Is Deputy Dillon in possession?
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 9—General (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.—(Minister for Finance).
Deputy Dillon rose.
You have all gone asleep. Wake up.
All right; go ahead. Go on and talk. Say your last dying words.
Is this Item No. 4 or No. 5?
On a point of order——
I thought it was No. 5.
I understood it was the financial motion.
Deputy Corry used the expression "Jamesy" in reference to a member of this House. Is that in order?
It is not in order. Deputies should be referred to as Deputies.
I understand that we are now discussing Item No. 5 and I desire to address the Chair.
No, Sir——
Sit down.
I beg your pardon——
If this is a point of order, I will give way; otherwise I will not sit down.
I am going to make a point of order. I want to know if Deputy Dillon reported progress.
What business is it of yours?
I am offering myself because I think the last speaker was a member of the Coalition.
I understand that the Ceann Comhairle——
You said you wanted to address the Chair. God knows what you wanted to address the chair about, as I am sure you do not.
Deputy Casey was the last speaker.
I offered myself and was told by Deputy Dillon that it was Item No. 4 on the Order Paper.
If the Minister for Finance offers himself, I am taking the Minister for Finance.
He is not the Minister for Finance but the Minister for Health. Where are we now?
I mean the Minister for Health. Deputy Casey spoke before and I am calling on a member of the Government in the person of the Minister for Health.
Deputy Dillon does not know where he is and I cannot bring him back to earth. I want to begin by making a confession. I want to confess that I spent some part of the week-end reading the speeches of Deputies Costello, Sweetman, Cosgrave and Norton. After making that confession, the House may think I am brimming over with virtue. That is not the case, however, for, in return for my labours, I got a great deal of amusement out of the attempt of the Coalition leaders to prove that during their spending spree in 1954 and 1955, the public finances were being handled, not by Philip drunk but by Philip sober. I am, perhaps, conscious of the fact and, accordingly, a little vain in that during the week-end I manifested a devotion to public duty which I dare say very few members of the Fine Gael Party or the Labour Party would emulate. There is a limit to what they will endure in the public interest, but in my case the two or three hours I spent reading the strictures on the Budget were not unrewarding. They showed how little Parties in the Opposition have learned from their experience in Government. Apparently, even the results of the last general election did not bring home to them that you cannot fool a majority of the people all the time.
The burden of the criticisms uttered by the Opposition speakers in relation to this Budget was that it was not imaginative; that it lacked imagination. "Imagination" and "imaginative" were words which were greatly abused and greatly ill-used by the Fine Gael trio and by Deputy Norton. Like parrots or cuckoos, with Deputy Blowick joining in as a skylark, they kept on reiterating phrases like "There is no imagination in this Budget." Now, imagination is an almost miracle-working quality when it operates in its proper milieu as, for instance, in a great work of art, a play, a fantasy, or a novel, but a nation's Budget is not a love lyric. I was almost about to say that it is not a work of fiction, a fantasy or a fairy tale until I remembered and recalled those imaginative masterpieces of the Coalition—Deputy McGilligan's Budget of 1951-52 which, when he introduced it, we were assured was framed to cover all contingencies but which eventuated in a deficit of almost £6.7 million and Deputy Sweetman's Budget for 1956-57 which ended in a deficit of £5.9 million. These were all Budgets charged with imagination, sizzling over with it. They very quickly fell flat like bad champagne.
These and other similar manifestations of the Coalition's imagination, however, have been largely responsible for the desperate straits in which the nation found itself under the first Coalition in 1951 and the even more desperate situation into which it was landed by the second Coalition in 1956.
There are three things which go to make a good Budget—honesty, courage and creativeness. The one essential indispensable quality for a Budget is honesty. If a Budget is not honest through and through, it will do harm to the nation, no matter how cleverly it may be framed. A dishonest Budget, such as the Budgets I have mentioned, shakes the confidence of every thinking citizen in the Government responsible for it. It frightens off investors. It discourages enterprise and it demoralises the workers. When a Government is shown to have manipulated the public accounts, to have lied about the financial and economic conditions of the country, then general confidence in the institutions of the State is so shaken that honest men begin to talk of public affairs in tones of despair.
This is precisely what they were doing in 1955 and 1956. It was largely responsible for that public malaise which during that period influenced men in good positions, well able to maintain themselves and their families in this country, to emigrate abroad and take their families with them, because they felt that if the standards of financial conduct which the Coalition had set were going to obtain in this country in future, there would be no prospect in it for themselves or their children.
Surely of all people in this land none should be more aware of these truths than those in this Dáil who were members of the previous Coalition Governments. They are where they are now, in Opposition, because of it. When by a betrayal of their pledges to the electorate, Deputy Everett and those associated with him put the first Coalition in power in February of 1948, the Fianna Fáil Government of that day handed over to its successors a country which, in the words which our present Tánaiste then used, was sound in every way, sound nationally, sound economically and financially, with a high international status and good relations with other countries.
Everything at that time seemed to be set fair for the Coalition, if only they would be honest with the people and fulfil their pledges to them. Everything was in their favour. They had been handed over a Budget for 1947-48 which showed a handsome surplus after every item which should be properly charged against current revenue had been provided for. A capital reserve had been built up abroad. In relation to the size of our community, it was unequalled anywhere in Europe outside, perhaps, Switzerland, and it was held in easily realisable form. The proof of that statement will be found in the ease and the readiness with which the first Coalition dissipated so much of that reserve. As a State, we were entirely free from external debt. We owed no nation even a single dollar or a single penny. On the contrary, some of them were debtors to us. Furthermore in discussions which took place with British Ministers in the autumn of 1947, the outgoing Fianna Fáil Government had laid the foundation for the Trade Agreement of 1948.
Oh!
"Thank God the market is gone," you said.
That was the condition in which this country was handed over to the gentlemen opposite. Unfortunately it was not long before all this was changed. In the first few months of its career, the first Coalition embarked on an unnecessary and indeed a dangerous policy of deflation. New enterprises which would have strengthened our economy and have given great employment to our people, employment in new trades, using new skills, which they had never been previously taught to exercise, all these, with all the opportunities associated with them, were abandoned in the first few months of the Coalition's term of office. Other enterprises like the Avoca copper deposits, on which years of difficult, costly and hazardous development work had been carried out, were shut down. That is undeniable. Building projects which were both important and necessary were not proceeded with. Plans to modernise our road system with the special free grant of £2,000,000 to the Road Fund were withdrawn by the then Minister for Local Government, who at that time was, strange as it may seem, a nominee of the Labour Party in the Coalition Government.
In consequence of all this, the figures for unemployment began to soar upwards and so also, to the joy of the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, did the figures for emigration. The first year of the Coalition Government was one, as I have said, of unnecessary and indeed dangerous deflation. It was a halcyon time for the reactionaries of Fine Gael and during the whole of it the Labour representatives in the Coalition Cabinet were, in the bragging words of Deputy Dillon himself, as mute as mice. It is true about the middle of 1949 the mice whom Deputy Dillon's words had jeered into defiance began to assert themselves and began to exploit the fact—and exploited it to the detriment of this nation—that the Coalition could not exist without them.
It was about this time that, in cooperation with Mr. MacBride, they put the Fine Gael Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, into the deep freeze and took over financial control from Fine Gael. The deflationary policy of that Party was then replaced by the inflationary policy of Labour and Clann na Poblachta. Approximately $112,000,000, for which to-day there is virtually nothing to show, but in regard to which to-day we are paying and will continue to pay for over 30 years, was borrowed from the United States without warrant and without necessity, converted into sterling, converted into domestic purchasing power and put into circulation. Services, the cost of which under Fianna Fáil had been defrayed out of current revenue, were now paid for out of borrowed moneys. In consequence, the balance of payments position deteriorated rapidly. The deficit on our external account, which was £9.7 million in 1949, rose to £30.2 million in 1950 and to £61.6 million in 1951.
When I came to the Dáil and pleaded here for the Opposition to join with me in telling the people the truth about the seriousness of our position on external account I was met with flouts, jeers and sneers from the other side. We were told that we had no such adverse deficit in our balance of payments. We were told that I was being unnecessarily alarmist and, when I asked that steps should be taken to deal with that situation, we were told that these steps were unnecessary and that we were only preaching a policy of gloom and despondency. But, when the year closed and the full results of the policy of the first Coalition manifested themselves in the account books of the nation, we were found to be in respect of that year's trading, 1951, £61.6 million on the wrong side.
Simultaneously with these unfavourable developments on external account, Deputy McGilligan fathered a series of Budgets of which Mr. MacBride was the real author though his colleagues were ashamed and afraid to acknowledge the fact. The result of all this is not hard to discern. The result was that public confidence in the credit of the Government melted away and, as one loan after another failed to fill, the Coalition Government had to rely on the banks to supply it with funds to meet its liabilities. The banks could only do this by realising securities, thereby not only depleting our external reserves but also reducing their capacity to meet the requirements of agriculture, industry and trade generally.
It was in these circumstances that the 1951 Budget was introduced. The one indisputable fact about that Budget is that the then Taoiseach did not permit it to be discussed in Dáil Éireann. He did not permit it to be discussed because he dared not permit it. Its fundamental dishonesty would have been exposed and, rather than risk that, Deputy Costello sprung a general election and led his Government and the Parties that constituted it to defeat.
It is curious how Deputy Costello and his colleagues on two occasions have harboured the delusion that a general election would be a general absolution for all the wrongs of which they had been guilty when they were in Government.
When Deputy Costello was in financial difficulties in 1951 he had Dáil Éireann dissolved. Similarly, when he and his colleagues were facing financial collapse in January of 1957, when they knew what a fiasco their 1957 Budget was going to be, when they knew the shock the public would get when the Estimates for 1957 were published, Deputy Costello repeated his 1951 act. He asked for a dissolution of the Dáil and the country was plunged into the general election of 1957. During that election the people were kept in the dark as to the grim reality of our financial and our economic position. But they had a shrewd suspicion that things were much worse than they appeared to be, so they turned Deputy Costello out and they put us in. For the second time within three years they put us in——
But Deputy MacEntee was not put into Finance.
——to shoulder all the burdens of a series of dishonest Budgets and, at any cost, to put things right. That is what the people expected from us when they put us into office last year. They expected that we would, despite all the unfavourable circumstances, take up the uncovered obligations which the Coalition had left behind them and that we would put things right.
We are putting things right, as the Budget which we are now discussing proves. It is an honest Budget. There is nothing flashy or meretricious about it. It is a plain, straightforward account of the nation's financial position which any intelligent man may read and, reading, be assured that things are on the mend; that we are indeed on the road back to financial stability, without which there cannot be any real or lasting prosperity.
Contrast this Budget with the Budgets of 1955 and 1956—the two Budgets prepared by the Coalition Government. The 1954 Budget was our Budget and the 1954 Budget would have balanced were it not for the unwarranted increase in the subsidies which was given by the Coalition at the end of that year. Let me take the Coalition Budget for 1955 first. On the Budget for 1955, despite the fact that they had the advantage of the proceeds of the first special import levy and that there was an increase of £860,000 in the amount of current expenditure which he defrayed from borrowing, Deputy Sweetman was forced in respect of that Budget to disclose a deficit of £312,000. There were the first fruits of one year of Coalition budgeting: the special import levy, £860,000, additional current expenditure defrayed by borrowing and at the end of it all a deficit of £312,000. Not even all the financial legerdemain of Deputy Sweetman could produce a balanced Budget.
But the Budget of 1956 was even worse. It was Deputy Sweetman's last Budget and it eventuated in a financial debacle. When the grim story about that Budget is fully told the public will understand why Deputy Costello preferred to ask for a dissolution and go down in defeat rather than face a debate in Dáil Éireann on it or even on the Estimates for that financial year. The Budget for 1956-57 was introduced by Deputy Sweetman, Minister for Finance at the time, on the 8th May, 1956. Apart from the proceeds of the first special import levy and of the second special import levy, which he imposed in July of that year, and from both of which he expected to get £5,000,000 in additional taxation, Deputy Sweetman raised the existing rates of taxation on the people to an extent which he estimated would bring him in £5,725,000.
With this additional £5,725,000 imposed on the people he thought his Budget would balance at about £118,000,791. The actual outcome of Deputy Sweetman's Budget was very different. In spite of the additional heavy taxation which he enforced, Deputy Sweetman's last Budget did not balance; instead it closed with a deficit of almost £6,000,000—to be exact £5,946,000. It was not quite as bad as that of Deputy McGilligan, but that is not any very great credit to him. Deputy McGilligan in 1951 beat Deputy Sweetman's £6,000,000 deficit in 1957 by just £1,000,000. The last Budget of the first Coalition Minister for Finance showed a deficit of almost £7,000,000; the last Budget of the second Coalition Minister for Finance showed a deficit of almost £6,000,000. I do not know whether Deputy McGilligan is worth the additional £1,000,000 on the wrong side or not.
So we have this position: that £5,725,000 of additional taxes yielded a deficit of £5,946,000 or a short-fall on Estimates of over £11,500,000. That was the significant feature of the 1956 Budget. This was what was behind the snap general election of February, 1957. These facts—the probable, almost certain, outcome of the 1956 Budget—were well known to every member—perhaps that is too wide a statement because, as we know, there was an inner Cabinet in that Coalition Cabinet— were well known to every member of the inner Cabinet of the second Coalition Government in January, 1957. They also knew what the Estimates for 1957-58 were likely to be, the Estimates which we inherited from them last year. When we keep these facts before us we shall have a fair and accurate idea of what was in Deputy Costello's mind when he requested a dissolution last year.
The Budget for 1955 was not an honest Budget. Neither, I fear—though I shall not be so positive on the point —was the Budget of 1956. But what did it avail the first or the second Coalition not to be honest and not to be straightforward with the people in these years? Their trickery and dishonesty were exposed in the end. It would have been better for them—they might even be the Government to-day —if they had remembered that, particularly in dealing with the public finances, honesty is the best policy.
So much for the absolute need for honesty in framing the Budget. The next essential for framing a sound Budget is courage—courage to do the right thing. Courage, as political history teaches us, is a quality in which Coalitions are notoriously deficient. Indeed it is a quality which both the first and the second Coalitions never displayed. In support of that I would instance what I have already referred to: Deputy Costello's actions in 1951 and 1952 when he knew that the taxes —let me repeat it again because it cannot be too often driven home—when he knew that the taxes in force in 1951 would not cover the expenditure for the financial year 1951-52. He was afraid to face up to his responsibilities. He was afraid to come to the Dáil and say: "Here is the position. There will be a gap of about £8,000,000 or £9,00,000 on this Budget. We cannot find that out of additional taxation. We must reduce expenditure. We must try and restore a sense of reality to the people of this country. We cannot have them believing if they are able to get things apparently cheap over the counter, they do not have to pay an economic price for them in the end. What they do not give to the grocer they will have to give to the tax collector."
Instead of making his case to the people and pointing it out to them— and if he had done so he would have had the same sympathy, support and understanding for his problems as we manifested when Deputy Sweetman came to the House in desperation in February of 1956; if Deputy Costello had come here and made a clean breast of it and exposed the grave and desperate plight in which the country was, he would have been received by us with understanding, aye, and a sense of patriotic duty which would have enabled us to co-operate with him if he was really trying to get the country out of difficulty——
Why did you not do it in 1922?
Instead of doing that Deputy Costello permitted his Minister for Finance to bring in a Budget which was so shallow a fraud that, as I said, he was afraid to have it debated in Dáil Éireann. Accordingly he plunged the country into the general election of 1951. The main reason for the general election in 1951 was a financial one. The credit of the Coalition was exhausted. The only chance of survival—and this they cannot deny—the Coalition had was for it to obtain a majority in the country in the election. Then, armed with this and using nationalisation as a threat, it would compel the banks to finance its most profligate expenditure. That was the strategy, the ultimate objective, of the general election of 1951.
The same trick, or perhaps more properly speaking, a variation of it, was tried in 1957. The difference lay in this: that in 1957 the difficulties of the second Coalition Government were so great that the Taoiseach did not dare even to publish the Estimates for the public services let alone present a Budget to Dáil Éireann and show how it was proposed to raise the money to pay for them. In contrast to this pusillanimous attitude of the Opposition Fianna Fáil have always exhorted their colleagues to do the right thing in the interests of the nation. We knew what the interests of the nation required when we brought in the Budget of 1952. It was not an easy thing for us to do. Many of us who had been a long time in public life, all of us, every member of the Government and every member of the Party that stood so loyally by the Government when it was doing its duty to the nation, knew that by introducing that Budget we were taking our political lives in our hands.
We knew how we would be misrepresented with regard to the food subsidies by the very Party which, when these food subsidies were first introduced in 1947, scoffed at them, mocked at them and said that the people did not want them. We knew the play which was being made about the price of the pint and the duty on tobacco and cigarettes. We knew what would be said about the increase in the income-tax. But we also knew that we could not restore financial stability to this country, that we could not get the economy of this country on a sound foundation, unless we endeavoured to balance the Budget, to make good the deficiencies which had arisen in the public finances over the three short years that the Coalition Government had been in office; and, in addition, we adopted a policy which would put us right with our external creditors and turn this country back from the road to bankruptcy and make it again solvent in the eyes of the world.
Deputy Sweetman had the hardihood on Wednesday last, talking about the Budget, to say that we had put Party before country. How does a political organisation put Party before country?—as a rule, by shirking its duty, by failing to do the unpopular thing when the public interest demands that it should be done. We did the unpopular thing in 1952. We did it again in 1953 when we refused to pay out money to the personnel of the public services which we were not able to raise out of taxation. Perhaps that fact, more than anything else, cost us the general election of 1954 when the ex-Minister for Finance, the shadow Minister for Finance—and it turned out to be only a shadow in the end—the shadow Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, promised every public servant a substantial bribe if only they would vote to turn out Fianna Fáil and put the Coalition back into office again. That, and the pledge to reduce public expenditure by £20,000,000, put the Coalition back into power again. These political stratagems were, in fact, putting Party before country. Thank God, we have never done that.
The third quality which a Budget must have if it is to benefit the nation is that it must be creative. It must create the conditions in which enterprise will reap its due reward, in which industry will expand, employment increase, savings will grow and public and private investment be sustained. This Budget, like its predecessor of last year, is, in the true sense of the word, creative. It maintains the conditions in which confidence can continue to grow in strength and become more widespread. Since this Budget was introduced, there has been an upturn in business. Since this Budget was introduced, investors have been manifesting increasing confidence in the public issues of the Government. Since this Budget was introduced, people know that they can go ahead in the hope that, unless there is almost a catastrophic change, conditions will be so much better next year that we shall be able, for the first time since 1954—because the 1954 Budget did remit taxation—to give some relief to the taxpayer. It is because of this that this Budget can be truly described as creative.
The Budget, therefore, fulfils all the conditions for being a good Budget. It is an honest Budget; it is a courageous Budget and it is a creative Budget. The one thing, perhaps, which it lacks is a little salad dressing of imagination. There are no feeble jokes in it which, I have been told, sometimes disfigured the deliveries of some predecessors of the present Minister for Finance in that office. It is a straightforward description of the conditions in this country which, as I have said, any man who reads can understand and from which any man reading will gain increased confidence in the position of this country.
The criticisms which Deputy Sweetman tried to level at it were of a somewhat pettifogging nature. "Oh," he said, "look at what the Minister for Finance has done. I imposed the special import levies but, if I did, I put the proceeds to capital account." Therefore, playing Little Jack Horner, he says: "I put the proceeds to capital account. What a good boy am I." That was just a little piece of conjuring patter. It is true that Deputy Sweetman said that the proceeds of the special import levies should be paid into the capital account so as, he said, to ease the difficulties of financing the capital Budget. It looks very well until you look at the balance sheet and then what do you see on both sides of it? You see on one side the sum of £4,762,000, representing the proceeds of the two special import levies, paid over to the capital fund; but, on the other side of the sheet, you see that on current account there is a deficit of £5,946,000. That £5,946,000 had to be borrowed—every penny of it.
What merit is there, with your right hand paying £4,762,000 into a capital fund, and with your left hand, borrowing £5,946,000? Is not it, as I have said, on the part of Deputy Sweetman, just a little bit of political patter to deceive the people? "Focus their eye," he said, "on the fact that I paid £4,762,000 into the capital account and they will forget all about the deficit of £5,946,000 which was the outcome of my Budget, notwithstanding the fact that I had imposed new taxes to the amount that would bring me in £5,725,000 and that the ultimate outcome of my Budget was a short fall on the Estimates of £11,500,000."
That was what Deputy Sweetman did and yet he had the hardihood to get up here and criticise the Fianna Fáil Minister for doing what was the straightforward thing, to bring the levies into the Central Fund as ordinary tax revenue which, in fact, they were from the very beginning, and to say to the people: "We are collecting these taxes from you; we have to do it because we have got to pay for the public services, and it is our duty to have a balanced Budget."
The next argument the Opposition resorts to really constitutes the joke of the century; or perhaps one might say the mystery of our age. Deputy Sweetman, Deputy Costello, Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy Norton all claimed that the present satisfactory position of the public finances, the present satisfactory condition of our economy, was due to the measures which they took in 1956 and which, when they had taken them, they were confident would rectify the situation. If they were so confident about the outcome of their actions in 1956, why did Deputy Costello and his Coalition members not stand their ground in 1957? Why did they not see the thing through? If they really thought, as according to themselves they profess to have thought, that everything in the garden would be lovely to-day as the result of their policy, then why did they run away? If they had stood their ground, they would be sitting here instead of over there.
I remember the then Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, boasting in a hall in Dawson Street that he had a majority in Dáil Éireann and, so long as he had a majority in Dáil Éireann, they would see the Coalition programme through. He boasted then that he had the united support of his Cabinet; that it was a nest of lovebirds and cooing doves. Why then did that Taoiseach, with a secure majority in Dáil Éireann, with a united Cabinet behind him, break up that united Cabinet? Why did he dissolve Dáil Éireann and bring himself and his colleagues to defeat? It seems to me to be incomprehensible that the men who did that believed then what they are saying to-day.
The only reason we had the general election in 1957 was that Deputy Costello and his colleagues had not the courage to face up to the task of framing the Budget for 1957. There was no other reason than that for the precipitate dissolution of the Dáil in 1957. If you do not believe that, let me repeat Deputy Costello's own words or, at least, his own arguments. He had, he declared, the support of a secure majority in Dáil Éireann, he had a united Cabinet behind him imbued with a determination to see the crisis through. That was what Deputy Costello was saying in the Engineers' Hall in Dawson Street about four months before he dissolved the Dáil in a panic or in a rage. We do know that Deputy Costello, as Taoiseach, sometimes loses his temper and when he loses his temper, he sometimes does the most unexpected things——
He is not the only one.
