I always read it. I like reading what Pravda says so that I can contradict it. Here is what Deputy Lemass said in Letterkenny:—
"We are entering four years of most acute difficulty in which economic disaster will threaten on every side and our only weapon of defence is our capacity to work hard."
He went on:—
"There should be no doubt about the reality of our danger. Our agricultural output has fallen. We must get it up again. This year's fall may be attributed partly to the abnormal spring and winter but our figures for years past are disturbing."
If, as Deputy MacEntee tried to suggest to this House, everything was beautiful when the inter-Party Government took over in the beginning of 1948, why did his senior, the Tánaiste, express the views he expressed in Letterkenny?
We have heard from time to time Fianna Fáil complaining that we were taking 1947 as a year of comparison. Is not it rather significant in that respect that the Tánaiste himself then said in relation to agricultural prices that the figures for years past were disturbing?
Deputy MacEntee passed from that to Marshall Aid. As I am referring to different Ministers for Finance, the Chair will not think that I am being in any way discourteous to the Minister by referring to him as Deputy MacEntee. He then passed to Marshall Aid. Of all the subjects upon which he should not speak in this House, I suggest that that is par excellence the one. When Deputy MacEntee, as Minister for Finance, took over the reins of the Department of Finance, in June, 1951, he had there to his hand more than 50 per cent. of the Marshall Aid.
Prior to that, Deputy McGilligan, as Minister for Finance, had been utilising Marshall Aid as it should have been utilised, for the purpose of supplementing year by year the ordinary facilities available for the capital expenditure necessary to make up the backlog of the war and scarcity years. We all know that the position was that there was a backlog that had to be made up. Goods were not available, particularly capital goods, during the war and it was desirable that, when these goods became available, they should be obtained as soon as was possible.
Up to June, 1951, the Marshall Aid moneys were utilised for the purpose of supplementing the ordinary savings that were available. From June, 1951, to December, 1951, however, the pattern was entirely changed under the aegis of Deputy MacEntee in the Department of Finance. Between June, 1951, and December, 1951, £24,000,000 of that Marshall Aid money was scuttled out of the central Exchequer as quickly as Deputy MacEntee could shovel it out, a procedure which added in an appalling way to the inflationary symptoms and inflationary pressures then operating following the outbreak of the Korean war. As I say, more than half the Marshall Aid was paid out by Deputy MacEntee in that short space of six months and it is pretty breathtaking that his audacity should enable him to come in here and speak about inflation and Marshall Aid in the same breath when that is his record in that respect.
The Minister for Health then proceeded to discuss the 1955 Budget. In column 1044, Volume 167, of the Official Report he says:—
"The Budget for 1955 was not an honest Budget."
He makes no effort whatsoever to prove that statement. He could not because it is an untrue statement and very little research by a person of his experience would have shown categorically and clearly how untrue was the statement. Unfortunately, he went further than that; he proceeded to make statements that were of themselves untrue, an attempt, by the implication of those statements, to bolster up the charge that he had made. He said:—
"On the Budget for 1955, despite the fact that they had the advantage of the proceeds of the first special import levy"
—the Minister must have forgotten that the special import levy in that year yielded £54,000 and that that £54,000 was put, not to current account, but to capital account, to reduce the amount that otherwise would have to be raised by the creation of debt—
"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."
Let me say categorically that there was no £860,000 increase in current expenditure defrayed from borrowing. On the contrary, there was less current expenditure in that year defrayed from borrowing than there had been in Deputy MacEntee's Budgets of 1953 or of 1954. There was a deficit of £312,000, which is the equivalent of about one-third of 1 per cent. on the total current revenue and let me make this present to my successor as Minister for Finance, that if he can get any Budget that he introduces within one-third of 1 per cent. of the amount at which he strove in his Budget statement to balance his accounts, then he is doing a good job. It is utterly absurd for anyone to suggest that any Minister for Finance can get his Budget Estimates nearer than the figure I have said of one-third of 1 per cent. and nobody knows that better than the Minister for Health.
The Minister then came on to discuss the Budget of 1956, about which I will have something to say at a later stage. At column 1044, Volume 167, he said:—
"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."
Deputy MacEntee, of all people, should be able to make computations without having double counting in them, particularly when he had before him, or when he should have had before him when he made that speech, the speech made by my successor last year, when he said there was a short-fall on revenue of £4,500,000. The method in which the Minister for Health attempted to blackguard the Budgets of 1955 and 1956, introduced by me, by dishonest and untrue statements of that sort, should be beneath the dignity of a former Minister for Finance.
