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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 28 May 1958

Vol. 168 No. 6

Finance Bill, 1958—Second Stage.

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.

As members of the House are aware, the main purpose of the Bill is to incorporate in legislation the Financial Resolutions passed by the Dáil on Budget Day and to make legislative provision for certain other matters of which notice was given in the Financial Statement. The Bill also contains a number of additional provisions which were not mentioned in the Budget and I shall explain these as I go along.

I propose to go through the sections and, in a general way, to outline their contents and purpose.

Section 1 is the customary section imposing income-tax and surtax for the year 1958-59 and continuing previous enactments. It corresponds to Financial Resolution No. 1, passed on Budget Day.

Section 2 provides that market gardening is to be treated as a trade and that income arising from it is to be chargeable under Schedule D. At present, income from lands occupied as market gardens, including nurseries, although estimated on a "profits" basis according to the Schedule D rules, is assessable under Schedule B. Difficulty has been encountered as to apportionment of the valuation in cases where such lands do not comprise the whole of one or more units of rateable valuation. This difficulty will now be overcome by providing that the profits of such lands are to be chargeable under Schedule D. The alteration is a technical one and does not impose any new charge to tax.

Section 3 provides that an outstanding appeal may, at any time, be settled by agreement between the taxpayer and the inspector of taxes. Under existing law, such an agreement may be valid only if arrived at before the date fixed for hearing the appeal.

Section 4 relates to statements made or documents produced by a person in cases of fraud or wilful default.

It is directed towards statements, etc. which may have been induced by its having been drawn to the person's attention that—while the Revenue Commissioners cannot give an undertaking in any particular instance—it is their practice, in deciding whether to accept a pecuniary settlement or to institute proceedings, to be influenced by the fact that a person has made a full confession.

Is there any chance of getting Fianna Fáil to make a full confession?

Very little, I confess. The section secures that such statements, etc. shall not, by reason only of their having been possibly so induced, be inadmissible as evidence in penalty proceedings. The section will obviate the danger of proceedings failing on such a ground where a person has promised a voluntary disclosure but in fact makes an incomplete disclosure and deliberately witholds essential information.

Section 5 provides that any notice to be given under the Income Tax Acts by the Revenue Commissioners or by an inspector of taxes may be served by post and also that any notice to be given by the Revenue Commissioners may be given by an officer authorised by them. Notices previously issued are validated.

Section 6 which is relevant to Part IV of the Bill, extends the scope of the information which employers are obliged to given to the revenue regarding cash payments to or on behalf of their employees.

Section 7 brings up to date, by reference to the Army Pensions Act, 1957, the existing exemption in respect of wounds and disability pensions and gratuities payable under the Army Pensions Acts. The section is so worded as to continue the exemption, without the necessity for further Finance Bill legislation, in the event of future amendments of the Army Pensions code.

Sections 8 to 12 recast and assemble together the chief provisions concerning assessment and collection of tax in the case of husband and wife.

Section 8 re-enacts existing law by providing that income of a wife, who is living with her husband, shall be deemed to be his income and that tax in respect thereof shall be assessable on him (subject to the right of either spouse to claim separate assessment).

Section 9 prescribes the method for division of personal reliefs between husband and wife where separate assessment is claimed. It is mainly a repetition of Section 25 of the Finance Act, 1920.

Section 10, which is a new provision, enables the Revenue for 1958-59 or any subsequent year to recover, from a wife, income-tax or surtax assessed on her husband and not paid by him, in so far as it is attributable to her income.

Section 11, likewise a new provision, empowers a husband to serve, on his deceased wife's personal representatives and on the inspector of taxes, a notice disclaiming responsibility for unpaid tax in respect of his deceased wife's income, whereupon the Revenue will exercise their powers of recovery under the previous section as against the wife's estate. This section and the preceding one were covered by Financial Resolution No. 5, passed on Budget Day.

Section 12 defines the circumstances in which a married woman is not to be treated for tax purposes as living with her husband.

Part II of the Bill — Customs and Excise: Section 13 terminates the customs duty on cinematograph films.

Section 14 is a technical amendment of the law necessitated by the Transport Bill, 1958, at present before the Dáil, so as to preserve existing duty relief of 6d. per gallon on diesel oil used on road passenger services.

Section 15 removes as now being inappropriate the limitation as to seating capacity placed on certain fully assembled private motor cars of British or Canadian manufacture which are, under Section 12 of the Finance (Agreement with the U.K.) Act, 1938, admitted on importation at a special rate of customs duty.

Section 16 increases the entertainments duty rebate granted to certain cine-variety shows in patent theatres from 30 per cent. to 50 per cent.

Section 17 terminates the additional excise duty on licences to sell cigarettes and tobacco.

Section 18 exempts persons who sell hydrocarbon oils or lubricating grease from the requirement of a hawker's licence.

Section 19 confirms in force four Imposition of Duties Orders, two relating to the special import levies and miscellaneous customs duties, one relating to the termination of the customs duty on roofing slates, and another restricting to shows of a certain length the rebate of entertainments duty payable on film shows having a specified content of sound films in languages other than English.

Part III of the Bill—Death Duties: Section 20, corresponding to Financial Resolution No. 8 passed on Budget Day, provides that any death duty payable in a foreign country on a death, whether occurring before or after the passing of the Finance Act, in respect of property situate there shall not, if double taxation relief arrangements subsist between Ireland and that country, be deductible from the value of the property for purposes of assessment to estate duty.

Part IV—Expenses Allowances and Benefits in Kind: Income-tax and Surtax: Section 21 makes chargeable to income-tax, including surtax, expenses payments, not already so chargeable, made to directors of trading companies and to certain higher-paid employees as defined in Section 24 of the Bill.

Section 22 provides, subject to certain exceptions, for the taxation of benefits in kind made available to directors and higher-paid employees. This and the preceding section, which operate subject to the normal claim for properly allowable expenses, correspond with Financial Resolution No. 2, which was passed on Budget Day

Section 23 lays down the methods to be used for valuing certain benefits in kind, including living accommodation placed at the disposal of a director or employee and other assets which may be provided for his use.

Section 24 is concerned with definitions. It defines among other things the employments, as distinct from directorships, to which this Part of the Bill applies. These are employments the emoluments of which, including benefits in kind but without any deduction for allowable expenses, are £1,500 or more in the material year.

Section 25 provides, in the main, for apportionment of expenses where payments by the employer are partly in respect of expenses taxable in the hands of a director or employee and partly in respect of other matters.

Section 26 is to the effect that this Part of the Bill shall apply in relation to a body corporate only if it is carrying on a trade, or is wholly or mainly an investment or property-holding concern.

Section 27 relates to interpretation.

Section 28 applies the provisions of this Part of the Bill, subject to necessary modifications, to persons employed by unincorporated societies and other bodies and to employees of partnerships or individuals engaged in a trade, profession or vocation.

Part V of the Bill—retirement and other benefits for directors and employees: income-tax and surtax—which will not take effect until the 6th April, 1959, is designed primarily to prevent avoidance of tax by means of certain arrangements made by companies and other bodies for the provision, for their directors and employees, of retirement benefits which are not bona fide superannuation. The benefits may be given by way of non-taxable lump sums or of pensions convertible into lump sums; or may be excessive by reference to generally accepted standards. Financial Resolution No. 3 passed on Budget Day, foreshadowed this legislation.

Section 29 defines various terms used in the subsequent sections.

Section 30 lays it down that, in general, an amount equal to the cost to a company of providing retirement benefits is to be treated as income of the director or employee concerned. Where the cost borne by the company is represented by a premium paid under a life assurance policy, the director or employee is to get the relief to which he would have been entitled if he had himself paid the premium.

Section 31 excludes from the scope of Section 30:—

(a) superannuation funds for employees approved by the Revenue Commissioners under Section 32 of the Finance Act, 1921;

(b) existing schemes operated through assurance companies, provided that certain classes of directors and employees are excluded from them and that they are closed to all new members as from the 6th April, 1959;

(c) statutory schemes;

(d) schemes (whether existing or future) relating to ordinary arm's-length employees which do not provide benefits in excess of £3,000 for any individual, and

(e) schemes approved by the Revenue Commissioners under Section 32 of the present Bill.

Provision is also made for repayment of tax paid under Section 30, if the individual concerned proves that he has not and will not receive the benefits.

Section 32 sets out the conditions with which a retirement benefits scheme must comply in order to be entitled to approval for purposes of this part of the Bill.

These conditions are intended to secure that the scheme is a bona fide one and that the benefits it provides are reasonable. As regards the quantum and nature of the benefits, the standard adopted is generally that set by statutory superannuation schemes, but it is more liberal in certain respects.

The Revenue Commissioners are empowered to approve a scheme which does not wholly satisfy the prescribed conditions.

One of the conditions of approval is that directors or employees of a company holding more than 10 per cent. of the company's ordinary shares may not be members of the scheme. Such persons, considered in the case of any particular company as a group, are, for practical purposes, proprietors rather than employees of the business in which they work and will, as regards retirement benefits, be put by the Bill in the same position as self-employed persons.

It is provided that, if an existing scheme is altered before the 6th April, 1960, so as to qualify for approval, such approval may be back-dated to the 6th April, 1959.

Section 33 provides that, for the purpose of this part of the Bill, a "scheme" includes an agreement with a single director or employee. All schemes relating to an individual (or a class of individuals) are to be taken together in considering whether the conditions of approval are satisfied; but a part of a scheme may be approved although the scheme as a whole does not comply with the prescribed conditions.

Section 34 is concerned with an approved scheme which may afford a lump sum benefit on retirement in excess of the ordinary limit (i.e., one-fourth of the total benefit), for (say) a person whose expectation of the life at the date of retirement is abnormally short. It enacts that so much of the lump sum as exceeds the prescribed limit will be taxed, at a rate depending on the circumstances of the particular individual.

Section 35 relates to an approved scheme under which a large lump sum may be paid on the death in service of a director or employee (e.g., where there is no widow or other dependent to whom a pension might be paid). In such a case, so much of the lump sum as may be in excess of the prescribed limit will bear income-tax at the standard rate; but it will not be treated as income of a beneficiary of the deceased's estate for the purposes of repayment or of liability to surtax.

Section 36 enables contributions paid by directors or employees under approved schemes to be treated for tax purposes as expenses incurred in the year of payment and relieved accordingly. The maximum amount of contribution which may be relieved in any year is limited to 15 per cent. of the individual's remuneration for that year.

Where contributions are repaid, they will bear an amount of tax approximately equal to the amount of relief given in respect of them, when paid.

Section 37 imposes an obligation on companies and other bodies to furnish particulars of their retirement benefits schemes. It also enables periodical returns to be obtained from persons having the management of approved schemes.

Part VI of the Bill—Retirement Annuities: Income-Tax and Surtax— introduces a new form of tax relief for self-employed persons and non-pensionable employees. It provides for relief from income-tax and surtax in respect of certain payments made by such persons to secure annuities for themselves in their old age. It also provides that income arising from the investment of such payments will be exempted from tax; and that the annuities purchased by them will be treated as earned income for tax purposes.

Section 38 defines the persons entitled to the new relief as those engaged in a trade or profession, either on their own account or in partnership, or in non-pensionable employment. It also links the relief to the payment of a "qualifying premium", i.e., a payment made by way of premium under an approved annuity contract, or by way of contribution under an approved trust scheme established by a trade or professional organisation. Approval of a contract or scheme will be conditional on certain conditions being satisfied.

Where the contributions under an approved scheme are accumulated in a fund, the income arising will be exempted from tax.

The annuities purchased will qualify for earned income relief in so far as they are attributable to premiums or contributions in respect of which relief is given to the payers.

Section 39 provides that the payment of a "qualifying premium" will be treated as reducing the payer's "relevant earnings", a term which means his earned income exclusive of any pension or remuneration from a pensionable employment. The amount which may be so treated, however, may not exceed £500 or one-tenth of the person's "net relevant earnings" for the year concerned (i.e., his "relevant earnings", reduced by certain deductions allowable in computing total income tax purposes). Both these limits are varied in certain circumstances by the First Schedule.

Section 40 exempts from tax the investment income of the part of the annuity fund of an assurance company which relates to contracts made by the self-employed, etc., and approved under Section 38 of the Bill; contracts made by the trustees of trust schemes so approved; and contracts made by the trustees of superannuation funds for employees approved under Section 32 of the Finance Act, 1921. Provision is made, however (following Financial Resolution No. 4 passed on Budget Day), for taxation of the profit derived by the company from such business; and accordingly the exemption extends only to so much of the income as is applied for the benefit of annuities under the contracts and schemes mentioned.

Section 41 contains a number of machinery provisions. It prescribes the manner in which relief in respect of a qualifying premium is to be claimed and gives the taxpayer a right of appeal if his claim is not admitted. It also enables the Revenue Commissioners to make regulations as regards certain matters of procedure; and provides a penalty for false claims to relief.

Part VII of the Bill—Relief from Double Taxation: Income-tax, surtax, Corporation Profits Tax and Death Duties—enables the Government, subject to the prior approval of Dáil Éireann, to give effect by Order to arrangements, whether inter-governmental or inter-State, with foreign countries for the relief of double taxation. Hitherto the only available method of investing such an arrangement with the force of law has been to schedule both it and the requisite technical rules to the next Finance Bill after the conclusion of the arrangement.