He can change in the twinkling of an eye, like a chameleon, from a true-blue Imperialist into a sea-green Republican. We do not know exactly what did cause Deputy Costello to dissolve Dáil Éireann in 1957. Certainly, he would not have dissolved it, if he believed what he and Deputy Sweetman, Deputy Norton and Deputy Cosgrave have been saying in regard to the efficacy of the policy which they adopted in 1956 to ward off the financial disaster which was then impending. Deputy Costello was not prepared to see it through and he went to the country. The country put us back into office with a mandate to put things right and to see the nation through the present crisis. We have started to put things right. Things in 1958 are a great deal better than they were this time last year and, in 1959, they will be better still. The basis of that will be the honest, courageous, creative Budget which the Minister for Finance introduced last Wednesday.
I wondered, Sir, when I heard this Budget being introduced——
Run out, boys!
I wondered what was the basis of the somnolent complacency with which Fianna Fáil approached its task. I think the country wondered, too, because the country remembered that this was the Government——
Felix, keep on walking.
The country remembered that this was the Government which had gone to the country a year before crying havoc, wringing its hands in public, clamouring for the chance to "get cracking", urging the women of Ireland to vote Fianna Fáil so that their husbands might get jobs. It is not surprising that when the Minister's Budget proposals were brought before this House the trade union movement should meet in Dublin and raise the question of the failure of the Government to implement their election promises.
It is not suggested that the solutions of the problem of unemployment in a free society, and of the problem of emigration in our special conditions, are easy. What matters is that promises were made which carried in them the implication that the inter-Party Government was indifferent to these things. As soon as these promises were put to the test of performance, it was manifest that they were not going to be kept. The tone of the Minister who introduced this Budget, indicated that the Government was calmly satisfied that all was well, and that the imposition on the cost of the people's food was justifiable and acceptable, as was by now universally admitted.
I remember Deputy Haughey, who was new to the House—as a Deputy representative of the City of Dublin, feeling the magnitude of the burden placed upon the people by the increase of 7d. a lb. in butter and 6d. on a loaf of bread—saying from the back benches of Fianna Fáil 12 months ago that these things are necessary in order to get a balanced Budget—and he believed it. It is only now that he realises that the first justification put forward to the younger members of the Fianna Fáil Party for the kind of Budget brought in last year, when tested by results, has produced a deficit of £5.2 million— after the 7d. a lb. on butter and the 6d. on a loaf of bread.
To-day, the Minister for Health intervenes in this Debate. He has awakened up to the fact, over the week-end, that somnolent complacency is not the mood of the people. If this Budget appears to have nothing in it, if the Government appear to have gone to sleep, and seem to the people not to care, he is injected into the debate now to make an announcement that, hidden in the mysteries of this Budget, is the certainty that, next year, there are to be widespread remissions of taxation. Twelve months ago, they were promising to balance the Budget and they missed their objective by £5.2 million. This year, they are promising that, if the horse will live, he will get grass this time 12 months. They were never much warrant for producing grass in this country and it will be interesting to see what the result of their efforts to produce it on this occasion will be.
Deputy MacEntee, the Minister for Health, was straining at the leash to-day for the opportunity to intervene in this debate. He spoke for an hour. Do I do him an injustice if I say that, for 50 minutes of that hour, he spoke of the 1948 Budget and of his own Budget of 1952, of lamentable memory, and of every Budget but the current Budget? I do not wish to offend the memory of Newman by describing his performance as an apologia pro vita sua, but, of course, it was. He was trying to explain that the things he did, and from which our people revolted, were justified. The verdict of history will settle that.
He is not the Minister for Finance in this Government.
One thing is certain in this Government—he is not the Minister for Finance. Apparently the Party to which he belonged did not choose to risk him in that office a second time. But let us follow him a moment because I do not believe in allowing falsehood to travel uncondemned.
It used to be said and indeed there is a great deal of truth in the proposition that, no matter how wild a falsehood, if it is sufficiently often repeated and allowed to go uncontradicted, some people will swallow it. The present Minister for Health was constantly eloquent to describe the Marshall Aid afforded to this country by the Government of the United States as an attempt by the American Government to saddle this country with a burden of foreign debt. He knows perfectly well that that allegation is wholly groundless. He knows perfectly well that, in respect of every dollar lent to this country by the United States Government wherewith to finance the purchase of essential imports, there was lodged in the Central Bank £1 to meet every $4.80 borrowed from the United States.
It is true that the borrowings of the first year took place before devaluation but against the devaluation may fairly be set the free gift of £6,000,000 afforded to this country under the same Marshall Aid scheme. If any Deputy doubts that, let him remember that, when the inter-Party Government left office in 1951, there was left on deposit in the Central Bank £24,000,000 in cash. The present Minister for Health, who was Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance, spent every penny of that £24,000,000 during his first year in office.
What was that £24,000,000 in the Grant Counterpart Fund in the Central Bank? Was it not the £24,000,000 deposited there to be available for the payment of the dollars that had been borrowed from the United States Government? I want to state categorically, not for the first time in this House, that, under the Marshall Aid plan agreed between the Government of this country and that of the United States, not one penny of net debt was left upon the Government of Ireland to the credit of the Government of the United States—not one single penny of net debt. I am convinced that the present Minister for Health knows that as well as I do but believes it to be good propaganda for the more unsophisticated members of his own Party to try to pursuade them that that is not so.
It was exhilarating to hear the Minister for Health claim to-day that the Fianna Fáil Government had laid the foundations for the 1948 Trade Agreement.
That was the limit.
I can remember well that when I was in office for six weeks as Minister for Agriculture I had to go along to London to interview the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer and the then British Minister for Food, Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. Strachey, respectively, to avoid the imposition of a levy of 15/- per cwt. on all cattle exported from this country to Great Britain and that I got that levy, which had been agreed to by my predecessor, postponed until the trade negotiations which took place in the following June and that, under that agreement negotiated the following June, all question of levy was finally disposed of.
I was interested to hear the Minister also claim that the development of the Avoca copper mines was undertaken in spite of the inter-Party Government. My recollection is that, in fact, it began at our instance. But what is most fascinating about the intervention of the Minister for Health to-day —and, indeed, it is largely a recapitulation of a speech he made in Cork last Sunday—is that it gives the key to the strange somnolent complacency of Fianna Fáil which they have manifested up to now. I am beginning to believe, though heretofore for me it has been incredible, that the leading members of the Fianna Fáil Party are persuaded that they handed over this country to us in 1948 in good shape when we took responsibility for it in the first inter-Party Government.
The Minister reiterates that to-day. He makes the case that, at that time, we had accumulated more substantial foreign reserves than any other country in the world except Switzerland. He glories in the fact that we had piled up foreign balances, as he said, on a more heroic scale than ever before recorded in our history. Does he overlook the fact that, having accumulated these balances, there was not enough butter in Ireland to give our own people two ounces a week; there was not enough bacon in Ireland to give our own people one-tenth of what they wanted to consume, and that bacon was as hard to come by as water in the desert? Do they recall that, having built up their balances, we had fewer cattle on the land of Ireland than at any time since the famine; that we had fewer sheep on the land than at any time since the famione, that we had fewer pigs than at any time in our recorded history, and that the land of the country had been allowed to sink into such a state of dereliction that such cattle as were upon it were dying of starvation, described as aphosphorosis, as they ate the grass that was then growing on the land of this country?
Do they forget the fact that with their balances accumulated of which they are so infinitely proud, our people were still living in tenement houses and that since that day when they were persuaded they handed this country over in good order we spent £100,000,000 getting our people out of the tenement houses in Hardwicke Street, in Gardiner Street, in Marlboro Street, in Dominick Street, and that they were then living in them when Fianna Fáil handed us over the country in good form? Do they forget that we have rebuilt a large proportion of the houses in rural Ireland since the day when they believed they were handing over this country in good condition, founded on the belief that they had accumulated large foreign reserves?
Do they realise that when they were handing over this country you could not get a T.B. patient into a sanatorium in Ireland without six months' wait? Do they recall that one of the great problems in circumscribing the spread of T.B. was that you could not get the infectious patients out of their own homes and that as soon as you cured one, two more went to the sanatorium if and when you could get accommodation for them? Do they forget that all these sanatoria had to be built and that 8,000 hospital beds had to be provided? Surely nobody contends in this House that we built them for fun. We were short by that number in 1948 and we have built them since then.
It is our glory that in 1958 we have lived to see the day that the sanatoria we built are now proving superfluous, are empty and that we are turning them to other purposes. That is why we built them and we knew that when we were building them. Our aim was to build them on a scale which would give, we then hoped, a surplus of bed accommodation at the end of 20 years but happily the intervention of new methods of treatment and drugs expedited the process and, instead of having to wait for 20 years, at the end of ten we are finding, in one part of the country after another, that the provision we have made for T.B. patients is no longer required and we can turn those sanatoria to other purposes.
Do we regret that? Is this the kind of expenditure that the Minister for Health described in Cork last Sunday as dissipating our national resources? Looking back I want to say with emphasis, that there is not a penny, there is not a shilling and there is not a pound of that expenditure that I would not undertake to-morrow morning if it had to be done all over again. Does Fianna Fáil believe that that expenditure represented the dissipation of our national resources? Does Fianna Fáil believe that it was better to have that money piled up in British or Swiss banks while the people were living in tenement houses, while the T.B. patients died? Or do they agree with us that it was better to bring that money home and use it so that our people could live in conditions in respect of which we would not have to hang our heads in shame before foreigners or before our neighbours in our own country? That is what the Minister for Health to-day describes as the dissipation of our resources, but that is not all.
We have spent since 1948, £50,000,000 in bringing rural electrification to the small farmers of Ireland. None of that was done on the day they handed over this country to us, as they said, in good shape. Was that waste of money? Does Fianna Fáil believe that the people in rural Ireland should have gone on with the dip candle and the paraffin lamp, that it was good enough for them? I think it was all money well spent and I hope to see the programme continued until electric power and light are extended to every person resident in rural Ireland on the same terms as they are now available to the people who live in our cities and towns.
We spent £13,000,000 in bringing the telephone to every rural area in Ireland. I want to ask Deputies will they now hang their heads in shame because we did it? I do not, and I glory in having had the resources to do it so that this country could be, in very limited degree, a fit place for our people to live in, and I recall the time when it was not. I walked down Dominick Street last week. Half of it is gone, swept away to make place for building the kind of flats that are to be seen around Mountjoy Square and elsewhere in this city.
I remember Dominick Street when I went there to Mass as a child and I remember, even as a child, being apprehensive lest strangers would find their way into what was once an aristocratic place in Dublin because in Dominick Street there were houses that would bring a blush to anyone's cheek. They are gone and it cost us, as a nation, some of the moneys which Fianna Fáil claimed were accumulated in 1948. Do we regret their passing? I do not and I think the man who says that the situation was better in 1948 than it is now is mad—stark, staring mad. I think that is what will ultimately destroy this country under a Fianna Fáil Government—the belief that there is a virtue in standing still. While we appropriated such moneys as were necessary to abolish the slums, not only in the cities but in the country as well, while we appropriated the money to provide the minimum of amenities to the people in rural Ireland, that was not all. We spent vast sums of capital in rehabilitating the land of this country and as a result there of we added 1,000,000 acres to the arable area of land available— 1,000,000 acres—and we spent £12,000,000 on improving the farm buildings of this country.
What has the result of that expenditure been? Do Deputies forget history as recent as that of the past ten years? Do Deputies forget 1947, the last year Fianna Fáil was in office, when they handed the country over to us in good shape? What was the total value of our total exports then? £39,000,000— that represented the value of our total exports. What is their value to-day? The total exports of this country in 1957, ten years later, are worth £131,000,000. Naturally, Deputies will say: "But price has played a not inconsiderable part in that." Of course it has, but if you choose to compare the physical volume of our exports in 1957 with the physical volume of our exports in 1947, to a base figure for 1953, the volume of our exports was 51.3 in 1947 and is to-day 115.3, more than double.
How many countries in Europe can improve on that performance? The Fianna Fáil Party professes to believe that Ireland in 1948, when they handed over to us, was in good shape. If there had not been a revolutionary change in the output potential as a result of the policy followed by the inter-Party Government from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957, this country at present would be in desperate straits. But that is not all. Have Deputies forgotten that two years ago the present Minister for Lands and the Fianna Fáil Pravda, the Irish Press, were campaigning to persuade our people that the live-stock industry was finished? Is that not so? Have Deputies forgotten when I was sitting over there in the front bench as Minister for Agriculture Deputy Vivion de Valera running in to justify the campaign in the Irish Press to the effect that the live-stock trade was gone for ever?
What are the facts? Fianna Fáil handed over this country to the inter-Party Government in good shape in 1947. We had at that time credit balances, the Minister for Health says, abroad, but the farmers of this country had 3,950,000 cattle, and it was with those they had to earn their living. To-day, they have 4,452,000 cattle, substantially more than they had in 1947 and substantially more than they had in 1939. In 1947, we had foreign balances in foreign banks, but on the land of Ireland we had 2,000,000 sheep. In 1957, we had 3,723,000 sheep. In 1947, we had 457,000 pigs and, in 1957, we had 906,000 pigs.
I said here that, over and above that, the land of Ireland had sunk into a state of dereliction unprecedented in our experience and how should we test the truth or falsity of that?
Fortunately, we have a pretty accurate index because in 1947 the mills received from the farmers of Ireland 6,250,000 cwt. of wheat, and it took 579,000 acres of our land to produce it. In 1957, the same mills received 8,000,000 cwt. of wheat and it took 397,000 acres to produce it. The deliveries of beet had increased from 451,000 tons in 1947 to 794,000 in 1957, but though the deliveries went up by 300,000 tons the acreage went up by only 10,000 acres. It is true that we may have accumulated balances abroad in 1947, but in that year the farmers delivered 154,000,000 gallons of milk to the creameries and, in 1957, they delivered 289,000,000 gallons, and that was largely because the cattle were no longer dying of starvation on the land.
In 1947, the creameries produced 519,000 cwt. of butter, not enough to supply much more than half of what our own people wished to consume. In 1957, they produced 977,000 cwt. of butter and of that sufficient was sent abroad to earn over £4,000,000. In 1947, the factories received 306,000 pigs, far less than was necessary to supply the requirements of our own people. In 1957, they cured 1,115,000 pigs and supplied all the bacon, ham and sausages we were able to consume. We shipped bacon worth £4,000,000 abroad. This is the place for these figures to be recorded, they are too easily forgotten. But these figures are the only fair test of the success or failure of the policy which it is the duty of this House to consider on the question of a Budget.
In 1947 when Deputy Lemass and Deputy MacEntee, as they then were, thought this country was in good shape we exported 482,000 cattle for which we got £15.6 million. In 1957, after a period which the Minister for Health thinks was catastrophic for Ireland, we exported 830,000 cattle for which we received £45.7 million, and if we did not export them where would all the pipe dreams of the Minister for Health be now? In 1947 we exported 14,000 cwt. of beef to the value of £78,000; in 1957 we exported 299,000 cwt. worth £3.2 million.
I have referred to the fact that in 1947 we had no exports of bacon and ham; in 1957 they were worth £4,300,000. In 1947 we had no exports of butter; in 1957 they were worth £4.3 million, and in 1947—something that many Deputies often forget—we exported wool to the value of £893,000; in 1957 we exported wool to the value of £4,200,000.
I often wonder if Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party believe the things they are told or do they ever ask themselves, when the Minister for Health and the Tánaiste get up and say they handed this country over in good shape in 1947, what the facts really were? We must remember that over and above the picture that I offer this House now, which is testified to by recorded statistics in the publications sponsored by the State, there is yet another indicator by which one can measure the state of the country when Fianna Fáil handed it over to us in 1947. One of the great evils of the present situation to which I shall shortly refer is the possibility that we shall drift back into that state.
It was in 1947 that the present Minister for Agriculture felt free to address the farmers in these terms:
"...I would have had inspectors tucked after them, and I would have tucked them out into fresh land, and I would compel them to break fresh land, and if they did not do it I would tuck in the tractors through the ditches and through the gates and tuck out the land for them. ... If the Lord Almighty provides us with good weather that will enable us to make a start, and if there should be a necessity next season to be as rigid as heretofore—and there may be—I am going to tell them here and now that I will recruit the full of ten fields of inspectors and I will spend plenty of money in paying them travelling expenses and everything else, and I will hire all the tractors and the machinery I can get and I will go down and pick every one of the ‘cods' out. ... When I do that, you can call me a thug or a clod or a driver——"
This does not seem to be a matter relevant to the Financial Motion; it seems to be one for the Department of Agriculture.
I want to recall your attention to the fact that when that statement was made, the Fianna Fáil Party which was then in a majority in this House, did not provide a single voice to protest on behalf of the farmers against that language. That the country was in such a state that a single voice was not to be found in the whole of a majority Government to protest against that language from an Irish Minister for Agriculture to the farmers was scarcely an indication that the country was in good shape because, heretofore, the homes, and even the land of the country, had been devastated by many a foreigner but up to 1947 nobody had succeeded in bringing our people so low that they would take that from an Irish Minister for Agriculture or from anyone else——
I would again point out that this is not relevant on a Financial Motion.
I cannot imagine why it is not, but I have said all I want to say about it.
My apprehension is that we are moving back to that position now. Twelve months ago the cost of living here was deliberately increased to everybody by the action of the present Government in increasing the price of bread, flour and butter. In due course, as a result of the representations made from various quarters, we provided compensation, first to the bakers, by voting £250,000 to compensate them. Then we introduced a scheme for the benefit of the biscuit manufacturers under which they were to get from £70,000 to £100,000 a year to help them through their difficulties. Then the Minister for Industry and Commerce indicated that he thought every industrial worker in Ireland ought to get compensation up to 10/- a week to compensate them for any inconvenience they experienced. Then every manufacturer in the country complained of rising costs and they were reminded that there was no control of prices and everybody in business subsequently received the flood of circulars that came out telling us that, as a result of increased prices, the cost of practically everything manufactured in the country would have to go up. There was compensation provided for them.
Then the Civil Service made representations and after some show of reluctance on the part of the Government, the civil servants, the Garda, the Army and everybody else were informed that compensation would be provided for them. All that compensation, for manufacturers, for bakers, industrial workers, for the Army and the Garda and for civil servants must be contributed to by the only people producing wealth in this country, the farmers on the land. They were called upon to square their shoulders and brace themselves to bear it, but, having received that summons, they were next informed not that they alone, of all the sections of the community, were to be left as they were— and there were some sections of the community to whom that was said for whom no compensatory payments were found—but the farmers were told: "Not only must you contribute your share to the increased revenue requisite to make all these compensatory payments but in respect of butter and milk you are to get less; in respect of wheat you are to get less and in respect of barley and in respect of pigs you will get less."
As a result of the reduction in the guaranteed price of pigs from 235/- to 230/- the curers were encouraged so to depress the price of Grade B pigs that we now have a scarcity of pigs. The minimum price for Grade A pigs is substantially higher than the 235/- which Fianna Fáil conceived itself to have a duty to reduce and, as if to crown the ignominy it sought to force on the agricultural community, it is now announced that the surplus wheat on hand is to be sold abroad at £18 10s. a ton but if any farmer in this country wants it for feeding to live stock he has to pay £26. Outside Bedlam, have such proposals ever been made by a rational Government and outside Ireland has there ever been an agricultural community which has been called upon to prostrate itself before such rank injustice?
Mark it well. There is not a single voice in the whole Fianna Fáil Party which has been raised to say a word in protest against that treatment of our own people in their own country. Is it any wonder then that I recall the language that was used to the farmers in this country by the last Minister for Agriculture, who had a clear Fianna Fáil majority in Dáil Éireann, when I see that same gentleman back again as Minister for Agriculture with a clear majority in Dáil Éireann?
When Fianna Fáil had not got that kind of majority, Deputy Smith was in cold storage in the Custom House, as Minister for Local Government but, as soon as the farmers of this country were betrayed into allowing Fianna Fáil to get their hands on their throats again, he is resurrected and the bacach Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, who blots his copy book, is shifted down to the Custom House——
That does not seem to have any relevance on the Financial Motion.
Is there any other conceivable explanation of the present Minister for Agriculture being where he is to-day? Whatever the reasons are, the fact is that he is back where he was and the farmers of this country are already beginning to learn the price of giving Fianna Fáil a clear majority in this country.
Having dealt with so much, there are some questions that I want to raise in respect of specific matters provided for in this Budget. Do Deputies realise that 12 months ago the present Minister for Finance, Deputy Dr. Ryan, speaking in this House said that to suggest to him that the proceeds of the special levies should be devoted to the ordinary purposes of taxation was to suggest a degradation from which he recoiled? It is only 12 months ago since he said that in this House. Now he has reversed engines. That does not dismay me. Most of the supporters of Fianna Fáil in the House are prepared to swallow anything which is compounded for their consumption. Do Deputies realise the implications of that procedure?
When this country ran into balance of payments difficulties in 1955-56, the whole question of the comparative merits of the physical control of imports and special levies was very carefully considered. Why did we opt for levies instead of control of imports? Because one was a flexible instrument which would cause the minimum of inconvenience in administration to the people whom it affected. It created a situation in which those who could do without the goods levied would suffer no inconvenience other than to forbear consumption for the time being, whereas those who felt they wanted these things could get them by paying the levy as the goods were imported.
I remember the loud hullabaloo raised because the levy affected oranges. We were told that, when Fianna Fáil came into office, the levy would be swept away and it was, but Jaffa oranges cost 7d. with the levy on them. They still cost 7d. and 8d. to-day with the levy off. I do not know who is getting the levy now. Before this we at least knew where the levy went. Now somebody is getting the levy. I wonder who is it who imports the Jaffa oranges?
He is in America.
Perhaps, the Minister for Finance would look into that question and discover what has become of the levy that was such an intolerable hardship when it found its way into the Irish Treasury and which still continues to be paid by the consumers of this country although none of us knows who is getting it or where it goes. Now the Minister for Finance has swept the levies away and converted them into permanent tax revenue.
