Last night, I was referring to the fact that in the past three years or so, there has been a very definite increase or expansion in the tax revenue available to the Minister for Finance. It is interesting to refer to the manner in which the moneys available to the Minister have been distributed over the past few years. In the financial year 1960-61, the tax revenue available to the Minister amounted to £115,000,000. Out of that, he expended on the less well-off sections of the community, on social welfare payments of one kind or another, a total of £26,000,000, or just 23 per cent. of the total sum.
The Minister now has a further £20,000,000 in tax revenue amounting to £132,000,000 or £133,000,000 and the expenditure on social welfare payments amounts to in or around the same sum but the percentage is down to something around 19 per cent. That means that this year with the moneys available to the Government, with an expansion in tax revenue, less of the total sum in proportion is being devoted to social welfare and to bettering the lot of the poor, the sick and the needy.
That illustrates very clearly the approach of the Government, of which we are critical. As I said last night, it has always been an expression of opinion by Ministers for Finance that as soon as the revenue will permit and within the limits of the increase in revenue available to them, they would first try to rectify and improve the lot of the less well-off sections. It is clear that this time it has not been done. To-day, compared with three years ago, we are spending a smaller proportion of the money available to the Government on the poorer sections of the community. It is in the light of that idea behind the Budget that we on this side of the House have had regard to what the Minister has done.
As I said last night, he had the claims of the poor; he had the hands of the poor held out for some relief, some measure of socal justice; he also had the demands of the farmers who were able to organise and march. He also had the demands and claims of the dancehall proprietors and the cinema owners throughout the country. In what way has he decided to dispense the extra £20,000,000 available to him? Of course we know what he has done. He decided to give half-a-crown to the old age pensioners.
Half-a-crown is an interesting figure. A month ago, I was led to believe, by strong-voiced Deputies, that they would never support the Government, unless the increase in the old age pension was 5/-. But it is half-a-crown now, take it or leave it, and it is half-a-crown that will be paid not now but next August, because, by deferring it to next August, the Government and the Minister for Finance will save £450,000 or £500,000. That is the relief—half-a crown to the old age pensioners. The unfortunate man who has to face an increase in the cost of fuel, of rent, of food, of clothing—if he has enough money to buy a new pair of trousers or a second-hand pair of trousers, or a coat—is to get 2/6d. but it is deferred until next August. That is the only provision of any significance in this Budget in relation to increased social welfare payments.
Of course, the farmer is to get an increase in rate allowance totalling £2,500,000, and I am sure it will be very welcome, but it is significant that the benefit is not to be widely distributed. It is not to be enjoyed by the small farmers in the midlands, or the west, or any other part of the country. The benefit of this expenditure of £2,500,000, or something like three times the amount being expended this year on increases in old age pensions, is to go to the well-off farmer in any county or rural community and that is to take place straight away.
The third measure of relief is the abolition of entertainments duty. It is interesting that if the Minister had decided not to give this relief in respect of entertainments duty, he could have paid the 2/6d. to the old age pensioners from the first day of this financial year. But no—in order to provide cheap ballroom dancing for the people of Dublin city, the old age pensioner cannot be paid his 2/6d. until next August.
Is it surprising then that we talk about this Budget as being a Budget which has cloudy and faulty thinking behind it, a Budget which is obviously the result of the stresses and strains on a Government composed as the present Government is? They are pulling in a variety of directions and they are anxious to placate, even temporarily, as many influential people as they possibly can. The old age pensioner is not influential and the sick and needy and poor are not organised. Half a crown promised might fob them off. But the farmers may be organised; we know the dancehall owners to be organised, and in the case of groups like that, who are in a position to exercise influence on the Government and on the Minister, they are met, not by declaring a moratorium, but by payment in full and on the nail.
