Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 13 Mar 1956

Vol. 155 No. 3

Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Sweetman)

I move:—

That a sum not exceeding £36,200,000 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, 1957, for certain public services, namely:—

		£
1	President's Establishment	2,800
2	Houses of the Oireachtas	77,500
3	Department of the Taoiseach	9,900
4	Central Statistics Office	58,000
5	Comptroller and Auditor-General	12,340
6	Office of the Minister for Finance	58,000
7	Office of the Revenue Commissioners	677,340
8	Office of Public Works	180,000
9	Public Works and Buildings	1,180,000
10	Employment and Emergency Schemes	235,000
11	Management of Government Stocks	47,630
12	State Laboratory	9,000
13	Civil Service Commission	20,000
14	An Chomhairle Ealaíon	6,500
15	Commissions and Special Inquiries	3,900
16	Superannuation and Retired Allowances	318,000
17	Rates on Government Property	10,000
18	Secret Service	2,500
19	Expenses under the Electoral Act and the Juries Act	—
20	Supplementary Agricultural Grants	1,250,000
21	Law Charges	41,000
22	Universities and Colleges	350,000
23	Miscellanous Expenses	9,000
24	Stationery Office	194,500
25	Valuation and Boundary Survey	25,280
26	Ordnance Survey	22,660
27	Agriculture	2,506,000
28	Fisheries	53,000
29	Office of the Minister for Justice	31,800
30	Garda Síochána	1,672,000
31	Prisons	61,900
32	District Court	30,600
33	Circuit Court	43,600
34	Supreme Court and High Court of Justice	33,900
35	Land Registry and Registry of Deeds	35,700
36	Public Record Office	3,400
37	Charitable Donations and Bequests	1,900
38	Local Government	1,810,000
39	Office of the Minister for Education	126,000
40	Primary Education	3,250,000
41	Secondary Education	350,000
42	Technical Instruction	420,000
43	Science and Art	60,000
44	Reformatory and Industrial Schools	100,000
45	Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies	20,000
46	National Gallery	3,770
47	Lands	866,950
48	Forestry	567,000
49	Gaeltacht Services	170,000
50	Industry and Commerce	2,508,000
51	Transport and Marine Services	578,000
52	Aviation and Meteorological Services	140,000
53	Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office	9,000
54	Posts and Telegraphs	3,100,000
55	Wireless Broadcasting	143,500
56	Defence	2,344,500
57	Army Pensions	543,450
58	External Affairs	170,950
59	International Co-operation	20,130
60	Office of the Minister for Social Welfare	183,700
61	Social Insurance	715,300
62	Social Assistance	6,174,000
63	Health	2,400,000
64	Dundrum Asylum	16,500
65	Oifig na Gaeltachta agus na gCeantar gCúng	1,600
66	Tourism	133,000
	TOTAL	£36,200,000

The Vote on Account marks the beginning of the business of the new financial year. It represents usually a four months' provision for each supply service and covers expenditure, therefore, up to about the end of July, when normally all the Estimates have been discussed and approved by the Dáil and the Appropriation Bill passed into law.

Deputies will have seen from the title page of the Estimates Volume for 1956-57 that the total of the Estimates for the Supply Services for the year comes to £109,123,280. The amount of the Vote on Account I am now asking for is £36,200,000, that is, one-third of the total. The items covered by the Vote are set out on the Order Paper.

The total of £109,123,280 is an increase of £3,635,187 on the figure on the title page of the 1955-56 volume. When, however, account is taken of the Supplementary Estimates passed during 1955-56 there is a decrease of £1,869,271. The total provision for 1955-56 includes, of course, the £3,000,000 recently provided for the National Development Fund. If this is excluded, the 1956-57 figures show an increase of £1,130,729 on the total provision for the current year.

Naturally I should have wished to produce a lower total for the coming year but, when regard is had to the higher price level, the heavy additional charges for salaries and wages and the higher provisions for health services and old age pensions to which we were already committed by statute, it will be understood what great care has been taken to confine next year's requirements to a minimum.

In fact, the total increase in the Estimates under the heading of remuneration falls little short of £3,500,000. It is this factor which is mainly responsible for the largest individual increase shown in the Estimates, namely, £639,400 for Primary Education. Other significant increases due largely to increased remuneration are the additional £592,500 for Posts and Telegraphs, the extra £131,840 for the Office of the Revenue Commissioners and the extra £125,100 for the Garda Síochána. The provision for Army pay has also been increased by £155,000 but, owing to other economies in the Vote for Defence, the Vote as a whole shows a reduction of £217,200.

The provision for grants to health authorities shows an increase of £971,000, due to the extensions of the health services which are to become effective at the end of this month and to the increased cost of existing services operated by the various local authorities but one-half the cost of which the State is liable to contribute.

The provision for the agricultural grant is up £249,000 because of anticipated increases in local rates. The net increase of £41,000 in the main Vote for Agriculture conceals considerable variations in the individual services. Appropriations-in-Aid of the Agriculture Vote are up by £661,000, mainly because of recoupment from the American Grant Counterpart Special Account of the cost of certain schemes. This recoupment covers an increase of £350,500 in the provision for bovine T.B. eradication and grants of £160,000 for the pasteurisation of separated milk.

The net increase of £256,000 odd for Forestry is mainly accounted for by an additional £153,250 for forest development which will enable us to plant a greater area in the coming year.

For University Education I am providing next year an additional £135,000, of which £127,500 will be borne on the Vote for Universities and Colleges and the balance on the Vote for Agriculture. Apart from two grants of £10,000 each—one towards additional accommodation at University College, Galway, and the other for the repair of certain historic buildings at Trinity College, Dublin—this additional assistance takes the form of a uniform increase on the existing provision plus certain additions which have regard to the individual requirements and responsibilities of the colleges concerned, particularly, with reference to their medical schools.

The Industry and Commerce Estimate shows a fall of £546,210, mainly because of a decrease of £716,000 in the provision for food subsidies due to the decreased cost of both native and imported wheat. The only noteworthy increase offsetting this decrease is an extra £165,000 for An Foras Tionscal.

The Estimate for Transport and Marine Services is down by £136,000 but, while the provision for the G.N.R. Board shows a reduction of £146,400, requirements under this head will not be known with accuracy until after the end of the board's working year in September next. Grants for harbours are expected to cost £64,500 less because the post-war development of our ports is nearing its final stages. Constructional work at Shannon and Dublin Airports, however, will need an additional £100,000. Higher receipts— mainly from catering and landing fees —are expected to offset this and other increases in the Vote for Aviation and Meteorological Services, leaving the net increase in the Vote at £85,300.

The provision for payments to the Social Insurance Fund shows a decrease of £618,000 but, in fact, a substantial saving is expected on this Vote in the current year because the employment situation has proved to be better than was anticipated when the provision was originally framed. It is expected that the employment situation will not be materially different in 1956-57.

Under the heading of Social Assistance, old age pensions—the major item —shows an increase of £70,000, but, of course, the 1955-56 total provision included the extra £820,000 voted during the year to cover higher pension rates.

There is a decrease of £1,000,000 in the amount required by the Hospitals' Trust Fund from the Exchequer towards the financing of the hospital building programme.

In the case of public works and buildings there is a reduction of £302,000 in the provision for new works and alterations partly because of a reduction of £125,000 in the amount for the new runways at Baldonnel now approaching completion. The current year's provision for new works will not be fully expended.

The Estimates contain provision for the first time for our contribution as a member of the United Nations and the cost of our representation, the total being roughly £93,000.

The segregation of capital and other services in the preface to the Estimates Volume follows the pattern of previous years. It has to be remembered, however, that the volume covers only the provision to be made for Supply Services and that account will have to be taken in due course of Central Fund Services and "below-the line" issues for capital purposes. The entire financial position will not become known until these additional details are filled in and the Budget for next year is presented to the House.

So much for the Vote on Account and the amounts included in the Estimates Volume for the various services for the coming financial year. I must now, unfortunately, turn to another matter which has been causing the Government some anxiety in recent months.

Last year the Central Statistics Office estimated our balance of payments deficit for the year 1954 at £5.5 million. When mentioning that estimate in my Budget speech, I was aware that the reduction of the deficit in 1954 was due partly to a drawing down of stocks at the end of 1954 and I referred to the replenishment of stocks which was already apparent in the import figures for the early months of 1955. I shall return to that feature later.

As members of the House already know, the adverse balance in our trade increased in 1955 by £29.3 million. Imports amounted to £204.3 million or an increase of £24.5 million in value while exports decreased in value by £4.8 million to £110.3 million. This increase in the adverse balance was not caused to any significant degree by the terms of trade—that is to say by the comparative prices of the things we buy from abroad and those we sell to other countries. Import prices were 4 per cent. higher than in 1954. Export prices, however, were 3½ per cent. higher, one thus almost counterbalancing the other, though, as imports are almost double exports, the adverse effect of the price movement on the balance of trade was £4,500,000. The increase in the trade deficit was, however, caused for the most part by changes in the volume of our trade, imports being 9 per cent. higher than in 1954, while exports were 7 per cent. lower than in the previous year.

At this stage we have not an exact measurement of our "invisible" items in 1955 but it is unlikely they will show other than a marginal variation from the returns of the previous year. If we assume invisibles at the same net figure as in 1954, as indeed we must in the absence of clear evidence of a variation, then the balance of payments deficit for 1955 was of the order of £35,000,000. A deficit of such magnitude would in any circumstances give cause for concern, arising as it did, not from the import of capital goods, but of goods for consumption. In addition, when we see it, as we must in the present instance, not in isolation but as part of a developing trend, it is one we cannot allow to continue.

The increase in the trade deficit was built up over the years to an accelerating degree. In the first quarter it was £3.8 million, in the second £5.4 million, in the third £9.7 million and in the last quarter £10.3 million. We must, on the one hand, remember that the early months of the year included replenishment of stocks. On the other hand, the trade balance in those months benefited from an abnormal increase, for that time of year, in exports of cattle at inflated prices. At the latter end of the year there was probably some advance buying of stocks in anticipation of price increases. Having allowed for these factors it is still clear that the growth of our adverse balance was on a rising scale over the year. That conclusion is reinforced by the most unsatisfactory figures for January, 1956, when, compared to a year previous, imports rose by £2.2 million while exports declined by £2.5 million, thereby disclosing an increased excess of £4.7 million. The figures for February, which came to hand to-day and show an adverse trade balance of £11 million—£2.3 million more than for February, 1955—afford no comfort.

This then is the picture, now sufficiently clear, of our balance of payments situation. My survey of the prospects for the year ahead must rest on the basis of last year's probable £35 million deficit, not as an isolated deficit, but as one likely to continue this year and even to grow unless other factors supervene. Proceeding from that basis, let us consider whether production, agricultural and industrial, will be increased this year to any material extent so that such increase would be available in whole or in part to redress the trade balance and, in conjunction with this, let us see how the world movement of prices is likely to affect our terms of trade.

All of us on every side of the House will agree that the primary aim and purpose of every Government, no matter of what Parties it may be composed, must be to create conditions in which there will be a real and lasting increase in agricultural and industrial production. We must concentrate on the efficient production of goods. That has been, is and will be the primary aim and object of this Government for without it there cannot be any hope of making our country prosperous, of increasing employment or of securing a permanent increase in the standard of living of all our people.

In particular, we must find export outlets for an increasing range and volume of home production, so that we may earn the means of paying for the high value of imports of raw materials and other goods needed to maintain and to improve our standard of living. This calls for improved organisation, more modern machinery, the elimination of out-of-date and inefficient methods, the relaxation of restrictive practices, the avoidance of stoppages of production and a climate in which capital and labour recognise their mutual interest, their duty to the country and the need for active cooperation.

It would, I feel, hardly be realistic to expect any great increase in the volume of our products available for export in the current year. That does not mean that we must not seek for export markets. On the contrary, we must be constantly vigilant in watching for openings for the sale of our goods to other countries. We must build up our production so that we will have, at world competitive prices, a larger and growing volume of products, agricultural and industrial, in excess of our home requirements with which to expand our export trade. While that must be our constant aim, in the immediate future the only significant increase in exportable output on which we can count is an increase of the order of 100,000 in the number of cattle. As against that, as we are all only too well aware, the price for both fat and store cattle exports has shown a serious decline compared to this time last year when prices were greatly inflated.

Mr. Lemass

That is not true. It is only Irish Press propaganda.

Mr. Morrissey

It helped.

Mr. Sweetman

The Irish Press has not assisted the problem at all.

Mr. de Valera

It told the same truth as was told on the radio.

Mr. Sweetman

In addition, on the purchasing side, we must anticipate some further increase in the price of imports. Over half in value of our imports come from Britain where during the latter part of last year there were serious increases in costs, increases which are even still continuing. We must, therefore, in this year be prepared for a worsening of our terms of trade which will more than offset any increase there may be in the volume of exports.

What of our volume of imports? In 1955 the high level of imports arose because we were consuming more than we were producing at home and, therefore, brought in imports to fill the gap. The ease with which the demand for imported goods such as tea, tobacco, petrol, books and papers, cotton, etc., is at present satisfied tends to obscure the fundamental reality that imports of finished goods, or of raw materials for our industries, must be paid for in sterling and other foreign currencies which can be earned only by selling our own goods abroad or selling services to foreigners. A further increase in money incomes, not matched by an improvement in production and in productivity, could only at this juncture drive up domestic prices by causing an internal inflation, or increase still further the volume of our imports for consumption purposes or perhaps effect a mixture of both. These are consequences that the nation cannot afford in present circumstances, and imports must be checked until we can earn more by selling additional exports. The expansion of our exports requires that costs of production be kept from rising.

In the light of the experience of the past year or so, which clearly reveals both the direct connection between higher wages and still higher prices and the disturbing effect on the balance of payments of increased expenditure not matched by increased production, it is my earnest hope that — at least until we have surmounted our present difficulties—there will be stability in money incomes.

From what I have said, Deputies will realise that the forces operating on our balance of payments this year are adverse and in the absence of countervailing influences and controlling measures would enlarge further this year the deficit of last year, estimated approximately at £35 million. That is a situation no Government could allow, for if it did, a point would ultimately be reached—and that sooner than some would care to realise—at which our available external resources would be exhausted. If that happened, those from whom we have to purchase supplies of essential goods, not merely for direct consumption but also as raw materials for industry and for capital purposes, would be able to enforce their terms for granting us credits before delivering such supplies. The Government is determined that this will not happen and that there will not be such a drain on our reserves for consumption purposes. I stress consumption purposes because I certainly would not be so concerned about last year's deficit if it represented assets repatriated for capital production purposes which would bring real and lasting benefits to our economy.

Before I turn to the measures needed to deal with this situation may I add that we are not the only country with an adverse balance of payments problem at the present time? Many other countries have similar difficulties. Some are brought about by underlying causes different to ours, but the factors that have accentuated our problems are world-wide to-day. The whole world appears suddenly to have been caught in a psychological urge to spend before it has laid the foundation of such expenditure by production. It was inevitable perhaps that we would feel here the effect of that world-wide inflationary tornado—an effect, which, in our case, because of our basic circumstances inevitably was more far reaching than otherwise would have been the case. The thought that others may also have the same difficulties may be some consolation, but it does not obviate the necessity for us to deal with our own problems in the way best suited to their solution.

I do not, of course, propose to-day— when the whole picture is not available—to review the problems of providing the finance for our necessary expenditure, current or capital. These are matters which will be dealt with in the usual manner in the forthcoming Budget. I must, however, make it clear that in framing my Budget for the coming year I shall have to take special care to strike a proper balance between revenue and expenditure and avoid adding to the inflationary pressures already existing.

As regards capital expenditure, it would obviously be short-sighted to seek a way out of our present difficulties by cutting down investment of a productive character, whether private or public, particularly investment which is calculated to yield early returns in terms of increased output of saleable goods. For it is in increased production of such goods that our future prosperity lies. Capital is, however, not only scarce but abnormally dear at present. The recent National Loan failed to attract adequate subscriptions. This makes it unhappily only too clear that, in the absence of a marked change in the savings trend, it would not be possible to meet all our desirable capital requirements without recourse to methods which would only increase the existing inflationary pressure. The community cannot have at one and the same time both more consumption and more investment than its present output will support.

In the screening process to which in the coming weeks I must subject the capital needs of the State and of the other bodies which depend on the State for support in raising their capital requirements, I must assume that the public will increase their savings to a significant degree. If this assumption were not made, very drastic reductions would have to be made in public capital outlay at great cost in terms of employment and of future prospects of improved living standards.

That brings me to the question of savings. The diminution in savings which took place in 1955 is one cause of our deficit and of our difficulties. Equally the revival of savings in 1956 and an accelerating growth in the volume of savings would go far to resolve these difficulties.

Some people, when savings are mentioned, think of money being put away in a stocking or a bank and never being used. From this comes the mistaken idea that money saved is barren and only results in reduced employment and a lower standard of living. Nothing could be further from the truth than this conception of savings.

Savings in our context means refraining from expenditure on current consumption so that the money so saved can be expended by the saver or by someone else on his behalf for capital purposes. That will not in any way reduce employment. On the contrary, provided the savings are utilised for capital investment which will increase the flow of goods and produce them more efficiently, the result will be more employment and a higher standard of living.

Some Deputies may have seen a recent article in which it was stated that if a nation wanted to double its standard of living it could only do so in either of two ways—by all its citizens working twice as hard or by arranging that the same volume of work produced twice as much. The second is the rational method but the only way of ensuring it is to provide through savings the investment in inanimate machinery and capital assets of all kinds which will produce this increased output and so raise the general standard of living.

It was to get this more clearly understood that with the approval of the Government I instituted in December a new savings committee, whose activities would be directed towards making the public more savings-minded and towards organising group savings. The committee includes among its members representatives of farmers, industrialists and trade union officials who have most generously given of their time for the promotion of this work of national importance. I hope that societies and associations of all kinds will also further this work by affording the members of the committee opportunities of putting the case for increased savings.

A propaganda film is already being shown to large audiences and is available through the director of savings. Another film is being prepared to illustrate the dependence of employment on increased productive investment. A series of radio talks will commence on the 19th March. Employers are being urged by the committee to facilitate weekly savings by employees; and organised workers are being acquainted with the benefits which they can derive from savings schemes such as those already operated by progressive firms who have the interests of their workers at heart. The committee is making a special appeal to teachers to encourage the habit of thrift among their pupils and to parents and others to use Savings Certificates as birthday and Christmas presents for young people.

I hope this campaign will be a success because on it depends the removal of much of our inflationary pressure and the provision of capital for worthwhile schemes. The committee cannot, of course, achieve more than a limited success unless the general climate is favourable to savings. The measures which I am announcing to-day will, I hope, show convincingly that the Government is determined to preserve the stability which is essential to the progress of our economy and to avert any threat to the exchange value of our currency.

In order further to stimulate savings it is proposed to replace the present issue of Savings Certificates by a new issue which will afford a tax-free yield of over 4 per cent. to maturity in six years. The shortening of the maturity period of the certificates and the substantial increase in the yield will, I hope, result in an active demand for the new certificates.

I have referred earlier to the abnormal cost of capital at present. This was reflected in the terms of issue of the National Savings Bonds, which, despite their attraction for investors, met with a disappointing response. The rate of interest at which the Exchequer can lend to the Local Loans Fund, Bord na Móna and other borrowers is determined by the rate at which the Exchequer itself can borrow for these long-term purposes. The result of the price of issue of the recent loan is that all Exchequer lending rates have had to be raised to 5¼ per cent.

My survey of the economic position and trends affords no ground for confidence that our serious balance of payments problem will be eased significantly in the immediate future by an expansion of exports. I am, of course, counting on an increase in the number of cattle exported and on a determined effort by all producers, both in agriculture and in industry, to enlarge the volume of our exports to the maximum degree in the period immediately ahead. We obviously need a great increase as the foundation of a high standard of living. When regard is had, however, to the disimprovement we face in the terms of trade and to the additional pressure on the balance of payments this year which must result from last year's increases in money incomes, we are left with no alternative but to restrict for the time being our imports of less essential consumer goods.

Here we come up immediately against the fact that the number and value of imported articles which can be described unequivocally as luxuries are relatively small. If we were to proceed by way of complete exclusion on such a narrow front, the effect in reducing imports and redressing our balance of payments would be altogether inadequate. In fact the only large item in our imports that can fairly be said to have a considerable "luxury" content is motor cars. Complete exclusion—even if it were otherwise defensible—would, therefore, throw on a single industry most of the brunt of the action needed to correct the overspending of the whole community.

Having examined carefully the nature of our imports last year, the Government decided that the only reasonable and effective action open to it was to impose on a wide range of less essential consumer imports a special import levy designed to make these imports dearer so that less of them would be bought. An Order has, therefore, been made under the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act which becomes effective at midnight to-night and which imposes on the articles mentioned in the Schedule a special import levy which in most cases will represent effectively a 25 per cent. addition to the import price. Copies of this Order are being tabled and made available to Deputies. In the case of motor cars and motor cycles, in consideration of the employment afforded in the assembly industry, the special import levy is limited to 15 per cent. on complete cars, body and chassis aggregates and component parts and accessories, while commercial goods vehicles have, as far as possible, been excluded altogether from the scope of the new levy.

This special import levy is the nearest approach in our circumstances to a purchase tax on less essential consumer goods but is largely free of the implications for employment that such a tax might have if applied to goods of home manufacture. The range of goods to which the new levy applies represents over 10 per cent. in value of our total imports in 1955 and I hope that the deterrent effect of the levy will be such that imports of the goods affected will be cut on average by about 30 per cent. This would bring relief of the order of £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 to our balance of payments.

I would like to emphasise that the special levy is being imposed purely to redress the balance of payments and not to increase still further the protection already enjoyed by Irish industries. In those cases in which it has a protective effect, this effect is quite incidental and unavoidable and the Department of Industry and Commerce will keep a close watch on the home price situation so as to ensure that the unintended protective effect of the levy will not be exploited to the public detriment. No goods to which the special levy applies can be relieved of that levy by admission under licence.

I should like to say, too, that the intention is to retain this special import levy only as long as the balance of payments situation requires. The primary purpose of the levy is to reduce imports and in so far as it produces revenue for the Exchequer that revenue will not be used for general purposes but solely towards preserving employment on useful works and easing the pressure on the balance of payments. With this in mind I intend to provide in the Central Fund Bill for the diversion of the proceeds of the levy towards financing the State capital programme. I should not like it to be thought, however, that this will do more than provide a small, and of course merely temporary, easement of the great difficulty likely to be experienced in raising sufficient capital for all public authority purposes.

For almost all the goods liable to the special levy the customary preference is being granted to the United Kingdom. As it is desired that the effective rate of levy in most cases should be at least 25 per cent., the granting of a preference to British imports means that imports from non-preferential areas will be liable to a levy of 37½ per cent.

Although the Schedule to the Emergency Imposition of Duties Order runs into several pages, and the number of articles affected by the new levy is considerable, it must be borne in mind that they represent in total value only a fraction of our imports. The levy, therefore, however deterrent its effect, cannot of itself be expected to right our balance of payments situation.

A conspicuous and not unimportant stimulus to excessive consumer imports is the over-ready availability of hire-purchase and deferred payment arrangements. Goods, often directly or indirectly imported, can be obtained for a small down-payment, or indeed without any down-payment at all, the balance due being payable in instalments over an unduly extended period of time. In this way consumption can run ahead of production with obvious detriment to the balance of payments.

According to the returns received by the Central Bank, the amount of hire-purchase debt outstanding had increased to £10.5 million at the end of 1955 and there is a danger that the rate of increase here will be accelerated by the restrictions imposed on hire-purchase firms in Britain, causing them to transfer their operations here. Indeed, it is to be inferred from the enormous growth of shop window displays and other publicity for goods on easy payment terms that this business will develop too rapidly unless some check is imposed.