What will he do if he finds himself in balance of payments difficulties again? What instrument will he employ to hold the line until exports take up the slack? Remember we imposed the levies on the clear understanding that they were designed to hold the line until our exports would rise to a volume which would permit our people to import all they wanted without restriction. We were as good as our word. Deputies will recall that the thing which contributed principally to the restoration of our balance of payments in 1957 was the splendid increase in our exports of cattle. At least the most barefaced member of Fianna Fáil will not contend that the cattle export in 1957 was the fruit of Fianna Fáil policy prior to 1954.
The figures for exports for the first three months of this year cause some concern. I am not without hope that they are not indicative of a substantial decline in our cattle numbers but are associated with the unprecedentedly severe weather in February and March and the consequent scarcity of grass in England. Suppose our cattle exports this year decline and suppose balance of payments difficulties arise again, how are we going to deal with the problem?
Will we introduce physical control? Would Deputies reflect on what that involves? It means that in respect of a whole category of goods, any citizen who wants to import them must get a licence. He must get a licence from a Department of State. Many people in this country imagine that referring something to the Government resolves their difficulties. Those of us who know what happens realise that ultimately some individual, whose economic survival may depend upon his ability or inability to import a certain commodity, has to go to a Department of State to seek a licence.
He makes his case. That is dealt with as promptly as a machine like the Civil Service can deal with it but the final decision falls to be made ultimately somewhere about the level of an assistant principal officer in the appropriate Department charged with responsibility for the administration of that scheme. The Civil Service is a big organisation and there are a great many splendid assistant principal and principal officers but, like every other organisation, there are a few "duds" among them. If every businessman, employer and individual in this country has, in respect of a wide selection of articles, to get a licence before he imports them into the country chaos may result.
I always remember my own experience during the war—when the transfer of a person's tea card from one shop to another might make all the difference to a country shopkeeper—going out to Ballsbridge, where the tea cards were then administered, showing a very able member of the public services the application from the customer and the shopkeeper to transfer this tea card from one shop to another and asking why in a free country, where both parties wanted the transfer to be made, it could not be done. Being a human man of the public service he said: "Look, Deputy Dillon, will you come out here?" We went out to the huge hall of the Sweepstakes office where there were about 3,000 girls sitting, and he said: "Now, Deputy, I do not want you to be under any misapprehension. It is not that I could not find that tea card because I could, but, my goodness, if I held up that whole machine while I was finding that tea card, the whole rationing system in Ireland would break down."
I agree that it ought to be possible for free people in a free country to deal where they want to and I agree that a shopkeeper who has got a customer ought not to be prevented from catering for that customer. I agree also that it is physically possible to effect the change, but the practical fact is that it cannot be done without a dislocation of the whole machinery out of all proportion to the benefit that those two individuals would enjoy.
I wish Deputies could understand the implications of physical control, where you get one man coming up for a licence to import bone buttons, a decision is taken that you may not import bone buttons, and that goes on the file. Another man comes up a week later whose business will fold up, if he cannot import bone buttons. His application comes up against the decision that you may not import bone buttons and everybody says: "If we do not put this man off it will be said that we refused the first fellow a licence for bone buttons because he had not the pull." Ultimately, the decision is taken: "We cannot put a man out of business because we cannot give him bone buttons and we had better write to the first fellow and tell him that if he writes back, we will reconsider his case."
I cannot see how this can be argued on the Financial Motion.
It is an argument against physical controls and the trouble is that Deputies do not understand that that is what is coming if we once throw away—and we have thrown away—the flexible control of levies and left ourselves unarmed against such a contingency arising again. We will find that inevitably by having recourse to physical controls, but the tragedy is that Deputies will not face the enormous dislocation that can result in and what injustice it can inevitably involve as between citizen and citizen.
Nobody who has not had some experience of the efforts to administer this kind of control can realise how often the administrative machine has to reconcile itself to the fact that a hard case cannot be provided for, because you cannot legislate for hard cases. You have got to provide equal justice for all, but the fact is that the circumstances and the conditions of every citizen in this State are not identical, and no matter how you might attempt to administer physical controls on imports, it would constitute no burden on half the public and constitute a burden of growing weight on the other half, until you find perhaps at the extreme end a certain limited number of individuals to whom such action means utter ruin.
I wonder do Deputies opposite, when they listen to their Ministers talking about the catastrophe of national loans failing, ever ask themselves is such language reproduced in any other country in the world. Have you ever heard any member of the Conservative Party in New Zealand howling from the housetops that the national credit of New Zealand is disgraced before the world because their 6 per cent. loan in England failed by 70 per cent. to be filled? Have you ever heard any other Opposition to a Government all the world over glorying and rubbing their hands at the failure of the national loan of their own Government to be taken up? I know of no parallel for it.
I can well remember that the only criticism we ever made of a public loan issued by the Fianna Fáil Government while we were in opposition was that it had been filled too well and we thought the reason why the response was so excellent was that they had offered terms far in excess of what the circumstances required. However, if the spokesman of a Party representative of half our people cries stinking fish before the world about the credit of this country, whatever the facts may be, a great many people in the world will believe him and people in the world who think of such things will not enter into any exhaustive examination of the facts to reassure themselves about the credit status of this country. If they contemplate investment in Ireland and if the Government declares that this nation is teetering on the border of bankruptcy, it is understandable that they would not want to invest in a country where the Government makes such a declaration. That is said before the world when our balance of payments is substantially in credit almost for the first time since the State was founded. I admit there were three or four years during the war when it was physically impossible for us to get any value for the exports we were sending out but with the exception of those years, for the first time since the State was founded we have a surplus on our balance of payments. That is the time when our own Government is proclaiming before the world that we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and nothing but a miracle pulled us back.
What insanity it is for politicians, however acrimonious, to cry stinking fish like that before the world about our own country. The fact is that every country in the world, not excluding Great Britain but certainly including France, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Finland and every other free country in Europe—I cannot speak of those behind the Iron Curtain—is deep in the throes of balance of payments difficulties.
The difference between them and us is that we, seeing them upon the horizon, acted promptly, vigorously and effectively and at this moment share with Federal Germany, and perhaps with Switzerland, though I doubt it, credit on our balance of payments. It may be that Switzerland has it through her rather doubtful financial banking transactions for which she has been famous down through the ages. God grant that this country will never have to engage in that kind of business in order to maintain the balances for which the Minister for Health at present yearns. However, it is no purpose of mine to deal with the morality of the economic activities of the Swiss Republic. I am concerned to compare the balance of payments position of this country with almost any country in Europe. The difference between us and the others is that we took action in time, and effectively, and have achieved results. The others are still struggling. Is there any Deputy here in the Fianna Fáil Party who is fully apprised of that fact? I think you would find, if you asked most of them and they told you what they honestly believe, that they would say that, acting on the advices of their own Ministers, they believe this country to be in a more precarious condition than any other country in Europe. Certainly that is the impression that, by their statements, they create abroad. It is a poor service to Ireland and it is a poor service to themselves.
Not for the first time is it true of the Fianna Fáil Budget that the tale of taxation is not told in the Finance Bill. After the Minister had dree'd his weary tale here in the House and had congratulated himself that his Budget bore upon it everywhere the hallmark of a somnolent complacency, which he thought was eminently justified, we opened the morning's paper to discover there was one little matter to which he had not thought it necessary to refer. That was that his liability in respect of the annual subsidy to C.I.E. was to be substantially reduced by a 5 per cent. increase in all rural bus and train fares, which the farmers have to pay, and that nobody could travel in a bus in Dublin at all under "thruppence" and the Exchequer was to have the additional advantage that school children going to lunch would no longer pay a preferential fare. Was it in the pious hope that that would not ever be mentioned in Dáil Éireann that that device was employed? To my mind, it is not a pretty way of handling the finances of this country.
I want to say a word now on a broad principle which, I think, is of vital importance to this country at the present time. I believe that the economic future of this country depends on the land and on the people who get their living on the land. I am aware that the Fianna Fáil Government pin their hopes, as do their supporters in the country, to the £100,000,000 development plan of the present Tánaiste, who was then Deputy Lemass. They did not know that when that plan was published as a supplement to the Irish Press, the Minister for Lands would get at it and that, under his attention, the plan was likely to turn blue and, having turned blue, was to be forgotten. We were to be told that where a plan indicated what was to be done in the future, when it turned blue it only represented pious aspirations in which no rational person was expected to believe.
I do not believe in the Tánaiste's plans. He has been turning corners all his life. He has been climbing mountains all his life to see the horizons beyond them and his political career is littered with the ruins of these excursions, but they are always forgotten around another corner or over another hump. I am concerned with the land and the output of the land and I am concerned to say to this House something which, if it is not borne in mind now, may bring ruin on us all, not least upon the people who live in towns and cities.
There is no use telling the farmers of this country, or of any other country, to increase production if they are to be told in the same breath that, every time they do it, they will be penalised for their pains. There is no use telling the farmers of this country in 1954 and 1955 and 1956 that they are not getting enough for creamery milk and that the whole Fianna Fáil Party is pledged to the principle that they shall get an adequate reward for the milk they produce and then, when the cost of producing that milk rises and, despite that increase in cost, the farmers do produce an exportable surplus, there is no use telling them that they are not going to get what was admitted by all to be an inadequate price in the past, but they are now going to get 27/- a cwt. less. Remember the Fianna Fáil Party at the time it was dashing around exhorting all the farmers to come up and march in Dublin because they were not going to get an increase in the price of milk. I told the farmers the truth then as I saw it; if they got one penny extra and bore the cost of the exports, that was substantially all they could hope for. But Fianna Fáil deceived them into the belief that they would give them more and, now that they have the power, they give them less.
There is no use telling the farmers that the more wheat they produce the more they will get for it and then reducing the price. There is no use telling the farmers that, when they have built up a supply of homegrown barley to feed live stock, the only consequence of that is that, once they are caught with the stock in their hands, their price will be further reduced. If that goes on, there is a sufficient number of farmers in this country in a position to go back to subsistence farming, to wipe out the entire exportable surface of agricultural products on which this country is living at the present time.
I believe the farmers are a reasonable body of men and if they were asked to bear their fair share of any burden they would be as ready as the next to do it. But, unless they are gone stark, staring mad, I cannot see, and I do not believe any other rational person can see, how they can be equitably asked not only to bear their own burden of the increased cost of living but to help to share everybody else's burden and be paid less for their own produce in the heel of the hunt although they know that the livelihood of everybody else in the country depends on their success or failure to produce an exportable surplus. That is, to my mind, the disgraceful quality of the Budget that has been brought in.
I condemn it on two grounds. One, that it manifests clearly the belief in the minds of Fianna Fáil that complacency and somnambulance are the appropriate attitude to the problems of unemployment and emigration. I am not saying—and I never say, as I have heard some Deputies allege—that these problems are easy of solution and can be settled without any trouble. I remember the day the Taoiseach used to be campaigning this country on the proposition there was no country in the world whose condition made it easier to put an end to emigration and provide full time employment than Ireland. I never said it and never will say it. I make no apology for saying that these problems are profoundly difficult to resolve.
I never believed, and do not now believe, that the problem of unemployment in a free society such as ours is one that can ever be faced with complacency and somnambulance. It is an outrage to those who suffer the rigours of unemployment for a Government to do so. It is because Fianna Fáil has created the impression in the country that they could get away with that that we have had the experience of last week and the extremely violent reactions that brought the Minister for Health to his feet to-day and in Cork to make his apologia pro vita sua and pour forth the mass of misrepresentation I have thought right to correct in my observations here this evening.
The second ground on which I challenge this Government is one full of injustice and pregnant with great evil for our whole community. It is that the farmers of this country are by the terms of this Budget cast for the rôle of hewers of wood and drawers of water in our community. I do not believe they will accept it. They are the only section of the community who are actually being told that they must bear their burdens and accept less at the same time. If they react to that as I think they will react to it, then all Ireland will suffer as a result therefrom. There is yet time to say to the farmers of this country that they will get at least what they were getting heretofore and that we will regard it as first charge on the resources of this State to ensure that they do.
I have no apology to make for that. I am satisfied not only, as I have said before, that a subsidised export is just as valuable to the national economy as a protected industry, but in our situation at present it is probably much more valuable. The circumstances in which our farmers are operating now are that in most of their foreign markets they have to meet identical produce sent there with unlimited subsidies from the Governments of the countries where they originated. Unless we are prepared to say to our farmers: "In consideration of your providing the exportable surplus without which this State cannot survive, we will see that no subsidy policy of any foreign Government will export the poverty that they seek to avoid for their people into the homes of the farmers of Ireland." If we are not prepared to say that, we lose the exports without which we cannot survive. When we have lost them, it will be too late to repine.
Nobody complained in this country when we increased the tariffs on boots, on bottles, on any of the other commodities, all of which the farmer has to pay for. Tariffs are designed by this simple expedient. You ascertain the cost of the material, the cost of production, the cost of a fair trade union wage and the cost of an adequate dividend on capital invested. That constitutes the price that the people of this country must pay. Whatever tariff is levied to enable the manufacturer to obtain that price is provided without comment, and anyone who questions it here is regarded as a heretic.
I claim for the farmer no more and no less. That is an overstatement. In fact, I claim a great deal less. All I ask is that this Government will provide that they receive for their output, regardless of what the state of the foreign market may be, a price that will enable them to enjoy a moderate standard of living, bearing in mind that the rate of pay for the agricultural worker in Ireland is the lowest rate of pay paid to any category of worker employed in the country and that the standard of living enjoyed by the small farmer west of the Shannon is in the vast majority of cases almost identical with that of an efficient agricultural worker.
Is it an unreasonable or excessive demand to ask that those on whose production the fate of everyone in this State ultimately depends shall at least be ensured a rate of pay which corresponds with the lowest rate of pay sanctioned by law for any category of hired worker? It is because this Budget implicitly and explicitly denies that right to the farmers and declares the Government's either irresoluteness or incompetence to face up to its responsibilities that I think it is a bad Budget that should be rejected by Dáil Éireann.
One finds great difficulty this year in speaking about the Budget, because as far as the ordinary public are concerned, this will go down in Irish history as the year in which we did not have any Budget at all. We had a performance from a former Minister for Finance to-day, the present Minister for Health, which certainly would not indicate that even the Government themselves took the Budget seriously. As Deputy Dillon has justly remarked, the Minister's lack of defence of the Budget resulted in a rehash of his interpretation of the administration of the country over the past ten years.
The Minister for Health asked why Deputy Costello, when Taoiseach, put the country to a general election in 1951 and 1957. It would be just as reasonable for any of us to ask why Fianna Fáil left office in January, 1948, when, as they said, they had a prosperous country, and when they had a reasonable majority. Why did they find it necessary then to go to the people and ask that a new Government be elected? My interpretation at the time was, and my interpretation still is, that they had thrown in the sponge in 1948 and were prepared to allow any Government to take office at that time.
God forbid that I should follow the line the Minister for Health took to-day and the line he takes on most occasions such as this. It is purely a line of abuse. He said that a Budget must be an honest account of a nation's finances and that this Budget has been such. That is no world-shaking announcement from a Minister for Finance. The Budget may be that or it may be that in part. I suppose the Budget, as presented, has shown, as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, an account of the nation's finances. The Minister for Health does not think that we are all so childish or so stupid as not to expect something else from the Budget. The people, last week, did expect something different from what they got.
It is true that some sections may have been relieved that there were no new taxes. Others were disappointed because there were no reliefs. Over and above all that, the people were disappointed because there was no lead shown by the Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance. There was no indication, and we have not yet got an indication, of the policy of Fianna Fáil. We have got no indication of the £100,000,000 plan that Deputy Lemass announced when in opposition. There has been no indication as to how Fianna Fáil intend to "get cracking", if they ever do.
The Minister for Finance, having reviewed income and expenditure, discovered that he had £75,000—a very pleasant position for any Minister for Finance to be in, but it is a flea-bite, having regard to the overall expenditure. He proceeded to distribute that £75,000 and made a great song and dance about the method by which he proposed to do so. He gave £50,000 to the film renters. When he was questioned last week as to his motives, he said that it was to increase cinema audiences and so increase revenue. It will do nothing of the sort because that money will go into the pockets of either the film renters or cinema owners. It will not be passed on to the public and cinema audiences will not be increased. He gave the remaining £25,000 to Córas Tráchtála Teoranta. I would not take exception to the application of £25,000 to Córas Tráchtála and for the reasons stated by the Minister, to encourage the export of Irish whiskey.
As I said in the beginning of my speech, reliefs are needed. Many people expected that there might be a relief or some change which would mean a relief in the income-tax code. Others, especially the Labour Party, and I in particular, did expect that the Minister for Finance and the Government would come to the relief of social assistance classes.
The inter-Party Government had the same difficulties and, I should say, greater difficulties in the last two years of their term of office than the Minister has now, but, because we appreciated the need of certain people on low incomes, such as social assistance or social insurance recipients, we decided that we would have to make an effort, and we did make an effort, to come to the relief of what we considered were deserving people. There is no thought in the mind of the Fianna Fáil Party or the Fianna Fáil Government for people who are expected to exist on 19/- a week. The important thing, as far as the Minister for Finance and the Government are concerned, is to balance the Budget. As long as they can show the economists—or should I say pseudoeconomists?—that they have balanced their Budget, they are happy. They forget about the unemployed and those who have to emigrate and those who must exist on 18/- or 19/- per week. These people expected that there might be some relief for them in this Budget, but they were disappointed.
We have heard the cry over the years that taxes are too heavy. I wonder are all sections of the community overtaxed. I know that certain sections, the white-collar workers, cannot evade income-tax and are probably taxed to the limit. There are others in lower income groups who are not expected to pay income-tax. There are other sections of the community who must admit that they are living pretty well.
It is not done in this House to refer to particular sections or particular events, but if any of us had occasion to be in certain places, say, Punchestown, to-day or yesterday, or at other sporting events or other gatherings, he would not see absolute poverty there. He would not see absolute poverty amongst certain of the upper sections in this country. The Minister for Finance and the Government, in my opinion, have not exhausted all the possible means of extracting money from those people who can afford to give more.
We in the Labour Party did not confine that sort of plea to those in the higher income groups. We talked about social assistance recipients in a debate recently in the House. We stated openly that as far as we were concerned we would be prepared to support a particular tax, such as a tax on cigarettes, if the proceeds of that tax were devoted to such people as old age pensioners and men who are on the dole and cannot find work. I still think that the Minister should consider that type of proposition, that there should be a particular tax the proceeds of which would be devoted to those people who cannot fend for themselves.
One thing that disappointed the Labour Party and the trade union movement was the Minister's neglect to mention in any detailed way the two problems which are always described in this House as the biggest problems that ever faced this country, the problems of unemployment and emigration. When one listens to the Minister for Health, Deputy MacEntee, one wonders if he is at one with his colleague, the Minister for Lands. The Minister for Health said that we stopped works of employment on roads and in building when we came into office in 1948 that Fianna Fáil had engaged in from 1945 onwards. The Minister for Lands, on the other hand, always complains here that we spend too much on roads and on building.
The Minister for Health says that we discontinued the annual grant from the Exchequer of £2,000,000 towards road works. That, of course, is absolutely incorrect because what Fianna Fáil were doing from 1945 to 1947 is as much as we were doing in 1948 and 1949. We were spending moneys that had accumulated in the Road Fund and, as far as I am aware, there was no question at any time of any special grant from the Exchequer to supplement the Road Fund.
As I had occasion to say when I spoke here on the Vote on Account, the problem of unemployment is of peculiar origin. Deputy Dillon says, and I agree entirely with him, that we in this country should be proud of our achievements, especially during the last ten years, in house building particularly, in the practical eradication of tuberculosis, the building of hospitals, schools and various other activities. But, in doing that, we created a problem for ourselves. We created this situation where we had so many people who got employment in that type of work ordinarily. They now find themselves unemployed or else they have to emigrate.
I looked at the industrial analysis of the live register for mid-March and, in itself, it was significant. The total number of unemployed registered in mid-March was 79,468. What amazed me, and what should give the House and the Government food for thought, is the fact that the number of those who would ordinarily be engaged on building and construction work was 19,209 and those who would ordinarily be engaged on forestry, farming, market gardening, etc. totalled 30,456. Therefore, in those two groups alone we have a total of 50,000 unemployed out of the full figure of 79,000.
I know that the stated policy of the Government in regard to employment is that they want to create a productive type of employment. That is very laudable in itself and it would be a great thing if we could build factories as we build houses, but we have reached a stage where we will not be allowed to carry on with the building of houses. We cannot say to these people: "You will not be employed on roads, forestry or agricultural work; you must wait until we have industries in which you can be employed". No man can wait for six months, let alone five or ten years, to get work when the Fianna Fáil plan for industrial employment materialises. I believe that Fianna Fáil have been absolutely wrong in discouraging house-building and hospital and school building during the past 12 months. The people must be employed in the interval until Fianna Fáil has shown some progress in what they call the second industrial revolution.
I have read in the chief propaganda newspaper of the Government, and also in the Sunday Press, week after week, of new factories being opened in various parts of the country. I wonder what has happened to all these factories mentioned in the Irish Press and in the Sunday Press? Every week we read of at least three factories opened in various parts of Ireland, but nobody seems to hear of them after that. Whether this is due to the imagination of the managers of the Irish Press and Sunday Press I do not know, but we never read in those newspapers of the factories which close down, nor do we read of the numbers of men thus unemployed.
I should like to ask the Minister a question in regard to unemployment. In Table II of the Financial Statement which he issued he shows that as far as the Capital Budget of 1957-58 is concerned there was a Budget estimate of £40.99 million, but the actual amount was £36.33 million. Is it not a scandalous thing that, whilst we had 75,000 to 84,000 unemployed during the winter, the Government withheld £4.66 million? It was not withheld in respect of Bord na Móna, Córas Iompair Éireann, Aer Lingus or Irish Shipping. It was withheld from the local authorities, and I say it could have given very valuable employment during the very difficult winter months. The Government and the Minister for Finance played a shabby trick on the unemployed by withholding approximately £5,000,000 which could have given useful employment in house-building, sewerage, water works, and different other types of work such as that.
The Minister for Finance may say that the money was available and the local authorities did not take it. The Taoiseach, or some member of the Government, said recently that money was available for whatever number of houses was needed. That may be the attitude of the Department of Finance and the officials may be sincere in it, but it is a different matter when the Department of Local Government enters into the picture. Every member of a local authority knows quite well it is practically impossible to gain sanction from the Department of Local Government for any of that type of work for which £14.88 million is shown to be provided in Table II of the Financial Statement. All the money required is available but, in actual fact, the Department of Local Government, whether with the aid of the Department of Finance or not I do not know, see to it that the money is not expended.
