Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 8 Mar 1955

Vol. 149 No. 1

Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Sweetman)

I move:—

That a sum not exceeding £34,560,000 be granted on account for or towards defraying the Charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1956, for certain public services, namely:—

		£
1	President's Establishment	2,600
2	Houses of the Oireachtas	76,000
3	Department of the Taoiseach	9,200
4	Central Statistics Office	42,720
5	Comptroller and Auditor General	11,300
6	Office of the Minister for Finance	54,000
7	Office of the Revenue Com missioners	611,720
8	Office of Public Works	160,000
9	Public Works and Buildings	1,300,000
10	Employment and Emergency Schemes	232,000
11	Management of Government Stocks	43,200
12	State Laboratory	8,300
13	Civil Service Commission	18,000
14	An Chomhairle Ealaíon	6,500
15	Commissions and Special Inquiries	4,200
16	Superannuation and Retired Allowances	306,000
17	Rates on Government Pro perty	10,000
18	Secret Service	2,500
19	Expenses under the Electoral Act and the Juries Act	—
20	Supplementary Agricultural Grants	1,150,000
21	Law Charges	39,200
22	Universities and Colleges	270,000
23	Miscellaneous Expenses	6,000
24	Stationery Office	181,000
25	Valuation and Boundary Survey	22,750
26	Ordnance Survey	20,150
27	Agriculture	2,468,500
28	Fisheries	38,880
29	Office of the Minister for Justice	29,660
30	Garda Síochána	1,536,000
31	Prisons	61,910
32	District Court	27,840
33	Circuit Court	46,000
34	Supreme Court and High Court of Justice	31,500
35	Land Registry and Registry of Deeds	32,100
36	Public Record Office	3,180
37	Charitable Donations and Bequests	1,720
38	Local Government	1,790,000
39	Office of the Minister for Education	117,000
40	Primary Education	2,907,000
41	Secondary Education	350,000
42	Technical Instruction	400,000
43	Science and Art	60,000
44	Reformatory and Industrial Schools	105,000
45	Dublin Institute for Ad vanced Studies	20,000
46	National Gallery	3,560
47	Lands	833,700
48	Forestry	470,100
49	Gaeltacht Services	170,000
50	Industry and Commerce	2,686,000
51	Transport and Marine Ser vices	509,000
52	Aviation and Meteorological Services	107,600
53	Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office	7,800
54	Posts and Telegraphs	2,795,000
55	Wireless Broadcasting	139,380
56	Defence	2,371,400
57	Army Pensions	536,300
58	External Affairs	130,300
59	International Co-operation	14,000
60	Office of the Minister for Social Welfare	170,000
61	Social Insurance	921,330
62	Social Assistance	5,860,500
63	Health	2,070,000
64	Dundrum Asylum	15,500
65	Oifig na Gaeltachta agus na gCeantar gCúng	1,500
66	Tourism	133,400
	TOTAL	£34,560,000

This Vote on Account begins the financial business of 1955-56. It is for a sum which is just under one-third of the total of the Estimates and will cover expenditure on the Supply Services until roughly the end of July next. During the next few months the Dáil will be dealing not only with the individual Estimates but also with the Budget and the Finance Bill. It is only when these last two measures are disposed of that a full picture will have been presented of the financial arrangements for the new year. Any assessments of the financial position made at this early stage—when only the Volume of Estimates for the Supply Services is available—are founded necessarily on incomplete information and are, therefore, liable to be mistaken.

While, as I have said, the Estimates Volume is merely part of the financial picture, it is nevertheless an important part. The Supply Services, capital and non-capital, have in recent years accounted for about three-fourths of the total State expenditure. The remaining fourth is made up by Central Fund Services and direct issues from the Exchequer for capital purposes. In framing the Budget the revenue side is of at least equal importance to the expenditure side but, for the present, this part of the picture is missing and we are at the moment concerned only with the provision to be made for Supply Services.

Deputies will have observed that the total of the Estimates for 1955-56 is £105,488,093, a decrease of £2,774,380 on last year's figure of £108,262,473. If account is taken of Supplementary Estimates in 1954-55, other than that for the National Development Fund, the decrease is £4.83 million.

Deputies will remember that in 1950-51, when the present Attorney-General was Minister for Finance in the first inter-Party Government, the Estimates were segregated between capital and other services. The last Government, for budgetary purposes, made exactly the same deductions from current expenditure but they gave no indication of this intention in the Estimate volumes they presented. Their action was of no advantage to the national finances and only served to befog the issue in the relevant discussions in this House. I have, therefore, taken the same capital items— now traditional—and have openly segregated them from the other Supply Services both on the title-page and in a preface to the volume. This division reveals that of the decrease of £2.77 million as compared with the original provision for the current year, £1.63 million relates to capital services and £1.14 million to non-capital services. It is the reduction in non-capital services which is significant in relation to the current Budget and it is on that account particularly gratifying. The reduced provision for capital services is due mainly to a fall of £1,250,000 in the amount required to supplement the Hospitals' Trust Fund grants for the building of hospitals. This arises partly because of increased Hospital Sweep income and partly because physical progress with the building programme has not been as rapid as was first thought possible. In the last year, for example, for which completed figures are available, 1953-54, expenditure was £1.6 million less than estimated. In the current year, expenditure will probably work out at £1.5 million less than estimated.

In giving a brief account, as is customary on this occasion, of the principal variations in the Estimates as compared with 1954-55, I shall distinguish as I go along between capital and non-capital services. I would remind the Dáil that, as I announced in November last, the Government have arranged for a detailed review of the State capital programme as a whole. When this review is completed and considered by the Government, and Deputies will realise that the review to be exhaustive will take some considerable time, it is possible that some changes may be made in the capital Budget necessitating adjustments in voted capital services or other forms of State capital outlay. Though not directly relevant to the consideration of the capital services detailed in the Volume of Estimates, I might perhaps add that the Government also arranged for an examination of the facilities available to Irish industry for obtaining capital. These two reviews when completed should be of real advantage in planning and promoting capital development for the future.

As Deputies are aware the Book of Estimates itself shows Vote by Vote and item by item where variations occur as between 1955-56 and the current year. I shall only refer, therefore, to the more important changes and for convenience I have attempted to group similar services together.

Turning then first of all to the non-capital services, Deputies will find that there is a net increase of approximately £359,000 in the provision for the remuneration of State employees including the Army, Garda Síochána and teachers, but excluding staff directly engaged on works of a capital nature. The post office accounts for approximately £199,000 of the total increase, chiefly because of pay increases awarded to postmen and other employees under conciliation and arbitration machinery. A further £100,000 or so represents additional provision in respect of labour for forestry work of a non-capital nature such as maintenance and timber conversion. Obviously as our forests increase with the years the numbers employed in their maintenance also grow. The provision for superannuation payments to State employees shows an increase of about £260,000, or £210,000 if account is taken of a Supplementary Estimate for £50,000 which was found necessary in the current year.

The provision for social services under the Social Insurance and Social Assistance Votes shows a net decrease of £247,900. I am happy to say that this decrease is due almost entirely to the better employment situation, in consequence of which there is a reduction in the provisions for unemployment benefit and unemployment assistance. I saw some comment over the week-end suggesting that the decrease in these two Estimates represents a reduction in benefit. This is, of course, untrue. The fact is that it is unnecessary to provide as great a total amount to give the same individual benefits next year because of two factors we are all pleased to note, namely, the improvement in employment and the decrease in unemployment. Owing to an increase in the number of beneficiaries an extra £120,000 is being provided for children's allowances.

The provision for flour and bread subsidy in the Estimate for Industry and Commerce shows a decrease of £681,000 as compared with the original provision for the current year which, however, will have to be augmented by Supplementary Estimate. Taking account of the prospective supplementary, which has yet to be introduced, the decrease is of the £1,000,000 order. The two items principally responsible for the decrease are, first, the new prices fixed by the Government for native wheat and, secondly, an increase in the world price of wheat offals which will be reflected in the price obtainable by native millers for this by-product. Nevertheless, I should make it clear that the provision now included ensures that the Irish farmer will be paid for his wheat of the 1955 crop a price much above that at which foreign wheat could be landed here at present. The differential would be further increased if world prices were to fall towards the minimum provided by the International Wheat Agreement.