To mitigate the undesirable effects of hire-purchase, the Minister for Industry and Commerce has made an Order under the Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act prescribing minimum deposits and limits on payment periods for all articles except commercial vehicles, tractors, agricultural and industrial machinery, cookers and fishing boats and gear. Breach of the Order will be an offence and agreements which are not in accordance with the terms of the Order will not be enforceable in law. Copies of this Order also are being made available to Deputies.

These measures are based on assumptions which on the whole can only be described as favourable. A large part of the task of correcting the defects in the national economy is being left—properly, I believe, in present circumstances—to the citizens themselves. It is expected that they, individually, will realise the need for restraint in spending and for an increase in production and saving, if a balance is to be restored in our economic life and steady progress assured. Let us hope, therefore, that there will be no accentuation over the next year or so of the unsettling influences on our economy, whether of domestic or external origin. The immediate national need must be apparent to all. But unless all join in making the necessary effort and sacrifice in response to that need, we shall not overcome our difficulties. They will, on the contrary, become more acute and necessitate more radical and painful adjustments. We must realise that prosperity is not to be had for the asking. We cannot vote ourselves progressive increases in our standard of living. These must be earned by producing more efficiently a greater volume of goods and services.

Mr. Aiken

This is the third Budget in this financial year, the third Budget within a year or two of the Parties opposite telling the electorate that they could vote themselves an increase in the standard of living, that all they had to do was to change from a Fianna Fáil Government to a Government dominated by Fine Gael. The reason that we have this third Budget in this financial year containing taxes on something like 68 items—we had the first Budget last May; we had another in the autumn increasing tea prices and now we have this one increasing the prices of 68 articles and making hire-purchase more difficult—is that the Coalition Ministers are ignorant, have indeed shown themselves to be criminally ignorant, of finance during these last years. That is the reason why the people have to face this impost and these three Budgets.

It is only a little over a year since the Minister for Finance, as reported in the Irish Times on 17th November, 1954, said: “There is no serious anxiety on the balance of external payments.” No serious anxiety on the balance of external payments! Even then, in November, 1954, it was apparent to a number of people, who had not all the information that the Minister for Finance could get in his Department, but looking at it from the outside, that they ought to be careful; they thought that it was a time to be careful. But the Minister for Finance advised everybody to go ahead and consume all they wanted of everything, because, as he said, there was no serious anxiety on the balance of external payments. To-day, after spending years telling the people that they could vote themselves an increase in the standard of living—that all they had to do in order to get rid of high taxation, a high cost of living and get better times was to get rid of Fianna Fáil— the only solution he has for these people, whom he deceived, is to say now, as he did at page 19 of his statement to-day: “We are left with no alternative but to restrict for the time being our imports of less essential consumer goods.”

In connection with financial imposts of this kind—a third Budget, the extent of which it is difficult to judge merely by glancing at the list of goods subject to this special levy—I would like if the Minister would agree to the ordinary Budget procedure; that is, that there would be a statement by somebody on behalf of the Opposition, that this Budget could then be examined in more detail later to-day and we could resume the debate to-morrow. These special import duties will become operative to-night without any vote in the Dáil and it is not, therefore, necessary to bring this Vote on Account to an issue to-day. It can be postponed until to-morrow, and the ordinary business can go on, in order to enable the members of the Opposition and, indeed, a number of back benchers in the Coalition, to examine this list of goods upon which it is proposed to impose a levy and examine also the ramifications of the general announcement that the Minister for Finance made in regard to hire-purchase.

We all know in regard to hire-purchase that there are people who buy their furniture, particularly newly-married couples, by means of this system. I do not think any provision is made to differentiate between them and the people who, having reared their families, purchase luxury goods. There are all sorts of circumstances affecting people who avail of hire-purchase. Some of them, I think, should be taken into consideration in order to ease the burden, particularly on people who intend to get married and who may not be able to get married if they cannot see their way to getting the furniture necessary for their houses.

Taking this list of 68 new taxes the Minister proposes to impose, the Minister says that he expects to raise by this means a sum of £7,000,000. I think it is £7,000,000.

Mr. Sweetman

I do not think so. I said I hoped to deter imports by that amount.

Mr. Aiken

The Minister then did not give any figure as to how much would be collected by, say, 33 per cent. on an average. It would not be 33 per cent. would it?

Mr. Sweetman

Oh, no, because the highest duty in the ordinary case, other than the preferential, is 25 per cent.; and the main range is, of course, the 15 per cent. one.

Mr. Aiken

So all this fuss and bother is to exclude an import of about £7,000,000. Why, the increase in wheat and maize alone last year was more than £7,000,000. If we are going to upset the whole economy in relation to a large number of people in the country by collecting this levy on 68 additional articles, by the measures taken to deal with hire-purchase, we are going to do it to save an import which is no greater than the extra imports of maize and wheat which we could produce or substitute by our native production.

We have warned the Coalition members over the years that if a Government does not take a stitch in time to save an inflationary situation, instead of shutting its eyes to an immediate difficulty, a much greater difficulty will be created in the days ahead. When we took office in 1951 we had to take steps to deal with the first inflationary situation created by the Coalition Government when they were in office from 1948 to 1951, and we were roundly denounced by them for the steps we took. They came in again in 1954, having given the people to believe that all they had to do to raise the standard of living, to have taxes reduced by £20,000,000, was to vote for the Coalition groups. We told the people that that was mere nonsense. We said some of these things that the Minister has been forced very much after it is time, to say in his statement to-day, that a nation can live at the standard of its production; it cannot live any higher permanently; and if it lives at a greater rate, it will run into difficulties. If it has savings, it will run itself out of savings; if it has no savings, or when its savings are gone, it will run into debt and then will have to pay the foreigner the price he demands for credit.

It is too bad for this country that the Coalition led everybody to believe that, by voting for the Coalition, they could vote themselves a higher standard of living. But to-day the Minister in his closing words told them that they were wrong and that those who told them they could vote themselves a higher standard of living were liars. In recent weeks and in recent months, the Minister and the Taoiseach in preparing for this March Budget spoke of the great increase in our imports of consumer goods. The Minister is now going to put a stop to some of these imports. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach did not agree that there was any problem or crisis in relation to imports. I do not see him here to-day to give us the benefit of his wisdom as to whether he agrees with the Minister for Finance or not.

We had a certain number of representatives of the Labour Party here when the Minister was reading his speech. They probably knew what was in it before he read it, but we would like to have the benefit of their remarks on the various items upon which the Minister proposes to impose this import levy. The Labour Party was one of the principal Parties who tried to make the people believe—and did successfully make a number of them believe—that they could vote themselves an increase in the standard of living. We would like to hear what they have to say on these proposals. The Ministers representing the Labour Party in the Government agreed to them because the Minister for Finance was careful to say in several places throughout his speech that these proposals had the unanimous support of the Government.

All I want to say now on this general budgetary statement is that, unfortunately, we have been spending too much in the wrong way and we have not been spending enough in the right way over these last years. I do not think these budgetary proposals set down by the Minister for Finance affecting 10 per cent. of our imports will cure the fundamental inflationary situation that exists here. There are two symptoms of inflation. The Minister merely proposes to deal with one symptom of the disease and that covering an import list of about 10 per cent. of the total value of imports.

The statement that inflation means simply too much money chasing too few goods is, like many other oversimplified statements in regard to an intricate subject, most misleading and dangerous. Inflation has two effects. In an open economy such as ours, where goods are free to flow in, inflation has the effect of increasing imports. In a closed economy, where no goods or few goods are flowing into a country, inflation means that the excess money supply will drive up the prices of the goods available for sale which are produced within the country. I remember Deputy McGilligan, when he was Minister for Finance, denying that there was any inflation here because the price of goods did not go up as a result of the inflationary policy that was pursued from 1948 and again in 1954, simply because he said the result of inflation had not appeared and there had been no increase in the cost of living. He said that, notwithstanding the fact that his inflationary policy had increased the deficit in our balance of payments to the extent that we were £60,000,000 in the red.

We are coming one step forward, at any rate, in financial and political education when the Minister for Finance and the Coalition can emphasise, as the Minister emphasised here to-day, that inflation has not only an adverse effect on prices but also on our balance of payments. Instead of advocating, as Deputy Dillon used to be so fond of advocating, that we get rid of all these external assets, the Minister for Finance, with the approval of the Minister for Agriculture, is now imposing these 68 new taxes in order to save our balance of payments, in order to keep more money in Britain. Had we imposed 68 new taxes in order to save 1/- we would have been told, as we were told, that we were saving that 1/- in order to buy a bullet for John Bull with which to shoot a Mau-Mau. Had we been in government to-day and introduced measures of this kind we would have been told we were doing it in order to save our sterling assets, in order to enable John Bull to take the Bishops from Cyprus to the far Pacific and to keep them there. At least we are advancing to some extent but it has been a long and hard struggle and the adverse effects on our people have been very great indeed.

Had we adopted, or had we continued in 1948, a steady economic policy in keeping our balance of payments in reasonable trim or if indeed after 1953—if Deputies on the other side want to talk to each other in such loud tones, Sir, they might have the courtesy to go outside. If they are doing it for the purpose simply of upsetting me, they will not upset me, they will only delay me.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach (Mr. O'Sullivan)

We are merely pointing out the Deputy's lack of geographical knowledge in saying that Seychelles is in the Pacific. We will send him an atlas as a Christmas present.

Mr. Aiken

That is the Parliamentary Secretary who once announced that he met a dance hall proprietor who told him that he had got £1,000 out of the duty on dance halls, and he announced that two weeks before the dance hall duty was imposed. I suppose it was for that he was promoted Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach.

Mr. Sweetman

On a point of order. Surely the term "lie" is not parliamentary.

Acting-Chairman (Mr. Sheldon)

I did not hear it used.

Mr. Morrissey

Let it go. It does not matter.

Mr. Aiken

Surely it was a lie to say that a man made £1,000 out of the imposition of a duty which had not been imposed?

Mr. Morrissey

£40,000 was the sum, not £1,000.

Acting-Chairman

The Deputy must not use the word "lie".

Mr. O'Sullivan

Has he withdrawn it?

Mr. Morrissey

Let it go.

Mr. Aiken

Our difficulty is that when we tried to talk sense about finance over the years in 1946, 1947 and 1948 we would not be listened to.

Mr. O'Sullivan

You were only trying, anyway.

Mr. Aiken

When the Coalition got in and we tried to talk sense to them about these matters from this side of the House during the years from 1948 to 1953 we would not be listened to. We had to take the situation in hand. We had deficiencies in our national balance in the year 1951 to the extent of £60,000,000, when we were left with a Budget deficiency of £15,000,000 or £16,000,000.

Mr. O'Sullivan

You were not.

Mr. Aiken

We would not be listened to then and to-day, when we are trying to congratulate the members of the Coalition—at least the Minister for Finance—in having given lip service or paper service, if you like, to certain reasonable ideas about finance, the back-benchers of the Coalition want not to listen still, but I would advise them to listen because the people of the country have seen the changes that have occurred in the Coalition's attitude over these years and they are interested.

It is an appalling situation that we had to have a third Budget within one financial year in order to effect a purpose which could have been effected much more easily, without detriment to anybody's interests, by looking ahead a little in dealing with one problem alone, the problem of wheat and foreign imports. If it is true to say that the Minister is only aiming at saving imports of about £7,000,000, we could have saved that by increasing our wheat and other crops to replace foreign wheat and foreign maize to the extent of £7,000,000. That would not have been difficult because the production of home-grown crops has fallen by that amount in the last couple of years and the imports of wheat and maize have increased to that extent.

Not only were the Coalition groups very wrong in talking about the effect of inflation, but they are also wrong in talking about the deficit in the balance of payments. They emphasised— as the Minister has again in the paper he read to us to-day, this third Budget statement—he over-emphasised the effect of imports on balance of payments and practically ignored the effect on the balance of payments of increased native production for home consumption. All the emphasis is on this business of cutting down imports whereas the proper way, from the point of view of keeping our people employed, keeping them happy and building up the strength of this nation, is to cut a deficit in the balance of payments by increasing native production for native consumers. We have been trying to get that lesson into the heads of the Fine Gael people and the people who support them throughout the country over a number of years. I hope that one effect this Budget will have is that it will drive that lesson home to more and more people throughout the country.

If we want to progress as a nation, if we want to develop, if we want to give our people remunerative employment, the thing to do is to develop our own industry and our own agriculture in order to produce what the Irish people require. I do not ignore the benefits of increased exports to pay for the things that we want to import but the thing that requires emphasis, the thing that has been denied by implication by a lot of the Coalition Deputies is that our first concern in facing a difficulty of this kind must be to produce what we can produce within the shortest possible time in order to supply our people's requirements and, in that way, avoid the necessity for imports, or if we can to export a surplus of home-produced commodities to meet the bills for the commodities that we must import.

Coming down to the effect of this Budget, it is difficult to know, just having seen it and thinking on one's feet, what effect these 68 impositions will have on employment but, undoubtedly, they will have some. Deputies in the Coalition must know, if they read the statistical sheets on unemployment that are sent around from time to time, that the number of men having claims current on unemployment benefit has now reached the figure of 35,061 and that is the men who have been recently employed because, otherwise, they would be drawing unemployment assistance, not unemployment benefit. The number of these is more than 2,200 greater than it was this time last year and almost 5,000 greater than it was on 3rd March, or the nearest comparative date in 1954.

Seeing that there has been that upset through that great increase in unemployment, particularly in regard to those who have been recently employed, we should be very careful lest by measures proposed by the Government we might add to that list which is too great already. There are 5,000 men to-day who were recently making goods for home consumption or export or performing services, who were employed within the last few months and who are now unemployed —5,000 more than the number of men of a similar type who were unemployed in 1954 at this period.

One of the reasons that the Minister for Finance made the statement, a year or 15 months ago, that there was no anxiety on the balance of external payments was, I think, to create the attitude that nothing required to be done here, that we were very different from the British and that, even though the British were very anxious in November, 1954, about the balance of payments, we were so different that we were not worried. I think one of the reasons why this panic Budget has been introduced a month or two before the normal period of the Budget is that the Minister for Finance and the Coalition wanted to be so different from the British a year ago that they took no action when some action was required to stop this inflationary trend developing to the stage when it has to be met by an emergency, panic Budget of this kind. It was not considered necessary, in February of 1955, a year ago, to follow the British example, to impose the type of restrictions that they imposed —a general decrease in credit all round and the various other steps they took at that time—but our situation at that time demanded that the Government should have taken some action. They did not take it because there was a local government election in the offing and they wanted to boast how different they were from the British.

What was required to be done a year ago, when the British took steps to decrease credit for all purpose, was that we should have expanded credit for certain purposes while restricting it for others. If we want to build up our economy, if we want to get more production, we must have more capital employed both in industry and agriculture and, last year—we should have continued to do it for these last ten years—we should have continued the policy of Fianna Fáil of seeing that every penny that we could get the people to invest in Irish industry and agriculture was so invested. But, in order that the Coalition groups could boast around the country that they were not following the British lead during the last local government elections, they did nothing; they let time elapse when effective action could be taken. They let this situation happen. Then they are going blindly to follow what the British have been doing.

This business about hire-purchase is nothing new. It has been done in Britain. As far as I can see, there has been no attempt to get credits extended here, to get them extended to their proper quarters, to those who will produce both for home consumption and for export. We simply sit down. Instead of following the British lead a year ago, the Coalition follow it a year too late. What they should do to-day and what they should have done a year ago was to follow the Fianna Fáil policy of trying to develop agriculture and industry, and not introduce a panic Budget of this kind to impose new taxation on 68 articles simply to restrict imports by the amount by which we could have decreased the need for imports had the present Government adopted a reasonable policy towards wheat-growing and towards agriculture generally.

Having had a quick glance at this Book of Estimates, I must say that this is supposed to be a Vote on Account which the Minister made an occasion for a Budget. I rather think that one of the reasons he introduced these budgetary proposals in relation to the Vote on Account was to distract the attention of the public from the Vote on Account.

This Vote on Account is the greatest ever. If the Minister for Agriculture were on this side of the House, he would be saying that this was the greatest Budget since Brian Boru. It is the highest Estimate for the public services that has ever been introduced by a Minister for Finance, notwithstanding the fact that they have cut down the provision for capital items by £1,121,000. In spite of that cut in the capital items, the increased cost of the Supply Services, including these capital items, is much greater than last year. When the annual £3,000,000 for the National Development Fund is taken into consideration, it will be about £7,000,000 more than it was in 1953-54.

I think I remember a certain criticism of the level of expenditure in 1952-53 by the gentlemen now supporting the Government. They did not think, in 1952-53, when they were going around the country that the expenditure for the Supply Services should be £7,000,000 more. Indeed, they were saying then that it should be £20,000,000 less. They put up Deputy McGilligan, the present Attorney-General, who was to be the Minister for Finance, to say that if the Minister for Finance only knew his job, he could reduce the cost of the public services by £20,000,000—reduce them by £20,000,000, instead of increasing them by £7,000,000 as has been done.

The people should take heed of the warning by the Minister for Finance in his Budget statement of to-day when he said——

Mr. R. Barry

On a point of order, I feel it is wrong that Deputy Aiken should describe the speech read by the Minister as a Budget statement. I think we should be told whether it is the Vote on Account or a Budget statement.

Mr. Aiken

It is a speech in relation to 68 new taxes. In the 20 years that Fianna Fáil were in power, they never imposed even six new taxes but 68 is the figure here. I do not wonder that the Deputy wants to keep me from quoting the Minister's speech because he says here in page 25:—

"We cannot vote ourselves progressive increases in our standard of living."

All during the three years that the Coalition groups were out of office they went around the country telling everybody that they could vote themselves progressive increases in the standard of living and progressive decreases in taxation. That was their song and dance around the country, that the people could vote themselves increases in the standard of living and decreases in taxation. A couple of days before the election of 1954, Deputy McGilligan, on the wireless, said that £20,000,000 could be saved by a Minister for Finance who was competent and who knew where to look for his £20,000,000. The present Minister for Finance, who took Deputy McGilligan's place, instead of decreasing the amount by £20,000,000, has extended the cost of the public services of the State by £7,000,000.

There is no use in the Minister for Finance growling about the increase in consumption. All during this budgetary statement, he has spoken about the need for less imports of consumer goods. He is actually going to get a propaganda film to show to large audiences about the necessity for saving. We all appreciate the public spirit of the gentlemen who are devoting their time to the work of the savings committee and we wish them luck, but it would be much better propaganda, I think, for the work of the savings committee, than making a film with pep talks to the people about how they should save, if the Government set an example in some way. If we could only get Deputy McGilligan to show Deputy Sweetman how to go after that £20,000,000 which he promised to save, it would be much better than spending more money on a film to tell the people how to save. The Minister is growling in this statement about the increase in cost of the Civil Service. I forget the number of millions it is going to cost next year as compared with last year.

I will conclude by saying that it would be much better and much more effective propaganda towards encouraging the people to save, if the Government showed that they appreciated the necessity for saving and showed good example. I hope that when the various members of the Coalition groups that support the present Government in increasing the taxation to be collected from the people by £7,000,000 come to speak, they will address themselves to some of the questions I have put to them and emphasise on the Minister for Finance that the people were very foolish, when, on the last occasion, they voted for the Coalition on the grounds that they could vote themselves an increase in the standard of living. The only thing the people succeeded in doing by voting for the Coalition was to secure for themselves a rather long-term decrease in the standard of living which they could have achieved. Had a steady, progressive policy been pursued since the war, or since the time when capital goods became available a few years after the war, and since the Marshall Loan became available, had a steady, economic, sensible financial policy been pursued, we could have been very much further on the road to increasing permanently the standard of living of our people; but during those last eight years the people thought fit for six of the eight or nine years since, to keep a Coalition Government here. We spent the three years we were in in trying to undo some of the damage they caused in producing a deficit in the balance of payments of the order of £60,000,000, and we tried to reduce it to reasonable proportions and to resume the march of development again. Unfortunately, the people did not follow our advice, and I want to say this to the members of the Coalition: there is no use in their talking to the people now and giving them pep-talks about increasing the country's production and about saving, unless the Government show that they are prepared to give good example and give support to those who will produce and those who will save.

It must be remembered that the Coalition has been in office for more than half of the past ten years and the people expect men with that record to produce, in a situation of this kind, something more in the way of long-term progressive policy than mere pep-talks. I hope we will hear it from the members of the Government before this debate concludes.

In conclusion, I want to say to the Minister for Finance that he should agree with me that, with a financial statement of this magnitude, of much greater magnitude than any Budget, involving much greater changes in taxation rates than many Budgets, I think the normal budgetary procedure should be followed, and that after one statement by a member of the Opposition, the debate should be postponed until both the members of the Opposition and the Government backbenchers have studied the effects of this statement. I hope the Minister will agree to that procedure because it is the procedure that is appropriate. It will not delay the proceedings very long. We all know the Vote on Account and the Central Fund Bill have to be got through the House next week. There is no reason why that should not happen, but I think in order that these financial proposals should be considered and debated thoroughly in the House, there should be a postponement to give all the Deputies who are not members of the Government a chance to study them, go into them and debate them in greater detail to-morrow.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy, of course, got notice yesterday.

Mr. de Valera

No; let us be clear about this. At a quarter to three, I got this statement. We were told there was to be a statement, but we got no statement——

Mr. Sweetman

That is not true. The Opposition got the normal notice.

Mr. de Valera rose.

Mr. Morrissey

A point of order?

Mr. de Valera

Deputy Morrissey is not going to shout me down.

Mr. Morrissey

And Deputy de Valera is not going to shout me down, either.

Mr. de Valera

Deputy Morrissey comes in here for nothing else but to shout down——

Mr. Morrissey

Nonsense!

Mr. de Valera

That is the only time the Deputy appears.

Mr. Morrissey

I am making sure I am in order. What is all the pother about?

Mr. de Valera

What is the point of order?

Mr. Morrissey

I am not putting a point of order, but I was asking if Deputy de Valera is putting a point of order.

Mr. de Valera

I am putting a point of personal explanation.

Mr. Morrissey

I am not going to be interrupted, except on a point of order.

Mr. Briscoe

You do not decide that.

Mr. Morrissey

The Chair.

Mr. Aiken

The Minister for Finance has made a statement that the Leader of the Opposition wants to correct.

Mr. Morrissey

Fair enough, provided it is not another speech.

Mr. de Valera

The Minister for Finance yesterday informed our former Minister for Finance that he had a certain statement to make to-day. It was not possible for the Taoiseach to do the ordinary thing and give any notice because he was engaged otherwise. I deliberately—as it was on the phone—prevented the Minister for Finance from giving any, even the smallest detail. I understood I would get it to-day——

Mr. Sweetman

I beg your pardon.

Mr. de Valera

I expected to get it to-day in time to study it. I got it at a quarter to three because the Minister for Finance was not ready with it until then.

Mr. Sweetman

That is untrue and the Deputy knows it is untrue.

Mr. de Valera

When did I get this statement?

Mr. Sweetman

I gave the Opposition the appropriate notice that is always given to the Opposition of special business at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon.

Mr. de Valera

But that was——

Mr. Sweetman

I asked the Deputy to-day at half-past one, particularly to facilitate him, whether he would wish, in advance of my making my speech here in this House, to have a copy of the speech and at what time, and the Deputy himself chose a quarter to three. The Deputy knows as well as I know that that is the only occasion on which a speech was ever given by any Minister for Finance to any Leader of the Opposition before the Minister opened it, and I did it in special circumstances on this occasion. The Leader of the Opposition has got more facilities than were ever given before by a Minister for Finance at any time.

Mr. de Valera

That is not the point, I submit——

Mr. Sweetman

It is the truth.

Mr. de Valera

The truth is that I was at home when I was told this would be available and asked what time I would wish to have it, and, as I was at my lunch, I said a quarter to three. But I am pleading for budgetary practice. If it is not given to the Leader of the Opposition——

Mr. Sweetman

Why did not the Deputy yesterday ask for that in the ordinary way?

Mr. de Valera

Because I was told——

Mr. Sweetman

Why did not the Deputy ask for it in the ordinary way on the Order of Business?