I was a member of this House in 1953. In that year we had an all time record as far as unemployment was concerned. The Government expressed their concern about the high figures and the Opposition criticised the Government for not taking action. On the 18th December, 1953, the National Development Fund Bill was introduced. I welcomed that Bill and I said it would empower the Government to bring relief to the very acute unemployment situation. The Bill was introduced to allow the Government a sum of £5,000,000 over and above that ordinarily provided for capital services in the Budget. Deputy Aiken, the then Acting-Minister for Finance, said the House should vote that money so that it could be devoted to relieving the unusually acute unemployment situation.
I do not believe it would be out of place if I were to read what the Acting-Minister said on that occasion. I quote from Volume 143, column 2793:—
"This capital Development Fund Bill, as Deputies will see, proposes that the Dáil should give the Government power in any year to spend up to £5,000,000 for capital development which is in the national interest. The £5,000,000 which we are asking the Dáil for this year is in addition to the £40,000,000 or so of works of capital development which the Minister for Finance announced at the time of the Budget."
The Labour Party welcomed that Bill and Deputy Aiken gave his reasons as to why this £5,000,000 could, or should be spent.
We have heard quite a lot about balance of payments problems over the past few years. Many people seem to imagine that all our difficulties will dissolve as soon as we have a favourable balance of payments. Last year we had a favourable balance of trade to the extent of £9,000,000; yet what effect did that favourable balance of trade have on the unemployment figures? It had absolutely no effect. In actual fact, the position worsened. It did not worsen as far as the number of registered unemployed was concerned but it did react unfavourably when one remembers that while we had 24,000 fewer people on the unemployment register, 50,000 people emigrated. In view of these figures will anybody tell me to-day that the Government's present policy is the same as that when they introduced the National Development Fund Bill, on the 18th December, 1953? The present time is an opportune and favourable time, as far as the economy of the country is concerned, to spend that £5,000,000 within the next 12 months.
At columns 2794-5 of the Official Report for the 18th December, 1953, the then Acting-Minister for Finance, is reported as saying:—
"When the balance of payments is good and unemployment is not so good, that indicates that there should be an expansionist policy to make use of the energies of the unemployed and to develop the country further. It indicates that every opportunity should be taken to use the energies of people who are idle to the greatest extent possible and in the best available directions. When, of course, the balance of payments is dangerously adverse it indicates the necessity for internal adjustment rather than a total expansion."
In a debate like this, much can be lost in the abuse from one side of the House to the other and in dwelling on what happened over the past ten, 15, 20 and 30 years. However, it is not unreasonable to ask the present Ministers and especially to ask the present Minister for External Affairs, if he now believes that it would be good policy to expend £5,000,000 over and above the capital services in order to relieve an unusual unemployment position. If he is of the same mind as he was in December, 1953, he should advocate such a policy within the Government. Let me go over what he said: "When the balance of payments is good...." As far as we know, the balance of payments is good. For the year 1957, a favourable balance of some millions of pounds was shown. Therefore, the balance of payments is good. Unemployment is not so good. Even members of the Fianna Fáil Party admit that. If unemployment is not so good, the Minister for External Affairs said that "that indicates that there should be an expansionist policy to make use of the energies of the unemployed and to develop the country further." He said: "It indicates that every opportunity should be taken to use the energies of people who are idle to the greatest extent possible and in the best available directions." I do not know whether or not the Minister for Finance can answer for the Minister for External Affairs, but he was a member of the Government at that time. He will get hundreds of questions across the floor of the House. He has got them in the past few days and I suppose he will get them in the next five or six days. I submit, however, that that was a fundamental point of Fianna Fáil policy in December, 1953.
I want to know whether or not the National Development Act, 1954, has now been repudiated by the Fianna Fáil Party or if they are prepared to implement it. At the time of its introduction, many Fianna Fáil Deputies were very enthusiastic about it. All of us who were in the House at that time remember Deputy Briscoe. I do not know why but at that time Deputy Briscoe seemed to know more about the Bill, when it was going through, than the Acting-Minister for Finance.
Believing that the Bill would do tremendous things, he described for us the different works he had lined up so far as Dublin was concerned. He said that Dublin would be able to spend £1,500,000 on different projects under the direction of the corporation for the relief of unemployment in Dublin. That did not materialise. Deputy Briscoe tried to tell us it did materialise. I would again ask the Minister to say whether or not the Fianna Fáil Government are prepared to spend that £5,000,000 in view of the fact that we have a favourable balance of payments and an unusual unemployment position.
Again on the subject of unemployment, I read the remarks of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when speaking on the Budget debate on Thursday of last week. I do not think he wriggled out of the £100,000,000 plan as well as he usually wriggles out of difficulties into which he has got himself. I think he committed his Party to too much in 1956 in respect of that plan. On that occasion, as well, the Provisional United Trade Union Organisation suggested certain proposals for capital development. In an endeavour to gain political support, Deputy S. Lemass, as he then was, warmly embraced these proposals. Last week, he told the trade union movement that they had no reason to meet in Dublin City to discuss the question of unemployment. He, who was their cheer leader, so to speak, in 1956 had that to say to them last week. The proposals of the Provisional United Trade Union Organisation were not unreasonable; certainly they are feasible. If Deputy S. Lemass had such a love for them in 1956 I think he should now be able to persuade his colleagues in the Cabinet to adopt at least part of the proposals advocated at that time by the combined trade union movement of the country.
Speaking of his £100,000,000 plan, Deputy S. Lemass did give a hope to the workers in the country that if Fianna Fáil got back to office there might be a change. Any of us who knew him knew that he was merely chancing his arm—the usual Lemass act. In the election manifesto of the Fianna Fáil Party the electorate were told that Fianna Fáil would work out the details of a dynamic programme of investment which, in an expanding economy, would bring the nation to that goal. They were further told by Fianna Fáil: "We are eagerly awaiting an opportunity of putting that programme before our people"—the £100,000,000 plan.
The people have been disillusioned. I do not blame the Fianna Fáil Party entirely for that. The history of our people demanded that we should engage in other work from 1922 onwards. I think the Minister for Finance and the Government, because he is the instrument of the Government, are cutting down too severely on capital works. Our economy is not geared to such an extent that we can turn our unemployed over to ordinary industries. When we can put them into industrial production or have them gainfully employed on the land then, and only then, will it be time to cut down on such things as house-building, hospital-building, school-building and road-making.
It is very difficult to talk about this Budget because, in actual fact, we did not have a Budget this year. The trade union movement and the Labour Party have been very disappointed that there are no new proposals for the creation of employment. There is not even an attempt to tackle the emigration problem. The type of speech the Minister made is the type of Budget speech made down through the years. Unless the Government are prepared to change the economic and financial system to some extent I think that, year after year, we shall have the same dreary Budget speech; year after year we shall have 50,000, 60,000, 70,000, 80,000 or 90,000 unemployed, and year after year we shall still have the same drain of emigration.
The frightening thing about unemployment and emigration is that we are losing consumers, potential taxpayers and workers. We must remember that the 50,000 people, or so, who emigrate every year are people who will not buy Irish-made goods. Being in Britain, they will buy British manufactured clothes, shoes and every commodity which they require. Ultimately our factories will be closed down for want of Irish consumers. The Minister himself will find that the reduction in the number of consumers of taxable commodities will mean a loss to him. The workers in those factories will themselves, in turn, be forced to emigrate. Therefore, I urge on the Minister, first of all, to indicate what the outlook is for the unemployed and, secondly, to say what now is the attitude with regard to the National Development Fund Act, 1954, which was introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government and which proposed to spend a total of £5,000,000 per year where there was unusual unemployment.
This debate has gone on for a number of days, in which time Opposition speakers have made various references to the type of Budget they think it is. They have called it a doleful, a dreary, "as-you-were" and a stagnant Budget. The latest description is that it is no Budget at all. Deputy Corish is usually very fair in his criticism and he at least refrains from becoming impassioned. He tried to stick to reality. I listened with interest to his speech and it had certainly more in it than the speech of the former Minister for Agriculture. I had to weigh up in my own mind what the people must weigh up in their minds—if Deputy Corish or his Party were guiding the destinies of this State, or if they were, as they have been in the past, an integral part of the Government, what would be their attitude towards the future development of the country and the building up of its economy?
Those who look forward to an intelligent discussion from the Opposition are certainly not getting it in this debate. Deputy Dillon spent over an hour taking credit for everything that happened virtually since the State was established. He even took credit for the rural electrification legislation in the Electricity Supply (Amendment) Act, which was introduced by Deputy Lemass as Minister for Industry and Commerce, on the 24th January, 1945, and which did not get a lot of support from Deputy Dillon at that time. He took credit for all the houses built in the country since the State was established. In fact, he resorted to the well-known Deputy Dillon tactics which the country has long since found out—take credit for everything good and blame Fianna Fáil for everything bad. At a time like this, when so much serious thought is being given to our entire economy, I do not think anyone welcomes that sort of statement from one whom they assumed to be a responsible member of a Government and who perhaps hopes to be a member of some Government in the future.
We have had many Budgets since the State was established—good, bad, popular and unpopular Budgets. After 35 years we should have learned what can be done and what should be done in this annual balancing of the books of the State. Why is it that at various times in the past, we had to draw attention to the serious situation into which our finances had lapsed? Why have so many Ministers for Finance to draw attention to the serious state of the balance of international payments and take drastic measures to correct it? I think I know the answer and I am anxious to find some person to tell me whether I am right or wrong. Everyone likes to give serious thought to a serious problem. We were castigated by the members of the Opposition last week and this week in an attempt to blacken the Budget and make it look as one that is not good. So far as I can see, they tried to blame us for not giving something to one section of the community without taking it off another.
It would not be difficult for any Deputy, if he were Minister for Finance, to place, say, on cigarettes 5d. per packet of 20 and give the old age pensioners a couple of shillings extra. It would not be difficult to put a few shillings extra on the lb. of tea or on the gallon of petrol or on some other essential commodity and, as Deputy Corish has suggested, giving a little more in social welfare allowance to the needy section. However, I should like some Opposition Deputy who suggests or implies that that should be done to stand up and straightforwardly advocate that as his proposal. Do we want more benefits in social services at the expense of the taxpayer? Do Fine Gael Deputies concur with Deputy Corish when he says that there is a large section of our people yet who are well able to pay more taxes, that we have not at all exhausted the last resources from which we can extract money, to use his own words, when he spoke of the display of wealth at places like Punchestown yesterday? Do the Fine Gael members agree that a former Minister who was prominently associated with the Coalition Government, is correct in saying that we have not yet exhausted the last resource in extracting money which we can put into the pockets of those drawing social services?
That is where the serious conflict of opinion comes, if there is a conflict of opinion on any side of this House. It is a grand thing for one section of the late Government to advocate extra payments for one section of the community and another section of that late Government to advocate improved conditions for another section, both being contradictory. I have no doubt that Deputy Corish had the farming community in mind. I can see no other section. He said he does not like to make a direct reference to the section he had in mind which could increase its contributions to the Exchequer. I do not believe it ever was or ever will be a cure for our difficulties or any contribution whatever towards expanding economy, to continue imposing extra taxes to give benefits to one section or another.
Therein lies the importance of this Budget, which I am convinced is a sound one. Do members think that just because a Budget does not impose extra taxes or give important reliefs to some sections, it is not a good Budget? Must a Budget make some serious changes in order to arouse the interest of the Opposition? It is not by accident that the Budget appears as it is. It is one which has been carefully thought out and which is balanced in accordance with the resources at the disposal of the Government. While those who advocate increased social services may play to that section, by doing so, who will agree or advocate that we should impose extra taxation in order to find the money? The Minister cannot provide the money out of nowhere. He cannot find it other than by the imposition of taxes, a course that will not be advocated by any Opposition speaker as the proper method of doing things at this time when we are making a serious effort to expand our economy on a sound footing and on a proper basis.
I said that we had good and bad, popular and unpopular Budgets in the past and I think we have all learned from experience that the popular Budget has not always proved to be the good Budget. Very often, it proved to be the contrary and the unpopular Budget proved to be the good Budget. If we had to take drastic measures in Budgets, as Fianna Fáil had to do following two periods of inter-Party Government, to put our economy on a sound footing, does that mean that immediately we have balanced the position, increased exports, improved our internal investments, we should then throw all these things to the wind and start again from increased taxation to give benefits to some communities and disrupt and aggravate the position, send prices after wages and so on, until we do not know where we are going to end?
I think we have stabilised our economy at last and—I defy contradiction on this, and I do not claim to be an expert economist—I do not think we can really start expanding our economy and creating lasting employment until we have put our financial position in a state where there is stability and confidence. I will say this, that there is more stability and confidence inspired by the present Budget than any that has been introduced for some time. What I think has created a good deal of the ills which we are experiencing to-day were weak Governments who took panic measures inspired by political prudence and the possibility of their future existence as political Parties. They took panic measures creating a false sense of economy and created employment that was no more lasting than the snow that fell last January.
It is a grand thing to talk about the Local Authorities (Works) Act which gives employment to men in getting into drains along the road to clean them. Personally, I never believed in that. I think it would be better to have the money going towards the development of roads. Supposing the Minister tried to find a few million pounds for the Local Authorities (Works) Act and put a few men to work for a fortnight in the drains along the roadside, what hope does that hold out for the future development and expansion of the economy? Remember that the money has to be raised by taxation. Those men find themselves in a worse position than before and it is not worth one iota to the future development of this country. Too much of that has been tried in the past, but remember, when I say that, we must of necessity have some of it; we must have road works so far as our resources enable us to have them.
The time has come when the emphasis must be on permanent employment, expanding production and on the creation of industry that has come to stay. You will not get that by panic measures or by creating false economies in Budgets, by imposing taxes and giving with one hand and taking back with another and at the same time aggravating the spiral which has existed in the past and jeopardising the economic position we have reached to-day. You will not bring back emigrants with emergency schemes; you will not even hold at home those who desire to go; but if you provide one good sound industry and establish it in a district, you will hold some people and enable young men to find employment in it, settle down and get married.
You will improve the whole economy of the district where it is established and you will be getting something worth while for the £10,000 or £40,000 or £50,000 which you have given to encourage the establishment of that industry. While that process may be slow, and it is slow, nevertheless, it is sufficiently rapid to point to the success of that policy. It is more worth while than calling in money to give a fortnight's employment and creating an impression that so many people are being employed at a particular period—probably on the eve of a general election.
I hope the country is done with the panic measures which were adopted for political expediency. If there is one thing which the people voted for in the last election, one thing more than another, it was stability in Government. They wanted a Government that would have the necessary majority so that it would not be in the position of having to take political measures; a Government that would be capable of putting through a long-term policy and programme that would ultimately lead to an expanding economy and better conditions generally. This Budget is the best example of that type of effort and I say that in all seriousness. It is the best example of that effort that we have seen in this House for a long time.
It would be a very popular thing for all of us to get up and say that this section of the community should get relief from income-tax, that another section should get improved disability allowances, that another should get extra social welfare pensions and so on. Those things are desirable but they can be given only in relation to our ability to pay them. However much one Party or another might like to go forward with an expanding social welfare programme they must necessarily apply the brake in accordance with the ability of the State to provide it and commensurate with the national income.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce rightly pointed out in his speech that there are certain definite financial indicators which nobody can fail to observe. When we took office last year, all those indicators pointed to a declining economy. I would ask Deputies on the opposite side of the House do they really believe that any Minister for Finance in his first Budget —and that is what this one may be regarded as—can with one stroke of the pen correct all that and bring us into prosperity and wealth? Does any Deputy believe that could really be done? No, he does not. One thing that can be done is that the foundations can be laid. There are those of us who believe that sound economy can be founded only on the bringing into line of our balance of international payments, the improvement of internal investment, the strengthening and expansion of home production and the improvement of our exports. Those are the things which point to an improved emonomy.
As the Minister for Finance pointed out, all the indications were in the opposite direction when we took over. To-day, they point in the right direction. Therefore, let us not take panic masures now by imposing new taxes in order to create relief schemes or temporary measures to relieve unemployment because unemployment can be solved ultimately only by taking the proper action now.
When I come to examine the position, I say to myself: "What are the Government doing for agriculture?" I look at the Book of Estimates and I find £2,500,000 extra given in incentives to the agricultural industry this year. I say that is good; there is nothing wrong in that. I look at the tourist industry which is, perhaps, next, if it is not the greatest industry from the point of view of our economy and our invisible exports and I find that everything possible that the Government can do is being done to encourage more and better tourism.
I look at our policy in regard to the peat industry, which is very important on the western seaboard, and I find everything possible is being done to expand that industry, not merely by Bord na Móna but by at least five other private enterprises which have gone into production of fuel from the bogs by machinery. When I examine another branch of our economy which is important and which holds out hope of future expansion, remembering that expansion means employment of a permanent nature, I am satisfied—and I would risk making a statement for the record—that our fishing industry, which has been sadly neglected in the past, is embarking on what will be a new era of success.
I believe the Minister for Lands is making a serious effort to develop this industry which is so important to the western seaboard because we have the raw materials, so to speak, on our doorstep—the fish can be harvested from the sea. For the first time, a serious effort is being made to find an export market for that industry. When I challenged the previous Minister for Agriculture, who was also in charge of Fisheries, as to what attempt he had made to find an export market for our fishing industry, he said an effort was successfully made to get an export market for shellfish in France. It was as easy to sell shellfish in France as to sell lifebelts on a sinking ship during his term of office. No effort was made during those years to get export markets, but an effort is being made now, and I venture to predict that the industry has embarked on a period of prosperity never seen before.
If Deputy Corish were Minister for Finance, he would see tremendous possibilities for extracting further taxes in order to increase social welfare benefits. If we were to do that in this Budget, no sooner would we have done so than every member on the Front Benches of the Opposition would be pointing out that we were sending further up the vicious spiral of the cost of living and that we were further devaluing the £ and that wages would necessarily follow an increased cost of living.
The Minister has made the best attempt—and a most honest attempt in the circumstances—to ensure that the money we are to spend will be spent in strengthening our economy. He has resisted any attempt at panic measures to bring about the preelection type of Budget that we were accustomed to in Coalition days, the Budget which attempts to be popular and proves to be dishonest, and leaves in its wake a serious problem that has to be cleared up by some other Government. The balanced Budget, with provision made in accordance with our resources, is, by every test, an honest Budget, giving nobody a wrong impression of our position. I believe no member on this side of the House is satisfied our rate of expansion now is as rapid as it should be, but all the indications are that we are moving in the right direction and that the expansion of our economy is well under way.
The international balance of payments is no longer a serious problem; internal investments have improved; production generally has increased; and our exports have improved over the past year. These are merely signs which we hope indicate acceleration in the right direction in time to come. I do not think—and this is most important—that the Minister has done anything to upset our progress, although that would be a very easy thing to do, and something that I am afraid has been done too often in the past.
Immediately our financial position had been brought into line, some Government came along to produce the popular Budget and if there is one thing that can be placed at the door of the Coalition Government during their two terms of office, it was that weakness when, in spite of warnings by their own Minister on some occasions, they succumbed to the temptation of taking panic measures to serve political expediency, creating or giving benefits which, at the time, our national income could not afford.
It is very nice to get up here and say that an old age pensioner cannot exist on 25/- a week. Nobody suggests that they could exist on it. It was a very nice thing for an Independent Deputy—Deputy Sherwin-to get up in this House a few days ago and advocate increased pensions of 30/-. Had he advocated £2 he would have been even more popular and the people of Dublin would say that he was the greatest man in the world.
Can we afford to tax the community further in order to find this money? Deputy Corish says we can. I say we cannot at the moment. If we expand the entire economy of the State and if we build on sound lines and refuse to be enticed to budget to suit political popularity, then we will ultimately reach the stage where we can afford to give benefits commensurate with an expanding economy and a better national income. Nothing succeeds like success. We could then see the benefit of real economic expansion. People would find more jobs; revenue would be more buoyant; the home market itself would consume much more; fewer people would require social welfare benefits and we could afford to pay more to those who did require them. Let us not put the cart before the horse and start paying more than our economy can bear.
I do not say we are paying enough to anybody. I remember a time in this House when I said that Fine Gael were advocating fewer social welfare benefits and the Labour Party were advocating more—it was at the time when we were accused of taking money out of the pockets of one section of the taxpayers and putting it into another—and Deputy Corish asked across the floor of the House what would I advocate. I said I advocated a happy medium which our economy and national income could afford. If we go beyond that, we are only putting this heavy burden on somebody in order to satisfy somebody else. We bring about the consequent evils which frustrate the whole national economy and we upset the stability which should be enjoyed in order that a country might be developed properly.
In this Budget, we have a greater measure of stability and a further fillip to our confidence in our finances. That was proved over the years. Without that, I do not think any Government can proceed to make progress of the type which should be made in this country. I said at the outset that we have 30 years' experience of Budgets. It was proved time out of number that the popular Budget was ultimately a bad Budget, necessitating at a later stage an unpopular Budget to bring us back to a proper financial balance. Let us not continue making that mistake. Let us not now start to find money for unproductive employment, temporary employment —something that will not be lasting. We should give to the people of this country hope in the future of constant employment.
In the absence of anything constructive to say by way of criticism of this Budget, Deputy Dillon resorted to all the old statements he has made in this House since I came into it. I remember, when I came here first, that I used to listen with great admiration to the speeches made by Deputy Dillon. I believed they were original, but now after eight years I find he is repeating the same statements about the old bicycle wheel and Deputy Smith's field of inspectors time after time. That means nothing and is not of any interest to the country.
He devoted 15 minutes to-day to reiterating the story about Deputy Smith's reference to the two fields of inspectors when he was Minister for Agriculture. If Deputy Dillon had any national pride whatever, he would be ashamed to make that statement in this House, because Deputy Smith— he was at the time Minister for Agriculture—was speaking at a period when the important matter was to keep the body and soul of our people together by food which we could only produce at home. His statement was nothing more than an assurance to the populace, the proletariat, that they were not going to starve as long as there was an acre of land to produce food.
That statement, which gave heart to the poor people in this country at the time, is being used in this House as mere propaganda for the farming community by a man who was Minister for Agriculture for two periods. If this country were faced with the same circumstances again-and God forbid that it should-I should like to hear whoever was Minister for Agriculture give the same assurance to the people of this country, that they were going to get bread without handing over their manpower to buy it from some foreign power in order to become belligerents in a war on one side or another. I think those statements are only disgusting.
