Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 17 Jul 1963

Vol. 204 No. 8

Finance Bill, 1963—Fifth Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Mr. Sweetman

As I was saying earlier in relation to the speech we had from the Taoiseach this morning, it was one of those frothy speeches without any factual proposals to which we have become accustomed to hearing from him. It would not be unreasonable to say that we could paper every room in this building with the speeches the Taoiseach has made in relation to alleged plans over the years. We hear a lot of those plans at times of crisis for the Fianna Fáil Party when it is necessary to rouse their morale, but we hear virtually nothing about them at a later stage. I venture to say that the speech we heard from him this morning will be about as successful in providing the things people on all sides of the House desire as was his famous, or infamous, speech in Clery's Restaurant when he categorically promised he had a wonderful plan to provide 100,000 new jobs for our people. Of course, he never had any such plan. There was nothing there except a desire to take advantage of the fact that naturally everybody listening to him was anxious to see that employment would be provided.

Equally, today everyone of us wants to have economic growth balanced as well as it can be without straining our trade to a great degree. But the repetition of truisms, such as we heard from him today, are not any indication of a policy as such. The only indication we have of a policy is, first, what is included in this Finance Bill, and about which I shall have a word to say in a moment, and, secondly, that he believes that Government expenditure must go on rising and rising.

In an aside, the Taoiseach suggested that he now accepted and admitted that Fine Gael had a philosophy, although it was a philosophy of which he did not approve. We can all remember it is not very long since the Taoiseach was trying to say there was no place whatever for Fine Gael and that he was trying to court the Labour Party into a different policy. His normal form in this regard is to produce a statement of a principle with which everybody can agree but in respect of which he can produce no positive factual method of reaching a conclusion.

I gathered he was anxious for a scheme of greater capital investment. Greater capital investment on what? Greater capital investment on worthwhile projects that were going to increase employment and living standards throughout the country would obviously have the support not merely of every Deputy but of every person throughout the country. The fact is, of course, that the record of his Party in relation to capital investment has been a singularly unhappy one. During the years 1932 to 1939—I am not going to blame the Taoiseach for what happened during the war years—it is a fact which cannot be gainsaid that there was no capital investment of any sort in any worthwhile project undertaken by Fianna Fáil as a Government in that period.

It is a fact that cannot be gainsaid that the pattern Fianna Fáil were following after the emergency—the pattern initiated by the supplementary Budget of 1947—was the continuation of the anti-capital investment programme of the early 'Thirties. It was not until 1949 that there was any realisation by the Government at all of the necessity to have a vastly expanded capital programme, but one expanded on worthwhile projects. The changes that were made in 1949 were made in the teeth of Fianna Fáil opposition at that time, but they are changes that, having been made, have come to stay. I am glad they have come to stay. My regret, however, is that the record of performance in relation to capital investment by Fianna Fáil when in government has not been a very happy one.

As was indicated in an article in one of the papers this morning by a person who cannot be described as being a Fine Gael propagandist, the Taoiseach himself more than anyone else has been responsible for the failure of capital investment in relation to our transport. It is to him that that failure through the years must be mainly attributed. The whole problem in relation to capital investment has been not a desire by any Government since 1949 to refrain from State capital investment, but to find projects in which it was worth while to invest the people's money on behalf of the State—to find viable projects that would mean a permanent increase in employment and, therefore, in living standards.

The manner in which a vast sum was thrown away stupidly, instead of being invested productively, in Dundalk has already been discussed in this House. I am not going to anticipate a discussion in relation to a similar effort that will take place after this debate has finished. The fertiliser project which was recently started at Arklow was put up to us and was condemned by technical experts at that time as being a project that was not economically viable. The Government say that there has been a change since then, both in technical methods and in the economies of the project. When we asked them for particulars, they have taken the line of saying that it would be commercially harmful to the company for the change to be made public. In the circumstances, the Opposition have no option but to place the responsibility firmly on the backs of the Government. It must be on them alone that the responsibility for the investment lies.

It is a fact that cannot be gainsaid that no Government since the change in outlook in relation to capital investment in 1949 have ever refrained from making any capital investment because they were against a capital programme as such. The only tests that have been made were whether the project proposed was a viable project or was something that was not likely to produce permanent results. As I have said a second ago, the judgment of Fianna Fáil in relation to those projects has been sadly lacking.

On the income expenditure side, the Taoiseach also gave us an indication that we could look forward to nothing but increasing Government expenditure to be met from current account all the time. If increasing Government expenditure were to be met by increases in the national income so that the proportion of national income set aside for Government expenditure would remain more or less constant and at a reasonable fraction, no one would object to Government expenditure as such going on; but when Government current expenditure is allowed to outrun the increase in national income and to outrun the normal revenue buoyancy that comes from increases in national income, then the situation arises that such increases require the imposition of additional taxation which may well have the effect of retarding economic growth. If Government expenditure is so allowed to run ahead and taxation has accordingly to be increased beyond the limits, then the effect is not going to be a consistent and permanent growth. It may provide a temporary inflation and a temporary sense of well-being but it will not provide the conditions in which we can hope to have any permanent increase in our living standards.

This Finance Bill which we are discussing today and which we have been discussing for some considerable period is based on the fact that the Government have allowed that expenditure to get beyond the point at which it could be met by revenue buoyancy or by the increase in national income. The natural and inevitable corollary of the statement made by the Taoiseach this morning that Government expenditure on current account is going to go on increasing is that the turnover tax of 2½ per cent imposed in the Budget and in this Finance Bill will equally be increased by Fianna Fáil for the purpose of meeting that expenditure. One cannot go without the other. If the Government said categorically that they are going to go on increasing current income expenditure over and beyond that amount by which revenue buoyancy may come, then we see the real reason for the turnover tax was that it is a very simple tax to increase at any time. It is as well, as I said earlier, that the Taoiseach should have made his speech so that stripped of the verbiage, not merely we but the whole country can see the mentality behind the imposition of this tax. In my view, an increase in taxation of that sort outstripping any rises in national income or revenue buoyancy is going to prevent further growth rather than assist it.

I was rather surprised, too, that the Taoiseach when about to make a fundamental speech of that sort—if it was intended to be a fundamental speech —did not advert at all to one of the vital things in relation to our economic progress, in relation to our position regarding the Common Market, GATT and EFTA, and did not say where we are to go in relation to our external trade and economic conditions. It is a fact that we are in the position at the moment of being alone and isolated in economic and world trade. We are not a member of the Common Market. I may say at once that I agree and always agreed with the Taoiseach in the final decision, not with the kite that he flew about joining the Common Market if Britain did not join. I always agreed that it would be impossible to join if Britain did not join. We are not a member of it. We are not a member of GATT and yet at the same time, we are reducing our trade tariffs.

We are not a member of EFTA, and I do not think that there is any very great advantage per se for an agricultural country in joining EFTA, if that agricultural country is to maintain a tariff selection. But it seems now that what we are doing is remaining, willy-nilly and without any choice outside the European Economic Community, outside EFTA and outside the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and at the same time, committing ourselves to a policy of complete tariff reduction without getting from that policy any benefit whatever in direct negotiations with the people who will benefit by it. That seems to me to be getting the worst of both worlds.

Let me say at once that I was all in favour of joining the European Economic Community, if that had been possible and if Britain had joined. Then we were going to move into a world in which there would be a dismantling of tariffs by ourselves, a dismantling that I agree may be inevitable in the future, but a dismantling of tariffs by us in return for a quid pro quo—for our possibility of access to a much greater market than that to which we are able to have access at the present moment.

I cannot understand where the Government want to go in this matter. I accept that the free world ultimately is moving towards a period of tariff reduction and freer trade. Everyone else in the world is moving towards that by dismantling of tariffs in exchange for other benefits. We could obtain other benefits in the EEC or even outside that community but we have preferred to take unilateral action in our dismantling. For example, we could have done some bargaining in this trading respect in the direct Government order placed in France of £250,000 for helicopters. That was a direct Government trade operation. They know the ratio of our trade with France is about seven to one against us. As the Minister for Defence and his colleagues acknowledge, no effort was made by the Government at that time to get any reciprocity for a very substantial Government contract. That is one type of example. Another is that we are apparently committed by the Government to short-term tariff reductions without any negotiations or bargain in any other country where that would assist us in getting something worthwhile for ourselves in exchange.

I agree that the free world is moving towards tariff reduction in the long run and it is obvious that the position will be such that we shall have to compete on far less favourable terms in some of our best markets, notably Britain. This is the time, knowing that, at which steps should be taken to try to ensure that this disadvantage will be overcome and yet I have seen no moves in that direction by the Government. Therefore, if the Taoiseach was going to branch out from the Finance Bill into a discussion on general economic growth, as he did this morning, clearly that is one of the sides on which he should have given some lead or explanation to the country.

So far as the possibility of increasing exports and the possibility of Irish private enterprise increasing productivity are concerned, this Finance Bill does not help at all. On the contrary, it deals it a body blow. The imposition of retrospective corporation profits tax to be paid out of reserves can only diminish the amount of those reserves that would be available for further expansion, modernisation and employment and better conditions of employment. If the policy was to reduce dividends, there is a simple way of doing that—or even holding of dividends—by imposing a distributed tax at a differential rate from an undistributed tax but the way it is being done rules out any possibility of that. The reserves that would have been there for modernisation, expansion and improvement of productivity, which we must have if we are to compete for markets, have been dealt a bad blow in this Finance Bill.

It is a truism that nothing in relation to industry can stand still. Unless industry can be constantly modernising it will not be able to hold its own, much less improve. Perhaps, to some extent the shock of tariff abolition may provide some shake-up towards competitiveness in industry but it will be as nothing compared to the benefits available if the Government had done their part in negotiating a counterpart of the reduction. The target for a dynamic economy must be not only to modernise and expand continuously —a fair amount has been done in relation to free equipment by grant inducement—but this Finance Bill will prevent a great part of the modernisation that should go with it.

Before the Budget, everybody thought what was needed was a Budget to encourage saving and investment and to encourage exports. There is little prospect of anything done in this Finance Bill encouraging any of those features unless the Minister claims for the turnover tax a discouragement of consumption. I should like to know when he is replying if he does make that claim.

I want to draw attention to the fact that the turnover tax, the main feature of the Budget, is allegedly modelled on the Swedish pattern. The Minister cannot deny that his justification everywhere for this type of tax is that it is modelled on the Swedish retail turnover tax. It is not quite the same but he says it is modelled on it. I was particularly interested, therefore, to read in Skandaniviska, a banking quarterly review, No. 2 of 1963, an article on the value-added tax, an entirely different tax, which suggests that Sweden is going away from the type of tax we are introducing towards the French value-added tax. In other words, having based our tax on the Swedish pattern, we now find that is going to be thrown overboard by Sweden as entirely out of date and unsuitable even for them. I am sure the Minister has in the Department this particular banking review.

Mr. Carter

The Deputy is coming around to the idea.

Mr. Sweetman

No. The tax the Minister has introduced is the worst form of all broadly-based taxes. I said that long ago and I repeat it. The one he has introduced is the worst form of all and, as I say, it is apparently going to be thrown overboard now by Sweden. I say to the Minister that I am sure this is in his Department, if he has not seen it himself, because from such time as I was over there, I knew this quarterly existed. I have been able to get it ever since and it has perhaps some of the best economic articles to be read in any quarterly in a language which I can understand.

That article makes it clear, as does one by the Economist Intelligence Unit published last month in Britain, that the European Economic Community operates an entirely different type of tax from this and that in those countries in the EEC where they have a tax based on something like this, they are moving away from it and the commission has recommended that they would move away from it and go to the value added tax as in France which is an entirely different operation. I might say that one of the things the Economist Intelligence Unit reports is that the tax sur la valeur ajouté as practised in France applies generally to all transactions in goods except retail sales and the other members of the Six who have not got such a form as the valeur ajouté in France are all now moving towards the French model. The Swedes are thinking of leaving the model the Minister thought so wonderful. The Common Market Commission issued a draft directive in November, 1962, for the harmonisation of turnover taxes in the Common Market. The recommendation was for those countries to replace it within four years by a non-cumulative tax. After the fourth year, all States were recommended to move over to an added value tax. That was one of the reasons why I asked whether the Taoiseach was still of a mind to get the country ready for ultimate acceptance, as he hoped, into the EEC when he had taken something as his model that has been discarded.

Mr. Lenihan

Amended—it is the same principle.

Mr. Sweetman

Not at all. It shows how little the Parliamentary Secretary knows about it if he thinks it is the same.

Mr. Lenihan

I have read the article about which the Deputy is talking.

Mr. Sweetman

Which one?

Mr. Lenihan

The Scandinavian one.

Mr. Sweetman

The Parliamentary Secretary could not have read the one by the Economist Intelligence Unit or he would not say——

Mr. Lenihan

It is the same principle.

Mr. Sweetman

The difference is vital between the two because the added value tax is a tax on the "add back" of each individual trader over a period and therefore it is not a question of endeavouring to keep down to the fictional decimal coinage which Deputy Sherwin wants of half a farthing. It is done in a block system which is entirely different.

Mr. Lenihan

It is a question of mechanics.

Mr. Sweetman

It is not a question of mechanics. It is a question of substituting a different form of tax for what we understand as profits tax here or across the water in Britain, because it is on that added value that the company has its profits. It is a different system and if it were not a different system, the directive issued by the Common Market Commission last November would have absolutely no meaning at all. The Minister himself deliberately chose this particular model and he could not have chosen a worse one. He has varied somewhat from his initial announcement and the result of the variation is a worse hybrid than the initial announcement produced because he will get the worst of both worlds. The only reason I mention that at this stage is that——

Mr. Carter

You are coming around to the view that some sort of tax is necessary.

Mr. Sweetman

No. Deputy Carter can read what I have said again and again.

Mr. Carter

Fine Gael are coming around to the view that it is necessary.

Mr. Sweetman

Nonsense.

Mr. A. Barry

Does Deputy Carter approve of this?

Mr. Sweetman

He does, of course. Has he not voted for it? He also approves of the statement of the Taoiseach that Government current expenditure will rise over and above the rise in income and buoyancy.

Mr. Lenihan

The Taoiseach did not say that.

Mr. Sweetman

He implied that beyond question. The Taoiseach said that anybody who believes that current expenditure was not going to go on increasing——

Mr. Lenihan

Correct, but he did not say the rest of it.

Mr. Sweetman

He did.

Mr. Lenihan

Buoyancy will go up, of course.

Mr. Sweetman

The Taoiseach is a very cute politician and he will not say something that can be quoted against him to slit his own throat, but he could not have meant all the things he said without one implying the other. It could not have been done. Everybody knows that is what he did mean. The Minister for Finance will enlighten the Parliamentary Secretary that the reason for the Bill we are discussing is that Government current expenditure has outrun the increase in national income and revenue buoyancy. Speaking from recollection, I would say the revenue buoyancy was £8 million this year but Government expenditure was greater, and we are told by the Taoiseach this morning that that pattern must continue. There was nothing else anybody could infer or draw from any of his statements.

The Taoiseach has told us, too, that we need an incomes policy and that he hoped to have one. The Government have been asked to provide an incomes policy for a long time and they have not done it because it is only recently they have realised the difference between an incomes policy and a wages policy. Their line of country has been to concentrate on restriction in wages alone and to forget about all the other constituent parts of an incomes policy. That is why they have been so unsuccessful. That is why there has been no balanced growth. I think they do realise, since the provocative publication of their White Paper in February, that an incomes policy governs more than pure wages, though they seem to be still inclined to fasten on the wages part alone, an incomes policy that should, in our circumstances of the necessity to expand exports, mean a reduction in our high-cost economy, this already high cost economy, which even the Parliamentary Secretary cannot deny, but, instead of that, the effect of this Bill will be, unfortunately, to put it even higher, and that will not help our competitiveness in relation to exports. We must be competitive if we are to survive at all.

The Taoiseach told us it is his desire to have widespread understanding of the policy he is adumbrating. I do not think there is a person in the House who will deny that the easiest, the best, and the most thorough way, of having widespread understanding of the policy of any political Party is to have that understanding tested in a general election. If the Taoiseach and the Parliamentary Secretary believe, as they pretend to believe, in the success of their policies, will they put them to the test? The result will be that they will get a much greater hammering than they got in North East Dublin. If the Taoiseach is honest, and if he is not being hypocritical in saying that the public will understand what they have in mind, there is an easy way to test that understanding, and one which we will welcome, and we have made it clear that we will welcome it.

Mr. Lenihan

We got it.

Mr. Sweetman

I wonder——

Mr. Lenihan

We got it last October 12 months.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Sweetman

Would the Parliamentary Secretary like to set an example? If he resigns his seat, we will test it in Roscommon.

Mr. Lenihan

I will test it anywhere with the Deputy.

Mr. S. Collins

Test it in West Cork, if you like.

Mr. Sweetman

Anywhere you like.

Mr. N. Lemass

If a Deputy resigns his seat, he is breaking confidence with the electorate.

Mr. S. Collins

The Deputy would not dare resign his seat.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Sweetman

The Fianna Fáil Party know they are on the defensive. They know the country is itching to get a chance to give a verdict on this performance.

Mr. S. Collins

Hear, hear.

Mr. Sweetman

The people resent the tax of which the Parliamentary Secretary is now such an ardent protagonist, although he previously said it would affect only fur coats, and something else. The people resent the fact that this tax is being placed on the necessaries of life in exactly the same degree as it is being placed on fur coats. The people resent the fact that this tax will be completely unworkable, except in one degree. It will operate in the place of the dance tax.

We always said that a dance tax was workable, and Fianna Fáil always said it was not workable. I am glad that to that extent they have been converted to our view. The Minister is insisting on imposing this tax on sales that are effected between 1st August and 1st November on the credit, and paid for after 1st November. On the other hand, the person who has got the funds to anticipate can anticipate as much as he likes.

The tax will be unworkable because the divisions in our coinage are not percentage divisions. It will cost infinitely more than the one per cent that is being suggested. The reason that one per cent is being suggested is that the cost of administration will be used as an income tax cost rather than a sales tax cost. I suspect that the official purpose of this tax is not so much to have a one per cent administration cost, as the Minister has indicated, but to utilise a series of cross-references so that the cost of administration will, in fact, be met out of income tax cost and the cross references used for the purpose of verifying income tax returns.

I am informed this morning for the first time that the tax will have the effect of taking away from certain charitable institutions, rehabilitation institutions, more than the benefit the Minister alleges he is giving them under Section 97. The people do not want this tax. This is a financial and fiscal policy which was never envisaged at the time of the last general election. It is retrospective in certain respects, although in 1958 the Minister agreed that he would never introduce retrospective taxation again. It is an imposition on the necessaries of life which everyone would have shuddered at if challenged about it in October of the year before last. The only honest thing any honourable Government can do in these circumstances is not to take a referendum on this issue, but to submit themselves to a referendum of the people.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands (Mr. Lenihan)

In the course of this debate and particularly because of remarks made by Deputy Sweetman, it is opportune and timely for the Fine Gael Party to get a lesson in the essential mechanics of democratic constitutional Government.

Mr. Sweetman

That is a puppish remark, is it not?

Mr. Lenihan

The first lesson is a very elementary one. Parliamentary constitutional democracy depends on a representative system. The people send their delegates here to Parliament to legislate and work for them.

Mr. S. Collins

Not for a turnover tax.

Mr. Lenihan

The Fine Gael Party Deputies are here on that principle; Independent Deputies are here on that principle; and I am here on that principle. Unless that system is to degenerate into anarchy or chaos——

Mr. S. Collins

You know a lot about anarchy and chaos.

Mr. Lenihan

——it must be acknowledged that periodically and at regular intervals, elections are held at which the will of the people is sought. That will is expressed in the ballot boxes and it is reflected in Parliament.

Mr. S. Collins

You opposed the establishment of the State.

Mr. Lenihan

Parliament then proceeds to elect a Government. That Government has been delegated its governmental functions by Parliament to whom the people have delegated their functions.

Mr. S. Collins

They are on your tail.

Mr. Lenihan

We are here on that basis and unless Parliamentary institutions here or in any other democratic country are to degenerate into chaos, the majority of the elected representatives of the people must elect a Government to govern.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

How did you get your majority? What did it cost you?

Mr. Lenihan

The majority was obtained by the free decision of the people of this country.

Mr. S. Collins

You denied that in 1922 and in 1932.

Dr. Ryan

What about the Blue-shirts?

Mr. S. Collins

We will quieten you.

Mr. Lenihan

Let us leave the enfant terrible of the Fine Gael Party to himself.

Mr. S. Collins

Your father served in the National Army to establish the State.

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Collins has been in and out of Parliament so often that he is now unhappy that he is, not in the Fianna Fáil Party or in the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, but in a new jazzed-up version of the Irish Party.