Mr. de Valera

Because I was told yesterday that this would be available to-day and I understood it would be available early in the morning. I was told at half-past one——

Mr. Sweetman

I do not believe Deputy MacEntee told the Deputy that because I do not believe Deputy MacEntee said something that was not true.

Mr. de Valera

And what was it?

Mr. Morrissey

Now——

Mr. de Valera

Deputy Morrissey should keep quiet and mind his own business at the moment.

Mr. Sweetman

And Deputy de Valera would be better advised to keep to what he knows. I told Deputy MacEntee yesterday that I would give Deputy de Valera, in the very special circumstances, a copy of my speech an hour before I made it.

Mr. de Valera

I was not told the hour. The word "hour" was not mentioned. I was told it was to be to-day.

Mr. Sweetman

If Deputy de Valera was not told that, that is not my fault. I am telling Deputy de Valera what I did and I am the person who knows what I did, and not Deputy de Valera.

Mr. de Valera

Right, and I know what I did and what I got. I started to make the case for proper budgetary procedure inasmuch as——

Mr. Sweetman

But the Deputy could do it in the proper way at the proper time.

Mr. de Valera

The member of our side of the House, who was going to speak on the matter asked, in a courteous way, if the Minister for Finance would do that, and instead of that the Minister for Finance suggested we had got this statement in time to study it. We had not time to study it—a quarter of an hour is no time to study a document of this sort. We ought, in an important matter of this kind, to be given an opportunity of studying it and seeing what it means to the country.

Mr. Morrissey

I can now continue. The remarkable thing is that Deputy Aiken started his speech by protesting that neither he, any member of the Opposition nor any of the back benchers supporting the Government had an opportunity of reading, much less studying, the statement made by the Minister for Finance. Although he had not time to either read it or study it, he spent three-quarters of an hour exactly denouncing it.

Mr. de Valera

That is very smart.

Mr. Morrissey

Do not be losing your temper when your card is trumped.

Mr. de Valera

When what?

Mr. Morrissey

You would not understand that.

Mr. de Valera

No; I would not. Probably it is not my way of thinking.

Mr. Morrissey

That is the trouble.

Mr. Carter

Not a three card trick.

Mr. Traynor

He does not have anything up his sleeve.

Mr. Morrissey

He is very rarely without something up his sleeve. Sometimes it gets caught and does not slip down at the appropriate time. The point is that the Deputies are bitter, not because the Minister is doing the wrong thing, but because they are perfectly conscious of the fact that the Minister is doing the right thing.

Mr. Traynor

The people will judge that.

Mr. Morrissey

I want to compliment the Minister for Finance on a clear statement and a clear survey of the position as it is to-day and not as it was in 1952 or 1953. I want to compliment him and his colleagues in the Government on coming to a unanimous decision to take what they consider to be effective steps to deal with what has been described up and down the country and from every cross-roads to gable-end in North Kerry by the Leader of the Opposition as a highly dangerous and critical situation.

Mr. Briscoe

So it is. This Budget proves it.

Mr. Morrissey

I am not competent to exchange compliments across the floor of the House with the arch financial wizard of the Fianna Fáil Party and Dublin Corporation.

Mr. Briscoe

I do not pretend to be that at all. He is over there, officially appointed.

Mr. Morrissey

The Deputy has to wait to be appointed for his knowledge or alleged knowledge of finance.

Mr. Sweetman

And the E.S.B.

Mr. Briscoe

I will give you that.

Mr. Morrissey

I challenge anybody on the Opposition Benches to deny this. Have not all members of the front benches and the back benches of Fianna Fáil and the so-called organs of truth been denouncing this Government over the past 12 months—I confine it to that period—because they had not the courage, as it was alleged, to take the necessary steps to deal with what they alleged was a dangerous situation? Is it not true that in every speech he delivered, the Leader of the Opposition challenged that situation and told the people that this Government would never take any steps to try to remedy what he described as a dangerous situation? Did he not tell the people that there was not the slightest hope that a Government formed of various Parties such as this Government was formed could ever agree on taking the necessary steps? Is that not so? Did he not say he did not believe that the Labour members of the Government would ever allow the Fine Gael members of the Government, as he put it, to do what they knew to be necessary and what they would be afraid to do? Is that not one of the reasons that we get three-quarters of an hour's talk from Deputy Aiken on something that he had an opportunity neither of reading nor studying?

The extra bitterness of Deputy Aiken came out when he taunted the Labour members of the Government for having the courage to unite with their colleagues in the Government in taking whatever steps, however unpopular they were, to deal with the situation. Everybody knows except a person who is wilfully blind, that there is a serious situation in the country— a situation that is not peculiarly ours, a situation for which this Government is very little, if at all, responsible.

Deputy Aiken said the Government were responsible for creating inflation in this country. Deputy Aiken himself, even with his limited knowledge, does not believe that. Deputy de Valera smiles when I assert that far the greater part of the problem is due to forces, reactions, and circumstances entirely outside the control of anybody in this country.

Mr. Aiken

Nonsense.

Mr. de Valera

You are learning that now.

Mr. Morrissey

Does the Deputy think we are so foolish as to think that the arguments and measures which he considered necessary with an emergency Budget in the autumn of 1947, or the arguments, the circumstances and the conditions which obtained in May, 1952, with Deputy MacEntee's Budget, are the same as the circumstances and the conditions that obtain to-day and that nothing has happened in the past nine years from autumn, 1947, or in the past four years since the Budget of 1952? The difference between the measures taken to-day and the 1952 Budget is that these measures in so far as they may be unpopular and may lean on certain corns, are not taken voluntarily, in the sense that they are not being imposed to keep the people down, as the 1952 Budget deliberately was imposed.

Mr. de Valera

"We were eating too much, drinking too much and having too good a time." Was that not the cry?

Mr. Morrissey

It was not in 1952 or in 1947 you first said that, you know.

Mr. Derrig

You said it.

Mr. Morrissey

The Deputy is well able to take care of himself. He has still more tricks in the bag than even Deputy Derrig or myself. It was not in 1947 or in 1952 that he made that observation. The observation was that the people were living too well. It was not in 1947 or in 1952 that we first heard about the hair shirt and the light beer. I want the Deputy to be a little more relevant than Deputy Aiken was and a little less disorderly than Deputy de Valera has been and is trying to be now. Do Deputy de Valera and Deputy Aiken want this Government to deal with what they have said over and over again is a highly dangerous situation, or do they not want that? That is a very fair question and, mind you, we will not be satisfied with a speech from the Leader of the Opposition such as we had from Deputy Aiken, from whose speech we were not able to tell on what side he was.

Deputy Aiken talked about imposing 68 new taxes and he said—just imagine this from Deputy Aiken—in the same breath that Fianna Fáil, in all their years of office, never imposed six taxes. Can you beat that? I do not know whether that is the fault of his own memory, or whether he is assuming that the memories on this side of the House are worse than they really are. But let me get back to the necessity for these measures. I wonder is it the suggestion that measures should not be taken to check, or deal with, or cure this highly dangerous situation which once again might land us in the position where we would be in pawn to the foreigners? Those are not my words; those are the words of prominent speakers on the opposite side and of the editorials and headlines of the so-called organs of truth which speak for the opposite side. If that is the situation, are we prepared to face up to it and to speak about it plainly and faithfully and, may I add, with respect to Deputy de Valera, truthfully?

Mr. de Valera

To do that, would it not be wise to give us time to study this document?

Mr. Morrissey

The Deputy can do that until 3 o'clock to-morrow evening and we will do our best to see that the debate is not closed down, but the Deputy will not get away with the parliamentary trick played when Deputy Aiken sat down. The situation is much too serious for the type of contribution we had from Deputy Aiken.

I agree with one point Deputy Aiken made which was about a phrase usually applied to a certain situation. It is taken up and then misapplied to meet situations which may bear some superficial resemblance to that to which the phrase was first applied, the phrase being, "too much money chasing too few goods". Let us be clear on this. No matter what Deputy Aiken says, there has been in recent years a very considerable, almost a startling improvement, in the standard of living of the vast bulk of the people in this country. That is unquestionable and one of the troubles is that we are so concerned about scoring points off each other either here in the House or on the hustings in Kerry, or somewhere else, that we are ignoring or trying to camouflage or screen very solid achievements which have been made.

There is no question whatever, and I speak on this subject with as much authority as any member on the opposite side, either on the front or back benches, that the standard of living of the ordinary working class people of this country has been completely transformed. The change there has been absolutely revolutionary and I can speak on that with perhaps more personal experience than anybody sitting on the opposite benches. There is no doubt whatever of the fact that, with the exception of those who are entirely dependent on social services or relief, whatever percentage of the population that is at the moment, no other people in the world, not even excluding America, have had such improvement in their standard of life as we have had here. What is perhaps even more important, not only the standard of living but the manner of living of our people is much better than it is in most places. Do we not know, whether we admit it or not, that there has been not merely an over-use of the hire-purchase system in recent years, but that there has been abuse of it? If Deputies on the opposite side do not know that, they can very easily and quickly find out.

I am not against the hire-purchase system or the principle of it. I think that, unless it is misused or abused, it can be of great benefit and it can be a really first-class form of saving. I want to be quite frank. I can understand the benefits derivable from a man getting his home on hire-purchase terms and of furnishing his home on hire-purchase terms, and getting a cooker on those terms to take some of the drugery out of his wife's life, particularly if she has a big family. I should like to see a working man being able to provide, on the hire-purchase system, a washing machine, in order to take some of the drudgery out of his wife's life in a small home with a large family.

That is one thing. These are articles that give good service and that are assets, the best assets any citizen could get—a comfortable home for a man and his children and a reduction, in so far as can be achieved, of the hard labour that is involved in being the wife of a working man and the mother of a family—but in days when we hear so much clamour and talk, some of it ill-founded, some of it deliberately fomented in certain quarters by certain people for certain reasons, about the impossibility of making ends meet, we see side by side with that, on the roof of a subsidised home, the rent of which is also subsidised, the aerial of a television set which has cost anything from £100 to £140, the repayment spread over probably two years at 25/- per week.

When we see teenagers, as I understand they are called, some of whom have not even started to earn a pound and some of whom are merely apprentices, scooting round this city and country, not merely to their own danger, but to the danger of the community——

Mr. Gogan

It is cheaper than the buses.

Mr. Morrissey

That is a typical Fianna Fáil interjection. We see these young people careering around this country—in many cases, a danger to themselves and a menace to their neighbours—on motor scooters or bicycles, or whatever they are called, costing anything from £130 to £180. Is it or is it not a fact that as much as £50, £60 and £70 is being paid for certain musical instruments—and I am not talking about pianos, nor am I talking now about radiograms?

I know I am saying things which are not merely not popular, but which will be misrepresented and distorted. I am perfectly conscious of that, but nevertheless I shall say them. Is it not a fact that we are all looking, every one of us, for more and more? I do not think that any section of the community is clear of the charge that we all want more and more for doing less and less.

Mr. de Valera

Hear, hear!

Mr. Morrissey

Is it not a fact that every morning when you take up the paper you read that some section of our people are clamouring for more and more and more, at the same time, endeavouring to ensure that they will do less and less? That is the truth, whether you admit it or not and, until such time as we are prepared to face up to these facts and admit them, there is very little use in either the Government on this side or in Deputy de Valera—if, by some miracle, he were transferred to this side to-morrow —talking about dealing with a dangerous situation.

Is it not true to say that not merely are we all inclined towards it, but that we are being tempted through the newspapers—the Irish Press as well as the Independent and Irish Times—the radio and every conceivable means to spend not merely what we are earning —every penny of what we are earning —but what we hope to earn next year and the year after? Is that not true?

Mr. Briscoe

I do not know what the Deputy means by the radio. Does he mean our radio? I do not understand about that.

Mr. Morrissey

Do not mind him. He has his own technique. Is it not a fact that people are being tempted to buy clothes?

Mr. Briscoe

Sponsored radio is what the Deputy means.

Mr. Morrissey

They are being tempted to buy clothes and almost every other thing that can be or is being produced either for a nominal deposit, as the Minister said, or with no deposit. They are being tempted to purchase some articles—not all of them; I want to be perfectly clear on this— where the price has little if indeed any relation to the quality. They are being tempted to purchase certain articles— and particularly when it comes down to the question of clothing—on terms which result very often in the misguided purchaser paying at least twice, relating price to quality, what he would have to pay, if it were a cash transaction.

Is it not true that in many cases the articles have almost completely lost whatever utility they had and whatever capital value they ever had before the final payment is made? Is it not true also that, because of the misuse and because of the reactions on this country of hire-purchase—because of its checking and attempts to apply checks to it in a neighbouring country—the situation here was aggravated and that that, in turn—the misuse and abuse of hire-purchase—has created other problems not merely for the national Government, but for the local authorities of this country?

Deputy Aiken made a point about unemployment. Deputy Aiken should not allow himself, even by a little loud talk on this side of the House, to be provoked into talking about either unemployment, budgets or dance halls. He is too vulnerable there. Nobody, I am sure, on any side of this House wants to see an increase in unemployment in this country.

Mr. Aiken

You were going to wipe it out in 24 hours, once.

Mr. Morrissey

I put more people into permanent gainful employment in this country in three years than you did in 16 years.

Mr. Aiken

Nonsense.

Mr. Morrissey

Would you like to quote the unemployment figures, from the same source from which you quoted to-day, in relation to the time before you returned in 1952 and 12 months after your 1952 Budget?

Mr. Aiken

Deal with the extra 5,000 men who lost their employment in the last three years.

Mr. Morrissey

I was concerned with the unemployed before ever either Deputy de Valera or Deputy Aiken was. I know more about it and the results that flow from it than they do; I saw unemployment and I saw the effects of it. I know, when I get down to these matters, what I am talking about, and I am not talking about something that somebody told me or about something I read. Unemployment means more to me than a row of figures in a book. If the best the Deputy can do is to try to score points like that, if the Deputy wants to compare the numbers of unemployed, let me compare even this year with the last year he was in office in 1953 or 1954.

Nobody, not even the most bigoted, bitter member of this House, not even the member who is most anxious and prepared to do most to get back power and authority again in Government and on this side of the House, would wilfully take any action that would increase the number of unemployed. Mark you, the Deputies opposite, by their talk, by some of the things they print, or cause to be printed, or allow to be printed, are not helping the employment situation in this country; and many of the things that Deputy Aiken said here to-day will not help to keep people in employment, much less increase it.

I am not a member of the Government. I am not in the confidence of the Government. For certain reasons, I have perhaps not been able to take as active a part in the House as I used to take at one time, but I am interested. I am interested in the welfare of this country and I try, as far as I can, to observe what is going on. I try, as far as I can, to get unbiased and unprejudiced information from people who have no axe to grind, politically or otherwise; and it is out of whatever knowledge I have been able to acquire in that way, that I have made the statements I made here to-day.

There is not a member of this House, certainly there is not a member living in this city or in the County Dublin who does not know, at least as well as I do, the truth of practically everything I have said here, particularly in relation to hire-purchase. I think it is our duty to try to make it clear to the people, whether they derive their living from the land, from industry, from services or from distribution that, to put it as simply and as plainly as I can, they cannot get more and more for doing less and less.

I want to emphasise one point. The Minister referred to it in his speech to-day. We are all desperately anxious, genuinely and sincerely anxious, whether we are in Government or in Opposition, to expand our exports. We have not, in so far as we have any surpluses available, much difficulty in finding markets for everything we produce agriculturally, though the price may not be as remunerative as we would like it to be. We have infinitely greater difficulty in getting industrial products into export markets, to compete with similar articles produced in the particular country and maintain and expand our foothold there. I know a little about this. I know when the door was left ajar, if not fully open, to enable us to put industrially produced articles on the British market. I know, and other members of this House know, that many of our industries are to-day not merely producing for the home market articles which are as good as are produced in any other country but are successfully putting these Irish produced articles into some of the most competitive markets in the world, and, on quality, design, packaging and price are keeping them there. That is not done without a very great effort.

I know that there are industries here that are exporting to-day and, relative to the size of the industry and our population, they are big industries giving big employment. I know that these industries are and have been for some years, and this is the real test, putting anything from 10 to 60 per cent. of their entire production into the export market; and, in some cases, they are doing that where the raw materials required for the particular processed article are not as freely or as cheaply available to the Irish manufacturer as they are to his competitor. Very often too, the margin, particularly the margin in the cost of the finished article going into the export market, which is so vital to us both from the employment and the balance of payments point of view, is so small that any adverse impact on it here at home can put that particular industry and its commodities out of that export market.

I hope that those concerned, either directly or indirectly, will consider that aspect and the seriousness of it very fully before they lightly, as it sometimes would appear, take action that would imperil that situation. Before I sit down, I want to thank the Minister for his clear and courageous statement, to thank the Government for uniting in taking very wide and comprehensive steps to deal with a situation that nobody, except some irresponsibles, would welcome. I want to say to the Opposition: "You cannot have it both ways." You cannot have it as you had it for the last 12 months, sneering at the Government for not having the courage, the unity or the strength to face up to the problem of telling the people that they never would have. When the Government, with the knowledge that is available to them, a knowledge which is very often not available to those outside, take measures which, in their opinion, are necessary and desirable, then they ought not to be sneered at. You cannot accuse them yesterday of not doing anything and sneer at them to-day for doing something. You may criticise as to whether the steps they are taking are the better steps to take to meet the situation in the peculiar circumstances, not of 1952 or 1947, but of 1956.

May I suggest that it is no help to this Government, to this country or even to the Fianna Fáil Party, to make the purely destructive Party speech of the type made by Deputy Aiken? There was not one constructive sentence in the whole of that speech for three-quarters of an hour. It was the sort of speech that I am sure Deputy Aiken must have been making down in Kerry, if he was down there. It is about time we all grew up. We are not, or at least we ought not to be, the political children we were when some of us met here 30 years ago. It is about time we began to realise that there are times and occasions when the country, its credit and its future should come just a wee bit in advance of Party interests.

Mr. Briscoe

I am trying to approach this matter from the point of view of an attempt at remedial measures to remove the danger of a serious adverse trade balance. The Vote on Account is exceptional this year in so far as it takes steps which are normally taken with the introduction of a budget. On the Vote on Account to-day, we are dealing with new additional tariffs, so that it is very difficult to confine oneself to what was the normal practice in the approach to a Vote on Account.

Deputy Aiken described what is taking place to-day as what appeared to him—and what I agree with—to be corrective measures of a panic nature. Let me give an instance of what I feel should have been the approach. If you want to correct the adverse balance, you must do it by trying to produce in your own country something previously imported, not necessarily by cutting down the absolute use of certain items by making them prohibitive in cost. I will give an instance. I have been watching and I have been making representations for some time about the woollen industry. The woollen industry in this country is one of our oldest industries, and, since 1932, certain protective measures were taken in order that we would become, as far as possible, independent of bringing in foreign cloths. Great progress was made, but what has grown up in the meanwhile? People have set up in business here importing woollen yarn, weaving it, sending out the cloth to be shrunk and dyed across the water and bringing it back again and selling it as an Irish cloth. That is, in the first place, getting away from manufacturing the product in full. The weaving of the item of cloth is, I understand, from a labour content point of view, only 20 per cent. of the operations.

If this practice continues, the firms that did go to the trouble of building up an industry will be put out of business. The numbers employed in these factories will fall and we will recede again not to importing all our cloth from abroad and making none at home, but just weaving cloths as one of the operations connected with that industry. Surely that matter was worthy of consideration? Surely the Minister could have said: "I will put a tariff on such a commodity. If somebody sends out the woven cloth to be finished, dyed and shrunk, we will impose a tariff, so as to protect the operations here." Certain firms, I understand, have been trying to establish this work in their own mills. Others have been trying to get some centre set up for the purpose of dealing with all this. Certainly that is an invisible export of capital, the paying for that operation. I should have imagined that, when the Minister for Finance and those other Ministers who are concerned with that, as Deputy Morrissey said, very serious situation —although he objects to it being called a dangerous situation; what the difference is I do not know as something serious, in my opinion, is always dangerous——

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Dillon).

Not if you have a good Government to deal with it.

Mr. Briscoe

I will come to the good Government in a few minutes. I am just making an introduction to the approach of mind I have on this matter. If I were in that position I would have sat down with my colleagues and I would have immediately concerned myself as to how best to replace imported goods by their production at home and to what extent it was possible to deal with what might be regarded as luxuries on a different basis.

I will have to go back to some of the statements made by the Minister for Finance when the last Vote on Account was introduced. I will have to refer to prophecies made from both sides of the House and see to what extent the good Government were—I do not know whether I should say "was" or "were"—in a position to forecast sensibly what was before them as they were kicking the ball of parliamentary control of the State, dribbling it along, not in the interests of the community as a whole, but for the purpose of securing a goal against their political opponents. I am quoting from Volume 149, column 31, and I am afraid I will be a bit boring, because I have quite a lot to read from this. It is grand to have it put back again on record to be freshly considered, seeing that it is now of one year's vintage. The Minister for Finance said:—

"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."

Is it fair to say that it is the deliberate policy of this Government to increase prices?

Mr. Dillon

No.

Mr. Briscoe

Is it not obvious that whatever is put on now by this additional tariff, it is going to cost more to the purchaser? It is going to cost much more than the amount of the tariff when it goes through the process of all the calculations——

Mr. S. Collins

It is not bread, flour, tea and sugar.

Mr. Briscoe

It is salt, pepper and mustard, if the Deputy would look at the list.

Mr. S. Collins

Agreed, but it is not tea, bread, butter and sugar.

Mr. Briscoe

I am going on to that, too—to tea and bread and flour.

Mr. S. Collins

Nor the deliberate breach of a promise to maintain the subsidies.

Mr. Briscoe

I am going to read some promises.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Collins will get every opportunity to make his speech.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister said:—

"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."

How long did that last? That lasted for the week in which the particular motion was considered by this House. Do the Deputies say that that statement of fact obtains to-day, or have we changed from that? It was good propaganda to have that headlined in the various papers—"We have changed that trend, and no longer are things going to rise. We have stemmed that, and now things are going to get better".

Mr. S. Collins

There was one paper in which it was not headlined.

Mr. Briscoe

I think it was headlined there, too, so that the people would remember it before the year had ended. Remember, a lot have read it and have hoped, or had hoped, that there was some effective result to be expected from those promises.

Mr. James Tully

Did the readers of the Irish Press believe that?

Mr. Briscoe

I am afraid that the Deputy will have to speak a bit louder.

Mr. S. Collins

He wants to know did they read that in the Irish Press.

Mr. Briscoe

It was read everywhere, and it will be read again. There was even a lot of election literature. However, as the Minister said:—

"While this 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."

That is what I am coming to. I am not coming to the attack. I am going to the defence.

"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."

Deputies

Hear, hear!

Mr. Briscoe

The question is what is the "hear, hear" interpretation of the temporary period?

Mrs. O'Carroll

Would you interpret it? It is not a wages standstill Order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These interruptions must cease.

Mr. Briscoe

In 1952, the chief spokesman for the Party on the matter of the 1952 Budget, which will live long in the memory of some Deputies——

Deputies

Hear, hear!

Mr. Briscoe

It will always come to haunt them. The real truth of the fact is this, that we saw in 1952 the trend of things. We saw that it was not only just temporary, that you could blink your eyes at it and forget about it, that they would clear themselves in a matter of five or six months. We saw that very definite measures would have to be taken in order to protect the country from what now is overtaking it, and has overtaken it only in part.

Mr. Dillon

And you are straining for a chance to bring in another 1952 Budget now.

Mr. Briscoe

What the Minister has now referred to, in my opinion, will show itself to be a much more serious business than the 1952 Budget. It will have its repercussions on business and on employment, and let the Minister for Agriculture remember that you cannot slow down the wheels of business without putting people out of employment, and the man who loses his employment is far worse off under this new development than he would be or would have been under the 1952 Budget, where his employment was guaranteed. The whole idea behind it was to preserve the situation and to safeguard it from what has taken place in the past 12 months.

Mrs. O'Carroll

Who guaranteed employment?