Section 42, which concerns arrangements for the relief of double taxation in relation to income-tax, surtax or corporation profits tax, provides for the giving of the force of law to any such arrangement concluded with a foreign country and incorporated in an Order made by the Government. The section furthermore applies, to such arrangements, the technical rules, set out in the Second Schedule, governing the method of allowing "credit" relief. These rules have already been enacted for the Conventions with the United States and with Canada but now they are being set forth in one place to apply to all such arrangements.

Section 43 makes provision for the necessary apportionments for corporation profits tax.

Section 44, which concerns arrangements for the relief of double taxation in relation to estate duty in similar terms to Section 42.

Section 45 empowers the Revenue Commissioners to make regulations.

Section 46 provides for the necessary relaxation of secrecy obligations.

Section 47 provides that any Order made under this part of the Bill may be revoked; and also that, before an Order is made, a draft of it must be laid before and approved by Dáil Éireann.

Section 48 is inserted to make it clear that arrangements as to relief of double taxation of profits from the business of shipping or air transport, to which effect may be given by Governmental Order under Section 15 of the Finance Act, 1951, may include inter-State arrangements as well as inter-Governmental arrangements.

Part VIII of the Bill—Recovery of Taxes and Amendment of Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1956: Income-tax, Surtax and Corporation Profits Tax: Section 49 is intended broadly to bring the position in the High Court, as to recovery of tax, into line with that existing in the Circuit and District Courts under Section 11 of the Finance Act, 1924, and Section 39 of the Finance Act, 1926. It authorises, without prejudice to existing methods of recovery, High Court proceedings to be taken in the name of an officer of the Revenue Commissioners; and prescribes a simplified mode of prima facie proof.

Section 50 extends the recovery procedure, embodied in Section 7 of the Finance Act, 1923, to arrears of surtax and corporation profits tax. Section 7 of the Finance Act, 1923, provides for recovery, by a county registrar or sheriff, of arrears of income-tax on the authority of a certificate issued by the collector by whom the tax in default is collectable.

Section 51 amends the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1956, mainly that part of it dealing with "exports" exemptions.

(i) As things stand, "exports relief" is available only where goods are manufactured in the State and exported by the manufacturer, but the scope of the measure is now, with full retrospective effect, being widened to include the case of fish produced on a fish farm and cultivated mushrooms.

(ii) In relation to new or increased exports, the present section lengthens the exemption period from five to ten years. Income-tax relief, however, is not to be given for any year subsequent to 1969-70.

(iii) Where a company gets relief under the exempting legislation, it is required to pass on that relief when making a dividend distribution. It is proposed now to ensure that, if the recipient of such a dividend is itself a company, it will likewise be required to pass on the relief to its shareholders.

(iv) This section also provides that, where an "industrial building allowance" prevents the granting, within the six years limit, of relief in respect of a trading loss carried forward, the displaced loss is to be carried forward for relief purposes without restriction as to time.

Part IX of the Bill—Stamp Duties: Section 52 authorises the Revenue Commissioners to enter into agreements with bankers for the payment in bulk of the Stamp Duty of 2d. chargeable on cheques. Under existing law, each cheque must be separately stamped with either an adhesive stamp or an impressed stamp.

Section 53 exempts, from Stamp Duty, receipts issued by the Land Commission for certain payments made to them in their capacity as successors to the Commissioners of Church Temporalities in Ireland.

Section 54 exempts from Stamp Duty any instrument which otherwise would have to be stamped solely out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas.

Section 55 repeals the Stamp Duty at present chargeable on bonds required for Customs and Excise purposes. These bonds relate mainly to the temporary importation of motor vehicles, the importation of goods for further manufacture, the payment of Entertainments Duty on the basis of certified returns, etc.

Part X of the Bill—Miscellaneous and General: Section 56 is the usual section to provide for the charging of annuities in respect of voted capital services.

Section 57 removes the requirement contained in Section 4 of the Central Fund Act, 1956, that Exchequer receipts in respect of Special Import Levy be paid into the Capital Fund.

Section 58 consolidates and extends the powers relating to the holding and investment of moneys of the Post Office Savings Bank. The new powers of investment relate to the holding of these moneys in United States and Canadian currency and securities, stock of the Bank of Ireland, mortgages of certain local authorities, securities and mortgages of harbour authorities and interest-bearing deposit accounts with banks in the State, Britain, U.S.A. and Canada.

Section 59 provides that the powers of investment of the Savings Certificates Reserve Fund shall be the same as those for the time being applicable to the Post Office Savings Bank.

Section 60 enables the Minister for Finance to determine the manner in which the remuneration payable for the management of Prize Bonds will be computed.

Section 61 and the Third Schedule deal with repeals.

Section 62 is the customary clause placing the various taxes and duties under the Revenue Commissioners' care and management.

Section 63 is concerned with the short Title of the Bill; and with its construction and commencement.

First Schedule of the Bill—Retirement annuities (Adjustments of Limit on Qualifying Premiums): The First Schedule modifies the limits of relief in respect of "qualifying premiums", specified in Section 39 of the Bill, in certain cases.

Part I of the Schedule provides for a reduction in the £500 limit in the case of a person whose earnings include remuneration from a pensionable employment. Part II increases both the £500 limit and the percentage limit, on a sliding scale according to age, in the case of persons who had attained the age of 40 years before the 1st January last.

Second Schedule of the Bill—Provisions as to Relief from Income-Tax (including Surtax) and Corporation Profits Tax by way of Credit in respect of Foreign Tax: The Second Schedule contains the technical rules which prescribe the method of giving "credit" relief from double taxation authorised by any arrangement having the force of law.

Third Schedule—Enactments Repealed: The Third Schedule, which is connected with Section 61 of the Bill, is concerned with repeals.

I am very conscious of the fact that the Bill is, of necessity, long and abounding in technical complexity. I hope to be able to deal with any point of particular detail on the Committee Stage. It would be helpful if Deputies could notify me before that stage of any aspect of the Bill or any clause on which they may require elucidation.

That is passing the buck.

It is very essential.

Let me deal with the Minister's last point first. While I am grateful to him for his courtesy in giving me a copy of the speech which he has just delivered, I think he, his officials, the Revenue Commissioners and the parliamentary draftsman all deserve to be severely censured for sending out a Bill like that without sending at the same time and with it a fairly good supply of wet towels. It must be one of the worst Bills to construe that ever appeared. That is inevitable, perhaps, from the type of problem with which it is dealing, but it underlines the fact that it is a Bill which could not possibly be discussed here on Second Reading. I am afraid the Minister will not get away quite so easily as he suggested in his peroration. However, if he wishes, I shall write a single sentence letter to him informing him that I propose to raise every question I can on every section, sub-section and clause. The Bill is a technical Bill and one which will require very careful consideration on the Committee Stage.

Before I deal with some of the more general problems with which I propose to deal on this Second Stage, I want to refer to a couple of things in the Bill itself. The Bill, as we all know, gives legislative effect to the Budget decision to make the special import levies permanent. It is nonsense to say that this Bill, and the Budget from which it flows, do not inflict any new taxation. Apart from that, the Bill makes permanent, and gives legislative effect to, Order No. 28 with regard to the imposition of duties. Anyone who cares to look at that Order will find in it pages and pages and pages of new customs duties, new revenue duties, imposed purely for the purpose of raising additional taxation, not duties in any way imposed for their protective effect but entirely permanent customs duties for revenue purposes, akin, I suppose one might say, to the McKenna duties in the middle of the first World War, 1916 or thereabouts.

In these customs duties we can see that everything, from knives to lawn-mowers and the toys about which certain members of the Fianna Fáil Party were so vocal when I put temporary levies on them, have been transferred not merely as a levy class to permanent taxation, but into permanent revenue customs duty. I have a kind of recollection that Deputy Burke from County Dublin waxed eloquent on the subject of the children's toys. I should like to draw his attention to Reference No. 14 of the Order made last month and he will see there that not merely is it now to be a percentage duty but, more than that, the cheap toy is to bear a specific imposition of 1/6 for each article.

It is nice to hear the Deputy playing with toys.

Deputy Burke from time to time speaks in this House; sometimes he is serious and sometimes he is not. I give him the opportunity on this Bill of explaining to the House whether his criticisms in that respect, when he was on this side of the House, were serious criticisms or whether he was only playing at that period. There are, as I say, in the Schedule no fewer than 34 additional permanent revenue duties. Apart from the fact that the special import levies as such have been transferred, others estimated to yield some £1,170,000, have been transferred permanently to current account. I shall have a little more to say at a later stage, but it is right that we should not pass from consideration of this Bill without all of us appreciating that no matter what the Minister may say, it does, in fact, impose new and additional taxation.

Parts V and VI of the Bill, which deal with the provision of allowances for self-employed persons, are welcome. However, I was flabbergasted when I read the Bill and compared it with the Minister's speech on page 1, which was entirely different. At column 612, Volume 167, of the Official Debates of 23rd April, 1958, the Budget statement, the Minister indicated his intention to introduce provisions:—

"...enabling a self-employed person or a non-pensionable employee to obtain a measure of relief from tax on payments made to secure a life annuity for himself in his old age or to secure, after his death, an annuity to his widow or dependent."

This Bill does that in principle, but it does not do it till next year. Everybody who read that provision in the Budget was entitled to think that it was in the current year he would get his relief. However, in the explanation which the Minister was good enough to give us a few moments ago, he said it would not come into effect until 6th April, 1959. I know very well there is the provision by virtue of which these allowances date back a year and that it is in relation to this year's income that the taxpayer is assessed next year; but that was not what the Minister said in his Budget statement. What he said in his Budget statement was that an allowance of that sort would be made, and the taxpayer was entitled to think that he would get that allowance this year. Instead of that, he has to wait another year before he gets it. That is very unfair indeed to that class of person.

The Bill also, in Part X, as I understand it, gives power for the Post Office Savings Bank Funds and the Savings Certificates Reserve Fund to be invested outside the country, in United States and other similar stocks. I want to say categorically that I disagree violently with that. The proper place in which our national reserve should be held is in the Central Bank and there should not be the duplication of different organisations holding that national reserve. The Central Bank— and the Order was made while I was Minister for Finance—is empowered to hold United States securities and currency as part of the Legal Tender Note Fund. If there are to be, as is visualised in Section 58, as I understand it, currencies of the United States or of the Dominion of Canada held by any Government or semi-Government institution in this country, it is in the Central Bank they should be held. There should not be the duplication that is involved in Section 58 permitting that outside investment.

Let me make this quite clear to the Minister. As I said at the very beginning, this is a most complicated Bill. It could not be more complicated and if in my criticisms of certain of these aspects I have misunderstood the Bill, I shall be only too delighted to hear the Minister contradict me, if my apprehensions are not correct.

I find it rather difficult to follow the Minister's explanation of Section 51 and the section itself. I understood that one of our troubles was that we were not saving enough, that one of the troubles in relation to various companies was that we felt—I am not putting any political complexion on this—on both sides of the House, that the companies concerned were not building up sufficiently adequate reserves; but as I read it, Section 51 prohibits these companies from building up any reserve. I cannot understand the meaning of that and the reason for it. It seems to me quite incomprehensible that we should prohibit a company virtually from building up any reserves. I know the company can build up the reserve and forfeit the export tax relief it now receives under Section 51, but that is asking something that should not be asked.

We had a fairly considerable discussion about that point on the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1956. I was, at one time, when I was introducing that Bill, inclined to go to the other extreme, to insist that, in order to get the benefit, the company concerned must retain in its reserves an additional amount, but it appeared clear in the course of the discussion on that Bill and in view of the necessity of changing certain definitions in it that such a provision would be far too rigorous and as I understood the situation at that time—perhaps I was wrong—it was left optional for a company to pay out dividends or not to pay out dividends, as it felt desirable in the circumstances of the case. I would most strongly advocate that such option be left to the various companies. It seems to me entirely improper in our present circumstances to impose that penalty on corporate saving which Section 51, according to the Minister's speech, appears to impose.

I presume that the purpose of Part IX of the Bill in relation to stamp duty is to save administrative costs and that it is purely for that purpose. Does it mean that our cheques will not have a stamp on them at all, when a particular bank makes a deal with the Revenue Commissioners? If what will happen in future is that a bank will make a deal with the Revenue Commissioners to pay on the number of cheques that come in to them, and pay in bulk, that seems entirely sensible. It will save a good deal of administrative cost and is entirely desirable.

So far as the waiver of duty is concerned in relation to Sections 53, 54 and 55, I think that again is a purely administrative question because up to this the duty had been paid and the refund was made later out of voted money. In fact, the purpose of Part IX, as I see it, is to ease administrative problems and not in any circumstances to make any difference in relation to the duty itself.

There is one section in this Bill which refers to the power of the Revenue Commissioners to issue directions to the sheriff or county registrar to seize goods of taxpayers for tax default, without having to go through a court process. I think that provision has been extended in this Bill to certain other taxes also. On both sides of the House and in business circles outside it, we all know, I am sure, that during the past year there has been far greater pressure than ever before by the Revenue Commissioners in the collection of arrears and tax of all sorts. As a Deputy, I have had far more letters from people concerned in these matters than I ever had before and I find that my colleagues are in the same boat. A great deal of this has arisen because I think during the past year for the first time the Minister gave the Revenue Commissioners power to issue a warrant to a sheriff or county registrar to seize goods without a court order. I am open to correction on that, but so far as I know such power was never given before. The effect of that has been extremely harsh on certain taxpayers and the section of this Bill to which I refer still further increases the hardship.

