Deputy Coburn referred to one of the three sets of millions which have been intriguing those who still pay any attention to debates in this House. It must be confessed that they are a definite minority in the country at the moment. Apparently the ranks of those who are not at all attracted by the debate here are increasing every day. That is possibly due to the fact that they look forward to reliefs at this time of the year and, when reliefs are not given, they are inclined to get pessimistic and not merely lose interest in but lose hope for the future as well.
Deputy Coburn inquired about the amount by which the Budget last year did not balance. We were told, when the severity of the Budget was being criticised, that the aim was to get a balanced Budget. That aim was not achieved. It was not achieved by a substantial sum. Deputy Coburn put it at about £6,000,000. A second tot of millions that intrigues people at the moment is the money the Government saved and put the people themselves to find what is required to meet the new cost of food. We know from last year that the saving on the food subsidies in a full year would be about £9,000,000.
Let us take it that the cost in a full year of making good, or attempting to make good, to the lower income people the abolition of the food subsidies would be about £2,500,000. There is another £6,500,000 that disappeared from the face of the Estimates which, therefore, had been a relief from the point of view of the person making up the Budget this year. In addition to that, the last return for the year showed that there was extracted from the people £5.3 million more than last year. It is hard to realise that in a year in which the Government had saved £6,500,000, although they offloaded it on to the people and in which they had extracted from their system of taxation £5.3 million more than the year before, the Budget could be in a deficit to the extent of about another £6,000,000.
People ask what has become of all this money, this extra £5,000,000, extracted during the last financial year which, as opposed to the year before, is a considerable sum and why that should be the case in a year in which the Government had saved themselves of having to find a sum of £11,750,000. Notwithstanding that, the Government were unable to make their budgetary ends meet.
Last year, when the austerity Budget was being commented upon, as I said, we had first the excuse that we were going to balance our Budget. We failed to do that, and failed significantly. The second comment that came from the Fianna Fáil Benches last year when the Budget was under discussion was that it was a "back-to-work" Budget. The unemployed were to be again employed and the total of unemployed would be definitely reduced and the misery of those walking the streets would at least be mitigated.
On 12th March this year, a question was asked with regard to those in industrial and agricultural employment and we find it at column 15 of the Official Reports of March 12th. The figures there given show that, as between 1956 and 1957, there were 14,000 fewer employed in industry and 10,000 fewer in agriculture, so that we had a deficiency of employment of 24,000 people between industry and agriculture and that at a time when it was recognised that emigration was running at its highest point.
A Deputy of this House, Deputy Briscoe, who is rather quietly getting on in America at the moment, where he has promoted himself with Press notices from time to time, said on his arrival in New York, as reported in the papers of 27th February this year, that he wanted to try to persuade American industrialists to become interested in investment in Ireland. He would like to get them to join in our plans and he would personally try to get them interested in the free port of Shannon.
He went on to describe the country's economic condition. He said it was bad, "to put it mildly", and he then added: "We are unable to absorb our unemployed in industry; consequently, our emigration figures are at their highest peak." He went on to give figures and said that we had about 80,000 unemployed. That was the tot, roughly, when he left and he described that as being about 12 per cent. of our working population, and that, statistically, is correct. Then he added: "The percentage of unemployed would be about 50, were it not for emigration." That is an amazing figure. The employable force of the population, the people who could be employed here, number about 700,000 people. I think that was about the tot he said. Deputy Briscoe's calculation is that while we are running 80,000 unemployed at the moment, were it not for emigration, the unemployed would number 350,000.
If we do get to that point—and it is not inconceivable, I suppose, that we might—certainly, it can be said then that the previous Fianna Fáil record for unemployment would have been beaten. It is forgotten in these days that the Fianna Fáil history with regard to unemployment is not too happy. I shall give a summary of the figures from 1934 to 1948. Unemployment during that period reached the all time high level. In February, 1934, the figure stood as 128,000 and from that on to February, 1947, when it was 103,000, the figure varied from the high record of 146,000, which occurred in the year 1936, down to 103,000. In those years, unemployment never dropped below the 100,000 mark and it went as high as 146,000 in the year 1936.