Mr. James Tully

Explain it further.

Mr. Briscoe

A guarantee of full employment was given by many of the spokesmen over there. Not only were they going to guarantee full employment, but they were even going to stop emigration.

Mr. S. Collins

You said that the 1952 Budget guarantee full employment.

Mr. Briscoe

I said that it guaranteed the employment of those in employment.

Mrs. O'Carroll

How did you guarantee it?

Mr. Briscoe

By taking steps to ensure that the work they were engaged in would not cease to exist.

Mr. S. Collins

And 25,000 people went out of employment.

Mr. Briscoe

I am going to give a few instances. The 1952 Budget would have guaranteed employment to the people who were in employment.

Mr. S. Collins

It put 25,000 people out of employment.

Mr. Briscoe

It did nothing of the kind. Perhaps Deputies will be able to recollect many instances of how it was hoped to effect employment. One instance will do. I am going to give an instance for every argument I use. I have given one suggestion to the Government, and I hope they will adopt it, to see that unemployment does not now begin to develop in the woollen industry.

Mr. S. Collins

You said that the 1952 Budget guaranteed full employment.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Collins must cease interrupting. Deputy Briscoe should address the Chair.

Mr. Briscoe

"We believe, as I have said on many occasions since we came into office——"

Mr. Dillon

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but he has not made it clear that he is quoting again.

Mr. Briscoe

Oh, yes, I thought I had shown that I am continuing. I am greateful for the advice to make it clear that these words of wisdom are not mine, and it is obvious that they are not mine.

Mr. S. Collins

That is fairly obvious.

Mrs. O'Carroll

It is quite clear.

Mr. Briscoe

I would never like the public in the future to think I said some of these things.

Mr. Coogan

Cé leis iad?

Mr. Briscoe

I beg your pardon?

Mr. Coogan

He does not understand. It is a foreign tongue to him.

Mr. Briscoe

I am now quoting from the Minister for Finance:—

"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 subsidies. 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..."

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Might I point out to the Deputy that excessively long quotations are not in order? Would it be possible for the Deputy to paraphrase?

Mr. Briscoe

I will paraphrase them on your order, of course, Sir, but subject to it not being suggested that I am wilfully misparaphrasing them.

Mr. Dillon

The Deputy cannot purport to reproduce what is in the Official Report and paraphrase. He can paraphrase, but he cannot reproduce the Official Report.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is entitled to quote, but long quotations are not in order in this House. That has been the general practice.

Mr. Dillon

I hope it will be enforced on another occasion, in another arena, and on another official document. The Deputy has got into bad habits with the Greyhound Racing Report, I suppose.

Mr. Briscoe

Unfortunately, the Greyhound Racing Report has given me a few headaches. I read it at night after I go home from here.

Mr. Dillon

So it would seem.

Mr. Briscoe

You want me to paraphrase the sense of what I have marked here as of vital importance to be brought to the notice of this House and, I hope, to the notice of the public. It was suggested by the Minister that bringing about a subsidy on butter, to enable it to be sold 5d. per lb. cheaper, was one of the main contributions to bringing about economic stability. It was the same concern, the Minister had said, that motivated the Government "to make arrangements to cushion the people against what we believe," they say, "to be a passing rise in the price of tea." A passing rise in the price of tea! We all now know what was meant by "a passing rise in the price of tea" to the Exchequer because the price of tea has now been passed on to the public. Does the Minister follow that; or does he dispute that?

Mr. Dillon

I would not dare to, in the presence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister is very orderly to-day. He must be very satisfied with these measures.

Mr. Dillon

I am trying to set you a good example for the Greyhound Industry Bill.

Mr. Briscoe

I will try to follow your good example on good behaviour, but I would like to be assured that the Minister accepts what I am saying.

Mr. Dillon

You may rest assured that I dissent from every sentiment you express.

Mr. S. Collins

I had better go, lest I would not be docile.

Mr. Briscoe

The other day I—I would not say it here—accused somebody of being something he was not, he knew he was not and he was most offended because I would not tell him what he was really——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This has nothing to do with the Vote on Account.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister says:—

"We were criticised at the time we took the decision..."

—that is the passing on of the temporary rise—

" ... by people who said 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."

Does the Minister still believe that that was a correct appraisal, an intelligent appraisal? Is it not a fact that we are all paying more for our tea now than we did a year ago, and is it not clear that the price of tea has not come down? It has come down a little from the Exchequer's point of view, but we are all paying now in the price of our tea so many pennies in the lb. to pay back the overdraft which accumulated while this temporary situation was in being. Does the Minister not realise how nonsensical that whole approach or, may I say, that prophecy as a result of considered deliberations, wisdom and advice from God-knows-who, but certainly not from the people who knew, was.

In column 33, the Minister further says—and I hope the Minister for Agriculture will listen to this one; I suppose this is why we have a new tariff on nuts, because this is about the best nut that was cracked:—

"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."

We had a discussion on that about keeping the bank rate down. Some of the Deputies on the opposite side almost proposed a special vote of thanks to the Minister for Finance for having accomplished this act of wizardry. "We have brought them to the position where they will never raise the bank interest again beyond what it should be"—what is the bank rate to-day? It is higher than ever it was. That is another of these promises. We were going to get money cheaper and we were going to use that cheap money for a number of things, including capital expenditure. And now that nut—a walnut, may I call it?—has been cracked and that is why the nuts are going to pay a 25 per cent. duty for coming in from now on, whether whole, ground or otherwise. Somebody sat on that nut, I can tell you.

The Minister further said, and I am quoting the Minister briefly here:—

"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."

All these things have happened. We have had higher costs. The Government has had to give increased salaries to all Government employees, and the balance of payments has got out of control; so that obviously the picture that the Government had a year ago about the whole situation as it confronted them was certainly one that they had seen through special goggles, but not in accordance with the trend of things as the ordinary simple people could see and realise. There is an appeal from the Minister, and I challenge Deputies opposite to say whether we in any way offended against that appeal and whether we are in any way to blame for the situation which has developed.

I know that some smart Deputies have suggested that the fall in the price of cattle was due to a campaign indulged in by the Irish Press. Of course, it was all wrong for the Irish Press to report market prices but it was all right for Radio Eireann to report in their night and morning news bulletins the same prices. Nobody accuses Radio Eireann of having started a campaign to bring down the price of cattle. Is it not one of the things that the Minister now says, and with which he would not agree years ago, that there are certain developments which take place, ups or downs in prices, which are beyond our control? We just cannot make our customers pay more for the goods they buy from us than they want to pay unless we are the last source of food production in the world for our neighbours.

Mr. Dillon

We can encourage them to hold out by telling them that the bottom has fallen out of the cattle market.

Mr. Briscoe

Is not it a fact that we had boom prices?

Mr. Dillon

Last year, yes.

Mr. Briscoe

And is it not a fact that the bottom fell out of those boom prices?

Mr. Dillon

Not out of the price of cattle.

Mr. Briscoe

And is not it a fact that the cattle prices have changed, whether they have reached bottom or not? We know at the present moment they are at the lowest level they can reach.

Mr. Dillon

No. They are at the 1954 level now.

Mr. Briscoe

Yes. We have an agreement. We know the bottom they can reach but we are far above these prices.

Mr. Dillon

The bottom cannot fall out of the price.

Mr. Briscoe

It can fall to the bottom of the agreement. We were much higher than it. We were floating around the top of the barrel. Now we are at the bottom.

Mr. James Tully

That will happen at the Grand National, too.

Mr. Dillon

They are at the 1954 level and cattle will go over £6 by the end of April. That is not correctly described by saying that the bottom has fallen out of the cattle market.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister is very tender in certain spots.

Mr. Dillon

On that subject, yes, because that is the vital interest of our people.

Mr. Briscoe

So long as he is tender on cattle and not on greyhounds, he will not be so angry.

Mr. Dillon

I understand that cattle mean more to the country than greyhounds. The Deputy would not appreciate that.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister knows that I know something about cattle and about the meat business. The Minister knows that.

Mr. Dillon

I would never mistake a cow for a greyhound.

Mr. Briscoe

No. I do not suppose I would either.

Mr. Dillon

I thought from the way that the Deputy was talking——

Mr. Briscoe

We might mistake the figure by which the price has fallen as a boom. That is how mistakes are made. The Minister said:—

"I mention these things to-day ... 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".

I challenge the Minister and the Deputies opposite to say in what way the leaders of public opinion and members of this House have in any way jeopardised this plan, the plan of prophecies, none of which has materialised.

I am sorry the Minister for Finance is not here. At column 34, he says:—

"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."

I should like the Minister for Finance to relate that part of his speech to the answer he gave a couple of weeks ago to a Parliamentary Question in regard to borrowings from subsidiary companies whose loans were underwritten by him. I should like to get further elucidation as to how these two things go together because I am informed that the answer given is not in accordance with the full facts and I should like to hear something further about it. Otherwise, I shall have to follow it up in another way.

At the bottom of column 34, the Minister refers to a speech made by Deputy Lemass and he quotes what Deputy Lemass had said, which I shall also quote:—

"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."

That was a prophecy made by Deputy Lemass in contradiction of what had been said by the Minister for Finance. Who was right? Is not it a fact that the cost of administration in every Department was higher in 1955 than it was in 1954 but it is put on record here by the Minister for Finance as something stupid, something silly, to make such a suggestion, in view of the plan they had?

In winding up his speech, the Minister said:—

"That shows the value of the prophecy that was made by Deputy Lemass."

It shows the value that we can attach to the prophecies of the present Government.

I am sorry Deputy Barry has just left the House. He followed the Leader of this Party, Deputy de Valera, in that debate. He started off by saying that the general reaction to these Estimates had been one of very considerable relief, both inside and outside this House. He continued:—

"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 trend was not held. In fact, the trend is continuing. Deputy Barry also said:—

"The matter of the price of tea has been dealt with in an intelligent and same manner and in a manner which will justify itself before the year is out."

Deputy Barry brings to his assistance this magnificent argument:—

"World opinion seems to confirm that view."

Then he says:—

"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."

There is no sense in Deputy Morrissey making a speech which, in a way, was a harangue. His appreciation of certain things is to get down to an understanding of the unemployed man and so forth. Deputy Morrissey made the allegation that the 1952 Budget was deliberately designed to keep the standard of living of the working man down. He used the phrase that we had stated that he was living too well. He related it to what he called the hair-shirt policy and he brought in some light beer. I do not know whether the 1952 Budget and its effect on a man's pint of beer or a glass of whiskey would have been more difficult for him to face than to be without a job and not able to buy the beer at any price. Is it not a fact that the 1952 Budget costings are still in existence except in so far that 5d. per pound was taken off the price of butter and a couple of shillings were put on the tea?

Deputy Morrissey then went on to discuss hire-purchase and I could not understand his approach to the matter at all. He said everything except what should have been said. He admitted that it was very desirable that a working man's wife should be able to have access to amenities such as a cooker and a washing machine. Then he came to the other extreme and he told us about teenagers racing all over the place on the new form of motor cycles. He talked about the radio, the papers and the amount of advertisement there is to induce people to enter into business agreements to buy on hire-purchase items beyond their capacity to pay for and the quality of which was in many cases in doubt.

I remember when Deputy Morrissey, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, was speaking at a conference of advertising people and his words were:—"It pays to advertise. The solution for your manufacturers to get their goods on the market and brought to the attention of the people is to advertise and advertise." Now he seems to have a grievance against them. He talks about the radio. The radio is in the control of the Government. Every sponsored programme is under the control of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and all he has to do is to give the order as from to-morrow—"No sponsored programme should be put on the air which recommends hire-purchase." I have not heard hire-purchase recommended on the radio.

Hire-purchase is a means for some people to acquire goods which normally it would be impossible for them to get. Let us start with the question of buying a house. We were great advocates until recently of the desirability of every man buying his own home through local loans. Much money was made available for men to buy houses on the hire-purchase system. Obviously, if a working man was to save up to buy a house he would be an old man before he had saved sufficient to buy it; he would have raised his family and they would have left home and he would not require the house then. Similarly that principle applies to certain other sections. If a young man intending to get married passes an inquiry as to whether he is eligible for a loan, he will then go on to buy essential furniture.

I had hoped to see a series of figures of what deposits should be made and in what period the money should be repaid, but that there should be a proper system of control because hire-purchase lends itself to so many abuses. There should be an agreement by the person selling the goods that they should be sold at a reasonable price and not at an inflated price, because the person buying them has not the cash to buy outright. The rate of interest charged should also be controlled and, further, if the purchaser finds himself in difficulties through losing his employment or for some other reason, and is unable to continue his payments, his equity in the goods, for which he has made part payment, should be preserved. If you do that, you will bring the hire-purchase system more in line with the requirements of the people.

To get up here and say that there must be a deposit of 10 per cent. with two years to pay for domestic furniture, and a deposit of 50 per cent. with six months to pay for personal clothing, is not a cure for what may be inherently wrong, and there are many things inherently wrong, with the hire-purchase system. The cure is to protect the purchaser against exorbitant prices, against exorbitant rates of interest and to preserve his equity in the goods. This is only part of a scheme to take away from the purchaser the means to purchase. That is what it is. That is what the Deputies on the other side said was inherent in the 1952 Budget, the statement. "You are spending too much." What it means is that if it takes three years to pay for a suite of furniture you may not have it if you cannot pay for it in two years. If your earnings do not allow that you have to do without the suite.

Deputy Morrissey talked about the transformation in the standards of the workers and he implied that that transformation took place only after the change of Government in 1948. I do not think that even the Labour Deputies would subscribe to that claim. The increase in the standard of wages in this country——

Mr. James Tully

Took place after the revocation of the Standstill Order.

Mr. Briscoe

The Standstill Order was introduced at a time when nobody knew what ceiling prices would reach and when nobody knew how wages would have to chase prices. Did not the trade unions agree with it? Are they not equally culpable if there was anything wrong in it? If the people opposite had not spoken so much and so adversely about the Standstill Order, they would be very glad to invoke such a measure if the situation should get further out of hand.

I have only a few references to make to the Minister's speech. I made some references to it before and I hope these references will be brought to his notice. I shall not repeat what I said about the situation confronting the woollen industry. The Minister for Agriculture probably made a note on what I said and I hope the Minister will act on what I suggested.

The Minister said on page 9:

"All of us on every side of the House will agree that the primary aim and purpose of every Government, no matter of what Parties it may be composed, must be to create conditions in which there will be a real and lasting increase in agricultural and industrial production."

Mr. Sweetman

Hear, hear!

Mr. Briscoe

I have given the Minister a suggestion as to how he can start doing that in a practical way. I do not know whether the Minister has had the note given to him. I know I am not allowed to repeat but I will say this briefly. There has grown up in recent years the practice of exporting woven cloth to England to be shrunk and dyed and then it is reimported here and sold as Irish cloth. It is having a very adverse effect on our woollen mills and bringing about a very serious decline in employment in the industry.

Mr. Sweetman

Surely that is for the Minister for Industry and Commerce and not for Finance?

Acting-Chairman (Mr. Bartley)

A passing reference is permissible.

Mr. Sweetman

Very well, if it is a passing reference.

Mr. Briscoe

If that is the Minister's attitude I wonder if it was also his attitude when he says in his speech on page 9: "We must concentrate on efficient production of goods." I suppose that line refers to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and not to the Minister for Finance?

Mr. Sweetman

I referred several times to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

Mr. Briscoe

I will repeat it on Supplies and Services or on some occasion when the Minister for Industry and Commerce is here, but in the meantime the matter is urgent and perhaps my statement will be conveyed to him. I got a bit of a shock, I must say——

Mr. Sweetman

I am sorry to hear that.

Mr. Briscoe

——particularly as the Minister had promised us low rates of interest recently, when he told us in this statement of his that from now on, and until further notice, the rate of interest on money to local authorities from local loans will be 5¼ per cent. That is a bit of a shock.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Dublin Corporation were very near getting it at 5 per cent. if they had looked for it.

Mr. Briscoe

I am amazed at the Minister for Local Government. I do not know whether he pretends this innocence or whether he makes those interjections deliberately to mislead other people. The Minister said publicly, and he has stated to deputations, that the Dublin Corporation had authority from him to borrow £2,000,000 from the banks and could have got it.

Mr. O'Donnell

I did not say any such thing; I said they had permission to borrow £2,000,000 and I gave sanction for it.

Mr. Briscoe

For what purpose?

Mr. O'Donnell

For financing the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts.

Mr. Briscoe

Does not the Minister now know that is all nonsense? We cannot go to the banks and borrow £2,000,000 for 35 years——

Mr. O'Donnell

You did not even try.

Mr. Briscoe

We did.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy must remember that the members of Dublin Corporation said to the Minister for Local Government and myself that they would not approach the banks.

Mr. Briscoe

We would not approach the banks for small dwellings loans——

Mr. Sweetman

That is all right.

Mr. Briscoe

—— and the Minister knows that we have no authority to do that.

Mr. O'Donnell

You got sanction for £2,000,000.

Mr. Briscoe

For ordinary housing, for ordinary overdraft, which we will have to use in the next few months.

Mr. O'Donnell

No such thing.

Mr. Briscoe

We cannot borrow money in the dark without knowing what the interest is because——

Mr. O'Donnell

You were doing it all through the years.

Mr. Briscoe

This is an exceptional year——

Mr. O'Donnell

Because you have an inter-Party Government?

Mr. Briscoe

Because this is the first year the Government did not honour its undertaking and allow us to borrow all the money we required for our annual estimate. This was the first year they said: "Do not borrow that £2,000,000."

Mr. O'Donnell

We gave you permission.

Mr. Briscoe

We read in the paper yesterday that Dublin County Council is having trouble in getting money for its small dwellings and that Dún Laoire Borough Council cannot get the £200,000 they need——

Mr. O'Donnell

Stampede the builders—that is what you are trying to do.

Mr. Briscoe

Nonsense. I am not trying to stampede the builders. The idea is to say: "We cannot give it to you because we have given £1,000,000 to Dublin Corporation." You have not given one shilling, just a promise to give it.

Mr. O'Donnell

You did not look for it.

Mr. Sweetman

You said you did not want it until the middle of April.

Mr. Briscoe

That is what we said and that is what we agreed to, but we cannot let you get away with the suggestion that the reason these other bodies cannot get the money they need is that you have given it to Dublin Corporation.

Mr. Sweetman

The Chair never made any such suggestion. The Deputy might tell the truth for a change.

Mr. Briscoe

I am telling the truth. The Minister when I went to see him with a deputation gave us a lecture——

Mr. Sweetman

Tell the truth.

Mr. de Valera

The Minister ought to be careful of that too. There was a suggestion at the beginning here this afternoon——

Mr. Sweetman

I hope Deputy de Valera has taken that to heart.

Mr. de Valera

I will. I have always taken it to heart.

Mr. Sweetman

You did not take it to heart this afternoon.

Mr. de Valera

I say I did.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy did not.

Mr. de Valera

I say I did. I cannot call you what I would like to say.

Mr. Briscoe

I went to see the Minister on a deputation and we were abused. We were given a lecture on our lack of credit-worthiness in Dublin Corporation and I said to the Minister: "If I were you I would not talk like that until next Friday." The next Friday he discovered that the same position confronted him.

Mr. Sweetman

Under different circumstances.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister says that now, but when I was talking to him on Monday, the day the loan opened——

Mr. Sweetman

I knew it by two o'clock.

Mr. Briscoe

That makes it worse.

Mr. Sweetman

No, that was on the Wednesday.

Mr. Briscoe

That was before there was any report in from any bank.

Mr. Sweetman

But the stock exchanges started to slide on the previous Thursday.

Mr. Briscoe

Anyway, I am saying that I find that what I said on the last occasion is coming to pass. I pointed out if there was any tempering with or interfering with the delicate machinery that controls finance you might have to sing a different tune. The Minister for Health is here and he interrupted me one day and said across the House: "Did we not keep the bankers down?" And my reply to him across the House—and it is on record—was: "Well, you will reap that harvest too." And you are reaping it. We are all reaping it.

Mr. Sweetman

The Chair is not reaping it.

Mr. Briscoe

We are all reaping it.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy said "you".

Mr. Briscoe

We all make these little mistakes.

Acting-Chairman

These interruptions must cease.

Mr. Briscoe

That is just a little bit of exuberance, I suppose. I pointed out on that occasion that we might find ourselves short for capital matters, that we might find it would reflect itself in the requirements of local authorities. If anybody doubts me I can quote it.

Mr. A. Barry

We shall take your word for it.

Mr. Briscoe

Deputy Barry says he will take my word—he probably remembers it. I pointed out what was likely to happen and it has now happened. We are now short of capital. I am not blaming the Government for that. When they interfered, as they said they would, and mastered the bankers to keep the bank rate of interest down we, on this side of the House, pointed out what they would succeed in doing would be to bring about a flight of capital, that the liquidity position would be altered and that when we went for loans for capital purposes, we would all find ourselves in certain difficulties. That has happened.

Mr. A. Barry

It is not as simple as that.

Mr. Briscoe

It is as simple as that.

Mr. A. Barry

No, indeed, it is not.

Mr. Briscoe

Yes, and it is that simple that we have to bring in corrective measures. I do not know who went to the banks and said to them: "You are released now from our restraint. You can go ahead and carry out your business according to supply and demand." I do not know who said that to them but the fact is that they are now charging more than they were charging at the time these measures were taken against them.

The position is that we are now faced with a whole list of items which have been imported, complete and otherwise, in large quantities. How are we to deal with this trend which is running along at greyhound pace and affecting the balance of payments? It is thought that putting on these tariffs, which are in addition to the ones already there, will make these items so deal that they will not come in in such quantities.

Mr. O'Donnell

Does the Deputy object to them?

Mr. Briscoe

No. We do not object to any measure, no matter how severe, that can help to bring about a safer situation than that with which we are apparently faced.

Mr. O'Sullivan

That is not Deputy Aiken's view.

Mr. Briscoe

He did not say he was against this. He criticised and I am going to criticise.

Minister for Defence (General MacEoin)

When it is too late.

Mr. Briscoe

The situation has been allowed to get out of hand by the development of a mentality hostile to the 1952 Budget. Now what will be the result? The Minister, I take it, hopes there will be a slowing down of imports. A slowing down will mean less goods. He is going to keep the additional revenue for capital requirements. I think I am quoting him correctly when I say that.

Mr. Derrig

That is right.

Mr. Briscoe

I am glad to hear it. What will be the result in regard to the motor car industry? Obviously, there will be a slowing down in the purchase of motor cars and in the assembly of motor cars. As a result, there will have to be a lay off of the workers engaged in the motor car industry. What will we call that—an improvement in the standard of living of those workmen?

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy says he agrees with these tariffs.

Mr. Briscoe

I did not say I agreed with these tariffs, but that I agreed with any remedial measures that would prove successful.

Mr. A. Barry

That is a good each-way bet.

Mr. Briscoe

As a result of the false promises made on the eve of the last election, the Minister's first Budget, his discussion on the Supplies and Services Bill, and his misunderstanding of the situation, the remedial measures to-day will have to be all the harder. Blame will attach to the present Government and no other Government. We say that had the measures we proposed been accepted, this position would not have arisen. That is what I said.

Mr. Sweetman

What were the measures?

Mr. Briscoe

The 1952 Budget.

Mr. Sweetman

Remove the subsidies.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister had more in it than the removal of the subsidies. The Minister blamed the 1952 Budget for the high cost of living with which he was confronted when he came into office. What is the cause of the increases since then? I am not going to go through all these items in detail. Some of them are luxuries. The Minister rightly says that the amount to be derived from imported luxury goods would not be very effective in bringing down the adverse balance. Therefore, he has to attack items which are not luxuries. Some of them are made in the country and some are not. Surely to goodness an electric bell might have been left out. As I say, I am not going into all these items in detail. I will refer to only one or two of them. For instance, we have toys, including working models of a kind used for recreational purposes. Surely we could have left the children out of it and allowed the toys to come in without an additional tariff.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Blowick)

Do we not manufacture them at home? The Department of Lands not alone manufactures toys but exports them.