A further reduction of £84,650 in the Estimate for Industry and Commerce arises from the deletion of the provision for the repayment of advances for rural electrification. The E.S.B., which showed a profit of almost £250,000 on its operations in 1953-54 and is doing well again this year, has reached a position in which it can assume responsibility for rural electrification and thus relieve the taxpayer of the subsidy which was originally provided when rural electrification had hardly advanced beyond the planning stage and actual experience of the effect on the board's finances had yet to be gained.

In the case of Defence, the provision for defensive equipment, while being still substantial, shows a reduction of £1,000,000. In deciding upon the provision to be made for defensive equipment the Government had given anxious consideration to reported developments in the discovery and manufacture of new and more terrible weapons of war and feel that in this age of transition to nuclear warfare it would be imprudent for them to spend more than a moderate amount of public money on the purchase of such conventional—and possibly obsolete— weapons as this country is in a position to obtain.

In the case of Agriculture, the principal variation in non-capital services relates to the provision for butter subsidy, which shows an increase of £2,015,000 over the original provision for the current year or an increase of £915,000 when account is taken of the Supplementary Estimate for £1,100,000 which was passed last July. This subsidy is the means by which butter is made available to consumers at 5d. per lb. less than is actually paid to the producers. The return which the creameries, and through them, the farmers secure is 4/2 a lb. This means that the price of milk is kept substantially higher than it would be in a free market, as any butter surplus to home requirements can be disposed of only at a loss.

Other important variations in the Estimate for Agriculture are the appearance of new provisions of £262,000 and £100,000 for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis and the pasteurisation of separated milk. It will be noted, however, that the bulk of the proposed expenditure on these schemes and all the expenditure on ground limestone subsidy is expected to be recouped from American grant counterpart moneys. The Estimate is relieved this year to the extent of almost £250,000 by the disappearance of the provision for recouping losses incurred by Eggsports, Limited.

Additional provision is made for the national farm survey which is being carried out by the Central Statistics Office and provision is made for the first time for the parish plan launched by the Minister for Agriculture. We are without certain basic information in regard to our agriculture and we hope that the farm survey will fill, at any rate, part of this void. It cannot be too often stressed that it is not intended that the survey should confine itself either to the very good farmer or to the bad farmer but rather that it should provide us with an analysis indicative of general conditions and standards.

The parish plan is part of the effort being made to provide better advisory services for agriculture. Having its roots in the parish, it will grow in the more natural way—from the bottom rather than from the top. It must be clearly understood that the rôle of the parish agent is not to control or to dictate to farmers but to act as their friendly adviser.

The decrease of £398,000 under the heading of C.I.E. arises from the ability of the company, in its improved financial circumstances, to operate without an Exchequer subsidy. In fact, the 1954-55 provision for a grant towards operating expenses will not be issued and a comparison of actual payments rather than of provisions made for this purpose would show no change as between the two years. The amount included in the Vote covers only the repayment to the Central Fund of advances made to C.I.E. to meet interest on transport stock.

In the Estimate for Primary Education the provision for ex-gratia payments to certain retired teachers shows a reduction of £144,000. The reason for the decrease is that the instalments have now been paid to all living pensioners and to the estates of many deceased pensioners. The sum of £5,000 proposed for 1955-56 is to meet outstanding cases where there are probate or intestacy difficulties.

The only other variation in the case of non-capital services to which I think it necessary to refer is the increase of £160,000 in the amount required for grants to health authorities. The latest estimate of expenditure in the current year is £6,130,000 so that we are actually providing for an increase next year of £760,000. As Deputies are aware, certain provisions of the Health Acts, 1953 and 1954, were brought into operation last autumn. Further sections, providing for new health schemes, will become effective during the coming year.

Coming now to capital services, it will be observed, from the summary inserted as a preface to the Book of Estimates, that, in the case of public works and buildings, the provision for the purchase of sites and buildings shows a reduction of £410,000. This is largely due to the fact that in the current year provision was made for the purchase of Arus Brugha and the Paris embassy.

In the Estimate for Agriculture an additional sum of £218,000 is being provided for the farm building scheme and water supplies while an extra £208,850 is required for the land project. In the case of advances under the Grain Storage (Loans) Act, 1951, applications are tapering off and it is expected that issues next year will be down by £375,000.

It is expected that allocations of grants for houses, both for new building and reconstruction, will rise, and, accordingly, an extra £250,000 is being provided for this service in the Local Government Vote. The provision of £100,000 for grants to local authorities towards the cost of housing schemes represents a reduction of £120,000 as compared with the provision in the current financial year. This provision is merely of historical significance; it is made to honour the outstanding liability of the Transition Development Fund in respect of housing schemes carried out by local authorities and it is estimated that, with the payment of £100,000 in 1955-56, the balance still to be made good at the end of that year will have been reduced to £50,000.

An extra £235,500 will be spent on forest development and Deputies will see that of this extra sum £151,500 will be spent in the form of wages. Those figures are, of course, in respect of capital expenditure and are in addition to the increased maintenance expenditure to which I referred earlier. The extension of our forests not merely utilises, in the creation of a valuable future asset, land which might otherwise be of little value, but at the same time gives substantial employment.

The new provision of £150,000 for the G.N.R. is a provisional estimate of the contribution which it may fall to us to make towards approved capital outlay by the board in 1955-56. It will cover such things as new diesel rail cars, cement wagons and lorries.

So much for the details. I think I have mentioned the main items in which there are differences of a substantial order between this year's provision and that for next year, and I have given the reason for such differences. As I said, the total shows a decrease of £2.8 million including £1.14 million in non-capital services. This reduction is all the more notable when Deputies remember that it has been achieved after this Government, by a deliberate policy decision, added a sum for next year of £2,000,000 in respect of the butter subsidy. If it were not for this additional provision there would have been a reduction of over £3,000,000 in the amount required for current services next year as compared with the proposals of our predecessors. My colleagues and I can claim, with justification, that this is a satisfactory achievement. When the previous inter-Party Government left office in 1951, the Book of Estimates was at the figure of £83,000,000. The last Government in their three years of office increased that sum by £25,000,000 or something over 25 per cent. Once a trend has been started it is very hard to arrest, but we have succeeded in arresting that upward trend in expenditure.

We are, of necessity, committed to much of the increased expenditure that was made by the previous Government, when, by their deliberate policy, prices were increased in 1952. That policy brought with it direct increases in the cost of government through the necessity to increase the salaries of public employees, through increased costs in commercial and business activities and higher prices, even outside the range of commodities directly affected. All had their impact on Government expenditure. That influence still remains but we have reversed the rising trend this year and have reduced the proposed expenditure on Supply Services below the Estimates for the preceding year. This is something our opponents were never able to do since the war but which we have achieved in a short period and to an extent never equalled by them at any time in their years of office.

The time has not yet arrived for a complete review of the financial or economic picture of the country as a whole. That must await the Budget.

While that is so, I would like to indicate, just briefly, the framework of these Estimates which is also the framework of Government policy since we took office. As I said a moment ago, the last Government, by deliberate policy, in 1952 increased the prices of essential commodities. That increase was followed by a rise in costs in industry and in the costs of Government. Our approach has been exactly the reverse. We cannot expect to keep our people absolutely immune from world economic forces, but we in this Government do strive to ensure that the harmful effect of outside economic influences will be reduced to the minimum, particularly if we feel they are only temporary. We believe, as I have said on many occasions since we came into office, that our future economic prospects depend, in the first place, on confidence and stability. We can justly claim that not for many years has there been such confidence amongst our people in the future of their Government and in their institutions, national and economic, as there is to-day. The Deputies opposite who are laughing at that can go down the country and if they do they will find that it is true, even amongst their own supporters.

We want to ensure that, in addition to that confidence, there will also be stability. It was to that end that last summer we provided that the Exchequer would take on the additional liability for butter subsidy. The reduction of 5d. per lb. in the price of butter, now some eight months effective, was one of the things upon which we determined for the purpose of improving the prospects of stability. Not merely did it ease the cost of living but it also had the advantage of helping the consumer at a time when consumption was lagging behind production and our surplus butter could be sold abroad only at a price much below the equivalent of the return received by our creamery farmers for their milk.

