I am sorry that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is leaving, because I wanted to put a couple of important questions to him.
Finance Bill, 1955—Second Stage (Resumed).
I cannot answer them now. I will read the Deputy's questions, and answer them later.
The Minister has gone; he cannot even wait for two minutes. Every member of the Labour Party has cleared out—I do not know why. I was addressing myself to those empty benches when this debate was adjourned. The questions I was addressing to them are of some importance, particularly to the people who voted for them at the last election and who enabled them to put the Coalition Government into power again. I was proceeding to contrast one section in this Finance Bill with the attitude of the Coalition Government on the implementation of the Health Act. Under this Finance Bill, in Section 4, the income-tax payer will be relieved of a portion of his income-tax provided he insures himself and his family against accidents and illness, and he will get relief of his income-tax on the payments he makes.
Now it was provided in the Health Act that a man in receipt of up to £600 per year, with a wife and three children, would get help if he or any member of his family fell ill. The Coalition Government have steadfastly refused to implement that Act. The man in receipt of £600 a year, with a wife and three children, gets no help from the State if he or any member of his family falls ill, irrespective of whether that illness lasts for a week or six months and irrespective of whether they have to pay two guineas to a specialist or £200 to a hospital.
While the Coalition Government, with the help of the Labour Party, have refused to give the benefits to the middle income group, to the clerk with the small salary or the artisan earning £10 or £12 per week, they have jumped in in this Bill to give a subsidy to the people who pay income-tax and surtax, and there is no means test. They may have £700 per year or £700 per week; nevertheless the Government will not apply a means test to that particular group and they will get the relief in income-tax irrespective of what the amount of their income may be.
This subvention is free for all income-tax payers. But the man with a wife and three children earning £600 per year, who may have to pay a few hundreds in some unfortunate case for himself, or his wife, or a member of his family who falls ill and has to go to hospital for a long period, gets no assistance. The Health Act has been postponed but the Government has jumped in to help the very large income-tax and surtax payer. I would like some member of the Government —the members of the Labour Party have disappeared again; the Tánaiste would not wait——
Of course, the Deputy is wrong. The Health Act is not being postponed.
If I am wrong let me be corrected. It is no use the Parliamentary Secretary simply saying I am wrong. He has said that on many occasions. Yet, it was he who went around the country with other members of the Coalition Government condemning Fianna Fáil because of the level of unemployment in our time and the amount of emigration. Now he regards emigration as a step towards full employment.
No—I said it had been called that; that is a different thing.
Order!
I have no doubt that it is in the Parliamentary Secretary's interest to defend the Coalition Government and the Labour Party in this particular instance, even if he has to make interruptions without any basis; but I want to know why it is that the Government and the Parties comprising it are prepared to give a subvention to people in the income-tax and surtax groups to help them to insure themselves and their families against illness and the consequences of illness and refuse to implement the Health Act which would at least have helped the middle-sized farmer and the middle-income group in the towns and cities.
The Minister for Health went down somewhere and condemned the giving of doles to everybody, a practice which, he said, was being operated by the Fianna Fáil Party. That was last November. But now the Coalition Government are prepared to give a dole to the large income-tax and surtax payers to help to insure themselves against illness and the consequences of illness. I am not contesting that that is a bad idea, but they are prepared to give that dole to people who can very well afford to insure themselves out of their own resources and they are, at the same time, refusing to give the rights which this Parliament conferred on the middle-income group and the middle-sized farmers under the Health Act of 1952 or 1953.
The Deputy should make up his mind on it.
The Parliamentary Secretary may want to forget that the Health Act is there.
No. There is £750,000 more for it this year.
Coming out of the ratepayers' pockets, the ratepayers whom the Minister for Defence was going to help; he was going to pay all the rates for the ratepayers.
We are not discussing the Health Act.
Under this particular Bill provision is being made for a State subvention to certain people.
