Deputy Séan Collins in his speech complained about using the Chamber as a forum for political discussion. I think the speech which he has just delivered is one from the very many briefs which he no doubt delivered in the course of the Kerry election. However, to come to the Vote on Account which is what we are discussing here, I noticed that in the total of 66 Estimates for the Public Services which are contained in the Book of Estimates, 50 have been increased. Some of those are increased by reasonable sums, some by large sums and some by small sums. Twelve have been reduced and I noticed that four are unaltered.
If we look at the Estimates which have been reduced and get down to examine them, we find some rather interesting aspects. For instance, it is difficult to understand why the Estimate for Public Works has been reduced by £353,410. That is rather a formidable sum to have taken off the Estimate for Public Works and Buildings. I notice that a sum of £302,000 has been taken off under sub-head B —new works, alterations and additions. Surely that must mean a considerable reduction by way of employment for the many craftsmen and labourers who are employed on the type of work this sum normally covered? I also notice that under the heading of "Purchase and maintenance of engineering plant"—sub-head K— which could be described as an item for capital purposes, there is a decrease of £35,000.
Looking at the Estimate for the Department of Defence, I notice there is a reduction of £217,000. That occurs in a year in which the Taoiseach announced that this State had become a member of the U.N.O. I must confess I find it rather difficult to understand that type of attitude or the technique that must have been used in coming to a decision to reduce the Defence Estimates by that amount in a year in which this nation has become a member of a world-wide organisation. Surely we must have some commitments to that organisation. We must have monetary commitments and I have no doubt we have other commitments of a physical kind.
I would imagine that in the circumstances the Estimate would have been increased if membership of the organisation could have been foreseen. If that organisation calls on us, as it has on other member states, our commitments must be increased under this heading. We note that the Garda Síochána have been called on to supply members to this organisation. I am pretty sure that will cost the State some expense and I can see that if similar assistance is called for from our Defence Forces, a similar situation will be created and that instead of having a depleted Estimate for Defence we should have an increased one.
However, I am quite well aware that, if necessary, there is power to bring in a Supplementary Estimate later on to get the additional money needed in that way. Another of the Estimates which become a victim of the economic axe is the Institute of Advanced Studies. There is also the Department which deals with Science and Art and the National Gallery. These are three Estimates that are further reduced. All of these bodies have been doing work of national importance. There can be no question about that. The Institute of Advanced Studies has done work which has won the commendation of international organisations outside this State and I feel nobody will suggest that Science and Art should not be given all the support possible by the State.
Yet we find in this Book of Estimates that the only reductions made were on Public Works and Buildings which provides such a large amount of employment, Defence which has much graver responsibility now than heretofore, and the National Gallery and Science and Art. It is rather a pity that the National Gallery has had its Estimate reduced. I think that in a Book of Estimates, which makes a demand for a sum never before reached, it is regrettable that that type of work should become the object of the few reductions made. Deputy Collins, in the course of his speech, said that the time had come when this action, referring to the action which is being taken in relation to this Vote on Account, was necessary. I submit that this action could have been made unnecessary if the proper action had been taken at the proper time. The situation which has developed over the last two years could have been righted if the proper responsibility was there to deal with it. I can hardly imagine that any body of individuals, say any body of directors responsible for the conduct of any large business, would have been allowed to remain in office for one week if they produced a deficit in their balance of trade such as we are confronted with here in this Book of Estimates and in the conduct of the affairs of the State over the last few years.
Deputy Collins also referred to the catastrophic Budget of 1952. Now, it would be no harm for us to examine the situation that brought about that catastrophic Budget in 1952. The first Coalition Government had completed a period of three years in office when they went out in 1951 and they left behind them an adverse trade balance of something like £61,000,000, together with a gap in the Budget, which had to be bridged, to the extent of £15,000,000. And, then, Deputy Collins castigates the Fianna Fáil Government for what he described as a catastrophic Budget. In 1952, we were endeavouring, as far as it was humanly possible to do so, to right the situation that had been left behind by the inter-Party Government, to clean up an unholy mess left behind by the first Coalition Government. The steps which the Fianna Fáil Government had to take then were taken in the interests of the people in the same way as the present Minister for Finance is now telling the House that he is taking certain steps in the interests of the people. I do not doubt that that is so, but it is extraordinary how one-sided we can become when we discuss affairs of national importance such as those we have to discuss in this debate.