I do not think that reference to the past is really a good line to take at a time like this, but the debate from the other side of the House has drifted in that direction, in a vain attempt by those people to defend the things they did. A child who has not yet come to the use of reason would give them the simple answer by saying that if they did anything good at any time or had any hope of doing any good, why did they not stay there? There is no answer to that. They stayed there as long as they could, until the position was untenable as a result of their actions. Somebody down the country said that any time a Coalition Government were elected, they did not dissolve; they were not forced to dissolve, but they simply disintegrated. They fell asunder.
Where is the use and logic of trying to pretend that any wise course was followed which led anywhere? We were left with an unbalanced Budget. On two occasions, Fianna Fáil had to step in to introduce unpopular Budgets to bring our finances into balance. I am perfectly certain that the Minister for Finance will not succumb to the temptation of producing a popular election or political expediency Budget at any time. I hope he will have regard only to the future development and expansion of our economy and will give to the people, as he has now given them, a true account of our finances.
I also hope that the emphasis will be on productive employment and the expansion of industry, and that every possible effort will be made to give the necessary incentive to investment, either by our own people or outsiders, to increase industrial production. We hope the Minister will give to agriculture the same measure of incentive which he has given to it in the Book of Estimates this year, where he has given £2,500,000 extra for the encouragement of agriculture and to which no member of the Opposition has referred or can take exception.
There may be Dublin Deputies who realise the importance of agriculture but do not pretend to do so, because it does not suit their constituency to talk about the agricultural community. They do not appreciate, perhaps, that it is the farmer who is feeding and keeping in existence the people who are in too great a concentration in the cities. However, they may some time realise that if workers in the city go on strike, it can create a great deal of hardship; that if the workers in any branch of industry in the towns go on strike, it can cause the community a great deal of inconvenience and hardship; but that if the agricultural community were to strike there would be nobody left to strike in the cities. If Deputy Corish thinks the farmers are not being taxed sufficiently in order to give greater welfare benefits to those people, I should like to hear what the view of his colleagues in the Opposition is on that important statement by an ex-Minister.
I congratulate the Minister on having produced what I think is an honest Budget. The Opposition are disappointed because it did not create new taxes in order that they might have something to talk about. They were hoping—and I am afraid it has nearly descended to that—that it would not give too many benefits which would place them in the awkward position of having nothing to say. Therefore, they have resorted to the only type of statement they could make: that it is a stagnant Budget, that it is not a progressive Budget, and finally Deputy Corish said that we had no Budget at all.
If we keep our feet firmly on the ground and continue to place the emphasis on the development of an expanding productive economy, we will see, year by year, the type of Budget that some Deputies think we should produce after one year in office, a Budget which will show increased production, and consequently increased employment, providing a better standard of living and making provision for more and more employment as success follows success. That is not founded on panic measures or temporary measures. Above all, it is not founded on measures of political expediency.
I have been present here since the speeches on the Budget began. I have listened to everyone who has spoken and I heard some good speeches. The last speaker impressed me, as did the Minister for Industry and Commerce and other speakers on the Opposition side. However, if good speeches solved our problems, we would have no problems. I am well aware that there were good speeches last year, the year before and every other year, but what interests me is results.
It is all right to say that the people in receipt of social benefits should not look for more, as the most important thing is exports. Surely, after 30 years, we should have come to some finality as to our position financially and as to our position in regard to social benefits, and surely after that length of time we are not going to adopt the same approach. I am satisfied that we will always have a substantial number of unemployed people, in spite of our great expectations. I have read a lot of history, especially Irish history, by many different authors. Recently, I was reading Dorothy MacArdle's History of Ireland and I have read many election speeches of 1918, and so on. What impressed me was that England was to blame for emigration and for the state of the country and what we could do if we had our independence. We have our independence and the best we can do is to give people who are unemployed 30/- if they are married and 25/- for old age pensioners, about half what people get in the North and in England.
Exports are supposed to be of great importance. I do not think we shall ever be able to export more than we are exporting. We have no raw materials to speak of, and to export will always entail a great effort on our part. We cannot give any great guarantee because there is outside competition from people more skilled than we are, and then we have the people of those countries to which we export making demands for protection. I hope we will succeed in our export drive, but I have no great expectasions. Our main exports will always be agricultural, but that should not stop us from trying in other spheres because it is by bits and scraps that you attain something. But to say that until we have reached a stage in production that is supposed to abolish all our unemployed, the unemployed are to be satisfied with a bare existence is unacceptable. We should accept the fact that the unemployed, the infirm and the old people are part of our make-up.
Only recently, the Taoiseach referred to a cake and said that only by enlarging the cake could everybody get a larger slice. Following that up, I take it that the State should be run like a home. In a home, the parents will not give a very small piece of cake to the person who happens to be unemployed and a very large piece to the person who is employed. There may be a small margin of difference, but that is all. Here the parents, the State, say: "You are not working so you will have to do with just a bare existence. When you are working, we shall treat you well." That seems to be their policy.
The Government recently gave about £1,500,000 to civil servants, something like 10/- a head, to people who had a good wage. They may argue that they were entitled to something to make up for the rising costs of foodstuffs, and so on, but the fact remains that they had a fairly good wage. I suppose the vast majority of them have salaries of from £8 to £12 or £13 per week. Nevertheless, although the Taoiseach said they could not find the money to increase these social benefits, a few days later they agreed to give the civil servants, the Garda, the Army and the teachers an increase in pay amounting to approximately £1,500,000.
Where did the Government find that money? A year ago, certain categories in receipt of social benefits were granted 1/- to offset the rise in the price of foodstuffs as a result of the withdrawal of the subsidies. It has been proved that that was only portion of what the withdrawal of the subsidies would cost these people. I estimated that the withdrawal of the subsidies cost each adult about 2/8. These people were granted 1/-.
Surely the Government realises that since that time those employers who have paid increased wages have raised the prices of their commodities. Only recently, as a result of Government action, C.I.E. decided to raise every fare by 1d. as from 12th May. School children, living on the perimeter of the city, who used to have a special rate will now have to pay the full rate. The Government talks about there being no increase in taxation. There is indirect taxation as far as those people are concerned.
Since the withdrawal of the subsidies, most commodities have increased in price. Those which have not increased in price will, I am certain, increase in the future, because if the employers have to pay this 10/-, they will increase prices to offset that increase in wages. The unfortunate people who got a paltry 1/- 12 months ago will have to pay these increased prices or do without the commodities. If they live on the outskirts of the city, they will have to pay the extra 1d. to and fro. Where will they get it? They can rob and some of them, I suppose, will. That will be the Government's responsibility. According to the latest report, there were more offences committed last year than in previous years. Temptation will make people do a lot of things.
How can anyone expect people, who got 1/- a year ago to meet an impost of approximately 2/8, how to spend a further 3/-, 4/- or more to meet increased prices out of the same so-called social benefit? How can anyone expect such people to carry on? Surely the Government could have decided, considering that they are to give civil servants an increase of 10/-, to split that £1,500,000 and give a little more to social welfare recipients. Remember, the people who will get this £1,500,000 are already earning good wages and salaries. Surely, it is not right to leave these people in the lurch simply because they are non-productive.
That is a very callous way to treat people who find themselves in the position in which they are through no fault of their own. It is certainly not the fault of people over 70 that they cannot work. It is bad enough that they should have to wait until 70 to get the pension. In the old days in Africa, they used to knock these people on the head and eat them when they ceased to be productive. Perhaps the Government would like something like that to happen here. After their own fashion, that is what they are doing.
There is no work for the unemployed. Since I became a Deputy, I have had hundreds of letters from people who think that, because I am a Deputy, I can find jobs for them. I have had hundreds of people calling upon me, looking for work. That is proof that there is no work. It is not the fault of the people that they are unemployed. I can suggest to the Minister now how he can solve unemployment; let him give every unemployed man a free ticket to England. It will cost £3 to £4 per head, but the Minister will get the money back in a few weeks. He will not have to pay these people social welfare benefits any longer. He will have the advantage of their remittances coming back into the country. It would be infinitely better for him to do that rather than leave these people in the lurch.
I can see no hopes of any increase in employment. In fact, I see more unemployment. I am a member of the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation and I am acquainted with the housing problem. A few weeks ago, 30 temporary men in the painting section were laid off. They are hoping to get back. Yesterday, their representative came to me and he told me that there were no longer 30 men waiting to get back; there were only 23, seven having gone to England. Last Friday, at a meeting, we were told that the direct labour section of the corporation which, at one time, comprised 700 workers now comprises only 200 workers. In exactly three weeks' time, that section will fold up completely. No more houses are to be built on the outskirts of the city, and 200 more building labourers will get their tickets to England. For the Minister's information, thousands more would go to England, were it not for the fact that they have not got the money for their tickets. I am giving him a tip now: give them a free ticket. I hate to have to suggest that, but it is better for them to go to England and earn a few pounds rather than stay around here in their miserable plight and, perhaps, do things they should not do.
There was every justification for giving these people a little more. It is all very well for people to sneer about producers and non-producers. The people who are running this country have been running it long enough to have done all the producing necessary. As far as employment and unemployment are concerned, there are more experienced men here in relation to these problems than I am. However, I am learning fast since I came in here. It is like the popular song in Annie Get Your Gun—“Anything you can do I can do better.” That is all I have been listening to here in the past four months.
Let me make a suggestion now for the solution of unemployment. Two jobs per man should be discouraged. How can we solve unemployment if 30,000 to 40,000 have two jobs? There is plenty of land to be reclaimed. The ocean is big enough. I was in Holland two years ago and I saw what they are doing there. Land under water two years before was producing flowers and other things. We must allocate a fair proportion of our income to constructive work, irrespective of whether or not it is productive.
We are in the position that we are mainly dependent upon agriculture and agriculture has not the same employment potential as industry. We must do something to keep our people employed. We must have something like housing and, since housing is now coming to an end, we must substitute something else. We want the country to have amenities. We want it to be a country worth visiting. If people on the Continent behaved as we do, there would be no tourists to the Continent because there would be nothing worth while to see. I have always advocated an underground railway system in Dublin. That would provide work for 5,000 people for the next five or six years. It would also provide protection in time of war.
There is then the tourist trade. There are 10,000,000 labouring people in England for whom we could cater as potential tourists. It is said that they all get their holidays at the same time, and, if they all came together, that would not suit us. They can be organised to come at different periods of the year. I was in Blackpool last year in June and it was full of people from Oldham. I was told that in two weeks' time the people from Bolton would be there and, in the following two weeks, the people from some other industrial centre. The whole thing was organised in such a way that Blackpool has a season extending over a full five months every year. Could we not have the same? Could we not have cheap fares and holiday camps? These people do not want hotel accommodation. They want cheap "digs"—bed and breakfast. We could have 10,000 every week. There are 10,000,000 English workers to be wooed as potential tourists.
Another matter, in which I am interested from personal experience, is the dance tax. As a result of lobbying, the Minister gave this concession of £50,000 to the cinemas. A lot of us were asked to Jury's Hotel to meet the cinema people. But the dance-hall business gives employment directly or indirectly to about 30,000 people. Whenever there is a dance, there has to be a band, doormen, caterers and so on. Fourteen or 15 persons are employed. Dances are on every night of the week and as there are about 5,000 dance-halls, you can work out the number employed.
There was a tax imposed on dancing in 1932, I think, which applied to sums over 4½d. The Minister will agree that 4½d. at that time would be equivalent to about 1/- now, but the tax has not been altered. I asked him some time ago did it pay to collect this tax. He admits he is getting about £160,000 a year from it, but he cannot say what that costs. Since dances are held nightly, these inspectors have to be engaged on overtime. There are hundreds of unlicensed dance-halls all over Ireland in respect of which no tax is paid. The Minister has brought about that situation because he has overtaxed dances. I know what I am talking about because I was in the business myself. Half of the dance-halls are now idle three days a week. If the dance-hall people had been as well organised as the cinema people, they might have got some concession.
I want to conclude by making a protest against the callous attitude of the Government in treating people on social benefits in the way in which they did, in view of the fact that costs are still rising. In particular, this further increase in bus fares will make martyrs of these people.
This Budget has been called by a lot of different names. When I got a copy of it and saw the way it was spaced out and boosted up to 31 pages, I could only call it a frothy Budget. I think it is a very good description of it. The Minister has shown a kind of contempt for the House by producing a Budget like this, the same contempt as was shown by the Minister for External Affairs when introducing his Estimate. Assured of himself and assured of his majority, he just does not care.
I underlined a portion of this Budget Statement which says:
"Production was stimulated both by increased export demand and by higher internal demand resulting from increased incomes, particularly amongst the farming community."
I hope the Minister will go down to his constituency and make that speech to the farmers there. As that appears to be the best the Minister can say about the farming community, I will go straight on to how this Budget affects agriculture and how the policy of the Government has affected agriculture.
All the people who put in for wage increases—the civil servants, civic guards, industrial workers, school teachers, and so on—got their increases because of the increase in the cost of living. But the poor old farmer discovered that, even though the cost of living went up for him, even though his costs of production went up and even though his rates went up, he had to take less for his milk, his barley, his wheat and his bacon. I do not think enough stress can be laid on that. How can one defend the raising of salaries and wages of so many people all over the country and, at the same time, reducing the income of the farmer?
When the Government came into office, they gave us the old mixture-as-before, the political clap-trap about expanding economies. I heard Deputy Brennan use it here to-day. We got the line about the way the economy would be expanded. They were going to "get cracking" immediately, and £250,000 was set aside to investigate and improve the sales of our products in other countries. On Budget day, Deputy Wycherley asked how much of that £250,000 had been spent during the year by the "get-crackers." The answer given by the Minister was £890. That is stated at column 595, Volume 161, No.5 of the Dáil Debates of Wednesday, 23rd April, 1958. That is a frightful confession of failure after a year. They were going to go galloping to the ends of the earth looking for markets, but I am suspicious that this £890 was only to summon one or two committees to Dublin. I notice that the Minister called a meeting of the Irish canners and the dead meat trade. They were to investigate the possibility of selling Irish dead meat and canned products abroad. That was not necessary at all. These people know their business. They have pioneered their dead meat trade in America, Spain, Germany and Italy. The Minister would be better engaged looking for an alternative market for our milk products.
Deputy Brennan deplored the fact that people went back; but Deputy Brennan hardly went forward. He spoke about what so-and-so did in the past. I thought he was going to speak about what Gladstone said in 1884. I shall go back, but not to Cromwell's time. He put words into Deputy Corish's mouth and said that he expected a statement to come from this side of the House, that Deputy Corish was actually submitting to the Government that fresh taxes should be put on the agricultural community, a thing that Deputy Corish did not say. I am glad Deputy Corish is in the House.
I never even mentioned the words "agricultural community".
He invited a statement from this side of the House. All I have to say is that the only time I heard anybody mention that there should be a tax on the agricultural community was when Deputy MacEntee said: "Taxation rests lightly on the land." Deputy MacEntee got up here this evening and attacked former Ministers for Finance and posed as an agricultural expert. He posed as an agricultural expert. For emphasis, he sometimes says the same thing twice. I shall adopt his habit. I say for the third time he posed as an agricultural expert. He gave a great dissertation on what former Ministers have done and the ruin they had nearly brought on the country. What I, in my innocence, cannot understand is that Deputy MacEntee was on two occasions Minister for Finance in a Fianna Fáil Government and, great expert though he is and great as is the experience he can claim to have, he was not appointed Minister for Finance in this Government. Maybe, in the Taoiseach's wisdom, he realised that he was not the man for the job.
By the action of the Government last year in withdrawing the subsidies, the cost of living increased. The Government saved £9,000,000 by withdrawing the subsidies and gave back a sop to the unemployed and old age pensioners of about £2,500,000. They saved £6,500,000. I am not as good a financial genius as the Minister for Health. I do not know where that £6,500,000 went to but I know the effect. Even if they say that they saved £6,500,000, there has been a chain of destruction from the day they did it. As I said at the beginning, as a result of the increase in the cost of living, industrial workers claimed an increase in wages to meet that increase, and they got it. The cost of food increased for hospitals and other institutions. That resulted in the supplementary estimates that were sent back to the local authorities. Then the local authorities had to meet increases in pay, and that reacted again, and the rates went up on the farmer and on the people in the city. Would it not have been better to have continued the subsidies and to have avoided that chain of reaction?
Now, of course, the people in Dublin got a stab in the back—something that should have been mentioned in the Budget or to this House—and the people in the country got a stab in the back in the increase in railway and bus fares. In the days when small children were working in the mines in England, Cobbett said in the British House of Commons that it looked as if it were the small children who were the bulwarks or the wooden walls of England. Now, it looks as if the Government are looking to the children's lunchtime pennies to get them out of their troubles with C.I.E.
I have referred to the position in which the farmers find themselves. A good deal of Fianna Fáil propaganda is put out against farmers—how well off they are, and so on. I was rather shocked when I heard a Fianna Fáil Deputy in this House—I would not think any other Fianna Fáil Deputy would stand over what he said— when a reference was made to millers' cars, saying: "Did you ever see the farmers' cars outside Mass on a Sunday?" That is the kind of mentality we get amongst some of the hierarchy of Fianna Fáil.
The Deputy is giving it a bit of a twist.
I am not. There is no twist in that. I do not twist words or put words into people's mouths. There was a twist put into it in the Official Report.
The former Taoiseach said they were going around in Chryslers.
No. I beg your pardon. Nobody said they were driving around in Chryslers. I can never understand why I am never allowed to address this House without interruption. I sat here since 3 o'clock this evening and heard more vilification from those benches and did not interrupt. I was here at 6 o'clock and could have called for a House, called you in when you were feeding yourselves like oxen. I did not. Now you have come in at 7.30. I did not get much chance of eating when I was over on those benches. They would come in here at 6 o'clock and call for a count when we would have our tea ordered and bring us in. I repeat that a reference was made here to the millers' cars and a Deputy over there said: "Did you ever see the farmers' cars outside Mass on a Sunday?" I repeat that that is the mentality and the propaganda that are being pushed, as if the farmer had not a right to as good a car as anybody.
Reference was made in the House this evening to the enormous benefits poured into the farming industry with this £2,500,000. Now I go on to an agricultural expert, the Minister for Industry and Commerce. This was said only last week, on the 24th April:—
"I said we should aim, for example, to cut down by two-thirds imports of feed grain, of barley and maize. It has been done. In the year 1956 we imported maize to the value of £2,745,000: in the year 1957 imports of maize had been reduced to £408,000."
Arising out of that, I have a suggestion to make. We are sending wheat to England at £18 10s. a ton and that will make pig feeding cheap for some people in England and put people to compete against us very hard in a market where we are feeling the brunt of competition.
I have been informed that there are people in this country in the privileged position of being able to buy some of this surplus wheat at £20 a ton—the biscuit manufacturers of this country— and that they were put into that position in order to give them an opportunity of competing in the British market. That sounds very well but I have to look at this from the point of view of a person who comes from the country to this House and I say, would not it have been as well to have given this wheat to the farmers and to the pig feeders of this country to give them a chance of competing in outside markets with their bacon? It may be said, of course, that I would ruin the barley market. I would suggest that what should be done with the surplus wheat is that there should be a certain amount run in with equal quantities of barley, that it be all ground together, and the mix offered at very attractive prices in one-ton lots. It is another matter to offer six-ton lots to farmers, because a good many of the farmers cannot store six-ton lots.
That would seem to be a matter for the Estimate for Agriculture.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce referred to maize, barley and wheat grain.
Yes, but the question of six-ton lots might be a matter for the Estimate.
I shall have to continue on agricultural matters as they apply to the Budget. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that the Estimates this year show a provision for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. He referred to a figure of £1,116,000, at column 780, Volume 167, of the Official Report, in connection with this disease. There are many farmers in the country and some of them said they would not co-operate. I would appeal to them not to say that. Also, I would appeal to the Minister for Agriculture—I am not prepared to wait until the Agriculture Estimate comes before the House—to co-operate as far as the eradication of bovine tuberculosis is concerned, and have his own herd tested. If anybody wishes to contradict me on this, and to say it is a misstatement, I have the Minister's own words here, and I think I should be allowed to read them. They appeared in the Sunday Express of January 12th, 1958, which stated: “He believed the only way a complete success of the scheme could be achieved was to mop up the disease county by county.”
Surely the Deputy will agree that a debate on that scheme would arise more relevantly on the Estimate for Agriculture and not on the Financial Resolution?
I agree, but I hope you will allow me to read this, because I believe it is a matter of some moment and some urgency, as the tubercular-tested scheme should be put into operation as quickly as possible. I want to give the Minister a chance of reading it.
Was it the Sunday Press?
The Sunday Express.
You should not be reading those Sunday papers.
The Deputy should get Ireland's Own.
Ireland's Own was a good fiction paper, but it could not touch the Press.
The matter does not arise on the Financial Resolution. It is one for the Agriculture Estimate.
I think I should be allowed to read it. The Minister for Agriculture said, in the interview given to the Sunday Express:“I have not had my own cattle tested.”
That still does not make it relevant.
Fr. Mathew, a man for whom I have a great admiration, when he wanted to make a success of his campaign, said: "Here goes, in the name of God," and he took the pledge himself. I wish to deal with what the Minister for Industry and Commerce said in reference to the Budget when he spoke to make political capital. He said at column 789 of the Official Report:—
"There are at the present time taking shape in many parts of Ireland either extensions of existing factories for the production of additional quantities of these goods or new factories being built for that purpose.... I urged the establishment of a State commercial export marketing organisation. That step had been recommended by the Commission on Emigration and, on consideration of the recommendation, the committee of the Fianna Fáil Party decided to adopt the recommendation and said so at the time but, upon re-examining the proposals since I resumed office as Minister for Industry and Commerce, I decided to proceed with it at the present."
He went on to speak about a lot of other commissions which he set up, but it was a very poor speech by the Minister, the man who was going to "get cracking", the man who is able to come into the House and make the most extraordinary statements which have no foundation at all, and get away with them.
In case Deputies might be a bit confused, I want to read what was said here on Wednesday last. There were very few members in the House at the time. I quote from column 784:—
"Mr. O'Sullivan: The £100,000,000 plan.
Mr. S. Lemass: I will deal with that later on."
Then there was a contretemps between the Minister, Deputy Sweetman, Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Dillon. Those three Deputies left the House and the Minister for Health asked me was I leaving, too. I replied that I was not because I wanted to hear the dissertation on the £100,000,000 plan.
You had to get in.