Mr. S. Collins

I have my tradition. You have none. My family established this State. Yours did nothing to help it. Answer that if you like.

Mr. Lenihan

Let us leave that.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

What did it cost you to get the votes?

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Sweetman, and Deputy Norton the other night, offered us an entirely new notion of parliamentary institutions that when there is anything contentious, anything on which the Government must make a decision, it must be referred to the people in the form of a referendum or a general election. There is no obligation on this Government—or on any other Government; I will hand you that—to submit every item of legislation to the will of the people. We have been, through the members of this House, appointed to govern the country.

Mr. S. Collins

Do not cod yourself.

Mr. Lenihan

That is the people's decision and we intend to continue in government until 1966.

Mr. S. Collins

Do not cod yourself.

Mr. P. Brennan

Three Independents were intimidated into going with you. One of them said it was the best Budget he ever heard.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

What did it cost to keep the Government in office? How much?

Acting Chairman (Mr. Jones)

We must have the Parliamentary Secretary without interruption.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Let the Parliamentary Secretary not get cross. Let him answer without losing his temper.

Dr. Ryan

Some Deputies will vote without being paid. Deputy Flanagan does not understand that. He thinks they must be paid to vote.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Were they not paid?

Dr. Ryan

No. You cannot get them without paying.

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Flanagan is thinking in terms of five per cent.

Mr. S. Collins

You are thinking in terms of your father's contribution to the National Army.

Mr. Lenihan

We can remember the time when Deputy Flanagan was going about Laois-Offaly churning out money in the form of Monetary Reform.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You are raking in money out of the people's pockets.

Mr. Lenihan

It is necessary in this House to emphasise that we have the responsibility for governing.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You have no mandate from the people.

Mr. P. Brennan

Who had a mandate to bankrupt the country in 1956?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The country was not bankrupt in 1956.

Acting Chairman

I cannot allow this kind of interruption or we will not get on with this debate at all.

Mr. Lenihan

On this side of the House, despite our endeavours to establish among our people a constructive appreciation of the situation which now faces the Government, we have been faced and are faced at this minute——

Mr. S. Collins

Your father made law and order.

Mr. Lenihan

——by a highly destructive approach by the Fine Gael Party. They have made no attempt during the debate on the Finance Bill to advance any alternative taxation system——

Mr. S. Collins

Do you want us to teach you your business?

Mr. Lenihan

——in order to obtain the economic expansion which we need. The Fine Gael Party purport to be an alternative Government in this country.

Mr. S. Collins

Give us the chance.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

And there will be no turnover tax.

Mr. S. Collins

And there will be no feathers in their tail.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

We will not have to buy our way there.

Mr. Lenihan

The difference between the Fine Gael Party and the Fianna Fáil Party is a very simple one. We face up to our responsibility and believe when we are enjoined by the people to govern that we should govern. We do not intend to founder in the way previous Fine Gael and Coalition Governments foundered in the past. We do not intend to scuttle in the way the Coalition Government scuttled in February, 1957, although they had theoretically got the support they needed to carry on business.

Mr. S. Collins

What about 1957 when the Big Chief scuttled?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

If the Big Chief were here, to give him his due, we would have an election.

Mr. Lenihan

If Deputy Collins is "scuttled", it is no fault of mine.

Mr. S. Collins

Do not take me on on your father. He was a decent member of the National Army and so was Deputy Haughey's father.

Dr. Ryan

Are you blaming him for that? Do you think that a disgrace?

Mr. S. Collins

You never served.

Mr. Dolan

He was serving in 1916, was he not?

Mr. S. Collins

I was there before he was. The colours were the same.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If Deputy Collins does not desist, I shall have to ask him to leave the House.

Mr. S. Collins

I will not leave the House but if anyone provokes me, I will challenge him and answer him.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No matter about challenges, this is disorder.

Mr. S. Collins

You were not in the Army either, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. It was a Collins who founded the National Army and who secured the freedom of the country. Tell that to anybody you like. Tell that to the Taoiseach.

Mr. Lenihan

I think the Fine Gael Party had a fairly good scheme by which they submitted Deputies like Deputy Collins to a course of rehabilitation in 1957 and in 1961. They had him under some such rehabilitation in some limbo in West Cork. At the present time he is back but on his present performance I would say that he was due another such course of rehabilitation.

Mr. S. Collins

Give me the chance and I will challenge you tomorrow.

Mr. Lenihan

I shall leave the question of rehabilitation to the genius of the Fine Gael Party.

Mr. S. Collins

You have been in only once. I have been in five times.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I would like to hear the Parliamentary Secretary on the Bill.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would like to hear the Parliamentary Secretary but it is very difficult.

Mr. A. Barry

The Parliamentary Secretary, I think, is inviting observations from this side of the House.

Dr. Ryan

He was on the Bill when he was interrupted.

Mr. Donegan

How these things start, nobody knows. Now let them finish.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Deputy Collins did not say anything wrong or anything out of place.

Mr. Donegan

Nobody did.

Mr. S. Collins

This Parliament was founded by a Collins, thanks be to God.

Mr. Lenihan

The issue is quite clearly this: it is a question of government.

Mr. S. Collins

Doubtful government.

Mr. Lenihan

We, by virtue of the decision of the Irish people, find ourselves in the position in 1963 that we must devise taxation which is necessary in order to achieve further expansion and achieve by 1970 a total national income of £1,000 million, an increase in national income of 30 per cent in accordance with the four and five per cent rises in national income since the initiation of the Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958. We must decide whether we want to go forward as we have done since 1958 or whether we do not. We have come down definitely on this basis. We believe that in order to achieve the standard of living and the economic growth to sustain that standard in our community planning is necessary. Since 1958 we have had a certain success in the working out of the Programme for Economic Expansion first published in that year. We have exceeded by more than 100 per cent the target set. Inside the coming months the full details of our new programme for economic expansion designed to achieve the targets I have mentioned will be published.

In the achievement of any such targets, in the achievement of the progress we desire in the working out of the economic expansion and development of our community, one thing is clearly necessary in our circumstances; that is a continued involvement by the Government in all such expansion. It is quite clear that in our circumstances the Government, no matter what Government it is, must take a positive lead in all economic expansion. By reason of our late start in the industrial race this is one of the facts of life as far as this country is concerned. If the State is to take such a positive lead in the economic expansion and development of our community it is essential to devise a taxation system which will yield to the State the revenue necessary for such expansion.

Mr. Belton

Provided the money is not wasted.

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary loves the sound of his own voice.

Mr. Lenihan

It all comes down to one essential principle and a recognition of that principle; we in Ireland today must plan and work ahead for economic expansion; secondly, the State must play a positive part in that work of, first, planning and, secondly, providing the capital to ensure that both the private and the public sectors play their part in such planning. Lastly, we must devise here the necessary taxation measures designed to yield the revenue for this overall purpose.

This Finance Bill must be viewed in that context. Nobody here will deny that there are many improvements needed over various sectors of our economic life. I referred on the Second Stage, and again on the Committee Stage, to one particular field—the field of education. The Minister for Education has announced the policy proposals he is working on at the moment, proposals designed to ensure a broad range of technical and technological education for our people, a type of education we need here to gear the country over the 'sixties and the 'seventies, a type of education designed to ensure that the ordinary man's child can acquire through the technical school and the technological college the technical and other qualifications which are in such great demand in the world today.

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary is accepting our policy.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Lenihan

That type of educational policy will, of course, need further financial assistance by way of scholarship development. More financial assistance will be needed to set on foot the extended scope of the institutions necessary to provide the technical and technological education. All of these could use to the full the entire amount which can be garnered in one year from the turnover tax alone. I would not be satisfied with an increased expenditure of £11,500,000, which is the increase we hope to get from the turnover tax, on education. I feel even more could be spent in this field alone in the 'sixties by any State anxious to equip itself as it should be equipped for the world today. I can go through various other fields where the State must and will have to in future take a positive lead. A Land Bill has been introduced here. We will take the Second Stage of that Bill after the Recess.

Mr. S. Collins

If we meet.

Mr. Lenihan

That goes without saying.

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary is hopeful.

Mr. Lenihan

In any progressive attempt to get down to the roots of the land distribution problem, much more money needs to be spent. Under the proposed new Bill, I envisage the Land Commission taking increased powers to engage in the acquisition and distribution of land. That inevitably will require more finance. It goes without saying that any attempt to put the Land Commission on a sound basis and equip it with the necessary powers to adopt a more progressive distribution policy in regard to land must require extra money. If the Land Commission is to function as it is envisaged it should function under the proposed Bill it will require at least another £2 million a year to carry out its job and perform its functions.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

What has it been doing up to this?

Mr. Lenihan

It has been doing its job, but I feel it can do more. The purpose of the Bill is to give the Land Commission increased powers and, consequentially, the increased finances necessary to carry on a proper distribution policy, particularly in the congested areas.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Let us see the Land Bill before we discuss it.

Mr. Lenihan

Education, land policy, agriculture. In regard to agriculture it is acknowledged that there is a disparity——

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary knows nothing about agriculture.

Mr. Lenihan

——which has arisen in recent years between urban and farm incomes. We must aim at an agricultural policy which will reduce that disparity.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

That is a great concession.

Mr. Barrett

The Parliamentary Secretary's Government have been aiming at that for the past 20 years and have not hit the target yet.

Mr. Lenihan

In regard to industry, we have to work out a balanced incomes policy. I was glad to hear Deputy Sweetman speak about this. That policy will have to be worked out within the broad framework of economic policy generally. That is why——

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

The turnover tax is not necessary.

Mr. Lenihan

——the Government are asking employers and trade unions to come together in the council which is in the process of being established and which will help towards the forward planning of our economy for the 'sixties and the 'seventies within the broad framework of our development. In that broad framework of our national economy the industrial council and the trade union and employer representatives can help the Government to work out a balanced incomes policy.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

How can one plan for the past?

Mr. Lenihan

Aiming at certain targets for increase in the national income, trade unions and employers can hammer out an incomes policy directly related to anticipated increases in productivity.

Mr. A. Barry

If there were a tax on ráiméis, the Parliamentary Secretary would be worth a million. Will he say something specific about something?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perhaps Deputies will allow the Parliamentary Secretary to make his speech.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Would you not think the Parliamentary Secretary would mention his own Department?

Mr. Lenihan

I shall deal with the Deputy tonight on the Adjournment.

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary was not able to bait the hook.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Lenihan

It is acknowledged that we must work out a balanced incomes policy.

Mr. A. Barry

He is off again.

Mr. Lenihan

It is here the new council can perform a very real function. Again, this is a matter which will require additional Government finance and Government assistance in the future. In regard to the sphere of social welfare legislation, I agree with many members of the Labour Party and with the National Progressive Democrats——

Mr. S. Collins

But they do not agree with the Parliamentary Secretary, you know.

Mr. Lenihan

——that social welfare legislation could be put on a more rational basis, a basis which would provide greater good for our people. Again, it is a question of finance.

Mr. Corish

What, in the Parliamentary Secretary's opinion, should social welfare be related to?

Mr. Lenihan

I would relate social welfare increases, income increases, and all necessary increases for the welfare of the community to the framework of an over-all national plan.

Mr. Donegan

What does that mean? Will the Parliamentary Secretary say something?

Mr. S. Collins

Will he come down off his high horse?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

He has spent too much time talking to the Taoiseach.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would ask Deputies to cease this barrage. The Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to speak just as other Deputies.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Lenihan

I did not hear Deputy Corish.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Corish has already spoken.

Mr. Corish

The Parliamentary Secretary is agreeable to hearing me. I merely want to ask him would he relate tax revenue to tax income?

Mr. Lenihan

Yes. The important thing is to devise——

Mr. S. Collins

Words, words, words.

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Collins finds himself once more in the Fine Gael Party.

Mr. S. Collins

But your father was in the Cumann na nGaedheal Party.

Mr. Donegan

The Parliamentary Secretary was told to leave Deputy Collins alone if he wants to be left alone.

Mr. Lenihan

The Labour Party is rightly concerned with the future planning of our economy and how we are to achieve the targets we propose to set out in the new Programme for Economic Expansion in the various sectors. They are concerned and we are concerned that one thing necessary to ensure the future of this State is a broadly-based system of taxation that will yield the revenue necessary to carry out the plans in the fields I have mentioned—in education, in agriculture, in industry, in social welfare legislation. To carry out the improvements in these sectors so often advanced by those people who are concerned with them, there is one thing necessary, that is, that the State in our circumstances, and charged with the responsibility of ensuring those improvements, will have a steady flow of revenue coming in to ensure that these various functions are discharged. The issue is as simple as that. It comes to the simple issue that people are expected to face up to the fact that improvement is necessary and if improvement is necessary, the taxation measures to sustain that improvement must be devised.

Mr. Corish

In your opinion, should a broadly-based taxation system embrace bread and butter?

Mr. A. Barry

That is too specific a question.

Mr. Lenihan

What we want from the Labour Party——

Mr. S. Collins

Is support and you are not getting it.

Mr. Lenihan

——is an alternative taxation system designed to yield the revenue we hope to obtain from the turnover tax. What we want from the Labour Party or anyone else who expresses criticism is a concrete suggestion as to how the alternative revenue can be obtained for the purposes we mention. The Labour Party and ourselves are with each other, as it were, on the forward looking planning that is so necessary to our State today. They are with us on the need for the improvements I have mentioned in the sectors I have mentioned. I say to them that they have not gone the whole way and faced up to their responsibility. We have faced up to our responsibilities and devised the necessary taxation system to yield the revenue to carry out the proposals and objectives which we seek.

We have nothing but contempt for the Fine Gael Party. Fundamentally, they are not with us. They are not with us in planning for economic expansion and more equitable social services. The Fine Gael Party are essentially negative, opportunist and expedient. They are not planning ahead; they are merely concerned with the immediate, narrow objective of dislodging the present Government.

Mr. S. Collins

Try a general election.

Mr. Lenihan

The aim and ambition of the Fine Gael Party do not go beyond that immediate narrow objective of dislodging the Government. We have heard proposals from the Labour Party, particularly regarding education. We have heard constructive suggestions as to future planning in regard to national economic policy. We have not heard anything of that nature from the Fine Gael Party who, as I say, are concerned with the narrow expedient of dislodging the Government.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is what the people want, not Fine Gael.

Mr. Lenihan

I dealt with that very fully on the constitutional issue. The people have expressed themselves. They expressed themselves last October 12 months.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

They did not know about the turnover tax.

Mr. Lenihan

The expression of their will resides in the fact that there is a Government here today to govern the country.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

On a point of order——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary is in possession and unless this is a point of order——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It is not.

Mr. Lenihan

We are not having Deputy Flanagan on a point of disorder.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I was honest about it anyway. There was not a single word about the turnover tax in the last general election.

Mr. Lenihan

At the risk of repeating myself, I feel that it is again necessary to point out to Deputy Flanagan the essential nature of the constitutional system, that this Government or any other Government, or any political Party facing the electorate are not required to tell the electors in full what they propose to do.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Of course they should. An honest Party would.

Mr. Lenihan

The main plank on which we fought the last election was the Programme for Economic Expansion initiated in 1958. We asked for a mandate to continue that work. That was the mandate we sought from the people and in accordance with that mandate, we, as the people's representatives, have the duty and obligation to devise the necessary taxation measures which we consider necessary to ensure that that programme is carried out.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

What mandate did Fianna Fáil get a few weeks ago?

Mr. Lenihan

I have mentioned the various improvements which we seek, and which the Labour Party seek, in various sectors of our economy.

Mr. S. Collins

Are you not wooing them very hard?

Mr. Lenihan

Apart from that, there is one basic requisite for any Government and without it, it cannot hope to succeed.

Mr. A. Barry

Deputy Sherwin.

Mr. Lenihan

That is the creation of a climate of confidence. Most logical people would agree that what we have done since 1957, what Time referred to last week——

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order, Deputies must allow the Parliamentary Secretary to proceed.

Mr. Lenihan

What Time referred to last week was that since 1957 a new climate of confidence has been created in this country. How has that been done?

Mr. McQuillan

Since you got your Leader up in the Park.

Mr. Lenihan

It has been done on essential principles again concerned with the constitutional question of government. Since 1957——

Mr. McQuillan

That is what Time said, because you put Mr. de Valera in the Park.

Mr. Lenihan

Since 1957, we have had confidence in this country——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It cost about £537 to erect a mahogany, silver-topped tall hat cabinet up in the Park.

Dr. Ryan

Another Flanagan story.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

And a few years ago, he would not wear a tall hat for the Papal Legate.

Dr. Ryan

Another Flanagan story.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It happens to be true.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Flanagan will resume his seat.

Mr. Lenihan

A desperate tall story. All his life Deputy Flanagan has been at it. He is the most acknowledged tall story writer and teller in this country.

Mr. S. Collins

The Parliamentary Secretary has a tough rival.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputies must desist and allow the Parliamentary Secretary to make his statement.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Mahogany, with silver mounting.

Dr. Ryan

The Fine Gael Party all enjoy that sort of story.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It is quite true.

Dr. Ryan

The more lies they tell, the better they enjoy themselves.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

On a point of order, is it in order for the Minister for Finance to say a lie has been told here. He said a lie was uttered here.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will resume his seat. I would remind him this is the national Parliament and that this sort of conduct can only bring it into disrepute.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Who is responsible? It is the Minister for Finance.

Dr. Ryan

Go ahead; amuse your Party.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Maybe one of those days you will put your hat on it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary on the Bill.

Mr. Lenihan

I shall go on to another constitutional lesson. It concerns the behaviour now of the Fine Gael Party. If anything is calculated to bring this Parliament into disrepute, as you, Sir, feared, it is the behaviour of some of the comic people the Fine Gael Party have transferred to their Front Benches in the past few months. All the comic artists in that Party find themselves in the Front Benches under the circus master who does not happen to be here at the moment.

Mr. Donegan

Who is the circus master?

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Dillon, of course.

Mr. Donegan

On a point of order, is it in order for the Parliamentary Secretary to describe a Deputy as a circus master?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am glad the Deputy is interested in a point of order.

Mr. Donegan

I have not been disorderly.

Mr. Geoghegan

Every day you have.

Mr. Donegan

That is a matter for the Chair to decide, anyway. Is it in order for the Parliamentary Secretary to describe a member of this House as a circus master?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Surely the Chair is not going to allow the Parliamentary Secretary to refer to the Leader of the Opposition as a circus master?

Mr. Lenihan

I would consider that a rather mild description.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I was not aware the Parliamentary Secretary referred to the Leader of the Fine Gael Party.

Mr. Barrett

He named him in my hearing. He named Deputy Dillon when he was asked whom he was referring to as a circus master.

Mr. Donegan

And he said he thought it was a very mild term.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Surely the Chair will ask the Parliamentary Secretary to withdraw that remark?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the Parliamentary Secretary made such a reference, it must be withdrawn.

Mr. Lenihan

I did not specify Deputy Dillon.

Mr. Donegan

The Parliamentary Secretary did. It is on the records of the House.

Mr. Barrett

Did he or did he not name Deputy Dillon when he was asked who the circus master was?

Mr. Lenihan

I will not be subjected to cross-examination by the Deputy.

Mr. Barrett

On a point of order, the Parliamentary Secretary has denied to us now that he named Deputy Dillon. I heard him do so and I am asking him, through you, Sir, did he or did he not name Deputy Dillon as a circus master?

Mr. Lenihan

His behaviour, yes. It is of the nature of a circus master.

Mr. Barrett

He should be asked to withdraw.

Mr. Lenihan

I was describing Deputy Dillon's behaviour. If I described him as such, I withdraw it, but I want to say that his behaviour here of late has been of the nature of a circus master, and, indeed, the behaviour of the Fine Gael Party during the past half hour, since I attempted to make a constructive speech, is also of that nature. The important thing in any economic plan is the creation of a climate of confidence. We have done that since 1947 because we have been able to present to the people an image of a Government in charge of the affairs of the nation, not a Government that is liable to scuttle like the previous Government was scuttled in 1957 and twice before that.

Since 1957, the affairs of this country have been handled in a different way to such an extent that private enterprise has been able to expand both from investment at home and foreign investment which has come in here in the knowledge that there is an equitable taxation system, a Government securely in charge of the affairs of the nation, and that there is a general climate of confidence, the basic ingredient of any expanding economy. That climate of confidence has been reflected in a number of ways—a steady rise of four to five per cent per annum in the national income over the past few years, our external assets continuing to increase, emigration being cut to a very extensive degree and employment in industry steadily rising. These are just some of the indicators which go to show the general climate of confidence from the point of view of investment and of the development of the economy.