I am not quite clear about Section 20 which relates to death duties. I fully understand and appreciate that where a person has secured death duty relief, he should not be able to claim as a debt the death duty which has been allowed him here in the computation of his Irish liability. It does not seem to me reasonable to say that, over and above that, if he has paid in the other country more than the duty for which he has been allowed double taxation relief here, he cannot claim that additional duty as a debt. I do not see the validity of the reasoning in respect of the second part. I think it was on the Financial Resolutions that I raised the question of the retrospective and retroactive effect. The Bill in Section 20 confirms that retrospection. If the situation is beyond question clear that this is a loophole which existed and which up to this nobody ever saw before and if I am given an absolute assurance by the Minister that there is no case or claim at present pending, then I am satisfied to accept that retrospection; but if there is, in fact, any case or claim at present pending, we should not endeavour here to void such a case or claim by retrospective legislation.

Finally, in regard to the terms of the Bill itself, may I return to one aspect of the levies on which I should like to have some elucidation? At this time last year—I think it was in the first amending Order he made—the Minister abolished the levy on newsprint and imposed a customs duty of 5 per cent. on newsprint. He reimposed the duty that had been there and which had been suspended for roughly 15 years. As a result, every paper produced in the State has to pay on the newsprint it gets to produce the paper a tax of 5 per cent. Foreign papers are not liable to that newsprint tax; they pay under the levy arrangement. What I want to know beyond question from the Minister is: what is the position regarding returns of unsold papers? Any returns there may be of home newspapers or periodicals have already paid the newsprint tax. Do foreign newspapers coming in here get a refund of their levies in respect of unsold returns, if they re-export them? If that is the position—and I think it is— then it seems there is an unfair prejudice against home papers. I think it was there before: I am not suggesting it is something the Minister has introduced but so long as the newsprint tax was only a temporary measure, one could say that both the levy and the newsprint cost were both temporary costs. It does seem to me, however, now that the newsprint tax, has become a permanent revenue tax, that it is a question that must be considered and provided against, if there is not to be discrimination against home produced papers and periodicals.

In the concluding stages of the general Budget debate the Minister because of the shortage of time—it was not his fault at all—indicated he was not able to deal as he would like with the Capital Budget. I was hoping he would avail of the opportunity to-day when introducing the Second Stage of the Bill. In fact he indicated when concluding that such was his intention. I think his last sentence was: "Whether or not it is a matter that can be dealt with fully on the Capital Budget is another matter. It is a big point and I think we could deal with it more fully on the Finance Bill." I am surprised that the Minister did not deal with it to-day on this Bill. When he admits himself it is a big point—unemployment and emigration and whether progressive capital expenditure is the way in which it is to be dealt with—I would suggest that it was at the opening of the Second Stage of the Finance Bill that it should have been discussed by the Minister.

I am still in the dark as to what is the Fianna Fáil policy in relation to capital expenditure. I was very sorry indeed last Sunday that I had to pass by the Minister when he was standing outside the chapel gate at Ternascragh and that I was not able to wait and perhaps hear him tell us what was this great secret—the financial policy of Fianna Fáil. Unfortunately, other commitments prevented my doing so and I had to go on to the chapel gate at Laurencetown where I heard the Minister for Agriculture speak, but I heard nothing about the agricultural policy of the present Government. He never mentioned it once from beginning to end. If I had been lucky and able to wait, perhaps I would have heard the Minister for Finance tell us what is the financial policy of the present Government. However, I was deprived of that pleasure, but I hope the Minister will enlighten us to-day.

What is the policy of the Government in relation to capital expenditure? Before they got into power the Fianna Fáil Party, now the Government, took every possible opportunity of suggesting that their remedy for our economic ills lay in more lavish expenditure. We can remember the £100,000,000 plan, project or imagination—whatever the Deputies opposite like to call it, they do not like to use the word "policy," even though it was accepted by the country that that was the Fianna Fáil policy at the time.

Proposals.

All right. I will take the word "proposals."

I thought they were blueprints?

What was the purpose of putting forward proposals of that sort if they were not meant seriously? Was it to catch the unsuspecting voter? That is all past history now. The Fianna Fáil Party by putting up proposals, shall I say, got certain votes. But to-day we have a Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance, and let us hear from him categorically, once and for all, what is the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government in relation to capital expenditure. Do they believe as a Government that it is possible to spend themselves out of a recession? Are they satisfied with the employment and emigration situation at present? Is the remedy in their mind for that employment and emigration situation to cut down on capital expenditure or increase it?

If one looks at the Tables published with the Budget and at the Estimates of receipts and expenditure, one can see that there is forecast for this year a further substantial reduction in Government capital expenditure. If one looks at the last available returns in Iris Oifigiúil, one sees there in the figures up to the 17th May, the first six weeks of this year, a far more savage deflationary policy than ever was on the capital side introduced or suggested at any time by me. And we all know how my policy was violently criticised by Fianna Fáil. The effect of the figures in the first six weeks of this year cannot fail to be deflationary to a very substantial degree. Their deflationary effect may be to some extent offset from a purely economic and external point of view by the increase in current expenditure—overall expenditure, not merely current State expenditure—that arose following and because of the Budget of last year.

The people are entitled to know what is the Government's view. Is it their view that they will make up by deflation on capital account the increase on current account that their policy brought into effect? If so, I would suggest it is a reversal of the manner in which we can solve our present problems. Actual expenditure in 1956-57 was £24.5 million. In 1957-58 estimated expenditure was £22.6 million and actual expenditure £21.4 million, some £3,000,000 down. In the current year estimated expenditure is £13.5 million. I accept at once that in relation to the £13.5 million part of the E.S.B. outside financing must be added for the purpose of getting a comparable figure, but however you take it it is quite clear that there is in the intentions of the Government a very substantial deflation on capital account. I do not know whether the Minister considers that necessary because, for example, of the April trade returns. One swallow does not make a summer and one month's trade returns are not those upon which one can base an economic policy for a whole year.

Does not that also apply to capital expenditure?

I do not understand the Deputy's point.

The Deputy is taking six weeks' capital expenditure as indicative of the whole year.

No. I am taking the six weeks' capital expenditure as indicative of the trend set out in the Tables issued with the Budget Statement, where the figure is £13,500,000 as against £21.4 million last year and £24.5 million in 1956-57. I am saying that that six weeks is in pattern with the figures quoted in the Budgetary Tables. I agree with Deputy Haughey that, if there was not the factor presented in the Budget Tables, it would be quite pointless to take the six weeks.

In relation to the external trade returns, one swallow does not make a summer. The April figures were most disturbing. Having regard to one statement made by the Minister in his Budget Statement in relation to our balance on external account, it would be desirable that the House and the country should get from the Minister some indication of where he expects to go on external account during the current financial year.

The Minister will remember that he referred to the fact that this year we would have a modified or controlled adverse balance on external account. I should like the Minister to give us some indication of what modified or controlled figure he had in mind when he was making that statement. If the "April Swallow" is repeated in May —we hope it will not be—it must be remembered that the Minister by his own deliberate action has thrown away one of the measures available for dealing with such a situation. The levies have now been built into permanent taxation. The Minister will no longer be able to avail of them in relation to our external account. By his own choice, he has jettisoned a weapon which could have been used for controlling from quarter to quarter any difficulties that might arise.

The Minister did himself a disservice in not appreciating six months ago that the balance of external account was satisfactory and in not making some relaxations then in the way in which they should have been made for the purpose, if for no other reason, of giving the people confidence by showing them that, when things improved, it was possible to lighten the load and relax the control. On the other hand, should the position worsen —as we all hope it will not—it would be possible then to put on the brake again by reimposing the necessary controls. The Minister has deliberately, of his own accord, thrown away that method of control and I fear that what would be involved now would be a quantitative restriction, and that is something which should be avoided at all costs.

When the Minister is replying, I should like him to give us some indication of his expectations in relation to the terms of trade. The terms of trade indicated at page 15 of the tables issued with the Budget Statement show a somewhat disturbing picture. Has there been any improvement since those figures were issued? All over Europe there is a change in economic conditions, a reversal of a situation which has hitherto existed. Shipping freights are down. They are lower now than at any time since the Suez crisis. That should have improved rather than disimproved our position from the point of view of terms of trade. Perhaps the fall was not sufficient to reflect itself in the figures at the time of the Budget Statement. Another month has passed since then.

So far as Sweden is concerned, imports have dropped quite substantially in price. In the first quarter of this year that meant an improvement in their terms of trade of 2 per cent. There was a drop there of 3 per cent. in import prices as against a drop of 1 per cent. in export prices. I should have thought that, so far as we are concerned, the position should have been even more satisfactory; the fact that shipping rates were going down very substantially, coupled with the distances over which we have to bring our imports, should have had the effect of reducing still further the cost of the materials we have to buy from outside.

Cattle prices have been increasing. As against that, wool prices have been decreasing substantially. We are entitled to get from the Minister some prognostication of his hopes and his fears in relation to the terms of trade. I repeat now what I said on a previous occasion: if there is any worsening in the terms of trade, I shall not hold the Minister responsible for that. It is something over which he has no control. It is something over which I had no control, though it was alleged by the Fianna Fáil Party that the situation should have been controlled by us. Nobody sitting in this House has any control over a situation such as that. Nobody has any choice. One must accept world prices and world conditions. Nevertheless, I think the country should be told clearly by the Government what the Government sees ahead in relation to its financial policy and in relation to its capital policy and what it anticipates in relation to external account.

It has been noticed recently in the Press that some people are considering the effect of our economic policies on our whole structure. The Minister for Lands was prolific in his use of the pen recently in defence of his Department after his unseemly outburst in relation to The Kerryman. He is a very foolhardy man, I think, if he takes the point of view that all our land policy over the years has been as excellent as he would have us believe.

What is the position in relation to the country as a whole? The only way in which one can assess real income is by making a comparison with another country. Our national income, per head, is about 55 per cent. of that of the United Kingdom, our nearest neighbours. The significant thing, however, is not that figure but the fact that it is about 65 per cent. in Leinster and, therefore, in order to get to an average of 55 per cent., what must it be like in the rest of the country? I think it shows that, for the remainder of the country, it must be down to somewhere about 50 per cent. I wonder if the Minister is satisfied with that overall position. I wonder if the Minister is satisfied with the effect the policy of the Land Commission has had in relation to our economic progress.

I think it is a fact that cannot be gainsaid that much of the improvement in real income throughout the country is due to the more substantial improvement that has been made in Leinster than in other places. If that is correct, and I think it is, we must consider how or whether we can bring the remaining parts of the country in line with that improvement.

I am disappointed in that, in relation to all the publicised material one can see, the Government do not appear to be doing anything to extend the capitalisation of agriculture. There appears to be capital for jet runways, for transatlantic planes, for other things—and, at this stage, I am not asking whether or not they are desirable, one type of industry or another —but it is a sad fact that the primary thing on which we should utilise our capital does not seem to be getting its fair share of that capital.

I should have thought it was without question—certainly we on this side of the House consider it to be so—that capital for agriculture should be the first priority and that, with this very capital employed in agriculture, there is far the best chance of solving our economic problems—I do not mean necessarily in agriculture alone but in derivatives from agriculture and that agricultural capital should take priority over every other desire for capital that there is in the community.

Speaking on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture, Deputy Dillon mentioned the scheme for the provision of new capital that was introduced during our time. I agree entirely with the analysis he made of it then and with his suggestion for its amendment. I hope the Minister for Finance will permit his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, to amend it on the lines suggested by Deputy Dillon.

When speaking on the General Resolution, Deputy J.A. Costello made the position of this Party clear in relation to death duties. While the Minister might not be able to afford, this year, the cost of any wholesale inducement such as that suggested by Deputy J.A. Costello—and, indeed, the Minister said so—he will agree with me that Deputy J.A. Costello's statement was the first requisite for an enlightened death duty policy. I referred to this matter last year on the Finance Bill.

People do not change their residences because of death duty inducements unless it is clear that there is an overwhelming likelihood of permanence in any such inducements. The Minister has now got a declaration from the Fine Gael Party and he can, therefore, introduce any inducement that is possible in that respect in the sure knowledge that it will have its effect because people will know that the two major Parties support such a project.

Pending the main approach to that matter, I want to mention the situation as it applies to death duties in Ireland and in the Six Counties. The cost of any amendments such as I shall suggest will be very trifling this year and, in a Budget of the size of the one we are discussing to-day, it would not be in any way significant. The present position in relation to the smaller estates of from £2,000 to £3,000 and from £3,000 to £4,000 is that such estates down here have to bear 1 per cent. more death duty than estates of similar persons who die in the Six Counties.

If, therefore, a person were in any way taking into consideration where he might retire, and the problem of death duties, he would find the situation to be that, by coming here, there would, perhaps, be something substantially less for his widow out of an estate of that size—even if the estate went up to £20,000. In addition, legacy and succession duty is chargeable here and is not in the Six Counties. Such differentiation and discrimination against estates of people buying down here is undesirable and should be amended. I do not think the cost, in relation to the current year, would be of any practical significance. Perhaps, on the Committee Stage, we might give the Minister an opportunity of discussing that aspect of the matter.

