(South Tipperary): Our entry into the Common Market has been mentioned by several speakers. I am at issue with the Government as regards their policy procedure. When the Taoiseach went to Brussels last January, in his speech there, as reported back here, he laid particular emphasis on the special protective measures he would like to see extended to Irish industrialisation, in view of the fact that we were an undeveloped community. He stressed three particular points. He asked, first, that the application of Article 226 to certain industries should be considered. This amounts, in effect, to a special exemption of special industries or areas in certain circumstances. He asked also that the appropriate general treatment in the reduction of tariffs should obtain. He asked, thirdly, that adequate safeguards should be provided against the dumping of industrial products here, in so far as we were very vulnerable to that development by virtue of the smallness of our industrial concerns.
All that is all right. At the same time, however, he went on to say that no special arrangements would be sought as regards agriculture. It seems to me by that approach he is asking agriculture to do what it has been doing here since 1932: to carry industry on its back again. There is there throughout that approach the same psychology which has actuated Fianna Fáil policy down through the years as regards agriculture: sink or swim into the stream, and the devil take the hindmost; but industrialisation must be feather-bedded and petted and secured all along the line.
I and every Irishman should like to see our industrialisation protected for as long as possible. The removal of all tariff walls and barriers should be so graded as to upset our economy to a minimum. All those employed in our industries here and all those who have put money into them should not have their circumstances in any way damaged. At the same time, we should not assume that our agriculture, insufficiently capitalised as it is, is sufficiently strong that we can say to the Common Market people: "We do not want any protection for agriculture; it is fine. It will jump every fence, but give us all the protection you can for our industry." That is unfair to the rural community, to the average farmer, farm labourer and that part of our population making their living directly or indirectly through agriculture. If that is to be the Taoiseach's line of approach, I would ask him to reconsider it. I would ask the Government to reconsider it, because I think it is grossly unfair.
I also believe the Government have been rather dilatory in the entire matter our approach to the EEC. Not so long ago, Denmark negotiated very fancy terms into the British market. What were we doing while she was doing that behind our back? We were fighting an election over P.R. In the last few years, Greece, an undeveloped country, has been negotiating with the Common Market and, as an associate member, has secured for herself quite fancy conditions. I understand we applied for membership some time last May or June. Yet I find that this industrial organisation group which reported yesterday or the day before was not set up until quite recently. It must have been obvious to the Government for a long time that there was an economic wind of change in the European situation. It is a considerable time since Mr. Dillon from the United States came over here, and that, I presume, was the forerunner of the political pressure which culminated in Britain abandoning membership of the Outer Seven and ultimately deciding wholeheartedly to go into the Common Market.
We have been taking too much for granted. I am only the ordinary man-in-the-street who reads the newspaper and to whom there is no special information available, but I presume a Government with their various embassies abroad should know something more than I know and should be able to anticipate these problems in time to meet them. This advisory body has now recommended a 20 per cent, building tax incentive, a 40 per cent, plant tax incentive and the upgrading of loans over a period of five years.
What effort has been made as regards agriculture? The Taoiseach, with some heat, adverted yesterday to some remarks made at an interview given by the President of the National Farmers' Association, that the Budget did not give to agriculture the dynamic aid it appeared to give to industry. I do not see why the Taoiseach should have got so hot under the collar about it. All he has been able to state is that he had set up survey teams, survey teams set up nearly 12 months after we made our application to enter the Common Market, a market which is effecting tariff removals at an accelerating rate. Is it not a fact that next July all the tariff barriers will be down by 50 per cent. as between themselves? Britain, I understand, is prepared to go in at that level, full blast. Future reductions are also being speeded up and that is the accelerating bus on which we are going to jump. I hope we do not break our necks.
This is a serious matter for us because it may mean over some period the disemployment of perhaps 80,000, 90,000 or 100,000 people throughout the country. Apart from the setting up of these commissions I see no practical suggestion coming from the Taoiseach on this very vital matter. We have listened to him for years issuing warnings to manufacturers that they must become more competitive, that the feather-bed conditions under which they were working would not last for ever. However, I know of no instance where he ever even attempted to carry these threats any further than threats.
I am told that some years back when Australia was introducing industrialisation she gave the majority of her industries a certain period in which they were to make good. They had to answer to their Government if they were unduly non-competitive after a certain, reasonable period. Our tariffs, quota restrictions and subsidies remain as high as ever and we are making provision in this Budget for a customs income alone of £45,000,000 and an income tax income, including corporation profits tax, of £38,000,000.