It was that same concern for stability that motivated us, as a Government, in making arrangements to cushion our people against what we believe is going to be a passing rise in the price of tea. We were criticised at the time we took that decision by people who said that we were wrong, that we did not understand the signs or symptoms of the tea market. On the contrary, everything that has occurred since has shown that our appraisal of the market was better than theirs. Deputies will have seen that large tea interests in Britain, in the last few days even, are bringing down their prices. Various well-known tea companies are all now advertising lower prices. I admit, at once, that prices still have to drop substantially to reach a satisfactory level but with larger coffee supplies available at lower prices in America the world demand for tea should fall and, with the prospects for next year's crop, world pressure on supplies and, therefore, on prices should not be so acute. Would we not have been precipitate and unwise, if what we have had is a temporary famine in tea, had we let our prices rise and in so doing had, in that phase, jeopardised the stability of our economic and industrial machine?

It was also in pursuance of that aim of stability that I made representations on behalf of the Government last week to the banks so that if at all possible interest charges here would not increase, though, as I said last week, any such question of our economic position is one that must be watched almost from day to day and, certainly, from week to week. The general national welfare must be our primary objective rather than the immediate interest of any one section of our economy.

All these actions of ours are evidence of our efforts to avoid any spark that might set off another spiral, bringing with it damage to the productive machine, difficulties in respect of our balance of payments by our being priced out of export markets, and higher costs of Government; and that would, in the end, bring no easement but in fact place additional burdens in terms of real expenditure on the wage earner. It is to avoid that that we have directed our policy since last June.

I mention these things to-day so that the public as a whole may understand and appreciate the pattern which shapes our policy and because I hope the public and the leaders of opinion, outside this House as well as inside it, will assist in ensuring that this economic plan is not jeopardised and that we are enabled, in consequence, to go forward with steady progress.

As I have said, a more complete review, financial and economic, must await the Budget but, meanwhile, I must repeat the warning I gave earlier about attempts to appraise budgetary prospects on the basis of the incomplete indications now available. The Estimates for the Central Fund Services have yet to appear and the Estimates of Revenue are still only in preparation. I have not yet, therefore, been able to assemble all the information which I shall need in framing the Budget. When I remember that I will not be able this year, as my predecessor was last year, to call upon C.I.E., for instance, to provide £1,000,000, I do not approach the task with optimism.

An increase in the Central Fund Services is, of course, inevitable. We are providing, and properly providing, every year from the Central Fund amounts to amortise our capital expenditure as well as to meet the interest on the national debt. This must cause year by year an increase in Central Fund Services but it is for capital development which is accepted by every Party in this House as being essential to national progress. As I said in an earlier speech this year, an interval elapses before an improvement in our economic circumstances is reflected in the revenue returns. There I must leave the matter for the moment. These Estimates represent a cut in expenditure, and yet we do not believe in cutting expenditure merely for the sake of cutting it. We work to ensure that we will get good value for the money that is spent and, at the same time, we are cutting out expenditure that does not bring an adequate return.

The effect of these Estimates can easily be read also when one goes back only a few weeks to a speech that was made in this House on 10th February, 1955. It will be found at column 197, Dáil Debates, Volume 148. In that column a Deputy states:

"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."

The Estimates that are before the House are normally grouped for the purposes of accounting into 12 different groups. We were told there, a few weeks ago, that almost every Department, if not every Department, would show an increase. Out of the 12 groups, seven show a decrease. The Book of Estimates that is before you contains the total of 66 different Votes. More than half of those Votes—34—in respect of non-capital and exactly half in respect of capital show a decrease in the costs on which the administration of this country will depend next year. That shows the value of the prophecy that was made by Deputy Lemass.

Mr. de Valera

There is one thing, whatever they may lack, that members of the Government do not lack, and that is audacity. Perhaps the word "cheek" would be better. We have here a Minister for Finance boasting that he has been able to reduce the Estimates for the coming year as compared with the current Estimates to the extent of £1.14 million. If we were to consider the Estimates in detail we would see that the whole of it was almost covered by a windfall, by the Appropriation-in-Aid that comes from the American Grant Counterpart Fund or, if we do not take the whole of that, that the amount for ground limestone which last year was some £600,000 has not to be met because it will be offset by this windfall and, again, we have the reduction that is caused by the reduction in the wheat prices and the diminished necessity, therefore, for the wheat subsidy.

Now, compare this £1.14 million with the promises that were made when the Parties now in the Government were out campaigning last year. They did not say that they would reduce current expenditure or the current Estimates of expenditure by a mere £1,000,000. We had the predecessor of the present Minister in the Coalition Government telling the people that some £20,000,000 and upwards economies were needed and were expected if we were to put the national finances on a proper level. Not merely that, but that there were millions of pounds of savings ready to hand to be found by anybody who was serious in the quest. Is his colleague the Minister for Finance now serious in the quest? Has he been serious in the quest when these "millions that were ready to hand" have diminished to the negligible amount of £1.14 million, negligible because, as I have pointed out, in fact they have been covered by a windfall.

Twenty million pounds were to be the target. Now we have the Minister having the audacity to tell the House that they have done wonderfully well because they have got £1.14 million and this same predecessor of his, when the Book of Estimates was less than £95,000,000, was telling the public, as an expert, of course, that if the Government was changed and they could get into office a Minister for Finance would reduce it by £10,000,000 in ten minutes. A million a minute—that was the boast at that time, that that could be done.

We have to take this Book of Estimates in the background of the promises and the pledges which were made by the members of the Government when they were seeking office. They sought office on the pledge to a large body of their supporters that the expenditure of the Government, which was too high, would be reduced by millions of pounds. That was not a casual matter; it was something that was deliberately done, deliberately done, as we now see, to deceive the people.

I have been in public life for a fair length of time. I have been through some 15 general elections and some 50 or so by-elections and in all that time I have never seen anything like the deliberate campaign of deception which was used by those who are now in the Government or supporting it, used in order to get the support of the people at the last election. The people are beginning to wake up, however, and if the members of the Government imagine that they can continue that deception and that that deception will enable them to continue to keep office as it enabled them to get into office, they have a very small opinion of the intelligence of our people. You can play that trick once or twice but, thanks be to God, the people are wise enough to see through it ultimately.

I have been talking about the reduction in current expenditure. There is a reduction of £1.63 million in capital expenditure. That reduction in capital expenditure is effected by people who were saying that we were sacrificing worthwhile national productive projects to the sacred cow of sterling. To-day I heard a cry of "hear, hear!" when the question of afforestation was mentioned. The same thing is happening now as happened before when the Coalition Government were in office. You have a reduction of some £60,000 in the amount provided for the purchase of land. In the case of afforestation you know perfectly well that you cannot have a continuous programme if you do not get the land. Here we have a Government that pretends to be anxious to develop afforestation in this country, and they diminish by £60,000 the amount that is made available for the purchase of the land. Is the land there to be got or is it not? If it is not there to be got then where are all the millions of acres which we were told should be afforested? If it is available why are we diminishing the amount that has been provided for its purchase?

I am not going into details, however. There will be opportunities here for those who want to follow the Minister in his detailed remarks. Were the remarks made by the Minister because he wanted to continue the deception of the public? The fact is that we have, in so far as these indicate Government policy or Government expenditure, no diminution worth talking about in the provision for current expenses. Current expenses, as far as this goes, are practically at the same level as they were at the time of the promises of reductions. It is true, of course, that we at this time cannot take a comprehensive view of all the national finances. It is true, just as it was true last year when there were considerable reductions made, that the Estimates can be altered at Budget time.

Reduction in Defence has been mentioned; there was a reduction in the Defence Estimate last year, though I for one—I may be alone in the matter —think that it is a very foolish thing to diminish your expenditure by omitting to pay your fire insurance. There is a need for a certain minimum Army in this country both from the point of view of protecting the democratic rights of the people on the one hand, and also as a basis, in order that, if a crisis comes, you will have a foundation for the necessary expansion of man power. I also believe that a considerable amount should be done in regard to making provision for civil defence.

I do not think, therefore, that either we or the present Government can boast too much of the reduction in the Defence Estimate. That reduction did take place last year at the time of the Budget, and there were other reductions which were also made. The fact is, of course, that ultimately there was a balance effected by the Minister for Finance of about £101,000,000 for current expenditure last year. When you took on the one hand non-tax and tax revenue, and took account of the reliefs, the Revenue Estimate was about £101,000,000. I am omitting vehicle duties and Road Fund from both sides. We do not know whether that Estimate will actually be reached in the revenue returns, but that is the figure. That was practically the figure of expenditure also when you took the Central Fund services and the current Supply Services after adjustment. We are not in a position at this stage to know whether the Estimate will be reached, and we have not a completed amount in regard to expenditure.