Deputy MacEoin speaking at Drumlish in June last said that, in 1940, the unemployed figure was 118,000 people. In that year, over 23,000 recruits were taken into the Defence Forces; 6,000 people were specially recruited into the Civil Service to deal with rationing; 50,000 joined the British Army, Navy and Air Force and 37,000 were recorded as going to Britain to work under permits issued by the Fianna Fáil Government. All those amounted to the amazing figure of 234,000 which would have been the unemployed tot here, but for the fact that our Army recruitment took off a certain number and the British Defence Forces took off other considerable numbers. Now, according to Deputy Briscoe, if it were not for the fact that emigration is draining the country of its population, the figure for the unemployed would not be the 80,000 or 12 per cent. it was running at when he left but would be about 50 per cent. of the working population.
Recently, the Taoiseach got himself to admit that it would not be reasonable for us to assume that there has been much improvement as regards emigration and all he could say about unemployment some months ago was what he called the "desperate upward trend" had been checked.
The actual situation, of course, is that unemployment has mounted. Fewer people were employed here in industry and agriculture last year than in the year 1956. Emigration is admittedly at its peak: the figure of 60,000 is currently accepted as being the number of those who fled from the country last year. Business, everybody knows, is in a definite decline in the country, and right through the country, the agriculturists are not merely depressed but resentful of the way in which they were fooled by promises and were so badly treated when they came to ask that these promises should be translated into something like progress.
It is true that during last year international payments were balanced, but they were balanced by the measures taken by the second Coalition Government before leaving office. If the present Budget is to achieve a balance —and it is doubtful if it will—that will only mean that it will have been done because there has been a reduction in the capital programme and the Government are neglectful or indifferent as to whether that will mean, in the end, a further increase in the number of people emigrating, or, if emigration were suddenly to stop even at the record height of 50,000, it will mean an increase in those registered as unemployed in the coming year.
If the Budget is balanced, it has been achieved at considerable cost to the citizens. They have had to bear increased costs of food; they have had to bear the increased cost of those things on which the Government relies on them to spend money because the one policy which the Government had in this Budget, or had in last year's Budget, is to try to remove the purchasing power from the hands of the community. That is the policy they tried in 1947, the policy they definitely represented themselves as being in favour of in 1952 and it is, to my mind, the policy behind the Budget of last year which is being carried forward again.
If one can get rid of certain embarrassing factors, the Finance Minister has not to budget for so much when he brings his proposals to the Government; but in the background there is this figure of almost £9,000,000 that has to be found by the citizens where previously they got, through the taxpayer, aid from the subsidies. While these figures have disappeared from the Estimates and have not, therefore, to be met by the Minister, the Minister for Finance failed by almost £6,000,000 to achieve a balance, the balance it was the aim of this group last year to achieve.
Last year, when the subsidies were taken off, and when it was suggested here that that would necessarily mean another shake-up in the industrial framework of the country, it was asserted here that the workers would naturally expect to receive some recompense for the increased costs put upon their cost of living through the medium of the Budget. The cry that went up from the Fianna Fáil Benches at the time was that that was a conspiracy to defeat the good aim of the 1957 Budget. It was said that anybody who encouraged the workers to look to arbitration, to the Labour Court, or in any other way, for even a percentage increase to meet their increased cost of living was engaged in conspiracy and that conspiracy was being engineered by politicians out to do mischief. The Minister for Defence, the Minister for Education, the Minister for Lands, and various more important Ministers, all had the view that every effort made by the worker to get some recompense to compensate for what the Budget had done to him would in the end mean more unemployment, possibly more emigration, because this country, it was said, had to get its standards reduced and the best way to reduce standards was to impose taxes on the foodstuffs of the community and not allow wages to rise to meet them.