Is it not obvious that there will be tremendous economic difficulties here in trying to clear that hurdle? Surely the time has arrived for the Taoiseach to say to the industrialists of this country: "We cannot wait to reduce our tariffs until we are asked by the Common Market to do so. We must reduce them now." If our application is to receive favourable consideration would a reduction on those lines not alone be economically prudent but also have a good effect on the negotiations which take place in the future? The £45,000,000 which we get from customs will gradually peter out, over what period I cannot say; nobody knows; that will depend on negotiations. The £38,000,000 which we get from income tax will, I believe, be considerably reduced because of the policy of harmonisation of taxation structures. The emphasis will be, as it exists in the Common Market and in most European countries, on indirect and not on direct taxation. To bring our taxation structure into line with that of the Common Market countries in which the free movement of men, money and materials obtains, we must be prepared to accept substantial reductions in our income both from customs and income tax. That is why I would exhort the Minister to address himself to these two important factors, which are the most difficult of the fiscal problems we must meet.
The increased taxes in this Budget are clearly set out in the Financial Statement by the Minister but there has grown up in recent years the practice of placing extra-budgetary charges upon the community. I do not know whether it is done purposely or otherwise but one naturally becomes suspicious that it is being done as a matter of expediency. In this little country bus fares and train fares have increased in the past 12 months. We have had E.S.B. charges increased. Whatever justification there may be for these increased E.S.B. charges, the fact is that they have happened.
I remember seeing a long explanatory memorandum relating to the increased E.S.B. charges about a year ago and I was quite amazed. This memorandum did not come from the E.S.B.; it came from the Fianna Fáil headquarters. Under the heading was written in brackets the words: "The Republican Party." I thought we had got beyond that but it is still in existence. I was amazed that the Fianna Fáil headquarters found it necessary to issue a memorandum defending the increased charges of the E.S.B. I am quite sure the E.S.B. are able to defend themselves.
Our stamp and telephone charges have been increased and it is true to say that motoring here, an important commercial aspect, is the most expensive in Europe. In the past 12 months, we have had a 30 per cent. increase in insurance charges, 20 per cent. first and 10 per cent. at the second go. When I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this House would he consider setting up some kind of an arbitration group to examine the matter, he blandly told me that he was satisfied that the increased charges were just and equitable. The same Minister, in an explanation published on the matter, made the same statement but issued a warning that if they did it again, he would regard them as very bold boys.
I understand that even in the purchase of cars, and I am open to correction on this, there is a measure of retention of the special levies in operation. In the commercial aspect of motoring in general, we are all aware of the restrictive and monopolistic attitudes of the E.S.B. We know that the taxes which we pay in the local county council offices do not compare favourably with similar charges elsewhere and I am sure we are not behind time in excise taxation on our petrol. On top of all that, the average motorist is expected to pay increased charges in view of rising costs of everything for repairs, services and renewals.
An increase has been given in the contributory insurance section and there has also been an advance in the disability allowance and the infectious disease allowance but let us not forget that in these particular items, a 50 per cent. contribution will have to be put up by the rates. Here again we have increased costings and again the public in general will have to pay for these added contributions to the Social Welfare fund by increased contributions from employers and employees.
Listening to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance, one would imagine that this country has never had it so good. There are many yardsticks by which one may measure the economic strength and prosperity of a people. I think personal savings are a yardstick one may use. I shall be told immediately that personal savings have advanced slightly in the current year but the Taoiseach has admitted that our personal savings are amongst the lowest in Europe. I do not care what kind of statistics you put up, to the average man, and to all of us, the measure of prosperity is the few pounds or few shillings we are able to put aside at the end of the week, the month or the year.
The Irish people in general do not live in a very extravagant fashion. Only a small percentage of the people are habitués of the race course and the dog track. Yet it is a fact that the average savings of the average person in this country are abyssmally low.
Deputy O'Donnell felt that the Government could have done better. He adverted to the three important sources of income which they had—the £9,000,000 as a result of the abolition of food subsidies, the £18,000,000 from what he described as the "raffles", and the £4,000,000 from the special levies. These were substantial windfalls. I have already mentioned the substantial windfalls from emigrants' remittances and the money brought into the country by tourist emigrants.
