Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (16th Dáil) – Thursday, 20 Apr 1961

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.—(Minister for Finance).

Mr. Dillon

I cannot embark on the general discussion of the Business before the House today without saying a word with reference to the tragic matter of which the Taoiseach has just spoken. The special circumstances of the tragedy surrounding the passing of our colleague has, I think, moved us all most deeply. None of us would wish to embark on the Business of this day without reiterating what the Taoiseach has just said and expressing in very special measure our sympathy with the widow and family of Dr. Humphreys and affirming our deep grief at the tragic passing of one who was a colleague of us all.

In the concluding words of his Budget Statement, the Minister for Finance invited us to contemplate his records during the past four years and to pass judgment upon them. I think it a fair test of any man's policy or any Government's policy to ask yourself not what have their intentions been but what have been the results of their activities. I accept that test.

I note that the Government have a unique and unprecedented capacity for talking themselves into a state of euphoria designed by the quotation of endless statistics to persuade themselves that everything is lovely in the garden and that all sections of the community are as happy as larks and as prosperous as the day is long. I wish I could agree with him that that is so from my observation and my knowledge of the circumstances in which my neighbours are living.

It is true, and it is something for which we have every reason to rejoice, that some stimulus has been given to our industrial exports in the past three or four years. When we come to examine those exports, we find that the increase consists very largely of the additional output of the copper mines in Avoca, of the oil refinery and of the increased exports of established industries of this country which have substantially been evoked by the policy of tax concession on exports inaugurated in the Finance Act, 1956. Even the turf briquette factories inaugurated in 1956 by the inter-Party Government have made their modest contribution.

However, to speak of these things, gratifying though they may be, and to forget that there is a thousand million pounds of our national wealth invested in the agricultural industry, in the land and the people who live upon it, and that that industry maintains 350,000 families, or did so before the catastrophe of emigration struck the small farmers of this country, is in my judgment economic and social insanity.

I propose to suggest to the House to-day that, examining the present Minister's record even in the past four years, not to speak of his rather remote record in the tragic days when he was Minister for Agriculture, the consequences for the fundamental industry of this country have been little short of catastrophic.

It has never been the practice of Fianna Fáil to furnish us with one Budget. Their consistent practice, and perhaps it is good politics but it is certainly not good economics, has been to provide us with a Budget but to supplement that by a series of other charges which operate to remove from the annual Budget a portion of the taxation which the people have to bear. Looking back over the four years of the present Minister's financial administration, I want to remind the House of the facts. In this year in which we are speaking, the fact is that over and above the Budget which we have now to consider, we have also provided that, through the Social Welfare Acts, the employees of this country have to pay £2 million per annum extra for their insurance stamps and the employers have to find as much more, an amount of £4 million per annum in addition to the taxation provided in the Budget.

But if we look back over the whole four year period, the facts are that, since 1957, this Government have put upon the people of this country £9 million for the cost of their food when they removed the food subsidies in 1957. In three separate stages, they have added £3 million per annum to the cost of the tobacco consumed by our people. They have put £750,000 extra taxation on the price of beer for those who consume it. They have put a million pounds in extra taxation on petrol. They have increased postal charges. They have increased E.S.B. charges. They have increased transport charges, both for passengers and goods and the rates payable on rateable property in this country have increased by £3½ million over the same period.

The Minister for Finance, in his concluding observation, states: "despite the removal of the food subsidies wage and salary earners are now immeasurably better off than they were and the position of the social assistance groups has been improved." Without accepting that proposition for one moment, I want to invite the House to consider that there is one striking omission from that phrase. There is a reference to the wage and salary earner, to the social assistance group, but there is no reference to the 350,000 families who live upon the land. Bearing in mind the fact that of those families a very substantial number live in Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal and the province of Connaught and the counties of south west Munster and that 90 per cent. of the farmers living there are self-employed, they have had to meet their full share of all the charges which I have described as having come in course of payment since the present Minister took office and they are being asked to meet them all today from a smaller income than they had in 1957.

The consequence of that impossible demand that is being put upon these people is visible for all to see. In hundreds of small farms throughout this country, the padlock is going on the door. The farmer and his family are emigrating from the land and this country is not only the poorer by one family irrevocably gone but economically the land that family left has virtually gone out of production when it is set in conacre and left for three or four thin store cattle to graze on.

I warn this House that there is a social revolution taking place over a large part of this country which I do not believe any sane citizen of this country would desire. I am not at all sure that the Taoiseach does not desire it. I believe that there are elements in the Fianna Fáil Party who have made up their minds that the time has come to get rid of the small farmer. The small farmers of this country are becoming the kulaks of Ireland. If that is the purpose of the Fianna Fáil Party, they ought to stop and ask themselves what the consequences will be.

It is not a new idea. Lord Lucan had that idea in 1840 and the people of Castlebar and West Mayo fought him with their bare hands. There are few living in Mayo who do not remember the story of the Christmas Eve when the master of the workhouse in Castlebar sent a message to the sheriff's bailiff to stop knocking down houses on the Lucan estate because there was no more room in the workhouse for man, woman or child. That gives a picture of Lord Lucan as a brutal, cold and inconsiderate man. I do not believe he was. He had the idea that the small farmer was an anachronism and that the right way to deal with the situation in the West of Ireland was to clear him off the land, to reorganise the farms into large blocs, to bring in Scottish managers and to allow the tenants to return as paid employees to work on the large farms.

If we are to talk in nothing but terms of statistics and production, pounds, shillings and pence, there may be strong economic arguments for that position, but what I suggest to this House is that, in a human society, there ought to be other considerations than cold figures and a complete preoccupation with production. If we are to accept, as the end of all human life, maximum production, then we had better make up our minds to the fact that we have been outstripped long ago by the insect world. The bees can leave us trotting after them. They live to produce—they have no other function.

It is a chastening thought to remember that, when the bees have done their best, somebody comes and takes their production from them, and their only destiny in life is to start all over again. I do not believe that is the destiny of the small farmers of this country. I believe their way of life has a value to our society. I believe a property-owning agricultural community is a far safer foundation for a Christian society in this day in which we live than a discontented proletariat living under an oligarchy of men who grow progressively richer and richer as their servants get poorer and poorer.

The time is coming when we will have to make up our minds which objective are we going to work towards. The present progress is towards the liquidation of the small farmers of Ireland. I think that is a deplorable trend. I think that unless this House wakes up to whither it is going, we may go so far as to find our course of conduct irreversible. If that should ever transpire, it would be a great disaster for us all. I do not want Deputies to imagine that these are apprehensions born of a too lively imagination. I want to sustain them from the cold print of the economic statistics issued prior to the Budget of 1961, compiled not by a poet or by a dreamer but by the Central Statistics Office. Anything more remote from human feeling it would be very hard to find. I speak of the body as a corporate entity and not with reference to the individuals who constitute its personnel and who know as much about the country as anyone else amongst us.

On page 11 of the publication to which I have referred reference is made to national income and expenditure. Bear in mind the farmers represent 350,000 families with an investment of £1,000,000,000 of our national wealth. This paragraph, dealing with national income, has it to tell:

Preliminary estimates indicate that, in current terms, national income increased by about 5 per cent. from £502 million in 1959 to £528 million in 1960.

