I want to explain briefly my position on this Bill because there is no doubt that this proposal by the Government will be looked on as rather frightening, not so much from the size of the bill but because of the fact that the Minister and the Government, by their lack of control of fiscal policy, seem to be living from hand to mouth and from day to day in the hope that something will turn up. There was a tradition in this country that the Budget policy, bad and all as it was, decided the financial policy for the year to come and gave the public some indication of their financial commitments for that year. Gradually, that principal is being distorted by successive Governments and, since the Fianna Fáil Party have been in office for the greater part of the time, they must take the greater part of the blame for the departure from that tradition.
That tradition had the advantage that people knew where they were from day to day, but the recent development indicates that the Government are now asking for money for economic commitments which they did not anticipate would arise. It gives the impression that the Government have no idea of where they are going or where they will find themselves if they remain in office for any period, particularly in the present unpredictable circumstances. We now have this serious development that, within a month or two months of the Budget, the public are faced with another bill which was not foreseen by the Government. That is the most disturbing factor of all. It is indicative either of shortsighted financial policy, bad advice, or else it means that the Government have decided to yield up the power of government to outside forces, that is, to the largest, strongest and loudest group in the community. I am not to be taken as objecting to this concession to the farmers but surely this is no way in which to carry on effective government?
There is a second grave departure from the original policy of Fianna Fáil, that is, the shifting from direct taxation which always gave the appearance of being equitable because it did take the money from the wealthier sections and distributed it amongst those who needed it. That departure has been particularly accelerated in recent years and we now have the reverse policy by which money is raised in the form of indirect taxation. That means that those who are less able to bear the imposition of taxation are made to carry more in order to remove from the wealthy classes the need to pay for the more deserving sections of society.
We do not agree with this departure and we do not think that the wealthy sections of our society are paying enough, that they are paying until it hurts. I do not see why they should not be asked to pay it until it hurts. If one sees the enormous amounts spent on horseracing, on social events of one kind or another, on frivolous expenditure of all sorts, it would seem clear that this country is still a paradise for the wealthier classes. They are still too well off and until they have been made to pay until it hurts, I do not think that we should extend the burden of taxation in the form in which we have it here.
Through this kind of indirect taxation which is gradually being extended over the years, there is a gradual increase in every aspect of the lives of our people. We read of the growing burden of taxation in editorials in the conservative newspapers but what they complain of is an increase of 2d. or 3d. in income tax or surtax, or whatever it may be, but nobody ever seems to complain about the growing increase in indirect taxation which is driving up every aspect of life. Rents have gone up by 17 per cent., postal expenses by 23 per cent., electricity by 25 per cent., education by 22 per cent., potatoes by 32 per cent., fuel and light by 13 per cent., tobacco by 90 per cent. These are only some of the items. They do not represent the complete burden of taxation which has been imposed on the community in order to protect the wealthier section. That is a reversal of the Fianna Fáil policy of the thirties and is a very serious departure from that policy. I do not think we should help in encouraging it.
The increased tax on cigarettes is, of course, immaterial to me because I support the findings of the College of Physicians concerning the association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. I supported the Government in the Budget statement because I felt it might be an earnest of their intention to take some serious action in regard to this matter. Now I have absolutely no illusions that the Government have any intentions of interfering with the continued use of tobacco or the very dangerous level at which it is now being used.
If the Government were really sincere, really determined to do something about the consumption of tobacco, there are many ways other than this in which they could do something about it. The sad thing is that the necessity to pay one penny more per packet of cigarettes, in the case of most people, will not reduce their smoking because this habit is something which is very difficult to give up. Putting a peneny or two pence on the package is not making any serious attempt to reduce cigarette smoking.
In that way, I feel the Government are being hypocritical. The Minister for Health, of course, is the person who has the greatest responsibility and the most power, but he has refused to take any action in respect to television and radio advertisements to restrict cigarette smoking. Neither has he done anything in respect to the newspapers as we gathered from a reply to a question here today. Presumably through the influence of the tobacco companies, a drug company who merely wanted to spend about £100 a week in all the newspapers to advertise an anti-smoking tablet were not permitted to do so and the Government are taking no steps to do anything about it. This company are putting on the market a drug which could help some people who want to give up tobacco smoking.
If this Government are genuine in their desire to restrict smoking, they should have done something about that. I do not know whether the exposing here of the fact that the newspapers have refused to accept this advertisement will be published and whether the newspapers will accept this tacit indictment of their purely material approach to this matter, but the Government could quite easily have taken steps such as they take in respect to many other problems and situations. They could have insisted on a proper balance being maintained in the case for and against smoking.