The Minister for Finance, in the course of his statement on the Vote on Account, informed the House that there was now a deficit of £35,000,000. That is what the Government is facing at the present time. That is what they are trying to remedy. The same type of handling of the affairs of State appears to have been carried on for the last two years as was carried on in the three years from 1948 to 1951 and the same trend in the affairs of State appears to have developed all over again. Otherwise, how could this shocking deficit of £35,000,000 have been allowed to grow in the balance of payments?
The Minister in the impositions which he is putting on the people—it is the people will have to bear the brunt of this Order and it is very doubtful, very questionable, if the Order will have the effect that the Minister is seeking; it may have the effect of producing the £7,000,000, but it is very doubtful if it will have the effect of the curb that he is aiming at—hopes to remedy the situation. If one takes £7,000,000 from £35,000,000, a gap is left of something like £28,000,000 and the Government has still to face the unfortunate position of finding ways and means of reducing that adverse trade balance of £28,000,000. It would be very interesting to know what steps it proposes to take to bring about that reduction.
The impost which will be enforced as a result of this Order, now in effect, will in my opinion be disastrous to quite a number of business people. I have no doubt whatever that it will be the cause of a good deal of unemployment. That will be a very serious result. Whatever steps may be necessary to bring about a still further reduction will also be liable to bring still further suffering on the unfortunate people who have no responsibility for the situation that has been created. They have no responsibility. If they lived well, they lived well because they were given the impression by speakers on behalf of the Government that they should live well, have a good time and should not allow themselves to wear the hair-shirt, as we have been told they wore by several speakers from the Government Benches.
The Government is repeating the plea which we in Fianna Fáil have been making for a number of years, the plea for more production. The members of the Government have at last awakened to the fact that more production is one of the ways in which a solution can be found for the unhappy situation that now exists. How are we going about finding the way towards that solution? I know that many of the things which I am saying have already been said by other speakers, probably with even greater effect than I can produce; but I am aware of the fact that the Government itself is one of the chief offenders in the bringing in of imports. We have the position of the Government itself bringing in wheat at a cost of almost £5,000,000. Most of that expenditure could have been avoided—I am not saying all of it—if the Minister for Agriculture had not succeeded in converting members of the Government, which includes members of the Labour Party, to his belief that wheat should not be grown in this country. That is one of the unfortunate decisions which has been responsible for the bringing about of the situation which exists to-day, a situation with which the Government is now endeavouring to deal.
On 6th February, 1956, there appeared in the Irish Press a report of a speech made by the Minister for Agriculture, in Clones. In the course of that speech he said:—
"We can invest our savings here and improve the standard of living and provide employment, or we can invest in British War Loan and export our population to earn their bread in well paid industrial employment in Britain."
He went on to say:—
"We should not hesitate to invest our savings in the useful development of our own country, but we should be on our guard against the temptation to squander recklessly our savings on the purchase of consumer goods which eat up the resources that we ought to husband for use in the development of our country and the employment of our people. If the people do not save the nation cannot invest. If the policy of national development is to go on the people as a whole must save and invest their savings in developing our own country and employing our own people."
I submit that was a wise, statesmanlike statement, but when we look at the actual facts of the situation, we wonder what sort of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the Minister for Agriculture is, because we find that he is vitriolic in his attitude to the growing of wheat in this country. He cannot find sufficiently bitter words to describe the growing of wheat or anyone who participates in the growing of wheat. As he said himself he would not be got dead in a field of wheat. Yet he makes that statement and at the same time, as a result of his policy and as a result of the fact that he has impressed on his colleague members of the Government, that wheat growing is of no value to this State, his policy of importing wheat from foreign sources has been put into operation. The result is that this vast sum of money goes into the pockets of foreign workers and the foreign workers, no doubt, in due course place most of the earnings in the banks of foreign nations. Therefore, the money of the Irish people is now finding its way into the pockets of foreign workers and into the safes of foreign banks. In spite of that, he is appealing to the Irish people to put their money into Irish savings and not to allow themselves to purchase consumer goods.
