On the motion for the Adjournment, Deputy Sweetman gave notice that he would raise the subject matter of Question No. 7 on today's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Finance Statistics.
For some time past, I have been accusing the Minister for Finance, and correctly accusing him, of comparing the records of the Government in which I had the honour to be Minister for Finance and his Government in two entirely different ways. I have accused him of criticising us on certain figures and of then applying entirely different criteria and entirely different figures to his own administration.
I have always taken the line, in doing that, that the manner in which we computed certain, charges and certain revenue was the correct one and that his was the incorrect one. I want to repeat tonight that that was true and that the allegation made by the Minister in the course of the Budget debate, when he said that, taking his three years with my three years, his were £2 million better, comparing like with like, is untrue. In saying that, I want to make it quite clear that when the Minister suggested he had got the figures from the officials of his own Department, I am not questioning the veracity of those officials. Officials produce the figures on the basis on which they are asked to produce them and the basis on which the Minister must have asked them for those figures was a dishonest basis and an incorrect one.
The facts are quite simple. It only needs a little very simple arithmetic and addition. The Minister stated—I do not challenge his figure because I agree it is correct—that over the period of three years from 1954 to 1957, the accumulated deficit, taking particularly into account the year 1956-57, was £7,900,000. I have no difficulty whatever in showing—we have each been three years there; I had three years to 31st March, 1957, and the Minister has had three years to 31st March, 1960—that on the basis upon which he criticised me for having been in deficit £7,900,000, the Minister is at least £12 million in deficit.
In my belief, the figure, as I shall show, is £13,280,000 but because the Minister would not answer my question today, I am not in a position to prove as conclusively as I would wish the last £1,200,000. The Minister today refused to answer the question I had on the Order Paper which was purely an arithmetical question because he knew and because he frankly enough admitted in his reply to the Supplementary Question that if he did answer it, he would show that I had caught him out.
As I say, the figure to compare— the Minister takes that figure; I do not challenge it—in respect of my record is £7,900,000. In 1957-58, the Minister had a deficit of £5,880,000. In addition to that deficit, he had imposed customs duties instead of levies. A rose by any other name will smell as sweet. He called certain levies customs duties and they yielded him £692,000. Remember that in the period when I was Minister for Finance, I took credit for no proceeds of levy towards balancing current Budgets.
In the year 1958-59, the Minister went a step further and he not merely took the customs duties he had substituted for levies, £1,535,000, for current purposes but he also took the proceeds of the levies themselves, £1778,000. In the year 1959-60, he did the same to the tune of £1,586,000 for levies and for customs duties, taken in lieu of levy, £1,855,000. Those figures are on the records of the House and the Minister will have no difficulty whatever if he adds up those figures now with pencil and paper—I do not expect him to be able to add them up in his head—in finding that they amount to £11,996,000. There cannot be any argument about them—deficits less surpluses. I have given him credit for the surpluses. Deficits less surpluses, plus levy, plus the rose by another name, the customs duties he substituted for levies, make £11,996,000 or £4 million worse than the figures on which he has criticised me.
That is not the whole story, but, as I say, because the Minister would not answer my question today, I cannot prove so conclusively to the hilt the balance of £1,224,000, but it appears that in the year 1958-59 and in the year 1959-60, the Minister took certain sums for certain subheads of various Votes which I had carried on current account and brought them not to current account but pushed them off, paying for them on the "never-never"—pushed them, in fact, to capital account—Vote 50, subheads O.4, industrial development grant-in-aid, and Q.1, Foras Tionscal grant-in-aid; Vote 53, Universities and Colleges; and Vote 57, grant-in-aid to Bord Iascaigh Mhara. All those totted together means that the Minister is borrowing £1,224,000 over these years for services which we met on current account. As I say, that is the best computation I can make, the Minister not having answered the question.
Let me say this. I shall not quarrel with the Minister if he says that the total figure should not be £1,224,000, that it should be only £1 million. Even at £1 million, it means that when you add the total levies he put into current account to the customs duties he substituted for levies to the deficits plus surpluses in the last three years, comparing like with like, the Minister's record is £5 million worse than it was during the previous three years ending on 31st March, 1957.
I want to remind the Minister and the House that it was the Minister himself who chose the standard of comparison; it was the Minister who chose to attempt by that standard of comparison on every possible occasion to pillory me and the inter-Party Government. I challenge the Minister to contradict the figures that I have given. I challenge the Minister to say in repect of any single one of those figures whether they are not the true and correct figures. I challenge him to deny that the tots, the subtraction and the addition are not correct. They are correct with the exception of the one item to which I have referred and about which he has not given me the information.
The fact is undeniable that, on the basis which the Minister himself chose to pillory me and the inter-Party Government, his record is £5,000,000 worse in the last three years than in the preceding three years. Those facts cannot be gainsaid and, when they cannot be gainsaid, I suggest that the Minister does himself, the Government, and his high office no good, no honour, in trying to suggest otherwise, as he did try to suggest in his closing speech on the Vote on Account.