There is in operation at the moment a serious squeeze of a credit type. As I understand it, it is operating in two ways. New credits are being refused to those who are looking for them, even though they can make good proposals of a business type, and old-time loans are being called in notwithstanding the embarrassment caused thereby to some of the people who are caught midway in a course of development. The bank rate has been allowed to go up. Money has become scarce and dear, and this at a time when bank dividends have been increasing.
One wonders if the increase in the bank rate was due either to the inexperience of the present Minister for Finance or to duplicity of the banks in dealing with them, or whether, in fact, it is not part of the actual policy which Fianna Fáil is trying again to operate, as they tried in previous years. In any event, there was no reason why the bank rate should have been increased and that matter had been tested already in Deputy Sweetman's time. It had been agreed by the Irish banks that conditions here did not call for any increase in the bank rate. It was accepted that conditions in England did call for such an increase.
Then the argument was used that, if the bank rate here were not raised, deposits might fly out of the country; depositors might find they could get a higher rate if they put money on deposit in banks in England or Northern Ireland and that would draw resources out of this country. The argument proceeded with the bankers in those days that there was not very much in the way of an investment mind noticeable in some of the small depositors in this country; it was agreed that that was so. Further agreement was reached that, in respect of the large depositor, if he was tempted to move his money because it would earn a better rate in England or Northern Ireland, the banks might raise the rate and give more to the big depositor. It was argued that the banks would get a more profitable use of the money that they had to lend on short term and that, out of the extra profits they would make in that way, they could offer an increased rate to the big depositor if the big depositor showed any sign of flying deposits out of this country.
At the end of the year the question was asked of the banks why, having been given permission to raise the rate in respect of the large depositors, they had not done so; and the answer was that they found there was no flight of deposits out of the country. Some inconsiderable sum short of £250,000, was spoken of as the most that was considered as due to any change in the bank rate. Notwithstanding that, the bank rate here was raised.
Certain remarks were made at a meeting which was addressed in Belfast by a very well-known economist from this part of the world. At that meeting two bankers spoke—one representative of the northern banks and the other representative of a southern bank. The banker from the North said there was no necessity in the Republic to raise the rates of interest because the people there were not investment-minded and it was, therefore, possible to keep deposits at home even though a lower rate of interest was being offered. The chairman of one of the banks, which also has its headquarters outside the country but might be regarded as more national than another, expressed again this old fear of deposits flying out unless the rate was raised.
The Government, apparently, accepted that point of view and they agreed to make money dearer than it should be and to hold up the people who were trying to develop their businesses, where the development was a rather narrow one—where, say, an extra 2 or 3 per cent. on risk capital might make all the difference to the promoters. I cannot credit that there was not enough in the way of experience around the Minister for Finance to tell him what happened in the year when Deputy Sweetman was dealing with the finances of the country. I doubt very much if, even in the face of their own experience, the banks, having made known that deposits had not shown any inclination to fly abroad, would have such duplicity as to put up a false argument to the present Minister.
I believe personally that this was accepted as part of the programme of taking purchasing power out of the hands of the community because of the fear the Government has with regard to imports, imports which happened to swell up one year, for causes not yet explained, and because they had become completely overawed at the thought of our famous sterling assets abroad and their investment power.
There is depression in this country to-day. There is depression in business. There is depression everywhere. There is depression amongst those who felt last year that possibly by spreading the amount gained from the subsidies it might be possible to get people back into employment, even though the employment would not be at the same high rate as before. One thought that there possibly might be an excuse for spreading the poverty, so to speak, of the country over the whole of the working community. But that has not happened. Again, Deputy Briscoe was the witness and outspoken commentator of what was here accepted, namely, that were it not for the very huge rate of emigration the unemployment figure would have overtopped the highest figure of Fianna Fáil days.
One looks to the legislation the present Government have brought in to find if there is any acceptance of these facts and if there is any chance that they are bestirring themselves to take steps to remedy the prevailing depression. I looked at a list of the prevailing legislation introduced since the present Government took over. Nine-tenths of the legislation was legislation prepared by the last Government, prepared to the point of almost perfection, and certainly when these pieces of legislation made their appearance there was no improvement on what had been left behind.