It has increased tremendously since 1957 and the greatest single indicator of that fact is the position in regard to banking and bank credits. Anyone who remembers the position in 1957 will bear out what I have said. I was at that time a member of a local authority with Deputy McQuillan and have a very clear recollection of the financial difficulties that local authority had, due to the closure of the Local Loans Fund. Now there is the position where not alone have we the Local Loans Fund but the financial institutions, the banks, are able to give money on reasonable terms not only to local authorities but to private business as well.

All in all, we have the necessary psychological and financial climate for the desired improvement in the economy. The fact that we have been able to foster confidence in the people has had this effect. But that is only one side of the question. The other is the direct participation by the State itself, either through its various Departments—Lands, Fisheries, Forestry—or indirectly through the Industrial Credit Company in assisting private industry. This participation by the State is the most important single reason for the increased revenue we seek not alone through these proposals but in other taxation proposals that have not come before the House.

We believe it is necessary for the State to give the lead not only in planning but sometimes in direct intervention in business. There is no other issue in Irish public life today except this: a division or disagreement between the people who believe it is important to take an objective lead directly in our economy and those who do not so believe. The people who believe that the State must take a positive part in developing our economy to a greater level than this will support our measures. They realise full well that increasing Government expenditure in the proper directions is necessary and that we need the revenue to sustain that expenditure. On the other side, there are the obscurantist people who do not believe in increasing Government expenditure, who do not believe in the State's taking a positive part in directing the country's economy. I believe these obscurantist people as a whole reside in the Fine Gael Party. Those people who believe in the future reside in or support the Fianna Fáil Party. I believe that is the issue in Irish politics today.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy McQuillan.

Mr. Corish

I have no objection to Deputy McQuillan but would the Chair tell me how many Labour speakers have been allowed to participate in this debate?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Since the debate on the Fifth Stage commenced today, three Government Deputies have intervened, three Fine Gael, two Independents and one Labour. None of the Deputy's Party I have just called has spoken and I feel he should be called on at this stage.

Mr. A. Barry

Do you not think the Independents——

Mr. Corish

Deputy Tully offered on a few occasions and Deputy Norton has offered. This is a bit lopsided as far as the Labour Party are concerned. I want to protest.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It would be lopsided if I left Deputy Dr. Browne's Party outside, too.

Mr. Corish

Two Independents have spoken as against one in a Party of 16.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is the duty of the Chair to ensure that all viewpoints are heard.

Mr. Corish

In order to get an opportunity to speak, is it the position that we should declare ourselves Independents?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No.

Mr. Corish

It is unfair. With respect, the Chair has not been fair in this instance.

Mr. Donegan

The people who are complaining were perhaps not here to offer all the time.

Mr. Corish

The Labour Party were here.

Mr. McQuillan

I have been here since 10.30 this morning, except for one break of half an hour. I offered myself on each occasion, without success. The last speaker, Deputy Lenihan, referred to the fact, as a member of a local authority, that in 1957 it had difficulty in obtaining the necessary credit to carry out the desirable and essential works which are the responsibility of the local authority. He went on to develop the point that when the change of Government came about there was a loosening-up of the pursestrings and that credit was made available by the banking concerns to local authorities and to the State.

I should like to say this much to this new recruit to a left-wing policy. Is it not a terrible condemnation of a State to say that a Government in power or the Government to be have to take their caps off and go humbly to the private banks and ask them for sufficient credit to run the State? Is that not what that statement by Deputy Lenihan amounts to? Is it not a confession on his part that the Government have no power whatever over the means of developing the State and that the stranglehold of credit and finance is something that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot break? To a great extent, that very admission on the part of a member of the Government makes discussions in this House seem to me at any rate to be very unrealistic.

If the money which is absolutely essential for development purposes can be held back by the banking system which is controlled from outside this State, what hope have any Government of embarking on a progressive policy which this present Government suggest they intend to do? Nobody for a moment ever believed that the sources who control credit are progressive in their outlook. Nobody can accuse our own organisations such as the Central Bank, and so on, of being progressive. They have always adopted a cautious attitude. This morning, we listened to the Taoiseach giving what I can only describe as a back-to-the-wall speech——

Mr. S. Collins

Sermon.

Mr. McQuillan

It was undoubtedly one of the finest speeches made by the present Taoiseach. It was a last-minute attempt to rally support for a Party that is crumbling under his own eyes. It was a last-minute attempt at the same time to frighten the general public that if Fianna Fáil are put out of office nothing but chaos will descend on the country.

I recollect, when I was a lot younger, listening to older people talking about the war. The previous Taoiseach of the Fianna Fáil Party managed for years on end to keep the day with him on the grounds that there was a danger of a war, that there was a danger of Ireland being involved in a war and, in those circumstances, it would be a disaster for the State to shake or shift the Government.

There is no war now but the same old bogey must be produced. Some other means must be found of dragooning the public or frightening the public into giving Fianna Fáil a prolonged lease of life. On this occasion, the Taoiseach saw fit deliberately to criticise the Irish electorate, to sneer at them here, because they did not agree with his idea on proportional representation. He told the Irish people here this morning that they were wrong not to have got rid of proportional representation, that the result now is that the country for the future will face minority Government.

I do not know that minority government is such a great disaster. I do not think it would be possible to have any greater disaster than the type of majority government we have had under Fianna Fáil for sixteen to twenty years. In spite of the overall majority they had, ranging at times to ten, 12 and 15 seats over and above all parties combined, they failed in their tasks to give an opportunity to the majority of our citizens to live in Ireland, to give them a decent standard of living, to provide work for them at home, to expand industry generally and, above all, to create a new approach in agriculture. They failed as a government with an overall majority the like of which will never be seen again. They failed to bring about that change. Why? Because that very majority they had gave them a sense of complacency and they sat back and played poker in their Party rooms when they should have been up and at it, concerned with the problems of State, instead of being concerned solely with how to prolong their life in office.

Bag after bag of clichés were produced here this morning by the Parliamentary Secretary and by the Minister for Transport and Power whom I can only describe as a man suffering from mental constipation and verbal diarrhoea, having listened to his speech this morning on this matter. We have had the statement from the Taoiseach that he believes in the growing maturity of the Irish public to accept what Fianna Fáil now offer. Does he then suggest that the Irish people were an immature, raw society for the past 30 years? I am inclined to agree with him. They must have been immature and raw for quite a while when they stood for what they had in office.

The Taoiseach said this morning that in the past, at times, economic progress was left to chance; that, as far as the future was concerned, he could not speak but that the danger is that men of no fixed aims may hold the political security of this country in their hands in the future: that men of no fixed aims may hold the political future of this country in their hands. If we examine these statements, we shall find that those chickens will come home to roost in one Party. The one I am concerned with at the moment is the one in office—Fianna Fáil.

The Taoiseach spoke of economic progress being left to chance. How many times in this House in the past 15 years have we listened to the Fianna Fáil front benchers saying it would be a crime for the State to interfere in the planning of society in this State? How many times did we hear it said that development here must be left to private enterprise? How many times in the past 12 months have members of the Government Front Bench said inside and outside this House that they worship at the shrine of private enterprise? That was a fixed part of their policy until less than 12 months ago. What have we now? Anybody who listened carefully to the Parliamentary Secretary a few minutes ago heard him say that Fianna Fáil believe the State must step in and plan. If that is not a political somersault, I do not know what is.

I do not attribute a great deal of weight to the words of that particular Parliamentary Secretary, but we must attribute some weight to the words of the Taoiseach himself. He stated recently, both inside and outside this House, that Fianna Fáil are moving to the left. How sudden was that conversion and how true is it. If I felt it was a sincere conversion, I would be the first to welcome it, because I believe it would make a tremendous change in this country. It gives me no pleasure—in fact, I do so with the greatest distaste—to say I do not believe that the Taoiseach and the members of his Cabinet are genuine when they say they have adopted a new policy of a progressive, left-wing approach to the major problems facing the country.

If it is true, they are shuttlecocks and have no principle if they are to switch overnight on a matter of vital importance. It is less than 12 months since the Minister for Finance made it clear here he was about to take steps to hand back to private enterprise a number of existing State companies. He was questioned here as to whether it was the Sugar Company, Bord na Móna, the ESB or what companies. He did not give us any idea. He spoke at dinners in various towns about the desirability of handing back successful State companies to private enterprise. When questioned on it here, he did not deny that the Government had such a plan in mind.

For the past nine months, we have not heard a word from the Minister for Finance about that plan. Why? Is it not because of the sudden new approach of a pseudo left-wing policy, which would make it impossible to sell out these successful companies? This shows the Government have not thought of what it involves. They have seen an opportunity to disassociate themselves from another major Party in this House. The two Parties had become so close on matters of public importance that they were actually pushing each other to try and find some difference. Fianna Fáil have slipped in with this new idea that they will go left and seek the votes of the underdog while, at the same time, take a gamble and try to hold on to what they have over the years.

The Taoiseach said this morning that Fianna Fáil were concerned for the future and sought a plan, hard work and sacrifice. Let us look at the last one first. So long as I can recall, we had a previous Taoiseach on practically every occasion possible putting a hair-shirt on the Irish people. Now his successor wants sacrifice from the Irish people. I believe the sacrifice has always been made by the poorer section of the community, by the emigrants and by those who cannot get work here. I have yet to see the people who have been spoon-fed and pampered by Fianna Fáil making any sacrifice over the past 20 years.

The previous Fianna Fáil policy was embodied in the sentence: "I look into my heart and I know what the Irish people want." That is thrown overboard now, and that is no harm. Now we have the sudden conversion to a planned economy, but where are the signs so far of it being put into operation? The Government have used the idea to attract the younger voters and the more progressive elements among our people by speaking about the duty of the State to intervene, but at the same time they are acting in a completely opposite direction.

We can see what the effect of this turnover tax will be on the cost of living. An increase in the cost of living will mean an increase in the price of commodities, and that in turn will mean that industrial groups will find it harder than ever to compete in foreign markets. Since the Taoiseach declared himself in favour of entering EEC, expert examinations have been carried out to find out whether our industries would be able to stand up to foreign competition. With the exception of the report in respect of the cattle and meat industry, every report from the CIO has shown that the number to be disemployed in these industries ranges from 30 per cent down to 5 per cent in spite of any reorganisation that would take place in these industries.

Those are cold, hard facts. There will be a reduction of 30,000 in the number employed in these industries if the tariff walls come down. What is going to be the position? We are not able to compete with those countries. The prices of our products are too high and costs are too high. Is it not a fact that the provisions of this Finance Bill, particularly in relation to the turnover tax, will make the situation still harder as far as the export market is concerned? Where does that leave us, when and if this country's application for admission to the EEC is further considered?

I must say this: the speech made today by the Taoiseach, one of the best he has made since he became Taoiseach, was a back-to-the-wall speech. It was an attempt on his part to justify himself for the years he was in the wilderness. He has sought in this speech to hold Fianna Fáil together for the last time, and when his policy and his years in government have been examined, I have not the slightest doubt that the Irish electorate which he has now said must be mature will find him and his Party wanting. An examination of the record of his Party even since 1957 will convince any thinking person that it is time to get rid of Fianna Fáil.

As far as his statement is concerned that the future may lie in the hands of people who have no firm convictions and no political philosophy, I think that that will be the position if Fianna Fáil are able to hold on to office. Whatever may be said about the older members in the present Cabinet, my belief is that what is there to replace them have no philosophy at all, no standards except "hold on to office, get into power, and stay there as long as you possibly can." I believe the members of the Fianna Fáil Party whose tongues are now hanging out for power to replace the older men are prepared to go left or right or any way possible if they think they will get into office. The country cannot afford playacting in politics for the purpose of allowing people to reach high places. If it was a political game where nobody was hurt, it would not be so bad, but in the process of all this jogging about and tricking, the Irish nation is suffering.

It is a terrible comment on the public life in Ireland today that the Taoiseach has decided to walk into this House and say that Fianna Fáil are the national Party and that if they go out of office, the country is lost. This is the same Taoiseach who within the past 12 months spent his time touring the capitals of the major countries of Europe hawking—and that is the only word I could use—this country for sale to the highest bidder. We have them today flocking into this country to take advantage of the wonderful facilities offered by this Government, people who are attracted by the speeches made by the Taoiseach abroad. The new approach seems to be that it does not matter who owns the land or the industries of Ireland, provided that there are a few people employed and that Fianna Fáil can say: "We increased the number in employment last year by 5,000 and we hope to increase it further by another 7,000 next year."

Do this Government believe that the Ireland which they had hoped to see free and able to give a living to its people here is one where the best land is owned by non-nationals and where the industrial potential is exploited for the benefit of non-nationals, where profits are made on Irish investments the Irish people poured into industry are taken fully out of this country for the benefit of a limited number of investors who only put up a small fraction of the initial cost when the industry was started? Why has there not been a proviso when Irish money is being handed out in the course of this industrial development plan that profits made as a result of Irish money being handed over to these private entrepreneurs, are or at least a proportion of them, are ploughed back into the industry in Ireland? Is it not a fact that the only advantage at the moment in having some of these foreign industrialists in here is the work given?

It will, I know, be argued by some people in this House: "Are not the Irish people better off working here in Ireland no matter who owns or controls the industries or what profits are made than to be working in Birmingham or Liverpool?" I wonder if that is a sensible or honest way to face up to this—that this country is not able to solve its own problems, that we can only let these foreigners in on their own valuation, take what they like out of this country and in return pay slave wages as they are doing in many cases all over the country? Is the new development now that the people who should be looking after the interests of the workers will not even fight in the Labour Court or elsewhere to see that the position is changed in which girls are being paid anything from £2 18s. to £3 4s. for a week's hard work, and that the companies which have got State money in order to allow them to pay a wage of that nature are brought to heel and forced to pay proper wages?

The CIO reports available to the Government are a warning sign, a red light to them that this country is not able to compete now in the international field in trade. What is the position going to be when the wholesalers and traders get their fingers into the pie? As far as this Finance Bill is concerned, I want to make it clear that I am not speaking on behalf of the traders. They have their own spokesmen in this House and out of it. But I do want to make it clear that the consumer is going to be the victim in this in the long run. That is admitted by all and sundry.

Today the Minister for Industry and Commerce was asked what action would be taken by the Government to ensure that no more than the 2½ per cent turnover tax which is now going into operation would be passed on to the consumer when the cost went up. The Minister said that he was taking no action. All he was doing was exhorting the traders and those whose business it is to deal with the price structure not to raise prices of commodities over and above what the purchase tax amounts to. Is it not beyond dispute that not alone will this 2½ per cent purchase tax come into operation but that on top of that, the corporation profits tax and other taxes which this Government are now imposing will find their way right along the line to the consumer who will be forced to pay?

It is not 2½ per cent on the first round of an increase; it will be at least 4 per cent next January when this tax is in operation—if ever. There is no sign of a progressive approach in this type of turnover tax. As I said before, if the Government, when dealing with the turnover tax, were prepared at the same time to bring in price control there would be a lot to be said for supporting a tax if it excluded the necessities of life. None of these things is being done. Even drugs and medicines that would assist in maintaining health in the country are subject to tax.

I cannot understand how the Government, who regard themselves as humanitarian and progressive, looking with abhorrence on what they call the Tory mentality, could tax medicine that helps to save human life and fail to tax medicine for animals. Is there not a conflict between their left wing stand, as they describe it, and their actual policy in operation? The animal is put before the human being.

The argument has been made that this type of turnover tax is imposed on medicine in Sweden. That was stated by the Minister for Finance. Is the Minister prepared to bring in here the type of health services available in Sweden? Of the countries mentioned here, with which comparisons have been made in Western Europe, it is beyond contradiction that Ireland has the worst health service of them all. It is so bad that even the present Minister for Health had to agree to set up a Committee of the House to examine the possibilities of improving it. The whole business is a stalling measure but there is dissatisfaction all over the country with the existing services and the cost of medicines.

Last year a half-promise was extracted from the Minister for Health that he would examine the possibilities of bulk buying of medicines and drugs in view of their outrageous cost. Now we find that instead of legislation to subsidise the price of drugs and medicine and make them available to the community at reasonable prices the Government has imposed a turnover tax on them. For that offence alone against the public they deserve to be driven into the wilderness.

The case for the trade groups has been made and I am sure will be made before long in another sphere but irrespective of what the Taoiseach has said, whether he likes it or not the traders have a right under the Constitution to protest against what they believe to be an unjust tax even though we know they will pass it on.

The Taoiseach again today launched a further attack on the traders and issued a warning to them. He was not satisfied to leave it there but then turned on the farming community and, in what I thought was the most serious part of his speech, he lashed out at the farming community and sneeringly pointed out that they should be thankful for the £6 million of dole money they got. That is how the Taoiseach described the support given to the agricultural industry. I wonder what farmer Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party think of that description by the Dublin Taoiseach who looks at Irish agriculture through Dublin spectacles and says: "I see that group of farmers doing nothing as usual." He has always shown contempt for them and today he revealed complete dislike. So far as the aid given to agriculture is concerned, much of it is misused, misdirected and misplaced. It is wrong to say the farmer is getting that aid. If butter is subsidised and the subsidy paid to the British people to eat our butter, how is it suggested the Irish farmer benefits by it? In my opinion, neither farmer nor consumer here benefit from that subsidy. Yet, we have that sneering reference by the Taoiseach.

I am not here to speak for the large farmers and if the Taoiseach ever wants support for a policy of acquiring the lands of ranchers, if he had the guts to do it, and dividing the land of those whose time is spent going from one racecourse to another, in the words of the Minister for Lands, he would get support from our group. They do not represent the farming community of Ireland. They may be in high places in outside organisations but if they try to misuse the small farmers they will learn the hard way. The small farmers have been the plaything of Fianna Fáil for years. I hope they will not be the plaything of any vested interest now coming on the horizon. It was made clear in the past month at a regional meeting of representatives of small farmers of Connacht, the Church and various leaders in the West, that the small farmer there is on the way out. He and his family are being wiped out faster than during the Famine by pressure of events here, by a policy stated today by the Dublin Taoiseach of the Government who knows nothing about the people in the west of Ireland except when he goes to fish in County Mayo with his new-found friend from London, who owns half O'Connell Street. The new ice cream general in O'Connell Street is the only company the Taoiseach can pick when he visits the west of Ireland.

An Leas Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should not mention in the House private individuals who have no means of replying to him.

Mr. S. Collins

The Deputy did not mention any individual.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. McQuillan

If the Deputy who is now talking wants to refer to the RIC, there were as good men in the RIC as ever there were in the Fianna Fáil Party who robbed banks when they got a chance.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Deputy is hitting a very sore point there and he does not know it. Do not tell me about the robbing of banks.

Mr. McQuillan

I do not want to get into a discussion with the back benchers of the Fianna Fáil Party who want to put me off what I wish to say. The Taoiseach has no interest in the small farmer. There is an old saying and it applies in politics: by their company you shall know them. That is what we see in the west of Ireland and the farmer members of the Fianna Fáil Party should be ashamed of the fact that the man who leads them today has nothing but contempt for the farmers of Ireland, who says they should be thankful they are getting £6 million of a dole handout. If I described the Taoiseach as a liar, you, Sir, would force me to withdraw it, but let me say it is completely untrue to suggest that the small farmers are being subsidised in any way.

There is a vast difference between the rancher farmer—and I might add to the rancher farmer those who in recent years have turned wheat farmers —and the small farmer in Ireland. When I refer to the small farmer, I mean a farmer of under £40 or £45 valuation. That man is not getting a fair crack of the whip as far as the State is concerned over the years. There has been a great deal of talk from Fianna Fáil that they are helping the small farmer. The figures for the last year show that last year was the worst as regards the numbers leaving the land. Why is it? Nobody can say this Government had to clean up a mess made in the past four years by a previous Government they describe as a Coalition Government. That Coalition Government cannot be used as an excuse since 1957. It will not work as far as the small farmers are concerned because over the past three years they have been leaving faster than they did in the previous four years.

Why is the small farmer leaving? What is there in this Budget and in this turnover tax that will attract him to stay on here in Ireland? I have heard Government speakers say there was more money for education, that there was an increase in the last six or seven years from £13 million to over £20 million spent on education. Let us put it quite bluntly that the biggest proportion of the increase was in salaries. I do not deplore that. The teachers are entitled to their increase but there is a backlog—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is here opposite me—of about 800 schools condemned and needing replacement. The replacement rate is not sufficient to catch up with the backlog, in spite of the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary who is here in the House is possibly the most energetic member of the Government.

How are the children of the small farmer benefiting in the educational field? We shall not have an opportunity of discussing the Estimate for Education before the recess. The Government think so little of it that they can postpone that discussion until next November. There has been talk here about the money needed for afforestation. Since when did Fianna Fáil become interested in afforestation? How many times have I been told in this House since I came here that there was no rabbit wire or fencing material and that it was consequently impossible to carry out a plantation programme because the rabbits would eat the young trees. That answer was given here year after year by various Ministers under Fianna Fáil. That answer was given in 1948 by a Government in power since 1932 and at no stage while they were in office from 1932 to 1948 did the forestry programme exceed a figure of 9,000 acres per year.