Might I ask the Minister a question about the levies in existence? Recently I asked him if he would give us, for the convenience of the House, a statement of what the levies were at present or else that a clear copy would be put in the Library. So far as I am aware no such clear copy has been given to us. I would press the Minister very strongly indeed, before we come to discuss this Bill on the Committee Stage and before we come to consider the position which arises under Section 19, to let us have that clear copy.

It must be in existence at present. If it is not in existence, two days' work, at the outside, by a typist would produce a typescript copy or two. I spent the best part of three hours over the weekend making out the various amendments in the Customs and Excise Tariff Supplement relating to special import levies that were necessary following two Orders of last year. I will not weary the House by enumerating the number of amendments I had to make, but I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that two out of every five items in the index to the duties had to be amended and that without coming to the April Order of this year. When I came to the April Order, I just threw my hat at it because it was impossible to segregate the present position. Sooner or later, the Minister will have to publish a new supplement, a new print. Such a print is always published and I would suggest strongly to the Minister that he would now give us a preview of that print, by putting a typescript in the Library for the convenience of Deputies before the Committee Stage of the Bill comes around.

As I say, there has got to be a Finance Bill. We all appreciate and understand that. The nature of this Finance Bill, because of those provisions, is one that can more easily, be discussed in detail on Committee Stage, and we will have the opportunity of doing so then. I am glad that the provisions in relation to self-employed persons' pension allowances are at last finding their way to the Statute Book. They have been under consideration for a very long time. In fact, if the Minister were to say categorically that consideration of them had commenced before even I went to the Department, I would not contradict him, because I know it was some time around about then they started to be looked at, and the results are here for all to see. I think it is a pity that the one thing in this Bill about which I can give any bouquets to the Minister now appears to be introduced not for this year. Even for that, we have to wait for jam to-morrow.

We will have it for this year.

Perhaps the Minister was wrong in what he said in his brief.

I am sorry.

I should be delighted to hear that will be so, but the Minister in his speech dealing with these, as I understood, said they were not to be operative until 5th April, 1959. If I am wrong in that, I shall be only too delighted to make, as the Minister should have made in other respects, the general confession to which he referred in his opening remarks.

I should like at the outset to deal, if I may, with the remarks of Deputy Sweetman on the capital Budget for the forthcoming year. I do not think the Deputy gave the full picture when he quoted from the table on page 7 of the Estimates of Receipts and Expenditure. The list of capital expenditure given in that table does not give the full picture at all. That table would appear to be prepared in accordance with some statutory requirements. In Table IV of the Financial Tables issued in connection with the Budget Statement, we get the capital Budget for 1958-59, and in it the total capital expenditure envisaged for 1958-59 is given as £36.25 million. That compares with the outturn of the capital Budget for 1957-58 of £36.33 million, so that in fact when the full Government capital Budget is compared for the two years, the difference between the proposed expenditure for the coming year and the outturn of the past year is so trifling as to be of on importance whatever.

What about the previous year?

I presume the Deputy was talking about 1957-58.

And 1956-57.

Apart from that, it seems to me that it is quite clear from the Minister's Budget Statement that as far as expenditure by State bodies and Government Departments is concerned, capital expenditure is to be continued during the coming year at the same levels as in the past year. When Deputy Sweetman states that he is in some doubt as to what the Government's financial policy on capital account is, I do not think he is being altogether fair, because surely the legislation put through during the past year gives a very clear indication of what that policy is? There was legislation dealing with the industrial credit company, with the encouragement of external investment, and other legislation passed during the past year all of which, to my mind, gives a clear indication of the trend and emphasis of Government capital policy.

I think it is a fair summary to say that in so far as capital expenditure by Government Departments or by State companies is productive, essential and important, it will be continued at the levels at which it has been, and in so far as can be achieved by legislation, by Government inducement or encouragement, the private sector of the economy will be encouraged to undertake a volume of capital expenditure which will be continually increasing.

Has the Deputy not rather underlined my point that agriculture has been left out in the cold? He has not produced anything in relation to agriculture.

I know very little about agriculture. No doubt, Deputy Dillon will be pleased to hear me say that——

——but in regard to that point, I sat in this House not very long ago and heard Deputy Dillon proclaim, with his usual oratory, that so far as he was concerned, he had never seen any evidence that credit or capital for agriculture which was genuinely necessary and needed was lacking. However, perhaps Deputy Sweetman will argue that point out with Deputy Dillon and come to me again and tell me what they are agreed upon.

With regard to the Bill, I am quite certain that by far the greater part of it will be welcomed by most people and, indeed, the Minister deserves to be congratulated on a great number of the provisions which he is introducing. That is not to say that the mixture is completely unadulterated and will be acceptable en masse. For my own part, there are provisions in it with which I would forcibly disagree. The primary feature of the Bill is the fact that the Minister has been able to avoid increasing taxation in any way and has given effect to the desire of the Government in that regard. The various rates—income-tax, surtax and corporation profits tax—have been maintained at the same level and all the various allowances granted in previous years are maintained. There can be no denying the fact that that is a significant achievement and that it has been warmly welcomed throughout the country.

The Minister deserves to be con— gratulated on the fact that he has introduced provisions which make more sensible the law dealing with the assessment of husband and wife. This will remove an anomaly which has existed. In fact, the situation is now much fairer both to the Revenue and to the individual taxpayer. I welcome also the provisions of Part VI which give new facilities to the self-employed person to enable him to provide for his retirement. For a long time, the self-employed person has been at a disadvantage in relation to all other sections of the community in this regard as a taxpayer and I join with the Deputy Sweetman in welcoming these provisions.

There is no doubt, however, that the aspect of the Bill which is causing most public comment and in which the greatest amount of interest is being taken is Part IV, which deals with the question of including expenses and perquisites for charge to tax from now on. I do not know that the Minister was wise to bring in these provisions at this stage, particularly as the Commission on Income Tax is still sitting and no doubt will be considering this very point. There is of course a volume of opinion which is very doubtful as to whether the commission can achieve the objective which it has been set. Many of the people interested would have liked to have seen that commission backed by some sort of a technical committee which would have been drawn from the Revenue and the legal and the accountancy professions. Be that as it may, its report might well have been awaited before the introduction of provisions as to the taxation of expenses.

I say that particularly because the last Royal Commission on Taxation which set in Great Britain dealt at some length with this matter and, in fact, its Majority Report runs counter to the ideas included in Part IV of this Bill. If this Bill were running along the same lines as the report of that commission in Great Britain, I would still say that there would be a good case for waiting until our own commission had reported on our own circumstances before enacting any such legislation, but especially when the trend of opinion of the British commission was against the trend of this Bill, there is all the more reason for awaiting the report of our own commission.

I should like to give some figures which I know to be authoritative and which I do not think will be contradicted, as to the sections of the community which subscribe the yield of taxation at the moment. Broadly, they are as follows: from industrial and commercial firms, we get 60 per cent.; from salaries and wages, 22 per cent.; from professions, investments, rents, etc., 8 per cent.; from surtax, 8 per cent.; and from property and farming, 2 per cent. Those figures give a very clear indication of where the weight of taxation is falling at the present moment. It is absolutely clear that the salary and wages-earning sections of the community are bearing a very fair share of the burden of taxation. In that situation, I do not think it is fair, apart from any other considerations, to go after that one section in the way in which Part IV goes after the salary and wage-earning classes and endeavour to copperfasten and tie them up completely in a fashion which is not done with any other section.

I think it is a good principle, if you take this class separately, that any opportunity for evasion or any loophole which exists, which enables any one taxpayer within the class to gain a benefit over another taxpayer within the class should be eliminated. Having said that, however, I still think it is not fair to go so rigorously after this section, when, as we all know, there are far greater fields to which the Revenue Commissioners could devote their activities.

Another aspect of this that strikes me is that, as a matter of national policy, we want to bring about an expanding economy and increasing production, and in that respect sales and selling policy will be terribly important, particularly in the case of the export market. Apart from the narrow question of raising revenue, it is not a good thing in that situation, when we are looking to this section of the community for a tremendous effort in selling their commodities on the export market, that they must always be looking over their shoulders and keeping an eye on this particular section when they are carrying out their sales programmes.

I do not know that it can be said that the abuses to which this Part of the Bill are directed are so widespread as to justify the very considerable amount of administration which will be involved in putting it into effect and also the amount of difficulty and trouble it will give to commercial firms generally to comply with its provisions. I suppose it has become a kind of catchcry to say that the whole incometax code is in need of revision. We may hope that from the commission which is sitting something will emerge along those lines. I should like, however, in the meantime to put these figures to the Minister for his consideration in the coming year. There are nominally, I understand, 180,000 assessments raised in any year, but 75 per cent. of the total revenue comes from not more than 10,000 of these assessments. Therefore, our efforts in future should be directed to be considerable extent towards eliminating out of the revenue net many of these small unproductive assessments which at the moment must be cluttering up the administrative machine.

In his Budget statement, the Minister stated he was considering the question of making one form do for incometax and surtax. I would be glad if he would pursue that a little further and see if it would not be possible to have the corporation profits tax return united with the ordinary Schedule D return.

The extension of the relief on profits from exports to ten years is very welcome and I think very beneficial results should flow from it. I agree with Deputy Sweetman in his approach to this matter. I do not understand why there should be the insistence on the fact that the benefits accruing to a company must be passed on to its shareholders. I think that the more incentives we can give to companies to create and build up reserves, the better. I understand that there is a difficulty if a shareholder comes to claim a repayment of tax and the tax has been deducted at the standared rate when the dividend was paid. I am quite certain that could be got over, if it were thought desirable. I would press the Minister to do some further thinking about this whole matter and change the emphasis to endeavouring to see that the very substantial relief which a company engaged in the export business can get from these provisions will be used to build up the reserves of the company rather than insisting that they be distributed.

I should like to congratulate the Minister on the efforts he makes in Part III to iron out a few difficulties in the appeals procedure and I should also like to say to him that anything further he can do in this respect will be very welcome. There is no doubt that the present system is a very timewasting one. How it could be got over, I do not know, but I would like him to look into it. The present position is that the taxpayer who is going to an appeal must report at a certain time and he may well have to wait around for half a day before his case is called.

In saying that, It must add immediately that nobody could complain of the manner in which the Special Commissioners themselves deal with appeals. There is unanimous agreement that the Special Commissioners are most courteous, painstaking and efficient in dealing with appeals that come before them. It is the actual mechanics of getting in to the Special Commissioners that I complain of. Both the taxpayers themselves and their agents—and this applies both to appeals before the Special Commissioners and the Circuit Court—may have to wait around for long intervals before their cases are called.

I put a question recently to the Minister on the question of surtax directions and asked if he would, as an additional encouragement to the investment of foreign capital in this country, consider repealing the section which gives the authority to make surtax directions. The Minister stated in his reply that he did not think that the existing provisions actually discouraged investment in Irish industry. I must say that I think they do and I think he should seriously examine this question for this reason. As far as I know, this process of the surtax direction is very little availed of. My information is—I may be wrong—that it is practically regarded as a dead letter. If that is so, there is no point in keeping the provisions on the Statute Book while they may have this deterrent effect on a company proposing to come to this country.

The only other point which I should like to raise is in relation to the provisions of Section 2 which deals with marketing gardening. I am not quite clear as to the effect of subsection (6). It seems to me that its effect would be that a co-operative society, or a registered friendly society, will from now on become liable to have its market gardening activities assessed for tax under Schedule D, on profits. If that is so, it is an anomaly. A registered friendly society is free of tax on its trading activities and there is no reason why market gardening should be singled out for special treatment. I should have thought that the engaging in market gardening by co-operative societies was a very desirable activity and something that should be encouraged. However, my interpretation may be wrong. I should like to hear from the Minister on the matter.

I conclude by repeating my appeal to the Minister regarding the provisions of Part IV of the Bill. I feel that, on the Committee Stage, we might ask him to modify, in some respects, his proposals, but at this stage I suggest as a matter of principle that it is not fair and is not in the national interest, if we are to pursue the type of vigorous and expanding export trade which we all want, to proceed with the provisions as they are at present in the Bill.

Deputy Haughey is always an optimist. I remember this time last year he was soothing his soul and justifying voting for an increase in the price of bread, butter and flour because it would balance the Budget. Then, at the end of the year, he discovered they had missed their mark by about £5,000,000. But his optimism is unimpaired because this year he cannot bring himself to share Deputy Sweetman's apprehensions about the capital Budget, because he finds, on referring to Table 4, the estimated capital expenditure for the coming year will be something approximately the same as the realised capital expenditure for last year.

He forbore from comparing these two figures with the realised capital expenditure of the previous year, 1956-57, but even in the restricted sphere where he allowed his inquiring mind to play, I wonder did he look at note C at the bottom of the page. If he digests that note, he may find it provides a seed of apprehension which may grow as his inquiries develop, because that note says that the figure of £2.8 million for the Industrial Credit Company, Ltd., represents a funding of existing overdrafts to the extent of £1.4 million.

If half of the entire provision for the Industrial Credit Company in the coming year is for the purpose of paying off expenditures undertaken by them last year, we cannot expect it to make a very material contribution to the provision of employment-providing enterprise in the year under review, 1958-59. In regard to the provision made for local authorities, the Deputy ought to bear in mind that the Minister for Finance grew quite passionate, when winding up on the Budget debate, in saying that he had provided £2,000,000 and he could not get the local authorities to draw it, but he was prepared to make a similar provision this year, but that, having made it in the Capital Budget, if the local authorities did not avail of it, there was nothing he could do about it.