On a point of order. There is no State subvention in this Bill for the purpose to which the Deputy is referring.
That is not a point of order.
The Parliamentary Secretary is as usual quite wrong. He is as wrong as he was in his reference to the entertainments duty and the man who made the thousands of pounds out of the abolition of the dance tax two or three months before it was actually abolished. This Finance Bill provides that a man who is paying income-tax will get relief of some portion of that tax if he insures against illness for himself or his family. The Tánaiste at one time used to berate Fianna Fáil for their favouritism towards the large income-tax payers and particularly towards those who made a profit out of Irish Industry. He denounced the people who put the money into Irish industry and made a profit out of it as racketeers and he said that, if he had his way, they would all be behind the thickest jail walls he could find.
I do not see what connection that has with this Bill.
We are discussing finance.
We are discussing the provisions embodied in this Bill. The discussion is not as general or as wide as the Budget debate.
We discussed everything this morning from the balance of payments in 1938 to very small items indeed connected with finance.
What the Tánaiste said or did not say in relation to industry does not relevantly arise on the provisions of this Bill.
If I am not allowed to remind him of his threat to put our industrialists behind the thickest jail walls the Government could find, then let me remind him of one thing which undoubtedly comes within the scope of this discussion; that is, what he said about the excess profits tax. He said: "By returning a strong Labour Party the people would have the guarantee that excess profits would be taxed to provide money to subsidise food and thus reduce the cost of commodities." He said that in Limerick on 24th January, 1948. Speaking at Celbridge also in 1948 he said: "Nobody had been able to explain why £4,500,000 of excess profits tax had been turned back to those whose backs were best able to bear the taxation burdens instead of being given to those whose only relaxation was a simple smoke or a glass of stout."
In those days the Tánaiste, then Deputy Norton, was going to take £4,500,000 to subsidise the ordinary bulk of the people of the country who found it hard to pay the price of commodities necessary to keep up their standard of living. He has departed from all that and instead of taking £4,500,000 from these people he proposes, under this Finance Bill, to give them more if they will insure themselves against illness. It is going to be free for all income-tax and surtax payers, but the man with the wife and three children with £600 a year will get nothing.
I would like to ask the Labour Party —I am still addressing their empty benches, which have been empty all day—why it is that while agreeing to the postponement of the Health Act indefinitely they are jumping in to help this particular group which was condemned by them very loudly and at some length. There would be something to be said for this section if it was applied all round and if help was being given in it to those people who would have been helped under the Health Act of 1952, which was ignored by the Coalition Government which refused to implement that Act.
The Tánaiste, when he was in Government before, increased the National Health stamp by 6d. and after being three years in office he left it so that if a sick man had ten children he would still only get 22/6 per week. It remained at that level until Fianna Fáil introduced and passed the Social Welfare Act and increased the benefits up to 50/- for a person similarly circumstanced. They were all for no means test when Fianna Fáil were in office but now they are all for no means test for the income-tax payer but if a man falls below that class he will have to undergo the means test.
Deputy Costello, this morning, spoke at some length about our balance of payments situation. He set himself up as an expert statistician who was able to enter the lists with the official people who have been trained in statistics and whose duty and job it is to provide the Government and the nation with vital statistics. He alleged that, in fact, during the whole period of the last Coalition Government there had been a decrease of merely £1.9 millions in our external assets. He quite satisfied himself that such was the case by a reading of the external balances of the commercial banks.
The ordinary man in the street knows that if a man wants to judge his own situation as to whether his external balance of payments is right or not he has not only to count the money in his trousers pocket but also the money in his waistcoat pocket and the bills in his inside pocket.
And his stock, his stock and trade.