He followed that by suggesting that the General Election of 1957 took place because we did not wish to introduce a Budget. Surely he does not expect that the people of the country have forgotten the manner in which the Fianna Fáil Party campaigned up and down the country that they wanted a general election at once? We had the Taoiseach, then Deputy de Valera, the Leader of the Opposition, rampaging through the country with his dictionary talking about how he would define a limpet and how he would examine all the attributes of that animal. Everybody knows that the General Election of 1957 took place because of the withdrawal by the Clann na Poblachta Deputies of their support for the Government. Everybody knows also that the reason for that withdrawal had in reality nothing whatever to do with economic factors but was because the Government were determined to govern and to preserve democratic rights in this country. Is it not, there, fore, dishonest for the Minister for Health to come into the House now and suggest that the reasons for the general election were that we were not prepared to make a Budget and that we had not in any way disclosed what the position was?
I want to refer to a speech I made at a time when I knew that a general election was to take place, a speech made on the 6th February, 1957, at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis. That speech made it clear beyond question that I appreciated there would be difficulties ahead, difficulties in relation to the budgetary position for 1957-58. If I wished to hide from the country that these difficulties were going to arise it would have been a simple matter and, perhaps, do as Fianna Fáil did to get votes on the head of that deception. Quite deliberately I chose to say truthfully what I knew was the position. There cannot be any suggestion by the members of the Fianna Fáil Party particularly, that they were unaware of that position because Pravda, the Irish Press, made a point of featuring my speech the next morning in their issue of the 7th February.
They made a point of featuring it in an effort to pretend that while I saw difficulties ahead they, and the people they represented, the Fianna Fáil Party, saw no such difficulties. I am quite aware myself that the fact that I did disclose those difficulties to the people may have cost the Fine Gael Party votes, and even seats in the general election. I did it quite deliberately and I am glad that I did it, even if it did mean that. We did not wish to hoodwink the electorate in any way. Indeed, it would be impossible for us to compete in hoodwinking with the boys over there—they are such past-masters in that, that anything we would do would be only just trotting down the river.
Anybody interested in that can see that issue of the Irish Press and they will see that I disclosed the true facts. They will also see another thing, if they wish to make the analysis. They will see, in relation to the weekly returns published in Iris Oifigiúil that, while I was Minister for Finance, we were disclosing the true position week by week in that return. I assume there is a statutory obligation on the Minister for Finance to publish that weekly return in Iris Oifigiúil. I have not been able to check the exact statute that deals with it, but it is being done year after year and, I presume, in pursuance of a statutory duty. When I was Minister for Finance that published return was a true return. This last year I am afraid it was not a true return.
In 1955, the March expenditure was £17.9 million. In 1956 the March expenditure was £18.3 million. In 1957 the March expenditure was £18.2 million but in 1958 the March expenditure was £25.9 million. Deputy Cunningham suggested on Thursday last, when I criticised the March expenditure of that year, that I criticised it because I wished it had not been paid. I did not. I criticised this from the aspect that a large succession of payments must have been quite deliberately held up over earlier months of that year and thrown into the expenditure for March, 1958, so that expenditure for March, 1958, was approximately £8,000,000 more than the March expenditure of either of the three previous financial years. I am not suggesting that the Minister for Finance had not got to pay that money but I am suggesting that the manner in which they were all held up to the end of the financial year shows the returns made of expenditure throughout the rest of that year had not got that genuineness, that forthrightness, which would be desirable when it is a statutory duty to publish such a return.
The point of such a return is that everybody may see how the receipts and expenditures for the Government are going ahead. Let me, however, return to the 1955-56 Budget on which Deputy MacEntee, the Minister for Health, was so voluble. He said that the 1955 Budget was not an honest Budget. Certainly, the Budget of 1955, which he said so much about being dishonest, had a deficit of £312,000. His Budget of 1952 had a deficit of £2,480,000 and the Budget of 1953 a deficit of £702,000. Those figures would seem to imply that he would have been wiser and more prudent in not throwing stones, considering the glasshouse in which he was himself situated.
To go back to the 1956-57 Budget one of the things which must be considered in relation to any Budget is not merely its balancing its books but its effect from an inflationary and deflationary point of view. This year the Minister has taken into normal current account the proceeds of the special import levies, partly by changing them to protective customs duties and partly by taking the levies as they are. If he does that this year, is it not fair enough to compare the 1956-57 and 1957-58 Budgets as they would have been, if he had done in those years as he has done this year? Then it would mean that the Budget introduced by the Minister in 1957 was, from an inflationary point of view, unbalanced to the extent of £3,329 million, while for 1956-57 it was unbalanced only to the extent of £1.67 million. In other words, on the current account, the Budget of my successor last year was twice as wrong as mine of 1956, to which the Minister for Health referred in such scathing terms the other day.