It took the Party to which I belong and others in this House at the time to force a recognition in the minds of politicians in this House of the tremendous value to the nation of afforestation. Today the figure is over 25,000 acres. It is not enough but it is on the right road. We have the people opposite us who are in Government today speaking as if they were responsible for afforestation or as if they had an interest in it. They made their position on afforestation clear over the years. Their speakers said it was a long-term programme. There were no votes in the planting of trees.

Mr. Lalor

The trees grew quicker than your Party.

Mr. McQuillan

We know where the timber is. What is there for the small farmer in the west to do? If there were available a sufficiency of forestry work which would enable him to do afforestation work for portion of the year and to work his holding for the rest of the year, we could keep the small farmer in Ireland. At present he is getting neither the afforestation work nor the return from his own holding, and the sad feature of it is that in the west of Ireland the small farmers are turning in their thousands to the county councils asking for a few months' work in the year in order to feed their families. What do we find, that the policy of this Government, so efficient, so modern, so ready to automate in the public service, is responsible for bringing in huge machines all over rural Ireland directed by the local authorities to do the work that men who are unemployed should be doing.

Will the Minister who is present tell me where is the economic commonsense in bringing a big machine into a locality where there are 25 men unemployed? That is what is happening and that policy is coming from the Custom House. I mention that because my view is that if these machines are to be used—and I am the first to preach modernisation and automation —and if we are to automate and use the most modern methods, we must make alternative arrangements for the workers who are disemployed. The only alternative arrangements being made for the workers who are now disemployed are in England with their families and their relations.

In the past 12 months, this Government, in their modernisation drive, have offered industrialists very attractive aid through grant and loan to modernise their premises and their machinery in order to complete with foreign countries. I understand the Government are not even satisfied with the rate at which industrialists are accepting the offers but even in so far as those attractive offers are being accepted, what is the position?

I gave an example of a certain Deputy who came running into this House as if I had made a personal attack on him when I referred to one firm not many miles from this city that received grants of £55,000 to automate portion of its industry. One machine that was brought in displaced eight or nine girls. I should like to ask the Government was any guarantee given by that company that the girls displaced by the machine would be given work in another factory in this country? Is it not a fact that the Irish taxpayers' money is being handed out ad lib to industrialists to allow them to modernise their factories, premises and machines, and that so far as the Government are concerned, there is no aid for the worker?

I admit the Government have set up a committee to examine the question of compensation for disturbance for workers who are put out of employment. Last week, the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that so far this committee has not reported. In other words, while the so-called modernisation programme is going on, and people are being disemployed, the committee set up to look after them has not bothered to report. That shows on whose side the Government are. The Government say they are progressive and moving to the left, in their own words. The Government should protect the worker's job for him but we see industrialists and former pets of the Government getting grants in the hope that they will be able to survive in the competition of the Common Market, if they get in.

I should like to conclude by suggesting to the Taoiseach that the Government have no mandate for this tax. The public had not even an inkling that such a tax was in the mind of the Government. The public, the people who put Fianna Fáil into office, had no clue during the last general election that the Government were moving to the left, in their own words. Supporters of Fianna Fáil today do not know where they stand. They do not know whether Fianna Fáil are left, right or centre. In the interests of the Party, if nothing else, they should go to the country and allow their own supporters to sort out the party and let the public in general decide who should be the next Government.

Mr. Norton

I do not know what purpose it was intended to achieve by sending the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands into the House this afternoon to justify this Budget, or to justify this Finance Bill, because it seemed to me that in his efforts to justify the action taken by the Government in the Finance Bill, he completely mistook his mission.

The outstanding viciousness of the Finance Bill is that it imposes taxation on large sections of the community whose backs are not capable of bearing that taxation. Notwithstanding that fact, the Parliamentary Secretary told the House and the community in general that everything in the garden is lovely. He said this is the best Government that the Irish people have ever got, or ever will get. He gave the impression that the Government are extremely popular with the people —so popular that he would not chance another general election. He told us of the various economic achievements of the Government in general and he gave the impression that everything in the garden is lovely.

If that is so—and for the purposes of argument, let us temporarily admit it is so — what is the necessity for this mass attack on the resources of the masses of the community by taking out of their pockets this year £3½ million in additional taxation, to be followed by the extraction of another £10½ million in the full 12 months of next year? If things are as bright and cheerful on the economic front as he says they are, the case for this indiscriminate taxation collapses. If the situation is as the Parliamentary Secretary said it is, there is no justification for the vicious taxation imposition of the purchase tax which is the cardinal feature of the Bill. Of course, the Parliamentary Secretary cannot have it both ways. He cannot have all that prosperity on the one hand, which he so generously exhibited for his own edification this afternoon, and at the same time, justify the imposition of a heavy rate of taxation on a large mass of the people.

Our general complaint about the Finance Bill is that it lacks imagination. There is no evidence of growth in the Budget or the Finance Bill. The Bill is primarily a punitive measure which taxes a very large number of people. By the very form of that taxation in the Budget and the Finance Bill, the Government confess an inability to raise money from developmental activities to finance the further development about which the Taoiseach spoke today.

If there were faith in the Government's policy, this taxation would not be necessary. If there were hope that what had been done in the past by the Government would fructify, there would be no need for this taxation. If the Government were convinced that dividends would be paid out of past investments, there would be no need for the imposition of this taxation. It is because the Government apparently have no confidence that their past or present actions will result in the development to which they at least pay oral tribute that they have taken the other course, the lazy course, of saying: "Where can we get £10½ million as quickly as possible?"

They found out the amount of goods consumed in the country and said: "What would a 2½ per cent levy realise in 12 months? We can, in fact, get £10½ million in that way if we have the courage to go through with it, so that is the best way of getting the £10½ million. It may be a troublesome way. It may be that the people do not like that way, but that is the way to get £10½ million." Thus we have a purchase tax imposed in this Bill which is a clear indication that the Government have no confidence in their already applied economic policy and no confidence in their economic development for this year.

The tax imposes hardship on people who are ill-equipped to bear it. A famous politician in this country once said that every time he wanted to know what the people of the country needed, he looked into his own heart. I had hoped that method of fortunetelling and mesmerism had passed from the scene. Are we to understand that the Taoiseach has repeated the same exercise and looked into the hearts of the old age pensioners, home assistance recipients, blind persons, sick people, those living on unemployment assistance, and thought the best remedy for those unfortunate people in our community was a purchase tax of 2½ per cent as a minimum? There can be no other explanation of where the tax came from.

At the last election, there was not a single indication of a food tax on the horizon. Candidates who can talk wildly and widely on a variety of subjects at elections never mentioned such a thing. Even the Minister for Transport and Power, who is usually sent out to fly kites, had not a word to say about the taxation of foodstuffs. Nobody mentioned it at the last election and no mandate for the taxation of foodstuffs was given in the last election. Why? Because no mandate was sought to tax food or other essentials of life.

Twelve years ago, we had largescale subsidisation in this country but in 1952, when Fianna Fáil, who had been out of office for three years, took office, they slashed half the food subsidies after saying in the previous general election that they never had any intention of doing so. Then six years afterwards in 1957 when Fianna Fáil got back in office again the remainder of the food subsidies were abolished. They had sought no mandate for cutting the subsidies on that occasion either. In their campaigns prior to the general elections of 1951 and 1957 they never mentioned that they intended to cut the food subsidies but, nevertheless, when they came back to office, without any consultation whatever with the people, they slashed the subsidies, half in 1952 and half in 1957, and we have had no subsidisation of foodstuffs or other essentials since then.

Now, of course, the wheel has turned the full circle. Another six years has elapsed since 1957 and not apparently satisfied with having abolished the last of the food subsidies in that year the Government, again without any prior notice to the people, consultation with the people or a mandate from the people, come to the Dáil now to propose taxation on practically every article the community needs for its daily existence.

Foodstuffs are in the forefront of the taxation proposals announced by the Government. Foodstuffs will bear the heaviest taxation impact under these proposals and after them virtually every other commodity in use by the people will be compelled to yield up its tribute of taxation to the Government because they have no confidence that their developmental programme will bring in the money to avoid the necessity for resorting to taxation of this kind.

When we talk about the taxation of foodstuffs, what we have to remember is that many of the articles which will be taxed are staple articles of food used by the masses. Taxation on butter, bread, tea, sugar and milk will press much more viciously on the poorer sections of the people than on the richer. Bread, butter, tea, sugar, and milk are staple articles of food for the masses. Many well-to-do people use a microscopic quantity of these commodities in the course of a week or a month but the poor have to rely on them because their slender income does not enable them to have meats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meat is used, perhaps, once a week, if at all, in many poorer homes throughout the country and it is in the poorer homes that this tax will be felt in all its viciousness by those who have to live on staple articles like bread, butter, tea, sugar and milk. To the wealthy, taxation on these commodities, apart from being lighter for them because their resources are greater, is not likely to affect them very much because they are not notable consumers of these commodities which usually go hand in hand with a low standard of living.

The Government hope this year to get £3½ million now in the people's pockets out of those pockets to be used for the purpose of government. Next year, if the Fianna Fáil Party are still in office, the public will have the pleasure of paying £10½ million and all this is being imposed by a Government who have no mandate to do it in this House and as a result of the votes cast at the recent election.

The only occasion this question of food taxation was mentioned was the by-election in North-East Dublin. There the Government were compelled to fight on the issue of taxation of foodstuffs and other essentials of life and the result in the only test so far applied was that the Government candidate was overwhelmingly defeated. Do the Government seriously believe they could win a by-election tomorrow on the taxation of foodstuffs? I have got a shrewd suspicion that they know perfectly well that they could not win even a by-election much less a general election. Because of that fact, there is now a coming-together, a great herding spirit. "We will sit here" they say "and ride out the storm rather than chance going to the people for a mandate for food taxation proposals."

If North-East Dublin means anything, it means that in a limited area with a fair cross-section of people but not, perhaps, as poor as could be found in other constituencies, Government food taxation proposals have been rejected. If the Government want to test the feelings of the people on present taxation proposals, then the simple way is to dissolve the Dáil and let us have another general election in the next few months when in any case the Dáil will not be sitting. If the Government do that, they know perfectly well they will be defeated. The defeat of the Government is not the first serious matter. What is much more important is that what the people desire should be done by the Government. It is a travesty of democracy that, although a majority of the people are opposed to taxation on food, they should have that taxation imposed upon them by a Government who do not command the confidence of the people and do not control a majority of the electorate. But they are going to have it if the Fianna Fáil Government hold on to office.

It has always been a principle of the sale of goods that the price fixed is somewhat about the pre-determined value of the articles to be sold. If you go into the market place and want to buy, you have your own assessment of the value of the goods offered for sale. You buy there, and other persons seeking the same commodity can buy, too, at approximately the same price as you pay. That has been the practice of competitive purchasing; but it has never been the practice, and it ought not to be the practice, of a democratic Government. Certainly no one engaged in taking steps to raise revenue in a democratic country would raise that revenue by imposing the same rate of taxation on the very poor as is imposed on the very rich.

It seems a travesty of justice that the poor old age pensioner going into a shop to buy any commodity should be subjected to the same rate of tax as the well-to-do. I know it will be argued that they are supposed to get some increase in their social welfare benefits but they ought to get that increase in any case. Social welfare benefits are already too low, having regard to the increase in the cost of living and social welfare benefits, even with the additions, will still spell out a pretty grim and gaunt life for many of those condemned to live on what we pay as social welfare benefits.

People talk about taxation on foodstuffs being operative in Sweden. They forget that in Sweden the workers and the people generally have the highest standard of living in Europe, having displaced the Swiss who held that record for many a year. The standard of living is outstandingly high in Sweden and what you can do in Sweden with their standards of income and their social services is one thing; what you can do here with our wage rates and social welfare benefits is quite another. I do not know anybody who would not willingly swop Swedish taxation proposals, even as current now, for our taxation proposals here because that swop would show a substantial rise in the standard of living of any Irish person accepting the Swedish standards.

It seems to me inequitable that the very rich and the very poor should be asked to pay the same scale of taxation under this Bill. That is a bad principle to employ. It is a principle that should not have been adopted. The Government have made no pretence whatever of treating the poor any differently from the rich. They impose a single tax, assuming economic equality between the rich and the poor, an equality which is not, of course, present. They do that because they are too lazy and too inept to work out a scheme of taxation on luxuries, too lazy even to indicate any sympathy for the poor in the community.

We have now to face up to a situation in which £10½ million will be taken out of the pockets of the people in 12 months to finance this Government's activities. Fianna Fáil have now the doubtful honour of being the first Party to impose widespread taxation on foodstuffs and on the other essentials of life. This is being done without authority from the people, without the consent of the people, and in the face of clear evidence of revulsion on the part of the people. We have now reached a stage in Irish public life when, if Fianna Fáil get their way, this purchase tax, involving the taxation of foodstuffs and all classes of necessaries will be a permanent feature of life in this country.

You will have now under Fianna Fáil, and thanks to Fianna Fáil, and again without the authority of the people, a situation in which the newborn child will have to suffer a tax paid on its infant clothing, in which all through its adolescence and manhood, it will pay taxes every day of every week in every year during which it survives. When we and future generations are going from this land, we will pay a tax on our coffins and the other articles characteristic of Christian burial here.

That is the position in which Fianna Fáil put our people in 1963, but that is not what they promised the people in 1961. They made no mention then that they proposed to impose taxation of this kind. I said they have no authority for what they have done and are now doing. They have a minority Government. They least they ought to do, if they have any regard for democratic Government, is to go back to the people in the three months available between now and November and put their proposals before the people. I believe that, if they do that, these proposals will be rejected because the people do not want them. If the people do not want them, they ought not to be imposed upon the people by a Government who have no mandate from the people and none of the authority that can be got in a democratic State for doing the things which this Government are doing under this Finance Bill.

Mr. Donegan

The Taoiseach made it quite clear this morning that we had, in his opinion, reached a point at which a decision had to be made. To his way of thinking, a decision had to be made for the increased revenue, increased Government expenditure, increased intervention by the Government in industry, and in various spheres of our economic life, in order to employ our people and in order to progress. We do not say, on this side of the House, that he has not the right to raise revenue. What we do say is that all these things must be substantiated on his own past record and performance. He must show that there is reason why he should now ask for this £10½ million in the way of turnover tax to implement his policies. Before he was elected, he promised 100,000 new jobs over five years. Since that date, there are in fact 50,000 fewer jobs. Last year, 18,000 people left the land. During that period, from 1957 to 1963, the cost of running the State has advanced by £50 million a year and, if one takes into consideration the full effect of the proposed new tax, that figure will next year by £63 million. The Taoiseach has, in other words, an extra £50 million in revenue; there are fewer people in employment; far more have emigrated over the period. The Taoiseach has spent that £50 million. The servicing of the public debt is dragging us down. At the same time he says he wants £10½ million a year more to continue.

The people did not give him a mandate for all this and, if he seeks this colossal increase, he has a place in which to find out whether or not the people want done what he says should be done, to find out whether or not the people want him to continue on the way he thinks is the right way. We do not think he has succeeded in doing the things he said he would do and we believe that his interpretation of the situation is one that will not bring greater advancement in the future. He has on more than one occasion taken the same line as he took this morning. If you read the Irish Independent of the 13th June you will see that he said there that Government expenditure was the life blood of the economy.

We realise that in a complex State such as you get in 1963 intervention by the Government in certain activities is inevitable but while it is inevitable, there should at the same time be encouragement for private enterprise. Because surely ten or 20 small industries, or even larger industries, founded on private enterprise with the profit motive, will have a better chance of providing constant employment than the activities indulged in by the Government in their intervention in some industries over the past few years.

In the Irish Times today, there is an article by the economist Garret Fitzgerald. He deals with the various industrial projects which we have seen initiated through Government intervention of a major kind over the past five or six years. He mentions the Avoca Mines, which has had an extraordinary and chequered career and in which this side of the House was involved at the start but not in respect of the introduction of vast sums of money at a later stage. He mentions Irish Steel Holdings, Verolme and the Industrial Engineering Company of Dundalk and Potez. In all these cases, we find that while the Government intervened, complete success was not their lot. We do not get mistakes of this sort in organised private enterprise operations. If you get firms like Verolme coming in with their own money because they feel there is a profit to be made here, you will find that in 99 cases out of 100, they will succeed. If Potez, who have not reached that difficulty yet, but who are asking for a large investment—larger than we thought—had all their own money and came in here in that situation, you would find that they would be 99 per cent successful. It is possible with these large organisations to forecast the market and see to it that they do not make mistakes. If we are to invest large sums of Government money in these enterprises, we have to have some tie on them. These people, having taken the money and invested what is often a nominal sum themselves, can lightly take the risk, a calculated risk—a great phrase of the Taoiseach—and if the risk does not come off, it is easy to lop off the Irish industrial arm. That is the situation we have to face up to. I feel the Taoiseach stands condemned on this particular facet. He was prepared to take a calculated risk and the odds were too great. Having done that, he did not insert the proviso which would ensure that it would not pay these people to lop off the Irish arm and go home.

Yesterday I entertained a Dutch economist and he was quite amazed to hear that these provisos did not exist. He instanced examples in Holland where there had been investment, particularly American investment by large companies, and there were provisos under which they had to leave a very large sum in balance for as long as seven or eight years and whereby there was an arrangement for the withdrawal of profits which did not make it so easy for them to lop off these industries and go home and write off small losses that perhaps could be written in in their own country to save tax. There is another score on which the Taoiseach can stand condemned. It is that if you put a lot of Government money in and at the same time put in the top executives, then on your decisions lies the success or failure of the industry.

I want to refer to a particular industry in my own constituency which has been characterised by the lack of debate on it over the past five or six years. I am the only Opposition Deputy from that constituency and as far as I was concerned my policy was that in regard to the Industrial Engineering Company the least said the better and that we would give the Government every opportunity and that we would not be hypercritical about their mistakes. If top executives are sent there, and to other companies, and the choice is that of the Taoiseach, then if they do not do their job he is the one who must stand condemned. I refer to the fact that he sent Mr. Percy Reynolds to Dundalk, a man with no record in industry that could have fitted him for the task. I feel that the picture painted in the Irish Times today is largely an historic picture. Things will improve there from now on. Let me say that the resignation of every executive in the entire group of companies was with the secretary and the secretary's resignation was with the board and yet Mr. Reynolds did not take himself out of there forthwith. I want to accuse the Taoiseach of sending somebody there who has lost perhaps £1 million of Government money.

Mr. N. Lemass

It is bad enough to have people within the House attacked but now people outside are being attacked.

Mr. McGilligan

He is attacking the Minister.

Mr. Donegan

I am attacking the Minister and I am saying that I did not raise this matter for six years. We have got to debate whether or not the Taoiseach was right or wrong in investing perhaps £50 million over the past five years; whether or not he was a gambler taking a calculated risk in backing an outsider. That is the last time until there is a fixed debate on it that I will raise this matter. If you want to look at the records, you will see that I have raised this matter on very few occasions. I believe whatever loss there was in employment was attributable to the Taoiseach's choice. I believe the companies will improve now and if not prosper, certainly salvage a great measure of the employment from the situation created by the particular man. There will be every support from this side of the House if they persist in their efforts to preserve employment there.

The Finance Bill is characterised by something else. While the Taoiseach says he needs this money to invest in Irish industry in our whole capital formation, there is no incentive within that Bill to anybody within the private enterprise sector of the economy to reinvest; rather is the till being raided to the extent that retrospective corporation profits tax is increased by 50 per cent. Deputy Sweetman gave a list of the companies which had already declared their dividends, already produced their balance sheet and decided on their capital expenditure. Will this retrospective taxation mean that the money they intended spending on new machinery and on extension to plant and premises will be taken from them? There could have been a provision in this Bill whereby reinvested profits would have been treated likewise. No such provision has been included and on that score also the Government stand accused.

One other factor is obvious to everybody. It is that Government expenditure costs money: if the Government want to spend £1, it has to be done in a very deliberate way; you must have the Revenue Commissioners and the civil servants to see that £1 is not misdirected. In fact, the investment of that £1 costs the Government far more than it costs a private individual to invest in Irish industry through the buying of machinery or the extension of his premises.

