When the House adjourned last night, I had referred to certain observations made by Deputies on the Fianna Fáil benches. To-day I am looking at the general question of policies raised by the Vote on Account. I want to direct the attention of the House to the fact that we are in the presence of a series of remarkable records in this year. For the first time in the history of this State, the adverse trade balance has reached almost £100 million. But for the very fortunate movement in the terms of trade to our advantage during the past 12 months, that adverse trade balance would have been nearer £104 million. For the first time in the history of this State, Government expenditure as expressed by the Supply Service Estimates and Central Fund will exceed £200 million. For the first time since this State was established, the national debt exceeds £500 million and for the first time in our history, so far as I am aware, the cost of living has reached the index figure of 160, which represents an increase in the cost of living index of 25 points since this Government took office in 1957.
The fiscal statistics to which I have referred have to be seen in the appropriate background. If we were in a period where imports were steeply rising and exports were stable or even rising, where the gross national product was maintaining an upward movement, the figures to which I have referred might not be as alarming as I suggest they are. However, when we look back over the past 12 months, we observe that the trend in imports has been rising while the trend in exports has been declining and when we consider that when the Taoiseach states that the average increase in that gross national product over the past three years has been four per cent, what he really means is that the rate of increase in 1960 was six per cent but had fallen to four per cent in 1961 and is now less than three and a half per cent in 1962, we realise that the use of average statistics is a dangerous occupation unless it is employed for the purpose of deceiving those who do not inquire more closely into how the average is arrived at.
Side by side with these remarkable figures, the rates property owners have to pay have reached in this year of grace the highest figure ever reached since the State was founded. It is true that last year there was an additional supplementary grant for agriculture amounting to something over £2 million. Since that grant was made, changes in the rate demand all over the country, I believe, have absorbed it all. The total rate demand has risen by more than the £2 million which was added to the agricultural grant last year and something that Deputies should not forget is that, in the allocation of the supplementary agricultural grant for the relief of rates on land last year, no corresponding relief whatever was made to the householder in the country towns of Ireland.
Can you picture the reaction of a small shopkeeper trying to earn a living in any town in County Mayo who has been informed that his rates hereafter are to exceed £3 in the £? Can you imagine the feelings of any young couple who married and built themselves a house and who now see the time coming when their initial exemption from rates is to disappear and they are faced with an annual rent on their house in perpetuity of £3 in the £? Therefore, the astonishing situation is that in respect of that burden which people have to bear, we have reached a record level never before attained since this State was founded.
It is an interesting exercise to apply what seems to me to be the only valid test to the policy of a Government. We here in this House are accustomed year after year to hearing the Government proclaim their hopes and explain the aims they have in mind when they introduce their Budgets, their legislation and everything else. Hopes are one thing but facts are quite another. Hopes are ephemeral: facts are inescapable. What are the facts? After the past six years of Fianna Fáil administration, it is not unreasonable to look back to what the Taoiseach expressed as his belief of what the functions of the Government should be. Speaking in this House, as recorded at column 1144, Volume 161, of the Official Report of the 14th May, 1957, the Taoiseach, the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, said:
...I and my colleagues have no doubt in our minds that we became the Government because the people expected us to work determinedly and intelligently to bring about a situation in which employment would expand, in which the twin problems of unemployment and emigration would be vigorously tackled.
Since he uttered those words in this House, we have exported to Great Britain and elsewhere 300,000 boys and girls, the vast majority of them between the ages of 18 and 30 years. I am sometimes astonished at the brazen-faced effrontery of the Fianna Fáil Party speaking about unemployment when we have more than 60,000 people unemployed at the present time after we have sent abroad 300,000 employable people in the past six years.
The census authority in Great Britain has quite a dramatic announcement to make and it is another record of which this House should take note. For the first time in the history of Great Britain or Ireland, Irish-born nationals from the Republic of Ireland represent today approximately five per cent of the total population of the city of London. That is another record which Fianna Fáil can chalk up as their contribution to the improvement of conditions in Ireland.
