After four years of office, Fianna Fáil on the occasion of the discussion on the Vote on Account, cannot blame anyone but themselves for the record which lies behind them. I think Deputies will recall that, on each of the last three years when Deputies from this side of the House challenged Fianna Fáil Deputies, as Deputy Blowick has done just now, there was always some Fianna Fáil Deputy to get up and say that they were not there long enough yet, that they had not yet had a chance, that they did not get an opportunity of putting their 100,000 job plan properly into operation: "Wait until we are near the end of our term of office and it will be a different story." Now Fianna Fáil find themselves on the last lap; they find themselves facing into a general election with by-election defeats behind them in Sligo-Leitrim and Dublin South West, and a very narrow shave, indeed, in Carlow-Kilkenny. I am full of admiration for the courage of Deputy Booth in speaking at all in this debate. I feel some doubt as to whether Deputy Moher or any other Fianna Fáil Deputy will show the same courage because they are going to be asked some awkward questions if they do.
I want to start by inviting the Deputies opposite, as an exercise in preparation for the general election and the questions they are going to be asked at the general election, to cast their minds back to the general election which put them into the Government seats opposite. Will any of them contradict me if I say that the three main points they put in issue in the general election in 1957 were, firstly, the cost of living and the cost of Government; secondly, the question of unemployment; and, thirdly, the question of emigration? Is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy or Minister satisfied with the record of their Government on those three points?
All of us remember the speeches of Fianna Fáil Deputies and Ministers, their propaganda and their posters during the General Election. One of their slogans was: "Let us get cracking"; another was: "Employment is the test of Government policy"; and Deputy Blowick has referred to a third: "Wives get your husbands off to work." There were various other posters and pamphlets of that description.
We had Fianna Fáil spokesmen dealing at that time with the question of the cost of living. Suggestions were made that if Fianna Fáil were reelected to office, they had not a good record as far as the cost of living was concerned and would not be particularly careful to keep the cost of living down and to shelter the weakest section of the community against rising prices. In order to rebut that type of suggestion we had the present Taoiseach and his predecessor going on record during the course of the election. I just want to remind the Parliamentary Secretary and the Deputies behind him of the words uttered by the present Taoiseach when speaking in Waterford on the 28th February, 1957.
He is reported in the Irish Press of the 1st March as saying:
Some Coalition leaders are threatening the country with all sorts of unpleasant things if Fianna Fáil becomes the Government: compulsory tillage, wage control, cuts in Civil Service salaries, higher food prices and a lot more besides. A Fianna Fáil Government does not intend to do any of these things because we do not believe in them. How definite can we make our denial of these stupid allegations? They are all falsehoods.
That was the man who now occupies the position of Taoiseach. All those allegations, according to him, were stupid. They were falsehoods. He appealed to the crowd in Waterford to know how definite could Fianna Fáil make their denial of these stupid falsehoods.
What was the Fianna Fáil record when they achieved office? I invite the Parliamentary Secretary and the Deputies sitting behind him to consider the Taoiseach's speech at the time, and to consider what has happened since. I propose to remind them of what has happened since. The former Taoiseach, who was Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party at the time, betook himself to Belmullet in the course of the last General Election and was reported also in the Irish Press on the 1st March, 1957, on the topic of foodstuffs. He said:
The Coalition Parties were urging the people not to vote for Fianna Fáil because there was hell around the Fianna Fáil corner. You know the record of Fianna Fáil in the past. You know that we have never done the things they said we would do. They told you that you would pay more for your bread.
There we had the present Taoiseach and his predecessor in the course of the General Election in so many words practically assuring the people that if Fianna Fáil were elected, there was going to be no increase in the cost of foodstuffs. Fianna Fáil got back into office. In their very first Budget, as Deputy Sweetman mentioned to-day, they abolished the food subsidies, which were being carried in the public Estimates each year for the purpose of keeping down the cost of living and of keeping down foodstuffs to a reasonable price for the ordinary people. That is the Fianna Fáil record as far as the cost of living goes.