Last night on the Report Stage, the Minister for Justice replied to a question by me after I had given instances of people in my constituency who would be very badly hit by the turnover tax. His reply was that the social welfare provisions and the increase in children's allowances would more than compensate. He produced figures which could not be contradicted because of lack of time or opportunity to intervene. He suggested that the small farmers would be more than compensated for the effects of this turnover tax. Deputy Norton gave the answer to that a few moments ago when he said that year by year there have been necessary increases in social welfare benefits and that the Government were now chalking off against this tax any little improvements they had given over the years.

The normal annual increase in social welfare benefits in every Budget during the ten years I have been here has been of the order of £3 million to £3½ million. This year it is £3½ million. In other words, this weighing of the scales is a completely dishonest political move. If you are to chalk up the turnover tax, you may chalk it up against all of the people, rich and poor. That is the fundamental reason why it cannot succeed. It will be very difficult to remove, but the first chance the electorate get they will fling this Government out on their political necks because they have taxed the farm labourer on the essential commodities at the same level as they have taxed the man who can afford a fur coat for his wife or whose wife can afford a second motor car. No amount of argument from Deputy Sherwin——

Mr. Sherwin

I am speaking next.

Mr. Donegan

——or from the Government will change that situation. It is true to say it is the private individual who will be bit most severely by this tax. The argument has been made that the rich man spends more, that he pays the 2½ per cent on a greater amount of money. They forget that the rich man has other advantages. If he has a car, he writes it against his business; if he has lunch he writes it against his business. That will mean his profits within the business will be reduced but it will not mean that whatever he draws in salary will be reduced accordingly.

Mr. Tully

Do not give away secrets like that.

Mr. Donegan

It is no secret. The country knows it. The question of taxing expenditure in industry and capital formation because the Minister wants £10½ million arises here as also does the question as to whether his action in this respect, especially since membership of the EEC came on the horizon, was correct. When Britain was seeking admission to the EEC, we on this side of the House gave the opportunity to the Government to proceed with their negotiations un-harassed and unrestricted, and in fact we were severely criticised throughout the country because our criticism then was neither severe nor harsh.

When the British negotiations broke down, we decided to give the Government any opportunity they wanted to get the negotiations under way. What did they do? The great supporter of tariffs and quotas, the Taoiseach, decided on a rhythm of tariff reduction over the years, ten per cent now and ten per cent again. We on this side of the House feel—Deputies Sweetman and Cosgrave have referred to it— that this was the wrong idea. The Irish industrialist who had been nurtured behind tariff walls and quota protection is now being thrown to the wolves until by 1970 there will be completely free trade as far as the EEC is concerned. I do not think that is the right line.

We feel that if we are to reduce tariffs in this way, we should get some sort of quid pro quo arrangement from those with whom we deal. France sells us seven times as much as we succeed in selling to her and when the Government had an order recently for £250,000, could they not have said to the French: “Take a little more of our land.” Land was fetching an excellent price on the French market. I repeat that we need some quid pro quo in respect of every country with which we deal, that we should get something in return for what we give. Britain has agreed on a rhythm of tariff reduction with the EFTA countries. It means that as time goes on we will find a greater variety of goods from a greater variety of countries competing against us on the British market. There is therefore bound to be a diminishing of our sales on the British Market.

At the same time, of course, it is necessary that we should accelerate our activities in the British market as well in order to increase our sales there and to withstand the competition that will come as Britain reduces her tariffs against the EFTA countries. It is not happening.

The Taoiseach just says there will be 10 per cent tariff reduction. The Leader of the Opposition asked the Taoiseach whether, if this happened, the motor assembly industry would collapse and agreement was reached that if this procedure happened and these tariff reductions were made rhythmically at certain periods, then without doubt our motor assembly industry would collapse. It is an industry employing quite a few thousand people. If we have to enter free trade—which, at the end, will be best for us—then at the same time, we should not do it with our eyes closed. We should do it with our eyes open at all times.

We had from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands the usual question as to what alternative taxation we would propose. The answer to that is that before the last election we printed our specific programme. The Labour Party mentioned today that they printed their specific programme and they alleged it was in even more detail than ours. I agree that both of those statements are true. It is also true that the Government printed no programme and sought a blank cheque.

If the people want to know what we are going to do there is our programme for you but if we are going to say to the Government of today: "We will impose alternative taxation, if it is necessary, on certain items." then, immediately, we know in our political wisdom——

Mr. Sherwin

You will lose their votes, then.

Mr. Donegan

That is exactly it. The Government know quite clearly that if we were to propose different taxation, or to say there are certain prunings that can be done, then, if we mentioned these specific prunings, everything we were going to do would be twisted by the Government and Government backbenchers in every constituency in rural Ireland would go around saying to the people: "You will lose your jobs if Fine Gael get in." Here in my hands is a copy of the Book of Estimates.

Mr. Leneghan

Tell us what you would do with Bord na Móna?

Acting Chairman (Mr. P. O'Donnell)

Deputy Donegan must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. Donegan

There are 328 pages in this Book. If alternatives and economies cannot be found within that Book and if there are not excellent changes in legislation that will bring more employment and more economic activity to this State, then we on this side of the House are mistaken. We believe that within this Book of Estimates we can do the job and the job we intend to do can be seen printed in our policy for the last election and you will see it printed in our policy for the next election which will not be too long. We know we can find our taxation within that Book to meet what we intend to do. Anybody who wants to produce the alternatives can take that, step by step.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands went further than anybody else, as usual. There was a time in Boyle, I think, when he said this taxation would cover expensive commodities such as jewellery and fur coats. He went a bit further today and said they were the people who believed that the lead must be an investment by the Government. We on this side of the House believe that certainly there must be investment by the Government in ths complex year of 1963 but we similarly believe that if the incentives are given to industry and agriculture we shall get from the people the investment and the effort that will bring a greater result.

If you want to see the difference now between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael it is quite clear. It is that Fianna Fáil have rejected the idea of the people doing anything to help themselves and that the Taoiseach has gone back again to 1952 when he said it was better for the people that we should spend more for them and that they should spend less for themselves; that, instead of ? in every £, 6/6 or 7/6 in every £ should be spent by the Government. We believe, on the contrary, that while it is necessary that there should be intervention by the Government in certain specific undertakings, at the same time, the people, if they get the encouragement, if they get the tax incentives, if they adopt, for instance, in this Finance Bill a removal of income tax in respect of profits left behind and invested in capital expenditure on works within a business, will do more for themselves and the Government would be better employed in keeping out of their lives and leaving them to proceed with their own advancement.

This Bill is also most obnoxious for other specific reasons. It has set the precedent of income tax for farmers. There is a provision in this Bill whereby people who let their land on the 11 months system must pay income tax thereon. I know many cases of decent men and women who have reached the evening of their lives and who are holding their farms for a nephew or a son to be old enough to farm. During the intervening period they have not the physical strength to farm the land themselves. During that period, they are paying their rates, their rent, all their taxes, as they go along. Now they are to be asked to pay income tax as well. This is a bad precedent for the very good reason that the farmer pays rates not only on his house, not only on his outhouses but also on his land. You will find that a farmer earning £500 a year will be paying three or four times as much in rates as the man earning £500 a year in any other business.

Mr. Corish

No.

Mr. Donegan

The man with the salary of £500 a year is paying very little in rates. Largely, he is a £10 a week man. He is probably living in a Housing of the Working Classes house. In his rent, there is a certain amount of rates. In my constituency, I would estimate his rates at about £15 a year, if you take what we give him. The farmer who would have that income would be paying £60 or £70 in rates and that is the whole basis of opposition to income tax on farmers. If you make the farmer pay it as well, he will be paying two taxes.

If a man has a public house and a farm down the country he will now have to put up his accounts for his farm. He will have the expense of keeping them and he will have to pay ordinary income tax instead of valuation tax on farming activities. When this Bill was introduced we thought the position was that the Revenue Commissioners would ask only for this in the case where a man's standard of living was such that there was a clear indication that he was defrauding the Revenue Commissioners by not returning sufficient profits from his business. As far as we know now, the Revenue Commissioners have a clear right to ask that man to produce accounts in respect of his farm. These are two bad precedents and we on this side of the House could not stand by them.

Another aspect which must and will arise as sure as sun follows day is that the ordinary worker in this country will now work one-and-a-half weeks in every year for the Government. He is probably working five or six for them as it is. Once this turnover tax comes in, he is going to work another one-and-a-half weeks for the Government. Immediately he does this, his trade unions will try to retrieve what he has lost.

Mr. Tully

Not "try"—they will.

Mr. N. Lemass

"As sure as sun follows day".

Mr. Donegan

A slip of the tongue is no fault of the mind. Thank heavens, I am not a smart alec from Dublin. I stand corrected by Deputy Tully. Their unions will retrieve this 1½ weeks for them, but that will have to be added to the cost of production. The net result will be that we will be in a worse position than before, so far as exports are concerned. In addition to paying 2½ per cent on everything he buys, the unfortunate consumer will have to pay for this increase in the cost of production. The burden will be far heavier than this 2½ per cent, and I forecast it will be a factual ten per cent. The members of the Labour Party would be in a better position to say what is the average percentage of wages represented by the cost of production. I regard it as extremely high, and you may take it there will be a savage increase in the cost of living, not only because of the 2½ per cent but also because of increased cost of production.

The Taoiseach was always noted as a man who liked a little gamble. The aim of all this seems to be to balance the Budget easily this year and have a comfortable surplus next year. Then they will go to the country.

Mr. N. Lemass

No, we will wait two years.

Mr. Donegan

We would have to have a general election at that time. Deputy Leneghan and Deputy Sherwin are naturally trying to back good horses, but the snag is that you normally have a by-election within 12 months. You cannot put 143 middle-aged and late middle-aged men into a Chamber such as this and hope they will all be here this day 12 months. I sincerely hope we all will be here but I know, as night follows day, we will not be. But one or two of us will be gone. There is not a constituency in which the Government can win a by-election.

Mr. Leneghan

They can in mine.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Would you give us the opportunity?

Mr. Donegan

Deputy Leneghan can resign. The Government have been extremely clever on this matter of who shall resign, but I shall give the mathematics of it. Deputy Corry is an old campaigner who knows his political onions. If a Fine Gael member resigned and we won the by-election, we would be back here with 72 to 71 against us. But if one of you boys resigned, we would come back with 72 to 71 against you. The plan is clear. You want to get a surplus next year, have a general election and go back for five years. But you are going to be forestalled by the fact that in the ordinary course of events one or two people always die over 12 months.

Mr. J. Lynch

Are you depending on the hand of God now?

Mr. Donegan

This time the Taoiseach is on a very long outsider.

Mr. Sherwin

The reason there are not so many in this House so often is that every Deputy is "browned off" with what he hears daily. He does not come in here except when he wants to make his own contribution or cast his vote. It has been decided by politicians for a long time that the majority of people have a "chump" mentality. Machiavelli summed that up in his advice on how to get votes. The assumption is that the majority of people live only in the present and are concerned only with the things immediately around them, that they do not analyse, because that requires effort and training, and that they do not look into the future. Because of that, you can cod them up to their eyes. You have only to paint a picture, any picture, and they accept it and convey it to their companions.

It is because of that there is so much codology. It is hard to blame politicians. If they told the truth, they would never get elected. I happen to be one of those people who gives his whole time—not just a little bit of his time—to local affairs. I probably have met the majority of the members of my constituency in person. They come and say they want a house. Having asked them the usual questions and knowing the housing position, I tell them: "You have no chance; you do not come under the regulations." I have to argue with them for half an hour and I cannot convince them. There is only one other way out—I reject it, but the other fellows do not—and that is to kid them and tell them: "O.K. Give me your name and address and I will do my best for you." The fellow who cods them wastes no time and loses no votes. He knows as well as I do they have no chance, but he tells them that he will do his best for them.

If you attempt to tell the truth, you wind up by having them tell you: "You are no damn use and you will not get my vote again." That sums up politicians. They cannot tell the truth unless they work like trojans to win votes. I can afford to tell the truth because I work so hard that I have enough friends to put me in. Because the other fellows diddle-daddle, they cannot depend on work to put them in and they must depend on codology to win. I sympathise with those members who have to cod people, because I appreciate people's ambition to get in here and stay in here.

Before going further, I want to quote again from President Kennedy's book—he is fond of quotations from history just as I am—a quotation from Frank Kent, an important American writer. He said:

Probably the most important single accomplishment for the politically ambitious is the fine art of seeming to say something without doing so....

—That is the Opposition—

The important thing is not to be on the right side of the current issue, but on the popular side....

—That is the Opposition—

... regardless of your own convictions or the facts. This business of getting votes is a severely practical one into which matters of morality, of right and wrong, should not be allowed to enter.

That is politics.

Mr. Corish

Who said that?

Mr. Sherwin

Frank Kent, quoted by President Kennedy. Let us get back now to this turnover tax. On several occasions, I thought I was going to hear an alternative to this tax but never have I heard it. Deputy Donegan I thought for a moment was going to tell me but then he said "Oh, no; we won't. We would be misquoted." But while he claims the right to misquote the Government, he refuses to give them the same right to misquote. He wants secrecy and does not want to give the same right as he claims. It amounts to that. They were his own words—"We are not going to do it because we would be misquoted." But he claimed the right to misquote the Government.

If I had heard some alternative, he would have some excuse for wanting me to fight it but how can I do it? I have my own convictions. I am not here trying to pull in some Party group. That is a great advantage an Independent has. He speaks for himself only. I have not got to pull in a lot of people, some of whom may be good, others not so good, and others weaklings. The Party man has to fight for his whole group, to lie for his group. If I have to lie, it is only for myself so it will only be a little lie compared with their lie.

We had a by-election which was fought largely on the basis that this was going to be an outrageous tax on food, and during the campaign there were cartoons in the evening and morning papers to this effect. This is proof that they accept that a large number of the electorate are chumps. This was issued by Fine Gael, 18 Hume Street. It was one of the many issued and was dated Saturday, May 30th, in the Herald. A shopkeeper is selling a lollipop to a child and he says “It is now 2½d. It was 2d. and I must give this gentleman the other halfpenny.” Underneath it says that the tax goes to the Government, not to the shopkeeper. Let us examine that. That is the basis on which they fought the campaign. The Government say only a halfpenny for every ten lollipops sold. That is all, but this cartoon stated that the Government wanted a halfpenny on every lollipop and that was the reason why the shopkeeper had to charge 2½d., whereas the Government wanted only a halfpenny on every ten lollipops. A halfpenny on ?—that is the tax.

In other words, the Opposition were accusing their pals, the monied crowd, who fought the election for them and won it, of being outrageous profiteers. Robbers, in fact, is the best word to describe it. They were actually saying: "Our pals the shopkeepers are making a halfpenny on ten lollies and will give one to the Government" because that was the position. The Opposition took it that the people were so chumpy that they would not see through this and things like it. That is the basis on which politicians approach the ordinary man in the street—that they are chumps, that they cannot reason, they cannot analyse, they cannot count, they will not bother to do these things but will just accept them, whereas the whole truth is that if the shopkeeper charges a halfpenny on every lollipop, he is going to put almost 1,000 per cent into his own pocket and give a halfpenny to the Government, though he might not even give that halfpenny because, do not forget, he could "hook" a bit and give less but certainly would not give more. The whole basis of the whole campaign in Dublin North-East was a fraud on the basis of that cartoon and similar arguments.

A Deputy

Anything about batch bread in that?

Mr. Sherwin

Never mind about that. I tried in my own way to do a little better. It is not like your people some years ago when you took the penny off the old age pensioners.

Mr. O'Keeffe

Then how much will it take to buy ten lollipops?

Mr. Sherwin

I do not believe that anything will be charged on small amounts, and if anyone does charge, then the customers have the remedy in their own hands—not to buy from them. That will happen; do not worry. We have heard this talk about the tax on food being the same for everyone—for the poor and the millionaire. Let us analyse that. As everybody knows, the well-to-do spend considerably more than the poor man. Therefore in accordance with that, he will pay more tax. If the poor man goes and buys a fish and chip, he will pay a halfpenny on it, but the fellow with the money will go in for his steak and chicken and probably pay a £ for it and pay a fistful to the Government. As against the poor man's halfpenny, the wealthy fellow with the money will pay 6d. and that all goes into the kitty. Do not forget that the well-to-do folk often have two and three dinners a day. Such a man has his usual dinner, he has meat and other luxuries for his tea and will do enough stuffing and be very full every night. All this steak and chicken and caviare crowd will have to pay on that surplus spending, and all that money is going into the kitty which can be used for the common good for a year and henceforth.

As an example, let us suppose for argument's sake that there was to be no tax on food. The Government would probably lose £2 million of what they would lose to the monied crowd, because if the poor had not to pay it, the fellows at the top would also not have to pay it, and you will be losing the revenue from the crowd who go into Clerys, into the Gresham, or into any cafe or restaurant in the city. The Government would lose all that money and would have to find other means and eventually that loss would probably fall on the poor people because they always pay, while this is the sort of tax that gets at the crowd with the money. The poor man can only spend 2½ per cent on what he has had to buy, perhaps a shilling a week, but the other fellow will probably have to shell out 10/- or 15/- in the week.

The Government's policy is: "We will charge the poor man a `bob' but give it back to him." That is just the same as going into a pub and asking a friend to have a pint. You are not going to give him a pint unless he gives you one back again. It is the same thing if the Government charge the poor and are going to get it from the well-to-do. They will give it back to the poor and therefore will charge the poor nothing. That is elementary, but that is not the way the matter was put to the electorate of Dublin North-East and that is why I am saying that the whole campaign was a fraud.

What does the Minister want the money for? We all know that there was a deficit of £6 or £7 million and that no increase in benefits could be expected this year. It is no use saying that they should be granted this year. In 1956, your bum year, you gave nothing at all to any of the non-contributory sections—not a penny to any of them—but you charged an extra "tanner" on every packet of 20 cigarettes that year. The workers smoke cigarettes, so they were being charged as much as what the Government are now looking for in the £, put on to every packet of 20 cigarettes, and the Government gave nothing back in 1956.

In 1957, the Government were so bankrupt that they would have got nothing but the new Government came in and gave them one shilling. On the coalition Budget, they would get nothing in 1957 as they had got nothing in 1956. At least if this Government are charging a little on food, to get something from the people with the money, their policy is to give it back to the poor and so, in effect, they are taking nothing from the poor.

They are giving 2/6 to the old age pensioner, to the unemployed man and his wife, if the shopkeepers, the pals of the Opposition do not rob them. That is the equivalent of the tax on expenditure of £5. Rents are not included, nor bus fares nor certain insurances, so that the old age pensioner who has 32/6 or 35/- to spend will only pay out 10d. Despite all the tears that have been shed for him by the Opposition it will cost him nothing. Nor will it cost the family with children anything. A letter in the papers abusing me said the first child would get 2/6 a month. The truth is the first child gets 2/6 every week.

Mr. Tully

No, £6 a year, ? a week.

Mr. Sherwin

The Deputy is splitting hairs. Up to now, the first child got nothing but now gets 10/- a month. For the second child, there is 4/6 a month and for every other child. If there are four children, there is 4/6 every week in this Budget for the family. If the Father is a labourer and his wife spends, say, £7 or £8, she will only hand out 3/- or 4/- of the 4/6. Therefore, it costs the family with children nothing. In the case of a man with two children, he has no responsibilities. It is the big families the Opposition were shouting about. The man with two children gets 2/6, so that if he has to pay anything it will be only 1/- a week towards his own father or mother, perhaps, or his own future or a neighbour's. All these people pay out 4/- or 5/- to pools every week. I see the collector stopping at almost every door. They practically never win but 1/- does not mean anything.

The man with one child will get 2/6 and the most he will have to hand out to meet the tax is 1/-. The man with no children will have to pay a "couple of bob" but, of course, that point is not made here—the only couple who will have to pay a few shillings are those with no children, but they can afford it.

If there was a sales tax cigarettes and drink would have to bear a heavy increase seeing that the Government would lose so much money when their hand would be out of the rich man's pocket. This tax keeps their hand in where the interest comes from money in the bank and profits from stocks and shares and gambling and all that sort of "wangled" money. This tax will make a big sweep on that group. That is why these people were in such a frenzy to defeat the tax in the past few months. A sales tax would have to go on a considerable amount of goods; the number excluded would be insignificant. It stands to reason the workers would have to pay twice as much because if the well-to-do, the chicken-and-chop people are being relieved, the poorer people must make up the difference. If beer went up, it would have to be by a penny on the stout and twopence on the pint at least but in this budget there is only need for both to go up ½d. because the tax on ? is only ½d. or 1d. on ¾. A publican may charge only ½d. on stout and ½d. on the pint now and come out on the right side. Suppose the fellow with £4 or £5 in his pocket who drinks 20 or 30 pints at the week-end—you often read of him in the in the papers—has 40 pints on Saturday and Sunday night on each of which he would have to pay an additional 2d. as against ½d. in this tax, he will be saved about 8/- because the rich man is being made to pay instead.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Deputy is referring to persons who drink 40 pints at week-ends and at the same time, pointing to Deputy Tully and myself.