What I should have done was ask for a House at the time. There were few Fianna Fáil members behind the Minister.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
The Minister then continued to speak about expanding the economy. That is a topic which Fianna Fáil will probably refer to in the Galway by-election. He spoke of confidence with a capital "C" and about the proper mentality for investment. We have the Control of Manufactures Act and the Minister was bragging recently about the other Bill, which was introduced in that connection, to make it easier for people to come into this country and invest their money in it. On my reading of the other Bill, no matter from what country people come in here, we will always have a certain amount of Irish control and we should ask ourselves at this stage is that correct or not? We are always terrified of cartels? We are afraid of big firms. Do we want just little hole-in-the-corner industries or do we want great industries? We have some industries which are tied to cartels and they never have any difficulty in disposing of their surpluses. It would be worth the while of members of this House to look into that fact.
In recent years, an Irish industry situated down the country was practically at death's door. It was important to the town in which it was located that it should survive. That industry was in the red for over £200,000. They got permission to tie themselves up with a big "foreign" firm, as they say in this House. That industry has carried on for the past couple of years. They had not to change their system of manufacture or bring in new experts. The only thing they were short of was salesmanship. They are out of the red now because, through being tied up with a big international combine, all their surpluses can be disposed of.
I have heard the Minister for Lands at times berate the inter-Party Government for their terrible extravagance, and so on. I want to say what other supporters of that Government have said, namely, that I am very glad the inter-Party Government spent money in the way they did. Deputy J. Brennan said Deputy Dillon claimed that the inter-Party Government built every house since the inception of this State. He made no such claim. What he said was that since the inter-Party Government took office in 1948, they saw to it that the vile slums in Dublin were blotted out. I could add to that statement that likewise were slums blotted out in the city I come from and the slums in towns and even in small villages. We had plenty of our agricultural slums, too. They were wiped out and that was good spending.
We have a fine sanatorium in Waterford which is not working to full capacity. About eight years ago, I had to come to Dublin and go around with my hat in my hand in order to try to get a boy into a sanatorium. It looked as though he might die if he was not brought into it. He was. That was a bit of luck. However, what about all the boys for whom there was no place, That was more money that was wasted in building—to cut out the greatest scourge that ever afflicted the Irish people.
A great deal of money was spent on schools. I suppose the Minister for Lands thinks that was bad. Money was spent on dock installations and roads and I suppose that that was bad, too. A western Deputy spoke about special employment schemes. I have not much to say in regard to them because we do not get very many of them. All our unemployed seem to be rich men: even though we have a lot of unemployed, we would not get any of these schemes.
It was said here this afternoon that panic Budgets were brought in and that more money was squandered on other works and schemes. When Fianna Fáil were in opposition, I remember an Opposition Deputy berate his own county man, Deputy P. O'Donnell, then Minister for Local Government, because of the amount of money allocated by him for roads and various works in Donegal. I happened to look up the figures to see how things were working out. Donegal was getting £290,000, whereas my constituency was getting £132,000. I would not say a lot for the men here who were hounding and prodding and looking for more money after having been treated so generously.
Deputy MacEntee made some fine statements about the Budget to-day. He must have influenced it by the way he was talking. It is a wonder to me he did not influence some of the leftover money that went to the film renters—not to the people who own the cinemas. I have read statements by these people and met them. It is of no benefit to them at all. A handful of film renters have been handed out £50,000. Would it not have been better if they had abolished an entertainments duty on something on which the Minister for Health seems to be an expert, namely, the entertainment tax on greyhound racing? In 1951, £38,000 was collected; in 1952, £33,000 was collected; in 1953, £31,000 was collected; in 1954, £28,000 was collected; in 1955, £25,000 was collected; and, in 1956, £23,000 was collected. The tax collected was going down. Anybody who listened to the Minister for Health when he was on the Opposition Benches and when he used to speak for five and six hours when obstructing the Greyhound Industry Bill would think that his interest would now be so great as to influence the removal of that duty.
I often wonder if the Taoiseach knows half the things that are going on in his Party. I will not go into that matter because he would not be in the fortunate position of being able to read as much as he should. I say that with every respect in the world and do not try to twist it around again. Coming up from the country, coming into Dáil Éireann and listening to speeches from members of the Front Bench of the Government, I often wonder at what we are told are responsible Ministers. That is particularly so when we hear dissertations by the Minister for Health on the financial position of the country. He said the inter-Party Government had not much success with their loans. He actually said that the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. I do not think that is a suitable statement for any Minister to make in the Parliament of his country.
I suppose we should excuse the Minister for Health because, when he was an ex-Minister, out of all the ex-Ministers of the whole world, he was unique in so far as, when the Government of his country was floating a loan, he advised the people not to put their money into it. He should reflect now on his conduct on that occasion and on the conduct of the present Opposition. Whenever loans were discussed in this House, the Leader of this Opposition stood up and invited the people to back them with everything they had.
Regarding fisheries, we were told here this evening that nothing was done during the time of the inter-Party Government to obtain a market for fish, that only a market for shellfish was found during Deputy Dillon's term of office as Minister for Agriculture. I read of the legend of the Flying Dutchman supposed to have sailed the seas, but I never thought he would be produced now. These must have been the ghosts of Dutchmen who came to Dunmore pier, and are coming for the past four or five years, to buy the fish.
The Deputy may not discuss fisheries on the Financial Motion.
Fisheries were discussed by Deputy Joseph Brennan, Sir. He discussed the policy of the Minister for Fisheries and the wonderful things he was going to do. Great pressure is brought by various Deputies to have buildings erected or money spent in their constituencies on anything, whether productive or not, the main thing being to get something done. Fishery installations have been erected in various ports, at considerable expense to the country. I am in a position to say that in some of them there has never been a fish yet. There is a fishing port in my constituency, Dunmore, where hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish are caught each year.
That is a matter for the Estimate, not for the Financial Motion. It does not arise on the motion.
Very well, I shall wait for the Estimate. I turn now to "the forgotten men", as far as the Budget is concerned, the unemployed. I have never subscribed to the theory that unemployment can be cured, but they have—the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fianna Fáil Government. They have placarded it all over the country for the past 26 years, in all classes of propaganda, including handbills and handouts. They have used the unemployed at times to prostitute them and to buy their votes with free beef and free milk. In this Budget, after this wonderful year of progress they say they have had, there is not a word of hope for the unemployed.
I did not say I wanted millions spent on increased social services, but the Fianna Fáil Party stated that unemployment was to be cured immediately. The women were to vote for Fianna Fáil and the men were to go into work the following Monday. That is a base betrayal of those unfortunate people. That is what the Budget is—a betrayal of the unemployed, a betrayal of the thousands of young people who are leaving the country and a betrayal of the farming community.
In examining what this Budget is doing, or is intended to do, we must consider the position as it existed on the 20th of March of last year when this Government took over. We must ask ourselves why a Government with a full majority cleared out of office and foisted a general election on the country. The sole reason was that the country's financial condition then was such that they could not remain one month longer in office. In regard to local authorities, there was in the Department of Local Government a horde of officials, all with their minds turned on one job—how to prevent local authorities doing anything that would cost money. Those were their instructions. There was due to the Cork County Council, in housing grants alone, on the day that Government left office, £500,000.
How much is due now? The Deputy does not know.
We found that this money was due by the county council in the shape of grants to contractors, to unfortunate people, newly-married people who were in for loans and grants to get houses built for themselves and who found themselves unable to pay for them. That was the condition of affairs right through the country at that time.
In the Department of Health, matters were getting into such a condition, due to the financial stringency, that they could not find 50 per cent. of the cost of 20 beds in an orthopaedic hospital in Cork. That is why those people left office—and no one can deny it. It was their second term in office as a mixum-gatherum.
Well, it is a queer mixum-gatherum you have now.
Let us see how they got on.
The Deputy would have left long ago if he had the courage of his convictions.
I did not interrupt Deputies.
You were not here.
The Deputy was raised to such a sphere of respectability when he was a Parliamentary Secretary and a Minister that he ought to know how to conduct himself. After their first term in office, this country found itself, for the first time, saddled with a burden that was the foundation of new taxation. They came into office having to pay principal and interest on a public debt of £4,500,000 per year and the day they left office, three years afterwards, that had been increased to over £10,000,000 a year. They left office on 20th March last year and the burden then was £17,000,000 a year, to be found in principal and interest before there was 1d. for anybody in the country. Those people over there are directly responsible for an increase in the principal and interest that has to be found by taxation each year—responsible for the difference between £4,500,000 and £17,000,000 which we have to find now.
That is No. 1. You can add to that at least £4,000,000 more for a surplus of civil servants who are not wanted and who cannot be got rid of. A recent investigation in one Department showed that there were some people there who were working only 1½ hours per day. We know the number of extra officials who had to be brought in in temporary capacity, during the emergency. There were 4,000 odd of them. On the day the inter-Party Government took office, their first job was to make all of those 4,000 permanent, despite the fact that the emergency was over, rationing was over and the need for those people had gone.
Now, I can understand a Government doing that rather than throwing more than 4,000 men and women on to the unemployed list, but I can also understand them coming along, at the other end of the stick, and saying: "We have to find room for those people but we are closing down on recruiting until such time as that gap is closed." It would probably take five or six years, but it could be done. Instead of that, recruiting was continued more than ever, so that to-day we have a further burden of £18,500,000 for the Civil Service. It was £17,000,000 when I spoke last about it, so £35,500,000 must be found by taxation before any money is left for anything. Taking all that into consideration, I think the Budget we got is as good as anybody could expect.
I want to know where we are going and that is the main thing that should concern everybody. If we are to have the position in which one Government comes in for three years and endeavours to straighten out the country's financial affairs and then another Government comes in for another three years and undoes the work that has been done, leaves bigger deficits and so on, it will not be long until somebody else is taking over, and it will not be either of the two Parties in this House.
I object to certain things in this Budget. I object to the provision of money for any committee or organisation, no matter who sets it up, when the money contributed by the taxpayer is not accounted for in this House, and is not open to question in this House. For example, £250,000 was voted by this House in 1953 for the erection of a sheet mill down in Haulbowline for Irish Steel Ltd. I have asked questions since then about what became of that money. The Minister tells me it is a semi-State concern and they can do what they like with the money. All I know about it is that the sheet mill has not yet been erected and we are at present paying through the nose for blank sheets from John Bull in order to keep that little industry going.
That is a matter for the Estimate, not for the Financial Resolution.
It is a matter of general policy.
It is a matter for the Estimate.
It is a great way to get over it; everything is a matter for the Estimate here. I am examining where we are going and I say it is wrong to have a state of affairs in which money is being voted under this Budget to be used by semi-private or semi-State concerns who are not responsible to any Minister and for whom no Minister need answer in this House as to where the money goes. I think that is very apposite to this Budget. I am more than anxious to see employment here, to see industries increasing, but when we hear, from all sides of the House, of the flight from the land and when we look at the sums down here for what is known as the Agricultural Credit Corporation, we wonder what the money is for in this Budget. We wonder how long we will have an agricultural population at all.
You cannot stop the flight from the land when you have a state of affairs in the country whereby you have a big gap as between the value of a man's four bones per week in one industry as against another. The value of a man's four bones in agriculture is £5 a week; the value of that man's four bones in Irish Steel, for instance, is roughly about £10 10s.; and down at White-gate it is valued at £8 10s. On what basis can we stop the flight from the land while that is the general condition? That general condition has not improved.
I have made a comparison of conditions in, say, 1951 and the present time so far as the rural community is concerned and I find that rates have gone up by about 14/6 in the £. In Cork, where I can give the exact figures, rates have gone up from 24/11 to 38/10, almost 14/- in the £. To meet that in 1951, Cork farmers with heavy valuations got 82/6 a barrel for wheat and 48/- a barrel for barley. To-day these prices are severely cut so far as the farmers are concerned. Deputy Dillon's action in regard to wheat took £1,600,000——
78/6——
I told that child to shut up.
Order!
I shall give the Deputy a tomato, or does he want a dualpurpose hen? The jockeying done by Deputy Norton and Deputy Dillon in collusion in regard to wheat offals cost the farmers another £1,096,000 so that roughly speaking he was docked about £3,000,000 by the inter-Party Government, putting it lightly. Our people came along then and I have estimated the cost of their further reductions at about £2,000,000. That means a reduction of about £5,000,000 a year in the income of the agricultural community. Worse still there is no good outlook for the future. There is no use in a farmer saying: "I will go out and work harder to produce an extra half ton to make up for the loss in price" because if he produces the extra half ton, he will be cut more.
These are matters for the Estimate on Agriculture.
I am examining the general policy here——
The Deputy is going into too much detail on these questions on a Financial Motion.
I do not think I have talked of anything but finance since I started. We are entitled to know what is the remedy for the present position. It is a simple matter for us as agriculturists to find a remedy, nothing simpler. As a farmer I know I could not grow wheat even at Deputy Dillon's price and I shall not grow it in future. I also know I could not grow feeding barley at either Deputy Dillon's price or the present price. When we examine the balance of payments and find we have to pay £12,000,000 or £14,000,000 a year to the foreigner again for wheat, flour and feeding stuffs we might have a different tune.
We are faced with another problem in regard to bovine tuberculosis which will entail a reduction in the cow population of 25 per cent. I do not see the farmers replacing them and, if they do not replace them, the price of milk will go up by 2d. or 3d. per gallon, no matter what Government is in office. At the same time the balance of payments deficit will go up by between £30,000,000 and £40,000,000 because we cannot have calves without cows. These are drastic cures that I suggest, I admit, but something must be done to bring some reality into the situation.
I should like to know by what stretch of imagination a subsidy of £200,000 was included in the Agricultural Estimate for superphosphate which is, in plain language, a subsidy to Goulding's so that they can produce superphosphate as cheaply, or nearly as cheaply, as farmers can get it abroad. That £200,000 should not be in the Estimate for Agriculture; it should be in the Estimate for Industry and Commerce. It has no business where it is. When we speak about export bounties and subsidies, I suppose we shall be accused of being unpatriotic as agriculturists, but I should like to point out that we have an annual export of some £5,000,000 worth of beer, stout and porter. Is this House aware that, to preserve that export this year, a small section of the community gave an export subsidy of £369,000?
When we met Messrs. Guinness, we were informed that they would have to give up exporting stout, which amounts to 60 per cent. of their brewing capacity, unless they could get malting barley at the same price as their competitors in Britain got it, 48/- a barrel. The amount involved was approximately 420,000 barrels of barley on which we dropped 17/- a barrel. That was a direct subsidy that the farmers paid to preserve——
The Deputy is going into details of agricultural matters now. They do not arise on a Financial Motion which deals with taxation.
I am dealing——
I know what the Deputy is dealing with.
——with bounties about which everybody in this House has been talking for the past month. I am pointing out what the farmers have to pay on one small item alone. Yet we talk about the flight from the land and we try to devise ways and means of stopping it. What is the position when we come to what is dearest to everybody in this House, the ending of Partition? We are voting £250,000 to find markets for our competitors in Britain of whom Deputy Dillon used to speak so highly. What is their present position as compared with their colleagues here? I will give again what two business firms found across the table. They found that the English farmers growing grain were 38/- per acre better off than their colleagues here, plus the difference between the 48/- and the 58/- which they get for all their barley. Those are fair comparisons. Yet we talk about bringing in people across the Border by inducement. They will not see very much inducement in that, nor will they see any inducement in the prices here compared with the prices across the Border.
I think nobody should object to the agricultural community trying to save themselves. After all, they will save the unfortunate taxpayer the job of finding £2,500,000 subsidy in regard to butter. They will also save on the wheat. There is only one simple remedy to keep the balance fairly level and that is to stop the purchase of fertilisers. If they carry out that policy for two years it is the Government who will be running after them and not they after the Government. That may be callous and unscrupulous.
It is unscrupulous.
Budget day is generally a day for a review.
A rehash.
We have seen in our time the end of landlordism as it existed in this country. Is it not time that steps were taken to end two other things which are the source of great and grave trouble to the people of this country at present? Speaking on the Fisheries Bill, I alluded to the trouble of getting down to fundamentals. How much money has been spent by the nation upon the improvement of inland fisheries for the past 20 years?
The Deputy may not pursue that line on this motion. It is a matter for the Department of Fisheries and not for the Financial Motion.
When we come to a debate on the Department of Fisheries, I will be told that I cannot advocate legislation. Therefore, I hold that on a general debate on the Budget which covers all the Estimates, I am entitled to call attention to matters of this description.
The Deputy is out of order in drawing the attention of the House to this matter on this motion.
We can allude here to the injustice done to the unemployed in not giving sufficient money and to the injustice done to the old age pensioners in not providing them——
These matters are usually related to the Financial Motion before the House and that is the reason they can be debated.
There is a portion of the Financial Motion before the House at present for about £198,000 to improve the value of fisheries for which, according as the value increases, the people of this country will have to pay more when they are taking them over.
If the Deputy proceeds in this manner, I shall ask him to resume his seat. The Deputy has been here long enough to know what he may discuss on the Financial Motion and what he may not.
Very well. I will find a means of discussing it. It will not be beyond my capacity. I have dealt with these matters to the best of my ability. I certainly take a very definite objection to the differentiation being made as between the agricultural community and the industrial community. I think it is wrong fundamentally. If an export bounty is to be paid for the export of goods, an export bounty should also be paid for the export of agricultural produce. What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.
I maintain that in matters of that description we could very easily improve matters enormously. I certainly object to this £250,000 for providing markets abroad. I do not see where the markets are. What is the £250,000 for—to find a market in Britain for butter, but at what price? Is it to find a market in Britain for bacon, but again I ask at what price? Is it a price we can sell it at here?
The cure for a surplus is not to have one and people who produce a surplus are idiots. The quicker they get that into their heads, the better. If you have a scarcity, as you had in the case of potatoes this year and a scarcity of oats, you will be paid for it. That should be lesson enough for all of us. I shall find another opportunity of dealing with the other matters to which I wish to refer.
Listening to the last speaker, I would say that he is the greatest critic I have ever heard of his own Party but, knowing Deputy Corry as I do, I know he really does not mean it. In all the Divisions that have taken place in this House Deputy Corry is always one of the first in to support the Party he now criticises. Apparently he is carrying out the policy of preaching one thing to the House and another thing to the people in Cork whom he represents.
I believed, with the whole Fianna Fáil Party, that in this year's Budget some concessions would be given to the people who were led to believe for the past two years that those concessions would be granted. Last year when the Budget was being introduced by the Minister he stated that it was a Budget that was left on his hands by the outgoing inter-Party Government. He gave the House to understand that if he had had the framing of the Budget there would be many changes which would be of benefit to the people, but that the money was not provided in that year's Budget and there was nothing he could do about it. He gave the farming community the impression that as far as prices for wheat, barley and oats were concerned, they in their turn would get all the concessions that had been promised by his Party from the various platforms during the general election.
Twelve months have gone by and the same Minister in the same Party has brought in a Budget in the framing of which we on this side of the House had no hand, act or part. What have we got? We have got a Budget—if, as some of the members of my Party have said, you can call it a Budget— that has possibly done more than ever to put thoughts of the emigrant ship into the minds of people who never before had the idea of emigrating. This Budget gives no hope for the working people, for the farmers or for the business people.
Fianna Fáil promised to do various things, and the reason the people accepted those promises was that the Fianna Fáil Party had formed the Government of this country for at least 19 years. In their Party they had many former members of Governments which had framed the laws and regulations which have obtained down through those years. Knowing this, the people said to themselves: "Those are the people who know what is really happening. If we put out the inter-Party group and return Fianna Fáil they will fulfil their promises because they know what they are talking about."
Deputy Corry said that the inter-Party Government went out of office because they were afraid to meet the wrath of the people. The real reason they went out of office was that they lost two by-elections, Carlow-Kilkenny and Laois-Offaly. I happened to be down there during both of those election campaigns. I listened to speakers from all Parties including my own. I know that the people of Laois-Offaly and Carlow-Kilkenny were told from those platforms that, if they returned a Fianna Fáil Government and put out the mixum-gatherum, as we are described by the other side of the House, that would result in a vast improvement for the people. Not alone would they cancel the reduction which the inter-Party Government had made in respect of wheat but there would be an increase in the price of wheat.
The barley farmers were led to believe that they would get a vastly increased price for their barley. The workers were led to believe that, with the return of Fianna Fáil, employment would be provided for them overnight. In those two constituencies the famous poster was displayed, copies of which were posted along the railways: "Let us get cracking. Wives, get your husbands back to work". The housewives "got cracking" and put us out of office. The result is that their husbands are not working except in Birmingham, Liverpool and London. The old age pensioners have not got as much as one 6d.——
That is not true.
Blind pensioners as well as the unemployed can barely exist on the benefits given to them.
The Deputy is saying that the old age pension was not increased.
Not adequately.
Here we have people who have spent all their lives toiling for this State, the old age pensioners and blind pensioners, and we could not in our generosity, either on this side of the House or the other side, now that these poor people have reached the evening of their lives, manage to give them at least half the amount the Government and the unions maintain represents the increase in the cost of living. Then we call this country Catholic Ireland.
As another speaker has said, we could not give the old age pensioners, the blind pensioners and the unemployed a small increase but we could give £1,500,000 to the civil servants. I want it to be clearly understood that a certain type of people, classified as civil servants, such as postmen and other people in lower jobs, are entitled to that 10/- increase but you have a type of civil servant drawing anything from £16 to £20 a week who has got that 10/- increase while it has not been given to people who really need it.
Deputy Brennan criticised what he called non-productive schemes. He as much as said that if the country wanted to progress there was only one way to do it—to cut out all non-productive work, and he included county council work. What do people in North Tipperary, in Dublin or anywhere else think of that, the people who are registered at the employment exchange, and trying to rear maybe three, four or five children on £3 1s. per week, when perhaps the rent of their house is 23/- or 27/-, as it is in the town of Nenagh, and when their coal bill may be 10/- or 12/- a week? What about the people who are employed either on productive or non-productive work? Their only ambition is to support those whom they are morally and legally bound to support.
A saving, possibly of £2,000,000, was made by the curtailment of schemes under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, but by that saving the Government inflicted a terrible injustice on workers in the rural areas. The Local Authorities (Works) Act schemes were productive schemes. Nobody can say that they were unproductive. I know farms on which land hitherto lying idle has been brought into production because of drainage schemes carried out under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Other Deputies can bear me out in that. In North Tipperary, we lost £17,000 under this Government, and that £17,000 would have tided a lot of workers over the months of December, January, February and up to June. Under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, they would have got at least a couple of weeks' wages at Christmas.