I suggest to Deputy Haughey that he should look at these figures somewhat more closely and then he would discover that his present leaders have not forgotten a practice to which they were much addicted during the 16 halcyon years when they constituted the Government of this country from 1932 to 1948, that is, the padding of a Budget. If you wanted to pacify your supporters, you made large provisions at the beginning of the year. You trusted to God that by the time the financial year was finished and the Appropriation Accounts furnished, everybody would have forgotten what you said the previous March, and, the Public Accounts Committee being usually two or three years in arrears, nobody ever discovered that where £1,000,000 had been appropriated, only £50,000 had been spent.

Deputy Haughey might remember that, in March, 1957, we appropriated £250,000 for agricultural marketing research and there was great excitement and anticipation among the less sophisticated elements in this House. At the end of the financial year it was discovered we had spent about, £857, but in the meantime the Minister was explaining that this money had to be found. Therefore, taxation had to be imposed in order to balance the Budget.

That is not a capital Budget.

But it is all the same procedure.

The Deputy is a better orator than a mathematician.

The difference between myself and Deputy Haughey is that I have been observing his leaders since he was in the cradle and I know their habits——

It is not for me to suggest that the Deputy may have gone a little senile.

The Deputy ought to be circumspect when he reads Estimates. Estimates are one thing, but realisation is another. I hope he remains with me on the Committee of Public Accounts for a little longer so that I may educate him in that respect. In fact, I should have imagined that his experience to date on that committee would have informed him of that practice. He ought to learn that the Committee of Public Accounts relates to the Appropriation Accounts. There is no similar inquisition into the capital Budget. These figures are never tested, unless somebody is sufficiently curious to query them in 15 or 18 months' time. The Deputy will now discover that no occasion arises for that as a rule because they are never reviewed. I should be very much interested to see what the Minister's appropriation for capital purposes in the coming year will be.

Deputy Haughey ought to remember, too, that capital for agriculture is not identical with credit for farmers. It was of credit for farmers I was speaking when I said I believed that there was a means to get credit available for farmers now, subject to the qualification of the recent scheme for small loans and that I would be interested to hear from somebody who had some further proposals to make credit available for farmers. That is not quite the same thing as capital for agriculture.

I should not like to persuade myself that newly arrived Deputies quickly fall into the practice of double talk in this House. I remember a Deputy who sat on the Independent benches. He had a disarming way of talking which led you to believe, whether he was right to wrong, that he sincerely and honestly believed what he said. I subsequently discovered him to be the most expert exponent of double talk that ever sat in this House. I should not like to believe that of Deputy Haughey. Deputy Haughey, I concede, manages to create the impression that, whether you agree with him or you do not, he is saying what he honestly believes, but I cannot believe that Deputy Haughey seriously contends this Budget does not represent increased taxation.

I know well that this Finance Bill is skilfully, drawn to conceal increased taxation, but that is quite a different thing from being drawn to avoid increased taxation. Surely it is true to say that if you appropriate to general revenue £4,000,000 worth of revenue which came in exclusively for capital purposes, through levies primarily designed to restrict imports, you are putting on additional taxation.

You are doing a different thing with the results of taxation. The level of taxation is the same.

I find it hard to believe that Deputy Haughey accepts that contention.

Of course.

We have now incorporated in our tax structure a whole series of charges which must remain permanently, unless economies in our total outlay are effected. These are permanent taxes. But that is not all. There are two ways in which you can levy taxation. One is directly by the imposition of taxes. The other is by means designed to short-circuit the Exchequer altogether. Does the Deputy not feel that it constitutes a tax on the agricultural community if you reduce the price of wheat, the price payable for barley, milk and pigs? You may say that it is the withdrawal of an advantage but, in fact, it is a tax and a very material tax.

I do not like to keep interrupting the Deputy but there is nothing about that in the Finance Bill.

Of course there is not. That is the way it was done. There is nothing about the levy on salmon in the Finance Bill. There is nothing about the taxation of salmon rods in the Finance Bill. That was not meant to be. Deputy Haughey has said it in a word; there is nothing about these in the Finance Bill. Of course there is not but are they any less taxes? That is an old dodge. You have two or three Finance Bills but you call one a Fisheries Bill and you call another a Statutory Order by the Minister for Agriculture and you call a third a declaration of policy by the Minister for Agriculture. There is no reference to them in the Finance Bill but they are taxes and the hope is that, when the Finance Bill comes before the House, drawn by not inexpert hands, there will be found innocent and wellintentioned Deputies to lean over from the back bench and say that they congratulate the Minister for Finance on the success attending his efforts to avoid increased taxation. That is the whole purpose of this structure but I need not add another word. Deputy Haughey has said it all himself; there is nothing about these things in the Finance Bill. There was not meant to be.

Having established, or sought to establish, in Deputy Haughey's mind that taxes do not have to be in the Finance Bill to impinge upon the taxpayer, I think this is the occasion upon which I ought to asked the Minister for Finance if he will tell us what the Government policy is for agriculture in this country. He will recall that he imposed last year in his Budget an increase of 6d. on the loaf, 7d. on the lb. of butter and 3/6 a stone on flour and he hoped or said he hoped, that that would involve no adjustments in our economic structure other than those envisaged in his Budget of 1957 where social services were increased in certain regards. In this Finance Bill he makes provision for his second thoughts. What were these second thoughts? In the course of the year, after he increased the price of bread, butter and flour, he made provision of £250,000 to compensate bakers and I am sure individual baking firms drew up to £50,000 to compensate them for their discomforts. He then made provision, to compensate the biscuit manufacturers, for an annual grant of £100,000—£100,000 per annum for two biscuit manufacturers. So far as I know, there are only two that count and they share it between them.

His colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, then declared that industrial workers throughout the country should receive up to 10/- a week increase in their wages, and that is fair enough. It was to help them to meet the increased cost of living resultant from the increase in the cost of bread, flour and butter. He has now extended the exemption from incometax on industrial exports from five years to ten years. He announced, that he was not prepared to entertain any application for salary adjustment from civil servants but he changed his mind about that and provision is made in this Finance Bill to meet increased salaries for civil servants, Civic Guards, the Army and his colleague, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, after some display of reluctance, consented to corresponding increases for every local government employee in the country.

All these claims were equitably made. The Minister was constrained by the irresistible logic of the case pressed upon him to yield and withdraw from the position he had originally attempted to take up. All that having happened and bearing in mind that many of these charges fall directly or indirectly on the small farmers— because there is not a single local authority that has not had to adjust its estimate very substantially in order to meet the increased costs arising from the increases in the price of bread, flour and butter and the small farmers have had to meet that in their rates—they in their turn inquire if they have to help to compensate the bakers, the biscuit manufacturers, the industrial workers, the industrial exporters, the civil servants, the Guards, the Army and the local government employees, what provision will be made for the farmers who have to eat bread, butter and flour and pay everybody else their extra costs of living on account of their having to eat these commodities also?

The only declaration of policy that I have heard so far from the Government Benches was that made by Deputy Egan of Leix-Offaly who said that the farmers do not need to buy butter, flour or bread; if they are good farmers they should make their own butter and should grow their own wheat and grind it at home and eat it themselves and, if they do not, as I understand Deputy Egan to say, the devil mend them.

I said the farmers need not buy any appreciable amount of flour or bread.

Any appreciable amount.

The farmer could turn a half statute acre of wheat into wheatenmeal, as Deputy Dillon should knew.

That is Deputy Egan's remedy for it——

That is my experience of good farmers.

——let them produce their own flour, bread and butter and then they will not have to pay anybody anything but they will have to help to pay their share of everybody else's expenses. I suppose Deputy Egan will agree with me in that. I think they are a reasonable body of people.

Had the Deputy that in mind when he was offering 1/- a gallon for milk?

I do not think this is the appropriate time to discuss that because that allegation is not true. I am discussing the circumstances that obtain at the present time. If they had been approached on the basis that, in these circumstances, nothing further could be done in the way of increasing their prices, they might have faced that but it is a hardship that Bowles' philosophy should be proclaimed in regard to the farmers of this country. We cannot too often recall the source of that philosophy. Bowles was Fetherstonhaugh's bailiff in Longford and, whenever Fetherstonhaugh would ask Bowles was it equitable for the tenants to ask for a reduction in their rent, Bowles used to reply: "No, no, no. The heavier you load them the sweeter they will draw." Fetherstonhaugh would say: "Very well. We won't reduce the rent, and if anyone does not pay it, we had better drop a postcard to the man who keeps the battering ram for hire."

We drew their teeth long ago. Did the Deputy ever hear of Sanders Fort, Woodford? That is what reduced landlordism.

Yes, and I was just saying to the people in Loughrea not long ago that I thought with satisfaction of the fact that the first move for the Plan of Campaign took place in Loughrea, and it was through that instrument we eliminated Bowles and Fetherstonhaugh from this country.

Let us come back from Loughrea to this Bill.

This is an appropriate place to say that in this day if anybody else, even if it were a native Government, sought to revive Bowles and Fetherstonhaugh, it would be no harm to give him the same treatment we gave Bowles and Fetherstonhaugh in the days of long ago. The suggestion we made was that we should dismiss them with full compensation.

Another reasonable suggestion tofarmers, pace Deputy Nicholas Egan, is to tell them that they are expected not only to pay their own increase in the cost of living, and their share of everybody else's increased costs, but also to take less for their wheat, less for their barley, for their pigs and their milk, while they are being reassured by Deputy Haughey that, inasmuch as there is no reference to these things in the Finance Bill, that is conclusive evidence that they do not constitute a tax on the agricultural community. It is not only unjust to do that but it is economic suicide. If anyone looks at the trade returns for the last 12 months he will realise that of the £131.2 million which constituted our merchandise exports, well nigh 80 per cent. was agricultural produce.

I see the Deputy is quoting The Kerryman.

I am not quoting The Kerryman. I am quoting the indisputable facts, though they are facts to which people very often do not advert, for instance the great danger, when we leave out all questions of justice and equity, that the agricultural community will drop production. If they do, bearing in mind the very menacing trade figures for the month of April, we may walk into a very critical situation this year in regard to the balance of payments, having deprived ourselves of the flexible and effective instrument of levies which was used to such good effect in 1956 to restore the balance of payments position.

I should like to remind the House that if we have that crisis of balance of payments again and are driven to the resort adopted by so many other countries of physical control of importe, we shall discover too late and to our great cost what a grievous burden on the whole economic life of the country such a system of physical control of imports would involve.

There is abroad in this country a great evil, and that is the habit of flaunting the unemployed as a kind of shuttlecock of politics. There is a second great evil abroad, and that is the practice of considering the extremely difficult problem of unemployment with one's heart instead of with one's head. It is so easy to get worked up into a passion of compassion for the unemployed. The judgment can become clouded and in the eloquence of one's description of their circumstances one can be carried away from reality and be misguided into efforts to relieve promptly the difficulties of the unemployed which, in the long run, operate to exacerbate their problems rather than relieve them.

I do not believe that there is any Deputy who does not from time to time worry very deeply about the question of unemployment, but every few of them, in my judgment, face this question honestly. They look at Great Britain and say: "If they have full employment there, why can we not have it here?" Until very recently they used to look at the United States and say: "If they have full employment there why can we not have it here?" There are 5,250,000 people unemployed in America to-day, and the figure is rising.

It went down last week.

Deputy Haughey's optimism again. Let the Deputy wait for another month and see what the situation will be in the United States. They have vast resources. They have impending the equivalent of our general election next month, when half the Senate and the whole of the House of Representatives face the electorate. There is every conceivable inducement to the Administration and Congress to deploy these virtually inexhaustible resources to correct the trend.

There is hot argument and angry controversy in the United States as to what can best be done but the fact remains that there are at least— Deputy Haughey will agree with me —5,000,000 unemployed there. He thinks it is going down; I am not so optimistic. I have no doubt that ultimately, when they reach about 6,000,000, they will have a down turn in unemployment, because I do not believe the United States is moving into a deep depression, but they certainly failed with their great resources to achieve full employment. In Great Britain I think a situation may be developing in which full employment may cease to be the order of the day.

When we look abroad we behold in Russia a condition of full employment, but a condition of full employment in what circumstances? Circumstances in which there is a vast unexploited territory and in which the man-power of a great nation has been more than decimated in the recent war. Nobody knows the extent to which men were slaughtered in Russia both by their own Government purges and by the horror of war. Let the number be 10,000,000, 12,000,000 or 14,000,000 men. They were nearly all men in the flower of their youth and this has created an acute labour shortage in the U.S.S.R. But even in the presence of any labour shortage, I do not think it is unjust to say that all who labour in the U.S.S.R. live under conditions which, for us, would rank with hard labour in Mountjoy. There is strict regulation and direction with penalties attached for failure to confirm which are probably a good deal more harsh than would apply to a recalcitrant prisoner in Mountjoy jail.

Therefore, I think attempts to identify our circumstances with those of the United States, Great Britain or the U.S.S.R. are futile because I hope we would never accept conditions attaching to such full employment as they have in the U.S.S.R. The price is far in excess of the benefit being obtained. We have not the resources of the United States, and even with them, the solution of the problem of unemployment has eluded them. Our conditions are very far removed from those of Great Britain where they may be advancing to a position in which they fail to maintain full employment.