Deputy Sweetman referred to the blisters which had been imposed on the community by Fianna Fáil and the cost which the people were paying for the doubtful privilege of having a Fianna Fáil Government. Deputy Booth—how, I do not know—got the impression that Deputy Sweetman had not mentioned any of these blisters. I heard Deputy Sweetman mentioning some of them. I think, possibly, Deputy Booth was tripping over himself, because he wanted to make the point that, in fact, there were no blisters at all and that if the Government were spending more money, if the Book of Estimates had increased by £23,000,000 since this Government took office, it was all explainable by the fact that the national income had risen and that no new burdens were necessary.
Is Deputy Booth being fed that kind of guff from any Minister's office, as was suggested by Deputy Blowick? If he is, I think it is scandalous. It is scandalous that any decent, honest Fianna Fáil back-bencher should be put in a position of walking in here and giving out that kind of nonsense: that no burdens have been placed on the backs of the people since Fianna Fáil came into office, that what has happened is that the national income has risen and that if the Book of Estimates is higher, it is all explainable by an increase in the national income. Are Deputy Booth, Deputy Noel Lemass, and Deputy Cummins aware of the fact that when Fianna Fáil came into office approximately £9,000,000 was being carried in the Estimates for the food subsidies to which I have referred? Are they aware that Fianna Fáil abolished those subsidies, that they saved the Exchequer that sum of £9,000,000 and that, by doing that, they increased the price of the loaf of bread from 9d. to 1/3d. or 1/3½d., increased the price of butter from 3/9d. to 4/7 per pound and increased the price of flour? Are they aware that since Fianna Fáil came back there have been increases in bus fares and railway fares, increases in postage charges and increases in electricity? Are they aware that Fianna Fáil have even made money out of the sick poor of this country and have increased the Health Act charges?
Does Deputy Booth or any other Deputy seriously tell the House that there have been no new burdens or new blisters placed on the backs of the people since Fianna Fáil came back into office? These are some of the things you are going to be told in the General Election, and prepare your brief to answer them now, if you can. I have mentioned some of the blisters. I have referred to the fact that the Book of Estimates, which is brought before us by way of this Vote on Account, shows an increase of nearly £23,000,000 since 1956. But the story does not end there. In addition to the increase in the Estimates which are now before the House, the Statistical Abstract for the year 1960 shows that between 1956 and 1960 an additional sum of more than £3,500,000 has been collected in local rates.
In that connection I should like some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies, preferably Deputy O'Malley if he were here, to tell me how they feel about the increases in local rates coupled with the increase in the Book of Estimates because, when he spoke in this House just five years ago, on 14th March, 1956, Deputy O'Malley had this to say at column 536 of the Dáil Debates, Volume 155:
The local authorities—the people —cannot pay any more in rates. The only solution of a constructive nature, as far as I can see, is that the Government should give the example. How could the Government do that? In my humble opinion the Government should give the example at the top. Take one example—the Department of Justice. Does everybody not know that the Department of Justice, instead of costing the taxpayers some £100,000, could be equally competently carried on by the Minister for Defence? Everyone knows the Minister for Defence could be Minister for Justice as well and carry on both Departments.
Then he says:
I am simply showing the Parliamentary Secretary how the cost of Government can be reduced.
Since then the cost of Government has risen by a little over £22½ million. The rates about which Deputy O'Malley was then complaining have increased over the few years since he made that speech by more than £3½ million and Deputy O'Malley's great solution has been thrown out of the window. There was no amalgamation of the Department of Justice and the Department of Defence in order to save one Ministry. Instead, we have the Department of Defence, we have the Department of Justice and we have added a Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Justice and, not to be outdone, we have created a new Ministry of Transport and Power. So that since the time that Deputy O'Malley was speaking we have a new Ministry, a new Parliamentary Secretary, an increase in Government expenditure and an increase in rates.
It is interesting that Deputy O'Malley made that speech in the year 1956. He was one of "the boys" then. He was only giving out the Fianna Fáil propaganda. Fianna Fáil were over here and they wanted to be over there and they were setting their sails accordingly. It was during the same year, on 8th May, 1956, that the present Taoiseach gave us the Fianna Fáil view, the Fianna Fáil view when in Opposition, in any event, on the question of taxation. He spoke in this House on 8th May, 1956, reported at column 49 of the Dáil Debates for that day, when he had this to say:
In 1953 the Fianna Fáil Government of which I was a member took a decision that taxation in this country had reached the danger limit. We announced that we had made up our minds on that fact and that so far as we were concerned there would be no increase in tax rates above the 1953 level.