Mr. Briscoe

Does the Minister for Lands think that these increased tariffs apply only to items made here?

Mr. Blowick

I am talking about the toys. We supply the home market and export them as far away as the United States of America.

Mr. Briscoe

Is the Minister talking about toys made in the Gaeltacht industries, and model animals? Do they, in addition to toy soldiers, make mechanical toys?

Mr. Blowick

They do.

Mr. Briscoe

This is an additional tariff. Toys, including working models of a kind used for recreational purposes, are not made in the Gaeltacht and the Minister cannot say they are. "Equipment for parlour table and funfair games for adults or children"— they are not made there?

Mr. Blowick

No.

Mr. Briscoe

That is why I suggest to leave the kids out.

Mr. Blowick

We are catering for the kids at home.

Mr. Briscoe

Are these the toys you and I play with?

Mr. Blowick

Both of us have gone beyond the stage of playing with toys.

Mr. Briscoe

I am talking of toys which apply to kids.

Mr. Sweetman

Has the Deputy any idea of how much is involved?

Mr. Briscoe

No.

Mr. Sweetman

Would the Deputy like to hear it?

Mr. Briscoe

He would.

Mr. Sweetman

£680,000 was the total imports last year.

Mr. Briscoe

What was the tariff— 33? per cent?

Mr. Sweetman

I will turn that one up for the Deputy.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister will appreciate that we had not time to look the matter up.

Mr. Sweetman

That is why I am so anxious to help. There are varying rates, Deputy. Would the Deputy tell me which type of toy he wants to know the duty on?

Mr. Briscoe

Children's toys—not the toys that the Minister for Lands and I enjoy.

Mr. Sweetman

I imagine the Deputy is interested in dolls?

Mr. Briscoe

No; they are made here in the Gaeltacht and very well made, indeed. Trains for kids are one items— mechanical toys.

Mr. Donegan

Boomerangs!

Mr. Briscoe

Boomerangs would come in under the definition of toys for recreational purposes.

Mr. Sweetman

Toy perambulators— is that what the Deputy is interested in?

Mr. Briscoe

I am talking about toys. I do not think toy perambulators are made here. In any event, I do not see why we do not make toy perambulators. I am talking about mechanical toys.

Mr. Sweetman

If the Deputy is talking about wooden toys I could tell him about 50 per cent.

Mr. Briscoe

I am talking about mechanical toys with metal frames with which the Minister and myself used to play when we were kids.

Mr. Sweetman

I never played with those. Metal frames were not in my class.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister does not mean to suggest that he played with dolls.

Mr. Blowick

He might have.

Acting-Chairman

These interruptions must cease.

Mr. Briscoe

Might I go on to another item—No. 38? I referred to this before as being responsible for its own demise as a result of being a nut which the Minister failed to crack when he introduced the last Vote on Account. The item refers to edible nuts. That is a nut the Minister could not crack during the year, so he has got it now in a position where he is going to give it the works. What is the idea of bringing edible nuts into this? Surely they are an essential. And what figure is the Minister going to get for that or what thin edge of the wedge is it? Nuts are brought in here in the shape of almonds which are one of the important items in the manufacture of chocolate. Surely to goodness, that is an item that could not be of any great consequence to the problem the Minister is trying to solve? What is it beside the £27,000,000 for motor parts and fuel oils? No. 34 deals with chocolate and other food preparations such as cocoa. Does that include cocoa beans in the raw?

Mr. Sweetman

No.

Mr. Briscoe

It is all right then. There is the item of spices. What do we understand by that? Does it mean pepper and mustard for instance?

Mr. Sweetman

Pickles, sauces, mixed condiments.

Mr. Briscoe

I am talking about item No. 41. It has got a heading all to itself.

Mr. Sweetman

It is not all by itself in the Trade Returns.

Mr. Briscoe

It has here on page 7 of this.

Mr. Sweetman

That could well be. I thought the Deputy wanted to know the amount and that is what I was trying to tell him.

Mr. Briscoe

Why should that be afflicted with this tax? The only attractive thing about properly cooked food is the way it is spiced. I suppose salt could be called a spice, as could pepper, mustard, nutmeg. I do not know what is the purpose of that tax. Surely to goodness, we should be given an understanding about these things. I could well understand the action about non-alcholic beverages because they are manufactured here, but I cannot understand the action in regard to what are termed "essential juices" which are the foundation for the manufacture of non-alcoholic beverages. All these things will tend to put up the cost of living very considerable, very quickly. It will bring about a very serious deterioration.

Mr. A. Barry

How much spice do you use in a year?

Mr. Briscoe

To tell you the truth I do not know because it belongs to the housekeeping side.

Mr. A. Barry

It would be very small.

Mr. Briscoe

If I had this document last night I would have asked the wife, and she would have been able to tell me.

Mr. A. Barry

Threepence would cover the cost anyway.

Mr. Briscoe

This will bring about an increase in the cost of living and will bring about a considerable deterioration in employment. It will very seriously affect the tariff revenue of the State. The Minister has admitted that these additional tariff payments will be put into a separate fund and devoted to capital expenditure. They will not be treated as ordinary current revenue. It will affect seriously the income of the State if it is to be effective at all. I am wondering what the position will be when the Minister concludes his Estimates with a view to bringing in his Budget. How then will we meet this falling off?

I have dealt as fully as I could with the speeches made and with what Deputy Morrissey has said. I have tried to make clear what the reactions will be, as I foresee them. I have made certain suggestions, one of which was, I believe, a constructive suggestion about hire purchase. What is contemplated here may certainly check the trend of business in that direction but it will not give the protection the people deserve. Side by side with the introduction of this Order, there should be, as I said before, control of the profit made by the people engaged in this business. There should be a maximum rate of interest and a warranty as far as the goods are concerned which would protect the purchaser for the equity he established after a number of payments have been made.

Mr. Sweetman

How would any of those things affect the balance of payments?

Mr. Briscoe

Surely to goodness the Minister is not anticipating that the introduction of this hire-purchase business will seriously affect the balance of payments?

Mr. Sweetman

Certainly.

Mr. Briscoe

The person who buys a suit of clothes made here from an Irish piece of cloth has to pay 50 per cent. deposit and the balance in six months.

Mr. Sweetman

It is not obvious that it is a piece of consumption goods?

Mr. Briscoe

It is not consumption goods coming from outside.

Mr. Sweetman

But it is a piece of consumption goods.

Mr. Briscoe

Is it not a purchase tax then?

Mr. Sweetman

I said this was the equivalent of a purchase tax in our circumstances but it is a better method because it does not hit employment in the same way.

Mr. Briscoe

I am trying to understand what the Minister has said. On the one hand we want to try and bring down the adverse balance. We agree with the Minister that the adverse balance must be brought down as soon as possible. The Minister talks about a purchase tax. Where is the tax involved in this item? The Minister gets nothing out of it.

Mr. Sweetman

I am talking about the levies.

Mr. Briscoe

The Minister brought in an order dealing with hire-purchase and credit sales.

Mr. Sweetman

I am afraid I have been misunderstanding the Deputy. I thought he was talking about the Levies Order.

Mr. Briscoe

I agree that in order to correct some of the abuses inherent in this business there should be a certain regard to the people who avail of it; there should be a certain protection for them, but I ask why does the Minister bring in a person who buys a piece of cloth and who has to pay 50 per cent. down payment? I do not suppose the Minister knows the history of the beginning of hire-purchase. If he did he would find it began with clothing, boots and household commodities of a wearable nature. There are many people who just cannot afford to buy for themselves and their families their full requirements of necessary commodities out of cash. They have not the means of saving and if there was adequate control over the suppliers of the items I have mentioned, the quality of the goods, the margin of profit and the rate of interest, what is wrong with it? These measures will not cure the abuses in the hire-purchase system. I would not mind if people were compelled to pay a 10 per cent. or even a 20 per cent. deposit on furniture. Radio sets, television sets— these are things that affect us in our adverse trade balance. Remember, the Minister introduced this in conjunction with corrective measures.

Mr. Sweetman

Sure.

Mr. Briscoe

I am pointing out that the working man is being hit. Why is he to be hit on the head if he buys an item of clothing made in Ireland with Irish labour and in no way concerned with imports? Why should he be hit on the head? I do not understand that. Perhaps the Minister would look it up and tell us the reason when he is replying. I think that is a mistake.

Mr. Sweetman

Far from it. I will refer to the matter when I am replying.

Mr. Briscoe

Very well; I feel sure we will get some information about it. Would the Minister agree that he should bring to the notice of his colleague, whoever he may be, that some steps should be taken to control hire-purchase other than by this method. This gives no protection. This does not say that, if I buy furniture, I will get it at a fair price and a reasonable rate of interest and that my equity in it will be preserved, if I find myself in difficulties and cannot continue with my payments. Surely these steps must be taken and is this not an opportune time to take them? I do not know how successful this action will be and I do not know how long it will take to show signs of results.

In conclusion, I just want to say that this is the first definite admission on the part of the Government of complete failure to understand the position when they took over. It is a complete renouncement of everything they said in their election speeches even up to the last by-election. I hope it will make them a little more careful in the future and that they will appreciate the difficulties that confront them—difficulties that cannot just be dealt with in the way they suggested. They said: "We will stop emigration. We will cure unemployment in 24 hours; we will bring down the Exchequer requirements by £10,000,000 or £20,000,000 in a matter of so many minutes; and we will bring down the cost of living." They now know that all these statements were little dreams; like those of small children dreaming little fairy tales.

Mr. Sweetman

Was that the Deputy's election address of 1952 that he was referring to?

Mr. A. Barry

In my opinion, the first speech we heard from the Opposition Benches this evening was one of the most reactionary utterances I have ever listened to.

Mr. Briscoe

So we are Tories now? When we were over there, we were described as Socialists and Comnunists.

Mr. Corish

Wrong Party.

Mr. Briscoe

We gave the free beef.

Mr. A. Barry

I did not interrupt Deputy Briscoe while he was speaking. The danger in a situation such as that which confronts us to-day is that the reactionary will attempt to panic others into an acceptance of his policy. That is what I fear from Deputy Aiken and people like him. Throughout his whole speech, I could sense that he was disappointed. He thought we had not been hard enough and that we were not injuring the people enough. In my view, that type of mentality put Deputy Aiken on the Opposition Benches and it will keep him there.

I want to talk now about the Vote on Account. It has been rather neglected in this evening's discussion. The positive thing about it is that it shows a reduction of £2,000,000 compared with last year, and that reduction has been brought about in spite of inevitable increases in the cost of running the State. Deputy Aiken said the Government should give an example in the way of trimming costs. Here is an example: they cut costs by £2,000,000.

I could point to a very substantial industry in this country which, in the past year, raised the cost of the product to the Irish public from £400,000 to £600,000. I am sure the directors of that institution did not take that step as a result of squandermania or inefficiency in their part. It resulted from the general increase in expenses in business or State activity which we must all meet. We have no choice about it. The institution I speak about is the newspaper business. They increased their prices by 5 per cent. That came to the very satisfactory sum of £200,000 per annum.

National Health shows an increase since 1952-53 of £4,000,000. Social Services are now at £20,000,000. Does anybody oppose the spending of that money? Do conservative people, Tories, the people across the floor of the House, say we should not spend that money or look after the people who have less and, if necessary, take it from people who have more?

The Minister announced emergency duties this evening. He envisages that they will have a deterring effect to the amount of £7,000,000 on imports. Roughly, that is 3½ per cent. of our total imports. Deputy Briscoe has gone through the list. Some of the items are interesting, but most of them are really unimportant. Most of us will not suffer, if we have to pay more for them. The important thing is that neither bread, nor butter, nor tea is on that list. When we endeavour to adjust financial misadjustment in this country, we make sure we do our best to put the load on the right shoulders.

Anybody who takes a walk around the cities or towns in this country will observe that there is a great deal of overflow from the production of our next door neighbour. A lot of the articles on this list fit into that category. Take, for example, imitation jewellery, certain musical instruments, gramophones and record players, table and kitchen cutlery, penknives and so forth. We can do with less of them. If the Minister devotes the money to capital purposes, it will do a lot of good.

With regard to the speeches of Deputy Briscoe and Deputy Aiken, the inference is that this money crisis may drive us into fresh thinking about this whole matter. That thinking need not necessarily be orthodox thinking. Indeed, there is considerable uneasiness about excessive conservatism in this regard. If I interpret the official attitude of the Opposition correctly, I am very uneasy. In fact, I think the Fianna Fáil Party can not legitimately evacuate their present Party headquarters in this city and almost go into occupation of a premises which, I understand, are now vacant—the Kildare Street Club.

Mr. Egan

It would not be the County Club in Cork?

Mr. A. Barry

I will not accept a system which says we must destroy employment and, if orthodoxy tries to create that pool of unemployed which it seeks to create elsewhere, then we shall have to re-assess the claims of orthodoxy. We will inevitably come to the cross-roads and we will have to make a decision then, and, if progress in housing, land reclamation and so forth is to be held up by any excessively reactionary financial policy, neither this Dáil nor this generation will be forgiven by posterity.

Mr. Derrig

The levy on electric bells, referred to by Deputy Briscoe, makes one feel it is perhaps an echo which has reverberated in the benches opposite and made them wake up to the realities of the situation. At the recent Fine Gael Ard Fheis, the Taoiseach was rather disturbed that the people might want the Government to go too fast or too quickly. At the same time, he was assuring the country that, although the balance of payments situation was creating anxiety, it could not be described as a crisis; it was merely a problem. As to whether it was a purely mythical problem, or a metaphysical problem, or a fiscal problem, or what its dimensions were, or what the realities of the situation were, we got very little information.

The fact was that the present Government had taken up such an attitude in 1952 when the country was faced with a somewhat similar but even more serious position, that they almost estopped themselves from being able to undertake the responsibilities which the course of events ultimately forced them to acknowledge, accept and honour from their point of view. When Deputy MacEntee, as Minister for Finance, issued a White Paper, after we returned to office in 1951, on this question of the balance of payments, it was, of course, scouted by all the brilliant, young economists who had sheltered under the wings of the inter-Party Government, hopeful, I have no doubt, that in the course of time they might look forward and aspire to high honours, such as ministerial posts and so on. At the same time that the British Government had announced that the situation was extremely serious, serious not alone there but all over Europe, our brilliant, young economists from University College, Dublin, were able to advise the present Government and its leaders that they need not worry about the situation; and, apparently, they have been able to maintain that situation, although they have been driven gradually from the position they first took up. They not alone questioned, in this House and throughout the country, the action of the Government of the day, but they described it as treachery almost of the real interests of the Irish people—an act which, according to them, was aiming almost deliberately at creating unemployment, higher prices, emigration and so forth. We know how they used that situation up and down the country throughout their political campaign. They did not scruple to suggest that the Government of the day was acting at the behest of the Central Bank and that the advisers of the Government—and I take it the present Minister is being advised by the same advisers—were in some way not trustworthy and were false to their own integrity.

Mr. Sweetman

Nobody ever suggested that. The fact was they were mistaken, of course, in certain respects.

Mr. Derrig

The Minister may be mistaken. He has a lot to answer for.

Mr. Sweetman

I am not mistaken, but the Deputy will find, if he looks back, that they were mistaken on that point.

Mr. Derrig

He stated, as quoted by Deputy Aiken, in November, 1954:—

"There is no serious anxiety on the balance of external payments and it did not appear that the deficit this year would much exceed last year's figure."

A year later, on 21st December, 1955, he is reported as saying:—

"There would be a sizable deficit in the balance of payments this year. His concern was to maintain and indeed accelerate the progress that had been made in production and employment. This called for restraint in consumption by business and semi-business and an increase in saving until output grew sufficiently to fill its new monetary clothes."

These adjurations, supplications and appeals are all very well, but they do not seem to have had very much effect, and now the Minister has come along with definite proposals.

These proposals are to be welcomed to the extent that they show that the Government have been able to make up their mind, first, that the situation is a really serious one, that the national interests are being jeopardised, that the situation would become more serious and more dangerous if allowed to continue without remedial steps, and, secondly, that they have announced, whether or not we agree with the particular steps that are being taken, that certain steps are necessary, and these are the steps they recommend.

I regret very much that this discussion should take place on the Vote on Account. I am sure the Minister will have the excuse that the situation is developing rapidly; he has referred to the January and February trade figures and he will, no doubt, plead, in extenuation, that he felt it necessary to take action at the first opportunity, having regard to the experience of the past two months. But he will recognise that this is, in effect, a fiscal measure. It could be described as part of the Budgetary policy and it is rather unfortunate that the Government has not been able to assemble all its budgetary proposals, instead of presenting them to us at different periods of the year, because it has the unhappy result of throwing the discussion on financial business out of focus.

In my opinion, the Vote on Account should be taken separately from these proposals under the Emergency (Imposition of Duties) Order. The Minister could have tabled a motion of a general omnibus character to enable us to deal with the emergency imposition of duties proposals separately from the question of general policy in regard to employment, national expenditure and so on—the type of debate customarily dealt with on the Vote on Account. There is an objection to taking proposals of this kind under these emergency powers and I think that the discussion on proposals of this nature should be dealt with separately from the proposals before us to pass for the Minister, during the next week or two, the equivalent of one-third of his requirements for the upkeep of services.

It is very noticeable that while we are discussing our economic difficulties and the situation with which the country is faced, the Minister is driven to rely almost entirely on the prospects of the cattle trade. I have no doubt that other speakers will enter into that side of the question more fully than I am competent to do. But is it not the position that during the whole of the past year the prosperity of the country, the boom and the general unhealthiness of the situation were either concealed or, if you like, supported by the level of cattle prices? No information has been given beyond the general expectation that the Minister says he has that the situation may improve.

We have no information as to how the coming season will affect the Irish farm producers. We know that the English market has been thrown wide open and that the situation that confronts our people there is entirely different from what it was during the years since the war has ceased. Deputies will have noticed in the News Letter which we get from the Netherland Legation that in the year 1954, while the Netherlands exported £15,141,000 worth of meat to Britain, in 1955 they exported £19,909,000 worth. Miscellaneous food went up from £4,000,000 to £6,000,000 and so on. That is simply dealing with one particular item from one particular country. We are told—and I hope I will not incur the anger and annoyance of the Minister for Agriculture by repeating it—in a well-known Sunday paper that prices of beef and meat in Britain are now down to what they were when meat was rationed.

Surely the farming community in this country are entitled to know what examination or investigation the Government is making into that situation or whether there is anything beyond the view expressed by the Minister for Agriculture that cattle prices will recover in the near future? We know they have disimproved very substantially during the past few months and we know that producers are very worried as to whether the glut, or whatever else may be the cause for this recession and serious decline in prices, is likely to continue. Could the Minister for Agriculture not take the House and the farmers into his confidence and tell them what exactly the future holds in store for them in so far as the information at his disposal shows?

I have to agree with Deputy Aiken that the Government by their attitude towards tillage and towards wheat growing, have made themselves culpable to a very grave extent for the import of unnecessary cereals into this country. We know that in Britain, in a community where the farmers are only a very small section and have to fight a hard battle to keep their end up, it is accepted as a fundamental principle by all Parties that it is good national policy to cut out the importation of cereals and feeding stuffs as far as possible, to increase still further home production and rely as little as possible on the foreigner for human or animal sustenance.

I can never understand why the Government here have not been able to take a more courageous stand in that matter, why they have not been able to encourage the farmers more and to give them incentives, if necessary, somewhat similar to what they are being given elsewhere, to see that a much greater acreage of land is placed under the plough which would benefit the employment position, the amount of money in circulation and the economy generally. I am sorry to say that I feel it is due more to a prejudice against policies with which our Party had been associated in office than to a proper realisation and a proper judgement of the situation that is now facing the country.

The Minister for Finance has not told us the amount of revenue he hopes to raise from these proposals and how it will affect the capital programme. He has suggested that the amount may be small, but I am sure in his present straitened condition the Minister is very anxious to put out both hands to take any revenues or any finances that may accrue to the Exchequer for either ordinary or capital expenditure. It must be expected to be a significant amount at any rate, seeing that about 3 per cent. of our imports will be affected by these levies, assuming that there is not a complete falling off.

I think Deputy Briscoe drew the attention of the House to a very valuable point in that connection. If the objective of the Government is to cut out these luxuries or non-essential or less essential imports, as you may wish to describe them, and if they are completely successful in that policy, then of course the fund for capital development will not benefit to any great extent. But with the temptations which must accrue to Ministers for Finance, particularly if they find that expenditure, under whatever heading it may be, is out-running and, perhaps, seriously out-running revenue prospects, I am afraid that perhaps at the back of his mind the Minister had the revenue-producing aspect of these proposals just as much as the balance of payments aspect of them.

We used to hear a great deal about the consumer. I wonder will there be any protection for the consumer from the Prices Advisory Body, or in any other way, when not alone the whole of the levy will be passed on to him, but the additional profits and the additional costs that the distributors may choose to throw in in order to recompense themselves? When we put down a motion some months ago deprecating the fact that the present Government had been unable to carry out their promises in regard to a reduction in the cost of living, if my recollection serves me even reasonably well, we were assured, in an amendment to our motion which the Taoiseach put down on that occasion, that the community was to be cushioned against the impact of increases in prices and in the cost of living. Later on, we had Ministers assuring people throughout the country that compensation would be given if prices went up.

The Minister for Finance did not, when he was introducing a Supplementary Estimate for remuneration, tell me what the circumstances were upon which he based his opinion that the increases in remuneration which were agreed upon were justified or the basis of these opinions, and what were the actual circumstances—for example, what was the increase in the cost of living between the period when the previous increase was granted and the new increase. I think that at least the House and the country are entitled to know what the particular basis was. I think I gathered from the Minister that he had also in mind not only that particular circumstance, but the fact that so many other bodies had been able to secure additional remuneration, and it, therefore, seemed, as the Taoiseach reminded the country at the Fine Gael Árd Fheis, that the demand had rather altered and advanced from the position that compensation ought to be given for an increase in the cost of living, to the fact that, since so many other sections had been able to secure compensation, there should be a general all round increase.

We have here the cost of the remuneration, and it seems to take up practically the whole of the increase in the figure on the title page as compared with the similar figure last year. There was an increase of £3.6 million, and, on the following page, he tells us that about £3,500,000 went on the increased Estimate. Is there any figure, or how soon may the country expect to get some figures? I do not think we need rely entirely upon the figures that are given in these matters, but they are most valuable in showing how the trends are, and so long as the Statistics Office is preparing its material on the same basis in connection with these different aspects of our economy year after year, then we at least know, as has been said here this evening, what the trends are, and that is very important. One would like to know the total increases in remuneration granted in recent years, and what they have been year by year as compared with the increase in output or the increase in production.

If we are faced with this position, that the Minister for Finance thinks that we have to depend on his lordship the bullock to even a greater extent, that he is not able to look forward to any change in the position of our industrial exports, we have to answer the question that our farmer constituents will ask us—whether we are taking every possible step to reduce the burden of taxation and expenditure, which inevitably, in the long run, must be produced, as this statement of the Minister actually shows, from the land and from the farming community, being the main producers.

It is stated with regard to hire-purchase that necessities are not coming under the Schedule, and differentiations are being made between the items that are mentioned and tea, bread, butter and so on. Of course, as has been pointed out during the debate, it could be a serious matter for a young married couple who are legitimately trying to set up house to find that the terms, if they are onerous at present, will be made still more onerous, to enable them to secure their requirements to start their housekeeping. I should like to know also what the Minister's reply may be to Deputy Briscoe's point as to making differentiation between the goods that are manufactured here and goods that are imported, so far as hire-purchase is concerned. It should be possible to make a distinction between the home-manufactured article and the imported one, particularly as the basis of the Minister's proposals is the balance of payments.

I think, also, that, while the opportunity is not present at the moment to go into the matter more fully, there is something which the Minister will at once recognise from his experience as of importance in the point which Deputy Briscoe made as regards giving the purchaser more equity, as I understand has been the case in the United States, that the article which he contracts to purchase on the hire-purchase system becomes his legal property, and that, in order to recover it, action has to be taken in the court.