There were two matters only, the first of which was called the Prices Bill. That Prices Bill was written up a couple of days before it was discussed here, in the editorial column of the Irish Press of 12th October last. We were told that the Prices Bill had aroused wide interest. We were told:
"It marks the fulfilment of the promise of permanent price control machinery and is a measure which has been foreshadowed for a considerable time."
It indicated that the problem was difficult to solve. It criticised Deputy Norton, the predecessor in office of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce. It said that even though Deputy Norton in opposition bemoaned the absence of permanent price control machinery, he failed while in office to formulate the required legislation. The last paragraph of the editorial states:
"Few legislative measures are likely to meet with unanimous approval, least of all a Prices Bill. But that the Bill now proposed represents a fair and just effort to deal comprehensively with a problem vitally affecting every citizen few will deny. Constructively approached, given the required measure of goodwill and support and accorded a fair chance, there is no reason why the new Bill when enacted should not prove to be not merely a valuable safeguard for the consumer but a significant contribution towards the maintenance of effective price control and the attainment of price stability."
Reading that editorial, one would imagine that the legislation did propose something in the way of price control. The Tánaiste's statement in introducing the measure was to the effect that he was putting price control aside and was making arrangements so that years hence, if price control were required, there would be something in the way of a panel of people to deal with prices. However, his own phrase was that he was abandoning price control except for four commodities. That, however, is the way it is written up for the gullible folk who still believe what is said in an editorial in the Irish Press. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that the machinery is now effective and is there to be used, when necessary, as an efficient price control.
There is no price control. If there is any point of policy that emerges from the meanderings of the present Government over the past 14 months it is that they do not pretend they want price control. I presume it is in the hope of bringing in, if possible, American investors who require complete control of prices and great dividends and great profits before they will engage in industry in any country.
Apart from the legislation we left behind as fully perfected, there was what was originally entitled the Control of Manufactures Bill. That was supposed to be a liberalising piece of legislation. It was considered here and discussed. It is due for its final stages soon. It does not liberalise trade. It is the same old control of the years 1932 to 1934, put at greater length and likely to affright possible American investors rather than induce them to come in here. These are the only two pieces of legislation that could be called new and, presumably, they form some part of the Government's policy as against the depression they themselves caused by their Budget of 1956.
There is this asserted, namely, an improvement in respect of finance and savings. There is. Savings have gone up. It is said here in an article in the Irish Independent of the 26th April, 1958, that the trend seems likely to continue. How has that improvement in savings been brought about? The biggest item is the item referable to the Prize Bonds, which, of course, was not a product of the mind of any of the members of the present Government. There are also these Exchequer Bills which represent another movement towards getting what should have been got in this country many years ago but to which the banks steadily refused to lend any countenance.
Anything else that there is of a good trend comes from the fact that capital last year fetched such enormous prices and that there is so much money arising from the sale of the capital that bank deposits have gone up. However, can the Government claim with any pretence of assurance that they have done anything to increase savings? Their attitude has been to make life dearer and harder and in that way to take away the capacity to save from the vast majority of the people of the country.
When faced with quotations from himself and from the Tánaiste, the present Taoiseach said it was quite right that they had said they had no intention of doing certain things. He said they had not any such intention as they did not know what the situation was and that they could not therefore have formulated their plans. That may pass for an argument. It is a debating society point that, as they did not know the situation, they cannot be accused of making plans or forming intentions until they realised the situation.
The Tánaiste said that the Fianna Fáil Government does not intend to do any of these unpleasant things, namely, wage control, cuts in civil servants salaries, higher food prices and a lot more besides. The Tánaiste denied that these were in preparation. He used the same phrase: "The Fianna Fáil Government does not intend to do any of these things" and he added "because we do not believe in them."