Mr. Sherwin

You cannot convince people with vested interests. I am not addressing the politicians on my left. They want power and you cannot convince such people. Nor am I speaking to wealthy people who have been bullying us for the past few weeks. I am appealing to the ordinary people to think over this and not accept it as put by the Opposition. The Lord himself could not convince people with fixed interests. He did not do it in his own day. Do not forget that. The ordinary people should realise that because of the very fact that the money is on the side of the Opposition, the tax policy must be in favour of the people.

Mr. McGilligan

That is all humbug. The Deputy does not believe it himself.

Mr. Sherwin

We heard about the Government depending on one or two votes. Surely Fine Gael with their 45 seats are not a majority Party next to the Government? We have Labour with 16, Clann na Talmhan with two, one for Clann na Poblachta, two Progressive Democrats and four Independents who go from Billy to Jack regularly. That is the collection the Opposition try to compare to a big Party of 70 and two individuals. There is no comparison.

Suppose the Opposition had their wish. I am as astute a politician as any. I know they have had a chance they will never get again because they managed to fool the people into believing things like the lollipop yarn. They had the monied people on their side. Last night a member of the Opposition said how much one firm would lose through a corporation profits tax being retrospective. Obviously, if one firm were going to lose that, the Opposition would expect half of it in the campaign and naturally they would expect it from thousands of firms.

I admit they had a great chance for once in a lifetime but there campfires are burning low now because these people are now doing a deal for themselves. The high hope now is that a Deputy will die and that the Government will lose a seat but let me remind the Opposition that they will never get 71 again on any other issue but this issue. In this connection, terror was applied and many of these fellows were terrorised as much by the crowd who were pressing them, on the one hand, as by the danger that there would be an election on the other. As Shakespeare put it, they died deaths in the past few weeks. I can assure the Opposition, whether the Government lose a seat or not, it will not make any difference. In the past few votes, a few of the Opposition were missing. I heard some of them saying: "I am voting no more." Having voted on the principle of the Bill, they felt they had done enough to save themselves for the gang outside so they said: "I am going to save my seat now." That is why the Opposition had only 65 last night.

Getting back to all this terror that was applied to Deputy Leneghan and myself, let me say that on the night of the vote on the Second Reading, I had to fight a row with four fur-coated women in the restaurant. Deputy Mullen was asked to call me and he will verify that. How did they get in here? They used threats and blackmail, what they would not do to prevent my being elected in future. I told them to go to hell and that was two hours before the vote. The Taoiseach was right about blackmail. If people can go as far as these women went, who got in here with the help of the Opposition, what can we expect for the future if by chance the miracle happened and those in opposition became the Government? In any event, they could not win enough seats for an overall majority because PR does not give that opportunity. It is only a marginal seat that the Government would lose. Even if the Opposition got eight or nine more seats between them, they would still need the support of a few Independents. How much could they depend on them? What about the blackmailing of those who are not made of the stuff that Deputy Leneghan and myself are made of? What chance would they have?

It is my opinion there will be no election for two or three years. As I have said, the Opposition will get no more 71's. I am not denying this tax is a nuisance. All taxes are. An issue like this cannot be put to the people with the expectation of winning. If that were done, it would be going back to the potatoes and salt of the past, back to the workhouses, because people individually are selfish. They do not like sacrificing themselves or giving anything away. We do not forget that the great success of Sinn Féin in 1918 was due to the fact that the British were imposing conscription and people voted for Sinn Féin to save themselves. The same occurred when Abraham Lincoln introduced conscription to win the fight against slavery and people did not want to accept it.

Issues like that cannot be put to the people. They can only be put to the people afterwards, in good time when the scheme has been allowed to operate. People cannot be asked to make decisions while they are stupefied with lies. It was said to me: "If there is a general election to-morrow, you will lose votes." I admit that but I would not lose many. I have many friends. I am not a deputy who depends on having my name in the paper. I depend on hard work. It was also said to me: "Frank, in a year or two, you will head the poll." Let us examine that. Why should I head the pole in a year or two any more than now? Is it that the Opposition are hiding something, that they are afraid everything will turn out well for the country, so that the money will be in the kitty to give out to the old age pensioners and all the other recipients of social welfare benefits? That is what the Opposition are afraid of.

Are they afraid that time will prove that the Government are right, that the Government will have a chance of vindicating their policy, and is it that the Opposition do not want to give them that chance? Deputy Donegan says to the people: "We will not let you know what our policy is because you might vote against us." In any event, I am not worried if there is an election to-morrow. I would be in every street and I would fight every fool who differs from me and I would convince him he was a fool. I do not sit on platforms and let other people do my work. I will fight and vindicate myself. Questions have been asked of me: "What did you get?" The only people who offered me anything were the Opposition, and they offered me the mayoralty on a plate if I turned over

Mr. Tully

Before I speak on the Finance Bill, let me say I hope the goboluther from Mayo will keep his mouth shut while this debate is on. As far as Deputy Sherwin is concerned, no matter what happens afterwards, he at least can say he got one good laugh and we can say we enjoyed the comic talk. I wish to direct your attention to the thing behind me that keeps interrupting people when they are trying to speak. If he wants to talk in that manner, let him go down to the bar and wait until the vote comes off.

Mr. N. Egan

Is it in order to call a Deputy "a thing"?

Mr. Leneghan

That is a scandalous remark from this thick lug from Meath.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These remarks are disorderly. They should not be made.

Mr. Tully

Disorderly remarks are coming all the time from the rear bench. If the Chair cannot control him, there are ushers present who should be able to do it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair can deal with offending Deputies. The Deputy should not refer to Deputy Leneghan as he did. That is a disorderly remark.

Mr. Tully

There are decent things knocking around. The standard of this debate was set by the Taoiseach this morning.

Mr. K. Egan

And by Deputy Dillon last week.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Deputy Kieran Egan will have to fight this in Banagher, and I will deal with Deputy Nicholas Egan in Tullamore.

Mr. N. Egan

I will be in Tullamore at any time.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perhaps Deputies would allow Deputy Tully to continue. This is most disorderly. Interruptions are coming from all sides of the House.

Mr. Tully

I have been waiting to speak for six hours, and I am sure that any Deputy who cares to wear it out that long will get an opportunity to speak. Perhaps some Deputies only want to interrupt. The trouble is that the standard was set by the Taoiseach this morning. Maybe Deputy Carter wants to say something. This would be a wonderful thing.

Mr. Carter

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is this a point of order?

Mr. Carter

It is. I have been here longer than Deputy Tully and I offered to speak every time. I resent Deputy Tully's remark.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Where is the point of order?

Mr. Carter

It is a point of order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is not a point of order. Deputy Tully.

Mr. Tully

When the Taoiseach was speaking this morning, he set the standard because he gave it as his opinion that there were only two sides here: the patriots on his side and the anti-nationals on the other. That was a very inaccurate way of putting the whole problem because, as has often been said before, the patriots are not all on the one side. We all have our faults, and we all have our merits. The Taoiseach should be man enough to admit that a lot of the faults in this House lie with the Party he leads.

He referred to the National Productivity Council and he pointed out how wonderful it would be if employer-labour relations brought about the situation in which productivity and wages could be tied together. He said that excluded agriculture. One of the big problems in this country is that the agricultural worker is excluded from everything. About 80 per cent of the agricultural workers are still getting only £6 per week for a 50-hour week. Yet, they will be asked to pay this turnover tax as well as everyone else.

There is no point in anyone trying to suggest that people go into shops and buy pounds worth of commodities and, therefore, they pay only 6d. in the £. We all know that the poorer people are the more likely they are to buy items of food in small quantities. The Minister has said that the shopkeeper is entitled to collect his tax on everything, in any way he likes. Of course, he will collect it on the small items as well as the big items, despite what Deputy Sherwin said. The result will be that people will find themselves paying a tax which will not represent 6d. in the £ but very much more.

It may be said that everyone must pay his share but surely the Minister will admit that this tax was brought in primarily to catch people whose incomes are so small that they are not caught for income tax. I am sure the Minister knows that no matter how we look at it, a person who pays £6 per week on the necessaries of life will pay 3/- at the very least, and as was suggested earlier today it may be nearer to 10/- per week, in tax. That is £26 a year. If everyone were asked to pay income tax at that rate there would be uproar in the House. A few moments ago Deputy Sherwin said that it would be rich people only who would be caught with this tax on food. I think he referred to them as the "chop and chicken" people. He said they would have to pay more than the person buying batch bread, for example.

Deputy Sherwin was not here when the Minister made his statement that the amount which would be paid on the foodstuffs was one per cent because, he said, if foodstuffs were excluded, the turnover tax would have to be increased to three and a half per cent. The Minister can correct me if I am wrong. Surely that blows sky-high Deputy Sherwin's argument that the "chop and chicken" people would pay millions in tax on food.

No one will buy the argument Government speakers have been trying to put across that the purpose of this tax is to pay extra social welfare benefits. We all know there is a proposal to increase certain social welfare assistance by 2/6 per week from 1st November. We also know there is a proposal to increase the children's allowance. The first child will now get 10/- a month, which does not represent 2/6 a week, because 10/a month is £6 a year, and it must be divided by 52 and not 48. There is nothing extra for the second child, and for each succeeding child there is 4/- a month, which is nearly 1/- a week.

If the Minister suggests that the purpose for which this turnover tax is being put on is to pay those social welfare benefits, surely the sensible thing would be to forget about increasing the social welfare benefits, and forget about the turnover tax. The Minister knows well—possibly the members of his Party do not know quite so well—that the amount which will be collected will cover far more than the social welfare benefits. The amount which it is expected to collect from the tax this year is £3½ million. Spread over four months that is quite a sizable sum. I am sure the Minister also knows that in the four months, November, December, January and February—the months immediately after the tax is imposed—nothing will be bought except the bare necessaries of life. If he hopes to collect £3½ million in the first four months, I wonder would he be prepared to say tonight what he hopes to collect in a full year, because £10½ million does not seem to me to fill the bill.

Maybe there is a lot in what Deputy Sherwin said about the suggestion that the Government by holding off for a couple of years would have a lot of money to spend and would therefore be able to give tax reliefs. If they want to give tax reliefs, let them do it now and do away with the turnover tax. That is the only tax relief they have been able to give and that will settle it, once and for all.

I was hoping that the Minister for Justice would remain here a few minutes longer so that I mght find out whether the amount collected in turnover tax would be used to pay the proposed increase to the Guards. I understand that there is a recommendation to give an increase and there seems to be great secrecy about it. Nobody wants to say anything about it until the Dáil goes into recess and it will be three months before any awkward questions will have to be answered about it. Perhaps the Minister will find the answer to that one.

During the discussion of amendments on Committee Stage, there was considerable confusion. Two amendments were put down, one of them by the Minister about raising an amount of £500 by £250, and a similar amendment referring to the same section, the same subsection——

Dr. Ryan

No, a different subsection.

Mr. Tully

——and the same line. The Minister will not get away from that because it is on record: the same section, the same subsection and the same line. It suggested raising an amount from £500 to £750. Before the question was put, I asked the Ceann Comhairle was the effect not as follows: if amendment No. 23 were carried, then amendment No. 24 could not be moved. The Ceann Comhairle is on record in the Official Debates as saying "Yes", that that was the position. Yet we had the two gentlemen, Deputies Sherwin and Leneghan, who proposed increasing the £500 to £750, trooping into the lobby to vote against their own amendment with the Minister for Finance and the Government. The Minister said very graciously: "All right, boys. On the Report Stage, I will introduce an amendment increasing the amount to £750." He very cutely twisted it round and in the Bill now is an amendment which could not be accepted when it was put down by two members of the House but was accepted the following night when it was put down by the Government. That sort of thimble-rigging will not do

Dr. Ryan

It is done now.

Mr. Tully

It could have been done more honestly.

Dr. Ryan

It is all right.

Mr. Tully

Yes, the Minister has one principle: whether he is with me or against me, he is always right.

Dr. Ryan

That is true.

Mr. Tully

I want to make it very clear and definite that the ruling of the Ceann Comhairle was that if amendment No. 23 were carried, amendment No. 24 could not be moved. Therefore, they were on the same thing.

The question has been asked about the turnover tax: how much will it cost the ordinary person? I have already referred to what it is going to cost the poorer people—and practically everybody in the country is in that category—who buy items in small quantities. I interrupted Deputy Donegan to say that the trade unions will insist, wage pause or no wage pause, that their members get full compensation for the loss they are going to suffer. As a result of that, there will be an increase in costs and I suppose a further increase passed along to the consumer and the blame for all must rest with the Minister and the Government.

I wonder also as a matter of interest whether the Minister is aware that already, in an effort to beat the tax and to have increases before the tax comes along, quite a number of items, particularly in chemists' shops, have been increased very substantially since 1st July. Of course they can continue to do that and I am afraid they may do the same with groceries and other items after 1st November because the Minister for Industry and Commerce has very effectively salted away the only piece of legislation which would keep prices down, that is, the Prices Advisory Body. He has made very sure that it will not be used and in reply to Deputy Corish here this afternoon, he made it clear that there was no intention of having the Prices Advisory Body or other legislation for the purpose of keeping down prices, no matter what way they went after the 2½ per cent tax was put on.

There is one other thing which I would like the Minister to try to explain because the other evening I am afraid he was a bit confused about it and eventually the House was as confused as he was: the question of different types of prices applying to building materials, particularly paints which are a common thing at certain times of the year. If I am right, the Minster said that if somebody goes to a shop to buy paint for a new house, it will not be subject to tax but if he goes to the same shop and buys paint to paint an old house, windows, doors or what have you, it is subject to tax. If that is so, perhaps the Minster might be able to explain how on earth he proposes that that is going to work. I am sure there are a number of other instances to similar effect.

The question of a referendum was raised and the Taoiseach and Deputy Dillon agreed that there would be no chance at all of having a referendum on this point. They made the point, the pretty good point, that you cannot have a referendum on everything and that Deputy Norton was wrong to suggest it. I should like to point out, however, that this is not a simple matter which is being brought before the House, because it is something entirely new. It was bad enough after the firm promise that the food subsidies would not be removed to have them removed, but we now have for the first time in this country legislation to tax food. Surely it is not unreasonable that there should be some reference to the people who have elected the Government? If they do not want an election, why not do it by way of referendum to find out whether the people of the country are agreed that this is the way to do it?

There has been awful talk about what RGDATA wanted and what other trade organisations wanted. I am one of the people who think that RGDATA have their own problems and other trade organisations have theirs, but we in the Labour Party are interested not in the traders but in the consumers and in the people who just will not be able to meet the tax without severe hardship. Whether a solution will suit RGDATA or suit other people is a matter for themselves and we do not want to quarrel with them in that way. As I said on Wednesday night last and now say again, the Labour Party are against the turnover tax so long as it is imposed on food, clothing and medicine. I want to make that very clear.

An amendment was discussed here last night and was defeated. It referred to pools. I do not want to debate it again but I think the Minister should even at this late stage have second thoughts about taxing the people who are trying to help the unfortunates of the country. I do not know whether I made the point clearly enough, but the people who run pools will not be paying 6d. in the £ tax but 6d. in the share of profits which they will be able to make, that is, 6d. on 5/- or maybe even at times 6d. on a half-crown, and I am sure the Minister will admit that is a very much higher tax than the 2½ per cent he is talking about. These are charitable organisations who should by right be getting a big subvention from the Government because they are doing the work which ought to be done by the Government and local authorities. They are getting no subvention and thanks to this, they will be paying tax on whatever few shillings they succeed in collecting from the generous people of the country who up till now have been keeping them in existence.

I should like to refer to another matter also, the moneys spent in grants to State organisations. I think it was Deputy Donegan who dealt at length with this and I should like to mention it briefly. The Government have themselves, either deliberately or otherwise, given a very bad name to a number of organisations in this country, to a number of firms, because of the fact that, instead of giving them the money which they needed, putting in a director to see that that money was properly spent and to report back to the Government if the money were not properly spent, they shovelled millions of pounds, right, left, and centre to people, without asking them to give any acocunt at all as to what was happening. Then, when the money was gone, these people put a pistol to the Government's head, and said: "O.K. We have so many hundreds employed and we will throw them out on the road unless we get another million or a million and a half." That happened not once but a dozen times. The Government could have solved that problem by adopting the procedure I mention.

We believe that, if private enterprise is not able to tackle a job, the State should step in, but the State should not shovel money to private enterprise without any control, good, bad, or indifferent. That is what has happened not once but on a number of occasions over the past couple of years. The results are now coming in and someone has got to carry the can. I shall not go into details of the Dundalk venture because it is unique and something we do not want to see happen again.

Anyone listening to Deputy Sherwin would think that all the Fianna Fáil Deputies were on the dole and all the opulence was on the Opposition side of the House. I am very glad Fianna Fáil Deputies are not on the dole. The trouble with Deputy Sherwin is that, when he talks about political standards, he tends to fall into an error that some people make; he tends to judge others by his own standards. Now that is an unfortunate yardstick.

I was surprised that the Taoiseach this morning did not make any mention of EEC. I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating him on being very clever. When the arrangements were made for the conclusion of business, it was agreed that the remaining Estimates, including the Taoiseach's Estimate, would be passed without discussion and would be dealt with in the next session. The Taoiseach, therefore, would not have an opportunity of speaking in this debate and giving a general idea of what he thought was happening in the country. He very cleverly, however, and quite legitimately, when the House allowed him, delivered his speech on the Taoiseach's Estimate on the Finance Bill this morning.

I waited for him to deal with one matter. I wondered when it would come, but he did not say one word about EEC. In every major speech he made in this House and outside it over the past three or four years there was always a reference to EEC: we were in; there was some delay about getting in; we were round the corner; we would be in before the sixties were out or in the early seventies; everything would be grand. He must now be going to pin his faith to another star because there was not a word about EEC this morning. I was a little disappointed. There have been developments over the past few days and I thought the Taoiseach might possibly have something to tell the House.

He also made no reference to this scheme of tariff cutting about which he has been talking so much up to now. I should like to think he is having second thoughts about this second round of tariff cuts due to take place on 1st January, next. Surely the Taoiseach and every member of the Government must now realise that it is a little foolish to talk about cutting tariffs on goods imported here from countries which have no reciprocal arrangements with us. Surely it is stupid to strip off tariff restrictions on goods imported here, competing with Irish goods manufactured here. It was quite legitimate while there was a prospect of getting into EEC but it is a little stupid today when that prospect has grown remote. It is foolish to smash the tariff barrier to enable foreigners to compete against our own manufacturers because that competition will ultimately result in our manufacturers closing their doors and disemploying Irish workers.

The Taoiseach did not make any reference to all the jobs created. He must be feeling a little ashamed of the record. Now I consider the Minister for Industry and Commerce an excellent Minister, but he had a habit of not giving the figures for actual employment in an industry; it was always the potential employment three, four, or five years hence. Before the three, four, or five years had passed, the industry in many cases had closed its doors, having got large grants from the State, and the potential employment never materialised. I think the Taoiseach felt this morning it was wiser to stop talking about this kind of employment.

I was also surprised that the Taoiseach should deliberately except agriculture from the National Productivity Council. He made no reference to the fact that agriculture needs a shot in the arm. Agriculture is very definitely in the doldrums. Even the influx of foreigners, whether they buy Senator L'Estrange's land, or anybody else's property—Senator L'Estrange is as much entitled to sell for big money as anybody else—has not helped agriculture. They may pay double the price, but it makes no real difference. We all know the small farmer is not doing well. We all know things have not improved for him in the past few months. The very least we expected from the Taoiseach was that he would hold out some ray of hope. All he did was to exclude agriculture from the National Productivity Council.

When all this money it is hoped to collect is in the Government coffers, I hope the Government will take a look at State employees. Local authorities and private employers have arranged for a reduced working week, shorter working hours and a five-day week. State employees in offices or working on drainage or in our forests are tied to the old-fashioned working week. It is time the Government stepped forward a little. Questions have been asked about this matter by the more decent members of the Government Party urging that the five-day week be extended to State employees. The Government advise trade union officials to set a standard. It is not the function of Government to set the highest standard. So it is said. Neither is it their job to set the lowest of standards, but that is what they are trying to do at present. I do not think the change asked for would call for any expenditure of money. Surely it is not too much to give to these workers a concession similar to that given to other workers all over the country?

There are a number of other things I should like to say, but as the debate is supposed to finish at 10.30 and quite a number of other Deputies are anxious to speak, I do not propose to hold the House any longer.