Mark the words that follow:

The greater part of the increase of £26 million took the form of increased employee remuneration which accounted for £17 million. About £4 million represented increased income of farmers and their relatives and £4 million went to other domestic categories.

I think it is dramatic enough to realise that out of an estimated increase of £26,000,000 of national income, agriculture, the greatest industry in the State, employing more people than any other individual industry, had £4,000,000 as their share.

Further down on the same page we read:

All domestic sectors showed increased income in 1960, but the increase was greatest in the industrial sector, in which the total income was £11 million, or 8 per cent. higher than in 1959. Moderate increases also occurred in distribution and transport, public administration and defence and other domestic sectors. Agricultural income...which had shown a partial recovery in 1959... increased by about £5 million to £129 million, which is only slightly below the level reached in 1957.

Mark those words—"which is only slightly below the level reached in 1957." These are the people who must pay their share of the £9,000,000 which was put upon their food, the £3,000,000 per annum put upon their tobacco, the £¾ million if they drank beer, the appropriate part of the charge for petrol, postal charges, E.S.B. charges, plus £3,500,000 in rates per annum. Well may the Minister for Finance comfort his heart that all other sections of the community have had their incomes adjusted to help them bear their share of the burden, but agricultural income, including salaries and wages, is slightly below the level reached in 1957.

It fills me with astonishment that nobody in this House in the Fianna Fáil benches has the courage to get up and call upon his own leader to face that situation and correct it before irretrievable damage is done. So long as I am here, and so long as this Party is here, we will continue to protest with all the emphasis we can command against the liquidation of the small farmers of Ireland. We will continue to protest against their being called upon to bear burdens that no other section of the community has ever been asked to bear. We will continue to protest against their being asked to bear burdens alone which other organised sections have indignantly refused to bear without a corresponding adjustment in income.

I thought at one time that it was possible that Fianna Fáil, stumbling into this dilemma, forgot that, when these immense additional burdens were being piled on, it was not enough to adjust wages and salaries; it was not enough to correct, even to a limited degree, the social service payments reserved for the unemployed, old age pensioners and others, inadequate as these adjustments were. None of these adjustments gave any relief whatever to the small farmer working for himself with the help of his family, and compelled to pay all—the small farmer who, in 1960, finds himself with an income slightly less than that which he enjoyed in 1957. That alone, in my judgment, constitutes a sufficient indictment of the Minister's four year record as Minister for Finance.

I want to examine now the euphoria in other sectors that he seeks to create. I remember—and the Taoiseach cannot blame us for recalling—that when the Taoiseach was deputy-leader of the Opposition, he undertook to our people that, if given the opportunity, he had a plan which, over a period of years, four or five years, would provide 100,000 new jobs. That promise was made early in 1956 or towards the end of 1955. When he made that promise, there were 1,163,000 persons employed in Ireland. Four years later, there are 51,000 fewer persons employed in Ireland. I do not want anyone to take those figures from me; I invite them to consult page 27 and page 22 of the economic statistics to which I have already referred and in the Tables appearing on those pages, they will find the figures of which I speak.

Many Deputies imagine, however, that if they could confine themselves exclusively to the industrial sector, they would have a more striking tale to tell. If we were to accept all the protestations of Fianna Fáil at face value, who could blame their followers for believing that some marvellous revolution had taken place in that sector of our economy but if these Deputies will turn to Table 16 of the same economic statistics, they will find that in manufacturing industry, 191,000 persons were employed in 1955, and that five years later, the number employed in manufacturing industry is 190,000—1,000 fewer than were working here six years ago. The total employment in all branches of nonagricultural economic activity—which includes mining, quarrying, turf production, manufacturing, construction, commerce, insurance and finance, transport and communication, public administration and defence, electricity, gas and water, and other economic activity—was 726,000 in 1955 and in 1960, it was 699,000.

There is one field which, on superficial examination, appears to be highly satisfactory, that is, the number of persons on the register of unemployed. That has gone down steeply but read that in the context of an emigration during the past four years of 200,000 boys and girls between the ages of 18 and 25. Does anybody in this House want to see the unemployment position resolved by shipping our people abroad to get work in Birmingham, Bootle and Manchester, so that their names can be removed from the register of unemployed in Ireland and the Fianna Fáil Party can triumph in this dramatic solution of the unemployment problem?

Oliver Cromwell could have made that boast in his day when he drove our people "to hell or to Connaught." He could have gloried in the fact that the register of unemployed in Leinster had shown a most dramatic improvement but I do not believe anybody in this country would share his triumph. They regarded that as a tragic event in our history, but at least that amounted simply to a transfer of some of our people from the rich part to the poor part of Ireland. This operation represents the transfer of our people from our towns and cities and rural homes to one or two-roomed tenements in industrial cities where living may be more remunerative in terms of cash received, but anyone who suffered the shock I suffered when I saw a programme called "Probation Officer" on Independent Television last Monday week will recoil with horror from some of the consequences of that emigration that has been thrust upon our people in the past four years.

Does the cost of living figure interest the Fianna Fáil Party? It has gone up since February, 1957—the year Fianna Fáil supplanted us as the Government and almost the month they supplanted us. Since that date, the cost of living has gone up by 12 points. I do not believe that anybody outside this House except a certain select few fully understands the meaning of the term "points." What it means is this: every 10/- a person had to spend in 1957, is now worth only 9/- and for every family which has to pay the weekly bill the cost of living has taken two shilling out of every £ since Fianna Fáil took office.

There will be people in Ireland who will rejoice at the reduction in income tax and who will blame them? There will be people in Ireland who will rejoice that they are no longer liable to sur-tax and who will blame them? But there is something crude and unlovely to my mind, in the gesture which makes these provisions and, in the same instance, claps £1 million on tobacco and flourishes an increase of 18d. in the old age pension—the price of a stamp, 3d. a day, or rather less. There is something a little incongruous in that. I do not know what the public will feel about it. I suppose it is better than nothing but I cannot help feeling that in the context of the Minister's speech, eighteen pence increase in the old age pension is not a very liberal provision.

I see the Minister makes play of the fact that he is providing additional help for agriculture. Let us examine it. He is going to increase the grant for lime but what is the increase going to be? It is going to be the restoration of what he took off three years ago. I told him when he took it off that he was making a grave mistake, that it was a reduction which would reduce the consumption of lime. I urged upon him that I had gone as far myself as it was prudent or practical to go in trying to use the lime subsidy as economically as possible by restricting the area over which lime might be carried so as to avoid gross overlapping in one lime-grinding factory and another. But, not content with that, they reduced the subsidy by 4s. a ton and now we are all meant to throw our hats in the air and praise them because they give it back.

We are told they are going to increase the subsidy for cow byres. Is public memory so short that we are expected to forget that it is only three and a half years ago since they themselves abolished the double byre grant? Is not that so? They were warned from this side of the House at that time that that was an obscurantist, silly thing to do and was well calculated to check the progress of the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme with which the double byre grant had been associated. They now discover that they have got to put it back but they are putting it back three years too late, just as they were three years too late and allowed the precious years of 1952, 1953 and 1954 to pass without doing anything about bovine tuberculosis eradication.