I am not the least bit thin-skinned. So far as I am concerned I believe that when you get into public life you have to take the knocks if you are going to give knocks. It cannot be a one-way street. But I believe in truth and the Minister shed all approach to the truth when he took a different line last week. I suggest in fairness, in honesty and, above all. because of the dignity of his office, he should now either prove my figures wrong or have the manliness to apologise for having misled the House last week.
I think it does not serve any good purpose for the Deputy to accuse me of trying to conceal any figures; I am not going to accuse the Deputy of giving wrong figures either, but the whole difference between us is whether we should add them up to a certain total or not. Today I gave the Deputy the sources from which he could find all the figures he needed but he tried to force me to produce others which, in my opinion, had no meaning whatsoever, except, as I said, to support a fictitious case against an imaginary hypothesis. I certainly did not say, as the Deputy says now, that if he produced the figures I would give the Deputy an opportunity of catching me out. I am quite sure the Deputy will not lose any opportunity of catching me out at any time.
This matter arose because last year at Budget time I drew the attention of the Dáil to the fact that there was a balanced Budget. The Deputy said that in his time he could also balance his Budget if he had placed certain items like the expenditure on bovine tuberculosis and industrial grants as capital expenditure——
I do not want to interrrupt the Minister because he was very fair and did not interrupt me, but I never said that.
——and taken the import levies in on the current side.
I never said that. What I said was that the Minister was doing something that I did not do. I never said that my system was wrong. I said the Minister's system was wrong.
I am not accusing the Deputy. What he said was that I had put the expenditure on bovine tuberculosis and industrial grants on the capital side and taken the import levies in as current levies and that therefore the comparison, if you like, between my balancing a Budget and his was not sustainable. This year when I was able to report again that the Budget for 1959-60 was balanced I thought I might anticipate the Deputy by giving amended figures to show what the result would be if the Deputy for his time had taken the expenditure on bovine tuberculosis and industrial grants and treated them as capital and taken import levies in as current levies. The figures I produced showed that even on that basis the operations of the Deputy would not have proved as favourable as those for the last three years.
When this was pointed out, the Deputy went on to a new claim, in my opinion—I do not know whether he mentioned it last year—and that is that the yields from the duties on the many items which were changed from import levies to ordinary duties should also be taken into account in comparing the three year period of office for the Deputy and the three years I have been in office. Perhaps I am as much to blame as the Deputy in this but I do not think it is going to serve any good purpose to say: "If you take so-and-so it suits me and if you take so-and-so it suits you." When you add it up, who is going to come out on top, because the next claim I shall make, if the Deputy produces those figures, is to say that I have lost in some ways about £4,000,000 in income tax and about £7,000,000 in increased social services?
And gained how much on subsidies?
The Deputy would come back with something else which only proves the absurdity of the whole thing. I want to say the burden on the Deputy of the capital expenditure, of current expenditure if you like, on bovine tuberculosis and industrial grants was comparatively small. As a matter of fact, during the three years' term of office of the Deputy, the total amount was £400,000 but in my three years it was £7,500,000.
Will the Minister quote any single place where I ever challenged bovine tuberculosis?
No, I am talking only about the items placed to capital by me.
I never challenged him.
The Minister is entitled to speak without interruption.
He is entitled to tell the truth.
I am telling the truth. My figures are correct.
The Minister said I never mentioned before the switch from levies to custom duties. I mentioned it in 1957, 1958 and 1959 and I have the Budget speeches here to prove it.
If the Deputy did, I am sorry. However, leaving that aside, I am trying to compare the various items which have been placed as capital by me and as current income and current expenditure by the Deputy. Leaving all that aside, the Minister for Finance at Budget time gives a forecast of the estimates of revenue for the coming year and he gives a forecast of what he believes will be his expenditure. The Minister tells the House what is going in as current income or current expenditure and what is going in as outside current income and as capital on the expenditure side. On that basis he gives the House his estimate, and if it is correct, of course, it results in a balanced Budget. Whatever I have taken in on one side or another, the estimate I gave for the last two or three years was correct. In other words, the Budget was balanced, while the fact is that whatever they may put on one side or the other in three successive years, the estimate given by the Minister for Finance in the inter-Party Government at that time was wrong. The Budget was not balanced in any of these three years.
I am not claiming that I am a better financier than Deputy Sweetman but I am claiming that the reason Deputy Sweetman was unsuccessful in balancing his Budgets and why I was successful is that during the three years of Coalition Government the economy was declining and deteriorating and that during the three years when Fianna Fáil were in office the economy was improving. That is the whole explanation.
It is strange that economic statistics do not bear that out.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 18th May, 1960.