It was suggested here that it would be interference with the rights of the individual, if we were to restrict in any way the kind of advertisements appearing in the newspapers, but of course the Government do that all the time. They do it under the Offences against the State Act in respect to the IRA and they do it in respect to many dangerous, addictive forms of drugs which are not permitted to be advertised in the Press. Accordingly, it is patently dishonest of the Government to say, on the one hand, that they are anxious to restrict the consumption of tobacco and that this penny on the packet may help, and on the other hand, to refuse to take any of the obvious steps that are being taken even by the British Tory Government who, conservative and all as they are, have issued handbills and posters and are making some attempt to deal with this problem.
The whole lurching policy of the Government from one side of the road to the other is particularly worrying in view of the findings of recent Government-sponsored commissions who investigated the economic strength of the country prior to our going into the toughest competition any social age has entered into, the European Economic Community, and surely no group of people in public life have had a more downright, cold and objective assessment of the position than our industrialists who now, after 40 years of activity, have had to face the verdict they now face. The Government must face it, too—they must face the fact of bad government on a phenomenal scale.
I do not propose to deal with this at length because I hope we shall have an opportunity of discussing it on a debate on the Common Market soon, but if you look at any aspect of life in society here, you will find evidence of that bad government. We have had the report in relation to the small western farms which says they are mostly uneconomic and that something must be done about them. This is after 40 years of self-government. We had the devastating report from the advisers of the Government —the Commission on Industrial Organisation—in which there is a condemnation of the failure of those in industry who, over the past 40 years, failed even to understand the significance of the imminence of their own elimination in this competition they are now facing.
These people do not appear to understand that they are on a trapdoor and that any day it will be jerked from under them. They seem to be incapable of understanding what is ahead of them and the only proposal being put forward by the Government is that we should give more money. Having been protected for years by tariffs from outside competition in order that they might produce for export, which they have failed to do, they did, on the other hand, set up monopolistic and restrictive trading practices among themselves so that they would not have even domestic competition. Now they are sitting there like mummies facing the most appalling competition from central European cartels and do not appear to have moved into any significant action, according to the Minister's own advisers.
This is something which, as time goes on, will really bear out what we have been talking about for ten years at least—the failure of the Government to establish any planned economy or to organise society for the community as a whole instead of supporting the establishment of a minority of wealthy industrialists. This is the time when the politicians who have been responsible for this policy must sit there and face the consequences of their own lack of action, of their lack of patriotism over the years. That is a very serious charge to make against the generation which was associated with so many of the outward signs of patriotism— a group of politicians who later sat and watched the denudation of vast tracts of their country, the emigration of upwards of 1,00,000 people over 40 years, the continuous incidence of seven, eight and nine per cent. unemployment, the fact that most of our social services—our health services, our social welfare services— are grossly inadequate, and the virtual neglect of all our people.
That is the sum total of the bill you people have readily and gladly paid with your eyes wide open. You have seen what is going on around you much more clearly than I possibly could. You have been in Government and you know these things in a far more concise way than I. You suffered the denudation of our whole society, the inadequate economy and the inadequate national income, which insists on your putting on these fiddling taxes on tobacco, rents and rates, posts and telegraphs and so on. That is the only way out of your difficulties because you refused to accept that what was basically required here was a dynamic and fundamental change in our whole fiscal and economic policy. In your own self-interested way, your first concern was the wealthy minority whom you have now latterly come to represent. Up to your last days or weeks or months of office—because once we go into the Common Market, this Dáil has lost any of its autonomy or right to make final decisions in the most important matters—you are still continuing to protect the wealthy minority at the expense of the majority.
As far as we are concerned, we do not propose to support the Government in this. We do not think we should help the Government at this stage to create a sort of wonderland prize-giving ceremony for all these industrialists who, over the years, have been protected by the Irish people and supported by them with great loyalty and with the hard cash needed to assist them in one way or another, but whose only reply was to create the restrictive trade practices and high prices we have seen in business over the past 30 or 40 years. We do not think these people merit any prizes or any pat on the back. It is probably too late now and there is very little that can effectively be done by the Government. For a time, things must get very much worse and then, after that, we can only hope that it will be possible to create a properly planned socialist economy which, if it had been done 30 or 40 years ago as James Connolly had said, would have left us now in the position of Sweden, who can consider whether she will be associated with or a full member of the Common Market, or even opt out if she wants to.
There is no reason why our people could not be in the same position. We had the intelligence, the ability, the skill, the craftsmen, the technicians, the technocrats. The brains and ability other peoples have, our people have in abundance, too. When I talk about Irish industry, I want to make it quite clear that this is no indictment on my part of the technicians, craftsmen, and other individuals involved in Irish industry. I was referring to the method of creating a national income which would allow us to look after our old people properly, to treat the sick properly, to educate the young properly, to let our people live in a reasonable standard of comfort, a standard of comfort that would pervade the whole of Ireland and not be confined, as it is at present, to a small minority of selfish people who, having sat around and seen the best part of a million of our young people leave the country, because of this selfishness refused to take the obvious steps to deal with it. In my view, the Minister and his colleagues are in as big a mess as it is possible for any Government to get into. It is our belief that we should allow them to stew in their own juice.
