The Deputy was put up to suggest that even if no reduction in tax rates was made then, these reductions would be achieved in the future. But no hint of any such undertaking came from any responsible member of the Government. We got, therefore, neither any indication that the election pledges were likely to be honoured at any time nor any attempt at a reasonable explanation for the failure of the Government to do so. It is true that one Coalition Deputy; Deputy Dunne of the Labour Party, said that he had gone around his constituency and interviewed a number of those who had voted for the Coalition and had satisfied those people as to the Government's reasons for not implementing its election pledges, but he did not tell the Dáil the nature of the explanation which satisfied his constituents.
This amendment is being moved again this year for a somewhat different purpose. There is now, I think, little hope that the Government will either by accepting the amendment redeem one part of its election undertakings or offer any intelligent explanation for not doing so; but there is, it seems to me, a need to get the public mind clarified as to the reason why the present rate of income-tax and the present rates of taxation upon beer, spirits and tobacco are being maintained. Throughout the months prior to the general election the leaders of the various Coalition Parties conducted a campaign throughout the country directed towards convincing the people that the then rates of taxation were unnecessary. They described them as penal taxes devised by the Fianna Fáil Government for the vexation of the people, taxes which were not required, they said, to enable the Budget to be balanced; and they succeeded in instilling into the minds of a large section of the public the notion that these were Fianna Fáil taxes, having their origin in some mistaken conception of national economic needs and were unjustified by the position of the Exchequer.
The trouble is that the propagandists of the Coalition Government did not stop that campaign when they became the Government. They still persisted in the contention that these taxes were in force because the Fianna Fáil Government put them there and they did not attempt to answer the contention that they were continued in force because the Coalition Government wanted to keep them there.
When we were discussing the Finance Bill last year every Coalition Deputy who spoke on it described it as a Fianna Fáil Bill. Every one of them attempted to suggest that if they had had time to draft the Finance Bill themselves it would have been completely different in form. A year has passed since then and another Finance Bill is before the Dáil to-day. No Deputy opposite can suggest that Fianna Fáil had any part or any influence in the drafting of this Bill. This Finance Bill of 1955 is entirely a Coalition production. Last year, in a debate upon a similar amendment, Deputy Morrissey said at column 871 of Volume 146 of the Official Report:—
"If we are in the position to-day that we have to bring in a Fianna Fáil Finance Bill the Fianna Fáil Party and nobody else is responsible for it."
That was the defence they made last year for the Finance Bill and yet the Finance Bill this year is designed to maintain precisely the same rates of taxation, the same level of income-tax, the same taxes upon beer, spirits and tobacco as the Finance Bill of 1954— indeed, as the Finance Bill also of 1952.
Every Deputy knows the reception which the Finance Bill of 1952 received. They know that the present leader of the Government, the present Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, asserted roundly when that Bill was under discussion here, at column 1439 of Volume 131 of the Official Report, that he would repeal every one of these taxes if he were in the Government. When Deputy MacEntee attempted to forecast that in the event of a change of Government these taxes would be left unchanged, Deputy Costello, as he then was, indignantly denied that and said he would resign the next minute rather than proceed with any single provision of that Budget. He added that he would be no party to any provision of that Budget.
Every single provision of that Budget which was so attacked by the leaders of the Coalition remains unchanged in the 1955 Budget; every single tax against which the Deputies railed then is still in force and will continue in force unless these amendments standing in my name on the Order Paper are accepted by the House here. The purpose of this amendment is to try to force from the Government an admission that these taxes are necessary to keep the Budget balanced. That is not asking them to say very much. It is asking them to be honest with the Dáil and with the public. That may not be their habit, but in relation to this matter, it is surely possible to get some member of the Government to say that they are proposing to keep the rate of income-tax at 7/6 in the £ because it is necessary to do so to enable the Exchequer to get in enough money to meet its outgoings. We tried to get them to say that last year but they would not. They wriggled and squirmed when the question was put to them. Will they say it now? Will the Minister for Finance admit to the Dáil that everything they said in relation to the possibility of reducing these taxes was wrong and that they now accept—if they did not know it before—that maintenance of these taxes is necessary if Government expenditure is to be covered by revenue.