I do not know whether attention has been given to these matters, but it certainly would look, as Deputy Briscoe pointed out, as though we are rather approaching the thing from the point of view of imposing perhaps certain hardships—I do not know whether they are inevitable or not—upon those persons who are purchasing goods under hire-purchase, rather than trying to control the companies and the institutions which are financing the hire-purchase.

I noticed a few months ago that the English banks announced rather proudly that one of their presumably very remunerative duties was to take a greater share in the financing of hire-purchase. We also know that the hire-purchase companies over in England have been advertising that they are prepared to take deposits at high rates of interest. I wonder whether, if the Minister is in such close touch with the banks as we have reason to believe from his recent communications to the public, he could not get more information as to how this business is being financed, and whether more could not be done to control the publicity that attaches to it.

I know that it has been going on for years and it is unfortunate that it is the poorest section of the community who very often are affected by the measures it is now proposed to take. It is our duty, on whatever side of the House we may be, to do everything we possibly can to see, as has been urged on this side already, that those people who are paying their instalments, or who enter into commitments, will not have charges placed upon them unfairly and that everything possible will be done, if the transaction is a legitimate one, to try to assist them, knowing that they come from the poorest section of the community who very often cannot purchase their requirements outright.

It would also be useful if we got some indication as to how the consumer will fare under the import levy, seeing that a great many of these articles are already, I take it, subject to tariff. The Minister, in his reply, if he has not been able to give us the information in the document that has been circulated to us, ought to indicate, I think, what is the present tariff on these articles, if they are tariffed, and what the additional tariff will be.

Mr. Donnellan

It is a rather tall order, is it not?

Mr. Derrig

It is. But it will be regarded, whether the Minister agrees with it or not, as being an additional incentive to Irish manufacturers and an additional protection for them, and, to the extent that they are able to step into the breach and fill up the gap that will be created by the falling off in the purchase of articles imported from abroad, I am sure we will all be delighted; but I should like to know that they are going to produce in the long run on terms and with standards of output and standards of performance that will compare with the articles and the prices of these articles which they will replace. No. 21, for example, is concerned with articles of personal clothing and wearing apparel, including handkerchiefs made wholly of linen.

Mr. Donnellan

Excluding.

Mr. Derrig

Sorry; I am glad to see that it is excluding. I am afraid I misinterpreted it. No. 52 concerns curtains. Is the Minister satisfied that there is sufficient production at home in this important commodity—sufficient competition—to be able to assure himself that the consumer will be able to secure his requirements from home sources. The same applies to paints. Then we have Nos. 65 and 66—newsprint and other printing matter. I am sure the representatives of the newspapers and the proprietors will be very keenly interested in this and, seeing that the price of newsprint is going up in the world market very steeply, one would like to know just what the justification for this particular levy may be, and one would also like to query it on the ground that it will possibly affect very prejudicially the costings of the Irish newspaper industry, and of book publishing. We have No. 66, daily newspapers. In order to rectify this balance of payments, which is £94,000,000 on the wrong side, we are to put a levy on daily newspapers.

Mr. Barrett

That ought to help the local newspapers.

Mr. Derrig

We all like to know what is going on in the world outside. I hope that our standards are such that the organs that we favour with our patronage are thoroughly respectable; if they are not, they will be looked after by another institution of the State. But really I wonder is the circulation of newspapers like The Manchester Guardian so substantial in this country that it is going to affect the balance of payment; and, if we want to try to deal with some other newspapers of the multi-millionaire class, it is rather a pity that the more serious journals like The Times and The Manchester Guardian should suffer in the process.

Mr. A. Barry

They are excluded.

Mr. Derrig

Good. Literary periodicals generally, are they all included?

Mr. A. Barry

They are, but only to the extent of a penny on a shilling's worth.

Mr. Derrig

The real issue in connection with the proposal is whether the Government is really merely prescribing for certain symptoms which have appeared, and which may be capable of treatment by medicine bottle, or mustard plaster or otherwise, or whether fundamentally the situation is not very much more serious.

I always have a great deal of sympathy with critics elsewhere who urge that the Government, when these demands for restraint and self-discipline and less spending are made, should be brought into general line. I always sympathise with those critics who think that the Government should give a good example, and in this instance the Minister's case in relation to hire-purchase and the levy on imports would have been greatly strengthened in the view of the country, if he had been able to point to some spectacular reduction in the national expenditure. But, as has been pointed out, expenditure is going up steadily, and it is unfortunate that, while the expenditure on administration is going up steadily, step by step, year after year, a few millions now and a few millions again, so far as I know— and I think we are legitimately entitled to make the point—the cost of the national administration and the national expenditure figures generally are out of keeping with our national income and our national production.

I think that, if the Minister expects prices to be kept level, and if he is making appeals to others to try to restrain their demands and ensure thereby that there will not be further increase in prices, he ought to begin by assuring the House that, as far as he is concerned, there will not be any increase in national expenditure during the coming year and that, on the contrary, every possible step will be taken in the coming Budget to reduce the burdens on the people.

The Government should give an incentive to the producer and to the middle-class citizen who pays the full rate of income-tax while others can get away, as has been pointed out elsewhere, with expense accounts or depreciation. The unfortunate middle-class citizen—he may be a newly-married civil servant who has responsibilities in connection with housing and founding a family—has to pay his full debt to the income-tax and revenue authorities, while others can go scot free. The Minister should hold out some hope to these sections of the community that he is particularly mindful of their position and give some indication that their situation will receive his consideration, when the time comes. That would do a great deal to relieve the unhappy feeling that they have. If such persons can put money aside, they know—they are intelligent people—that by investing it, even in Government funds, Government stocks or savings certificates, it is in danger of losing its value. If we are going to have a new deal, particular consideration must be given to the class that is paying income-tax at the source or, in the case of factory workers, paying it out of weekly or monthly earnings while others, making very large profits, if not completely free from this responsibility, are certainly able to employ devices to ensure that their contribution will be the least possible.

I am sure the goodwill and good opinion of the middle-class would be forthcoming most wholeheartedly in response to the Minister's appeal that all must join in making the necessary effort and sacrifice if we are to be enabled to get over the present ills and to try to make this country worthy of our aspirations. I am sure that they would give the Minister every support in the public service and wherever they may be.

The suggestion that the schools might be utilised for the savings campaign is a useful one. There should be a savings circle in every school, particularly the large schools in Dublin. Even if the financial results were not as great as the Minister might expect, the inculcation of the habit of thrift would be well worth while. It is necessary to cultivate the idea that, instead of entering into hire-purchase commitments or, worse still, depending on the result of the 2.30 or the football pool, people should start to save for their holidays or for Christmas early in the year. That is commonly done across the water. Unfortunately, the burdens on the teachers and on the schools are so numerous that one dislikes imposing any additional task on them. Purely from the point of view of inculcating the idea of thrift in the young people, especially in Dublin, a proper appreciation of the value of money, the necessity for spending wisely and of making sacrifices in order to save money to buy the things that people like to have, a savings campaign in the schools is very necessary and is well worth while from the educational point of view.

Mr. Carter

In his statement this evening the Minister for Finance mentioned that he is looking for £36,200,000 on this, as it has been termed, Supplementary Budget. In a Supplementary Budget, or in a statement explanatory of it, one would imagine, as Deputy Ó Deirg has said, that the Minister would give facts and figures in support of his demands. We gathered that, last year, the volume of goods imported to this country stood at £94,000,000, over exports, the highest since the present Government were in office in 1951. It is significant that this should arise in the second term of the Coalition Government's period of office. It is significant that, having regard to their experience of the hardships imposed on the country following their debacle in 1951, they should let this thing happen again so soon.

The only indication that the Government intended to take any action to meet the problem came in the course of a speech by the Minister for Industry and Commerce here last week. He said:

"The Government will be compelled to take steps which may have to be stern and disagreeable steps."

Prior to that, the Minister for Finance, speaking at Galway in January, gave some warning of the dangers of what he described as the consumption boom. What boom? Does he refer to that which he denied previously—that the people are living too well; that there are too many cars in the country, or does he deny that unemployment stands to-day at 70,000 and that more people emigrated out of this country last year than at any time in history? Does he produce facts or figures to support that end of his claim? I submit that he does not.

He went on to speak of increased output and he told us of the greatly increased savings as being vital in solving our economic problems. The Minister did not give us any indication then as to what measures, if any, the Government proposed to take. He gave us an indication to-day that the Government are going to put a levy on what I would describe as bric-a-brac. He claims they are going to prevent the import of £7,000,000 worth of goods if I gather rightly from his statement. I wonder what effect that is going to have on the small farmer or the worker. Surely they are not concerned with jewellery or, for that matter, with hot water bottles? As a matter of fact, if the present Government continues in office they will have to be content with a hot lid as a substitute for a hot water bottle. Imagine putting a duty on hot water bottles and the summer coming in!

Sometime later the Taoiseach, down in Cork, made a statement dealing with the situation and said that the greatly increased deficit in the volume of international payments last year would cast a shadow over the present year unless it was quickly rectified. I wonder does the Government propose to rectify the balance of payments in the measures they have just announced to-day? Deputy O'Donovan did not at all agree that there was a problem or a crisis and neither did the Minister for Defence. The Minister for Defence alleged that it was a slight thing and not worth talking about it. Still to-day it is significant enough to warrant the introduction of a Supplementary Budget. I wonder how is collective responsibility working out in this matter. Surely if the Government as a team cannot make up their minds as to the measures they will take, it is hard, in turn, to expect the people of the country to make up their minds or to know what the Government is up to.

The Parliamentary Secretary in that statement further said that the situation was nothing like as serious as people were led to believe and he proceeded to tell his listeners not to take all this fuss too seriously. It is now clear, however, that despite all these statements which, to me, at any rate, are at cross purposes, the Government think that there is a crisis and that they are forced, under pressure, to deal with it. It is cold comfort for those engaged in the task of home building to realise that their furniture is going to be taxed in this Supplementary Budget. One may ask why did the Government wait until six weeks before the annual Budget to introduce those measures?

I have no intention of making political capital out of the serious crisis that has resulted from the Government's mishandling of their job. They assumed office following an election in which they made rosy promises and painted a picture of their ability to eradicate the evil to which, they asserted, Fianna Fáil extravagance had led. "Return us to power," said Fine Gael, "and we will very soon find the road back to prosperity." Is this the road back to prosperity? If it is, I must be on the wrong road.

General MacEoin

You are on that road for a good while.

Mr. Carter

And I would very much like to turn back. They spoke about the road back to prosperity and the road to plenty but we, on this side, will leave to the people to judge in the light of events since then, the measure of the sincerity of the people who made those statements. We should point out, however—and I think it is our duty to point out—that never in the existence of this State has there been a more favourable period for progress than this period of the Government's term of office. Everything has been in their favour, and yet we have witnessed a process of deterioration that has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy inside two years. Why has the position worsened so greatly? One should pose the question so that people may ponder on it.

I believe that the Government are in a panic at this stage. They have panicked after their failure because Micawber-like they hoped that time would work a miracle. The miracle has not come about. There must be many, who like ourselves, are reminded of an inefficient fire brigade watching the flames spread and defying their best efforts to prevent them from spreading. That is the picture the present situation conveys to me. The flames at the present time are creeping dangerously near the heart of this State, and, in my opinion, the hold which they get on the country will depend on the quality of the Government in power.

The credit squeeze now in progress and the general reduction of bank loans brought about by its adoption is, in my opinion, worse than useless in our position. The Government should realise at this stage that what is needed is less money for useless enterprises and more for essentials. "Essentials first" is not a bad motto. "Clean and keep clean" is an old saying and a true one. This situation could be foreseen last spring by a Government determined to do their duty, but Fine Gael were too busy selling part of their programme to Labour, and the Labour Benches that are empty this evening were too busy flogging their programme to their followers to bother about the financial situation or the overall common good. They were too busily engaged in dirty politics——

Mr. O'Donnell

Mind the furniture now; be careful of it.

Mr. Carter

——and striving to bluff their way out of one financial difficulty after another. Now we hear that there is a wave of austerity about to descend upon us and strangely enough the spearhead in the fight is the Minister who threatened to kick the pants off austerity. Deputy Norton, as he then was, threatened to kick the pants——

Mr. O'Donnell

No; only to expose the hair shirt. That is all.

Mr. Carter

Now he finds austerity living at his own doorstep and he is completely immobilised. We witnessed the spectacle, after he had come home fresh from his tour in America, of the Minister up until 2 o'clock at night trying to settle a problem which should properly be left to the Labour Court.

Mr. Donnellan

He settled it.

Mr. Carter

I submit it is just lowering the dignity of the office of Tánaiste. At the taxpayers' expense, we provide a Labour Court to deal with any problems which may arise and I submit that it is not the function of any Minister to go in and patch up something that should properly be left in the hands of that court. That is what has us here this evening wrangling about a Supplementary Budget.

Now I turn to the Estimates for the coming year and I find that the Government have pushed up taxation by £3,500,000 odd. Together with taxation they imposed in their previous Budget, I think they have created a record in this House for taxing the community and it is to be presumed that they intend to collect this taxation in revenue during the coming year. It is not too hard to visualise rate collectors and tax gatherers abroad in the country in general ramming their demand notes into the pockets of the people in much the same manner as a process server would serve a writ.

As a Deputy, I can visualise in the coming year that 25 per cent. of the rates of this country will be collected on sheriffs' warrants. Certain prominent members of the Government sat sniggering all evening on the Front Benches when certain comments were made by the Opposition. The sniggering may be on the other side of their faces before this year is out.

Let us turn then to the Minister's statement when he came to talk about higher output. The Minister urged higher output. No doubt we all agree with that, but we would be more agreeable with him if he had produced a policy to encourage higher output. Deputy Morrissey endorsed the Minister's opinion. He called for a sort of political truce. He warned Fianna Fáil that they should not embarrass the Government or that we should not throw the sponge at them now and then. He asked us to hold off and be charitable in our criticism. It is a new one on me to hear Deputy Morrissey come into this House and talk about charity. As a matter of fact, it is the poacher turned gamekeeper.

The same Deputy went on to point out the opportunities which existed in the markets abroad for selling agricultural produce and also, I presume, industrial produce. No doubt, we know England still imports four-fifths of her wheat, one-fifth of her eggs, three-quarters of her cheese, nearly all her butter, half of her bacon and ham, half of her mutton and lamb, one-quarter of her beef, and having regard to our proximity to the British market, one would think that during the year the present Government would have taken steps to encourage the farmers to capture some of that market and implement the wish expressed by Deputy Morrissey and by other speakers on the Government Benches in order that we would gain a slice of that market. But the sad part, as I see it, is that the Government cut down wheat acreage. They cut down the supporting price for wheat that we initiated.

Mr. O'Donnell

We were not going to export that.

Mr. Carter

You imported over £10,000,000 of cereals during the year. Let the Minister not talk too loud. Those imports affect the balance of payments more heavily than the bric-a-brac contained in this statement to-day. You denied to our farmers the terms you would give to the farmers abroad. The number of cattle, pigs and poultry are all down as compared with 1954. Potatoes, beet and milk production are down, so that there is not much hope in that direction for breaking into the foreign market. We are priced off every market abroad, except the British market for cattle on the hoof and the Minister responsible does not show any serious signs that he recognises that fact. It will take more than appeals or pious hopes, wishes and promises to get into a position where our production will enable us to capture a decent slice of the markets abroad and hold them.

It is a significant fact that we have trade agreements with Austria, Belgium, Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, and still we have to rely on a small slice of the British market, which is, by the way, progressively being closed to us for our cattle on the hoof. I think it is time the Government realised that no nation abroad owes us a living here and that, if we intend to succeed, it is up to us to make our own way in life.

Mr. A. Barry

Hear, hear!

Mr. Carter

And since agriculture provides a living for over 1,000,000 workers, 40 per cent. of the total working population, mostly small farmers and members of their families from whom almost one-third of the national income is derived, the Minister for Finance might use his influence with his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to take his claws off £600,000 odd which he is pulling out of the small farmers' pockets who engage in poultry feeding and pig feeding by levying a charge on wheat offals.

If the Government are serious in their quest to succeed in capturing some share of foreign trade, it is not by a succession of fire-brigade tactics that we will capture any of the foreign market. It is not by the spectacle of three Budgets in a year, nor it is not by promising this to-day and running away from that promise to-morrow we will succeed.

Mr. Donegan

The debate on the Vote on Account seems to have hinged on the question of the balance of payments and the steps taken to see that an unfortunate situation is rectified. My impression, listening to the debate, is that Fianna Fáil are envious that, in a similar circumstance not so many years ago, they did not use these forthright and very humane tactics, instead of the practices to which they at that time lent themselves. We had a balance of payments problem in 1952. That was very closely linked with the British balance of payments problem and will, of course, be extended by their efforts to right the situation probably as much, or more, as our efforts can make our own situation better. I think Deputy Aiken referred to this problem as one of too much money chasing too few goods, and at that time Fianna Fáil took one method of stopping the situation of too much money chasing too few goods. That was the simple method of the hunger Budget of 1952, the purpose of which was to reduce the purchasing power of the community by reducing the purchasing power of their money for the essential articles of diet and clothing—articles which they must have.

They of course succeeded, but I am proud to support a Government that faced up to the problem in a much more humane and kindly way, instead of trying to reduce the purchasing power of the people by increasing the prices of foodstuffs and other essential items—and in that I include a measure of cigarettes and a measure of beer. In this measure, which has been erroneously referred to as a Supplementary Budget, necessaries of life remain untouched. In a time of very serious inflation, no working men in any part of the country can say we have made it harder for them to live, harder for them to provide for their wives and families by the necessary action we took to combat the balance of payments situation.

The excuse made in 1952 for the hunger Budget was the position of the balance of payments. Are we not proud now to be able to say that, in similar circumstances, we have proceeded on different lines—lines which are distinct from those employed by the Opposition. This Government acted kindly and humanely and have in their minds at all times the fate of the working people of this country.

With regard to hire purchase, I confess I have no worries. Do Deputies know it is a fact that hire-purchase agents—and, mark you, these gentlemen have also to live and have also to be paid—are at the moment—not perhaps to-day but certainly yesterday— going round housing estates where the people do not own their own houses and where they have no property which, if they are in difficulties, they can offer to a banker in order to get a loan at 6 per cent. and offering goods of cheap quality at as much as 18 per cent. interest and suggesting to the housewife—playing upon her human weakness—that she should go once a month to the post office to draw her children's allowance and, without leaving the post office, post it in to God knows what hire-purchase company?

The Minister has taken very humane action to call a halt to this. I think this sort of thing is not a proper part of our Irish life. All over the country, in towns and villages and cities, it was a fact that working people were afforded credit, and there are decent drapers, hardware merchants and furniture merchants who afforded them credit on their good name, taking a small deposit and the balance in weekly payments. That system, without the organisation of the large hire-purchase companies and without the high pressure salesmanship of the visitors to the housing estates which are the happy hunting ground of these people, did supply the needs of the working people throughout the country. I think the working people had their needs adequately looked after in the way I have described. I believe the merchants looked after their interests and they got a fair product for a fair price.

It was high time that a halt was called to the activities of the big hire-purchase companies. Having disposed of that, I should like to pass on to the statements on agriculture made by my colleagues, Deputies Aiken, Derrig and Carter. One statement made by all three was that we had imported far more foreign wheat since we came into office than they did during their period, the implication being of course that we had used far more foreign wheat in our manufacture of bread and that we wished to do so. That is not true. The position is that, according to a decision of the Fianna Fáil Cabinet in January, 1954, our usage of home-produced wheat should be about 300,000 tons per year. We do not quibble with that. Anybody who reads the agricultural Press will know that in years to come it may be possible to use a much higher percentage of Irish wheat, but the decision of the Fianna Fáil Cabinet in January, 1954, was that our usage of Irish wheat can be approximately only 300,000 tons.

I was very perturbed by statements in the Sunday Press that we were using far more foreign wheat than did our predecessors and I set out to disprove that and wrote to the Department of Agriculture. I found that approximately 65,000 tons of native wheat, dried, were carried forward on 1st of September, 1955. We entered the cereal year on 1st of September, 1955, with 65,000 tons of our own wheat and I find that up to 12th November, 1955, the quantity delivered to mills was 295,556 tons. In other words, we had in the cereal year beginning 1st September, 1955, 364,556 tons of Irish wheat, plus whatever was delivered to mills since 12th of November last. Fianna Fáil decided that the maximum usage should be 300,000 tons. I shall place this letter on the Table of the House, if anybody wants to see it.

This is proof that, in fact, the Government have sought to use more native wheat than Fianna Fáil thought possible. If there is an amount of wheat brought in larger than was brought in in the previous 12 months, it is as a result of an effort being made at replenishment of stocks. These are the figures. If Deputy Walsh wants them, this letter can be laid on the Table of the House. They prove that this Government used more Irish wheat than Fianna Fáil thought possible. They prove that this Government used the absolute maximum amount that could be used of Irish wheat and that the imports of wheat have been merely the amount that was required to make up the difference between that and 100 per cent. of the wheat required for bread.

Deputy Carter went on to say that we reduced the income of the Irish farmer and left him in the position that he could not pay his rates as a result of the reduction in the price of wheat. I do not want to labour wheat but I do want to say that a greater impost has been placed on the Irish farmer by the Health Act of 1953, so far as his rates are concerned, than by anything else I know. Secondly, if such were the case, why did Fianna Fáil, during the entire period of the war, place a maximum price on Irish barley so that they could get their Irish wheat at 50/- a barrel—and the yields, at that time, without granulated fertiliser or any of the aids we now have, were so low that for certain years the output dropped to a level of less than £10 per statute acre. Why did they do that? I will tell you. They did it because they could get their wheat at 50/- by simply placing a maximum price on barley, thus cheapening the price of wheat. The only reason why wheat ever went to 80/- was because the present Minister for Agriculture removed in 1948 that maximum price on barley. As a result, the price of malting barley went to 84/3 in 1952 and, so as to salve their votes, Fianna Fáil in 1953 had to go to 80/-. I wish the Irish farmer could get £6, £7 or £8 for wheat, but the fact is that some statements have been mischievous and irrelevant.

This Government would like to give the Irish farmer more than Fianna Fáil gave for wheat and would do so if it could be afforded. They did not depress the price of wheat artificially and, as a result of the action of the present Minister for Agriculture, the price of wheat was related to the price of barley. Financial circumstances did not permit it to be continued but this Government have seen to it that the Irish farmer has got the absolute maximum that could be afforded.

Mr. J. Brennan

A marked change has come over the tone of the debate in this House. At one time, I did not think I should really live to see this happen. There was an occasion when we were being held up as the people responsible for creating austerity when there was no need for it. We were pointed out as the people who were introducing the hair shirt policy. The adjectives from the people who are now on the other side of the House were all in the superlative in condemnation of every action we took to bring about a better position in the balance of payments. At the time, there was a fairly obvious reason for that behaviour. We had only a slender majority in the House. We were hanging on by a few votes. A number of people saw Parliamentary Secretaryships and ministerial posts dangling before them. They could not resist the urge to exploit a situation which, in their hearts, they knew was of their own making. They could not, at the time, resist the urge to exploit the situation for political capital in order that, as did happen, they would find themselves on the other side of the House. For their first few weeks in office, they continued to talk about lowering prices. In fact, the tone of the opening statements on the first night of the formation of the Government was that all the indications from the result of the general election were that the people wanted a Government that would lower prices and reduce taxation and that, for that reason, they were justified in coming together.

The present trouble has arisen out of that whole situation. The people got the green light from those who now occupy the Government Benches when they were told it was absolutely unnecessary to take any drastic measures, that prosperity was around the corner and that only the bad wolf of Fianna Fáil prevented it from entering the homes of the Irish people. That was the green light to the people to get down to any luxury spending they wanted. There is where the roots of the present trouble were sown and that is why the Minister and the Government have to meet the trouble which they are reaping here to-night.