I sometimes forget the measure of the folly of this Government but recently I was listening to a broadcast in which I participated with Mr. Joe Carrigan from America, in 1950. It was not until I heard the broadcast replayed over again that I realised that I then said to him "We are now about to embark upon the eradication of bovine tuberculosis in all our cattle in Ireland." That was in the Autumn of 1950. We went out of office in the Spring of 1951 and when I returned to office in 1954 not one step had been taken to advance that programme. To expedite it, we introduced the system of double byre grants so that anyone who was active and vigorous in participating in that scheme would be allowed to get a double grant in respect of his cow byre. That was so powerful an inducement that we were falling behind in providing the money. We had allocated close on £½ million per annum for that purpose and had a backlog of about 18 months work to do. Applications were being filed and we were doing them as opportunity came.

When Fianna Fáil came into office they cut the Gordian knot by wiping out the scheme. Now, three and a half years too late, they propose to go part of the way to restoring it and we are all meant to throw our hats in the air and bless them for their beneficence.

I understand we are to have another £1 a ton off potash. I would ask Deputies representing agricultural interests in this House, outside the intensive tillage areas, how much potash is put out or should be put out upon the land of Ireland? One cwt. to the statute acre per annum.

When I see a society in which employment has gone down, when I see a society in which the burdens of cost are driving some of the most valuable elements of our society out of their homes and out of their country, when I see a society which in the last four years has lost 200,000 of its best to England and the United States, when I see a society where the cost of living is steadily rising, I ask the Minister for Finance if he is proud of his record. I ask any Minister for Finance or any Taoiseach who has presided over the shipment of 200,000 of our young people abroad, how can they say at the end of the period in which they went that it was something on which they have every reason to congratulate themselves, for these are the terms employed in the concluding paragraphs of the Minister's speech?

I should like to ask the Minister, when he was distributing reliefs in this Budget, had he given any consideration to one service which has been dear to my heart and which, I think, is of very great value in our society, that is, children's allowances. I do not want to under-estimate the difficulty of making effective adjustments in that service because, when you try to increase the allowance for the first child or even for the second, the annual cost is very heavy indeed, but I wonder if the Minister had considered the special case of large families, where you have five or more children in the home? I think at a relatively trifling cost a very valuable addition could be made to children's allowances to cover families in that category and it is something that I would commend to the Minister for consideration.

Before I conclude I should like to refer to one other paragraph of the Minister's speech because it seems to me so typical of the Fianna Fáil approach to the performance of their undertakings. We all remember in 1957 when the Minister made his first Budget speech his proposal to establish a Government commission ruthlessly to cut down the number of civil servants, the implication being of course, that his predecessors in office had allowed the Civil Service to mushroom out into an altogether excessive and top-heavy organisation. He was going to put his hand to pruning it down and reducing its numbers. He had an alibi the next year, in 1958, a further alibi in 1959 and a last despairing alibi in 1960, but in 1961 he tells us: "If you want more services you must pay for more civil servants."

That undertaking in 1957 was almost as impressive as the promise of the 100,000 jobs from Clery's restaurant. It was almost as convincing as the statements made in Belmullet, Wexford and Dublin on the same night, and in Waterford, too, by four different Ministers, four different leaders of the Fianna Fáil Party, that it was a cruel libel on them to suggest that if they were elected food subsidies would go. After a suitable interval has passed, it is just another Fianna Fáil promise gone up in smoke and they hope the people will accept that.

I think the people do accept it. One of the tragedies of the situation is that the whole standard of conduct in public life is debased on that account. One of the disasters of our public life is the excessive readiness of our people to shrug their shoulders and say: "What do you expect? They all tell lies." There is no political society in the world in which that attitude has become universal that has long survived in freedom. If our people ever accept the proposition that "they all tell lies" in reference to the public men of Ireland, parliamentary democracy will not long survive, and who can blame the people if they believe that any alternative would be an improvement?

I like to remember that in the period when we were responsible for this country we were able to point to the fact that in 1951, for the first time for a very long time, the census showed the population had begun to go up again. I like to remember that in the period for which we were responsible the total exports of Ireland, which were of the order of £39 million in 1947, were of the order of £131 million when we finally left office in 1957. I like to remember that in 1955, when we were in office, employment reached the highest point it had ever reached. I like to remember that when we were in office we actually asked many of our people who had emigrated in the past to come home and help in the work we inaugurated at that time.

I do not want to suggest for a moment that every Government has not had its difficulties and will not always have them, but when the Minister for Finance, Deputy Dr. Ryan, invites us to look back over his years of administration we must face the fact that there is a decline in the general standard of living of the agricultural community, a failure of employment to expand and a reduction of unemployment registers by the export of 200,000 people. I want to concede at once that it may be true, it probably is, that there is a small section of our community who are growing rich but there is a very large section of our community who are growing so poor that they can no longer live at home.

Let us remember the words of the President of the United States early after his inauguration: "No society which cannot look after its poor can long protect its rich." The whole agricultural community west of the Shannon are being made poor by the policies pursued by this Government. The best elements in our community are being exported in ever-increasing numbers and we are being left with a problem which may endure for years to come.

I do not call that a record of which I would be proud. I would be much happier to see a small section of our community being less rich if I were convinced that the vast majority of our people could be made less poor. I would never conceal the fact that I do not believe we should, or any other section of the public life of this country should, hold out to our people the prospect that by waving some wand we can extend to all of them the same level of material wealth that is available in the United States of America, Great Britain, Western Germany or the other great industrial nations of the world. We cannot, and there is nothing anybody can do which will provide for the Irish people those standards in their own country. What we can provide, however, and what it should be the object of Government to provide, is that everybody in this country will enjoy a modest standard of comfort and the right and ability to rear a Christian family in dignity and peace in their own home.

A great number of our people are having that right withdrawn from them. I believe there are elements in the Fianna Fáil Party who believe that is a good thing. We do not. There are elements in the Fianna Fáil Party who think the time has come to liquidate the small farmers of Ireland and to consolidate their farms. We do not think it has and we do not think it ever will. If that decision is ever taken Ireland will lose something infinitely precious and will find itself wholly unable to replace it with anything of corresponding value. The great danger is that if the present policies continue we may stumble into that.

I welcome the arrival in this country of foreign capital. I welcome the arrival of foreign enterprise and know-how. I advocated it in this House and I am prepared to advocate it everywhere in this country, but let us never forget that that type of industry, valuable as it is to the economy, is none-the-less peripheral industry.

It is a fringe industry which we cannot control because it is dependent for its survival on access to markets of which we are not the controlling element. Deputies ought to know what happened recently in the town of Newry where a British firm with a branch factory there suddenly announced one morning that it was closing its doors.

That is a risk which we have to take. It is a risk we ought to take, but the risk inherent in the introduction of foreign capital, know-how and management into this country is the supreme danger that, in our desire to acquire them, in our satisfaction at getting them, we should accept peripheral industries of that character as a substitute for the greatest industry in the country, agriculture, which is founded on the land which belongs to us and which no one can take away from us, which is oriented to markets which we built up and to which we can always have access, and, above all, which is engaged in the production of that without which the human race cannot survive, food, and the types of foods which many other countries are not as well equipped as we are to produce.