But when I look for a situation closely analogous to our own, I do not have to look any further than the Six Counties of Northern Ireland where they have between 9 and 10 per cent. of their available labour force unemployed, and that after Lord Chandos has been operating as chairman of a development council for Northern Ireland with immensely influential contacts all over the world, so influential that he has been able to bring in a number of British and United States firms to establish branch factories in Northern Ireland. Yet, within an extremely limited area fortified by an intimate contact with the United Kingdom and having a very strong claim as a sort of garrison of occupation on the special consideration of the British Government—with all these advantages, they cannot maintain full employment.

I think that should make us ask ourselves what we ought to do here. I have a pragmatical mind. I have been listening all my life to the preachings of economists and a greater tribe of frauds I have never heard of. I have learned enough and read enough to know that the economists of 50 years ago were antediluvian according to the economists of 25 years ago, and the economists of 25 years ago were Bloomsbury frauds, according to the economists of to-day. I have lived through the last two phases and I remember the halo of infallibility that surrounded the late Lord Keynes whenever there was any suggestion that he was not the fount of wisdom and knowledge in all informed circles. Deputies may read what people think of him now.

But that situation is no novelty; it has gone on down through the ages, but what is also true is that if one sought industriously enough in any age one could find one school of economists prepared to press most urgently on the Government of the day one viewpoint, and an equally influential body of economists who were prepared to press just as vigorously an almost diametrically opposite view. When pressed to say what all this amounts to, their complete reply was: "We are not prophets; we are merely analysts. We give you the analysis and it is for you, the executive, to determine what is best to do."

My answer to that is that they should retire into their ivory tower and perform their economic acrobatics for their mutual entertainment. People who are charged with the responsibility of Government have neither the time nor the inclination to join them in their gyrations. I say that in order to introduce my pragmatic suggestion. My concern is to get men to work because I share most deeply the feeling of the most romantic Deputy in the House for the unspeakable desolation of a man, particularly of a family man, who wants work and who is constrained to go home night after night to tell his wife and family that he has failed to get it. I have never been able to think, as I frequently think the Taoiseach can, in globo. I can never divorce my mind from the individual cases and the circumstances of the neighbours I know as distinct from the global approach which enables the Taoiseach on occasions when he wishes to do something unpleasant to say: “We cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.” I am always obsessed with the feelings of the eggs.

Coming back to the question of how we can give employment, I wish to make it clear that in considering that problem I am not particularly concerned with the resulting benefits to the national economy. I do not think that matters as much as that men should have employment. I then think of setting up a factory and employing 500 of them and at once I find myself caught in this vicious circle, that if you produce industrial products in excess of the domestic capacity to consume— and we have pretty well exhausted the domestic capacity to consume industrial products—you must find a market for your output and to do that you must build up a very elaborate marketing machinery, if you wish to tap foreign markets. You cannot build up that machinery unless you have goods to supply the demand you create.

One of the common disastrous mistakes that enthusiasts make is that they rush out to get a market for a small output and they generate a demand far in excess of their immediate capacity to supply and their failure to supply the demand they themselves created not only destroys that demand but destroys all hope of reviving it because they create the belief in that market that to depend on an Irish factory is to invite disaster. And it can be disastrous for big distributors in America or Western Germany or in France to programme their supplies only to discover that one of the suppliers completely fails to perfrom what he has undertaken to perfrom in the way of deliveries. So that when you start out on that road of industrial development you are in the vicious circle that you cannot produce, unless you have a market in which to distribute and you cannot beget the market because you have not got the goods to supply.

I do not know of any way to break the world conflict at present proceeding that was adopted in regard to a certain factory in Athy and which, I believe, is in the process of being adopted in regard to a factory in Waterford, to make contact with a large international organisation which has a marketing machine in operation and which is prepared to draw into its general output the relatively small output of a branch factory in Ireland in the knowledge that if we can do the job of production in that particular line of goods cheaper and better than their branch factories in other countries, they will expand their branch factory in Ireland, all the time drawing its output into the marketing machine which they have created themselves for both the parent factory and such other branches as they may have already established.

If that thesis is valid I want to put it to the Minister for Finance that if you want to create employment in this country over and above the very limited employment opportunity that the investment of capital by the State provides—and I think it is very limited —I believe it is not impossible for us to put to the United States of America a certain proposition that in the world conflict now proceeding, in which they and the U.S.S.R. are in fact the only protagonists of significance, it is the concern of the United States of America to demonstrate that a system of society based on free enterprise and individual liberty is more productive and more acceptable to human dignity than a system based on compulsion and State capitalism such as that of the U.S.S.R. But if that is to be demonstrated to the world there is no one better able to do so than the United States of America themselves; it involves them in no hand-outs whatever but if the United States Government would invite a special foundation of big industrial entrepreneurs such as General Motors, and Du Pont—you could name many others—who would collectively accept as an obligation to their way of life to come to any undeveloped country which sought their assistance and establish in that country branch factories of their own parent business, accepting responsibility for the marketing of the output of those branch factories, I believe that in that way and in that way alone could we secure in a country such as ours industrial development which might strain our labour resources in a very limited space of time.

I do not want the House to imagine for a moment that I believe that that kind of development would stop or crystallise into the establishment simply of ten, 12 or 20 branch plants financed and controlled from the United States. I do not think it would. I believe if you got ten, 15 or 20 such plants situated in this country, they would generate around them a very considerable secondary development of small industrial establishments designed to supply the constituents of the main product produced in the branch factories which I have envisaged.

I do not know if the Minister's attention has been directed to a long series of advertisements which have been sustained by, I think, the General Motors Corporation in America recently, designed to establish the thesis that they have not only provided employment themselves directly but that they have begotten around their plants all over the United States of America a legion of small, privately-owned industries which are giving local employment in the production of accessories and constituents of the main product of General Motors in their plants throughout the United States. If that is true in respect of the various branch factories of General Motors in the United States, it would also be true of such branch factories established in this country or other countries.

I mentioned this before when the Minister for Industry and Commerce was introducing the Industrial Credit Bill. He quite misunderstood me and said the United States of America was interested only in private enterprise and would not be interested in State enterprise of the kind I mentioned. I am not talking about State enterprise. I am deliberately talking about private enterprise and deliberately saying it is well worth our putting to the United States of America the suggestion that, instead of handing out huge grants to this or any other country, they should invoke the assistance of private industry to engender the kind of development I have spoken of here to-day.

This is not moon-raking, because I am informed that at present there is in existence such a body of American manufacturers who are concerned to do this very thing in the Near East and certain Arab countries and who have already undertaken work of this kind in certain of the Republics of South America. They have done it not primarily from the point of view of siting their factories in the place economically most advantageous to themselves but have taken the longer view that the more they can win friendly nations to the concept of their way of life, the greater scope there will ultimately be for the development of international markets of a kind in which they can freely and advantageously trade.

There may be much better plans for providing employment, but I am sick listening to people thumping the tub about unemployment. All I am concerned to do is put men to work. Weeping, grieving over them and lamenting their sad state will not put one of them to work. As we have learned to our cost, providing lumps of money to build factories on condition that people set up some kind of industry in them very often results in the most bitter disillusionment. We have the case in Portumna and other cases where people believed they were in permanent remunerative employment, and to their shock and dismay woke up one morning to discover the whole thing gone up in smoke. Their second state was far worse than their first because they had adapted themselves to a way of life associated with remunerative employment and they suddenly found themselves without any employment at all.

Now, if we go on doing that, we shall waste oceans of public money and we shall not get results. If anybody knows a better plan than the one I seek to adumbrate here, I should like to hear him expound it; but I hope that anybody who undertakes discussion of this Finance Bill, and the capital programme associated with it, will feel himself charged with the obligation, when dealing with the question of unemployment, of making some constructive proposal for providing employment for men, instead of just waving a flag and lamenting everybody else's misfortunes and saying: "It is a great scandal somebody does not do something."

I have been listening for 25 years to people saying: "Something will have to be done," and when you come down to brass tacks and ask them: "What do you propose to do?" in 99 cases out of 100, you get the answer: "Oh, I would not know. That would be your job." I have no doubt the Minister for Finance was bracing himself for the ordeal here to-day of being angrily upbraided for his grotesque failure to fulfil the disreputable promise he made on posters all over the country: "Women, vote Fianna Fáil and get your husbands back to work," and then to come in here and to hear no constructive suggestion of any kind as to how employment may be provided.

I despise the Minister's poster but I expect nothing better from the Fianna Fáil Party. I detest the fraudulent "£100,000,000 Plan" that was trotted out in Clery's Restaurant. I heard Deputy Dr. Browne say that he believed that and I think the trouble is that, when Deputy Dr. Browne believes in things like that, he is listening with his heart rather than with his head. Certainly, I never believed it. I believed it was a dirty, cheap election stunt and, as soon as they got into power, it was thrown out contumeliously and the Minister for Lands has been explaining to us that it has turned blue and, of course, the moment it turned blue, nobody could expect it to be operated; and Deputy Haughey has been explaining that it was only a rocket plan, like a firework shot up into the air to hear the comment it would evoke when the people saw it in all its pristine glory.

These are nice sublimations two years after the rocket went up, but, in the meantime, Deputy Dr. Browne believed Deputy Lemass. He really thought he meant it. Deputy Dr. Browne is a participant in public life and can look after himself. What I detest is that there were thousands of unemployed men and their wives who also believed it and who, when they saw the poster placarded all over the country, and especially in the working areas in this city, thought that, when that poster said: "Vote Fianna Fáil and get your husbands back to work" that was the summons to vote for Deputy Lemass so that he might become Tánaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce and put into operation the "£100,000,000 Plan" that was to provide—was it 5,000 new jobs every year?

I am sick of that kind of talk, but, as a member of the Front Bench of the Fine Gael Party, I do not think I would be discharging my obligation in that context were I to confine myself to repudiating emphatically the vile hypocrisy of the Fianna Fáil Party in that outrageous deception on a most vulnerable section of our community if I did not go on freely to confess my own doubts and difficulties and to offer, at the end, one suggestion at least that I think could bear fruit for people who want work and cannot get it. Maybe, from my own political point of view, I would be well advised to stop here. This much that I have said sounds well, but I would not speak the truth in the position in which I now stand if I did not say a word about emigration.

There is an awful lot of cod talked in this country about emigration. Involuntary emigration imposed upon people by poverty is a great tragedy. I can remember, and older men in this House remember better than I, what used to be called the "American Wakes" of 50 years ago. I remember, as a little child, going up to the railway station at Ballaghaderreen and seeing the passionate distress of mothers who were sending their children to America, believing they would never see them again. Even in those days, the stress under which people emigrated was infinitely less than that which made them go 30 years before.

Up to about 50 years ago, most of our emigrants went, poor and illequipped, into the world because they had no other means of survival at home, but it is all nonsense to say, it is utter rubbish to say that there is any true analogy between the emigration proceeding to-day and the emigration of 50 or 70 years ago. For one thing, it is easier to-day to come home from London or Birmingham than it was to come home from Mullingar 50 years ago. It is easier to-day to come home from Canada or the United States of America to any town or village in Clare or Connacht than it was to come from Belfast 50 years ago, and much quicker, and there is none of the sense of irrevocable parting associated with emigration to-day that obtained 50 or 70 years ago. That is one distinction, and it is a very fundamental and real distinction to our people; and those of us who live amongst them, and close to them, and in intimate contact with them know that.

Secondly, there is nobody leaving this country to-day to go to Great Britain or the United States of America who is either illiterate or indigent. Half the people who went 50 years ago were both; let me amend that—half the people who went 70 years ago were both. A high percentage of those who went 50 years ago were both indigent and illiterate. To-day, they go with plenty of money. They go with a better education than most of the people they will find in the countries where they land. In the vast majority of cases, they are going to friends or relatives who will take as good, or better care of them than their own people at home could hope to take.

From their own point of view, there is no comparison whatever between conditions of emigration to-day and conditions of emigration 50 or 70 years ago. From their own point of view, it is not emigration of necessity. I do not believe it is. I have lived in America. I have lived in Great Britain. I have travelled all round the world. I have met Irish emigrants in Canada, in the United States of America, in Fiji, in the South Sea Islands, in Australia, in New Zealand and in Great Britain. In both Great Britain and the United States, I have worked. I never met anyone who was sorry for going. I met thousands of them who looked back to home with nostalgia and were homesick for the chance to come back and pay a visit.

I ask Deputies who have any knowledge of rural Ireland and have seen people come home for a holiday if it is not a fact that, after they have been home a month or so, many of them are anxious to get their ticket and go back to America from whence they had come? Very few are not anxious to do so. What is to stop those who want to come home from doing so? You will see some of them down in the Rosses of Donegal living in houses sticking out like sore thumbs in the middle of the bog who came back from America and built a house for themselves in the most inaccessible corner of the Rosses—and there they are. What is to stop them from doing so? They have the certain knowledge that any savings they have accumulated will go a great deal further here in Ireland than they would go in Great Britain or in America.