The attitude of the members who are on the Government Benches now is very, very different from their attitude when the Vote on Account was being taken last year. When we then pointed out that you could not at this stage give a true picture we were shouted at: "Of course you can". We were told that we were just holding on to power, and that there was no necessity whatever to wait until the accounts for the year could be closed, and when we would be in a position to present a proper Budget. Now, however, the members of the Government want to forget all that. They want also to forget what they said about C.I.E. We were supposed to be playing all sorts of tricks last year when the Minister said that it was not necessary to make any provision for any current deficits during the year.

As I have said, I am dealing only with the block of Estimates in the main. The details will be dealt with by other members from our side. I hope that when the public in general who listened to the broadcasts of the former Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, read the excuses—because that is what they are—in the statement read by the Minister for Finance to-day, they will think of how they have been deceived. When it was pointed out by some of our speakers that you cannot effect big reductions in expenditure unless you cut out various items such as some of the social services or the like, and that if the Government intended the economies they suggested they must be considering reductions in subsidies, such as by reducing the price of wheat, the indignation of the Taoiseach foamed over. He said that those who were suggesting anything of the kind were dishonouring themselves and insulting those to whom the statements were addressed, that they were besmirching—I think that was the word he used—the dignity that ought to attach to public life; and that they offended the obligations of Christian charity.

I wonder if the Taoiseach were over on these benches and if we were to present, after statements such as were made during that election, a Book of Estimates and a set of excuses such as those we have listened to from the Minister for Finance, would there be any limit to his indignation? I wonder what rhetorical or oratorical heights he would have gone to in order to denounce us as being unworthy of the confidence that had been placed in us? He would have said that it was by a confidence trick or confidence tricks that we had come into office.

I am not gifted with powers of oratorical expression as the Taoiseach is, but I do think that the people will require no rhetorical efforts on the part of anybody to convince them that they have been misled. They have been misled not merely on this question of reduction of expenditure, but on the question of prices. The Minister has again the audacity to refer to the increase in prices. There were some 24 points increase in the price level index and, of these, no less than nine occurred during the time the previous Government were in office. Before they left office, so rapid was the increase that six of the points increases occurred within the last two or three months of their period of office. Eight points increase occurred similarly later by reason of world conditions and the only number that could be in any way attributed to Government policy was seven out of the 24.

The Government are now saying that they cannot shelter the community from the effects of outside economic disturbances, of outside economic movements. They did not say that when we were in office. They wanted to pretend that every single increase in price was the result of deliberate Government policy. That is what was said. Now, however, it is quite different. The Government cannot control prices. These are due, in the main, to outside influence which they cannot affect. They misled the people with regard to prices; they misled the people with regard to expenditure; and others who are in the Government misled the people by suggesting that there were going to be huge increases in social services, as if you could, on the one hand, increase expenditure by millions and, on the other, diminish it by millions.

The pretence was that there was waste, wilful waste, and that anybody anxious to find the items of waste could do so, if he were serious in the quest. Has the Minister for Finance found this waste? If he has, why has he not shown it here? It is possible, no doubt, to improve the machinery of Government—nobody denies that—but the £20,000,000 reduction, the £10,000,000, the £1,000,000 a minute, and all the rest are not to be found in that way. If we want to diminish expenditure, taking it absolutely, we must not incur extra expenditure anyhow. If we want to diminish it, we must make up our minds that certain things we are doing we cannot continue to do because we cannot afford them. We shall be very anxious to see the time when the Government comes forward to tell us that we cannot afford some of these things here. If they do not come to say that, the pretence that they are going to effect a big reduction in expenditure is all pretence.

The tendency is for expenditure to grow and every year there are additions. We have in this case increases in Central Fund services to which the Minister has referred and there will be additions for a variety of reasons every year. If you are going to offset these and try to keep expenses within the nation's capacity to pay, then it is necessary, when new proposals come up here, to say "no" to them. Are the Government, before they bring these proposals up, going to say "no"? Are we going to have new proposals which will mean new expenditure? We are told that if we have increased production, we will get from it, on the basis of the old rates, a greater yield. That is true, but we have to see the increased production, and we have to see that the expenditure does make for that increased production. Have we put many of our proposals to the test in the past in that way?

We are being urged on the one hand constantly to increase and increase, and, while we are being urged to do that, the very same people who do it are the people who tell you that expenditure can be decreased by tens of millions. It just cannot be done and we know it cannot be done in that way. We know, too, that the present Government were very loud in their denunciation of us about the flight from the land, about unemployment and emigration, and we know that these things are happening to-day just as they were happening before. We were told, without any proofs, that emigration was at the highest point ever. If we were on the benches opposite and the members of the Government were over here, there is no doubt that they would be crying out still that the flight from the land is taking place more rapidly than ever before, that emigration has reached a higher level than ever before and that, if we spoke of the reduction of a couple of thousand, or whatever it may be, in the unemployment figure—I think there are still 72,000 unemployed on the register—we would be told that there was a slight reduction in unemployment but that it has been cancelled out by increased emigration. Those who are listening to me on the opposite benches know that I am telling the truth, that these are the charges that would be made.

What has the present Government to say to them? Is it or is it not true that there is flight from the land? Is it or is it not true that there is heavy emigration? Is it or is it not true that there are some 72,000 registered as unemployed? When they were contesting the election, it was in minutes they could bring about remedies, and, in the case of the money, it was £10,000,000 reduction in ten minutes. When Deputy Morrissey was over here and talking about unemployment, he said that, if the Government only acted properly, every unemployed person in the country could be employed within 24 hours. He said there was productive work to be done, that it was crying out to be done, but that the Government either did not know how or did not have the desire to bring about that state of affairs. He was afterwards in Government and I remember seeing a report of a speech of his in which he turned quite round and said that if the people who emigrated would only work as hard at home as they did when they emigrated there would be no unemployment. I can only point simply to facts. I will not attempt to add any rhetorical flourishes to them. In my view, only a Government with infinite audacity, or a Minister with such audacity, could present a Book of Estimates such as this and try to excuse it by the speech the Minister for Finance made here to-day.

Mr. A. Barry

The general reaction to these Estimates has been one of very considerable relief both inside and outside this House. For the first time in many years the upward trend has been held. As the Minister has said, the trend is the important thing. The general confidence which the people expressed in this Government when they gave them their votes—and which they endorsed when the Government floated a loan at reduced interest rates—is justified in these Estimates and the people can face the future more cheerfully. They know they have at least four years of steady Government ahead of them and that that should bring a better and more attractive picture of our national affairs into view.

When the Leader of the Opposition says that the Government are audacious, I prefer to use the word "courageous". They are courageous in dealing with this task which they have inherited. They have done well in a very short time. We can all remember when the present Opposition, the Fianna Fáil Party, took office in 1951. We all remember the question of the Marshall Aid moneys and of what it has meant to our economy. We all remember the lowering and the weakening effect of the 1952 Budget and what that has meant to our economy. The injury has been such that no succeeding Government could undo the harm overnight. These are factors which have faced the present Minister for Finance with very considerable economic problems. The manner in which he is dealing with the legacies of ill-Government which he inherited will commend itself to the people of the country generally; of that I am confident.

The Minister and the Government have given us a sane and a crisp reaction to any new problems that have arisen since they took office. The matter of the price of tea has been dealt with in an intelligent and sane manner and in a manner which will justify itself before the year is out. World opinion seems to confirm that view.

While the manner in which the Minister dealt with the bank rate may not commend itself to Deputy Briscoe, it will, I think, commend itself to the majority of the members of this House and to the majority of the people of the country. I am very glad to note that there has been a change in direction. We have now reached the apex of expenditure and, henceforward, the trend will be downwards and in a healthy and satisfactory direction.

Mr. Aiken

There is no doubt about it that Deputy A. Barry is correct when he says that this Book of Estimates indicates a change in direction—but it is not the direction they told the voters of the country they were going to take. During the last general election they were out for full employment, for an increase in the farmer's income and for a great reduction in the expense of Government. We remember the speech made by Deputy McGilligan— which was alluded to by the Leader of the Opposition—in relation to the Book of Estimates for the financial year 1952-53, while we were in office. The amount was for £94,871,000. Deputy McGilligan took to the platform and said, as reported in the Irish Independent of the 10th May, 1952: “If they could get the present Government out before July 1st, a new Minister for Finance could, in ten minutes, save £1,000,000 a minute and thus wipe out the £10,000,000 that was being asked for. He did not even despair of being able to save the other £5,000,000 as well”. Those remarks were made in relation to a Book of Estimates which we, as a Government, presented to this House for a sum of less than £95,000,000.