That is one of the fundamental errors into which Fianna Fáil are stumbling at the present time, and I do not believe they can be cured of that error. It is for that reason that I look forward with eager anticipation to the general election, so that we can get rid of them as the governing force in the country, and resume the laborious task of educating them, as they sit in these Opposition benches, in the fundamentals, not only economic but social, which are vital to the survival of the country.

The Taoiseach

I suppose it is unduly optimistic to expect from the Opposition benches in an election year, intelligent comment on the Budget or on the economic and fiscal policies of the Government which determine the character of the Budget. We have all known for a long time that preoccupation with Party politics is the Fine Gael characteristic, and no one nowadays really expects from them any serious contribution to national thinking on current affairs; but I am sure even Deputies now seated behind Deputy Dillon expected, on the occasion of the Budget debate, which is the most important opportunity available in the year to members of the Dáil for discussing policy matters, something better than the harangue of which he has just delivered himself.

No one is seeking to deny that we in this country have problems. The last thing the Government desire is to conceal or minimise them. Deputies opposite, however, appear to read statistics and other reports with which the Government supply them, solely for the purpose of finding material to exaggerate the dimensions of those problems. If they have any ideas as to how to tackle them, they are certainly keeping them to themselves. Neither the Dáil nor the people are any wiser as to the Fine Gael attitude to these problems after Deputy Dillon's speech than they were before it.

I propose to comment on the Budget, and on the policies and purposes which determined the character of the Budget, before going on to speak upon some of the other matters to which Deputy Dillon referred. The Minister for Finance set out in this Budget to do three things. The first was to ensure that social welfare beneficiaries would share in the improvement in national income. The social welfare classes cannot participate in the general improvement in national circumstances unless we here in the Oireachtas so will it. They can gain their share of the expanded national income only if we make the necessary financial provisions, and pass the necessary legislation— legislation which, as the Minister for Finance said yesterday, will be introduced into the Dáil shortly.

When I was speaking on the occasion of the debate on the 1960 Budget, I said:—

The aim of Government policy is to keep on expanding our social welfare services in accord with increases in national income as they are brought about.

In every single year since the present Government took office in 1957, some improvement in the social welfare services of the State, in the scales of benefit provided and in the scope of the services came into effect. No other Government in Irish history have ever been able to make that statement.

Mr. Dillon

Nonsense.

The Taoiseach

Against the four per cent. increase in national income which was achieved last year, we are now providing an increase of over five per cent in the old age pensions and the other social welfare payments. That process is not going to stop now. The policy of the Government will continue to be as I have stated, and if the power remains with us, will continue to be implemented.

Then the implications I read into the Deputy's speech must have been incorrect. But can we get from him, or any member of his Party, a clear statement, yes or no, whether they accept those ideas; whether, if by any chance the power of Government came to them, they would apply them in their measures? Deputy Dillon read out a long list of increased taxes and other charges on the community which came into operation since 1957. Is it not a relevant fact that the total amount taken now in State taxes and local charges to carry on the expanded administration and additional services which are being provided for our people represents no higher proportion of the total national income than it did in 1957? In fact, it represents a slightly smaller proportion.

If Fine Gael think that there is any different or any better policy to follow than the Government have been pursuing, is this not the time to announce it? I ask them at some stage during this debate to make known to us where, apart from details, do they contest the principles upon which the Government have based either their fiscal or economic policy. All these general debates in the Dáil in recent years have been conducted in an atmosphere of unreality; and mainly, I believe, because nobody knows whether the principal Opposition Party contest in any fundamental way the policy which the Government are applying, or disagree with them on the basic issues which are of vital concern in the determination of the country's future progress. I do not know if Fine Gael believe they can go to the electorate at a general election looking for a blank cheque. Their record in Government was not so good that they can hope to secure their return here as a majority upon the trust and confidence which the people may repose in them without any knowledge of the policy they propose to apply.

In all our actions and all our thinking, in all the plans we have made or are discussing at the present time, the Government are proceeding in the belief that this country is on the threshold of a decade of development, a development which will determine the kind of country in which we and our children shall live. But that is not going to happen of its own accord. That is something which must be contrived, something which must be planned for and worked for. We have never hesitated—and less than ever now would we wish to appear to—to avoid stating our aims as clearly as conditions make possible. There are, in our view, three essentials for success in the economic development of this country and the improvement of the living conditions of our people. They are: (1), clear objectives in the short-term and long-term: (2), a comprehensive integrated programme, of which the public are fully informed; and (3), the co-operation of all organised elements in the community in the fulfilment of that programme.

I think I can say with some confidence that, in most sectors of national activity, realisable objectives have already been defined and comprehensive plans for their attainment are now in operation. But I admit that, even at the policy level, the work of the Government is not yet completed and there are some decisions which have yet to be taken. I spoke last week about the need for a reassessment of policy for small farmers. I am not going to repeat now what I said then. I can afford, I think, to laugh at Deputy Dillon's interpretation of my mind in that regard when, in fact, what I said is on record. I believe that there are possibilities of so altering the pattern of production and methods of operation on small farms that they can be made to provide for those who work them living standards comparable with the national average. Certainly the task of re-examining these possibilities in the light of modern ideas and thinking has begun.

I think also there is still work to be done in the preparation and publication of a comprehensive fishery development programme. We have already carried out important surveys and taken some important decisions such as the decision to establish a number of major fishery harbours: but the completion and publication of a completely integrated long-term programme for fishery development has yet to be done.

I think the country needs also an extension and improvement in its educational facilities, particularly at the higher educational and vocational levels.

We have, as the Minister for Finance pointed out yesterday, increased very substantially the total expenditure upon education in this country during our term of office. This year's Book of Estimates provides for a further increase of £750,000 on the services under the Department of Education, but there is a need for a more fundamental examination of some of the problems and a more definite determination of our future plan of action. A Commission on Higher Education, as the Dáil knows, has been established.

We have a continuing problem of industrial relations. That problem is not peculiar to this country and is, indeed, present in all the free enterprise countries of the world but it is one to which, I think, we now need to give closer attention than we have in recent years. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has announced that the adequacy and suitability at the present time of the Industrial Relations Act, which we passed in 1946, is being re-examined in the hope that a better system of establishing satisfactory industrial relations can be worked out in agreement with those who speak for workers and employers in industry.

There is, of course, the further problem of finding a satisfactory method of meeting the cost and enabling the community, notwithstanding the financial implications to continue the programme of improving rural amenities, particularly in regard to water supplies and minor roads. Legislation relating to water supplies will be before the Dáil shortly. The matter can then be discussed.

Mr. Dillon

I hope it will be carefully considered.

The Taoiseach

The speed at which the country can carry through any programme of development depends upon the rate of expansion of our resources and upon the success of our efforts to increase production, even though Deputy Dillon thinks that is the wrong place on which to put the emphasis.

Mr. Dillon

I beg the Taoiseach's pardon.

The Taoiseach

Because our resources are limited—and they always will be limited—we must determine some order of priorities. We must work out a realisable rate of progress. Everything cannot be done at once but success breeds success and because of the expansion of the national income, which has already been brought about, we can now consider possibilities and attempt projects which we could only dream about a couple of years ago.