Mr. Corry

I have been in this House for a long time but there has been more humbug and bluff since this Finance Bill was brought in than I have heard during the whole period I have been here. It started off by sending to America for a vote and bringing it over. The next thing was that when we had a division, Deputy Ryan was missing from the gang. Then we had a snap division and when it came along, the National Socialists were missing and Deputy Norton with them.

Mr. McQuillan

We were over looking for socks.

Mr. Corry

This kind of bluff has been carried on here——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

On a point of order, Deputy Corry is referring to the divisions that have taken place on the Finance Bill and if the records are produced, he will find that in the most important division that took place, he was the only Deputy in Fianna Fáil who was missing.

Dr. Ryan

That is not a point of order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is scarcely a point of order.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You were the only Deputy missing.

Mr. Corry

Who?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Deputy Corry was the only Deputy missing.

Mr. Corry

I have not been missing from a division. That is about as true as the notes Deputy Flanagan was supposed to print.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You were on your way down to Power's when the division bells rang and when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach went after you, you would not come back.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy has expressed an untruth and I demand its withdrawal.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Will Deputy Flanagan please resume his seat? Deputy Corry is in possession. The time is running out and Deputies should be allowed to make their speeches.

Mr. Corry

I have asked for the withdrawal of an untruth——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

There is nothing untrue about it.

Mr. Corry

——namely, that I was missing from a division here.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You were.

Mr. Corry

You are a liar.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

If you agree to that, Sir——

Dr. Ryan

It is obviously not true but the Deputy does not mind persisting in an untruth.

Mr. Coogan

Leave it to the Chair.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Corry

If I said anything unparliamentary, I withdraw it, but I will have a gamble with the Deputy on that part of it later on. This game has gone on here. First of all, there was an attempt, as Deputy Sherwin said, to bluff the public; then we had tears and cries of woe for the poor unfortunate shopkeeper who was going to be ruined. Then Deputy A. Barry stands up on his hind legs and told us that he had four per cent on his turnover. Is that correct?

Mr. A. Barry

I was not listening to the Deputy, as is my habit. Will he repeat it?

Mr. Corry

I have here an advertisement of a sale by a very respectable gentleman in the firm of Monica Duff of Ballaghaderreen. They are advertising ten per cent or 2s. in the £ discount off all regular priced goods. It is marked in plain figures. Now if Deputy A. Barry can only make four per cent profit on his turnover and the firm of Monica Duff can afford to give a discount of ten per cent, what profit must they have and what is 2½ per cent going to matter? Let us get down to cases.

Mr. A. Barry

I do not think I could explain it to the Deputy because he would not understand it.

Mr. Coogan

Are there any socks in it?

Mr. Corry

I am quoting from the Western People for Saturday, July 13th, 1963. Surely this firm were not giving away all their profits with this discount? Surely they had a little more. If they divided the profits, that would be 4s. in the £. These are the people who came in with bands and banners talking about the 2½ per cent that was going to drive them out of business. Deputy McQuillan said he was down town looking for socks. It would be worth his and other Deputies while to ramble around these shops and find out what is happening. I gave an instance some time ago of a refusal by manufacturers to supply goods to certain shops because they would not charge the full profit and the full profit was stated to be 50 per cent.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Deputy Burke sent a note to the Deputy. He should read it.

Mr. Corry

The last note you got you missed it and you lost your case. The profit was 50 per cent and I have stated here, and I repeat it, and I challenge contradiction, that the profit on all British drapery goods sold here is 63 per cent. I suppose they are going to put on 2½ per cent on that.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Why do you not buy your socks in Cork?

Mr. Corry

That is why we had the honest to God firm here that did not stock Irish socks. Thirty-five per cent of the goods they sold were British goods because they had 63 per cent on them and only 50 per cent on the Irish goods. Those are the people who are going to be ruined and robbed. We have certain choices to make. I heard the gentlemen from the Labour Party speaking on this matter before. We also had an attack by Deputy Donegan on what he calls State companies, or State-subsidised companies. Last Monday, the Taoiseach opened a new cheese factory in my constituency and Deputy Donegan's contribution to that was a statement in this House which was to help to sell the cheese, that 75 per cent of the milk going to the creameries could not be processed because it was too dirty. Evidently the farmers, their wives and families, were producing milk that was unfit for processing because it was too dirty. That was his statement made in this House. He then attacked Irish Steel Holdings Limited. That company have a very funny history.

Mr. Coogan

Like your own.

Mr. Corry

I have been here 36 years and I have seen a lot like you come and go. I have seen them kicked out. I have seen many faces over there come and go.

Mr. Coogan

I am not ashamed of my history. I have nothing to hide.

Mr. Corry

Irish Steel originally was a private enterprise effort and it went bankrupt. There were 150 workers there and it was the first opportunity given to people in Cobh to work in their own town between 1920 and 1939.

Mr. Barrett

At their own expense.

Mr. Corry

We brought a deputation up here to the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, to ask him to step in. He stepped in, and as well as that, he told me: "I am sending a Cobh man down in charge and he will make a success of it." Mr. Christy Fitzpatrick was sent down in charge of that industry. The day the inter-Party Government took over, to our misfortune, there were 430 men employed there. The day they left, the number was down to 304 and if we had not the good luck that put them out that day, the place would be closed down now. They began trying to save money in this way: the company were told to buy second- and third-class scrap, that the first-class scrap, the railway lines, were to be exported.

That was done by a Labour Minister for Industry and Commerce. That was Labour's contribution towards increasing employment in Cobh. I heard a wail from Deputy Donegan in regard to employment and I ask him whether it is not better to have more boys and girls employed here in their own country even if, despite the 50 per cent and the 66 per cent profits being made by the shop keepers, we still have to charge this 2½ per cent turnover tax. I do not believe there is a worker in the country who would begrudge paying 6d. in the £ so that the unfortunate fellow who is idle could find employment in this country. This has been all bluff during the past week here. They were going into the Lobby afraid of their lives they would win a division in this House.

Mr. A. Barry

We will call the Deputy's bluff if he likes.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): We will call it tonight.

Mr. Corry

My dear man, I am getting kind of fond of you. You are a nice-looking fellow over there and I will be very sorry that you are not coming back. I will miss you.

Mr. Barrett

Or vice versa.

Mr. Corry

I have seen a lot of you coming and going. The Deputy need have no doubt about me. I intend celebrating my golden jubilee in this House. Do not have any doubt about it. I have been 36 years here already, I intend spending the next 14 years here and if those people over there are looking for somebody to peg out, they need not look at me.

An Ceann Comhairle

Will the Deputy please come to the Bill?

Mr. Corry

They can go down to Ballycotton, into the icebox there.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Which I provided. I heard this same speech 18 years ago.

An Ceann Comhairle

Will Deputy Corry come to the question before the House and will Deputies from the other side cease interrupting him?

Mr. A. Barry

Do not be unfair to him. Come on, Martin; do not mind them.

Mr. Corry

I will give Deputy Barry another couple of years here. As regards this shadow-boxing that has been taking place, if five of our fellows were missing from a division tomorrow, there would be six of them missing. They have not a notion of going to the country.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): Try it tomorrow.

Mr. Corry

Perhaps there are three or four of them who were hoping to become Ministers——

Mr. Coogan

The Deputy has been 36 years there and they did not make a Minister of him.

Mr. Corry

They got three chances here and they had to clear out each time. I saw worse than that. I heard the public statements made, and they are on record in this House, about the late trips made in the middle of the night to Deputies, about the late trip made to a former member of this House, Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll, when they promised him he would be Minister for Health if he voted for them. Those things happen and they cannot deny them. I know them inside out.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Does the Deputy remember the time he gave the register to Eoin O'Mahony when he was not even in the constituency?

An Ceann Comhairle

If Deputy Corry does not come to the matter before the House, I must ask him to resume his seat.

Mr. Corry

I thought I had been dealing with the Finance Bill. As far as the people in my constituency are concerned, they will not be bluffed or fooled by the kind of stuff being dished out here in regard to the 2½ per cent turnover tax. The people can have the choice at any time. Their choice would be very definitely what I pointed out.

We have at the present moment in my constituency some five new industries being started—three of them in Cork county and two in the adjoining county of Kerry. They will require something like £1½ million of State funds. They will give employment, roughly, between 400 and 500 per factory in the factory itself but they will give employment to a couple of thousand more people on the land.

We hear lip service being paid here repeatedly about the flight from the land but if this Government were defeated tomorrow all that effort would disappear overnight—just as they endeavoured to force the disappearance of Irish Steel and to cripple the sugar industry. It would be done in the very self-same way and along the very selfsame lines. Therefore, as far as this turnover tax is concerned, I do not think you will defeat any Government on it and I think you are thanking God that you will not. That is my personal opinion. I do not believe you are in earnest. I do not see any danger or any notion of it. Hang it, I should be sorry to miss some of them over there. They provide a bit of amusement for me from time to time. I am getting old in that line now and I like to get a bit of amusement from them.

I remember Deputy O.J. Flanagan coming to my constituency on one occasion. He said to the fishermen there, in effect: "Look, if you want anything, go to Deputy Corry and I shall give it to him."

Mr. Barrett

Let me return to the subject of the debate, after Deputy Corry's digression. I think that one of the things that the speakers on the Government benches have been trying to do all through this debate is to insist that they obtained a mandate to impose the turnover tax which is enshrined in this Bill upon the people. I am sorry Deputy Corry has left the House because he is really the only Fianna Fáil Deputy who produced any proof of that. On the Committee Stage he was able to mention that in the gloom of a mid-Cork public house, towards closing time he was able to obtain a mandate from those present simply by challenging them to challenge him in the public house. None of them did and Deputy Corry took that as a mandate from his constituents to impose the turnover tax on the entire country.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands, simply by virtue of the fact that they are sitting on the Government benches, said that, no matter under what strategem or what auspices, they were entitled to do what they liked with the people and no matter what elements of the people might make their views known in no uncertain manner the Government had a mandate to do what they liked.

It is quite true that a Government may impose various taxes once they have been elected but we must bear in mind that for 40 years Governments have walked into the benches over there and have walked out after serving their office. However, no Government so far ever attempted to raise revenue by means of a turnover tax such as the Government now intend to levy on the people. As Deputy Dillon and others said earlier today, if the Government had gone to the people at the last general election and had informed them of their intention to do exactly what they intend to do in this House tonight they would not be sitting over there in a position to do what they intend to do tonight in the teeth of the feeling of the Irish people.

The worst of it is that this is not just an expedient to get £10½ million this year. Speaking on 21st February last, the Taoiseach said the Government must look for taxes of a more stable nature. "Stable", in other words it will stay. The worst of it is that most people know that it will not stay at the 2½ per cent level at which the Government now intend to impose it.

The only good aspect of this tax is that it has aroused the public conscience. It has aroused the inquiring mind among the people. The people are beginning to wonder why this tax must be imposed because the Government have been quite shameless about the manner in which they introduced it. The Minister for Finance, on the occasion when he introduced the Budget, said he did not mind how the tax was levied so long as he got the money because he had to get the money. He was quite plain and quite distinct in explaining to the people that the bottom of the barrel in every other direction had been scraped and at last they had to resort to this. The Taoiseach told us the same thing on 21st February of this year when he explained it would not be possible to obtain extra revenue simply by raising the rates of taxation from the usual sources. Despite all that, we have found member after member of the Government front bench glorying in the fact that they must spend more money.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands came in here night after night and gloried in the fact that they had spent more money than had ever been spent before. He promised the Irish people they would spend more money still in the future whilst they remained in office. That is what the Parliamentary Secretary described as the progressive Party. He was inclined rather to jibe at us. I think he called us conservatives and reactionary.

The extraordinary aspect of the entire matter from the point of view of those on the Fianna Fáil benches was that every challenge thrown out to those across the floor of the House related only to the question: "Where would you find the money if you were in office for this extra expenditure?" There has not been one breath of a suspicion of a thought in one Governmennt mind along the lines on which the public mind is running at the moment, namely: where can the economies be effected and how can we save money?

One of the speakers here on the last occasion pointed out that we are not here on our own behalf or to say what we like but rather to mirror the minds of our constituents. That does not apply only to Opposition speakers. It applies to every Deputy who voted on the intermediate Stages of this Bill. I am quite certain that if any Fianna Fáil Deputy went to his constituents and discussed this present measure with them he would be told to think along the lines which Deputies of his Party have studiously avoided thinking along during this debate—namely, not: "Where are you going to find the money by way of alternative?" but "How are you going to economise?"

It is all very well for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands to promise more expenditure. People such as the NFA, members of RGDATA, the trade unions, chambers of commerce and, indeed, the Central Bank have all pointed out that only one attitude should be adopted towards our expenditure at the moment. The Taoiseach says this is not a time for retrenchment and that it is a time for courage. It is open to interpretation that what the Taoiseach is saying is what he often said—in other words, that he is ready to make a gambler's throw to see if he can pull the fat out of the fire even at this stage.

Deputy Corry spoke of the factories that have been erected. If I were the Deputy, I should not speak in that way about some of the factories to which he referred. It is all very well for the Government to pour public money into factory after factory. I would ask the Deputies on the other side to reflect on the fact that thousands of workers in these Government-subsidised factories are living on a razor edge. Injection after injection of public money—not the money of any particular Deputy in the Fianna Fáil benches but the money of everybody sitting in the public gallery and of every constituent who sent a Deputy to this House—is being made so that the Fianna Fáil Government will not be put into the embarrassing position of being told they started a factory purely for the sake of starting a factory, that they gave employment purely for the sake of giving employment, come what may.

None of us needs to think very hard to advert in his mind to industries started in the most unpropitious circumstances, to industries started although similar industries all over the world were crumbling, to industries that were started despite the fact that words of warning were spoken from these benches and from businessmen throughout the country. These industries are continuing not to flourish but to give employment because the money I spoke of already is being deliberately injected, come what may.

That is why the Government are here scraping the bottom of the barrel. That is why they are trying to pretend they have a mandate. That is why the Government at one stage were near defeat on this issue, but for the fact that two Deputies felt they did not want to leave this House at this juncture. Surely it is time for them, even at this late stage, to think of what the people are saying about them up and down the country? Surely it is time for them to think of some economies, to see how money can be saved, to stop talking in terms of courage and that this is no time for retrenchment, when it is, indeed, a time for prudence? That is all we are concerned with. Let us have prudence. Let us think before we spend needlessly. Let us put ourselves in the position of any prudent businessman or any prudent head of a household. Let us cut our cloth according to our measure, be it painful or otherwise.

I agree it would be difficult to throw out of employment some of the people in the small industries to which Deputy Corry referred. These things might be necessary. When Deputy Corry speaks about these people being given employment, they are being given employment at their own expense and at the expense of their fellow-Irishmen throughout the country. Whether that is good economics or not is for the people to judge. I believe the people have now reached the stage of asking the Government to halt. If they do not wish to do so, the day will come when every member of the Government Front Bench and all the backbenchers sitting so pleased with themselves at the moment will have to face the bar of public opinion. I do not believe that the Government injections of money into industries of a certain nature can continue over that period. There will come a stage when the Fianna Fáil Party will have to answer at the bar of public opinion and then it will be much too late, not alone for themselves but for the country, to find they were wrong.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I listened carefully to Deputy Dillon's reply to the Taoiseach this morning. I thought I might hear from him some constructive policy. His first allegation was that the two Independent Deputies supporting the Government were the two buttons on the Fianna Fáil trousers. He wanted to intimidate them into not voting the way they felt they ought to vote. He said he nailed his policy to the mast, that he had a good policy and that he always produced it before a general election. He produced no policy here today and made no constructive criticism. He acted in a most irresponsible way.

The Leader of my Party told the people where we stand both nationally and economically. He did not tell the people, as Deputy Dillon told them, he was going to spend £77 million a year on various services and that there would be no increase in taxation. Could anybody follow a leader of that kind, who makes such a statement at the Ard-Fheis of his Party and then opposes this 2½ per cent turnover tax? When I asked him here how he was going to do all these things, all I got was the old personal abuse for which he is noted. He lacks the gentlemanly conduct one would expect from the Leader of the Main Opposition Party.

Members of the Fine Gael Party had motions down seeking increases in social welfare benefits. They were supported, of course, by the Labour Party. The people must realise the hypocrisy shown by Fine Gael and Labour in putting down motions of that kind. I thought the Leader of the Labour Party would give some lead to the workers of Ireland. Instead, he criticised everything that had been done. He criticised the Taoiseach for not being definite enough, but he himself quibbled so much that in the end I did not know what policy he was advocating. Fifty-three per cent of the people will benefit as a result of this Bill. The remaining 47 per cent will also benefit because we are ensuring our people have sufficient purchasing power. The Taoiseach said this morning that in two years the profit of shops had gone up by 13 per cent because of increased purchasing power.

The last speaker, Deputy Barrett, is a decent and honourable man, and I knew he would try to be sincere, but if he were to take money from industry, cut down on housing, schools, and so on, would the traders of the country not be far worse off than they are? Would the purchasing power of the people not go down considerably? Would the people crying out against the 2½ per cent turnover tax not be worse off? If our programme gets an opportunity to go through, we have no doubt that the purchasing power of our people will increase considerably during the next year or two. If you are going to cut down in other things, you have to be prudent, but you cannot be prudent by throwing people on the scrapheap and taking their employment away from them.

That is what is being advocated here by the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party and all the other people who have spoken here. They cannot deny that. What we are trying to do is to have a 2½ per cent tax on every commodity bearing equally on every section of our people, notwithstanding the fact, as the Taoiseach has already stated, that the prosperity of the nation has increased 13 per cent in two years. If that is the case why all this outcry here? Why are we castigated? Why have we been gibed at by the men on the other side of the House that we are not standing up and defending the Minister for Finance? Of course we are standing up to defend him.

We are standing up to defend what we believe is in the national economic interest. We believe we are doing the right thing. As I have said on numerous other occasions, we are putting the interests of this nation before those of our own Party and that is the only thing we can do. We will stand by that policy.

Deputy Norton asked why we did not put this to a referendum. Does he want the chaotic conditions here that exist in Eastern Europe, to let the Communists and others——

Mr. Coogan

Now we are doing it!

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am not saying that we have Communists here, but they took over in other countries on the same cry used here by a number of people, inadvertently or not. I look upon them as good Christians, but the policy they have adopted here over this tax was adopted in the countries of Eastern Europe and brought down democracies, and they have dictatorships there now. The very same policy undermined the democratic parliaments. It had been adopted in a number of the countries that have lost their freedom and are under dictatorship of some kind or other.

Mr. Coogan

We are all Communists over here.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am not using that word but I am saying that the tactics Deputy Norton suggests are very similar.

Mr. Coogan

Are you not going to turn left next?

Mr. P.J. Burke

After I sit down, you can make your contribution. I will sit down peacefully and I am sure the Ceann Comhairle will give you a good hearing. I will note what you say and I might be able to learn something.

Mr. Coogan

I will not be called on.

Mr. P.J. Burke

It was rather amusing to hear Deputy Tully trying to make excuses——

Mr. Corish

I will send out for him now.

Mr. P.J. Burke

He would be very welcome in the House. He was trying to make excuses for voting against increases in social welfare benefits. He is really good at this. The reason he gave was that he did not want food or clothes or anything else taxed. It took him three or four weeks from the time the Budget was introduced to think of some excuse, and one excuse is as good as another. He was not concerned at all, of course, as a trade unionist with the number of people he represents—whether they were to be thrown out of their employment.

Mr. Corish

The corporation profits tax will take care of that.

Mr. P.J. Burke

We were more troubled about the effect of this on employment, but the Labour Party and Fine Gael were not concerned with that.

Mr. P. O'Donnell

We were concerned with the unemployed, not the employed.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am talking about the employed who would be unemployed if the Labour policy were adopted. While it was not my intention to say very much tonight about this, one thing I have to say is that I hope the people of Ireland will realise the hypocrisy indulged in by both Labour and Fine Gael.

Mr. Corish

Speak about the food subsidies in 1952.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Do they realise the way they left the country in 1951 when we took over? Do they realise that they had sold nearly everything out? They had auctioned the aeroplanes and nearly everything else and sabotaged anything that was well worth while, both nationally and economically. They sold the aeroplanes and will sell them again if they get back.

Mr. P. O'Donnell

You are subsidising them ever since.

Mr. P.J. Burke

They tried to sabotage every step taken by Fianna Fáil to improve the national well-being, and then when they went out in 1951, we were faced with an unbalanced Budget, with numerous debts, and when the Minister for Finance of the Government of that period found that they had to do good housekeeping, they found that they could not carry on. They had to come along and introduce the Budget of 1952. Every Deputy on this side of the House is human just like every Deputy on the other side and none of us wants to increase taxation at all.

Mr. P. O'Donnell

Why are you doing it now, then?