In those days, it was a question of Fianna Fáil creating unnecessary austerity. Now the tone of debate has changed and it is now a question of who is taking the very best measures to alleviate the situation. Deputy Donegan said this Government have taken a much nicer way of doing it than Fianna Fáil. At least we have come to agree that there is a reason for introducing corrective measures to bring about a better situation in our balance of payments. I remember that, day after day and night after night in this House, we debated the measures which Fianna Fáil were compelled to take at the time. In fact, some Deputies on the other side—some less responsible Deputies on the other side —suggested there was absolutely no need whatever to take any corrective measures for the purpose of bringing about a better situation so as to bring current expenditure into line with current revenue or to correct our adverse trade balance. It was held up as an insignificant matter that really should not affect the lives of the people. Now, it is a serious matter and we are told that the methods being adopted are much more suitable or much easier on the people than the methods we adopted. However, nobody has ventured to say that the measures being adopted will be sufficient or will be effective. Deputy Donegan paused and gazed down at the Minister for Finance and, in effect, said: "Maybe I have said too much. God knows what he is going to bring about in the Budget by way of further——" and he did not continue.

With regard to the Book of Estimates which has just been issued, we have to remember that increases are due to increased salaries. Every single Estimate in the Book shows a remarkable increase in salaries. Speaking here the other night, Deputy Kyne said that that was good; as a result of Labour policy, extracted from the Government, the worker was allowed to cushion himself against any increase in the price of consumer goods or in the index figure. Going around the country, the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach have pointed out this serious trend and said it will have to stop. It is left for the country to guess who will win in the end.

However, one thing I do know— coming, as I do, from a constituency where there are few civil servants and fewer salaried people—and that is that the small uneconomic holder has no means by which he can cushion himself against the impact of rising costs. He has no means by which he can take part in the race between salaries and the cost of living. He must take part in and pay his share of the rising costs. But by what means can he cushion himself against these increased costs? By what means can he improve his income to meet the rising costs? It is all very well for the Labour Deputies to get up here and say: "We admit that the Government have allowed the cost of living to rise but we have ensured that the people have been able to cushion themselves against that unprecedented increase by getting increased salaries and wages." They forget that a large and very useful section of the community—87 per cent. of my constituency and, indeed, of most constituencies on the western seaboard—have no means by which they can recoup themselves for the higher costs they are compelled to pay, except one; that is, to tighten their belts and live with less comfort an even more frugal existence than they have been enjoying and, God knows, it has not been too luxurious for them at any time.

Mr. Dillon

The Deputy would not suggest to them the keeping of another cow or another pig.

Mr. J. Brennan

They cannot find the capital to replace their stock.

Mr. Dillon

I will provide them——

Mr. J. Brennan

I would suggest the Minister should present them with another sow.

Mr. Dillon

I will provide them with a sow, give them 18 months to pay for her, and guarantee she is in pig.

Mr. Walsh

Will the Minister guarantee the sale of the pigs?

Mr. Dillon

Yes.

Mr. J. Brennan

If the Minister would guarantee cheaper feeding stuffs for pigs, we might not even have to ask him for a pig. We will pay for it ourselves.

Mr. Dillon

Yes, and I will help to provide an acre of barley to feed the sow and the pig.

Mr. J. Brennan

Most of us keep a pig, or two, and we know whether it is profitable or not.

Mr. Rooney

The bonhams are more than 7/6 each.

Mr. J. Brennan

There might have been as much profit out of them when they were 7/6 each when compared with what they are costing to-day. I wonder if the people making those jokes have ever kept costings. At least, I have.

Mr. Dillon

We kept the sow, which is better.

Mr. J. Brennan

I have kept costings and I can tell you that we are working at a loss.

Mr. Dillon

We kept the sow, which is better than the costings.

Mr. J. Brennan

I think some people are not really experienced in the matter. They may be; I do not know. But I am certainly giving what is my honest opinion and experience.

Mr. Dillon

Will the Deputy keep a sow?

Mr. J. Brennan

No.

Mr. Dillon

Do! I will give it to the Deputy on 18 months' credit and I will help him to sow an acre of barley to feed it.

Mr. J. Brennan

The credit side of it would suit me all right. I think this question of wages chasing prices and prices chasing wages all began at the Boston Tea Party, namely the trouble over the price of tea last year. It was quite obvious on that occasion that agreement could not be reached in the Cabinet. I think I am only reiterating now what we all know. The Minister for Finance wanted to have the price of tea rise to its normal level and the Labour Party in the Cabinet wanted it subsidised. Eventually there was a compromise and the Labour representatives were told: "If you allow the price to go up we will not prevent any demand you make for increased wages for any section of the community in respect of the increased cost of living" and there began the vicious spiral. I think that is a fairly true account of what really happened.

Mr. A. Barry

I hope the Deputy is better about pigs than he is about tea.

Mr. J. Brennan

Deputy Barry may really not know what happened, but there is the information for what it is worth.

Mr. A. Barry

The Deputy was there?

Mr. Sweetman

If the rest of the Deputy's information is as inaccurate——

Mr. Dillon

We will convert him to the sow yet.

Mr. J. Brennan

I want to deal now with the last speaker's reference to the hire-purchase system. He said it was time it was finished. Mark you, I go a certain distance with him and say that the hire-purchase system was probably going too far, but it certainly made available to many people things they never otherwise would have had. I am sorry some people were not present when the last Deputy said he hoped it was done away with forever. The E.S.B. are the greatest pushers of hire-purchase terms at the moment. Every time one gets one's two-monthly bill there is a nice little folder enclosed to show what one can buy on the simplest hire-purchase terms and pay for with the cost of the meter.

Mr. Rooney

Not at 18 per cent. though.

Mr. J. Brennan

I am sure hire purchase has provided many people with —call them luxuries if you like— household commodities and household utensils which they otherwise would not have. We now have Deputies on the other side lauding the Government for taking steps which will wipe out hire purchase for all time and prevent its use. That may be severe in another way. I have a very good memory of what happened after we came into power following the first Coalition Government because I was a new member in the House then. I remember sitting on those benches day after day listening to the criticism from these benches, and some of the most trenchant criticism came from Deputy Morrissey, who appealed to-night for a political truce to enable the Government to overcome a crisis, a serious political situation. He did not call it a political situation, but that was really the implication.

I ask the Minister and the members of the Government now, if the speeches to which we have been listening here to-night were made from the platforms by those members in the election campaign, what would have been the result of the election? We would still be on that side of the House and we would still be condemned from this side for taking unnecessary measures to make the people tighten their belts, to create austerity. We would be called the perpetrators of a hair-shirt policy. I think that political ramp has done no good and I hope we on this side of the House will not be induced to indulge in it at any time. Those people who deliberately accused us of taking unnecessary steps and creating unnecessary ills for the people have now to swallow their own words; and, mark you, I am much more comfortable on this side of the House, listening to them.

Mr. Sweetman

That is just as well, because you will have a few years yet.

Mr. A. Barry

The Deputy will get used to it in time.

Mr. J. Brennan

It does not need a lot of political foresight to see what is happening. While I say we are very happy over here, we have a certain responsibility, too.

Mr. Dillon

But the Deputy would be prepared to migrate, if pressed.

Mr. J. Brennan

We have a responsibility to expose the fallacies, the misrepresentation and the exploitation indulged in when we were on that side of the House doing the things which you people are compelled to do now. Nobody can blame us now.

We agree the position is serious, but there is one item in this list to which I object and which, I think, should be withdrawn; that is, the duty on imported travelling-cases. People emigrated in the olden days with their bundles on their shoulders. That was famed in song. In recent years, at least they went with a decent travelling-bag. They are going to go now in greater numbers and I appeal to the Minister at least to take the tax off the old travelling-bag so that we may continue to send them away decently when they go abroad.

Mr. Rooney

I am surprised at the brazenness of the Fianna Fáil Deputies who have contributed to this debate, having examined the mild form of penalty that has been proposed here to-day by the Minister for Finance to slow down spending on consumption goods. I make that statement because I want the Deputies opposite to remember the state in which we took over this country, first, in 1948, and again in 1954. In 1948, we took over the country at a time when we had a lesser number of cattle, sheep and pigs than we had for 100 years. That was the gift that was handed to us. In addition, in regard to our savings that were accumulated in the Bank of England during the war years, we had to set about the repatriation of those savings for the provision of houses and other items of capital expenditure. I want to remind Fianna Fáil that, not alone did they give us over this agricultural country in that condition in 1948, but they handed us over also a ten-years' supply of green timber, wet turf and African and American coal, of which we have a quantity in the Phoenix Park still.

We had to set about providing houses for our people. No attempt was made by the Fianna Fáil Party to do so although the war was over for two years. They were busy exporting cement so that the British Government could build up the houses that were knocked down in the English towns during the war. We stopped the export of cement and set about a vigorous housing programme instead.

Furthermore, we found ourselves committed to the purchase of Argentine wheat. We hear a great deal of talk about the growing of native wheat, but in 1947 when the Fianna Fáil Party got the farmers to scratch 600,000 acres of land under compulsion, we found that there was on the books an order for Argentine wheat, 75,000 tons of it, at £50 a ton when they were giving our farmers something like £22 a ton. The new Government that came in in 1948 found they had to pay £50 a ton. Yet we have Deputy Aiken and the others talking about the growing of native wheat.

We also took over a situation where the old age pensioners, who were getting 10/- per week in 1933, were still getting 10/- per week when the inter-Party Government came into office in 1948 although the cost of living had risen considerably. We had to proceed to improve the position for these destitute and helpless sections of our people, the old age pensioners, the widows, the orphans and the blind persons. Having achieved all that and having had the country's prosperity well under way, we know ourselves the difficulties which were brought about and which caused the General Election of 1951. We know also the circumstances in which the Government of the country was changed despite the fact that the vast majority of the people in 1951 voted against Fianna Fáil just as they did in 1954.

The Fianna Fáil Party again took over in 1951. The then Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, made a statement in this House that he had something to tell us about minority Government but we never heard from him on that subject from that day until 1954, when a change of Government took place again. When they took over in 1951 they immediately tried to upset everything that the inter-Party Government had planned. They started off, for instance, by selling the land reclamation machinery for scrap. They also proceeded to spend the Marshall Aid money and succeeded in spending £22,000,000 in eight months.

Mr. Walsh

Is the Deputy in order in stating that the land reclamation machinery was sold for scrap?

Acting-Chairman (Mr. Palmer)

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Dillon

Can he not state what he likes?

Mr. Walsh

Is he in order in saying the machinery was sold for scrap?

Acting-Chairman

Yes. It is not a point of order.

Mr. Dillon

It is no point of order.

Mr. Walsh

That is all right.

Mr. Rooney

I want to remind Deputy Walsh that the only positive step he ever took in this House was the change in relation to the operation of the land reclamation scheme, where the change in the machinery took place and every scrap merchant in the country was interested in that at the time.

Mr. Walsh

They did not get it. Ask the Minister for Agriculture. He has the files.

Mr. Rooney

I heard the debates and the Minister had to reply to the debates at that time and it was very embarrassing for the Deputy to reply.

Mr. Walsh

Not a bit.

Mr. Rooney

It was indeed. I mention some of these points to show how we set about a progressive policy from 1948 to 1951. We were removed by a trick from office in 1951 by the Fianna Fáil Party who, instead of pursuing the positive progressive policy of the inter-Party Government, set about reversing the policy, much to the misfortune of this country. As I say, they proceeded first of all to get rid of the Marshall Aid money as quickly as they could and there was not a halfpenny left; £22,000,000 of it had gone. We planned and had announced that we required the savings of the people for a national loan in August, 1951. That conversion loan was under way in June and completed in July but when it came to the Fianna Fáil Party to pursue the policy of the previous Government—and most of us do carry on consecutively from one thing to another —the Fianna Fáil Party proceeded with the issue of their White Paper telling us that the country was broke.

In the famous White Paper presented by Deputy MacEntee, who was Minister at the time, he proceeded to tell us he was broke in order that he could justify the reversal of our policy. He did not then go to the people of the country as we had gone in the previous three years for a loan to which the people had subscribed between £35,000,000 and £39,000,000. He did not then go to the people for the £20,000,000 loan on which our policy was based at that time and which would have been subscribed just as successfully as the previous one. Instead of that, the Fianna Fáil Party had to justify a statement which they made in a previous election that the inter-Party Government, by floating these loans and getting people to subscribe their savings for these investments, was putting the country in pawn. In order to justify that statement Fianna Fáil decided to leave the savings of the people in their pockets and to change the policy of the inter-Party Government in the matter of subscribing for these capital projects. Our opportunity to get the £20,000,000 was lost.

Mr. Walsh

You tried to get £20,000,000 recently and you did not.

Mr. Rooney

That is another day's work. This is your own handiwork. We had the chance of getting money at that time and the Fianna Fáil Party decided not to take it. We must remember that while the Fianna Fáil Party was busy getting rid of £22,000,000 Marshall Aid money, anybody who will examine the statistics will see that in relation to the 1952 Budget of the £61,000,000 adverse trade balance, £49,000,000 of that was incurred in the last six months of 1951 when Fianna Fáil was in power. The remaining £12,000,000 was accounted for in the first six months of 1951 when the inter-Party Government was going well. Those figures cannot be contradicted. I have gone to the trouble of finding those figures. Anybody who looks can find that the balance of trade went against us to the extent of £49,000,000 in the last half of 1951. In addition to that, the Fianna Fáil Party, then having spent the lot and allowed things to rip for the last six months of 1951, came crying in March, 1952, to say that the country was "broke", that we had been overspending, and that we went into the red for £61,000,000 in that particular year.

Deputy Aiken came in here to-day, and his description of the very modest regulations proposed by the Minister is that this is a panic Budget. He says that we have restrictions brought in now which are to relate to lawn mowers, gramophones and umbrellas— instead of bread, butter and sugar. In 1952, we had the Fianna Fáil Budget brought in here, and their modification of the situation was to increase the prices of tea, bread, butter, sugar, flour—everything they could think of; and in compensation for that increase, they took the tax off the dancing, so that the people could go and make merry in the dancehalls as a result of those taxes.

Mr. Dillon

This is the truth.

Mr. Rooney

Now they come in here when we have proposed to modify the situation with a remedy which is to include motor cars, radios, television sets, lawn mowers, gramophones and umbrellas, and tell us that the country is doomed.

[Interruptions.]

Acting-Chairman

Deputies must refrain from interrupting and let Deputy Rooney speak.

Mr. Rooney

We have had to grapple with a situation handed over to us twice in eight years. We have taken over the country and have tried to get the ship into shape again. As I say, we took over the country at its lowest ebb in 1948, and we took over a country that was wrecked in 1954.

Mr. Walsh

Develop that. We would like to hear it.

Mr. Rooney

I am going to tell you. The 1952 Budget, which was designed by the Fianna Fáil Party because they said that the people were eating too much and drinking too well, and the difficulties which it caused, made 20,000 people lose their jobs, in addition to people who had to leave the country, particularly the people that we had brought back, skilled tradesmen, to help us in the vigorous housing programme which was pursued at that time.

We found that Fianna Fáil nearly broke the record they had previously set up in the matter of unemployed. They are the one Party that can boast of having the largest number of people workless when they were in Government. I think that at one stage in 1939 they had 120,000 people looking for jobs and with no work to do, but they nearly broke that record again when they brought the number to 90,000 people early in 1953 as a consequence of the policy which they pursued in 1952 after letting things rip and spending all the Marshall Aid money at that time.

In addition to the 20,000 people unemployed as a result of the 1952 Budget and the number of people who had to emigrate, the cost of living went up by 23 points. We then found a situation where the costs were put up because people earning wages and in business were obliged to seek, and to obtain, increases in order to meet the very sudden and drastic rise in the cost of living.

I just want to put those few points to the Fianna Fáil Party, because they must remember that this situation with which the Minister for Finance is trying to grapple now is not something that has come overnight. It is something that has developed and grown and been put upon us, particularly by the negative policy that was pursued by the Fianna Fáil Party, particularly from 1951 to 1954, instead of the policy of expansion on which the inter-Party Government had embarked in the previous three years. Since we took over office in 1954, we have had many difficulties to grapple with. Those difficulties have come upon us by reason of the policy pursued by the Fianna Fáil Government in the previous three years and the reversal of the inter-Party policy.

We had not the same situation to take over as we had in 1948, but we did have to take over a situation which was the result, as I said, of a negative policy, one that did not give us an opportunity for expansion. The real fruit of that negative policy is that we had 20,000 extra people without work, not working and not producing, whom we had working when we handed over to Fianna Fáil in 1951. I want the Fianna Fáil Party to remember these things when on this occasion they tell the country that the Government should not bring in the very modest penalties which are included here for the benefit of balancing the accounts.

Deputy Brennan is gone now, and I am sorry, because I was hoping he would be here. I wanted to remind him that there is a very large number of people in his constituency who are very much better off now than they were under the Fianna Fáil Party in 1948. When we took over, the old age pensioners were on 10/- a week, and we were able to give an increase of 4/- since then, remembering particularly that at a Fianna Fáil function in November, 1954, the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party stated that social services could not be extended, meaning that the old age pensioners could not get an increase; but the Minister for Finance was able last May to give them an immediate increase of 2/6 each and a subsequent increase of 1/6, making a total increase of 4/-. There are a lot of old age pensioners in Deputy Brennan's area, but maybe he does not recognise or know them, and a lot of people also on the other social benefits which have been increased, and those people in Donegal are receiving the advantages.

Mr. Walsh

For some time past, many of us have been watching the trend of events in this country. We were wondering when the Government would make up its mind to take action. The trend of events did not start last week or the week before. It has been going on for a considerable time now. As a result of the hesitancy and the cowardice of the Ministers involved, we are now faced with a trade deficit of over £90,000,000. That deficit has been brought about in many ways. We have increased our imports and we have reduced our exports.

This evening here in the House the Minister introduced—it could be described, I am sure, seeing it is not yet the end of the financial year, as a Supplementary Budget—a new method of finding taxes or—shall we say?—a preliminary canter in preparation for the Budget that is to come later on. But duties are being imposed and, as a result of the imposition of these duties, the Minister is going to find money. He states that that money is to be devoted to building up capital, to be expended on capital works. Many of us doubt the sincerity of the Minister when he makes statements like that, as many of us doubt the sincerity of the last speaker when he gets up to paint a picture of the state of the country when the Coalition took over in 1948 and again in 1954. We have good reason to doubt the Minister when he comes into this House and tells us that these moneys are going to be devoted to a certain purpose.

We know, and have reason to know, that the Minister and his colleagues had no hesitation in going out in 1952 and preaching a gospel—an untruthful gospel—throughout the country. They attributed to us reasons for the Budget of 1952 that were not true, and many of them know they were not true, but, in order to mislead the people and to misrepresent the Government of the day, they had no hesitation in doing so. We will remember 1954. From every platform in this country, we remember the statements of the Minister for Finance when he talked of taxation and when he talked of the reductions that we should have, and could have, in taxation.

This evening, he had the temerity to sit there, without one word of apology to this House or to the people, and, as his colleague the Minister for Agriculture would say, as brazen as brass when he looked across at this side of the House. Do we not remember the statements regarding the excessive taxation—that Fianna Fáil was taxing the people in order to create a surplus? Did we not hear of the £10,000,000—the unnecessary £10,000,000—of taxation that was being imposed? Were we not told that Fianna Fáil was responsible for the increase in the cost of living? Were the people not told these things? Were the leaflets not issued from the platforms and put on all the doorposts and dead walls all over the country?

Is there any reason then, having regard to the statements that were made by the Minister and his colleagues on that occasion, to believe that he is now honest with this House when he states that these moneys are to be devoted to the purpose of building up capital—to be used on capital expenditure? How do we know that these moneys will not be used for the purpose of balancing his Budget in order to avoid imposing taxes that might be necessary? We agree that it was time a change was made if this country is to survive, but no attempt has been made to make a change that is necessary, if this country is to survive. We cannot continue to survive if the basic industry of this country is being neglected, and at the moment that industry is being neglected. We have a reduction in our cattle population——

Mr. O'Donovan

I beg your pardon?

Mr. Walsh

A reduction of 49,000. Whether the Minister likes it or not, it is there.

Mr. Rooney

The wrong paper!

Mr. Dillon

See the January figure and your heart will break.

Mr. Walsh

If at the moment the January figures, which are only an estimate anyway, indicate that there is an increase, go to the fairs throughout the country and you will get the answer. It is not now a question of price. It is not now a question of the Fianna Fáil tangler. It is not now a question of the Irish Press depressing the price of our Irish cattle.

Mr. Rooney

It is, yes.

Mr. Walsh

Deputy Rooney repeats parrotlike anything the Minister says. He says "yes". If he went to the fairs down the country—I was at one yesterday in New Ross—and if he went to my county last week, he would know. If he went to any of the fairs throughout the country, he would know that it is not the Fianna Fáil tanglers, and it is not the Irish Press that is responsible for the price of cattle going below £9.2 per cwt.

We want to know what measures are being taken by the Government to remedy the situation. The Minister some time ago was talking about this agreement he made with Britain. When he mentions the reduction in the differential of 1/- per beast——

Mr. Dillon

Per cwt. There is a slight distinction.

Mr. Walsh

It is not a 1/- per cwt. Excuse me, in this case it is a difference of from 5/- to 4/-. Is that not right? But there is also this difference. There is a difference in the period that these cattle have to remain on the hands of the buyers, which makes all the difference—a difference that we could have had, but we refused it when we went across there in 1954. We could have had exactly the same agreement that the Minister is now boasting about. We refused it—simply turned it down. Under this agreement, the movement of cattle in England is being restricted——

Mr. Dillon

Just imagine that! He says 1/- per beast.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Walsh

In the past, we had a two months' period which our cattle had to remain on the farmers' hands. That was all right while we were dealing with the Ministry of Food. It did not make very much difference, anyway; but once we came in on a free market, it was a completely different situation. We had the farmer, the purchaser, who is now restricted in the movement of his cattle, in the movement of his Irish cattle. He has to keep them now for a period of three months before he can qualify for the subsidised price. That is the big trouble we are facing at the moment. It has restricted the movement of cattle from six turnings in the year to four, whether the Minister likes it or not.

Mr. Hughes

Is that the cause of the reduction in price?

Mr. Walsh

It is not the cause of the reduction, but I am criticising the Minister. This agreement is not to our advantage.

Mr. Hughes

Of course, it is.

Mr. Walsh

It is not to our advantage but it is very much to our disadvantage.

Mr. Hughes

Any increase in price is an advantage.

Mr. Walsh

There is no increase.

Mr. Hughes

There is an increase in price.

Mr. Walsh

There is no increase in price because the differential does not operate until the price of our cattle goes below the subsidised price and it has not gone below it yet.

Mr. Dillon

In spite of the Irish Press.

Mr. Walsh

The English cattle are still higher than the subsidised price but they are not coming in but are our cattle on the fairs making the subsidised price? Is there anyone to buy them?

Mr. Dillon

Yes, plenty, thanks be to God.

Mr. Walsh

If you have plenty of them, I will take you down to my own constituency and will get train loads of cattle for you.

Mr. Dillon

And if you do half as well as you did on the conacre I will call again.

Mr. Walsh

At your price of £6 per cwt. that you guaranteed for the 1st April. Remember, the Minister made statements before. They did not materialise. At one time the Minister said, when talking of his agreement with the British: "I will smother them in eggs and choke them with butter." The Minister remembers that. Did that materialise? Will he be less prophetic in his statement regarding the price of cattle on 1st May—£6 per cwt.—than he was regarding the butter and eggs?

A Deputy

He will not have to slaughter the calves.

Mr. Walsh

Poor things. They have to fall back on the slaughtering of the calves, but a few of the calves sitting on the far side might be lucky that the calves were slaughtered because they would be slaughtered themselves, if it were not for that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is getting away from the Vote on Account?