Deputy Dillon spoke about emigration. I do not know at what period in his life he became aware of the existence of emigration. It is easy, however, to pinpoint the time in the past couple of years when he and his Party colleagues took the decision to exploit emigration for Party purposes, but even today, notwithstanding his eloquence and his historical references, we did not get from him, nor will we get from any of his colleagues, one single glimmer of an idea as to what to do about it.

Let us get the facts right so that we can at least apply some test to Deputy Dillon's sincerity in this regard. I concede that we have no reliable statistics about emigration. The only statistics we have arise from the count of the number of people who travel in and out of the country every year by sea and air and each year these figures give an outward balance. The number of people who travel out of the country during the year in excess of the number of people who travel inward to some extent gives us a measure of emigration and variations in these figures show the prevailing trend in that regard.

These figures are calculated each year to the end of February to eliminate from them the effect of exceptional traffic that occurs over the Christmas period, inward and outward. In the three years, when Deputy Dillon's Government were in office, the three years ended February, 1955, February, 1956, and February, 1957, that balance outward averaged 47,000 per year. In the three years which ended in February last, 1959, 1960 and 1961, the average was 40,000. Even though that is far too heavy a figure, even though the size of that figure is a matter for grave concern for all of us, let us take account of the fact that emigration is now running 15 per cent. below the level it attained when Deputy Dillon's Government were in charge of affairs.

Mr. Dillon

Does the Taoiseach believe that?

The Taoiseach

These are the available figures. Deputy Dillon himself quoted these figures here this morning.

Minister for Finance (Dr. Ryan)

He did not quote the figures when he was in office.

The Taoiseach

Let me say that these figures are not the measure of our emigration problem. I think it is fair to assume that there will always be some number of people in this country who will wish to explore the possibilities of using their talents to their own advantage in other countries, irrespective of their opportunities for doing so in Ireland. We know that something over 1,000 priests and nuns leave this country every year for the missionary fields. We know there are doctors and teachers who also hear the same call to help the undeveloped nations of the earth. Indeed, last year we altered the regulations applying to secondary teachers to encourage them to spend two or three years in secondary schools in African States by ensuring that they could come back to employment in Ireland without loss on the incremental scales. The figures for 1960 include the Irish contingent serving with the United Nations Force in the Congo.

There is a problem of excessive emigration. It is a problem which we cannot end by oratory, or by deploring it, or even by voting against it. We have indeed too many people in this country who are prepared to salve their conscience about this subject of emigration by urging others to do something about it but who will not contribute even the benefit of their own ideas to its solution. We have never tried to conceal our concern. On the contrary, we have endeavoured to bring it into the open to an extent never previously done. We want the people to think about it and to try from their own experiences to identify the various factors operating to sustain it.

We know there are economic causes working. We also know that the economic cause in the narrow sense of that term is not the sole factor. How can we identify these other factors more precisely? When the Coalition Government came into office in 1948, they set up a commission on emigration. It may be that their desire at that time was to try to ascertain all the factors at work and to get the information that would enable them to do something about it. It may be that they merely wanted to make a show of activity in a manner which released them from any necessity of taking decisions at that time. That commission took a long time in the preparation of its report and, by a coincidence, its report was published a few weeks after the second Coalition Government came back into office in 1954.

No recommendation of that Commission was accepted by that Government. There was no public comment in the Dáil by any member of that Government on the recommendations of the Commission. So far as evidence in public was available to us, no member of that Government had even read the Commission's report, with one exception to which I shall refer later. I will confess that that report did not contain any strikingly good proposals. The report demonstrated again the futility of seeking, through a commission of that kind, a cut and dried solution to such a complex problem, but I can say that we on this side of the House, we of the Fianna Fáil Party, examined that report very carefully and in great detail, both in Opposition and again when we came back to office.

We did not agree with all the proposals. We regarded some of them as being impractical, but we have accepted and are seeking to apply some of the things they recommended, not, I confess, because they were the Commission's recommendations but because they coincided with our own views. I said there was one exception in so far as the Coalition Government are concerned to the general conclusion that no member of it had even bothered to read the report. Deputy Corish, as Minister for Social Welfare in the Coalition Government, brought along to his colleagues a proposal, based upon the Commission's recommendations, that there should be some decentralisation of Government administration and he sought the consent of his colleagues to a proposal that some part of the Department of Social Welfare, which he controlled, should be transferred out of Dublin.

He did not get a very cheerful reception. The record shows that the decision was taken to leave the matter to a Cabinet Committee which never met. Deputy Corish's influence must not have been very strong; otherwise, he would have seen that the Cabinet committee at least assembled.

I am not going to suggest here—I think it would be very unwise for anyone to do so in the national interest —that the elimination of all the causes of emigration can be achieved quickly, but there is no solution which does not involve increasing the number and the scope of occupations in Ireland by new developments in agriculture, industry and other sectors. That is what the Government are attempting with unremitting vigour and not inconsiderable success.

Deputy Dillon devoted a large part of his speech to the theme that there are fewer people in employment now than in 1956. It is true that the rate of emigration exceeds the annual natural increase in population and it is therefore a mathematical certainty that there are fewer people in the country now than there were at the time of the last census. But we must not consider our national problem in that regard and discuss our economic situation as if the three years of the Coalition Government never happened. Whatever the position regarding employment and unemployment, the fact is that employment is now going up and unemployment is going down. What was happening in 1956 when Deputy Dillon's Government were in office? In the year which ended in April, 1956, the number of people employed in nonagricultural sectors, as set out in Table 16 of the document Deputy Dillon is now studying, declined by 8,000 and in the following year, which ended in April, 1957, employment in those sectors declined by 15,000. In the year which ended in April, 1960, the number increased by 7,000 and in the year which ended on first of April last, there was—presumably a similar increase—a continuance of the upward trend.

The point I want to emphasise is that even though all our economic efforts in the past two years did not achieve more than putting the same number back into employment as were put out of employment in the last year of Deputy Dillon's Government, the trend, anyhow, now is upwards. The number of people in manufacturing industry is the highest ever recorded.

Mr. Dillon

That is not so.

The Taoiseach

The number of people employed in manufacturing industry in this county is the highest ever recorded. Between 1956 and 1960, there was a decline in the number of persons employed on constructional activities. I think that has been largely repaired since those statistics were completed last year. Deputies received by post this morning the usual monthly industrial analysis of the live register issued by the Statistics Office and they will see therein that in the month of March last, as compared with March, 1960, unemployment among workers engaged in general building construction and repair and in maintenance of roads and bridges fell by approximately 3,000 and everybody knows there has been a considerable revival in the building trade in the past twelve months. There was a decline in the number occupied in agriculture, mainly, as the volume of statistics makes clear, farmers' relatives not wage earners. But, as the Minister for Finance emphasised in his statement yesterday, for the first time since 1953 the increase in the number of persons employed in non-agricultural sectors exceeds the decline in the number of persons occupied in farming.