That is right. The Department of Statistics, after going into the situation between 1947 and the end of 1951, reported that, after checking up the decrease in the sterling assets and taking into account the same situation in regard to Government Bonds and having given heed to the increased liability of £46,000,000 owed to America and other capital items, there was a decrease in our external assets between the end of 1947 and the end of 1951 of £159.9 millions—£160,000,000 in round figures. I need not go any further into that but I just want to give him those figures so that he can chew on them and also to let him know that he must look further than the external balances of our banks between one year and another if he wants to know how our balance of payments stands. He must take into account transactions such as loans and advances to Irish citizens, dealing in external stocks other than by banks, capital payments made externally and so on. All these have relation to our external balance of payments and the sooner Deputy Declan Costello realises that the better.
I intervened in this debate, Ceann Comhairle, to ask the question of the Labour Party as to why they stand for no means test for our income-tax payers, whether they have £7 or £70 per week, and also why they insist that a man with a wife and three children who has £600 a year or less should have to pay full medical expenses for himself and his family and pay their hospital expenses if they fall ill. Is it that the Tánaiste has changed his mind so greatly over the years and has the Labour Party changed with him? Every day you see him appearing in the papers as being entertained by a number of people whom once he thought should be the guests of the Government behind the highest-walled jails they had. He now thinks that instead of putting them behind the thickest-walled jails, the thing to do is to give them a subsidy to insure themselves and their families against illness while he is leaving the middle-income groups without any such subsidy and leaving them to pay the full expenses for themselves and their families when they are subject to illness.
Deputy MacEntee opened the debate on this Bill by making a quiet criticism of certain aspects of it. I did not agree with all he said. I think the Deputy would have been surprised if I did agree with him just as I would have been surprised if he had agreed with me, but I must say, having regard to the tone of the debate that he set, I was rather surprised at what transpired subsequently.
Before I go on to the speech of Deputy Lemass I want to make one reference to that of Deputy MacEntee. I notice that he paid me the compliment of apparently reading the speech that I made recently in Cork. In that speech, as I did when replying to the Budget debate in the Dáil, I made it quite clear that the only interpretation that I could put on the speech made by Deputy MacEntee on the Budget General Resolution was that if he had been in my position he would not have provided this year the £900,000 that I provided for the increases in the three types of pension covered by the Bill that is now circulated. I repeated that in Cork and Deputy MacEntee referred to my Cork speech to-day and did not in any way suggest that my interpretation of his previous remarks was in any way incorrect, and therefore I may take it, I correctly interpreted him on the previous occasion and that we now know the difference between the policy of this Government and that of Fianna Fáil in that respect. They would not have done what we have done.
But, after listening to Deputy MacEntee, I sat here dumb with amazement at the speech which was produced by Deputy Lemass. With our knowledge of Deputy Lemass we are accustomed to having him make speeches in annoyance, or in simulated annoyance, but it was clear this morning that there was something more than that in the manner in which he addressed this Bill. I suggest that what was really wrong with Deputy Lemass is that he has been around the country and that he has found throughout the country that his line and the line of Fianna Fáil are not finding any favour with the people. Deputy Lemass does not seem to realise why he and his Party were put out of office last year and it might be desirable to stress again why they were.
I have often said before and I repeat that I do not think it would have mattered in the very slightest degree what was said by this Party or by any other Party on this side of the House, and that the reason the people desired a change of Government last year was that they had found out Fianna Fáil. The record of Fianna Fáil, and only the record of Fianna Fáil was responsible for their own downfall. What was wrong with the Party was that the people discovered that the Fianna Fáil Party through Deputy Lemass when he spoke in Cork on the 12th May, 1951, had given certain specific promises about what his Party would do if they returned to office. Deputy MacEntee, too, I think repeated those promises when he was speaking at Rathmines Town Hall on the 14th May, 1951, and the reason that there was a change of Government last year was because the people were disgusted with the manner in which Fianna Fáil immediately they had got into power turned their backs on the promises they had made in the general election campaign of 1951.