This, remember, was Deputy Seán Lemass, the present Taoiseach, speaking in 1956:
We made it clear that if any Budget difficulty arose that difficulty would be met by a reduction of expenditure and not by increasing the burdens on the taxpayer.
A reduction in expenditure was the flag that was nailed to the mast-head by the present Taoiseach when he was in these benches in the year 1956. Was it any wonder that poor Deputy O'Malley would in the same year, practically in the same month, make the kind of speech which he did make and which I have quoted? But, instead of getting the reduction in expenditure which any of us was entitled to believe from the Taoiseach's speech at that time that Fianna Fáil were committed to, we have an increase of more than £22½ million in the Book of Estimates and we have local taxation increased by over £3½ million since Fianna Fáil got back to office.
As Deputy Sweetman very properly pointed out, it does not end there because there will be Supplementary Estimates added on to this before we get the total bill and we have the present Government adopting the system of hidden taxation not directly imposed by the Budget when they allow bus fares, postage stamps and telephone calls to go up and various increases of that sort and there is the extremely heavy additional burden, if I understood Deputy Sweetman correctly—he had made a calculation; I did not—of the increase in insurance stamps on the employer and employees since this Government took office. I think I am correct in saying that Deputy Sweetman calculated that out at something like £2 million extra on the employers and £2 million extra on the employees.
Therefore, the position is that since 1956 Fianna Fáil saved £9 million at the expense particularly of the weaker sections of the people; that although that sum of £9 million has gone out of the Book of Estimates, the total of the Book of Estimates has increased by nearly £23 million. If that £9 million were still there and still being borne by the Government the increase in expenditure would be practically £32 million on the Book of Estimates alone, £3½ million on local taxation and about £4 million on insurance stamps, leaving aside completely the other increases such as charges under the Health Act, electricity, bus fares, and so on.
That is the Fianna Fáil record, the record of the present Government, as far as the cost of living and the cost of Government are concerned. That was one of the main points they put in issue in the last general election in order to get into those benches.
The second main point of attack on the then Government was in relation to the question of unemployment. I do not suppose that there is any Deputy who has not heard Fianna Fáil Deputies from the former Taoiseach down referring to the year 1956 as the black year as far as employment in this country was concerned. In that context there was the Lemass plan or Lemass proposal for 100,000 new jobs if Fianna Fáil were elected to office. I do not care whether they claim it as a plan or a proposal, those figures were bandied around. We were told that 1956 was the black year for employment in this country and that there were proposals in existence in the Fianna Fáil Party for 100,000 new jobs if the people elected Fianna Fáil as the Government.
When one thinks of those statements, when one thinks of that propaganda and the propaganda employed in the posters, "Wives Get Your Husbands Back To Work,""Beat the Crisis,""Let Us Get Cracking" and all the rest of it, which were festooned on all the dead walls in this city and throughout the country during the general election, would not any Fianna Fáil supporter, would not any Fianna Fáil backbencher be entitled to be a little bit disappointed if he discovered this evening that there had been, we will say, only 10,000 new jobs since Fianna Fáil got back to office, that they had made new jobs only at the rate of two and a half thousand a year? Would they not be entitled to be disappointed and to turn on the Government and to tell them that they were falling down on the job and that it was time to get cracking? Instead of having 10,000, 5,000 or 1,000 new jobs as between the year 1956 and the years 1959 or 1960, there are now 51,000 fewer people in employment in this country than there were in the black year of 1956. Fianna Fáil, having been in office for four years, have now to add to their proud record the fact that 51,000 people who were in employment in 1956 are now out of employment in this country.
They can fiddle as they like and make whatever speeches they like about a reduction in the live register and about fewer people drawing unemployment assistance. They are not in the country to draw it. Is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy who will challenge that? We find it difficult enough in the House to get figures from the Government with regard to emigration, but apparently it is not so difficult for members of the British House of Commons to get information. When the matter was raised there the figures were published for the years 1958 and 1959 and the figures showed that for those two years alone almost 123,000 people had left this country and secured work in England. The figures showed that these people had left southern Ireland alone. Those figures did not include the north and it did not include those who have gone to New Zealand, America, Australia or Canada. They show that 123,000 people left these Twenty-Six Counties in two years to get employment in England. Is it any wonder that they are not here now to draw unemployment relief and that Fianna Fáil are in the position that they can boast that fewer people are drawing unemployment relief than when they came into office?