I have said that I believe this country is entering upon a decade of development and that our development is dependent upon the progress which we make in this year and in next year. Indeed, any set-back now, any reversal of the trend we have developed, could have such catastrophic consequences for the country that getting progress started again would be much more difficult even than it was in 1957.

We believe that the country has the necessary resources of men, money, land and materials to permit of a very substantial development, if we use them properly. If we had any doubts as to the realisation of our economic objectives, they related to the will of our people to make the effort required. These doubts are diminishing, but the people's will to avail of the opportunities open to them and to use the Government's programme of economic expansion to the utmost possible limit can be weakened by a persistent campaign to disparage their achievements to date and to exaggerate the problems which have still to be solved. I can understand that Party political considerations may induce Opposition Deputies to feel that they are obliged to belittle the Government's achievements, but surely they can devise some way of doing that without spreading gloom and despondency among the people?

So far as the upsurge in economic activity, this progress which we have recorded, is concerned, it is true to say that not one iota of that is due to a positive, constructive suggestion from any member of Fine Gael inside the House or outside it. On the other hand, whatever other criticism the Opposition may have regarding members of the present Government, there is one thing they cannot accuse them of and that is leaning on their shovels in this task of nation-building. I have a long experience in Government and I can say that never before have I known a body of men as that which now sits around the table in the Cabinet Room in Government Buildings so dedicated to their work, so anxious to proceed with it that my task as Taoiseach is very largely to arrange some sort of orderly queue for their projects so that they can proceed regularly and with some regard to the resources of time as well as the resources of money which are available to us.

Mr. Dillon

Modesty is a vice no one would ever convict the Taoiseach of.

The Taoiseach

Let me say—in all modesty—that I am not claiming that all our plans and projects have been one hundred per cent. Perfect. No Government, directing the widely deployed effort on which we are engaged, could avoid making mistakes. No Government in a hurry, as we are in a hurry, could afford to wait for perfection in every detail, but we have never hesitated to change our plans, modify our proposals and rectify our mistakes when need for that was brought to our attention. We have never failed to listen to constructive criticism, but we have to turn for that criticism to organisations outside the Dáil, to the groups and committees and organisations which speak for the special interests in the community and who are concerned to help the Government to fulfil their programme. We do not get that type of criticism here. Deputy Dillon and his Party content themselves with destructive criticism and confine themselves to belittling the Government efforts. They will not say a word of hope or encouragement to the people and, therefore, so far as I am concerned, the election cannot come too soon.

Mr. Cosgrave

It would be, I suppose, appropriate for us to echo the Taoiseach's hope that the sooner the election comes, the better.

The Taoiseach

Do not make it sound too enthusiastic.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Budget introduced yesterday came as a disappointment to quite a number of people. It may be that Press speculation on the prospects were too optimistic and the turn of events did not justify the commentaries. I have no desire to belittle in any way the Government's achievements or to take from them any credit to which they are entitled. It is true that circumstances can make or mar a Government. Success, or otherwise, depends to a large extent on the luck of the draw. So far as this Government are concerned, they have had very favourable conditions. Since 1957, the terms of trade have been continuously favourable. Contrasting that situation with the terms of trade which operated during the lifetime of the previous Government, this Government have all along enjoyed a distinct advantage. No Government in this country is responsible for these conditions; neither can a Government take any effective action to change them. It may be, indeed, that a Government must take action in particular circumstances to minimise or offset in some way the effects of unfavourable terms of trade.

We are entitled now to examine the record of this Government, with these favourable terms of trade, and compare it with what the people were led to believe they could expect. We are entitled to contrast conditions obtaining under the policy of the Government and compare them with the cost of living and other economic indices when circumstances were different. This Government have had very favourable terms of trade. Despite that, the cost of living has risen continuously. If we take the consumer price index, we find that in February, 1957, it was 107.7; the most recent figure we have for this year is 119.8. In addition to that, train fares have increased by 12.8 per cent. and bus fares by 14.19 per cent. Increases have taken place in the prices of many essential commodities. The food index shows an increase of 16 points between February, 1957, and November 1960. Clothing shows an increase of four points; housing and sundries, an increase of 11 points; condensed milk, an increase of four per cent; cocoa, an increase of 12½ per cent; biscuits, an increase of ten per cent; other groceries, an increase of 15½ per cent. The most significant increase, however, is that in respect of such an essential commodity as flour; flour increased by 89 per cent. Bread increased by 69 per cent. Butter increased by 22 per cent.

It is significant that these increases occurred at a time when the terms of trade were favourable and when the import price index showed a continuous drop. While commodities which had to be imported fell in price, the prices charged to the consumers increased continuously. At the same time, the prices paid for certain commodities produced by our own farmers showed a reduction. We had the peculiarly anomalous situation that we paid less in respect of wheat to our own farmers and charged our own consumers more. Similarly, substantially more had to be paid by the consumer of butter.

Considerable play has been made here with the numbers in employment at a particular time and the fact that the last year showed an improvement over the preceding year. I have no desire to quote figures in order to refute arguments put forward on the Government side. I believe there is no easy solution to the problem of emigration. I have repeatedly expressed the view that an improvement in the employment position here must be sought through industrial expansion. Quoting figures will not put more people into employment. It is significant, however, that in the past ten years, the biggest exodus from agriculture and the biggest drop in the number of those employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing occurred during a year in which the present Government were in office.

Between 1952 and 1953 20,000 people left employment on the land and for the same year 23,000 fewer people were employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing. That was the highest figure for any single year since 1951 up to this year, so that for the last decade the largest number of people to leave agricultural employment occurred between 1952 and 1953. I state that as a matter of record and of fact and not for the purpose of developing an argument because I believe quoting one set of figures against another does not help to put people into employment. Despite all the expansion in industrial development, despite the very considerable State assistance that has been given over the last few years, in particular since the assistance was provided first by means of tax remission in the 1956 Finance Act, which has since been extended, it is significant that this year from the figures which are contained in Table 7 and Table 16 of Economic Statistics there are still 51,000—in round figures over 50,000— fewer people employed than were employed in 1956. That is a significant figure and a figure I believe which demonstrates the magnitude of the problem and the effort that must be made to expand industrial employment and improve the opportunities for reducing the numbers emigrating.

It is significant that figures which were published in Britain on December 16th last showed that the number of working emigrants in Britain from, as it was described, the Republic of Ireland, was 64,000 in 1959 and 58,000 in 1958. These figures were based on the number of insurance cards issued to people entering employment in Britain for the first time and did not include non-working dependants nor persons under 16 years of age who were at work and who are not obliged to stamp cards. When that figure is taken into conjunction with the drop in the numbers employed, we realise how inadequate the efforts so far have been to stem the drain of emigration and to expand employment. It was, and it is, satisfactory that last year the increased numbers in industrial employment matched exactly the numbers that left agriculture. It was the first time for a considerable time that the numbers leaving agricultural emploment were not greater than the numbers who found employment elsewhere.

However, I want to advert to one aspect of the assistance which is being given to industry. Since the introduction of the tax remission in 1956 there has been a very considerable expansion in industrial employment and production, and I have no desire to minimise the improvements in the tax arrangements that have been made by the present Government, but a start had to be made. As has often been said, Rome was not built in a day and until the relief was first afforded in 1956 no specific incentive was provided in respect of industrial export.