I must confess that I was quite dumbfounded at the brazenness of Deputy Lemass in roaring and ranting —because those are the only two words which are accurate to describe the speech we heard from Deputy Lemass this morning—in the way he roared and ranted about political honesty. The Deputy's own words are recorded and the manner in which he turned back on them immediately he had got into power, and these were far more specific than anything that was ever said by any Deputy on this side of the House, much less by myself, as he alleged during the course of his speech. I do not like going back on debates in this House in preferring charges across the House about honesty and so forth but the people should remember, and in fact do remember, when Deputy Lemass makes that type of speech about honesty that it was not the Parties who are now on this side of the House who were concerned with certain matters that had to be raised in the public life of the country in the last ten years.
We were not the people who were responsible for Eindiguer and Maximoe and company; we were not the people responsible for the bacon performance that went on in the days of Fianna Fáil before; we were not the people in office at the time that the Great Southern Railways ramp went on through the country some years ago. I do not like referring to these matters, and I am not going to refer to them in any detail, but it is a bit thick for Deputy Lemass of all people to come in here and get up and talk about honesty when he was the person who was in charge of the Department that was concerned in two of those matters that had to be submitted to inquiry.
And the inquiry proved that the Opposition at that time, the present Government, were damn liars —that was what it proved.
It proved nothing of the sort.
And proved them perjurers in the box.
The Chair is doubtful about the relevancy of all this.
It would not be relevant but for the speech made by Deputy Lemass this morning. Deputy Lemass would have been wiser for his own sake and for the sake of his Party if he had kept to a discussion on what is in the Bill or if he questioned what is not in the Bill. That would be perfectly fair and he is perfectly entitled to make suggestions and to debate what is not included in the Bill on the Second Reading, but to take the line that he took this morning—perhaps it was for the purpose of having a nice scare headline in the Evening Press——
The Minister is on a weak line when he is slander-mongering again.
Deputy Aiken always adopts the same line that anybody from Fianna Fáil can say exactly what he likes, but immediately anybody from this side of the House tries to retaliate it is a case of: "Don't hit me with the baby in my arms." We know that type of thing——
Professional slander-mongers, that is what you are.
Deputy Aiken failed when he came along to follow Deputy Lemass. He did try to make an effort and it was rather a poor effort to try to follow in the footsteps of Deputy Lemass. That is all that is worrying him, that he was not very efficient at it.
Deputy Lemass then went on to list various things about which he felt there should have been some provision in this Bill. He made a reference to industrial taxation and to the manner in which it was desirable to assist industry, but he forgets, of course, that he had many opportunities in Government if he desired to bring in a system of taxation by which there would be a different rate of taxation for profits drawn out of industry and profits left in industry. He had that opportunity over the years and it always amazes me about the Deputy that the only time he ever gets any of these ideas is when he has been translated by the people from these benches across to the other side of the House.
One of the criticisms that could fairly be made—if I may be allowed in passing to make it on this Bill, although it is not strictly relevant to Finance—about Deputy Lemass's handling of Industry and Commerce is that he was never concerned with productivity as apart from production. One of the difficulties that has arisen because of the build up in the Department of Industry and Commerce over these years has arisen precisely because there never was any consideration of productivity and the desirability of ensuring that we would have our industries producing at figures and at costs comparable with the costs at which they should be produced. The whole emphasis always has been, not on productivity, but on production, regardless of productivity, and we are certainly not in that way going to achieve the maximum increase in national income.
We had some discussion also from Deputy Lemass about export possibilities. It was the Deputy's agreement of 1938 which hamstrung us in the matter of exporting into the British market and it was not until 1948, until the 1938 Agreement was amended by the inter-Party Government in 1948, that we were able to export industrially into Britain.
Nonsense!
There were many factories in Deputy Aiken's constituency which were not in that position. The boot factories in the constituency which he represents were not in the position—thanks to the agreement made by Deputy Lemass in 1938 —of being able to export to Britain, until we came along in 1948 and had that agreement amended. That is another example of the way in which Deputy Lemass on that side of the House is a very different Deputy from what he was when he was a Minister on this side.