It was perfectly obvious in the autumn of 1956, immediately the necessity arose for the second import levies, that their restrictive effect would, to some degree, affect the current Budget out-turn for that year, but no matter how much it might affect that unbalance, it was bound to have a very substantial dis-inflationary effect —not a deflationary effect—and bound again to have an unbalance. It became quite clear towards the late autumn of 1956 that our trade position was improving very substantially and that we were surmounting the difficulties that had shown themselves in the earlier parts of the year. If the restrictions and cuts in capital expenditure which had been visualised in July were not eased to some extent, then their deflationary effect would have been more than was necessary and the economy would have gone from dis-inflation to deflation.
It was because of that that the Government at that time released £1,000,000 for the relief of unemployment so as to avoid an unnecessary deflationary effect. We then had, on top of the situation at home, the effects of the Suez crisis. Nobody need suggest that it did not have a severe effect on this country. Indeed, the Minister in his Budget speech the other day acknowledged that when he instanced the effects of the Suez crisis on the Road Fund. There is no doubt whatever that the effect of the measures taken at that time proved adequate without the necessity of the further deflation that would then be required if one were to have brought—after the second import levies and after Suez— the current Budget into balance, in 1956-57. However, I think if I were to deal only, in discussing this Budget Resolution, with the outrageous and audacious impudence of the Minister for Health, that I would not be fulfilling the duty which I have and which we all have.
This Budget about which the Minister for Health said hardly a word, if indeed he said a word at all, is built on four foundations. First of all, it consolidates and continues everything in the 1957 Budget—of which I will have something more to say later on. Secondly, in order to make it balance, it transfers to capital account items which previously were dealt with on current account. In other words, it adds these items to the public debt about which the Deputies opposite are so very found of talking. Items which before were dealt with on current account are, in this Budget, included in capital account.
The third basis upon which it is built is the transfer of the levies and the switch to revenue duties. There is no difference whatsoever between that switch and the Minister standing up here and saying: "Whereas previously we paid these moneys as we went, now we are going to borrow for capital expenditure"—because that is exactly what the Minister is doing. Fourthly, the Minister has arrived at this balance in his Budget by, in the words of his colleague, the Minister for Health, purloining the petty cash.
Let me go over the details of those points. Perhaps I might take the last one first—transfers from the balances in the hands of the Revenue Commissioners. Of the amount of £323,000, £165,000 is a balance in excess of £2,000,000 left over when the 1956-57 financial year concluded, the year in which there was a deficit without any question. The sum of £158,000, the balance of the £323,000, represents an increase in that £165,000, an increased balance in the hands of the Revenue Commissioners, an increase the Revenue Commissioners obtained between 1st April, 1957, and 31st March, 1958.
Surely it is utterly dishonest for the Minister for Finance to come in here and to say that last year in his Budget he had a deficit of £5,800,000 and that he had unfortunately to borrow for that deficit when he could have reduced the deficit by £158,000 revenue that came to him during the year, which he did not use for the purpose of reducing the deficit, but held over to this year so that he would be able to utilise it for the current Budget.
I am not saying that the Minister did that deliberately in relation to the increase of £158,000. I do not think he deliberately gave instructions to the Revenue Commissioners that that excess was to be there. In fact, I think the reverse, but no matter what directions are given by the Revenue Commissioners, inevitably there are moneys that flow in after the decisions have been taken in relation to that balance and show up in this way. But when that balance was there now after a year in which there had been a deficit in particular of the size revealed by the outcome of the Minister's 1957 Budget, the proper way of using that balance would have been to retire some of the debt created by the Minister to meet his deficit of last year. It is quite dishonest to use it for the purpose of balancing this year's Budget.
I do not know whether there is any particular significance in another aspect of this. I have not got all the material yet on which I can express an opinion, but if one looks at the last available Iris Oifigiúil in respect of 29th April and examines in that the expenditure from the Exchequer this year and last year, one will find that the expenditure this year is £2.9 million and the expenditure last year was £4.763 million—a difference of just under £2,000,000 in the same period. It occurs to me that one possible explanation of that decrease in expenditure this year would be that the Minister had brought forward, so to speak, payments last year and paid things before 31st March so that they would not be coming in charge against him during this year. We have no way of telling whether he did so or not. If he did, I would suggest that just as his endeavour to balance his Budget on the transfer of moneys that were not brought to credit last year is a dishonest method of balancing his Budget, so the other would be equally so.