If what Deputy McGilligan said to the public at that time was right, then, instead of having a Book of Estimates for supplies with a total expenditure of £105,000,000, the Government should have one for £80,000,000. The fact, however, is that the amount is not £80,000,000, as Deputy McGilligan forecast and promised, but £105,000,000. We shall examine in more detail what that Book shows inside the cover, as well as the figure on the outside. There has been an increase of £25,000,000 on what Deputy McGilligan promised in July, 1952. On the eve of the last general election he went even further than that. He broadcast on the 7th May, 1954, and said that "a distinct change of policy was required, however, and a new outlook on the part of the Ministers was demanded if the reduction of £20,000,000, and upwards, desirable in everybody's interest, was to be achieved." He said, of course, that this could be done—you remember, it has been so often quoted—"if there was a Minister for Finance who knew what he wanted, how to effect this £20,000,000 in savings and was prepared to go after them". Did Deputy Sweetman, the present Minister for Finance, know what he wanted and did he go after it?

We know that there was a lot of colloguing in Government circles for this last three or four months. We know that, when the Estimates were presented from the Departments and it was quite obvious there were going to be several millions up on the total, they got together and said they would have to put a better face than that on them—and the face they put on it, we will see what it discloses. But there is no sign of the £20,000,000. Instead of being down to £80,000,000, as Deputy McGilligan promised in 1952, it is up to £105,000,000, a plus of £25,000,000.

There was a lot of discussion on Opposition platforms about the need for capital development. The Labour Party have been prating about it all the time. What do the latest figures show in relation to capital development and the men employed on ordinary production in the country? They show there were more men drawing unemployment benefit—and these are people who have been recently employed—than there were last year. In fact, on the 26th February, the latest date circulated by the Government, there were 33,563 men drawing unemployment benefit as against 30,585 a year ago, an increase of 3,000 in the number drawing unemployment benefit compared with last year. During February, 1954, the total number of people on the live register went down by 1,850. This year during February it went up by 1,500. That is the trend that is satisfactory according to Deputy Barry and according to the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Sweetman

4,000 down last Saturday.

Mr. Aiken

The trend is upwards.

Mr. Sweetman

The trend is downwards.

Mr. Aiken

The trend is upwards and as regards the people that we can really get a grip of, that we know, the people who were recently employed and who are entitled to unemployment benefit, that number is up in every week of this year as against last year. There were 33,563 on the 26th February last, as against 30,585 a year ago. On the 19th February there were 32,232 as against 31,185 a year ago. There is an increase of 3,000 in the latest week for which we have the figures. We do not know what the trend was last week, as we have not got the figures yet. We will see how the trend is going, but the trend is upwards in regard to unemployment amongst the people who are normally employed.

Deputy Barry is quite cheerful. He wants us all to be cheerful about this situation. The Minister for Finance himself adjured us to look to the future with the greatest of hopeful anticipation. He claimed that this Book of Estimates is a satisfactory achievement. The most he has claimed is that he has saved £1,100,000 odd on non-capital items. I will show that that is completely wrong. The saving is nothing of the kind. The total saving, between capital and administration expenses, in the two groups, is £2.77 millions. The total of the present Book of Estimates is £105,488,000 as against £108,263,000, a total saving, or total decrease, of £2,775,000.

Let us have a look at that for an instant. The Minister gave a lot of details as to how this was achieved. I want to give some figures I got from a quick glance through the Book of Estimates. There has been a decrease in one sub-head, in the Oireachtas, for salaries of officers and allowances of T.D.s, of £1,872. Divide that by three and you get the allowance of a T.D., so the saving in that sub-head of T.D.s salaries has been by the increase of one Minister and one Parliamentary Secretary, and the reason it is now £1,800 less is that it is anticipated there will be another one added. We could save a lot on that sub-head if we made everyone in the Parliament a Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary. That is one saving. If you go on through this Book of Estimates, you will see that there has been expenditure either avoided or postponed on items of repairs and upkeep and the replenishment of stores all through it.

It is most wasteful not to paint prisons or, as is being done for the saving of a few thousand pounds, not to prepare for the repair of roofs. Lest the Government should fall, they are quite prepared to take the risk of the roofs of a lot of State property all over the country falling in. In the Revenue Commissioners there is a saving on one sub-head, sub-head G, of £5,920, but what is it on? It is on machinery and repairs to machinery. In Public Works and Buildings here is a saving of £410,000 in sub-head A, and £270,000 in sub-head B. All these are for buildings or sites. In sub-head K, there is a saving of £90,000, and that is on the purchase and maintenance of engineering plant and stores.

Any Government that wanted merely to effect an apparent saving could let the machinery go to bits and fail to acquire the sites and buildings necessary to keep the Government going, but a Government that has a conscience should behave as if it had a conscience. One of the savings shown —the Minister adverted to it—is £239,700 in G (3) in the Department of Agriculture. That is on the improvement of poultry and egg production. Is the Minister going to claim that that is a magnificent saving simply because the Eggsports Company had no losses last year and they had not to be provided for? In the Department of Agriculture we come to a most peculiar item. It is in the Appropriations-in-Aid, under 19 (a) £933,000 of a saving because there is a recoupment from the United States Grant Counterpart Fund directly into the Department of Agriculture. Is there any precedent for putting a sum of £933,000, which is an inter-Government transaction, into the coffers of one Department? I never heard of it. If the Minister is going to show a reduction in one Book of Estimates as against another by treating this vast sum of money, £933,000, as an Appropriation-in-Aid, it would be very easy for him to show a £50,000,000 reduction by meeting all the expenses of all the Departments in that way.

It shows the reason why you had all these meetings of the various members of the Government going on for so long. What tricks could they evolve out of their heads that would show an apparent reduction in the face of the Book of Estimates? This was one of the tricks. They decided they would have a reduction by hook or by crook and they did it largely by crook.

Another item is an Appropriation-in-Aid for £8,000 out of the National Development Fund. It is in respect of staff employed on bovine tuberculosis eradication. There is no provision at all in the Book of Estimates for the National Development Fund. Yet the Book of Estimates has been reduced by £8,000 out of the National Development Fund. It is a very easy way of accounting. It is very easy to show a reduction if you are prepared to do that sort of trick.

The Minister said that all these reductions were satisfactory. I take it that it was satisfactory, therefore, to advert to what I have already spoken about, that the machinery should not be replaced and that you should have all these indirect methods of accountancy to show an apparent reduction. Another item that was reduced in the Department of Agriculture was the grain storage loans. That was reduced by £375,000. Of course, we know that if the Minister for Agriculture had his way there would be no grain stores being built throughout the country. We would get it all in from abroad. He succeeded last time in reducing the necessity for grain storage by 500,000 acres. If he gets his way and has the clique behind him—the quiet as mice Labour Party as he referred to them— it is not grain stores we will want.

Another item of reduction is under the Garda, sub-head A, Pay and Salaries. There is £65,815 of a reduction there. They even went to the extent of saving £100 in the replacement of tools—subhead H (50). The purchase of transport is down to £28,800. There was a fleet of cars bought the other week I believe. With regard to the prisons— I mentioned this before—the maintenance of buildings and equipment in prisons has been cut by £4,630.

Another of these reductions of the sums of money in respect of which they want to show a reduction in expenditure in this Book of Estimates as against the last one we presented is £400,000 saving on Gaeltacht roads. Last year in our Book of Estimates there was a sum of £400,000 for Gaeltacht roads. It was decided to take it out of the National Development Fund. It is not in this particular Book of Estimates and the Minister claims as a great cut the disappearance of this £400,000 on Gaeltacht roads. It is part of this £2,750,000 that he has saved.

Another item is that in respect of primary education. Part of his savings is the fact that sub-head DD—ex gratia payments to certain retired teachers—have been reduced by £144,000 because all the lump sums were money provided by the Fianna Fáil Administration for the teachers who were entitled to them on the 1st January, 1950. The Minister made another saving in the Institute of Advanced Studies under sub-head B— provision for the acquisition or adaptation of buildings, £9,700.

Mr. A. Barry

Do you object to that saving?

Mr. Aiken

The buildings were bought last year. They had not to be bought this year. You cannot buy buildings twice. You can only buy them once.