The Taoiseach may quibble about the intentions but he cannot quibble about what he believes in. All through the war period, the present Government believed in and operated wage control. In 1947, the time when subsidies were first brought in, they decided again on wage control. When we came into office in 1948 we found the text of the new Bill which the Ministry of Industry and Commerce had prepared and which would be put into operation against the trade unions of those days. In 1952, we had the brutality of that Budget explained by the then Minister for Finance. We were told the Government had come to the conclusion that as wages and salaries had advanced more than the cost of living there was no social or economic reason for the continuance of the subsidies at that time. Last year, the subsidies that were then left after 1952 were cut. There is a policy right through all those years—the policy of keeping money out of the hands of the spending public, the people who earn money in return for the work, labour or service of some type they give.
The Government have become bemused by this fear with regard to foreign assets. Probably the fear grew during the war period but, having emerged from the war period, the Government proceeded as far as they could to maintain the old system of control on wages and salaries. That is what they believe in and they believe in it for the reason that they have become bemused by this thought of assets lodged abroad and which are to be regarded as reserves. In England at the moment there is operating a system of credit squeeze and an attempt to keep wages at a certain point.
In England it is done because over there Chancellors have become bemused by attempts to get what is called a stable £. Many economists have written recently objecting both to their views and to their policy and saying that, in a country like England, where investment is not yet as high as it might be, where production to be got through investment has not yet reached the proportions it should reach, there is a good deal to be said for taking a chance in respect of the £ and that it is an economist's nightmare, not his dream, to have millions of people standing idle, to have millions of people not properly remunerated or to have millions of people not properly provided with purchasing power to cause a demand for the goods which then can be still more easily produced on the great market that England provides for her own community.
Here we have not the stable £ as the idol; it is the assets, the famous sterling assets, and apparently here we operate between saying there is not enough capital in this country for our requirements and that there is too much. The Tánaiste is responsible for both these statements.
We had his famous plan, the £100,000,000 plan, a plan that was to leave us without a single unemployed person in the country. It was a plan, and it was spoken of as late as November of 1956, and spoken of by the author of this plan. Speaking at Carlow on 11th November, 1956, the Tánaiste said:—
"He had published on behalf of Fianna Fáil proposals for a full employment policy designed to secure that in five years capital investment would be extended until jobs were available for every boy and girl leaving school as well as absorbing those unemployed at present."
These proposals, he remarked, still stood, "and represent Fianna Fáil's idea of how national affairs should be conducted."
Earlier in the year, in April, 1956, he spoke of these proposals as proposals published, providing for a full employment policy and he then boasted that they were the only proposals which had been made and that nobody had attempted to show any serious defect in them.
As late as November, he could go back to his old-time statement in this House and say that the only thing wrong about unemployment in this country was that there should be any. Here he is in Carlow speaking of proposals to make jobs available for every boy and girl leaving school as well as absorbing those who were unemployed at present.
That is the plan and part of the plan was:—
"It is an essential feature of these proposals that the whole of the additional investment expenditure to be undertaken by the Government must be financed without drawing on current savings. The higher volume of savings which is anticipated must be forced to seek investment in private business."
He had, of course, calculated things nicely. He said the £100,000,000 was totted up in a special way and then he said:—
"There is no doubt that there is available to finance the proposed capital investment programme resources which are well in excess of the £100,000,000 which may be needed and which are at present being employed in a way which yields the minimum of national advantage."
There were, of course, a few safeguards that had to be taken. There were difficulties and there were dangers and one of the difficulties was that, if you got full employment in this country, of course, people who were selling their services for wages might ask for more wages. He practically said that the best way to prevent that would be to have a certain amount of current unemployment so that workers would be afraid to ask for what they might feel was legitimately due to them lest they might find themselves sooner or later joining the ranks of the unemployed. However—1956, November—£100,000,000 needed and there is more than £100,000,000 that can be got. Then we turn to the other side of the picture and the same Minister tells us that the savings of the community are not sufficient for the community's needs. He told us at Wexford, at the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce, that capital generated within the country was not sufficient to finance the industrial expansion called for by the country's economic position. He spoke of a crucial test of the industrial progress as being the number of new jobs created and by that test present progress was inadequate. Then, again, of course, the warning had to come.