I want to quote one impartial observer who commented on this matter, Professor Carter who is Professor of Political Economy in Queen's University. He referred to this this year when he spoke in Belfast and he said:

Progress in industry in the Republic has been remarkable. The biggest technical factor in the change has been the tax exemption for export industries.

That was an unsolicited comment by an impartial observer. This improvement in industrial exports, the expansion in industrial employment, has been achieved not only by established industries but by some of the industries that have benefited by these new concessions and which were established more recently. There is, I believe, some volume of opinion particularly amongst existing industrialists who are concerned at the dangers inherent in offering special facilities for new industries over and above those which are afforded to existing and established industries.

Earlier this year the annual meeting of Sunbeam Wolsey which was held in Cork on the 20th March, was addressed by Mr. Declan Dwyer, the managing director, who I need hardly say, is himself a well known and highly competent industrialist and who not merely inherited a great business which was established with such genius and ability by his father but has himself expanded the industry of Sunbeam Wolsey and the subsidiary companies.

At the annual meeting he had this comment to make, and I am quoting from the Cork Examiner of March 21st:

Direct taxation continues to be the greatest dis-incentive to industry in this country, and the old established industries have a legitimate grievance against the discrimination shown in favour of newcomers, which would appear to be the continued policy of the Government. But these matters have been aired on so many occasions by private and public bodies that we can only continue to hope that the appeals will eventually penetrate and the overdue levelling of the position as between the old and the new will come about.

Surely, if it is the policy of the Government to allow tax relief on all the exports of the manufactured products of a company, the same relief should be extended to an old established company who had put its efforts into developing an export trade before it was the fashionable thing to do.

Mr. Dwyer went on:

Less than 60 per cent. of our total exports qualified for tax reliefs, but if this production had been undertaken in a new factory built either in the Shannon Free Area or elsewhere, the total would have qualified for relief.

I mention that because quite recently another industrialist spoke to me about the fact that his industry which had been long established and which was in the same line of business as a new industry, found that it was suffering competition on the home market.

While it is true that, under the existing arrangement, industries are obliged not to sell more than 10 per cent. of their export quota on the home market, it is difficult for competitors to ascertain accurately as to whether that figure is being exceeded. In the case of certain commodities 10 per cent. could make a very big difference. If a firm develops a substantial export trade and is entitled to sell 10 per cent. on the home market, that could impinge very severely on the existing marketing arrangements of comparable established industries. I want to direct attention to that matter so that the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce may keep the question under constant review and ensure that there will be no abuse of the facilities that are afforded and no action taken which will militate against established industries which have been built up here, without the same facilities or encouragement as have been afforded to more newly-established firms.

It is agreed on all sides of the House that the utmost encouragement should be afforded to new industries, that this question of tax reliefs and incentives is not a matter of dispute between any political sections in the House, that it was, as I said, introduced first by our Government when in office and has since been continued, but it is appropriate and right that now, after five years' working, the matter should be reviewed with a view to avoiding some of the disadvantages which established industrialists have complained about, so that no undue discrimination will be allowed.

The section of the community that have suffered most severely from the rise in the cost of living are pensioners and others on fixed incomes or living on retirement pay. I believe that most people expected that the Minister would have given a greater increase than 1/6d. to the non-contributory old age pensioners because that category in the community have been most severely hit and taking into account existing price levels, the amount of the non-contributory pension is inadequate to meet the reasonable needs of people. It was, I believe, a source of disappointment to many people that the Minister was not able to increase the pension by a greater amount. But, in addition to those pensioners there are many persons who have retired on fixed pensions and, with the exception of the slight increases that were granted in the Pensions (Increase) Acts of 1950, 1956, 1959 and 1960, these categories have received very little in the way of compensation for the rise in the cost of living.

I want to re-echo some comments that I made here on an earlier occasion in favour of a system which would allow an automatic increase, which would provide for the establishment of machinery whereby these pensions could be reviewed. I understand that under the 1960 Pensions (Increase) Act, approximately 38 per cent. of a total of 2,089 civil servants were in receipt of pensions under £200 per annum. Allowing for the present values of money, anyone can see that that is a small pension. There should be machinery, such as arbitration, similar to the Civil Service arbitration or conciliation machinery which provides increases for serving officers, which would apply in respect of retired public servants.

When I raised this matter on a previous occasion the Minister for Finance answered, at Column 549 of the Dáil Debates for 3rd November, 1960:

Indeed, it is even a novel idea to give these increases because I believe increases to pensioners were unknown until after the last war, so that at least we have done something that was not done before.

Of course, that ignores entirely the fact that it is only since 1939 that there has been this, sudden on certain occasions and continuous on all occasions, drop in the value of money. What has been often described as creeping inflation has devalued the pensions paid to retired State servants. It has been estimated that the average life of a State pensioner is nine years. The consequent demand on the Exchequer would not be considerable. It is no more easy for a pensioner to live on the pension awarded to him than it would be for an existing State servant, whether he is in the Civil Service, the Garda or the Army, to live on a fixed salary which would not be increased in accordance with rises in the cost of living.

In justice and equity retired State servants, whatever their grade or rank, whether they served in the Civil Service, the Army or the Garda, have a claim for machinery which would enable increases in pension to be provided on a similar basis as applies in the case of wages and salaries.

I was interested in the proposal in the Budget to increase the tax on purchases of holdings by non-nationals. This matter has been referred to here before. While this question may have been exaggerated, nevertheless, there is a growing volume of opinion that the number of holdings being purchased by non-nationals requires to be checked and kept under constant review. In that connection, the Land Commission should as a matter of definite policy operate on the basis of larger holdings.

One matter that has been the subject of comment here for a considerable time is the difficulty in present circumstances of making a living on very small holdings. While many people have in the past succeeded in achieving this there is a very great case for a review of the policy and an increase in the acreage of holdings. As I understood it, the Land Commission some years ago had an allocation of four or five holdings to 100 acres but since then that has been brought down to three and in certain cases even to two holdings to 100 acres. That matter should be kept under review so that adequate holdings would be given whenever re-allocation takes place.

In the course of his speech, the Minister referred to the fact that it was intended to adopt certain proposals which were recommended by the Commission on Taxation with a view to simplifying the payment of income tax and making the same arrangements in respect of income tax and surtax. I believe all Deputies have received complaints from income tax payers under P.A.Y.E. It might have been unreasonable to expect in the first year that a simpler system could have been adopted. It is quite remarkable the number of forms that have to be filled up and the queries answered in respect of even a single employee. Not only have I received complaints from an employer who had only one employee but I have discussed the matter also with an accountant who informed me that the amount of paper work that has to be undertaken by accountants and by firms to comply with P.A.Y.E. requirements is considerable. It was natural that at first it might be impossible to devise a simpler system, certainly in the initial stages, but after the first six months or so it ought to be possible for us to operate a less complicated system, one that would ensure the same result without causing a great deal of trouble to persons who own small businesses and who have not available to them qualified or experienced technical advisers in filling up these forms.