If the Government wants to save, they must save at someone's expense. The Government has many ways at their disposal in which to effect savings. Do not try to make all the savings at the expense of those who are unable to defend themselves. Make your savings on your £1,000,000 runways, on the establishment in the Phoenix Park, on the universities all over the country whose only function now is to direct the emigrants to go farther away. Do not try to save solely at the expense of the poor. This Government, the last Government and any future Government can always save if they are harsh enough and cruel enough to save at the expense of the poor people.
I appeal to all Parties to stop blaming one another. When one Party gets into office they immediately start accusing other Parties of having done this and not having done something else. That has been going on for the last 35 years. The people outside are now beginning to realise the true position and the cat-calls and abuse are beginning to wear thin. Is it not time we ceased hurling abuse at one another here and started to think of the country, the country we all profess to love so much and for which we do so little? Is it not time we thought of the country and the people? Is it not time to make a joint effort and some sacrifice to help to get out of our present difficulties? Is it not a fact that all Parties seem to have lost their love of country and to harbour instead a love of Party? I appeal to all Parties here to co-operate to put this little country back on the map and make our economy one in which we shall not be, like the old age pensioners and others, waiting for the remittances to come from England from the emigrants who were forced to leave the country.
I spent some time over the week-end reading the Minister's Budget statement. Like the speech of the Minister for Health this afternoon, it raised some questions and posed some doubts. I propose to put these questions to the Minister, as well as my doubts, and I hope that the Minister will later be in a position to answer the questions and dispel the doubts.
In his statement the Minister referred to current account and he mentioned the deficit last year. He said that agricultural subsidies were mainly responsible, as well as higher interest charges. In relation to capital account, he speaks of the success in borrowing and to the fact that the deposits in the commercial banks increased during the year. Dealing with the economic background, he stated that production is higher both in agriculture and in industry. One is prompted to ask at this stage whether this higher production in agriculture is welcome, considering that in the opening portion of his statement the Minister referred to the subsidies paid for agricultural produce as forming a large part of the deficit?
The Minister spoke of increased incomes, particularly among the farming community. If increased incomes mean the money which accrued to the farmers, I wonder how much of that might be accounted as increased profits, taking into consideration the increased costs which the farming community has to bear? The present position in relation to agricultural produce is that the farmer is getting a lower price for some of the commodities he produces.
The Minister stated that bringing external balances into line restores confidence and provides the firm basis necessary for expansion. Perhaps the Minister will tell us later in what direction his mind is moving in relation to this expansion. How are we to reconcile the necessity for this expansion with the fact that the upward trend in exports halted towards the end of the year and, in the first three months of this year, our exports were not as great as they were. During 1957 imports were restrained by restrictive measures introduced in 1956. They increased towards the end of the year. Imports of essential industrial material are certainly welcome since industry provides an outlet for the employment of our people. The importation of luxury goods, such as form a large proportion of the list on which the levies were imposed, is rather inclined to influence unfavourably the balance of payments position.
In regard to the increase of productive efficiency, the Minister visualises a reduction in costs. There are two ways in which costs may be reduced. One is the lowering of the cost price per unit. Does this mean also a lowering of prices for agricultural products? It has happened this year. Various factors are likely to impose a strain on the balance of payments position in the coming year. Perhaps the Minister would inform us what factors he has in mind that might influence the balance of payments position? He might tell us what imports might do this. I do not think there is any necessity for the import of feeding stuffs when it has been proved that our farmers can efficiently produce in abundance the necessary materials for feeding stuffs. Surely it is strange to find that the surplus they produce is being exported at a far lesser price than that at which they can get the same material?
In regard to the general question of taxation, the Minister states that no extra taxation is being imposed this year. In regard to one sector of taxation, income-tax, there is very little incentive in this Budget to the people who pay such taxation. They are people taxed on their productive capacity. The more they produce by their ability to organise and direct their businesses, the more is taken from them. If there had been an inducement to these people, there might have been a greater incentive for them to produce more wealth and this, of itself, would mean increased employment.
I would have welcomed an increase in the allowance under the income-tax code. It is rather an anomaly that the allowances in regard to children are the same at all stages of their lives. As they grow up and become more costly to their parents, particularly when they go to school, there is need for increased allowances for the parents who have to maintain them at school until the age of 18 at least. No such provision is made here.
In regard to agricultural rates, there is an inducement to the farming community to employ labour on the land by giving them an allowance for individuals employed. I do not think it would be beyond the capacity of the Minister's advisers to devise some scheme which would allow of an encouragement to managements and business executives to recruit further labour.
The Minister referred to corrective measures to prevent an unduly large deficit. I am sure Deputies on all sides sincerely hope that no such thing as a deficit will occur.
In regard to the levies, they were imposed at a time when the balance of payments position was getting out of hand. They were imposed with the fixed idea of decreasing the import of luxury goods and were to be used for capital account. I heard it said by the Minister for Health to-day that what was now being done—using the levies for ordinary revenue purpose—was justified inasmuch as on a previous occasion it was taken from the left hand and put into the right hand. When the levies were imposed previously, they were used for capital purposes and clearly kept for that. Since the levies have been made part of the tax code, that means we have increased taxation. We may say it is simply using the levies to help the ordinary Budget, but as far as the people who purchase the articles on which there are levies are concerned, it means they must pay more for these commodities.
The Minister mentioned an amount for over-estimating. The only sum which would be available for Supplementary Estimates or unforeseen expenditure amounts to £1.425 million. If the necessity for unforeseen expenditure arises and if it exceeds this amount, there is no alternative other than increasing taxation or resorting to increased borrowing.
There is a section dealing with tax relief for annuity contributors. The Minister raises a doubt in my mind in the final sentence when he says: "An adjustment of the law as to the assessment of assurance companies will be involved." What exactly does this mean? If there is to be an adjustment in regard to the assurance companies and if there should be an increase in taxation, as far as that is concerned— and I hope not—I wonder if that would be passed on to the people who avail of the scheme for annuity contributions by self-employed.
The Minister says that the public capital programme for the coming year should afford at least the same volume of employment as last year. Last year's capital programme was curtailed, we are told. There is a large volume of unemployment and if the public capital programme is to be only the same as it was last year, there cannot be any hope of absorbing those who are now unemployed in State or semi-State schemes, or even in local authority works. In regard to local authority works, as the amounts available are the same as, or less than, they were last year, there can be no increase in employment there.
Referring to the use of capital for productive purposes, the Minister said:—
"Some reduction in the scale of investment under many of the heads I have mentioned is inevitable and may be welcomed because of the opportunity it will afford to apply more of our development resources and energies to immediately productive purposes."
In the succeeding paragraph, he refers to emigration and unemployment, the remedy for which is the provision of productive occupations. When the Minister is replying, he might indicate what his mind is in regard to the employment of capital for productive purposes.
It is to two sources that we have to look for employment. In the first place and in the main, it is to agriculture in all its phases. The second source is the industrial arm, to which we look for the provision of employment in urban areas.
The increased agricultural production which has been achieved does not seem to hold out any prospect to the producers or for the employment of people in rural areas contiguous to the areas in which this production is brought about. I suggest that we should process more of our agricultural products. In that respect, I was disappointed to hear from the Minister, in reply to a Parliamentary Question, that very little of the sum provided in last year's Budget, £250,000, for market research had so far been spent. It is not much use to produce agricultural commodities, if we do not know how to derive the greatest benefit from that production, or where it might profitably be marketed. We must develop abroad a better marketing system and make a more intensive study of requirements. Reference has been made already in this House to the fact that Irish butter is not getting the market in England which it would get, if certain steps were taken to popularise it. Deputy Cunningham of Donegal referred to that matter.
The Minister referred to having "held the line against increased taxation." I have already said that the use of levies on this occasion hardly justifies that statement. Table I of the Tables issued with the Minister's Financial Statement shows that the Budget of 1957 was estimated to bring in £122.51 million and actually realised £122.92 million; that expenditure was estimated at £122.51 million and that the actual expenditure was £128.80 million. The deficit shown by those figures has been referred to. In that expenditure, I suggest, subject to correction, the increased supplementaries amounted to £4.11 million.
In regard to the capital Budget of that year, I notice that the local authorities got £1,000,000, roughly, less than was estimated for, that the Industrial Credit Company, Limited, got £0.50 million less than was estimated for and there was £.3 million less for telephone capital. In the 1958-59 Budget, it is estimated that local authorities will get £2.26 million less than in 1957-58 and the E.S.B. £1.6 million less.
These figures must be taken in relation to the employment position. Table XII shows a decline in employment in agriculture of 60,000. In manufacturing industry, the position was static. In other production, there was a decline of 10,000 and, in services, a decline of 13,000. The average percentage of insured persons unemployed, taking the period covered by the Table, 1951 to 1957, rose from 7.3 in 1951 to 9.2 in 1957. According to statistics published in the Irish Trade Journal there are quite a number of occupations where unemployment seems to have increased among insured persons. The percentages have gone up in public works, in food, clothing materials and engineering. There has been a large increase in unemployment in general building and construction works, in transport and communications.
All these factors, taken in conjunction with this Budget, place an onus on the Minister and the Government to tell the House and the country how the current Budget can hope to inspire confidence amongst the people that these twin problems of unemployment and emigration can be dealt with, when the capital Budget proposes to use less money in the coming year than during the past year.
With regard to the agricultural community, the line which has been taken is that the more production there is, the less it gets. It does not hold out much hope also. We would need more incentives to production of all types in which to absorb those whom we have unemployed and to retain them here at home. It is regrettable that, on occasions such as Budget time, we should descend to vicious forms of attack on one another. Rather should members on all sides of the House give their opinions as to how best the problems which face our people could be met. It is very much to be regretted that these attacks occur. It will require the united efforts of everybody to devise a scheme which will lead to a general improvement of conditions for our people, an object which we hope everybody on every side of the House has at heart.
It would appear from the speeches of the Opposition that this Budget is very disappointing. It is disappointing to them, I suppose, because there are no increases in taxation. That is the only reason it was disappointing to that side. I listened to a colleague of mine, representing North Tipperary, who made great play about the unemployment situation. He said there was no provision made in the Budget to relieve it. Speaking on the reason the last Government went to the country, he said it was because they lost two by-elections. I do not think that is the reason. They went to the country because they knew the position in regard to the forthcoming Budget, and they knew very well they could not face up to it.
The last speaker has made a reference to the agricultural community and to agricultural production, with which I am in agreement. However, though there is seemingly a decline in employment in agriculture, as he stated, yet we have increased production. That shows that we cannot put all the unemployed to work on the land because we are mechanised. In certain parts of the country it is very hard to keep people on the land because the farmers are in competition with other industries, Bord na Móna, the sugar factories and such things, and the farmers cannot pay the same wages as those industrial undertakings.
Reference was made last week by Deputy Desmond to income-tax and, though he did not mention any section by name, he said he knew the classes which got away without paying income-tax. Deputy Lynch made reference to a remark of Deputy MacEntee's that taxation rests lightly on the land. Other people on that side of the House have said that income-tax should be imposed on farmers. One would think that the farmers were rolling in riches but, as the previous speaker has said, the farmers have to buy their seeds, pay their rates, pay their hired labour and, when that is done, they have very little left. Reference was made to the fact that cattle are giving the farmers a fair income but, after they have restocked their farms with cattle, they have very little money left in their pockets for anything else.
During the last 12 months of Deputy Costello's Government, I had experience, as a member representing North Tipperary on the county council, of people approaching us day after day asking when they would get grants for houses and such things. There was no money to pay these grants. At one meeting of the county council I had to propose that we raise the sum of £8,000 to pay the moneys which the Coalition Government should have made available to us the previous year. That Government put the county council into arrears, and we are still in arrears.
As was stated by the Minister for Health, ruination of this country began in 1947 or 1948. No one can deny it. The Coalition came together to put Fianna Fáil out of office. There was a new Party then which claimed it had a cure for all our ills. They were going to pick up money like mushrooms but, when they came into power, how did they act? They borrowed money which we shall be paying back for all our lifetime. They borrowed £112,000,000 which this generation and the next generation will be paying back to America, and it was money which was not spent in the best possible way.
Deputy Tierney talked about the good work done under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. I believe some good work was done under that Act but a lot of money was wasted and frittered away. In so far as that work is concerned it should be given to the ordinary man with a shovel, but I remember some councillors seeking £60,000 or £70,000 to clean a river. That was not a scheme for which the Local Authorities (Works) Act was first intended. Unless flooding of land occurred a grant was not made under it at first, but afterwards the provisions of the Act were otherwise used. I have known a scheme where half a mile of roadway was raised three yards. It took the water from the road but it flooded the adjoining farmers' land. That money was not usefully or wisely spent.
Deputy Tierney also made a remark about old age pensioners, and spoke about the increase given to civil servants. That was very good propaganda but when civil servants were given increases before we did not hear all this noise. The Labour Court has been established for some time and we must either abide by its recommendations or abolish it. We all deplore the position in which old age pensioners and widows find themselves. A suggestion was made by a Labour Deputy that we should put a tax on cigarettes, or on the pint of stout, to provide an increase in pensions for these people. It is all right to say that in this House but, if it were done, that Labour Deputy would make use of the increased taxation as political propaganda at chapel gate meetings. He would say: "Look what Fianna Fáil have done to you; they are putting more taxation on the pint."
Reference was made to income-tax and to the P.A.Y.E. system. I think the Minister said that a commission had been set up to examine the matter. I should like to see some agreement in relation to this tax because it can be a very serious hardship, and even road workers or workers with Bord na Móna now have to pay it. It would not be so bad if the P.A.Y.E. system were in operation. A few weeks ago, a young fellow approached me about a bill for £50 which he had received for income-tax over two years. He has not any money to meet that bill and the danger is that he, and others like him, will have to leave the country and leave his job. A young fellow could not have that amount of money at the present time. For that reason, I think the P.A.Y.E. system should be adopted. It would also help to clear up a lot of false statements, and so forth.
According to Deputy T. Lynch, another Deputy spoke about the farmers having motor-cars. I may say I am certain that he did not want to deprive farmers of motor-cars. However, when there was a debate in this House in regard to health, the former Taoiseach, Deputy J.A. Costello, remarked that we would be providing amenities for farmers of £50 valuation who had Chrysler cars. There are very few farmers of £50 valuation who can afford to have Chrysler cars.
Deputy Jones referred to a point which, on reading about it in the newspapers and on hearing it spoken of, seems to be bad. If we have a surplus of wheat, we must export it at £18 10s. to £20 while we must pay £27 for imported bran or pollard. I hope something will be done in that connection. It certainly looks bad that a producer will lose money because of overproduction and that we must export what we over-produce at a lower price than that which we must pay for what we import ourselves.
Deputy Tierney remarked that we should not bandy slanderous statements from one side of the House to the other or try to make political propaganda. I only wish he would adopt that attitude at home locally because he has quite a different tune down there. If we have two or three wet days down the country, he is inclined to blame Fianna Fáil for it. However, when he is here, he is all for shaking hands and everything is nice.
The former Taoiseach said that this Budget showed a sign of sleeping sickness or St. Vitus's Dance, so far as the Government are concerned. I think he must have been asleep during the whole of his term of office and until he went to the electorate, he did not open his eyes, but they opened them for him.
It has been said that the members of the Fianna Fáil Party put their Party before their country. No sensible person would be taken in by such a statement. We are doing the job which we have to do. If we wanted to curry favour and have all the people with us, would we not throw money out at will and then let somebody else pay for it later on? That would be a spendthrift policy and a gamble. We should all work together in the interests of our country which does not belong to the members of this House or to the members of the Seanad but to all the people of Ireland. It is up to each and every one of us to do his share. As a matter of fact, a number of Deputies might be better off, if they were not Deputies. It is strange to hear some people down the country say: "Life is easy for you. You are a Deputy. You have a good fat job."
The Minister is to be congratulated on keeping the Budget as it was. It is disappointing, as I know it, only to the Opposition. I suppose that position will continue while politics last. If there had been an increase on anything at all, there would be a far greater outcry.
This Budget is a tame affair. There is not colour, imagination or hope in it. It looks like the Budget of old, sick, tired, conservative politicians. The country demands a bolder policy. Human beings come before either bankers or money-changers. As a result of our experience over the past 30 years, it would seem that orthodox finance methods will not cure our ills. The conservative approach has failed and a new approach is needed immediately.
It is sickening to hear one side taxing the other across the floor of the House. We do not want that old rehash because it is nothing but tripe, and we are all sick of it. If you read back over some of the speeches made 15 years ago, ten years ago and last year, you will see that they are almost the same speeches from both sides of the House. We want to get down to brass tacks. We cannot sit here in complacency. There is a national crisis in this country which began, not to-day or yesterday, but 25 or 30 years ago. That situation must be righted. There is no use in talking about pin-pricks or anything like that. Something must be done and it will take big men to do it.
We cannot have 50,000 persons emigrating annually and 80,000 unemployed almost permanently. The hope of national reunification is now almost forgotten: we must resurrect that spirit. The youth of Ireland are now going behind prison bars. That situation must be righted. The agricultural income is falling. What hope does this Budget give to right any of these wrongs? None whatsover.
This Budget is dictated by the money kings. Cromwell's policy is in full swing. The small man must sell out or clear out and the big man comes along and buys up all around him. Then he sets up a ranching system. The small man is bought out or sold out and the big man is buying-up. We are told that the cattle trade is immense and important. Cromwell said the same thing. So long as we send cattle on the hoof to England, we are carrying out Cromwell's policy. I want to see a bold national policy. I want to see our young men and our small men given the same right as the big men. This country is a paradise for the money-changers.
This is a bad Budget. We cannot afford to have a Budget like this at a time when almost 80,000 persons are unemployed and 50,000 persons are emigrating annually. We cannot have this Government making the excuse that they are righting the wrong the inter-Party Government left behind them. The inter-Party Government left nothing behind them but good work and national progress. More was done by the inter-Party Government in their few years of office than was achieved by Fianna Fáil after 25 years of office, and I defy contradiction of that.
The present position of the country is critical and it will be worse. For a good many years, house-buiding was a great boon and gave excellent employment. Thanks to the progress made over the years housing is now easing-off and the unemployment in that industry is alarming. It is the same with regard to the roads. We now have some of the best roads in Europe, which means that we will have more unemployment as fewer men will be required to maintain the roads. The Local Authorities (Works) Act which gave a good deal of employment all over the country and in the right places—on the drains and on the farmers' land—has been closed down and there is no employment there. Bogs are being mechanised and, that being so, fewer people are required to work on them.
Thousands of men are leaving the bogs and seeking employment in Britain. Some years ago, thousands of men were employed on the bogs in the Midlands. To-day, there are machines there and most of these men are now in England. Our railways are closing down which means that thousands of our men are thrown on the scrapheap. The agricultural income is falling. Whether it be wheat, barley, oats or anything else, the price is falling. The farmers are being put into a critical position. Added to that, we have the unemployed. Is that not a grand situation for the present Budget, without the slightest ray of hope for any of those people?
I may be a revolutionary to some extent, as I believe the nation should control credit in the interest of the people and not in the interest of financiers. Bankers, insurance companies and big business must be controlled in the national interest. There are millions of pounds going out to those big syndicates to enhance work and buildings in other countries, chiefly Britain. We could use that money at home and it is the duty of the Government to see that it is available for the Irish nation. If we have any spare money, we might export it, but whilst we export money we must export people. While money goes, men must follow it. That is a dangerous situation which we have had too long in this country.
We want a revolutionary course. It will take the strength and character of every honest man to right our wrongs. Our position is very critical, more critical than the ordinary man knows. People sit complacently in this House when they should go out the country and see what is happening. There are revolutionary changes all over the country. The small men are being squeezed out, men cannot get work, big financiers are buying up property, chiefly land; but we sit here and hope things will come right. The Taoiseach said at one time that if things failed in this House he would go outside this House to right them. Things have failed and it is his duty to stand up to that promise and go outside the House to right the wrongs.
We have heard a strong man speak over the last month or two—Most Rev. Dr. Lucey, Bishop of Cork—and he has given a pointer to the way of progress, what we should do and should not do. Is the Government going to heed the voice of that great man? Will they heed the voice of the late Canon Hayes? If not, they are not doing the nation's work. They must wake up and not sit here complacently. We on this side of the House must wake up, because our nation is not in pawn and the wrongs can be righted by unity, co-operation, justice and honour. Do we stand for these things? We say we do, but we give only lip service to them. Our minds and hearts are far away.
The work which should have been done here in the last ten or 20 years is not being done, even to-day. We have this grand little nation called Ireland, that so many died for, almost decayed and dying; yet we sit here complacently and hope things will come right. We come in with a rehash of the annual Budget, the same old orthodox nonsense, the same old cross-fire in the House, with nothing done. It is a bad Budget, a weak Budget, a Budget of small men. We want something big, something bold. This Government has got a clear mandate from the people and there is no excuse for them. They can do almost what they like, but they have done nothing about it.
What hope is there for the next 12 months? None whatever, but the same flow of emigrants, the same amount of unemployed, a fall in the prices to the farmers, no hope for the small men but a large amount of hope for the big men, for the financiers and the money-changers. Is Fianna Fáil going to sell itself, body and soul, to those people? There was a time when they would spit in their faces and did not want them and did not need them, but now there is a change over. These men are now their friends. I cannot understand it, as it is a revolutionary change. There is no need for us to go whining and crying to other countries to come in and help up. There is plenty of money here for us to help ourselves, if we get down to a bold policy, take off our coats and do the right thing in the right way. What we need is honest work and sweat, in order to right the wrongs.
There is no need to send to Germany, to Britain or anywhere else for help to save the Irish nation. This nation can be put right by our own people. I want no men going out, whether Jews or otherwise, to beg others to come in here, who would only be international interlopers seeking to get money out of us. There is plenty of money and ability here to right our wrongs, to do small things in a big way. If we do that, we will have a grand country within 12 months. But no; "live in expediency" is the order of the day.
People outside are sick and tired of the politics we have here. I am sick and tired of them myself and so is every honest back-bencher but they are all afraid of the front benchers. It is time the ordinary man spoke up. We want no nonsense, no big flowery "flahaws" about what can be done and what should be done, while nothing is being done. What we want is work and action and those prepared for it should come out to the front. The nonsense must stop, so that there will be justice and honour for the small man. This is a grand little country, a glorious country, which has held its grip for thousands of years, in spite of adversity, pestilence, fire and sword and the pitchcap. Are we to go down in this State? If we do, we are not worthy of being men and women.