He said:—
"Everybody wishes to see workers getting the benefit of higher wages when they can be awarded without danger to prices, or to their employment or to the expansion of activity in their trade. A rising living standard for workers must be the aim of successful industrial development. The penalty for wrong policy, however, may be declining trade and less employment. That is why there is need for effective understanding of economic realities by employers and workers, so that our price levels may remain competitive and that our trade may expand."
In that mood, that the resources which were generated inside the country are not enough for industrial needs, the Tánaiste sends emissaries to America and himself lectures the American industrialists about the necessity for what he calls getting a springboard to leap inside the Free Trade Area which is, apparently, shortly to come on us.
Here are the two figures—£100,000,000 and more than that, easily achievable, easily in our hands, required to be spent on industrial employment here, and the aim that every boy and girl leaving school will go into a job and that the present unemployed will be absorbed. On the other hand, he suggests that we have not enough capital and that there is not enough capital being generated from our own resources and therefore we have to parade ourselves as selling parts of this country and all sorts of devices being thought of to induce Canadians and Americans to come here in order to do what, apparently, the Tánaiste has despaired of getting the natives themselves to do for us.
The Tánaiste is very much in the limelight in connection with the O.E.E.C. talks. He made two statements on his arrival from discussions in Paris and a third when he was in Cork recently opening the factory of Messrs. Goulding at Marina in Cork. He is reported on the 18th January of this year at Dublin Airport, commenting to reporters in this way:—
"Our predominant interest is the British market and in that regard I think it desirable to say that nothing has emerged from the discussions which appears in any specific way prejudicial to our interests."
The older members of this House will remember the time when the British market was derided and we were told that, in any event, it was gone and gone for ever and it was like a child crying for the moon for people to think that that market could ever be restored. Now our predominant interest is in the British market and he holds out the consolation to our people that nothing has happened at the talks that will in any way prejudice our position there.
Speaking on March 6th to the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association, the Tánaiste told the groups to whom he was then speaking that they should now begin to reconsider their economic aims and policies which a decision to join the Free Trade Area would force on them. The headline the Irish Independent gave that is: “‘Prepare now for Free Trade,’ says the Tánaiste.”
The Tánaiste, apparently, cannot recollect the days in which he paraded himself as the great champion of economic nationalism, isolation of this country, and he was joined by a colleague in telling us that if we could not sell our produce abroad the only difficulty that might meet us would be that we would have to get the doors of our houses enlarged because we would be eating so much of our own production that we would all grow enormously fat. Now the Tánaiste is in full retreat from economic nationalism, the champion of that whole idea and the person who foisted his propaganda upon the public here, telling them we could live happily here on our own resources and that we neither needed to sell by way of export nor required much in the way of imports, that, in fact, imports were a curse and the sooner they were reduced the better.
The speech in March was the most brazen of all the speeches by the Tánaiste. He was opening a factory of Messrs. W.H. & M. Goulding, Limited, at Marina in Cork and the headline and the report in the Irish Independent of 31st March ran:—
"It was evident that our grasslands constituted the country's main potential for increased export of agricultural products."
He later said:—
"Whatever possibilities might exist in other directions the volume and quality of our exports of live stock were of overriding importance and were likely always to remain the sheet anchor of national prosperity."
I remember a time when a colleague of the Minister boasted on those benches: "It has taken possibly 150 years to build up our cattle trade, but, please God, it will not take anything like that length of time to break it down." On 31st March, the Tánaiste repeated that live stock is always likely to remain our sheet anchor. If there is prosperity, if there is a trend in the way of savings, that trend was not in any way solely developed by the policy when Deputy Sweetman was Minister for Finance. It is due to the fact that cattle, the sheet anchor, brought in such enormous prices that the farming community, at least those engaged in that particular farming activity, are well off, and they are the people increasing these bank deposits.