Surely wheat comes into the category of consumer goods. It surely is the cereal that provides the staff of life. It is the particular type of food that must be purchased by every family in this State. If the importation of this vast quantity of wheat had brought about a reduction in the cost of bread, there might be some case to be made for it. But can any Deputy say that bread has been reduced by a fraction since the importation of this wheat began? If it has, I have no recollection of ever having noticed a reduction.
Deputy Morrissey, when he was discussing the schedule to this particular Order last evening, referred to the help which the present Government had given to the housewives since its advent in 1954. Personally, I would rather have heard some of the housewives giving that testimony than Deputy Morrissey, because I would be more inclined to believe that the housewives had been given some help from the Government if I heard it from their own lips. But when Deputy Morrissey in the course of his speech makes that statement and then when we look at the schedule and see the long list of goods that housewives must of necessity have, you begin to wonder was Deputy Morrissey just being sarcastic or was he going back to the period of the General Election when statements of that kind were made ad lib and when the more statements of that kind that could be made the better.
Let anybody go down that long list contained in the schedule and they will find there that 37½ per cent. on some of the goods which are included in that list amounts to roughly 7/6 in the £1, so that the help that the housewife will be getting in the future, if she wants to buy a washing machine, is that she will have to pay 7/6 on every £1 that that washing machine costs. That is a peculiar type of help for the housewife. The only thing I do not see included in that long list contained in the schedule is the laminated springs that the Taoiseach told us on a former occasion were being reduced.
On this occasion the Government has to do its own work and, thanks be to God, it is not the Fianna Fáil Government that has to deal with the situation again. We had sufficient odium cast upon us in trying to clean up the situation that was left behind on a former occasion and on this occasion it is this Government that now has to deal with the situation. As I said a few moments ago, they are dealing with it only to the extent of about £4,000,000 and they still have to deal with £28,000,000. It gives me very great pleasure to know that I will not this time be one of those to suffer the odium we had to suffer as a result of the misrepresentation which was made on the occasion of the 1952 Budget, an occasion which was forced upon us by the ineptitude, the irresponsibility and the failure of the former Government. The same failure, the same ineptitude, the same irresponsibility is the reason for the situation that exists to-day and which they have now to make their own efforts to clear up.
All I wish to say in conclusion, and I know that most of what has been said by me has been said by other Deputies, is that it is an extraordinary state of affairs that we have a Labour Party in this country that is supposed to represent the workers and yet we were told by Deputy Morrissey yesterday that the Labour Party is 100 per cent. behind the efforts which the Government is making in the schedule. In other words, they are 100 per cent. behind the impositions that are being enforced on the people, impositions which could have been avoided if proper steps had been taken in the early stages. Instead of taking initial action or endeavouring to carry out their duties as they should have carried them out, they allowed a situation to develop as a result of their refusal to take the necessary action, because of lack of courage, that would have prevented this terrible situation with which we are confronted this evening.
The Labour Party cannot get away from the responsibility for that, any more than Fine Gael can get away from it. We know that Fine Gael was, at all times, a conservative Party and a situation of this kind would not worry them to the same extent as it should worry a Party supposed to represent the workers of this country. I can tell the members of the Labour Party that they will be judged by their actions in this House and by the fact that they have allowed thousands of the workers to leave the land because of their support of the policy of the present Government. I have no doubt that the effect of their action will be brought home to the people who are in this House representing the Labour Party but it is the Labour Party outside the House that will have to deal with a situation of this kind if it hopes to retain the respect of the people of this country.