I appeal to every man to cut out the nonsense, on all sides, on the Fianna Fáil side, the inter-Party side, the Labour side, and so on. Every Party is sincere and honest. The inter-Party Government was good enough and was a good national Government. Fianna Fáil did many good things and many bad things. They must forget all about the past and think of the glorious future. We can have that by unity, strength and character. We must forget the small things and do the big things. This country can be righted by the right hand of honest men, without whining or crying to other people to come in and save us. We can save ourselves. In the name of Heaven, let us get down to good work and glorious work. Let us listen to the appeal of Dr. Lucey and Canon Hayes, let us have charity, peace and honour. On with the work, and Ireland is yours for the taking.
Listening to the very gloomy speech from Deputy Giles, I hope that he is not taken seriously, since such gloomy speeches do infinite harm to the nation's economy. There is no necessity for such speeches. We heard those who occupy a higher position in the ranks of the Opposition giving us the banshee's wail, not alone at 12 midnight but every minute of the day. They deplore the condition of the country and are trying to put up some sort of excuse for the terrible work they have been doing for some years past. They act like a bad carpenter, who tries to fill the bad spots with plenty of putty, hoping that even if they fall out the owner may by then have gone away.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this Budget is a good Budget. It is the first Budget in the past ten that has not given us extra taxation, that has not called on the taxpayers for another contribution. That in itself is certainly a very good omen. We have unquestionably restored the confidence of the people in this little nation. Without confidence, there would be a continuation of the appalling unemployment and appalling emigration of the past. Therefore, the restoration of confidence was absolutely imperative, if we are to succeed in fighting these two terrible cankers which have attacked this nation so very seriously in the past ten or 11 years. We have undoubtedly redeemed this country from the financial Limbo to which the Coalition Government had consigned it.
We know very well that, after three years or less of government, the Coalition found themselves unable to carry on. They had put on levies at a very unpopular time, but we did not stand up and condemn them or try to make political capital out of their misfortunes. On the contrary, we stood behind them in those days, weeks and months of crisis, as honest Irishmen should. Despite that, they found they were unable to carry on. If they had listened to the good advice of people in 1948 who told them that Coalition Government was impossible in this country and that disaster would follow, they would have been wise and the country would have been better off and would not be suffering from the two terrible cankers which I mentioned, unemployment and emigration.
Unfortunately, perhaps in good faith, they believed that they would be able to pull together and carry on government with the different Parties they got together. All I can say is that while they were in power they burned the candle at both ends, and it made a glorious light, but it scarcely lasted a night. That was the position. Deputy Giles said that the Taoiseach stated on one occasion that if he was not able to remedy the ills of this country inside the House he would go outside. That is not correct. What the Taoiseach said was that if he was not able to remedy the nation's ills under the present system he would go outside that system. We still have faith in that system, the democratic system that obtains here. We feel it is the best for the nation. If it fails then consideration must of necessity be given to another system.
Most Rev. Dr. Lucey has been quoted freely here but why not quote His Lordship, Most Rev. Dr. Kyne, who has no doubt as to the position the country holds at the moment? He has stated quite clearly that this country was never better off than at present. The financial position of this country has been improved. That is a very important thing because if you raise a structure without a foundation you will very soon find that it will tumble. The financial position must be sound: if not the cracks will appear in a very short time.
I know that everyone would like to see more money provided for employment schemes, old age pensions and so on. We hear a lot of criticism about the money given to civil servants. In my opinion they are perfectly entitled to it. We can feel very proud of the Civil Service we have in this country. We can truthfully say, before any nation, that we have a Civil Service which is pure and cannot be corrupted. During 30 years of self-government not one charge of corruption has ever been levelled at the Civil Service. That alone fully justifies our keeping them content and happy, whatever sacrifice is entailed. It is much better to have a contented and happy Civil Service than to have people who have to incur debt and perhaps put their principles in pawn. We must avoid all that and keep them in a position where they can live in frugal comfort so that the terrible nightmare of corruption will never trouble even the most humble of our civil servants.
I listened to Deputy Jones who made a very reasoned speech. The one thing I liked about it was that he made an appeal for co-operation between political Parties. If we could have that it would be a very good thing, so long as it was on a sound basis. The day is gone for shouting at the crossroads about the country's evils. People do not want to listen to that. The people are not getting tired of politics; it would be a pity if they did for we know the evils that beset people who did get tired of politics. The people who did not voice their opinions through the ballot boxes were automatically handed over to dictatorships and we know what dictatorships have led to in Europe and elsewhere. While the old and democratic system may not always be palatable, nevertheless it is the system that our people will always hope will stay with them.
Speaking of that type of goodwill reminds me of one thing which I believe would help this nation to a very considerable extent. We have a surplus of butter which is responsible for a very high charge on the Exchequer. As the dairy farmers are the backbone of the country, we must make certain that they get a remunerative price for their produce. I believe that if everybody in this country who has friends in Britain were to ask them to ask their grocer for a lb. of Irish butter, and ask their spirit merchant for a glass of Irish whiskey, they would be doing more good for this country than if we talked here for the 365 days of the year.
There are in Britain about 250,000 people who are either Irish or of Irish descent. If each one of those bought a lb. of Irish butter every week it would be a considerable help in disposing of our surplus butter, the cost of which is unfortunately falling so very heavily on the taxpayers. The taxpayers are not alone those who pay income-tax and surtax. Everybody who smokes and drinks or who drives a car, is a taxpayer. I believe that taxation has reached its peak point. If we are going to encourage people to remain here, and put their money into Irish industry, we must of necessity keep taxation at a level which will enable them to live in frugal comfort.
I should like the Minister to be able to provide more money in this Budget for drainage, because I believe drainage is one of the most worthwhile works we have. If the smaller rivers are not drained there is no use in farmers draining their own land. If they do, it results only in bringing more water on to the land——
That is a question for the Estimate.
I was merely suggesting that if the Minister had been able to provide more money for drainage it would be appreciated.
This Budget commends itself to the people who, no doubt, expected more taxation because it has become customary to expect new taxation each year. It is, therefore, a great relief to the people to find, for the first time in ten years, that there is no new taxation, and it will be a great incentive to them to work harder in the future. I think we have turned the corner and that public confidence has been restored. If Opposition Deputies seriously desire—and I know many of them do—to see the country prosper it is their duty, as well as ours, to boost the tourist trade and other activities that help our finances.
I hope and pray the drain of emigration will cease. Many people emigrated because, unfortunately, they were forced to do so, but many also went who need not have done so. They were induced to go by love of travel or by the attraction of modern amenities. Every man or woman who leaves the country is a very substantial loss because the State has expended quite a lot of money on each of them. Up to a certain age, they have all been, to an extent, in debt to the State.
Unemployment, while not nearly as high as it was a year ago, is still too high and it is the duty of those who can employ more workers to do so. The fewer unemployed we have, the more contented homes there will be and the more respect the people will have for Parliament. I sincerely hope that we have come to the end of higher taxation which, I believe, is one of the factors responsible for unemployment and emigration. If we could keep taxation at a reasonable level I feel certain the nation would benefit very substantially.
I should like to refer to the speech of Deputy Giles. I do not agree with everything he said but his words were at least stimulating. It is a good thing that men who have been a long time in this House, and who are saddened by their experience here, should have the courage of their convictions and that they should not be afraid to speak out untrammelled in any way. That is the very essence of democracy. I agree with Deputy Giles that there has been too much crossfire here but I shall come to that later. We should join in these debates for their objectiveness alone and omit all personal considerations.
The Minister for Health spoke at length this afternoon and pointed out that a Budget should have three characteristics. It should be honest; it should be courageous, and it should be creative. If Budgets are to be honest the debates and contributions made to such debates should be equally honest. Nevertheless, the Minister for Health made certain wild assertions. He implied that the country was in a shocking condition when it was taken over by this Government. Such wild statements have done more to damage the prestige of the House and the credit of the country at home and abroad than anything that can be said or done by people outside Parliament.
He made the assertion that the Coalition Government shirked its responsibilities in 1951 and that they had created such chaos in the finances of the country that they wanted to get out of office and arranged the general election. I do not accept that for a moment. Every Deputy knows quite well that there was a split in the Cabinet because Deputy Dr. Browne, then a member of the Government and now a member of the House, resigned. The majority that the Coalition had was very small and I suppose rather than carry on under the strain of uncertainty, they took the wise course and went to the country. I think that should be accepted once and for all.
It has been said by certain Ministers, that, in 1957, Deputy Costello deserted the ship. He did not; he was ejected from the ship. We know that two motions were tabled, or were to be tabled when the Dáil would assemble after Christmas, 1957. One came from the Clann na Poblachta Party which had supported the Government up to then but which changed its mind because of certain things happening in the country. The Government lost that support, and felt insecure. The Party now in power and then in opposition, did not hesitate to cash in on the situation and tabled a motion of no confidence which did not come to be debated because of the general election.
I have no doubt that if the people now in Government were in power then they would have done the same thing; that is the irony of Irish politics. That was, or should have been firmly brought home to us, if we reflected on the matter, during the Redmond Centenary in Wexford over two years ago. The present Taoiseach was there and so was the Leader of this Party and both contributed to drive John Redmond—may the Lord have mercy on him—and his Party out of public life. But mellowed by time, they were both able to join together to——
The Deputy is departing from the terms of the motion.
I am sorry for the digression; I do not intend to continue in that strain. I endorse everything the previous speaker said about the Civil Service. I said before in this House that we should be very proud of our Civil Service, and I deplore men coming in here or going elsewhere and talking about the Civil Service and the grip they have in this country. They have no powers other than the powers given them by this House. The one great difference between the civil servants and ourselves is that they got into their positions by way of competitive examination, which was no easy one, and we got in simply by the whim of the people. Their position is secure; ours is very insecure. There is no doubt about that.
The Minister for Health this afternoon went back as far as 1948 and dealt with some of the Budgets during the period from 1948 to 1958. I will not go back so far. I will go back as far as the Budget of 1956. The then Minister for Finance was faced with a very difficult situation because of the very difficult circumstances facing us here, as they faced most countries of Western Europe at the time. During the latter part of 1955, the value of our exports was dropping all the time and the cost of our imports was rising. That brought about a very serious situation which challenged the very solvency of this State. Our balance of payments situation was in jeopardy.
The then Minister for Finance faced a situation where revenue was decreasing and savings had dwindled to nothing. The Budget of 1956 was most courageous. I thought it was exceedingly harsh and I spoke very critically about it in this House. It imposed very severe taxation, but nobody can accuse the then Minister of cowardice or of shirking the task of balancing that Budget. He imposed that taxation because of the difficult position and the difficulty that existed in relation to finding revenue to balance the Budget. That taxation was most unpopular. It was one of the contributory causes, I am sure, to the falling away of support from the Government.
If one reads the debates of that period on the Budget, one will find that from this side of the House there was very forcible comment on the harshness of the Budget at the time. At the same time, I have a distinct recollection of a remark by the present Minister for Health, when he was in the Opposition Benches, complimenting the then Minister for Finance on his courage and on his realism in making an effort to balance the Budget. At the same time, it is unjust to say now that Ministers shirked their responsibility at that time and evaded the one fundamental which faces every Minister for Finance in bringing in a balanced Budget.
Last year, the Minister for Finance was faced with a deficit that was natural because of the situation which existed, through no fault of his or his predecessor, but he took the very bold line of seizing upon the food subsidies to make up the deficit in that Budget. I think it was imprudent but there is no good talking of that now. The removal of the food subsidies should have been effected gradually over a period, so as not to cause disequilibrium in our domestic position.
During 1957, as evinced by the Minister's statement, revenue increased and non-taxed revenue increased. The Road Fund was only slightly lower than last year. Savings increased very considerably and yet at 31st March the Minister was faced with a deficit. There is a great difference between the circumstances surrounding the introduction of the Budget this year and those that obtained in 1957 because of the fact that the Minister for Finance abolished the food subsidies which gave him over £9,000,000 to play with in a full year.
The people had high hopes that this year there would be an easement in many directions, and we regret that we did not get that easement. The Minister could have come in last week and said: "I am giving you the same Budget as last year. I can do nothing better. I am taking the money that accrued from the import levies and am transferring them from the capital account to the current account and taking the risk of reducing the overestimation by £1,500,000 and making some other minor alterations." That is simply the whole Budget of this year.
Last Thursday, the Tánaiste took Deputy J.A. Costello to task because, as he said, his speech was entirely one of generalities. Deputy J.A. Costello's speech had to deal to a great extent in generalities because there was very little specific matter in the Budget.
Certainly the Budget is remarkable for what it has not done this year, having regard to the fact that £9,000,000 were spared to the revenue. People had high hopes that something tangible and progressive would eventuate in this year's Budget. I am sure they are disappointed. The taxpayers should have got some consideration by way of increased personal income-tax allowances. The House knows that people who earn even £4 per week are liable for income-tax. In the local authorities, offices, businesses and the public service there are many people who begin at a salary of between £4 and £5 per week. They are liable for income-tax. I know one girl who is in a bank in Dublin whose parents had to send her money every week to help her to live here. I think she also pays income-tax.
People who have to leave their homes to live and work in Dublin or in other cities and towns have to pay income-tax. Outside Dublin, they have to pay £3 10s. per week for board and lodging. I know one person in particular—I can give the name and the facts, if necessary—who pays £3 10s. for partial board in this city, for breakfast and tea, and you can be sure that he pays at least two guineas a week for his lunch. There is no allowance for that.
I think these are hardships on the young people. It is one of the causes of emigration and disillusionment. Immediately those young people start to earn over a certain figure the State takes part of their earnings.
The old age pensioners were mentioned. I appreciate that nothing can be done for them under this Budget. Money spent on the old age pensioners is money well spent. It gives them comfort in their declining years and a certain independence in the home. It is money well spent for that reason, in that it may relieve the burden upon the members of the family who have to provide for such old people. It is too bad that something cannot be done for them.
I cannot understand why the Minister gave the £50,000 he had to spare to the film industry. One of our besetting sins in this country is that we spend far too much on pleasure and amusement. This is an incentive to maintain these pleasures. I do not know what employment the film industry gives, but it would be nothing compared with what would be given if £50,000 were added to the £50,000 and put into some important productive scheme which would absorb our unemployed and help to tide our people over the very serious situation we have had in the country for the past couple of years.
This State is now 36 years old. It is too bad, after all these years, that a Minister can do nothing better than tell the country, through this House, that he proposes to spend £125,000,000 on the supply services, the Central Fund services, the roads, C.I.E. and Córas Tráchtála in the coming year. In addition, he must get over £30,000,000 for development purposes and, as well, people will subscribe over £21 per head through the rates. In all, there is a sum approximating £180,000,000. The wonder to me is how the country has stood up to that trend over the years. It is quite obvious that the country is groaning under that weight of taxation. It is all the more difficult in our present circumstances with only 2,900,000 people to bear that burden.
I do not know if this situation will last. I do not know, if this recurs year after year, whether there is any future for the country at all. It amazes me that this Bill should be so high. It is the reason we have nothing to provide for this emergency and the high unemployment figure we have. I think I said here before that some years ago a man I know very well, a man of great repute in Cork City, was talking to General Collins after the Treaty was ratified in 1922, and he told this man how delighted we should be that we had got complete fiscal autonomy under the Treaty and that the best of it all was that he would never have to ask the Irish people for a shilling.
Let us reflect on all the shillings and all the thousands and millions of pounds the Irish people have paid in taxation over the past 36 years and have put into investments here. How disillusioned Michael Collins would be, were he alive to-day. How disillusioned would his associates be, if they were alive to-day. Indeed there are many in this House who are disillusioned, Deputies like Captain Giles and myself. I must admit I have been disillusioned when, after 36 years, we can do no better than we have done. We seem to be in the economic wilderness all the time. We have nothing to provide for a time of emergency and crisis. At the present time, America has the highest rate of unemployment ever, over 5,000,000 unemployed, and they were able to put schemes in train to relieve that unemployment. We have made no such provision over the years for the rainy day which is bound to come on occasions in a little island, particularly nowadays when there are so many fluctuations and upheavals from time to time abroad.
It is no wonder we have pessimism, gloom and despair. I do not at all share Deputy J.A. Costello's optimism. I have faith in the future, provided we manage our own affairs in the way we should be managing them. I would ask Deputies to ask themselves: are we true to the heritage we took over here in 1922? Have we made the best use of our opportunities over the years? We talk about efficiency experts and output, but has the output from this House been what it should be? I welcome the sentiments expressed this evening about the desire for a better spirit, a better understanding and a broader view of the problems which face us. Personalities should not be allowed to enter into debates and there should be less crossfire, which is deplorable in a small Parliament like ours, which we should always treasure proudly, and the conception of which we based on Grattan's Parliament, which we lost through the Act of Union in 1800.
Our aim should be to raise the dignity and prestige of this House, to say nothing that would degrade or lower that dignity or prestige. We are judged largely abroad by the conduct of our Parliament and I wonder if from the activities of this House foreigners can always confirm that we are the nation we are supposed to be, the Island of Saints and Scholars of the past.
There is not a great deal in this Budget to arouse any hope, and looking back over the years make me wonder, if we had 50 or 60 businessmen in charge of the administration of the State over the past 36 years, would we, at this stage, find it incumbent on us to go to other countries in search of capital which our industrialists should be able to find at home in a well-ordered State in which they had trust in the administration. I am afraid the answer is too obvious for me to give.
Perhaps it took the Dublin election last year to bring home forcibly to us the fact that the people are losing confidence in our parliamentary institutions. That result followed canvass, so that it was no chance result. There will be a by-election in Galway very soon, I understand, and we shall be anxious for the result. I make this suggestion, and I am glad Deputy Sweetman is here to hear it. The practice of going from door to door begging for votes is reprehensible and degrading, and I wish that opinion on all sides of the House would assert itself against that practice.
It does not arise on this motion.
I am giving some of the causes for the present gloom, and I should like permission to finish my comment on that. First of all, in relation to the honour of this House, does it not play into the hands of the critics who say there must be something in politics when people are so anxious to get in? Secondly, is it not an assumption by the canvassers that the people whom they visit and ask for votes are not able to make up their own minds? It is a growing practice which should not be tolerated and should not be encouraged. I do hope that the people over there at some time will insist on its being stopped. They have the Press, the radio, the public platform from which to put their point of view and let the people judge for themselves. Going from door to door has many dangers. A youth movement might rise up with three times the energy of the members of the old Parties and perhaps turn the tables completely on all of us.
Apart from the material disadvantages under which we labour at the moment, there is the unfortunate fact that our standards seem to be deteriorating. There is a great deal of vandalism, destruction of property, abroad to-day, a reckless disregard for the rights of the owners of property. This is one of the evil consequences of the political upheavals and dissensions over the years. I believed at one time, and I am sure that most of us believed, that this little country would be so happy and make so much progress, that our standard of living would so rise that we would be the envy of the world and that when that day came, the Border would readily disappear. Unfortunately that day has not come and the Border now seems to be more firmly established than ever. I do not know whether it is permissible to refer to Partition on this motion.
The question of Partition scarcely arises.
I shall not pursue that. I have very little more to say, except that, judging by the incident which occurred here last Thursday, personalities should not be introduced into debate. If insinuations are made, they should at least be made when those against whom they are directed are present to defend themselves. That was a deplorable incident and I hope it is the last we shall see in our time. It is incidents such as those that make this place so soul-destroying, as I have found on occasion. If we cannot face up to our responsibilities, if we cannot accept the solemn trust reposed in us and our obligations to those who put us here to do the best we can for this little nation of ours, and if we are determined to put political ideologies above the national interest, then we shall not succeed in retrieving our position and reaching that Utopia of which we have all dreamed over the years.
A number of comments have been made here during the course of this debate in relation to civil servants. Some of the comments I have heard have been extremely critical of civil servants. In my opinion, criticism of civil servants in so far as the state of the country is concerned at the moment, is unfair and is to a great extent based on ignorance of the functions of the Civil Service as such. I am not speaking of individual civil servants now. The main body of the Civil Service is composed of men and women of the highest intelligence. To my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the majority of the members of this House, civil servants are prepared to carry out their functions at all times loyally, efficiently and faithfully, irrespective of whatever political party holds the reins of office. It is a tragic situation to find politicians, therefore, trying to use this loyal and efficient Civil Service as the scapegoat for the inefficiency of the political heads.
Hear, hear!
I have not the slightest doubt that if efficient political Ministers were charged with the responsibility for the different Departments, they would have a first-class team at their disposal to carry out whatever directives or policy they might have. The trouble all along has been that the civil servants have had no concrete policy and no planned programme to put into operation because the political Parties had no planned programme to offer them. All policies and all programmes over the past 35 years have been on a day-to-day, week-to-week and a year-to-year basis. No sooner has one Budget been successfully imposed upon the electorate than a huge sigh of relief goes up from the political group responsible for that Budget and they sit back happily and say: "Thanks be to God. We have 12 months before the next Budget." That is the mentality that has been displayed all down the years in relation to the Budget.
The Budget, as has been said repeatedly here, should be an instrument in the hands of Government for the economic direction and planning of the economy of the country, not for 12 months but for at least five years ahead. It is very unfair, therefore, to criticise or blame civil servants for the many ills that beset us politically and economically at the moment. If we are honest about it, we must admit that the blame can be laid only on the shoulders of the political Parties who have had the confidence of the electorate over the past 35 years and who have failed miserably in the tasks they undertook over that period—failed so miserably, in fact, that emigration has reached such proportions that it is now becoming the concern of elements outside this House who would normally be the last to speak in a critical manner of this Parliament or of the Oireachtas. Side by side with the increasing impetus given to emigration, there is disclosed this year a considerable rise in bank deposits, a considerable rise in the deposits of our banks outside this State, and a considerable rise in our external assets. Side by side with the stream of emigrants, our money is being stacked up outside the country. It is a well-known fact that where the money goes, there the people follow.
The serious situation that has eventuated is not the fault alone of the inter-Party Government, as was suggested here to-day by the Minister for Health. It is the fault of all the political Parties who have had their opportunity over the years to put into operation the alleged policies with which they duped the electorate before getting into office. I do not think it unfair to suggest that, no matter what political group achieved power, the moment they got the reins of office, we had the same policy as that implemented by their predecessors. In other words, so far as this country is concerned, the more Governments change, the more they remain the same. We may have had a change of faces but we have never had a change of policies. It is a welcome change, therefore, to find Deputies on both sides of this House in this debate agreeing with one another that it is time the bitterness of the past 30 years was buried.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 1st May, 1958.