There is a statement in the Minister's Budget speech in relation to the Common Market:
.... the Community, while protecting itself from outside fluctuations, cannot close its frontiers with the rest of the world if its external trade is to be maintained...
The Minister, speaking of a Community of 200,000,000 people, adverts, by implication, to the importance of external trade. Is it not extraordinary to find the Minister in 1962 so conscious of the importance of external trade for a Community so large and so potentially self-sufficient when, in 1932, the same Minister was pursuing a policy of splendid isolation for this country? For many years, Lord Beaverbrook and his Press preached in Britain the policy of splendid isolation. Mark you, Britain, with all its economic resources and its vast empire, never fell for the doctrine of economic self-sufficiency. But certain people in this country 30 years ago subscribed to this doctrine.
The policy pursued by Cumann na nGaedheal was the old traditional policy of agriculture first, industrialisation to take place pari passu with that, and each industry compelled to fulfil certain criteria; it would be screened, examined, its labour content assessed, whether it was using native raw material, whether there was a home market for its product. It was on that basis that the E.S.B. and the Sugar Company were set up. In 1932 there was a complete reversal of that policy. An economic wall was built around the country. We were told we could ourselves produce anything from a needle to an anchor. All we had to do was approach a Government Department and get a list of the various imports and then set about making this, that, and the other.
The consequence of that policy was that little industries were set up here and there throughout the country. Economically now these cannot survive. There was a book by Professor Johnson then called "The Nemesis of Economic Nationalism". It is still available. It could profitably be read today. Fortunately, economists do not always subscribe to political concepts. We have now come full circle and are abandoning the policy of 1932, a policy upon which this country should never have embarked, a foolish policy of attempting to make the country economically self-sufficient. In the economic sphere, as indeed in the political sphere, we are now going into a complete reversal of the policy we have been pursuing for the past 30 years.
I am sorry for the Taoiseach. I am sorry for any man who has built up an economic structure—I do not deny the Taoiseach is a man who works hard—and then finds the temple he has built collapsing around him like a house of cards. I am sorry for him, but I am much more sorry for the Irish people whom that gigantic foolish industrial experiment cost so many millions of pounds. At one period in the United States of America they tried to introduce prohibition. That was a costly experiment, and ultimately proved to be a foolish experiment. Vis-á-vis our small economic resources the economic experiment we have tried has been far more foolish and far more costly. Now we are hoist with our own petard. Now the nemesis of economic nationalism is catching up on us.
It is unfair—I think it is unwise— to place the undue emphasis that the Government place on our expanding economic position. I am happy for any small advances that may have been made in the last year, or two; but that is not the long-term view. While one refrains from damning confidence, it is nevertheless one's duty to recognise how fragile our economic structure is. The Taoiseach has admitted that we are more dependent than any country in Europe upon exports; we live by our exports, and we are exporting to a market which is virtually a world dump. So far, we have only the one market.
I have already mentioned that our personal savings are the lowest in Europe. Our emigration rate, in proportion to our population, is at least the highest in Europe. If you add our emigrants year by year to the number of unemployed people here, our unemployment figure I believe would be the highest in the world. Under the guise of tourist income, we have become partially a nation of remittance men, balancing our Budget upon the money sent from our poor Irish emigrants whom we affect not to know, once they leave our shores, despite the fact that we have one of the largest emigrant rates in Europe.
I see nothing in the Minister's Budget: I see no new ground broken to suggest that there is the slightest attempt to give any help, any guidance, any follow-through, to the poor people of our community who, by economic circumstances, have to land in Liverpool, London and Coventry, perhaps without a friend to meet them. I am sure there is not one worthwhile individual in this country who would begrudge the reasonable amount of money necessary to establish a liaison service in the bigger cities in Britain between the Department of External Affairs and the various voluntary agents who are trying to help the more defenceless members of our community who have to emigrate there.
I mentioned our declining population within the period of the last two Budgets vis-à-vis the population rising by 51,000 in Northern Ireland. Our output per capita here—and this is not the fault of the workers—must be one of the lowest in Europe. It is considerably lower than in Northern Ireland. Our income per capita is in a similar position. Our taxation per head, taken in co-relation with the social and national service provided, is one of the highest in Europe.
I shall conclude by repeating what Deputy Norton has already mentioned, namely, that we are the only dying white race in the world.