When this Budget is considered in the light of the promises that were made by this Government, it is very significant that no mention was made of the proposals put forward by them to provide 100,000 new jobs over a five-year period. Despite the favourable terms of trade, despite the increase in industrial employment, despite the expansion in the amount of money being made available for industrial development, there are still 50,000 fewer people employed than were employed five years ago. At the same time we have had the continuous exodus through emigration. I have repeatedly expressed the view that this problem cannot be solved simply or quickly, that it can only be solved through a very substantial expansion in industrial development, that in order to do that we must not merely encourage efforts by our own industrialists but also encourage, if possible, in new spheres of industrial development and new spheres of activity so as not to conflict with established industries, industrial undertakings from abroad who have the know-how and technical competence that is not available at home.

There have been remarkable instances of success in that direction. Reference was made here to the oil refinery and to the development of the Avoca Mines. There are many others; for instance, Bord na Móna in conjunction with Messrs. Guinness, who made facilities available in the establishment of the briquetting factory. All these State undertakings have played a significant part in expanding industry.

However, in addition, we must depend on private enterprise and private initiative and afford the maximum encouragement possible.

It is indeed significant that the drop in the numbers in employment and the general fall in the population have continued over a ten-year period in which very considerable efforts were made by all Governments to expand and develop the economy. It may well be that some analysis of the whole economic position should be undertaken to ascertain what retarding influences are having effect or what circumstances are causing this increase in emigration and the continuous tendency to seek employment elsewhere. It is a matter for grave concern that despite the efforts made over a period of 10 years, there is, taking one year with another, a continued outflow from the land and a continued flow of emigrants.

Some years ago I listened to a speech by a well-known economist in which he expressed the view that it was likely that over a period of years here an additional 200,000 fewer people would be employed on the land. That figure when stated in that form seemed a staggering one but when we examine the statistics contained in Table 7 over a period of years it is not so unrealisable as may at first seem. In fact the indications are that the tendency is all in that direction. This person expressed the view that, even with fewer people employed in agriculture, it would be possible to secure as high a standard of living and even a higher one.

These factors must be taken into account in relation to the question of the size of an agricultural holding, the facilities for credit for agriculture as well as the general, economic and social policy which is a matter that has repeatedly been commented upon by social writers, by distinguished clerical commentators and others. It is a matter that has always been the subject of regret but these are inescapable economic facts. The indications over a very long period are that there is no escape from them and the tendency has been continuous although it may vary or fluctuate slightly from year to year.

It is, therefore, vital and if we are to provide increased employment we must expand industrial production and industrial potential. The efforts that have been made up to the present have contributed in some way towards an increase in industrial employment but a much greater effort will be required in the future.

In that connection, I was surprised that there was no indication from the Government as to their policy on the future of the European trade arrangements. Once again this matter has been the subject of continuous comment in Press reports recently both in Britain and here, while on many occasions in the past it has appeared to be a question which is ripe for decision. The British Government seem to be having another look at the situation. The general tenor of Press comments is that Britain is about to take a decision in the matter. Whatever decision Britain takes will vitally affect our interests.

I think the House and the country will be disappointed that there was no indication from the Government of their attitude in the event of the British Government deciding to join the Common Market, or deciding to make arrangements with the new trade entities in Europe. Whatever decision is taken will affect our interests and we must, so far as possible, ensure that whatever arrangements are made, adequate safeguards are provided for our industries and for our agricultural position as well.

As I said initially, I believe this Budget will have come as a disappointment to many people because of the fact that in the circumstances it was not found possible to give greater reliefs at a time when many sections of the community, and particularly the old age pensioners and other pensioners living on fixed incomes, are feeling the effects of the very substantial rise in the cost of living in recent years. That rise in the cost of living has hit those sections of the community because of their low incomes and because of the fact that they have not been compensated to the same extent as were other sections who received increases in their salaries and emoluments.

There was dissatisfaction with regard to the increases granted to Army personnel. That matter has been referred to previously, but I believe there is no justification for a lower rate of increase in respect of Army personnel than that which was granted to civil servants. The officers and men of the Army are entitled to increases commensurate with those paid to civil servants. I believe that matter should be reviewed at an early date.

Mr. Davern

The Taoiseach's speech to-day was a clear indication of the position this country now holds, and it was brimful of confidence. That is as it should be, after the Minister for Finance presented what will be termed, and must be termed, the best Budget ever to come before this House. I have listened to what I may term a reasoned speech from Deputy Cosgrave. He usually makes reasoned speeches, obviously with the interests of the country at heart. Would it not be well for the country if the Leader of the Fine Gael Party and Deputy Sweetman, a former Minister for Finance, could rise to that level, too? One would imagine they would get some sense instead of uttering statements which they know perfectly well to be untrue, statements which are damaging to the nation's economy such as those they have been making for some years past, and especially during the past four years. One would imagine that a love of country would stop them from trying to sabotage the nation's economy.

This country of ours has gone through a fairly trying time in the past, but I venture to say that at no period of its history had it to go through a more trying time than during the period of the last Coalition Government. The nation was brought to the very verge of bankruptcy and people with money refused to subscribe to the demands made on them. That must be compared with the past four years when, every time the Minister for Finance asked for money, he got it and, indeed, it was over-subscribed. That is a clear indication of their position in the estimation of the people.

Deputy Cosgrave referred to the decrease in the number of people employed in agriculture. It is quite true that there has been such a decrease, but everyone knows full well that was due to the use of machinery more than anything else. Machinery is now used for practically all farm work. Whether that is good or bad, time will tell, but I should not like to be the person who would dream of putting a stop to the capital investment in machinery which has taken place for a considerable time. Machinery will also tell against the employment of road workers, and eventually even in industry we can visualise that, as a result of the use of machinery, more machinery and new machinery from day to day, the difficulty of creating full employment will, as time goes on, be felt to a greater extent.

There are more people employed in industry now than heretofore. There are, of course, fewer unemployed. We saw the sorry spectacle and had to take over the terrible dead weight of 97,500 unemployed. When speakers on the opposite benches mention unemployment, I can only come to one conclusion, which is, that their memories have become very short, or that they think the memories of the people they represent, and will be going before in the near future, are also very short indeed. During the past four years, no one has forgotten the terrible figure of unemployment that obtained at the period when the last Coalition Government ceased to occupy the office of Government.

No doubt the Government will be criticised for not doing this, that or the other and, of course, the critics will always be very careful to avoid telling the country that the Government did not even start from scratch: they started from very far behind the lines with a big leeway to make up. That leeway has been made up thank God, and thanks to good planning by sensible men, all pulling in the one direction, as the Taoiseach said, with plenty of energy, plenty of hope in the future, and hope and confidence in the people. We now stand one of the most prosperous States in Europe, if not in the world.

This country of ours is now enjoying a prosperity which even the most optimistic person on this side of the House did not anticipate. Not even the greatest and most ardent supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party ever dreamed that, in such a short time, we would achieve the great success which has now been achieved. They have been responsible for an expansion of the country's economy and a degree of confidence in the future that even the wily statements of our political opponents could not prevent.

We have had references to the social welfare services and the unemployed, but they try to forget that they were responsible not so long ago for a reduction in the old age pension.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 20 Apr 1961

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 20 Apr 1961