One would think that in their present more responsible status they would feel an obligation to be frank with the public in that regard. I ask Deputies, as I asked members of the public, to visualise the meeting of the Coalition Cabinet that took place in April last when the details of the Budget statement were being decided. Is it not likely—or is it likely?—that some member of that Government tentatively put the question: What is the possibility of carrying out our election pledges and revoking the taxes imposed by the 1952 Budget that we denounced? Will the Minister for Finance admit that that question was at least asked at that Cabinet meeting and will he tell the House the answer he gave there? He may not give the whole answer but he can at least give sufficient of it to enable the public to understand the position, and if they understand it they may accept it as his colleagues in the Government accepted it. Or, are we to assume that the details of the 1955 Budget, the 1955 Coalition Budget, were discussed by the Cabinet without any Minister asking that question?
This amendment also stands in a different light to that which I moved last year because, admittedly, last year we could not argue that a responsible Government could accept the amendments we moved. We knew that the maintenance of these tax rates was necessary to cover the Budget position. This year that is not so clear and it is possible to argue for the adoption by the House of some of these proposals. I will admit that not all of them could be adopted, but it should have been possible for the Government to consider incorporating in this Budget some of the proposals contained in these amendments. I do not know if the question is relevant to the debate, but I think it is: Could the Fianna Fáil Government have reduced the rate of income-tax as proposed in this amendment or reduced the rates of taxes on beer, spirits and tobacco as will be proposed in subsequent amendments? I cannot, and nobody can say, because the matter was never in fact considered, that they would have done so but I think it is possible to contend that they could have done so.
I said when speaking on the Budget that the most significant fact about it was this: that the Minister was able to prepare it on the basis of an estimate of revenue prepared, presumably, by the Revenue Commissioners, which indicated that he was entitled to expect from existing taxes £3,000,000 more than those taxes brought in last year. When the Minister for Finance went to that Cabinet meeting to tell them the details of his Budget Statement he was in the very happy position of being able to tell his colleagues that without changing any rate of taxes, they could nevertheless count on getting in £3,000,000 more than the previous Minister for Finance was able to estimate for when preparing the Budget of 1954.
But not merely had he that advantage; he was also able to tell them that because of the reduction in the guaranteed price for wheat the cost of the flour and bread subsidy would be £1,000,000 less than in the previous year. He was able to tell them also that he had got the proposal of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, or at any rate the concurrence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in a proposal to tax biscuits and confectionery to an extent that would bring in practically £500,000, and over and above that, he was able to take into the Book of Estimates, as an Appropriation-in-Aid, a sum of over £750,000 representing Marshall Aid Grant Counterpart Funds. So that altogether the Minister for Finance in the Coalition Government had this year £5,000,000 to spend over and above the revenue that was available to Deputy MacEntee, his predecessor as Minister for Finance in 1954.
All the proposals of the Budget, the increase in the old age pensions rate, the various minor tax revisions which are dealt with in this Finance Bill between them will not cost £1,000,000 in this year. If, therefore, this Government had been able to keep down the level of Government expenditure to the 1954 level they would have had available for the purpose of giving reliefs in taxation a sum of approximately £4,000,000.
This reduction in the rate of income-tax which is proposed here would cost much less than that, and therefore, on the assumption that a Fianna Fáil Government would have kept the cost of Government in 1954-55 to the highest level it ever reached previously in the history of this country, the highest level it ever reached under Fianna Fáil administration, there would have been available this year £4,000,000 to be given in tax reliefs, £3,000,000 arising from the optimistic estimate of the Revenue Commissioners for tax yields, and £1,000,000 because of the reduced cost of the bread and flour subsidy. Keeping the cost of Government to the level at which Fianna Fáil had left it was not much to expect from the Government which promised to reduce the cost of government by several million pounds. I know that when Deputy McGilligan went down to Radio Éireann to announce the belief, the conviction, of the Fine Gael Party, that the cost of government could be reduced by several million pounds a year, no member of that Party knew what he was going to say. We have his word for that.