Over that same period, bus fares, postal rates, the prices of tobacco, beer, bread and butter have all been increased by the Government and now we are informed in the White Paper which they have recently circulated that there is to be a wages freeze. It is hard to know what way their mind is working. If one listened to the Taoiseach last December, or indeed to some of his Ministers in the course of this debate, one would imagine everything in the garden was lovely. Yet, if we accept the terms of his White Paper, we are faced with an acute crisis, to avert which energetic steps must be taken.
All I want to say on that White Paper is that if steps have to be taken along those lines, they ought to be steps based on justice and equity and equality of sacrifice. I am quite unable to understand a policy which lays it down that the wage earner must exercise extreme restraint for the common good in order that income may be restricted, lest excessive consumption be promoted while at the same time, company after company publish their reports and announce an increase of dividend distribution of anything from 15 to 25 per cent.
If restraint is necessary, and that case is made, and conviction is carried to the minds of the people that restraint of that character is necessary for the common good, surely it is elementary justice that if those who earn wages or salaries in the service of an enterprise must forgo any improvement in their circumstances, the least they can demand is that those who employ them will not claim the right to an expansion in their own income which is to be denied to those who work for them? The difference between good government and had government is the ability of a Government to insist that justice will be done between all elements of the community and that grave injustice to one section, however lacking in influence that section may be, will not be tolerated by a democratic Government who profess to speak and act in the interests of all.
We are now told that there is to be a sales tax. That is introduced with the interesting euphemism that the Government have decided to undertake a radical review of our taxation system. That is the newest definition I have ever heard of a decision to raise taxes steeply on everybody. It will be done under the cover of a majority recommendation of the Income Tax Commission which suggested that a sales tax of a strictly limited character might be justified if its proceeds were used to reduce the standard rate of income tax. This Government's interpretation of that is to say that may be a desirable ideal to aim at but, ad interim, they will provide the people with the sales tax and the income tax as well.
The price of wheat has effectively been reduced by the terms of the new Wheat Order, for which the Minister is responsible, and also by the degree to which Ministers have climbed into the pockets of the millers over the past three years. There was a time in this country when the Minister for Agriculture required the millers to buy the wheat and convert it into flour and to pay the farmers for it. Now, the rule seems to be that we sell the wheat abroad at £16 10s.; encourage the millers to bring in wheat from abroad, for which they have to pay, and tell the farmers that, instead of 72/6, which they used to get—or the 82/6 which Fianna Fáil used to say they were going to get—they must be glad to get 50/- and express cordial gratitude not only to the millers but to the Government as well for having given them 50/- for the wheat which Fianna Fáil told them would be worth 82/6 if they got into power.
Our Government, the inter-Party Government, provided a guaranteed price for pigs. We built into that guaranteed price a further guarantee, namely, that it could not be changed without six months' notice to the farmers. Nevertheless, Fianna Fáil have managed to get around that. They have not changed the basic price but they have changed the whole method of grading. The result of that is a substantial reduction in the guaranteed price for pigs.
As I already mentioned, even after sending 300,000 of our boys and girls to Britain, we still have 60,000 unemployed at home. Another astonishing figure brought to the attention of the House as recently as 7th instant, as reported at Column 894 of Volume 200 of the Official Report, concerns the average number of insurable persons employed in Ireland, based on the numbers of social insurance stamps sold in each year from 1960 to 1962. If you come to study that return, you will discover that whereas there were 498,000 in insurable employment on the average in 1956, there were 486,000 in the same type of employment in 1962—a reduction of 12,000 persons. We have to bear in mind, I think, that the ceiling of eligibility for stamping cards has been raised in that period and doubtless certain people have dropped out of the category of insurable persons as a result of an income rising even above the raised ceiling but one element, I think, operates to cancel out the other so that we have the astonishing fact that actually there are 12,000 fewer people in insurable employment today, on the average, than there were six years ago.
It appears to me that any Government obliged to concede these facts—I do not think this Government can deny them—ought to get out and make way for people who could do better. If I had that record, I should be ashamed to admit that I had been responsible for the Government of this country for the past six years.