I am told emigration, is a great disaster for Ireland. I cannot see what a disaster it is for Ireland if the proprietor of the Grace Line and the Grace Bank and the Grace Import and Export Company of America, Buenos Aires and London is the grandson of a fellow who lived in Ballylinan 100 years ago. Would he or Ireland be better off if he was still in Ballylinan? Would the people in Ballylinan be better off? I think it is much better, from the point of view of Mr. Grace, Ireland and Ballylinan, that that young lad got the chance to exploit the gifts God gave him in the most fruitful way.

If Senator Phelan of California, who made President Wilson the President of the United States, had not left Tipperary, would he have been better off? I do not think so. I think that from the point of view of Ireland, Senator Phelan and everybody else, the fact that he found an arena in which his great gifts could effectively be employed was a great blessing.

I imagine it is greatly to the advantage of France and of Ireland, probably, that General de Gaulle's grandmother went to France from Ireland. In any case, whether it is a blessing or not, we have helped to supply France with a great General and a great man. Is there a country in the world of which we cannot say that the Irish people have made a very great contribution?

The Deputy is travelling away from the Finance Bill.

Are we not discussing the policy of the Government on employment and the control of emigration? If we cannot discuss it now, I do not know when we can do so.

The Second Reading of the Finance Bill deals with taxation and the Budget policy of the Government.

In the name of goodness, what have I been talking about for the past hour?

The Deputy has been speaking about General de Gaulle. How does General de Gaulle come into the Finance Bill?

I do not ask the Leas-Cheann Comhairle to follow my argument but I am entitled to make it. I hold that emigration is not an unqualified disaster for this country. The proof of it is the uniqueness of our situation. Our trouble is that the record of our people in the countries to which they have emigrated has been such that there is no country in which they are not welcome—and we are the only country in the world, practically, of which that is true. The Danes, the Dutch, the Germans, the Italians all have waiting lists a mile long thrusting to get into the United States. We are one of the few countries in the world which has a quota three times greater than we are prepared to fill.

Our affliction is that our people are so welcome in Great Britain that we cannot prevent them from going there —and I say that advisedly because the people going to England at present are very largely people in good employment here at home. It is true; I know it. I see them in my own town leaving jobs where they are earning £6 to £7 a week and going to England where they can earn £12 to £14 a week. Old and grey heads may say to them: "By the time you have paid your lodging and other charges in England, you will not have as much left as you have with your present job." Their reply is: "I do not believe it."

If the Deputy wishes to discuss emigration, he must relate it to the Finance Bill before the House.

I have here the Tables in connection with the Financial Statement, 1958. Table 4, The Capital Budget—which, I understand, is designed by Government outlay to provide for public expenditure to abate unemployment and to avoid the necessity of emigration. Is that not what I am talking about?

I do not agree that the Deputy may go into the detail into which he is going——

If I cannot say what I have to say in this connection on the Second Stage of the Finance Bill, when can we do so?

There is no precedent for discussing emigration, per se, on the Finance Bill. It may be mentioned in passing.

I have been doing it for the past 20 years. This is the great occasion on which Government policy is to be discussed. How else can we discuss the propriety or the impropriety of the Capital Budget on Table 4? Is it enough? Is it the right way of going about it? What is it for? I take it that (1) it is to reduce the numbers of unemployed and (2) to reduce the necessity for emigration. Is that not so?

The Deputy is aware that the same latitude in debate is not allowed on the Finance Bill as on the Budget.

I must discuss this Capital Budget or we are talking to no purpose. There does not seem to be any use in having a debate here which consists simply of telling the Minister for Finance what we think is wrong if we do not go on to tell him what we think is right. I am telling him now what I think is right.

I think emigration which is voluntary and which affects people who, by their own election, want to go is not the catastrophe it is commonly represented to be. I want to make this important distinction and it is in order to correct the orientation of the Capital Budget that I make it. There is no greater tragedy than a situation in which the father of a family is constrained to leave his family and go abroad without them in order to provide the wherewithal to maintain them, and I am afraid that that is happening in certain of our towns and cities.

Unless we correctly evaluate that situation, I think we run into the danger of dissipating our resources— attempting to remedy something which really does not require a remedy and depriving ourselves of the means of doing that which really requires to be done. I believe if we mobilise such resources as we have, we ought to be able to make an impression on the relatively restricted problem of the father of a family who cannot find employment here at all, and that if we try to spread our resources, our domestic resources, over the whole field of emigration and unemployment, without submitting these problems to some close diagnosis such as I have attempted this evening, we will waste the resources that are available to us. I, therefore, suggest that, as far as the Capital Budget is concerned, we should in so far as possible direct its usage to the provision of employment for the married man who is faced with the possibility, with the necessity, of emigrating without his family. I know it is not and easy problem to make that segregation effective. I think it is something we ought to attempt in regard to the general question of increasing employment vacancies in this country, and I know of no method other than the one I have sought to recommend to the Minister.

In regard to the emigration problem as a whole, I think it is time we stopped talking codology about it and segregated in our minds that part of emigration which is undesirable in itself, notably that of the married man who has been separated from his family, and that part of emigration which will go on so long as this continues to be a virile and effective nation which, down through its history, has helped to build up other countries, to the great advantage of those countries of which our emigrants constitute a part. I deplore the continued implicit suggestion that those who fare forth into the world the better to employ the gifts God gave them are guilty of some conduct unbecoming patriotic Irish men or women. I think people should take the gifts God gave them to whatever field they believe they can best the employed in, and there use them to their best ability, towards the realisation of the supreme purpose for which they are put on this earth. I do not think this is the appropriate arena to go into that in any greater detail. I do not suppose Fianna Fáil will do any of these things.

Fianna Fáil is a dreary collection of old hacks that will never do much except what they are kicked into doing by the opening of events which push them about from one sheltered pillar to another. I think they have given up thinking long ago and are just hanging on by their eye teeth, hoping something will turn up. I do not think that is a good approach in the times in which we live. Of course the people will accept it for a certain time, but it will beget a bitter disillusionment which I am afraid may not be discriminating in its reactions. I have got to concede that people get the Governments they deserve. I have got to concede that Fianna Fáil has a clear majority in this House. If there is a Government in the world which has its authority from God to govern, it is the Government of this country.

They have secured their majority in the freest of elections without any material volume of intimidation or violence though with the maximum of fraud and deceit, but, under the existing political system, these methods do not invalidate the right to govern which a Party secures if they secure a majority of our votes. I think the rule of caveat emptor may be said to apply in our public life. If people allow themselves to be fooled by Fianna Fáil, then they have got to endure the results of their own folly—five years of faltering tombstones resting on their backs, all of them supported by a reluctant but admirably disciplined body of back benchers who are all prepared to turn when the head tombstone turns.

We have this consolation, though, that under our Constitution the penalty for electoral folly cannot exceed five years penal servitude and, after the people have had that maximum retribution for swallowing Fianna Fáil fraud and deceit in the last election, they will get a chance to change it. I hope they will and I believe, if and when they do, good headway can be made again against most of the problems that confront us at the present time. I see no prospect of any headway being made under the dispensation of the tombstone Government we at present have, but that does not discharge us who are the alternative Government available to the people, and the principal Opposition in this House, from our obligation to make proposals, in the vain hope that this Government will adopt them or operate them, but in the real hope that some day an opportunity will be vouchsafed by the Irish people for a better Government to try them out, in the certain knowledge that if they do not succeed, other means will be attempted to resolve the problems which at present confront us.

If I make a long speech-I know my two questions will not be answered. I propose to be very brief but I think I should make some comment on some of the things which Deputy Dillon has just said. I agree with him when he says the unemployment problem should not be regarded as a romantic problem, or as one to be approached in a romantic way. I think he is very sincere in the method he has put forward by which employment could be increased, but I rather doubt that the American nation, or the American Government, would list us at the top, so far as priority is concerned.

As Deputy Dillon says, the unemployment problem should not be approached in any romantic way, but I think he tried for half an hour to represent emigration from this country as being very romantic. I do not agree with him at all in that. The majority of people who emigrate from this country do so only for the reason that they cannot find work here. My experience, in any case, in my part of the country, and in other places I have travelled through, is that it is purely because men and women cannot get jobs that they emigrate. Having said that, I want to pose these two questions to the Minister. If I wrap them up in a long speech, the Minister will probably forget them. In view of the fact that there is a great amount of unemployment in general, I should like to ask the Minister this question. It is a question which I asked after he had made his Budget speech. What has become of the National Development Fund?

Has the idea of this fund which was initiated and begun by Fianna Fáil been forgotten or has it been scrapped? It was alleged against Deputy Dr. Browne by Deputy Dillon that he expressed his belief, his trust, in the £100,000,000 Lemass plan. I, too, believed when Fiana Fáil introduced the National Development Fund that they were prepared to implement it, but it now seems as if they have forgotten it. When I asked the Minister a question on this matter during the Budget debate, I naturally assumed he would reply to every question addressed to him. When Deputy Aiken, then acting Minister for Finance, introduced the National Development Fund Bill, he said at a time when the balance of payments was favourable and unemployment was high, it was quite legitimate, as far as economic experts were concerned, to spend an appreciable sum of money— £5,000,000 was the sum mentioned—to relieve unemployment.

Here we have a situation where we have 65,000 or 69,000 unemployed and the balance of payments is favourable, we are told. Surely it would be an opportune time, in accordance with the sentiments expressed when the Bill was introduced, to spend £5,000,000 per year to relieve unemployment? That is the first question. I would like to know if the Minister or the Fianna Fáil Government have scrapped or aban— doned the idea of the National Development Fund which they introduced in December of 1952 or 1953.

The second question I should like to ask the Minister is on our external assets. Many theories have been put forward about them. The last Government were criticised by the present Minister for Lands, he alleging that the inter-Party Government dissipated our external assets and dragged them down. I would ask the Minister this question. At what figure should our external assets be to be regarded as safe? I think that is a fairly simple question. At different times we have had £400,000,000 or £500,000,000 in external assets from various sources— private or Government sources. If they have gone down to £50,000,000 or £100,000,000, the main criticism of people is that not alone are we exporting hundreds of thousands of working men and women but also hundreds of millions of pounds to be invested in Great Britain. Surely there should be some formula or yardstick whereby to measure the extent to which our external assets should go in Great Britain? Until we do that and until we can explain to the people the connection between our external assets and the economy of the country, we shall still have the cry that we should repatriate our external assets with a view to putting our people to work here.

Briefly the two questions are, first, has the National Development Fund idea been scrapped and secondly, what is the safe figure for our external assets?

I want to bring one point to the Minister's notice. It arises out of the expenditure for the coming year on one particular Government service. One of the matters we find of great importance in the Finance Bill is the question of the hardship to be imposed as the result of the Budget. The Finance Bill implements the policy outlined in the Budget statement. One matter came to my notice in the past few days in connection with certain expenditure in the Health section of the Government services. Most of the things we see in the Budget are impositions. Any place we saw a relief go, it has been, so far, to that section of the community which in my opinion is the least thankful. There is a possibility for the Minister to give a relief here in the very near future, not alone to the Exchequer but to thousands of parents. The question of expenditure on anti-polio vaccine is such——

The matter does not arise on the Finance Bill and the Deputy may not discuss it. It is purely a matter for the Estimate for the Department of Health.

I suggest, Sir, that if you allow me to make one statement, you will see the relevancy. It is unfair to describe my statement as out of order until you hear it.

I have listened to what the Deputy has already said and the matter he mentions may not be discussed on the Finance Bill.

I suggest, Sir, that you have not a clue as to what I am going to mention. I do not think the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has been endowed with the gift of prophecy.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle is not under discussion. The remark made by the Deputy is.

The Finance Bill, Sir, is——

The Deputy is entitled to his opinion, but he will obey the ruling of the Chair. The matter he mentions is not one for discussion on the Finance Bill. It is one for the Department of Health Estimate.

I cannot understand how you arrive at that conclusion without hearing what I have to say.

The Chair has heard the Deputy very clearly.

The occupant of the Chair is the boss as far as procedure in this House is concerned, but I should like to suggest, Sir, that where the question of taxation is involved and where extra burdens have to be borne by the public as a result of the activities of Government Departments, it is relevant for me on the Finance Bill to make a specific reference to burdens imposed through the Budget.

The administration of Government Departments is not under discussion. The Deputy will have ample opportunity of referring to the administration of each Department, on the appropriate Estimate.

I am not referring to administration. I am referring to an imposition on a section of the community through the activities of the Department of Finance, which in turn makes funds available to the different Departments.

As I have already pointed out, the Finance Bill relates to taxation and the budgetary policy of the Government. Details may be raised on the Estimates.

Sir, I have no option but to accept your ruling and conclude.

The first point raised by Deputy Sweetman was with regard to the self-employed. He said he was disappointed to gather from my speech that the scheme is not to come into operation this year. That is wrong. The Deputy may have misunderstood my reference to a scheme coming in not sooner than 1959-60. I was referring to Part V, which deals with superannuation schemes, which I said are not bona fide and which we had to deal with under Part V. As far as the self-employed scheme is concerned, it does come into operation this year.

In regard to investment by the Post Office Savings Bank in the United States or Canadian securities in banks in those countries, there is no intention to purchase securities outside this country, but it is proposed to transfer the existing dollar holdings of the foreign exchange account to the Post Office Savings Bank. The foreign exchange account is one of the schemes which has to be brought to a close by the end of June, as there will be then no further emergency legislation to deal with a matter of that kind. It is proposed to transfer the securities held by that fund to the Post Office Savings Bank. That is the meaning of this clause. The Central Bank has been consulted and agrees with the section.