Mr. Sweetman

Once is enough for the Paris Embassy.

Mr. Aiken

The Minister is talking about that but why did he not act about it during the past ten months?

Mr. Sweetman

Because you had already signed the contract.

Mr. Aiken

The Minister spent twice as much on it as I thought he would spend on it.

Mr. Coogan

Tell us about the turf-cutting improvements.

Mr. Aiken

This is getting a little bit too hot for some of the people over there. Let us come to the question of forestry. Another of the savings the Minister made is £60,000 on the acquisition of land. The money provided for the acquisition of land has been reduced from £135,000 to £75,000. I want to point out that the Coalition did that trick the last time they were in. They opened their mouths and talked about the millions of acres of land they were going to plant but they made no provision for the purchase of the land. We had accumulated about 70,000 acres. They did not add to it. We had 70,000 acres in hands. Now they are at the same game again. They are talking about forestry and talking about 25,000 acres a year but all they are providing for land this year is £75,000.

Mr. Blowick

What about the balance you left on the spit for the last three years?

Mr. Aiken

Everyone knows that if you are going to have forestry you have got to have land and that you cannot have any efficient programme of afforestation unless you have sufficient land on hands. You are going round the country prating and yapping about forestry. One of the satisfactory cuts the Minister has made in this Book of Estimates is the reduction of the money to be spent for the purchase of lands.

Mr. Coogan

There is an increase in regard to forestry of £280,000.

Mr. Aiken

Simply because there was an increase in wages of over £100,000 and that the more land we planted the more had to be thinned. You have got to thin the forests we planted. It is no thanks to you to thin them because there would be a public outcry if the people saw the forests being allowed to go to rack and ruin. But do not talk around the country about what you are going to do for forestry when you are reducing the amount of money that is being afforded for the purchase of land. There is a claim that there is an extra £10,000 being spent on Gaeltacht Services in this Book of Estimates. On the face of it the normal person would think there was an increase of £10,000, but in fact, there has been an increase in the Appropriation-in-Aid of the Gaeltacht Services of £51,480. This arises from the fact that the material that we provided has been made into goods that are to be sold and there will be to that extent an increase in the Appropriation-in-Aid. In fact, the Minister for Finance is providing not £10,000 more for the Gaeltacht services but £40,000 less in this year. There was a lot of chat about what they were going to do for the Gaeltacht all round the country—there was to be a new Minister for Gaeltacht Services—and yet we are providing £40,000 less for Gaeltacht Services, while we are making provision, as I pointed out regarding the Oireachtas, for the appointment of another Minister— perhaps a Minister for the Gaeltacht.

It has already been pointed out that food subsidies have been reduced by £681,000 and that is claimed as a very satisfactory reduction, but at whose expense? At the expense of the farmers. If the farmers were being paid a reasonable price for their wheat there could not be this saving of £681,000, so that it is like the Appropriation-in-Aid from the American Grant Counterpart Fund. This, in fact, is an Appropriation-in-Aid out of the pockets of the farmers.

Mr. T. Lynch

You are fretting about the farmers now!

Mr. Aiken

I know, as the Deputy from Cork has just said now to my colleague from County Louth, the farmers were never better off.

Mr. T. Lynch

I am a Deputy from Waterford, not Cork, and I said you are fretting about the farmers—you always were!

Mr. Aiken

I think it is a bit steep that the only saving that can be pointed to in this Book of Estimates as compared with last year is at the expense of the farmers—£681,000. After all, all the other Estimates have gone up, payments of this salary and that salary, but the farmer's salary is the only one that has been cut, and cut to the tune of £681,000. It might be more. If the policy of the Minister for Agriculture is effective it is not £681,000 by which the farmer's salary will be cut. He hopes that by cutting prices there will be no wheat grown and then there would be £18,000,000 reduction in the farmers' income.

We come to an item in the Department of Industry and Commerce, a saving of £34,000 which the Minister regards as satisfactory and which I am sure the Labour Party and all the rest of them were brought in on. I suppose the Tánaiste was sitting in and I suppose he agreed to this reduction of £34,000 in L (1) of Industry and Commerce for mineral prospecting. Do not let anybody think that this was but a mistake, that somebody had a few winks of sleep and that this cut slipped by. Exactly the same cut was made by the first Coalition within a couple of months of their coming into office. We had a sum of money of about £84,000 in the 1948 Estimate as far as I remember for mineral prospecting for Mianraí Teoranta but the Minister announced in the Budget that he was going to save it. As things turned out he was not allowed to save it all. However, the present Minister is following his footsteps and though he could not go to the full extent he has cut it down by £34,000. These are the people who are out for capital development, if you please, and they will not even take the trouble to find out whether or not we have the resources that we hope we have in minerals.

There is a decrease in Industry and Commerce under M (1) of the matter of £10,000 on the Bord na Móna research and experiments. We are hoping to have a £9,000,000 or £10,000,000 turf industry. We already have an industry worth several million pounds here and we have to cut by £10,000 the experiments that are now being carried out for the purpose of reducing the cost! We have to cut expenditure in half. And that is a satisfactory achievement and one that the Minister for Finance is very proud of and one for which Deputy Barry and others of the clique pat him on the back.

The Tánaiste was going about talking to everybody and telling them that they should be all out to produce more and export more but when it comes to the private conferences with the Minister for Finance as to how they can put a better face on the Book of Estimates he agrees to a reduction of £25,000 for An Foras Tionscal.

Another thing he agreed to was a £41,568 reduction for technical assistance, and then we have the agreement to reduce the provision for rural electrification—to wipe it out and to improve the look of the Book of Estimates by £84,650. We know that we have had an Appropriation-in-Aid of £933,000 from the Americans into the Department of Agriculture; we have had an Appropriation-in-Aid out of the pockets of the farmers of £681,000 into the Department of Agriculture for flour subsidies, and here is another Appropriation-in-Aid—that is what you can call it—from the electricity consumers of £84,000 odd. The E.S.B. were told during the war that if they prepared plans for rural electrification the State would stand a subsidy to give electricity to rural communities at reasonable prices, but now we are saving that £84,000.

Mr. A. Barry

Is not that good development?

Mr. Aiken

I do not know whether the Deputy has the same experience as I have, but I am always getting letters from farmers who say: "The E.S.B. will not give me electricity unless I am prepared to pay £200 or £300." I think it is unreasonable that the people who are in the most backward places should give this Appropriation-in-Aid when it was announced as public policy passed by this Parliament that it would be the general taxpayers who would help the rural communities.

Another saving, as the Minister explained, is the £398,000 to C.I.E. There is a saving also on the Sligo-Leitrim railway of £40,870. That was the sum of money that was put in for this railroad last year to keep it going, and that has been wiped out. There is no provision at all being made for it by the Minister. Is it going to close down? What is the story about it? Or is this only cut out in order to make the cover of the Book of Estimates look better? The Minister explained a lot of other figures; he did not explain that one. Another little cut that these developers of the nation have made is £116,000 on harbours. Does anybody think we should pat the Minister on the back for a satisfactory achievement in reducing the amount for harbours from £506,000 to £390,000? Have we no unemployed that we could put to improving all the harbours around the country for which there is a general call for attention?

Mr. T. Lynch

What do we want harbours for?

Mr. Aiken

That must be the mentality at the back of the Minister's cut—what do we want harbours for— because the Minister was very proud of all those cuts which he made and one of them was this £116,000 for harbours. We have heard the Tánaiste all around the country prating about the great interest he is taking in aviation development. The Minister for Agriculture used to hope the time would come when the Shannon would be a playground for rabbits and that we would turn the masts into knitting needles to knit their wool. However, recently the Tánaiste has been going down the country and he has seen, or at least the people have told him of, the enormous advantages to this country of the development of civil aviation. He has promised that he is going to do a great deal for the development of aviation, particularly at Shannon.

What does he do when it comes to the Book of Estimates? When he returns to Dublin after this great speech he reduces the amount for the acquisition of land and buildings by £10,000. This is all in connection with aviation and meteorological services; in sub-head G, constructional works at Shannon airport, there is a decrease of £15,000; in sub-head H, constructional works at Dublin airport, there is a decrease of £25,000. He does that in spite of the fact that the Appropriations-in-Aid, receipts from landing fees, from the catering services, from the rent of stores in the customs free port, have gone up by £55,400. Shannon is earning more money and the Tánaiste says down the country that he is going to give it all the help he can. He comes back to Dublin and he cuts the sums of money involved for development.