Mr. T. Lynch

That is what the Deputy says. He would slaughter us if he got the chance.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Detailed agricultural policy may not be discussed on the Vote on Account.

Mr. Walsh

If those Deputies stop interrupting I will keep to the Vote on Account but let them come in and I will deal with them. We have been told time and again that the country was making progress. Deputy Rooney can see nothing in Fianna Fáil; no progress was ever made under Fianna Fáil. Let me for a moment talk to the Minister and to Deputy Rooney. The Minister has a habit of comparing things that are not comparable. He tries to do that when he wants to make a good case out of a really bad case, on a rotten foundation. He is the one person in this country who always tries to seize the opportunity. He is very adept, very astute. Have you remarked that when he talks of cattle he selects the year 1947?

Mr. Dillon

The last year of Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Walsh

He selects the year 1947 and holds it out. He gives the number of cattle that we had in this country at that time and the number of sheep. If he were honest, I do not even say charitable, in talking to the unfortunate people that suffered in that year, he would tell them the reason. Of course, the Minister was not concerned with agriculture or agricultural problems in those days. They were of very little concern to him. The year 1946 was a bad year for the farmers. It was a bad harvest.

Mr. Dillon

True for you.

Mr. Walsh

It was a bad harvest.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The question of agricultural policy does not arise.

Mr. Walsh

Every member on the opposite side of the House went on in this strain right through the debate and was permitted to do so and surely I am permitted to answer every one of them.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Financial policy only may be discussed on the Vote on Account. Most of the matters referred to by the Deputy would be more relevant to the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Dillon

On a point of order. May I respectfully submit that the case has been made that production should be substantially increased and I would deplore a ruling which excluded the possibility of considering the question of meeting the trade balance by production rather than restriction. I think Deputy Briscoe made that case at some length.

Mr. Briscoe

I did.

Mr. Dillon

I would be very sorry if we were debarred from a full discussion of that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I should like to point out that my ruling does not exclude references to agriculture but that Deputies should go into the agricultural question so closely as to warrant the intervention of the Chair is regrettable.

Mr. Dillon

The general question of production may be discussed.

Mr. Walsh

May I try, then, to relate the situation in 1947 to the situation that obtained in 1954 and again in 1955? The situation was so bad in 1947——

Mr. T. Lynch

"The British market was gone forever, thank God."

Mr. Walsh

Many Deputies on the opposite side, I am aware, are still thanking God because, if it were not for that bad year, some of them would not be sitting where they are to-day. They have to thank somebody for the opportunity to fill those benches. In 1947, any Deputies who were concerned with agriculture must remember, it was April before there was a sod ploughed. Many of them, possibly, do not understand me when I say, "a sod ploughed". Actually it was the 20th April.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Donnellan)

Why would we not?

Mr. Walsh

Is it any wonder that, in 1947, there were reduced yields of wheat, oats, barley, beet?

Mr. Dillon

What stopped the cows calving?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Walsh should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. Walsh

The Government felt, in 1947, that the situation was so bad that it was necessary for them to issue interest-free loans to farmers to restock their lands. It was done. That is proof that it was a bad year but it is the year that the Minister for Agriculture selects as being a comparable year with 1951, 1954, or 1955. There is no comparison and nobody knows that better than the Minister.

I will be more honest with the Minister for Agriculture and his colleagues on the opposite side of the House and I will take two years—1950 and 1951. Any objection to these two years being taken? The Minister for Agriculture was Minister on 1st June, 1950, and was Minister on 1st June, 1951. What do the statistics reveal? The statistics reveal that there was a reduction in tillage, a reduction in the number of pigs, a reduction in the number of poultry, a reduction in the number of cattle and milch cows, and that the only increase in live stock was in sheep.

What do the statistics for 1955 reveal? Again we had the Minister in office on 2nd June, 1954, when the census was taken. He had taken over that day. He was there again in 1955. What do the statistics reveal? They reveal that the number of cattle in this country had been reduced by 49,000, that the acreage under wheat had gone down by 129,000 acres, that beet had gone down by 19,000, and that the only increase that could be shown was again in sheep. The pig population had been reduced. This year the people who have introduced this Supplementary Budget to-day for the purpose of stopping luxury buying and stopping hire purchase have forgotten——

Mr. O'Donovan

There was not much luxury buying in 1947.

Mr. Walsh

The Parliamentary Secretary knows very little about it. The closer he keeps his mouth shut the better, because every time he opens it he puts his foot in it. In 1956, we have this document presented to us and we have been told that by increasing production in agriculture we would be able to offset this adverse trade balance.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear! Two million cows, barley and pigs.

Mr. Walsh

The Minister is talking about 2,000,000 cows. If you had them in the morning, how would you milk them?

Mr. Dillon

If you could not get the men, you could get the calves.

Mr. Walsh

Where would you get the cows on which to put the calves?

Mr. Dillon

I would put two on a cow.

Mr. Walsh

A cow will only have one calf, and so you can only put one calf on each cow. Is it going to be economical to do that?

Mr. Dillon

Why not put two calves on each cow?

Mr. Walsh

No one will give you the other calf. If it pays me to put one calf on a cow it would also pay the other man.

Mr. Dillon

If you have 14 cows you can put two calves on each one of four of them and you can milk the rest.

Mr. Walsh

I asked the Minister who was going to milk cows if we had them. We will have to milk them. The calf is no solution to the problem. There is only one calf for one cow.

Mr. Dillon

Put two calves on each cow. Milk ten cows and let eight calves milk the other four and you have six calves over to sell.

Mr. Walsh

That is a very nice argument in its way but in fact we are up against something else altogether. We have to consider the point that one cow only has one calf.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This might be quite a good argument in the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture but it is not relevant to the Vote on Account.

Mr. Walsh

I have been talking about the only way in which we can overcome our trade deficit at the present time and that is by an increase in agricultural production.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Walsh

The Minister thinks that the cow will rear the calf but I have said that it would not be economical to put one calf alone on the cow. If the Minister could promise, along with all his other promises, that in the future he will get the cows to have two calves each we will be all in agreement with him.

Mr. Dillon

That is not necessary.

Mr. Walsh

That is the only way in which we can increase our production. Let us examine what the Government has done to get that increased production from agriculture. The very first action of the Government on assuming office in 1954 was to depress the very things they have in mind now. They said to the farmers: "Gentlemen"— of course they were gentlemen and the Taoiseach said that they were travelling in Chrysler cars to draw home assistance or to get benefits under the Health Act, so I am entitled to say they were gentlemen. The first thing that was done was to depress the prices for the commodities which the farmer was producing. The Government depressed the price of wheat and they got the result. They got what they were looking for, a reduction in acreage. Where were the fly-by-nights last year, the people who were coming from Britain and the Continent and taking all the conacre in the country? They drove them out but it was never suggested in this House that the fly-by-nights took 129,000 acres. In addition to driving out the fly-by-nights you also drove out some of our own.

Mr. Donegan

They changed over to barley and oats.

Mr. Walsh

It is most unfortunate that I have to listen to statements like that. Does the Deputy not know that the acreage that can be put under malting barley is very limited? It was to malting barley that Deputy Donegan referred to-night.

Mr. Donegan

No, Sir. I referred to all barley.

Mr. Walsh

I must say that Deputy Donegan quoted the price for malting barley that Guinness were paying at £4 a barrel. Was he not speaking of malting barley then?

Mr. Donegan

In that instance, yes.

Mr. Walsh

Very well, I am speaking of malting barley now and the amount of that which we can grow is about 120,000 acres to supply the distillers, brewers and maltsters unless we can get an export market for our whiskey. Now we come to the question of feeding barley. Why was it that we had a reduction in feeding barley last year?

Mr. Dillon

I do not think we had.

Mr. Walsh

We had.

Mr. Dillon

No.

Mr. Walsh

We had a reduction in the acreage of feeding barley grown last year.

Mr. Dillon

We had not.

Mr. Walsh

Then somebody will have to correct the figures. We had a reduction of 10,000 acres of feeding barley last year. We had a surplus of malting barley all over the country last year and it was sold for other purposes, but there was a reduction in feeding barley, as feeding barley. The reason for that, of course, is very obvious. The price in 1953 was 48/- per barrel and in 1954 it was 48/- and we got 40,000 tons of it into Grain Importers in that year to be sold out to the farmers all over the country.

Mr. Dillon

And what did you lose on it?

Mr. Walsh

Nothing.

Mr. Dillon

£250,000.

Mr. Walsh

We lost no money. As a matter of fact, when I left office I left a little nest egg for the Minister to disperse. I will deal with that little sum of money later——

Mr. Dillon

I hope you will.

Mr. Walsh

——because the Minister has, or should have, a little fund now that is going to relieve the flour subsidies. If not, what is he doing with the £3 per ton that is being made out of barley——

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputy would need to be more accurate on that file than he was on the reduced interests file last week.

Mr. Walsh

There is a nice little sum there.

Mr. Blaney

The Minister for Finance knows about it.

Mr. Sweetman

I know all about the decision in which Deputy Walsh acquiesced.

Mr. Walsh

There is no doubt about it, and the Minister knows it.

Mr. Sweetman

Would the Deputy like the file put on the table?

Mr. Walsh

I do not need it; he knows the agreement that was made and how it was broken by the Coalition when they increased the price of pollard by £5 per ton from £20 to £25. Now let the Minister produce the file and we will talk.

Mr. Sweetman

Certainly, and the Deputy is going to feel very red in the ears shortly.

Mr. Walsh

The Minister reduced the price of feeding barley by 8/- per barrel from £2 8s. to £2. Possibly he looked at it from the point of view that the price of feeding barley was dependent on what we were getting for live stock produced on that barley, our pigs, and beef and poultry. That was a good argument. But we were doing well at that time. Our pork and bacon were doing well. There was a fund created for maize and barley and it would have enabled us to maintain our pig population and our exports of pork and bacon. If the Minister goes back over the figures from August 1953 to May 1954 he will find that there were reductions in the prices of feeding stuffs comparable with the reductions in the prices of pork and bacon and that the producers had the same margins of profit on the 1st May as they had in August. I did read some time recently where Deputy Donegan stated that 10/- per pig was sufficient profit for a farmer.

Mr. Donegan

That is not true.

Mr. O'Donovan

I am glad we are back on finance at least.

Mr. Walsh

The Deputy may not like agriculture but his bread and butter depends on it. He may not realise it but he will have to realise it.

Mr. O'Donovan

You did not always realise it.

Mr. Walsh

The Parliamentary Secretary went down the country some time ago and asked what was all this fuss about. He said there was nothing wrong with this deficit in the balance of payments, that we were all right. It was a problem then but it has now developed into a crisis and the country is being told it is a crisis. If not, why this?

Mr. O'Donovan

It does not sound like a crisis.

Mr. Walsh

With the Parliamentary Secretary, it was just a question of: "Why make such a fuss about it?" There was nothing in this. The Parliamentary Secretary does not realise yet that the prosperity of this country depends on agriculture. The prosperity of our towns and cities and villages——

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Walsh

——depends on agriculture. I have always maintained that, and we have recognised it because we got what we set out to get—increased production from the farmers. Look up the statistics for the years 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954, and you will find what our exports of pigs were in 1951. Deputy Rooney has left the House and I would like to have him here now for a few minutes. What were our exports of bacon in that year? We sent six cwt. across the Border into the Six Counties in 1950-51 and not a single cwt. of pork.

Mr. Dillon

And then?

Mr. Donnellan

Shades of Dr. Ward.

Mr. Dillon

And then?

Mr. Walsh

And then in 1953-54, we sent out 340,000 cwt.——

Mr. Dillon

Why?

Mr. Walsh

——and left a good margin of profit to producers.

Mr. Dillon

Why?

Mr. Walsh

Do not tell me it was the 1951 Agreement, please.

Mr. Dillon

Was it not?

Mr. Walsh

Oh, no. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Government is amazed.

Mr. O'Donovan

I should be beyond that now.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Walsh

It was because of a little secret, a little adjustment we made between pork and bacon that was responsible for it. Do not let anybody tell you anything else. The little adjustment that we made——

Mr. T. Lynch

Who are "we"?

A Deputy

Is that the time Deputy Lemass brought you over?

Mr. Walsh

Now, we are reaching the gizzard. They are starting to talk. We built up the bacon and pork trade, but what is it like to-day? We reached the figure of 26,000 pigs per week. Last week, I was reading the paper and I saw we now have 17,000—just enough to meet our requirements in the home market. This is the production we now enjoy in agriculture; this is the increased production we are told about; this is the increased production that will reduce that adverse balance of payments, a reduction in 1954-55 in every conceivable thing that is produced on the farm, bar sheep—one item. That is what the Coalition has given to the country. How long can we survive if we are to follow this trend? Can this country survive unless we change our methods and policy? We know it cannot. Those who are concerned with the interests and well-being of this country know that unless there is a change of outlook, of method and policy this country is doomed. We have gone through almost £100,000,000 now—how long can we continue that? Who is going to put on the brakes? Is this document going to do it? How much will be saved on it?

Mr. Dillon

What would you do?

Mr. Walsh

How much will this save?

Mr. Dillon

Tell us; it would take a good man to tell us what he would do.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These interruptions must cease.

Mr. Walsh

To a great extent, those who wanted things on hire purchase are supplied. In the case of motorcars, possibly this is a good thing. It is good that we have changed the method of exporting second-hand cars and importing new ones. No other country is doing it. We are not using our cars for the full duration of their lives. We export our second-hand cars for other people to use them and we must import new cars. We have been doing it.

Mr. Dillon

Did the Deputy stop it?

Mr. Walsh

It was not a problem in our time but it has become a problem now.

Mr. Dillon

Would the Deputy stop it now?

Mr. Walsh

We certainly would stop it.

Mr. Dillon

No. Observe Deputy Aiken cheering to the echo.

Mr. Walsh

When we had to take measures for the well-being of the country, we were not afraid to take them.

Mr. Dillon

Is fíor dhuit sin.

Mr. Walsh

That is not going to do anything.

Mr. Dillon

I do not see Deputy Briscoe cheering.

Mr. Walsh

Let us not think that for a moment. It is just tinkering with the position.

Mr. Briscoe

I will cheer when you come to the white turkeys.

Mr. Walsh

Some of the speakers talked about the cruel and brutal Budget of 1952, and the hardships it imposed.

Mr. O'Donovan

So it did.

Mr. Walsh

The 1952 Budget saved the situation at the time.

Mr. Briscoe

It is still in existence.

Mr. Walsh

I paid the bills that were left to us to be paid. I often wonder what some of our people down the country think when they read the reports of the speeches made in this House. I often wonder what they think when they read the statements made at the cross-roads and from the platforms having regard to the insincerity and untruthfulness of many of them. Is it any wonder, that when the Government go to the people to look for something from them, that they will not get it? You went to the people for money and you could not get it.

Mr. Donnellan

We got the people.

Mr. Walsh

It is no wonder you could not get it because the people know the insincerity and untruthfulness of many of the statements made by members of the Government. The people down the country have no confidence in the Government to invest their money in anything with which the Government would be concerned.

Mr. Coogan

They did it in Kerry.

Mr. Walsh

Anything you have done to discredit this House and the members of this House lies on your heads. You went out deliberately in 1951 and told the people that Fianna Fáil was responsible for the increase in the cost of living. You told the people that taxation could be reduced.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must confine his remarks to the third person.

Mr. Walsh

I am speaking collectively of the Government.

Mr. Dillon

The Deputy must not do that. He must speak through the Chair.

Mr. Walsh

I am speaking through the Chair all the time.

Mr. Dillon

That is the way.

Mr. Walsh

The Ministers and their colleagues went out in 1951 and said from every platform that Fianna Fáil were responsible for the increase in the cost of living. They issued pamphlets in which they compared the prices in 1954 with those in 1951. They put those pamphlets under every door in the country. They induced the people to vote for them on the promise of reduced taxation and a reduction in the cost of living. Here we have a Book of Estimates seeking £109,000,000, plus the Supplementaries that may be introduced in the coming year.

Mr. Briscoe

Will be.

Mr. Walsh

We had £5,000,000 in the past month brought into the House to balance the Budget of 1955-56. The Lord knows how many Supplementary Estimates will be brought in to balance the £109,000,000 that appear on the face of the Book of Estimates this year. We do not know. On the other hand, we know that the figure of £109,000,000 is an increase on the Estimates put forward in this House by Deputy MacEntee which at the time were criticised because, as was said, there was no justification for them. It was also said that if the inter-Party Government were in office they could be reduced not by £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 but by £10,000,000. These were the statements made.

We were told that the inhuman taxes in the "brutal Budget" of 1952 were responsible for the increase in the cost of living. As a result of these statements, the issue of these pamphlets and the propaganda employed from one end of the country to the other, the people were induced to record their votes against the Government of the day and support the members of the inter-Party Government. The State was left to the inter-Party Government in good condition, with the finances in sound condition when they took over. There was prosperity in agriculture and industry and the machine was working smoothly and perfectly. After 18 months, do we find the finances in the same perfect condition in which they were handed over to the Government in 1951? We hear people on the opposite side laughing and scoffing when there is any criticism levelled at them.

Mr. Dillon

I did not laugh or scoff.

Mr. Walsh

I did not say the Minister did. I said the members on that side of the House lost no opportunity to laugh and scoff.

Mr. Coogan

There was laughing in Kerry.

Mr. Walsh

There was no laughing in Kerry by the Opposition. The Government had no reason to laugh but they have reason to be very perturbed as a result of the Kerry election.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Kerry by-election has nothing to do with the Vote on Account.

Mr. Walsh

If the remainder of the country responds to Fianna Fáil as Kerry did then——

Mr. Dillon

You are sunk.

Mr. Walsh

——the Government had better pack their bags and that quickly.

Mr. Blaney

You will not have a skirt to hide behind in the rest of the country.

Minister for Health (Mr. T.F. O'Higgins)

That is an unpardonable remark.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

It is well that Deputy Mrs. Crowley has left the House.

Mr. Walsh

Do not stick your heads in the sand.

Mr. Blaney

There would be no sand left.

Mr. Walsh

Try to be a little realistic. The Government got realism in Kerry.

Mr. Blaney

Do not worry them too much.

Mr. Walsh

They lost 3,000 votes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I cannot permit this sort of discussion to continue.

Mr. Walsh

I should now like to go through a few figures I have. The principal reason why our adverse trade balance is now over £90,000,000 is that we import many commodities which we could produce at home. Wheat, for insance, is one such commodity, also barley and coarse grains of every description. There is a market in this country for £12,000,000 which we are now sending to the foreigner. Why do we choose the foreigner? Do we find an advantage in choosing the foreigner for Milo maize or maize for that matter? It has been demonstrated that maize is no longer the food to feed pigs on. The Dutch have demonstrated it; the Danes have done it; and the British have done it. They have used barley, with the result that they are producing higher quality bacon than is produced with all maize. Every person of note who is any authority on pig production was advocated greater use of barley and other home-grown grain.

Mr. Dillon

Barley and skim milk.

Mr. Walsh

Yes; that is good feed, but that is as far as we agree. It is grand to talk about all those things. Who is going to grow the barley? Certainly not the farmer who is finding it uneconomical.

Mr. Dillon

Why?

Mr. Walsh

It costs him too much.

Mr. Dillon

To grow an acre of barley to feed his pigs?

Mr. Walsh

Yes. Has the Minister examined that side of the question?

Mr. Dillon

Year in, year out.

Mr. Walsh

It is grand to talk parrot-wise and say: "Go out and do this or that." But you will not feed or produce pigs that way.

Mr. Dillon

I grow six acres of barley and feed it all to my pigs.

Mr. Walsh

Does the Minister say that he is growing it at a price which enables him to make a profit on his pigs?

Mr. Dillon

I do.

Mr. Walsh

I am thinking of the farmer who does not grow barley and I am thinking of the cottier——

Mr. Dillon

What has the cottier got to do with it?

Mr. Walsh

Nothing, except that he produces most of the pigs in some areas.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has all this to do with the Vote on Account?

Mr. Walsh

We are trying to bring up agriculture——

Mr. Dillon

We are discussing the balance of payments.

Mr. Walsh

I am trying to educate the Minister on the production of barley and I think he needs it. I do not say I am going to convert him.

Mr. Dillon

Surely Deputy Walsh does not say the cottier produces more pigs than the farmer.

Mr. Walsh

I said "in certain areas."

Mr. Dillon

Where?

Mr. Walsh

All over the country, in different pockets. Of course, the cottier has to buy the barley and the farmer may find it uneconomical for him to sell his barley at the price at which the cottier demands it, if he is to make a profit on his pigs. These are all arguments we must examine from the point of view of building up the prices at which we can export our pigs. That is the ultimate thing—the price at which we can sell the pig.

Mr. Dillon

We can get 24/- a cwt. now more than the Danes do.

Mr. Walsh

What is the use of the Minister saying that? What I want to know is how farmers can feed barley to pigs and still make a profit on their production.

Mr. Dillon

If the Danes can do it, so can we.

Mr. Briscoe

The Japanese can make articles cheaper than we can.

Mr. Walsh

We are buying barley for about £20 a ton.

Mr. Dillon

Why do not we grow it?

Mr. Walsh

Yet if we go to another field, we can get it for £16 a ton.

Mr. Dillon

In Iraq?

Mr. Walsh

I did not say where.

Mr. Dillon

Where?

Mr. Walsh

Across the border, behind the curtain.

Mr. Dillon

You mean Russia?

Mr. Walsh

Russian barley was offered for sale some years ago for £16 a ton and the Dutch, competing with us, were buying it. We have to try to build up a pig population. We want to produce more pork, more bacon and, in order to do that, we must give the food to our producers which will enable them to make a profit.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Walsh

That is the only way. We have disposed of the barley now. Deputy Donegan told us to-night that we were using the highest admixture of native wheat in our flour—about 75 per cent.—we ever used. I did not like to interrupt the Deputy at the time and say he was wrong, but there was a higher one than that. We already have carried out experiments and we have discovered that our Irish wheat is capable of producing flour that would make an all-Irish loaf equally as good as the 50 per cent. or 75 per cent. admixture. In addition to our demonstration, the National Farmers' Association sent flour to Sweden and got back a report just as favourable. As recently as ten days ago, I heard the Minister saying that the British were falling over each other trying to purchase Irish seed wheat. Is that not correct?

Mr. Dillon

It is.

Mr. Walsh

If that is so, there is no reason why we should not be growing our full requirements of wheat. It compares with the best produced on the Continent, so surely it must compare favourably with the wheat produced on the Continent as far as flour making is concerned.

Mr. Dillon

That the Continent produces, yes.

Mr. Walsh

What country on the Continent is going to trouble importing wheat, if it can produce its own? The French do not import American wheat.

Mr. Dillon

Immense quantities.

Mr. Walsh

But they export wheat.

Mr. Dillon

They do, but they import Canadian wheat. They export wheat they buy from their own farmers and sell it in London.

Mr. Briscoe

The French bread from French wheat is the nicest I have ever tasted.

Mr. Dillon

I thought so too, but the bakers told me it is not made entirely of French wheat.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has this to do with the Vote on Account?

Mr. Walsh

We have had experiments carried out and found that the loaf made from all Irish wheat was as palatable as that made from a 50/50 admixture. Why do the people on the opposite side object to the production of Irish wheat?

Mr. Donegan

We do not object.

Mr. Walsh

By inference, you did.

Mr. Donegan

I qualified my statement that I wanted all the wheat produced——

Mr. Walsh

You cannot qualify statements in this House.

Mr. O'Donovan

Not from that seat.

Mr. Walsh

Not from any seat. The facts are there. By this reduction in the price of wheat, the Government have made it impossible for growers.

Mr. Dillon

We are paying them 15/- a barrel more than world prices.

Mr. Walsh

They are not getting any such thing for comparable wheat.

Mr. Dillon

This is 1956, not 1936.

Mr. Walsh

There is no question of the Irish farmer getting more for his wheat now. The difference, as far as I can make out, is 26/- a ton. It depends on the allowance, which I say should be 11/6. The Minister may say it should be more.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, March 14.