I have said there is one plan obvious through the whole of Fianna Fáil policy, that is, the plan they started during the war and which they continued afterwards, and which they proposed to continue in a more aggravated way in 1947. They tried to put that plan into effect in 1952 and for some time subsequently, and they have succeeded in putting it across since 1956, that is, this idea that the country must live at a lower standard of life. A great exponent of this is the Minister for Lands. The Minister for Lands has told us his idea of how the country should be run—"that the paternalistic care of a community by a Civil Service acting on instructions from a Government elected by the people, could alone preserve the fundamental freedoms and sanctity of human existence". He said that in 1946, as reported in the Irish Independent of December 31st of that year.
He summed up his own view, as later reported on 24th June, 1957, when he suggested this: "Millions had been wasted in the vain hope that building houses and hospitals would keep our people at home. We had spent £226,000,000 in ten years, of which only a small fraction really directly expanded trade and only 10 per cent. of that was spent on agriculture. Fianna Fáil was pledged to turn capital spending into production. For this, 80 per cent. of the initiative must come from the people."
He wound up his speech, made at Kilbeggan, by saying the Government had set its course solidly and resolutely to kill the idea that a Government could end emigration by spending money to give employment. Through the years, he has been promoting his views on this. He stated that we got happiness out of wireless sets and television sets, but our savings had been largely dissipated and it was time we paid tribute to the directors of the Central Bank for the prediction they issued in 1951 concerning the economic position of the country. The last three Budgets proved what the directors said was right. This was the beginning of the real Irish economic nation. It meant getting away from the "Celtic twilight" outlook of earlier days.
At an earlier stage, he had come back from a trip on the Continent and addressing Longford Committee of Agriculture said:
"Import restrictions, abolition of food subsidies, compulsory savings, heavily increased taxation, credit restriction, building limitation and wage ‘freezes' were among measures taken by European countries to check inflation.... No one could doubt that some of the universal remedies applied by Socialists and Conservatives alike in developed and undeveloped countries would have to be adopted in wise and reasonable measure here if national development was to continue."
We have now got most of these. The levies were import restrictions and they have now been made permanent. The food subsidies have been abolished. As far as compulsory savings are concerned, the Tánaiste has threatened that if everybody does not save 5 per cent. of his income, he would do it for them by increasing taxation. We have building limitation and credit restriction and, finally, wage freezes were attempted, but that has broken down.
The Minister for Lands has also told us that we have to face a stern competitive struggle for export markets. Costs must be brought down and, in the case of some commodities, sales increased to make a lower profit margin more remunerative. The wages and salaries of all the community must be related to economic selling. At a later stage, he told us ten years were needed to ensure real progress in expanding output, that there could be no swift change. It would take time to build up the competitive side of our export markets. He later said that, for the next 20 years, the Irish people would have to accept a somewhat modest standard of living until times improved. There were signs that capital was flowing back into undeveloped areas of the world because industrialists were looking for willing and productive labour.
These statements made by the Minister for Lands are in line with what Fianna Fáil policy was in 1947, 1952, and are in line with the policy they have been working since 1956. They have their eyes firmly fixed upon these famous deposits of ours and, at the same time, the Tánaiste had the idea there was a sum of £100,000,000 readily available to provide employment for every boy and girl leaving school and to absorb the current unemployed. That is the view which has prevailed in Fianna Fáil Government circles since the war. They are afraid to let purchasing power freely pass into the pockets of the spending public. They are afraid our resources might be absorbed. As the Minister for Lands said, we were building houses and hospitals merely to try to keep people employed, to keep people from emigrating. Unless this money is put into productive work, the Minister for Lands at least throws up his hands and thinks nothing can be done.