I said there was a lot in these alleged savings connected with stores, replacements and repairs. The last time the Coalition left there was hardly a boot or a shirt left in the Army stores. It looks now as if it is not only the Army that is going to suffer in this way in order to get the sum on the face of the Book of Estimates down.

The Post Office stores are also being cleaned out. There is a reduction of £44,000 in G (1) for stores. In G (2), uniforms, there is a reduction of £8,000. That is, for Posts and Telegraphs. They are going to reduce the manufacture of stamps by £21,500; salaries and wages in the engineering department by £22,000. That is an interesting item. We all know that there are people all over the country flaming mad because they cannot get telephones installed, that they have to wait six months or a year before they get them installed. Now, there is a decrease in the number of installers, the technicians who instal the telephones. Why on earth are the number of installers being reduced from 588 to 402 when the cry is for more telephones more quickly? There is a saving of £60,000 on the wages—if that is not the reason what else is it?

Mr. O'Donovan

I think the Deputy should have looked at the two items above that. Look at the number of electricians.

Mr. Aiken

I want to point out that one of the savings that the Minister is claiming credit for is £60,000 in the item in sub-head L (1) for salaries and wages in the engineering department of the Post Office.

We come to Defence. We have advertisements in the paper for recruits. We all know that the numbers in the Army have been decreased and that it is having a very bad effect. The Army is just fading off the face of the earth, but there is provision being made in sub-head A for a further £99,436 in the pay of officers and privates. For provisions and allowances in lieu, there is a reduction of £111,808. Then we come to the process of emptying the stores and leaving as many bills as we can to another Fianna Fáil Government. The item for clothing and equipment is down by £44,294. The civil defence is being cut in spite of the fact that every country in the world is worried about civil defence and that something should be done about it, at least as much as we can. It is being cut down by £21,000. Another thing that the Minister is proud of is that he has not to buy naval vessels this year as they were bought last year and there is a saving of £28,000 in sub-head P (2) accordingly.

Then we come to Social Services. There is a decrease in the sum required for old age pensions of £10,000 but if there was any real intention behind all the prating of the Labour Party instead of cutting it by £10,000 it should be up by £10,000,000. For unemployment assistance it is £339,000 less although, as we know, the trend in unemployment is upwards. It may be that the intention of the Government is to arrange that more will leave the unemployment exchange if not for jobs in this country then in some other.

In regard to Health, if there was one thing more than another the Labour Party was prating about all over the country it was the necessity, not only for health services but health education. But what do you think they did in order to save £5,000 to make the face of the Book of Estimates look better? In F (3)—the item in regard to the dissemination of information and advice on health—they cut it by £5,000. That was done as a result of the colloguing that went on between the Tánaiste and the other Ministers in preparing the Estimates.

One of the excuses of the Labour Party was—what was the use of talking about bringing in health services when we had no hospitals? We had no hospitals until we built them and we could not have the other services either unless we had hospitals. Now they are taking care that they will not have more hospitals by cutting down the Grant-in-Aid for hospitals by £1,250,000.

Mr. S. Collins

That would not be because the hospitals have been completed, would it?

Mr. Aiken

The Minister for Finance seems to have gone back to the system of thinking about tourism like a lot of his colleagues did immediately following the war. They condemned us for entertaining these spivs and for allowing them to eat our beef. They wanted us to clear them out altogether. We seem to have the same thing back again. In order to discourage these people from coming in here the Minister has cut £78,000 from tourism. I am giving only a few rough figures. I am not giving all the figures of these savings. Remember the savings, as shown on the cover of the Book of Estimates, amount to £2,775,000. Actually those I have alluded to amount to about £7,000,000. Just like that. So that the £2,775,000 should actually be £7,000,000, only it is counterbalanced by £5,000,000 extra expenditure on other items.

Mr. A. Barry

Are you sorry?

Mr. Aiken

Deputy Barry may be very delighted about the £681,000 that is being saved at the expense of the wheat growers. Indeed I am very sorry. I think it is disastrous policy. I think that a number of these other things on which savings have been made are disastrous. I feel it is a terrible thing to fail to keep our buildings in repair, to fail to repair them and to keep their roofs in order. This Book of Estimates which may look better on its face is deliberately bad economy and amounts to disastrous policy.

Mr. Sweetman

What about Sligo?

Mr. Coogan

Yes, and Bord na Móna.

Mr. Aiken

The attitude of the Deputies who support the Coalition is to ask what we are talking about. Their attitude is that we can talk till the cows come home, because it is as the result of all the promises they made that they would save £20,000,000 that they got where they are. But at any rate there is one good result, and it is that there is no doubt about it that the public are being educated and that the same sort of a trick will not be played upon them quite so easily again.

Mr. S. Collins

I think it is time that we came to grips with some of the twaddle that has so fulsomely come from the former Minister for Finance. I think that what is wrong with Deputy Aiken in the main is a sense of frustration that he feels in the false procrastinations of his Deputies here that everything was going to sky-rocket upwards. He comes here and he does a bit of schoolboy play-acting in relation to saving, as he puts it, on tools or on roofs or on various maintenances, apparently not giving us credit for either intelligence or a capacity to appreciate the fact that many of these things that appear year after year in the Book of Estimates have for far too long gone unchallenged. One would think from the gyrations of Deputy Aiken that all this painting and all these roof repairs and all the other types of maintenance operations had become a recurring account in relation to all Government buildings. Let us test some of these supreme weapons of Deputy Aiken's taunting.

Deputy Aiken has taunted the Labour Party for failing to provide the hospitals that are necessary, and speaks airily of a reduction of somewhat over £1,000,000 in the moneys provided for hospitals, completely ignoring the fact that some of the largest hospitals in this country are completed or on the verge of completion and that some of them are just ready to be opened.

Mr. J. Brennan

Hear, hear!

Mr. S. Collins

To mention but two of them, take the huge new sanatorium in Cork and the new regional hospital in Limerick. Is not the former Minister for Finance—yes, and the former Minister for Defence—being completely dishonest in terming as a saving something which arises by virtue of the fact that such substantial advances have been made in the progress of building hospitals that it is unnecessary to provide in the coming year——

Mr. J. Brennan

Hear, hear!

Mr. S. Collins

——this £1,000,000. I hear some of the Deputies more or less claiming with apparent significance that the great progress in the building of hospitals is attributable to them.

Mr. J. Brennan

The Minister for Health has said we have enough hospitals.

Mr. S. Collins

We should have grown up enough and we should have become adult enough in this House to appreciate that it is the duty of the Oireachtas, irrespective of what Party is in office, to provide as quickly as possible adequate hospital facilities.

Mr. J. Lynch

Why then has the Minister cut them by £1,250,000?

Mr. S. Collins

That is where the Deputy is acting the gom.

Mr. J. Lynch

Just a moment. Let us take what seems——

Mr. S. Collins

Is Deputy Lynch in his naïve way going to suggest that the fact that we have built a substantial number of hospitals does not mean that as many more may not have to be built again?

Mr. J. Lynch

Will the Deputy give way just one second and I will tell him?

Mr. S. Collins

I will not give way. The Deputy will have plenty of time afterwards.

Mr. J. Lynch

The Minister said he was cutting down anticipated expenditure by £1,250,000.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order! Deputy Seán Collins on the Vote.

Mr. S. Collins

What is wrong with the Opposition is that even as a Government they never had the capacity of a reasonable or practical survey of the Estimates. They never appreciated the fact that without detriment to the Vote it was possible to find in these Estimates substantial grounds for savings. I am going to come back to another bit of tomfoolery indulged in by Deputy Aiken. We had in this House for a number of years considerable difficulty, year after year, in relation to the Defence Estimate, because year after year we were appropriating fixed sums of money for technical stores and equipment which we could not get and, year after year, we saw in the Estimates, coming back as an Appropriation-in-Aid, money which, with the best intentions in the world, the Minister was not able to use because he could not get the stuff.

The situation changed some few years ago and we were able to get immense quantities of a certain type of material from Sweden, and we were able to fill our stores in the way we were not able before. Most of this stuff has not been used yet. It is there as a reserve until the necessity arises, to be used for the protection of our people. All that is used in an average year is that which is necessary for training and practice, and is the former Minister for Defence now suggesting that we would throw out all those stores and leave this money in to replenish them? It is wrong to suggest we are doing something queer because the cupboard is full. It is not because we have four bare walls in the store that the Appropriation-in-Aid in relation to technical equipment and warlike stores is down: it is because the stores are full.