In regard to Section 51, I think Deputy Sweetman was under the impression that we were compelling the companies concerned unduly to distribute their profits. There is no such intention. They may distribute them, if they like, but if they do, a recipient company must get the relief from income-tax given to a distributing company, under Section 51.

Deputy Sweetman asked me to give some explanation of Section 20. It deals with double tax relief as applied to death duties. What is laid down there is that where there is a double tax arrangement between ourselves and another country, this provision will apply. To illustrate that, a citizen of this country leaves property in a country with which we have a double tax arrangement; suppose he has £10,000 assets in that other country and that country would take £2,000 in death duties and we would be entitled to take £3,000 off the £10,000. What really happens is that £2,000 is paid to the other country and we take the £3,000, less that £2,000 already paid to the other country. Actually, we get only £1,000. In all fairness, we could, if there were no double tax arrangement, charge first on the £10,000. He would, however, pay his £2,000 to the other country and we would get whatever we were entitled to of the £8,000 left, which would come to very much more in the aggregate than under a double tax arrangement.

There is no really retroactive effect in this section. The reason the clause is put in, making it retrospective, as it were, is that the fact that this clause is brought in might bring it to the notice of people that we were not sure of our legal position on this particular aspect up to this and they might sue for the return of moneys paid in the past. We do not know, of course, what the courts might decide, but it is made retroactive to that extent. There is no injustice done to anybody. People have paid up whatever was due in the past and this clause is brought in only to make sure that the law is correct. There is no claim of any kind pending.

I must apologise to Deputy Sweetman and others with regard to the capital Budget. When winding up here on the Budget debate, there was not sufficient time left to reply in full, and at the end I said I had intended to deal with the capital Budget but had not time and perhaps I could deal with it on the Finance Bill. I must say I overlooked the matter. I am not sure if I would have been permitted within the rules of order to deal fully with the capital Budget. Therefore, I will refer to just a few points raised. I was asked about the unemployment position. I am not satisfied, of course, nor are any of us, about the unemployment position or the emigration position. We would be very anxious to do anything we could to relieve unemployment and cut down emigration.

Deputy Haughey already gave some figures in connection with the capital Budget and I wish to quote them also. In 1958-59 the capital expenditure for public authorities is put down at £36.25 million. Against that figure, we spent last year a sum of £36.33 million. Therefore, it is almost the same as was provided last year. It is true that we provided more than that last year, but the total sum was not spent, and of course it will be found when we get our demands in from the various Departments — the Local Government Department with regard to local authorities, and the various other Departments and bodies like the E.S.B., the Telephone Capital Account and so on — that the figure which is estimated in that respect is not the same from year to year, but the aggregate works out much the same this year as compared with last year.

In the early part of 1958-59, there were issues from the Capital Expenditure Account which will not recur this year. As I pointed out in the Budget statement, there was a very big amount — practically £2,000,000 — due to be paid in the beginning of the financial year. This year, we started off with a clean sheet, there were no outstanding accounts and that explains to some extent the very big difference in the expenditure in the early part of this year as compared with last year. There is one other point. The E.S.B. needed money in the beginning of last year, but this year they do not need money, as they floated a loan towards the end of last year and still have money of their own to draw upon.

The general policy is to have as much productive capital expenditure as possible, both public and private. We must keep in mind that if private enterprise requires capital, there must be money available, whether it be in the banks or elsewhere. It is not good policy, therefore, for the Government to collar all the available money for capital and to leave nothing for private enterprise to draw upon. The money that we hope to use this year for capital expenditure will come almost entirely from current savings. We expect to use every penny available in that way. I do not think that there will be a surplus available on our balance of trade. That goes some part of the way and leads me on to the point raised by Deputy Corish.

The Deputy asked my opinion about external assets. The financiers and economists usually tell us that our external assets are dangerously low at the moment. They were, of course, lower four or five years ago — they are a bit better than one or two years ago. It is not the policy of the Government to build up external assets at this stage. We think it would be better policy to use whatever assets we have for capital development, whether public or private, and we see no necessity at the moment to allow the external assets to grow.

Of course, it is not a matter over which we have very much control. After all, if we succeed this year in exporting more than we import — taking visible and invisible exports and imports into account — and if we should happen to have a favourable balance of trade, that will go into external assets — and I do not see what we can do about it. One cannot, as it were lay hands on them and just carry them over and lay them down here. They must come in in the form of goods or services of some kind. It is not our policy to seek to increase our external assets. As far as we can direct policy, it will go in the direction of using all the assets we can here at home to develop industry and so on.

As I said in my Budget speech, the capital provided for the coming year has at least as high a labour content as in any recent years. I explained that then by pointing out that there were certain items — for instance, the repayment of a carry-over of liabilities in the beginning of last year — and also as far as the Estimates go, that the E.S.B. and bodies of that kind will not require as much capital machinery as last year, so that the amounts spent will be spent more on labour than on capital goods and the expenditure on employment will be more favourable this year than last year.

Deputy Sweetman also raised the question that, in the early months of this year, the balance of trade was not too favourable. We expected that. I think that on many occasions during the last year I pointed out both in this House and in the Seanad that we could not expect to have a repetition of the export of cattle in the beginning of this year that we had last year. There was, as we all know, a carry over of cattle from 1956 into 1957. There was an abnormal export of cattle in the early months of 1957. That could not be repeated. I think figures were given to-day, as a matter of fact, in answer to a question, which would show that the big difference in our exports for the first four months of this year as compared with last year was made up of receipts from cattle exports.

Again, in reply to Deputy Sweetman, I am not satisfied with the present national income. I do not think any Party in this House is satisfied. It is fairly obvious that it is the object of every Party to try to increase the national income and the standard of living of everybody, which can be done only by increasing the national income. Naturally, therefore, the answer I give is that I am not satisfied with the national income and our efforts will be directed, as far as we can do so, to raising it.

I agree that capital in agriculture and increased agricultural production are most important. I should like to tell the House that the matter is not being overlooked. There are many questions of that kind which are sometimes hard to solve. It sometimes takes more time than we anticipate in arriving at a good solution to the problem that arises. I can assure the Dáil the matter is not being overlooked and that we hope to be able to suggest some aids for production in agriculture and, if necessary, capital also.

Deputy Sweetman said he would like on behalf of his own Party and in support of his Leader, Deputy Costello, to say that a relief in regard to death duties would be welcome and that if the Fianna Fáil Government were in a position to deal with death duties, we could expect the support of the Fine Gael Party. I am very glad, indeed, to hear that. I quite admit there are very many arguments to recommend that line of action, particularly if we want to attract people who are now living outside this country and who might live here if it was made worthwhile. Surtax and death duties are the two things which people are inclined to compare between one country and another when considering a change of residence. I am speaking now of very well-off people. There are very many arguments in connection with the question of death duties, but the one big obstacle is the loss of revenue. In these times of stress—and I must say that as long as I have been in the Government times of stress seem always to last—it is difficult to face a big item of that kind where the amount of money involved would be very substantial.

Deputy Sweetman also asked me about a new and clean list of dutiable articles and asked me would it be possible to have it soon. I am glad to say that it will be available soon. It is with the printers at the moment. I hope it will be ready for distribution in a week or so.

Part IV of the Bill deals with the question of a director or a highly paid official setting payment in kind, whether by way of a free house, a free car or something of that kind. The object of Part IV of the Bill is to give the Revenue Commissioners, first of all, power to get returns of these things from the employer or the company concerned. Then the Revenue Commissioners will make their own settlement. With regard to allowances of that kind, if the amenities they are getting at the present time are too high, there would be a certain amount of income-tax to be collected. Deputy Haughey does not like this, but I think my answer to criticisms of that kind is that none of us likes paying income-tax, but I think we would be more willing — I was about to say, more cheerful — about paying if we were sure that everybody had to contribute equitably.

What annoys people most is that when they pay their income-tax, they say so-and-so is getting away with it or so-and-so is getting big allowances which they cannot get. The object is to try to get an equitable system of income-tax applicable to everybody. I can understand anybody making a plea for a reduction in the standard rate of income-tax or even, indeed, making a plea for more liberal allowances. That is all right. If we could afford to do it, it would be quite all right because it would apply to everybody and equal treatment would be given all round. Just as in the case of death duties, there are many arguments in favour of reducing the standard rate or giving better allowances, but the one big trouble is the cost.

Deputy Haughey said — I think his figures were fairly correct — that there are about 180,000 people assessed for income-tax in this country and that about 10,000 pay 75 per cent. of the income-tax. I am not sure whether that figure is correct or not; perhaps it is. His plea, therefore, was that it was hardly worth while going after, as it were, the other 70,000. The 70,000 pay about £5,500,000 between them and it would be absolutely impossible to replace that £5,500,000 by means of any other form of taxation. According to Deputy Haughey's figures, which I accept for the moment, it would be impossible to put the £5,500,000 on to the 10,000 already paying something like £15,000,000.

Deputy Haughey also raised the question of market gardening. I should like to assure the Deputy that there is no change in the position. Sub-section (6) does not make any change whatever. It merely makes the present position static. Friendly societies or co-operative societies engaged in market gardening pay income-tax under certain conditions. As far as sub-section (6) is concerned, it leaves the position as it is.

Deputy Dillon made a very long speech indeed. He spoke about many things which I do not intend to deal with this evening, but Deputy Dillon showed one thing: it is very hard to teach a man who is not prepared to learn. He spoke again about the biscuit manufacturers getting wheat at a low price. I heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce explain in the Dáil to Deputy Dillon why they were getting that. He explained that the biscuit manufacturers were carrying on an export business and that they were competing with manufacturers in Great Britain and elsewhere who were getting wheat at the world price. We should at least give our own biscuit manufacturers a chance of carrying on by giving them wheat at the same price as biscuit manufacturers elsewhere are getting. That is why they are getting wheat at £24 a ton.

I do not think any great objection could be raised to that, but Deputy Dillon raised the point in order to make what I regard always as a rather low political point, that is, that the farmers could say that the biscuit manufacturers were getting cheap wheat but they were getting nothing. That does no good to anybody. It misrepresents the position. It is merely an appeal to the farmers' sense of grievance to try to make them more dissatisfied with their conditions. It does not do any good to anybody.

The Deputy made a very interesting speech on industry. It was a lecture, if you like, on the building up of industry in this country but I am not disposed to follow that now. I do not agree with Deputy Dillon that the efforts made to establish new industries here have been fruitless. I think they have borne fruit in many cases. If there are a few failures that can be quoted by Deputy Dillon or somebody else, that does not say that the whole effort to bring new industries into this country, whether by native effort or by foreigners, is a failure. Then Deputy Dillon engaged in the usual attack on the Fianna Fáil Party, which made me come to the conclusion that Deputy Dillon will never forgive us for winning the last election.

Deputy Corish raised a point, which I think is the last I have to mention, with regard to the National Development Fund. The amount left in the National Development Fund has been hypothecated. There is no more free money left in the fund, let us say, and therefore we cannot use it for any new proposition. I do not think a fund of that kind matters very much. What does matter is the money available and, whether it is in that fund or in any other fund does not matter, as long as the money is available for any project that may be put forward

Hear, hear! It was South Galway for you in 1953.

That was not the case when the Bill was introduced. There was no question of availability.

It won South Galway for you in 1953 — its only purpose.

Deputy Sweetman must think that it is very easy to win elections.

You won that on the National Development Fund.

Can the Deputy explain why we won all the elections since 1952?

Very few except that one.

Remember what Abraham Lincoln said.

I think the idea has been scrapped, has it not?

I have my idea about it. Another Minister for Finance may have another idea and is quite entitled to have it. A Minister for Finance is quite entitled to say: "We will go on with our usual financing in the usual way but, if there is anything abnormal, we will create a separate fund for it." I think that is quite all right. He has a good reason, perhaps, for doing that. I do not look at it in that way.

I am not speaking so much of the name of the fund. The theory expounded at that time was that, when the balance of payments was favourable and unemployment high, it was legitimate, even as far as economists were concerned, to engage in big capital expenditure for the relief of unemployment.

I said, first of all, with regard to the fund, the fund does not matter. What does matter is the amount of money we are going to spend. I did point out already that the capital provision for this year is as good, at least, as what was spent last year and, as I explained here already, I accepted the amount put in by the Minister for Local Government. He said: "We can spend so much on houses; we can spend so much on water schemes, and so on." I said: "Very good. We accept that." The amount put in by the E.S.B., the amount for the Post Office Telephone Capital Account, were all added up. I am not in a position to say to the Post Office, the E.S.B. or the Minister for Local Government: "Is not there some other scheme that you could bring in as well as that?" It is a matter for them.

Taking the Government generally, the Government, certainly since we took office, have never tried to cut down expenditure of that kind. As a matter of fact, if they took action at all, it has been more in the other direction. They have asked Ministers if they had new desirable schemes. We shall not put up a scheme for the sake of spending money but, if there are any new desirable schemes coming, you may take it that the money will be provided. That is all I can say. It does not matter, as the Deputy will admit, what source it comes from so long as the money is provided.

The Minister said in the course of his reply that he hoped capital development schemes this year would be financed from public savings. Do I take it from that that the Minister intends to launch a national loan this year?

I am sure that will be necessary, yes.

Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 17th June, 1958.
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