The facts are that there are 51,000 fewer people in employment in this country and that practically a quarter of a million people have emigrated in the last four years. That is Fianna Fáil's record as far as employment is concerned and again I would advise Deputies opposite to get down to the job and see what answers they can think up to those questions because they are going to be asked about these matters when the next general election comes along. Those were the three main points that Fianna Fáil put in issue in the last general election. On the question of the cost of living they have fallen down completely. On the question of employment there are 51,000 fewer people in work than when they came into office and on the question of emigration practically a quarter of a million have gone to England in the last four years.
In the face of that, we have to listen to speeches such as that made by Deputy Booth who said, in effect, that emigration, like the poor, is always with us, that it is traditional. It is interesting to hear that kind of speech from an intelligent Fianna Fáil back-bencher in 1961 because it is a complete repudiation of the type of speech which we were hearing from the Fianna Fáil Ministerial benches immediately after Fianna Fáil were elected to office. On 15th May, 1957, when dealing with the general Budget resolutions just after Fianna Fáil had come into office, the present Minister for Defence gave us his views as to what Fianna Fáil were elected to do and why the people elected them. As reported in Column 1283 and in Column 1284 of the Dáil Debates of 15th May, 1957, Deputy Boland had this to say:
In my opinion, and in the opinion of any fair-minded person who even now goes back and looks over the speeches made in the election campaign, it is beyond all doubt that we were put in here as a Government to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of mass unemployment and emigration brought about by the previous Government.
According to the Minister for Defence he and his colleagues, Deputy Noel Lemass and the others, were put in as a Government to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of mass unemployment and emigration. What action have they taken in the last four years to do that? What steps have they taken? Would it not be better if they had taken no steps at all? Whatever steps they took resulted in 51,000 fewer people being now employed in this country and in a quarter of a million people fleeing the country and emigrating to England alone. Is there any Fianna Fáil Minister or Deputy who will have the courage to tell us what steps they have taken and why those steps will not work?
That, according to the Minister for Defence, is what they were put into those benches to do—to end unemployment, to stop emigration. The Minister for Defence was just a novice at the time. He was never in the Dáil before. It is no wonder that if the ordinary people of the country felt there was some substance in the talk of 100,000 new jobs that a new and enthusiastic Fianna Fáil Deputy and Minister should also think that there was some reality about it. Perhaps when he took up office he thought that, somewhere out of the hat, the then Tánaiste, now the Taoiseach, Deputy Seán Lemass, was going to be able to pull 100,000 new jobs.
Deputy Booth tells us to-day that emigration is traditional in this country and that there is nothing very much we can do about it. The present Minister for Defence had not very much sympathy with that point of view in May, 1957. As reported at Column 1288 of the Dáil Reports of the 15th May, 1957, he said:
"It is all right for Deputy Norton to speak, as he did when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, of the advantage of having the safety valve of emigration. It is all right for him to ask, as he asked a deputation of representatives of trade unions here in Dublin, why should they worry about unemployment in the categories they catered for, when the people were leaving the country and not remaining as a liability to them. The wives whose husbands have had to emigrate, the children whose fathers have had to emigrate, cannot regard emigration in that complacent light, as a safety valve. To them, it is a real tragedy."
I hope Deputy Booth will wander into the office of the Minister for Defence with the Dáil debates of the 15th May in his hand and ask him is there to be any change of policy now; what kind of speeches are they to make in the future, as he has put his foot in it by coming in here and finding that the Minister for Defence has told them that that was all tosh and nonsense a few years ago.
There are a number of other matters which might be referred to in the course of this discussion. I will not detain the House much longer. I was very disappointed to learn from Deputy Sweetman's contribution to this discussion—again the information was not vouchsafed by the Government and it is not surprising—that instead of reducing the number of civil servants as we had been led to expect when this Government took office, over the past four years the numbers have increased by some 500, apart altogether from the civil servants who have been seconded to other positions.
Therefore we find that the sum total of the Fianna Fáil record for the past four years is that they have increased the cost of living; they have reduced the number of people employed; they have increased the outflow of people by means of emigration; they have increased the number of Ministers and increased the number of Parliamentary Secretaries; they have increased the number of civil servants.