Within the last two years the Minister for Defence in the Fianna Fáil Government, Deputy Traynor, boasted about all the warlike stores he could get. Presumably he got them and, if the stores are now full, why should the people be asked this year to provide large sums for technical equipment and stores that are neither necessary nor required?

Let us come to grips now with this subject of forestry and the taunts thrown across the floor of the House in relation to afforestation. My complaint has always been that the money provided for forestry and for the purpose of buying land has never in the past been expended in the year in which it was provided.

Mr. Blowick

Hear, hear! And well the ex-Minister knows that!

Mr. S. Collins

Just a moment. I will develop my own argument. The burden of my complaint is that the rate of progress in relation to the activity of Fianna Fáil in the past has been too slow. That applies both to reafforestation and the acquisition of land for distribution. No matter what money was provided by the Oireachtas, at the end of the year an unexpended sum was brought back by way of Appropriation-in-Aid. I hope that the Minister for Lands this year will spend his £75,000. If he wants four times that amount next year, and if he can convince the Minister for Finance that he can use that sum in the year he asks for it, I am quite sure the money will be forthcoming.

This petty play-acting serves no useful purpose. A quite extraordinary sorrow seems to issue from the breast of Deputy Aiken because there is a reduction in the grant for mineral exploration. Sometimes I am tempted to think we have done a lot of probing in that regard with very, very little result. In the main, where there is a potentiality of economic mineral return private concerns are seeking permission from the Minister for Industry and Commerce to carry out the necessary exploration. I have a different complaint from Deputy Aiken in relation to that situation. I think the Minister has only gone part of the way. Year after year we examine the Book of Estimates. Year after year large sums of money are voted for specific purposes and, year after year, one finds in the Expenditure and Revenue Account Appropriations-in-Aid brought back because the moneys voted have not been expended. I commend the energy of the Minister in so far as he has gone out after that type of estimation, a type of estimation which gives rise to unnecessary inflation in the Book of Estimates.

There has been for too long a tendency on the part of Departments to think of a number, and ask for that figure. It is time we got down in a practical way to correlating the figure asked for with the sum that is likely to be expended during the particular financial year.

We have come to a time when people expect some limit to public expenditure. During all the years I have been in this House the tune played by Deputies, even though it may vary slightly when they change their position here, has always been that there is a staggering rise in expenditure and dead administrative costs which must be got after; but Fianna Fáil to-day are acting like chastened children because this Government, after a short period in office, has been able to apply the brake. That is the whole burden of the case against us. Deputy Aiken taunts us with the reduction of £10,000 in the appropriation for old age pensions. Deputy Aiken is trying to fool the people. He is not adverting to the fact that that reduction may be caused by a higher death-rate in recipients as compared with the number coming in. The Deputy will have an even worse heartache than that. His tomfoolery here in relation to this particular facet of the Vote will have a horrible boomerang effect when he finds that the promised alleviation and amelioration of conditions adumbrated by the Minister for Social Welfare is not just so much empty talk.

Will we again have the stupid situation that arose on the Social Welfare Bill on the occasion when the inter-Party Government introduced an increase for old age pensioners? Fianna Fáil at that time tried by every method at their disposal to distort the facts and to abuse the measure, but that did not change the fact that the old age pensioners enjoyed at the end of every week the increase that Fianna Fáil would feign deny them but dare not. I advise Fianna Fáil speakers who follow to steer clear of the old age pensioners. They left them in the lurch long enough. We were able to give them some effective amelioration of their conditions in the first inter-Party Government. Let the Fianna Fáil Deputies sit back now and see the further amelioration they will get after we have been a few months in office.

We must face reality. I do not think the Minister is boasting. The Minister has been able to put an effective brake on the rising spiral of expenditure and that rising spiral at one time seemed to be almost without limit in its future potential. When the Minister has had an opportunity and has had more experience of the workings of his own Department I am sure he will be able to cull still further types of productive expenditure while giving the necessary impetus to capital development and worthwhile projects as distinct from deadweight rising administrative costs. The present Book of Estimates is a sad blow to Fianna Fáil. We all know that. Deputy Aiken would not have been in the petulant, waspish mood he was in this afternoon were it not for the fact that he is feeling the strain of trying to make a case on pseudo-facts that are hurled back in his face. Let him go back over the list that he has been quoting and distorting and apply common sense to it. If he does, he will find that the savings effected are not savings that are going in any way to stop the impetus to production and national development which this Government has succeeded in reasserting within the people. It is time we realised that we have been suffering from the heritage of an extraordinarily bad economic approach to our problems by a stop-gap government.

There has already been advertence to the catastrophic Budget of 1952. We had to face, after that, a situation where even the money market was shaken to its foundations by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, seeking and boasting about getting a fully subscribed loan at terms which were disastrous to the general economy of the country. We had that heritage behind us, and now Fianna Fáil are sore because the present Minister for Finance, in the new surge of confidence that is within the people of this State, was able to readjust the money market and get his full national loan oversubscribed at a rate far below that of his philanthropic predecessor, Deputy MacEntee, who gave to the big investors a rate of interest and security which this State could not afford. They were annoyed at the remarkable success of that, and now, to add to their aching pains at the prospect of a protracted opposition, is the fact that without in any way affecting the prospect of further development and of employment where State moneys are concerned, the Minister has been able to effect a substantial reduction in the dead weight of administrative costs.

Grow! That is what Fianna Fáil wants to do. It had the power punch so long in this country that it does not realise two things: that it is a spent force and that it cannot cod the people any more. With all the ranting and prating of Deputy Aiken and the distortion, the attempted distortion, by him of the real situation, it all only goes to intensify the lack of reality in the case which that Party is trying to make.

The facts speak for themselves. The figures in the Book of Estimates are down, but there is no saving where development is concerned, whether it be on the bogs of Ireland or on the roads of Ireland or in our rural improvement schemes. There is no saving on any of these schemes so that poor Deputy Aiken has walked himself up to the neck into another serious blunder. He is bemoaning and begroaning the fact that the £400,000 for the Gaeltacht roads is gone. The poor man is codding himself, or else he does not appreciate the fact that it is there, to the same amount as before, the only difference being that it is not to be found from the same source.

Another thing that is giving Fianna Fáil county councillors considerable worry is the fact that we are going to get a very substantial increase in the Appropriations-in-Aid for our county roads while still maintaining the position that exists is relation to major road maintenance. What is really wrong is that the Fianna Fáil Opposition is so bewildered at the situation that they cannot sit down and assess it, and so they come in here like petulant, annoyed schoolboys to get something off their chest that has no basis in reality. I want to say to them that they are going to have to watch, for a number of years, the formation and development of a completely different economic pattern in this country.

I see where one of our national newspapers has taken the Minister to task because he has not been able to do better. I think it is time that all of us began to realise that this is only the commencement of a different type of era in which expenditure for the sake of expenditure is going to recede, and where expenditure for the worthwhile development of this State is going to increase and keep increasing. It is time we realised that in the short period of eight months the Minister has been able to give an earnest which provides a very favourable portent for the future, and that it is not going to serve any national purpose, even for the Opposition Party, to bicker about reductions in administrative costs because on the other side of the scale the people of Ireland are going to see more and more worthwhile schemes of national development from the capital side of expenditure being put into effect.

There is no good in talking about the flight from the land, about emigration or anything else or the checking of them until we get our national economy in order, so that with a complete and ruthless culling of administrative expenditure there will be a courageous and forthright approach to the problem of putting Irish money into the development of Ireland at home for the Irish.

I think it can at least be said in fairness to the Minister that the time has arrived when he and his colleagues in the Cabinet are not prepared to take as gospel what figure is presented to them by the Departments. The complaint which, apparently, Deputy Aiken has is that this Government asks Departments to justify and, in fact, convince them of the necessity for certain moneys. I think that in so acting they are discharging a duty which for too long has been undischarged by public men in this country. I think that particular type of interest is a safeguard for the people in the future. I think it is a healthy sign that is going to be reflected in the situation which will gradually develop, so that whatever increases we may see in the future will not be on the deadweight administrative end but rather on the capital side of our Budget. We all hope to see these emanating either directly from Government sources or from sources supported or helped by the Government thereby providing the potential for additional employment, whether it be on the land or in the factories of Ireland. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.