I listened to the Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries seeking to defend the record of the Government. It struck me that they had some inkling of that sentiment themselves. I did not hear him but I was amused when I read the report of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance expounding on the social services and on the record of Fianna Fáil in connection with the old age pension. What is that record? I think that record ought to be on the records of the House. The record of Fianna Fáil in that regard was that the old age pensions were restricted to the 10s. a week given by the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government on 6th April, 1928. They remained at that figure until 1949, all during the 16 years in which Fianna Fáil were consistently in office — they entered office in 1932 and left it in 1948. Over the whole of that period there was no change by way of addition to the old age pensions. During the war, there was a supplement made available by way of a ticket to residents in the city of Dublin and there was a supplement made available to people who had no other means of subsistence in rural Ireland of 2s. 6d.
In January, 1949, when Deputy Norton was Minister for Social Welfare, he introduced a Bill which added 7s. 6d. a week to the basic rate of the old age pension. He gave every old age pensioner in this country 17s. 6d. a week. Not only that, but he completely revolutionised the means test in connection with the old pension code. Again in 1951, in Deputy McGilligan's last Budget, provision was made for a further alleviation of the means test in connection with old age pensions and a further increase in the pension of another 2s. 6d. was given. Remember that at that time the price of all essential foodstuffs was heavily subsidised and maintained at constant level.
Fianna Fáil came into office and introduced the 1952 Budget in which they swept away a great part of the food subsidies and to meet that, they increased the pension by 1s. 6d. per week and made some adjustment in the means test in regard to it. It stood at that figure until the inter-Party Government returned to office in 1954 and, in the Social Welfare Act of 1955, for which Deputy Corish was responsible, the old age pension was increased by half a crown for all old age pensioners. Since then, in May, 1957, it was further increased by 2s. 6d. on the occasion of the sweeping away of the remainder of the food subsidies, and there was a further increase of 2s. 6d. in August, 1959 and last year an increase of 1s., bringing the pension up to 28s. 6d. I think there has been a further upward adjustment since, but the fact is that over the years when the inter-Party Government were dealing with old age pensions, they not only increased the basic rate but radically and fundamentally changed the means test associated with the old age pension code.
The traditional challenge was thrown out by the Government Party in connection with this Vote on Account: "Show us how you will reduce it." It is a trap which is often set and which no experienced member of this House is likely to fall into as the members of the Government might hope he would, but I shall answer it in some measure because there are certain changes so obvious and easy that any competent Government would make them. Before dealing with that particular problem, however, I want to recall to the House the Taoiseach's boast that local government taxation supplies only 23 per cent. of the gross national produce here, whereas in Britain, it is 26 per cent., 24 per cent. in Belgium, 29 per cent. in the Netherlands and 29 per cent. in Italy.
Of course that is what is wrong with the Taoiseach. He entirely forgets the fundamental difference between this country and the countries he refers to. Britain is maintaining a vast defence programme. Our entire defence programme runs to £7 million or £8 million, whereas Britain's runs to something in the order of £1,000 million. If the defence element of Britain's administration were withdrawn and if there were anything approaching equality between us in our provision for social services, then the percentage of the gross national product would not be as it at present appears to be.
The Taoiseach went on to say that the public capital programme has gone far beyond the target set by the Programme for Economic Expansion. That can be understood in two senses —either they are spending much more than the programme ever envisaged or they are spending it for purposes far different from those envisaged when the Programme for Economic Expansion began. I am glad Deputy Dolan is here now because I want here to refer particularly to the extent to which the capital programme has been developed from the point of view of housing.
I know the argument can be made, and is very often made, that a greater proportion of the capital programme should be directed to remunerative investment and I want to examine the Government's record in that respect. Before doing that, however, I want to glory in the fact that in a capital programme operated by us in the Government for which we were responsible in 1948 and again in 1954, a primary charge on the programme was the provision of housing for the people, and I am convinced that from that investment we got the most enduring and precious return of any investment ever made in this country. I want, for Deputy Dolan's edification, to read out to him first the experience of the Cavan people under the inter-Party Government in regard to housing, and then what it has been under Fianna Fáil.