Therefore, this Budget is introduced. The available money to the Minister is being dispensed in directions which may be perfectly justified. There may be sound cases to be made for these reliefs, but certainly they do not represent the most urgent reliefs, so far as the community are concerned. It might have been a better investment in the future if the Minister had done this—and certainly social justice would demand he should do it in a year in which there is a surplus in tax revenue compared with other years. He might have increased the level of home assistance throughout the country to those barely surviving on the margin between nutrition and starvation. If he had made more available for those purposes, if he had invested a little more in improving our health services, if he had devoted a little more to raising the standard of our education, if he had done things of that kind—not a lot because the money available to him would not permit a great deal—certainly it might have been a step in the right direction. But all that has been forfeited in the interest of expediency and in order to get, not a better country in the next 12 months, but to get this Government over the vote they had to face three or four weeks ago. That is the object of the Budget we are debating this evening.
In relation to the debate, we have had the Taoiseach coming in making, not a very convincing speech on behalf of his Government's Budget, but rather saying: "Well, it is not too bad a Budget, but remember there may be temporary difficulties at the moment and things are going to be much better next year. Wait until the Budget next year." But when we compare his speech with the speech of the Minister for Transport and Power when he was talking about the great things Fianna Fáil did in the past, about all the social welfare benefits they conferred on the people, one cannot help feeling that it is very much a case of jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but they are not going to have any jam today.
I was interested in some of the speeches from the more junior members of the Government or associated with the Government, particularly the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands, who spoke yesterday. In defence of this Budget, he proceeded to emphasise how wonderful everything now was in the country. I thought he was going to use the phrase made famous by reason of its present illfame, which was coined some years ago by the present Prime Minister of Great Britain when he told the people, "You have never had it so good." Certainly if the Parliamentary Secretary's speech was to be given an adjective, that would be the adjective in the way of a phrase that could be ascribed to it. The people apparently are to be told that, whether they know it or not, they have never had it so good as they now have it under Fianna Fáil.
I wonder is that bromide going to quieten the shattered nerves of some of Deputy Sherwin's constituents? Do they feel their lot is much improved or made very much easier because dancing is to be cheaper or because the owners of the local cinema are to make a little more money or because the large farmers of Cork or elsewhere will have a remission on their rates? These people may never have had it so good, but I would be concerned to know whether the unfortunate people who queue up at the dispensaries in Deputy Sherwin's constituency and who live in the tenements around the place, trying to balance a few shillings or a few six-pences to buy a Fianna Fáil loaf of bread or a half pound of margarine, are the people the Parliamentary Secretary or any other member of the Government is addressing when he tries to convince them that things have never been so good in this country?
I should like to recommend to the Government that it is a worthwhile thing, even if they are long on the road and stale in their tracks, to keep an ear to the ground and to realise that the ordinary people at present are far from satisfied with the manner in which the country is being governed. This Budget contains nothing. It is an improvisation to tide the Government over their political difficulties. It is a Budget brought in to buy time. Time for what? Do the Government think that, politically, things will be better for them next year? Is that the reason the Taoiseach says in his speech: "Next year's Budget will be better"?
We are not going to wait. When I say "we", I mean the ordinary people in the country. We are not going to be fobbed off by promises to be paid on Tibb's Eve. The people will remember that the Government were elected and sent into office five years ago on certain specific promises —promises not to be carried out sometime, somehow by some contrivance— but to provide 100,000 new jobs for the people. These jobs were to be provided at the rate of 20,000 a year. That was five years ago. If that promise had been carried out, today in this country, there should be close on 1,000,000 people in insurable employment. We know it has not been carried out. We know now that the best that can be promised is that things may be better, perhaps not this year, but maybe next year.
The facts are that at the time that promise was made five years ago, when Fianna Fáil were eager for office and concerned to get there, no matter what the cost might be in blighted hopes for the ordinary people, the time they made a promise of 100,000 new jobs, there were in insurable employment close on 800,000 people. Today, five years later, instead of the figure for those in insurable employment approaching the million mark, there are 62,000 fewer people working in this country. That is not bad for five years. The only trouble is that instead of going forward we are going backwards. The story would be complete if instead of 62,000, we had 100,000 fewer working today than five years ago, but the fact is 62,000 fewer people are employed than when this promise was first made.
It is not necessary to discuss emigration. When you discuss emigration in this House it is like the old patient going to the doctor and discussing his old complaint. Everybody is bored with it. We are bored with it because it is a chronic complaint. Over the last five years, we have lost a quarter of a million people. That has happened during that wonderful period we were to have when Fianna Fáil were elected to office in 1957.
