The Minister for External Affairs, apparently is a neophyte sitting at the feet of the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General is also very adept in switching a debate from a real issue to one which he manufactures. The issue in the debate on this amendment to reduce the spirits duties, is not what Fianna Fáil did when it was in office and not what Fianna Fáil said when it was out of office, but what the Government promised when it was out of office and what it is failing to do now that it is in office.
The Minister for External Affairs has recited the history of the supplementary duties on beer and spirits. He has told the House that in 1947, under the Supplementary Budget, the duties on beer and spirits were increased. They were increased for a definite purpose: to enable the Government to cover the possible cost of subsidies on foodstuffs which the Fianna Fáil Government were about to introduce. They were introduced as a wise precaution to ensure that the Budget for 1947-48 would be like all other Budgets for which Fianna Fáil had been responsible prior to that time: that instead of showing a deficit on current expenditure, a deficit which would be met by borrowing and which would be passed on to succeeding generations, the country should pay its way and the State should pay its way as it went. That was an honest policy: that is the sort of policy which honest men try to follow in respect to their own individual expenditure and to their everyday concerns. Therefore, this Supplementary Budget was introduced and, quite frankly, the taxes on beer, spirits and tobacco were increased in order that the Government might make provision to cover the expenditure which was contemplated in respect to food subsidies.
The Minister for External Affairs has come in to tell us that the moment the Coalition Government came in they repealed those duties. Now, they are asking the people to believe that they have conferred great boons on them by maintaining the price of tea, more or less constant, and in reducing the price of butter by 5d. per lb., but during the election which preceded the advent of the Coalition in 1948 they went around telling the people that these things did not matter: that the subsidies in fact were only a way of disguising the consumer's expenditure, and of preventing the workers from securing the living wage which, if the real cost of living to the workers had been disclosed, they would have been justified in demanding. That is what the Labour Party were telling us and that is what some members of the Fine Gael Party were telling us.
However, as the Minister for External Affairs has reminded us this morning, when the first Coalition took office in 1948, they reduced the beer and spirits duties to their former level. They continued the subsidies, gradually tapering them off and providing for some part of the cost of those subsidies in a rather surreptitious way. For instance, there were two prices for bread, two prices for butter, two prices for tea and two prices for sugar. At the same time, they were compelling the Irish manufacturer of confectionery and other things to pay an enhanced price for his sugar and in that way they were, of course, compelling those workers who were engaged in the manufacture of sugar confectionery for export, to accept, perhaps, a lower standard of living than they might have been if this dishonest imposition had not been passed on to the Irish manufacturer of sugar confectionery.
That is what the Government did from 1948 and continued to do until 1951. Do not let us forget that while they had the two-price system in operation there was as much bread, as much butter, as much sugar and tea there for anybody who was rich enough to pay for it, and those who could not pay for it were kept strictly to the ration at the ration price. That is the subterfuge and the device that was adopted by our predecessors during the period 1948 to 1951.
But there was something more that had happened. What did follow from the repeal of the increases imposed in the Supplementary Budget? There followed this, that from the Budget of 1949, there was an openly disclosed deficit of about £2,700,000. I am speaking now from memory and without any memorandum on that matter in front of me, but Deputies who wish to verify my statement in this regard can go out and look at the statement which was issued to the House by the then Minister for Finance in the course of the preliminary part of his Budget speech of 1950. They will see there a disclosed deficit of £2,607,000, the fruit of a policy that had been pursued by the Coalition in refusing to live up to their just obligations and to find the revenue to cover the expenditure which they were undertaking.
That happened in the Budget of 1949, in the Budget of 1950 and in the Budget of 1951, as presented to this House. There was a concealed deficit. Those two Budgets of 1950 and 1951 did not balance because the then Minister for Finance did not meet the obligations that properly fell in respect of a number of subsidies, including that for fuel. But the position could not be concealed. Once there was a change of Government and the books were open to scrutiny we realised, and we warned this House in July, 1951, that after an examination of the figures it was clear to us that there would be a deficit of many millions of pounds on the Budget which my predecessor, the present Attorney-General, introduced, as Minister for Finance, in this House in May of 1951.
When the end of the year came and the books were closed with it, then it was clear that there was a deficit on the 1951 Budget of no less than £6,700,000. £6,700,000 was the deficit on the Budget of 1951 on the expenditure for that year, as it had been foreseen when the Dáil was precipitously dissolved on the 4th May of that year.