The Minister had better read the export statistics of 1947.
The Minister knows exactly the position which existed when this Government came in in 1948 in respect of that industry and the Minister quoted them to people concerned in the industry when the Minister was up in Louth ensuring that Deputy Aiken's Party would suffer a defeat about 15 months ago and when all the people concerned in the industry up there agreed, not with Deputy Aiken but with the Minister.
Deputy Lemass also referred to P.A.Y.E. and he suggested that there was complete unanimity amongst the trade unions here that a system of P.A.Y.E. was desirable and should be introduced. I think that if the Deputy investigates the position further, he will see that that is not so and that in fact there is a division—they are very nearly equal—between the representatives of the unions, one suggesting that it is desirable and the other suggesting that it is not desirable. Before we should even examine the possibility of a system that would suit our particular purposes in this respect, we should have a clear and almost unanimous view from the unions concerned. I do not think it would be desirable that we should merely take holus-bolus from the other side a system which may suit their industrialised country but which would hardly be appropriate to ours.
The Deputy also referred to the administrative cost on the Exchequer of such a system estimated here and as given by me in reply to a question the other day. I think the Deputy is entirely wrong when he suggests that the Exchequer costs of the implementation of such a system is less than the cost to business as a whole. I think that far the greater cost of working out any system of P.A.Y.E. arises from the cost which impinges on employment and therefore on business and ultimately on prices in the introduction of such a system. As I indicated in reply to a question some months ago by Deputy Casey, there is another method of dealing with that problem. Certain large employers have indicated that they are prepared voluntarily, with their employees and with the revenue, to enter into arrangements whereby tax can be deducted in a somewhat similar way to the statutory method in force on the other side of the water. I made it clear then, and I want to make it clear now again that, if employers and employees wish to work out a scheme like that, we will give them any assistance that lies in our power.
Deputy Lemass also tried a hare by suggesting that we were about to control private investment. He made the innuendo that, when we talked of reviewing capital expenditure, there was inherent in that review a suggestion that we would control private investment in some way. That is entirely without any foundation and I really do not think that any Deputy who thought for a moment would make such a reckless statement, a statement which, if believed, might do untold harm to the economy. The review we have undertaken is a review of State capital expenditure and it is a review which, at the same time, we hope, is going to ensure that we will be able to make more capital available for private enterprise, which, of course, I need hardly say, is an entirely different thing from the control Deputy Lemass suggested.
We want to ensure in respect of our capital investment that we are getting the best results from it. A great deal of the capital programme grew up piecemeal and I do not think anybody could suggest that it is unwise now, having regard to that piecemeal growth, to take a general review of the whole State capital programme so as to ensure that our capital resources are being utilised to the best possible advantage, and that the best are given proper priority. It was perhaps inevitable that the capital programme should have grown up in the dismal way it did, but it certainly appears to me and I think it was accepted by Deputy MacEntee—to be perfectly fair to him—in his speech on the Vote on Account as being entirely right and proper that we should now make a review of the type that is going on at the present moment.
So far as the other speeches on this Bill are concerned, Deputy Aiken confined himself entirely to opposition to Section 4. Section 4 of this Bill provides for an entirely new relief. It is the first time any relief has been brought into the income-tax code to ensure that people would be encouraged to go into insurance against the loss that sickness brings. Deputy Aiken suggested that that was in contradiction of all the Labour Party had stood for. It is not for me to speak for them except to say that, as I understand the statements made by the Labour Party and the trade union principals over a number of years, they have always stood firmly for the principle of insurance—they have always considered that insurance was the correct principle that gave people things as of right.