Last year, we were told that the standard of living had so increased that there was no necessity to give subsidies. It was said there was no economic or social necessity for the subsidies. This year, we reduced the subsidies, whatever of them were left. This year, we have thrown on to the farming community the task of increasing production and the duty of paying the cost of that increased production, if it results in a surplus that can only be exported on a subsidy basis.
There are certain other things we let pass. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare spoke in February of this year about the frauds that are being practised under the Welfare State. I know he made an effort here to back away from this later on. Speaking last week on the subject, the Independent of 2nd May said they were
"faced with wholesale fraud which resulted in the necessity to bring in Supplementary Estimates amounting to £3,000,000 or £4,000,000."
He questioned that and he gave a rambling explanation that it was at some Fianna Fáil meeting this happened, and he was being asked to agree to new benefits for different groups of people, and in some way or another he counted this up as meaning that Supplementary Estimates for £3,000,000 or £4,000,00 would have to be brought in, if these demands of his constituents or of the Fianna Fáil Party in his area were to be met. How that came to be confused with the wholesale fraud growing under the Welfare State he did not explain very successfully here.
We expected to hear the Minister for Finance refer to this matter. It is common talk that there are frauds. No one has yet put them at the height at which the Parliamentary Secretary put them, requiring Supplementary Estimates of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000, but there is quite an amount of common knowledge that there is fraud going on in regard to benefits of the social welfare type and the Minister for Social Welfare let it be known that they have heard these complaints and they believe in them.
What is happening? Are we taking any steps to put an end to it? Is it a question that we can subsidise fraud, where we cannot subsidise food subsidies; or is it a question that there are votes to be lost, if people now fraudulently preying on the community are brought to book through the operation of law? I do not know. In any event, it is on record that a serious situation was revealed by the Parliamentary Secretary most close to this matter. The people can judge his attempted explanation here in regard to these figures and can realise that probably he said most of what is reported in the newspapers, and that his effort here in the House is simply an excuse, because he probably found the members of the Government were not going to support him in any effort he made to get those abuses rectified and the delinquents brought to book.
I cannot understand the divergence between Fianna Fáil and its two wings. There are people who say that we have plenty of capital, more than is required, that we should use current savings for industrial development, but we should use our resources for the purpose of getting productive employment and getting every boy and girl and everyone now unemployed back at work again. On the other hand, there are other people—and sometimes even the same persons—who say this country has not enough capital, that we have to go begging American industrialists to come along and help us to do either what we are not able to do ourselves or what we have not the capital to finance.
Then, the Minister for Education, on going to Liverpool on St. Patrick's Day, made an appeal to our folk—I do not know how many of them—at a dinner he attended there. He said they should send their savings back home here. He said they owed a good deal to the land of their adoption, that it was only right that they should subscribe to industries over there; but it was also right that they should send some part of their savings back here. I do not know whether the Minister for Education is getting educated into the intricacies of certain financial matters, but I wonder if he realises the absurdity of his statement. He wants Irish people who have emigrated to Liverpool to send back here some of their savings. Apparently, he does not know that a tremendous amount of the savings generally inside this country is being sent to England to be invested in industrial development there. Probably he does not realise that if any of these emigrants' savings get into the hands of the Central Bank directors, so much praised by the Minister for Lands, they would probably immediately reinvest them in English securities. Therefore, the appeal made by the Minister would be successful and some savings would be brought home—to be sent back immediately for use in the way in which all our savings for many years have been invested and in which a great quantity of our savings is still being invested.
The Minister could do one thing for the community, if he could clear up these three sets of figures with which I opened my speech. Why in a year in which he offloaded from the shoulders of the people £9,000,000, the cost of the subsidies, and in which he extracted £5.3 millions more than a year before, how was it possible that he could achieve the incredible under these two amazingly favourable circumstances, from a Government point of view, and let a Budget run into deficit to the tune of nearly £6,000,000? If the Minister could throw some light on those sets of figures which are confusing the public mind, he may at least get some credit from the public for understanding what he is doing and for being able to explain to the people what they certainly do not understand at the moment.