The third point to which I refer is the levies. In April, 1957, the Government made an Order, presumably at the instance of the Minister for Finance, by virtue of which certain levies were switched into permanent revenue duties—not protective duties for the purpose of protecting industries but revenue duties as such. I asked a question recently and I was told that the proceeds of these duties were £692,000 in the year up to 31st March last. It was not a full year and it is fair enough, therefore, to take about £750,000 as being the revenue from these duties in the current full year. Revenue duties, for example, duties on newsprint which I had given a most specific assurance would be a temporary levy became a permanent revenue duty as a result of the action taken by the Government in April, 1957, and brought in £750,000 in a full year. In April this year, the Minister did a further switch on other levies— transferring those levies from that temporary purpose into permanent revenue duties—permanent blisters on the backs of the people to the tune of no less than £600,000.
Finally, in this Budget he has transferred £1,750,000. He still calls them levies, but instead of using them for the purpose of financing capital expenditure, he switched them into current expenditure. He will now have to borrow in all £3,000,000 which those levies would have paid for—out of the levy procedure—but for the manner in which he has introduced them into the current Budget.
I referred also to the items that had been switched into capital account for the first time. There is the bovine tuberculosis grant of £884,000, the net amount. Let me say without any question that the more we can spend on ridding the country of bovine tuberculosis, the better, if it is achieving its purpose. The only test we should have in relation to that is the test of efficiency in the expenditure and that it is doing the job. If we do not succeed in that eradication scheme at an early date, we will find ourselves in a very serious difficulty in relation to the whole store cattle trade. When I say that is one of the methods by which the Minister for Finance has balanced his Budget by switching that into capital account, I want to be perfectly clear that, in so doing, I am not making any criticism of expenditure as expenditure.
I am aware that there was a grant counterpart receipt for that in earlier years. A former Minister for Finance, Deputy Aiken, when I brought that grant counterpart receipt in as an Appropriation-in-Aid or as an extra Exchequer receipt—I forget which— waxed most frightfully eloquent. He said it was the wrong way of dealing with the situation, that it should not have been included in that way at all. Yet now the Minister has switched that item. He also switched the item for industrial grants which I carried previously out of current account into capital account. He has switched industrial grants in that way to the extent of £200,000 and the allocation for Foras Tionscal to the extent of £450,000 from current to capital account.
I wonder what the Minister would have said in criticism of this Budget from this side of the House if I had introduced these three changes. Would he and all the Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party not have got up and, with one universal wail, said that we were putting the country in pawn; that we were putting off the evil day; that we were putting these items on the never-never system; that we were raising the public debt instead of dealing with them out of current revenue as we should have dealt with them and as they were dealt with before? I know very well we would have had that wail raised from one end of the road to the other. Deputy Burke would not have been able to restrain himself from getting to his feet and Deputy Davern could not have refrained from making interruptions. They would have taken the view that that was dishonest public accounting.
Yet that is what their own Minister has done in this Budget. It is one of the ways in which he has in this Budget arrived in the end at a balance. Let me say also in relation to the levies that I have tried and found it utterly impossible to distinguish and determine what levies are still in existence and in what way they are still operated. Some of them have been amended and some of them have been switched into public revenue taxes and, as I have said, others are still in existence. I did receive an amended print from the Revenue Commissioners of these levies, but I am afraid that I found it difficult to follow.
I would suggest to the Minister that he should now, regardless of whether he was right or wrong, publish a new clean copy, so to speak, of the existing levies which are there, so that it may be possible for traders, Deputies and public men of all sorts to see exactly where they are. I do not know whether the Minister intends to do that or not. I might give him an opportunity of expressing his view on this between now and the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, because I assume we shall have to have a special section in the Finance Bill to repeal the section which I put in the Central Fund Act of 1956, under which moneys raised from levy had to be used for the purpose of decreasing the public debt by financing capital expenditure. Now the levies will be used for current purposes and, as I have said, that is the same as increasing the public debt. I should like also to see if there is still included the levy on rubber toys about which I remember Deputy Davern making an awful hullabaloo on this side of the House. To the best of my recollection, it is still there and, therefore, Deputy Davern cannot have very much influence with the Minister for Finance.