This provision is an insurance provision. I do not think any of us could rationally object to it. Surely it is much better that people would be encouraged in that way, when they are able to do so, to make provisions for the unforseen cost that may come upon them at any time because of sickness? None of us can tell when the very heavy expense that sometimes attends the sickness of oneself or one's family will come and it would be a wise and a prudent person who would make provision against that day. This Section 4, to which Deputy Aiken is apparently so violently opposed, merely acts as an encouragement for that insurance and merely acts as a gesture and a signpost that this Government believe that the principle of insurance in those things, as in others, is a wise principle and one that should be encouraged.
Deputy Lemass told us this morning that when this Bill would come to the Committee Stage he proposed to repeat again all the amendments that he put down last year. That is his privilege as a Deputy. That is his privilege on the Committee Stage of a Bill to introduce amendments, within the Rules of Order, if he so desires. I think the Deputy will find, however, that the public will not relish that type of play-acting—because that is all it is. The people outside know quite well—as I said at the beginning, before the Leader of the Opposition came into the House—that what translated Fianna Fáil from this side of the House to that side of the House was the fact that they made specific promises in 1951 and made specific criticisms of us in 1951 and that they had only got into these benches and barely warmed them when they went back on all the promises they made.
Mr. de Valera
That is not true.
Deputy de Valera can say that if he likes. The fact is that Deputy Lemass said in Cork he would not reintroduce or increase the duties on tobacco and beer — and Deputy de Valera was the Taoiseach whose Minister for Finance, within 11 short months of that statement being made, did reintroduce them.
Mr. de Valera
Because £15,000,000 had to be met. The Minister has a very different task from the task our Minister had to meet.
Never mind the Rathmines Town Hall. God be with those days.
The Leader of the Opposition should remember that it was what he and his colleagues said in the general election of 1951 that determined the general election in 1954— and everywhere you go throughout the country the people will tell you the same thing. They will tell you that they were disgusted last year——
Mr. de Valera
Where is the £10,000,000?
Can the Leader of the Opposition contain himself a bit? I will tell him where part of the £10,000,000 is. A sum of £5,350,000 had to be met this year for the service of debt and a sum of £4,000,000 for the Civil Service by reason of the increased spiral he put there. That comes to £9,350,000.
Mr. de Valera
What about the increased revenue?
The Leader of the Opposition should remember that every time he allows Deputy Lemass to make a speech of the sort he made here this morning the only thing it does is to re-create attention to the record of Fianna Fáil for the three years in which they were in office—the record which stands there clear and without question.
We had a long speech this morning from Deputy Lemass, for example, about the necessity for finding new work for people. What was the record of Deputy Lemass when he, as Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1951 to 1954, was responsible for employment? It was a record which showed that in the period from mid-June, 1951, to mid-June, 1954, 19,000 more people were registered as unemployed. There were 19,000 more people on the live register on the day Deputy Lemass and Deputy de Valera left office in 1954 than there were on the day they took office in 1951. Now they come in here and have the hardihood, the brazenness—perhaps I might even use the word the Leader of the Opposition used about me, the check—to talk about a policy for employment when, in fact, their record over those three years was to put an additional 19,000 persons on the live register.
Not merely that, but Deputy Lemass —who was the Minister for Industry and Commerce and responsible for prices—was the person who, during the election of 1951, suggested that there was no reason at all why—Korean war notwithstanding—prices should increase. Nevertheless, they were raised again under Deputy Lemass in the same three years from 1951 to 1954. It was the fact that the people who are now on the Opposition Benches indulged in such dishonest criticism in 1951 and then came over to this side of the House and turned round and broke the pledges they had given to the people that was responsible for putting them out of office in 1954 and nothing that was done by any other Party. It was because they were found out and had been found out.
What was really worrying Deputy Lemass this morning was that after a few visits to the country in recent weeks he has found the country peaceful, happy and contented with this Government, certain that this Government is going to remain in office for its full length of term and certain that, when the record of this Government comes to be shown at the end of our five years in office, it will be a record very much more pleasant, a record very much more pleasing to the people, for our five years, than that for the three years during which Fianna Fáil were in office.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 14th June, 1955.