Mr. P.J. Burke

In 1952, we had to put the national interest first and to introduce a Budget to put the national finances in proper order. May I say to the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party why, when they left office in 1951, did they not leave the country in a sound financial position? In 1948, when we were defeated, the Taoiseach, when Minister for Industry and Commerce, sitting in the seat that Deputy O'Sullivan is in now, said to the inter-Party Government then: "We have given you over a country in a sound financial position. Give it back to us in the same way".

Mr. Coogan

You are not able to give it now.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Fianna Fáil did that, and better, and the workers and the Irish people trusted them at that period. You got back again in 1954 and did not even balance your Budget in 1957. What happened then? The workers of the city and county of Dublin could not get out of the country quickly enough because there was no money for housing or for various other schemes we had initiated during our time.

Mr. Corish

They cannot get out of the houses now quickly enough.

Mr. P.J. Burke

There were almost 1,800 houses idle in Dublin Corporation schemes in 1956 and 1957 with the number of people who were leaving them, especially tradesmen, and the Labour Party are this evening saying what they will do if they get back. I do not know what policy the Labour Party have at all, if they have any, but there is one thing I am very sure of—that neither the Labour Party nor Fine Gael are concerned with the economic interests of this country——

Mr. Corish

Deputy Leneghan said we were.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Why not face this 2½ per cent turnover tax in a reasonable and constructive way? Finally, I want to say that I am sure the people of Ireland will consider the way they were treated from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957. Fool us once, shame on you: fool us twice, shame on us.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It is a great pity that a serious matter of this kind should be made the subject of comedy. We have had speeches from Deputy Burke, Deputy Corry and Deputy Sherwin that could only be described as a mockery of Parliament, making a joke and a laugh of something that is a serious consequence to the people, particularly the poor and workingclass people. This is degrading Parliament and is something that should be deplored by all Deputies with any sense of responsibility to their constituents.

I intend to be brief in my condemnation of this despicable Bill now in its Final Stage here. Listening for most of the day I heard speeches by those supporting the measure. Many of the speeches went back to the days of the inter-Party Government to rehearse the old Fianna Fáil speech that was put in type for them for the past two general elections. It was to the effect that the inter-Party Governments left the country in debt, with particular reference to the manner in which Marshall Aid money was spent. Now that the Minister for Finance is in the House, let him correct me if I am wrong when I state the facts. In three years, the inter-Party Government spent £18 million on housing, hospitals, drainage and land reclamation and in six months Fianna Fáil squandered £24 million of Marshall Aid. That can be proved. If Fianna Fáil say that building houses for the poor, providing work, draining and reclaiming land, building hospitals and staffing them is squandering money, I am proud to be associated with it. If we get in tomorrow, we shall do the same again.

Mr. Cunningham

Where will you get the money?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

In regard to the money we are now told must be got, what money is the Minister looking for? Since the inter-Party Government were in office, Fianna Fáil have put £63 million extra taxation on this country and we are worse off to-day than on the last day we were in office. For what do they want the money now? We have no evidence of progress as a result of the additional £63 million already piled on. Unemployment is a serious and growing problem: the cost of living is at an all-time record high level; emigration is serious and growing. I wonder, during their trips abroad, do our Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries ever go down the streets of a British town on a Sunday morning and see in places like Cricklewood and West Hendon the very strong representation of Irish people? All those young people will tell you that they arrived in the last year or two. There are as many people from Ireland in London today as there are in the whole province of Connacht. That is the proud record of Fianna Fáil in regard to the provision of work and the stemming of emigration.

This morning, the Taoiseach called for harder work and greater sacrifice. When Fianna Fáil face the people at a general election this year or next year or the year after—it cannot be postponed indefinitely—the people will remember this. This tax will not be forgotten by Christmas because it is an unnecessary tax, a tax on which the Leader of the Opposition has challenged the Government to go to the country and abide by the verdict of the people and he gave the guarantee that if he were elected, there would be no turnover tax.

Mr. Cunningham

Just a purchase tax.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Minister for Finance may sit in a trance but if he thinks he has nothing to worry about, if he thinks he can convince the people in the same way as he has convinced Deputy Leneghan and Deputy Sherwin, why not go to the people about this turnover tax, which is a new tax here? We now face the position in which the baby will have its christening robes taxed, the milk for its bottle taxed; its First Communion and Confirmation clothes will be taxed. The wedding ring will not escape. All his life that person will pay tax on everything he eats or drinks and wears, on the light and the fire, and when he dies his habit and coffin will be taxed and everything connected with his last end, even down to the nails that go into the coffin will be taxed. This will mean a tax from birth to death, something that must be viewed with the greatest concern.

The Minister did not tell us where the idea of the turnover tax came from. Why did not the Taoiseach this morning be honest to the House and the country? The Minister well knows because the Taoiseach told him where the idea for this tax came from. The Taoiseach had discussions concerned with the economic position of the country with a personal friend and the friend suggested: "Why do you not have a turnover tax?" The Taoiseach paused and this influential friend said: "I have experience of the working of the turnover tax abroad and next time I come over for a fishing holiday I shall bring you the details." He brought the details to the Taoiseach and the turnover tax was born on a fishing lake in County Mayo.

Dr. Ryan

That is not true.

Mr. Coogan

It is true.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The idea came here through one of the most outstanding and influential millionaires in the world who is a friend of the Taoiseach.

Dr. Ryan

Make them all laugh now.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I may be making Deputies laugh but I am making the Minister mad.

Dr. Ryan

You are not telling the truth.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I say it is true and if you want to know who it was, it is the ice cream king who owns half O'Connell Street and a string of restaurants in London.

An Ceann Comhairle

Names should not be introduced.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I did not mention his name. Far be it from me to mention the name of any outstanding person in this House.

Mr. Cunningham

You did it before and did not get away with it.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I want to prove to this House and to let the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach see that we on this side of the House now know where this millionaire idea came from.

Dr. Ryan

It is not true at all.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I want to put this to the Minister for Finance as a second query. The Minister for Finance was once the Minister for Health and he told this House, in the hearing of most of the senior Deputies who were here when he was introducing the Health Act, that it would cost 2/- in the £ in the rates.

Dr. Ryan

That was true.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Did the Minister not tell us that?

Dr. Ryan

That was true and remains true.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Health Act was being passed and we all took the Minister's word.

Dr. Ryan

You did in your hat.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Now it is 15/in the £ and £1 in the £. Today the same Minister, in his capacity as Minister for Finance, tells us this turnover tax will be 2½ per cent. I venture to say this will wind up at six per cent, seven per cent or maybe ten per cent in the same way as the Minister told this House that 2/- in the £ would be the cost of the implementation of the Health Act. Heaven help the shopkeepers who think this will only be 6d. in the £. Heaven help the farmers and the agricultural workers who think it will be only 6d. in the £. Heaven help the labouring people and the unemployed who think this sham Social Welfare Bill will compensate them.

This Bill to improve the social welfare services should be brought in at an increased rate, irrespective of the turnover tax or any other tax because the benefits are entirely too low, too mangy for the unemployed, for the widows and orphans, for disabled persons, for home assistance recipients, for the blind and particularly old age pensioners.

Now I come to the third point for the Minister for Finance. When Dr. O'Higgins was alive and was a Deputy here, he and Deputy John A. Costello put down a motion asking the Fianna Fáil Government to increase old age pensions. The Minister for Finance and the then Taoiseach said it could not be done because there was no money to do it. There was a change of Government and the new Government immediately substantially increased old age pensions and reduced taxation. Does everybody not know that? It is on record. Now they tell us they are looking for £13½ million of which they hope to get £3 million between 1st November and 31st March next. I want to be placed on record as saying that it is dishonest. It is diving their hands deep down into the taxpayer's pocket. It is putting their hands into the purse of every housewife. It is extracting money dishonestly from that pocket and that purse without consideration and, more important, without a mandate from the people.

Everybody knows this Government have no mandate from the people. This Government are known and will be known to posterity as the Sherwin Government, whether they like it or not. Deputy Leneghan is jealous now because it is not the Leneghan Government but we must give the honour to the city man. This Government have no mandate. There was enough mention of the turnover tax at the last election and they lost hands down. Irrespective of any other reason they should be put out of office because of the increase which will occur in the price of milk, butter, sugar, bread and flour.

I cannot understand why Fianna Fáil always concentrate their energies on slashing food. In 1952, they commenced the campaign and advocated dearer food for the people. Everything that was on the shop shelves and in the shop windows, everything that goes on the old age pensioners' meagre table, they decided to attack. They concentrated their attack on food the whole time. Why? Because we were told by one of the Ministers at the time, we were eating too much and drinking too much; the Irish people were living too well, looking too well and in the lap of luxury. In order that the people might tighten their belts and eat less, the Government decided to tax food.

During the general election campaign of 1957, there was a suggestion that if Fianna Fáil were returned to office, they would increase the price of bread. Above all places in Ireland, where did the Leader of Fianna Fáil go but to Belmullet to address a meeting and in Belmullet he said: "Somebody in Fine Gael says we are going to increase the price of bread. If we get back, we will never increase the price of bread." His exact words were: "Why should we increase the price of bread, such an important commodity of diet for the people?" Those were the words of the President, then Leader of Fianna Fáil, in Belmullet.

Mr. Leneghan

There are no poor down there.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

At the same time, Deputy Leneghan was shouting him out of the town and heckling him. The general election took place and back went Fianna Fáil. They were not back three months when they slashed the food subsidies and without any consideration increased the price of bread and flour. Although we on this side of the House reduced the price of butter, they increased it substantially. In relation to the increase in the price of butter, they are today paying the British for eating our butter when our own people are forced to eat margarine because they cannot pay for butter. Anybody who cares to look for Irish butter can get it for 2/7d. or 2/8d. a lb. in Manchester. The best Irish butter can be got in the Tesco Stores outside London for 2/7d. a lb., while in this city it is 4/8d. and 4/9d. a lb. because Fianna Fáil are paying the British with our money for eating our butter which we cannot afford to purchase.

This turnover tax is a savage blow to the poor of my area and very much so because of the numbers of working class people in the midland constituency which I represent. I venture to say that no Fianna Fáil Deputy can take the platform on any Sunday morning, whether it is next Sunday morning or within the next 18 months, in any provincial town and defend increasing the price of milk, butter, sugar, bread and flour after removing the subsidies which gave them an extra £9 million to play around with, which they must have squandered because there are no results for it.

The Minister talks here about a plan. The Taoiseach had another plan this morning. When will we be finished with all the plans from Fianna Fáil? There was a plan in 1932. At that time, the plan was to bring back the emigrants from America. They had another plan later which meant that the people could not pass up and down through any of the towns at lunch time because there would be so many thousands of workers coming out of all the factories that were to be established that there would be traffic jams.

That was the plan for 1933. There was another plan for 1937 and 1938. This time it was the farmers. Having whipped John Bull and slaughtered the calves—and the Minister for Finance played no small part in that regard; he was the official butcher—the plan now was to cut the throats of all the calves, sell them for 50/- a head, and give free beef to all the Fianna Fáil supporters in the country.

Mr. Lenihan

This is comic opera.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That was the plan. In 1943, there was another plan. What was it?

Mr. A. Barry

Something to do with the railways?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I do not think so. The then Taoiseach said there was going to be another war, that it was just around the corner but: "We have a plan to keep you out again."

Dr. Ryan

He did keep us out.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

He won the general election in 1943, and lo and behold, there was another general election in 1944.

Mr. McQuillan

On a point of order, is it not a fact that the Minister for Finance has stated that the former Taoiseach kept this country out of the war, and is it not a fact that the present Taoiseach is trying to embroil the country——

Dr. Ryan

Is that a point of order?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

We come now to the 1948 general election. There was another plan, but this time the people did not fall for it.

Dr. Ryan

They got a Coalition. There was no mandate for it.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Towards the end of that Dáil, the Taoiseach decided he would go to a dance in Clery's Ballroom. When the dance was over, he decided he would produce another plan known as the Clery's Ballroom plan, but this was the best plan of all, because the plan he produced in Clery's Ballroom was nothing less than 100,000 new jobs in five years, if he could get back. The Irish Press got to work and they published his speech in a free supplement for every reader and the plan he made when he was jigging around Clery's Ballroom. Lo and behold, if he did not get back——

Mr. Lenihan

The Deputy is the biggest joke.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The biggest joke, as the Parliamentary Secretary says, was that there were no 100,000 new jobs. All he wanted was votes, and he got votes, and the whole country which was expecting 100,000 new jobs could go and dance the same jig as he had danced in Clery's Ballroom the night he announced his great plan. There was never a word about the 100,000 new jobs since.

The next thing was that there was another plan. At the last general election, from every platform the Taoiseach said he was going to stop emigration and reduce the cost of living, but he never once said that there was to be a turnover or purchase tax. Since the Government got such a hiding from the people without mentioning a purchasing tax, what would they get today if they went to the people and mentioned a turnover tax? After 20 years' experience in this House, I know very well that Fianna Fáil will try to hang on to office as long as they can.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Government are afraid to put this issue to the country. When I listen to Deputy Corry and Deputy Burke, I am reminded of a person whistling loudly while passing a graveyard. They are whistling loudly tonight saying there will not be a general election because of Deputy Lenehan and Deputy Sherwin. They will try to hold on as long as they can. I accuse the Government of cowardice. They are windy and afraid. They are afraid to look for a mandate from the people because this issue was already tested. The only election that took place since the turnover tax was mentioned was the by-election in Dublin where the Government were completely and entirely disgraced. I venture to say that there is no constituency in Ireland in which what took place in the recent by-election in Dublin would not be repeated.

Many people would like a general election before this tax is implemented, but I would prefer to see the tax going ahead for a short while and then have a general election, because the people will not fully understand the tax until they feel the pinch. When they feel the pinch, they will know who is responsible. As I have said before, if the people sow nettles, they cannot expect roses to grow. People get the type of Government they deserve. If the people voted for a Fianna Fáil Government at the last general election, what could they expect, judging them on their record since 1932? Our country must be the greatest in the world, because there are no other people who would survive under such a rotten administration for the past 30 years. The only progress that was made in this country was made during the terms of office of the inter-Party Governments.

Mr. Lenihan

The Deputy is not serious.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Taxation was reduced; the cost of living was reduced; the price of foodstuffs went down——

Mr. Cunningham

And you went out?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The old age pensions went up two or three times. There was the Prices Advisory Body and control of prices which kept them within reach. A million acres of arable land were created as a result of the land rehabilitation scheme.

Mr. Lenihan

Created?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes, created.

Mr. Lenihan

So you are a creator now.

Mr. Cunningham

Created out of the sky?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes. I want to repeat that because I feel some Deputies did not understand what I said. As a result of that scheme, land was created. Land which contained furze, bushes, rushes and rocks, land which was too bad to grow weeds, is now producing food for man and beast as a result of the inter-Party Government. There was the Local Authorities (Works) Act that drained the land and gave work to every county council worker in Ireland. It was scrapped by Fianna Fáil the minute they got into office, with the result that every county council in Ireland had to increase their rates to make up for the Local Authorities (Works) Act money which we were giving them and which we will give them when we get back again.

Mr. Cunningham

Where will you get it?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

We propose to reintroduce the Local Authorities (Works) Act. The Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme was advocated and inaugurated by the inter-Party Government. Deputies opposite know better than anybody else that the only years of real progress were the years they were out of office and they are mad jealous. That is why they are so crickety. They do not like to hear these things and they are mad jealous.

When I see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands touring the country and welcoming tourists to fish in our lakes, I notice that he never once refers to the fact that it was Deputy Dillon who instituted the Inland Fisheries Trust that makes it possible for him to make his important speeches today.

Mr. Cunningham

I suppose you created the lakes, too?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I hear the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce taking credit for factories but it was Deputy Sweetman who gave the tax concessions to commence those factories. The Government had nothing whatever to do with the tax concessions.

Mr. McGilligan

They opposed them.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Those tax concessions were responsible for starting those factories. I remember that Mr. Dan Morrissey when Minister for Industry and Commerce was responsible for the Industrial Development Authority. There was no more bitter opponent of it than the present Taoiseach and every Fianna Fáil Deputy listening who was here in the House at that time. All opposed it but the very moment the change of Government came, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce could not be loud enough in their praise of the Industrial Development Authority.

I really feel that the Fianna Fáil Party are envious. They are a group of envious men. They envy this side of the House their outstanding record. May I say for the record of the House that I do not wish to deny the Labour Party credit for the part they played as honourable patriotic men with the interest of the country at heart and for the contribution Labour Ministers made to that great inter-Party Government?

Mr. Cunningham

Are you afraid they will not come in again?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You are afraid that you might want them.

Mr. Lenihan

You have not a principle in your head.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

They were good Ministers who did their job nobly, efficiently and well.

Mr. Lenihan

You are the biggest bluffer in the House.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

May I say again for the record that while we have had great Ministers for Local Government, the greatest and best who will go down in history is the late Tim Murphy. Deputies on all sides of the House will and must agree with that.

We do not believe a single word of what the Taoiseach said this morning. The country does not believe it. He knows in his heart that he made that speech for the purpose of rallying all the uneasy 69 or 70 behind him. Is it not true that over the length and breadth of the country it is now found impossible to call a meeting of any Fianna Fáil Comhairle Ceantair as a result of the turnover tax?

Mr. Lenihan

Definitely not.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Is it not true that the Minister for Finance was not allowed to speak in his own constituency within the past month?

Dr. Ryan

No, it is not true.

Mr. Coogan

It is true.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Did I not read it in the papers?

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Esmonde was there and he knows it is not true.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Well, it was wrongly reported in the papers.

Dr. Ryan

And you believed it.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is an old trick of Fianna Fáil Ministers. Every Fianna Fáil Minister has the same complaint against the Press. He was wrongly reported, a twist was put on what he said, an important word was left out, a "t" was not crossed or an "i" was not dotted. They are always wrongly reported when it does not suit them.

Dr. Ryan

It does not matter to me at all how I am reported.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It does not matter?

Dr. Ryan

No.

Mr. Lenihan

Deputy Flanagan is the comic relief for the House. That is his function here.

Mr. Tully

He would have a bit of a job to keep up with the standard set up by the boys on your side.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I do not propose to detain the House any longer. I have made my protest. I appreciate every syllable uttered here by the Leader of the Opposition. The country is behind Deputy Dillon and the House knows it.

General MacEoin

On a point of order, the Parliamentary Secretary is sitting outside the House and he is continually interrupting Deputy Flanagan. If he wants to interrupt or address the Chair, he should take his seat.

Mr. Coogan

He is losing his seat shortly.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

On behalf of every shopkeeper in Laois-Offaly, big and small, I want to express open disapproval: the firm of D. E. Williams, Tullamore, P. & H. Egan, Tullamore, staff, managers and employees, M. P. O'Brien, Edenderry, branch houses, staff, managers and employees, the firm of Jessop & Co., Portlaoise, and every other firm in every town in the counties of Laois and Offally—I venture to say that some of these firms have already closed down some of their branch houses——

Mr. Cunningham

Name one.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Williams's of Mountmellick have closed down.

Mr. Cunningham

What about Locke's?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

D. E. Williams have three or four branches closed down already. Do Deputies want any more information?

(Interruptions.)

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I venture to say there are thousands of small shopkeepers in business today who will close down as a result of this tax. It will put them out of business. Mark you, the Government are out to close up the small shopkeeper and put him out of business. This tax was designed by the friend of the millionaire ice cream merchant for no other purpose than to put the small shopkeepers of Dublin and of the country generally out of business. The more shops there are for sale in O'Connell Street, the cheaper the ice cream merchant will get them.

Mr. Lenihan

Perjurer!

General MacEoin

On a point of order, I ask you, Sir, did you hear that interjection of the Parliamentary Secretary's?

Mr. McGilligan

You said "perjurer", did you not? Say it again. You said it, did you not?

Mr. Lenihan

I did; I said the word "perjurer".

Mr. McGilligan

Do not run away from it. You have said occasionally that people here have a red streak in them. You have a yellow streak.

Mr. Lenihan

If the cap fits, wear it.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

On a point of order, I suggest that the Chair must have heard the remark of the Parliamentary Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary should be asked either to withdraw it or else withdraw from the House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary stated he did not call Deputy Flanagan a perjurer.

Mr. McGilligan

Did you say "perjurer"? Do not be a coward. Did you say "perjurer"?

Mr. Lenihan

I did. If the cap fits, wear it.

Mr. McGilligan

Whom did you apply it to?

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Sir, I insist on my point of order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary has stated he did not call Deputy Oliver Flanagan a perjurer. The Chair must accept that.

Mr. MacEntee

Did not three judges find that Deputy Flanagan was a perjurer?

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

I have raised a point of order. The Parliamentary Secretary used the word "perjurer"——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The three judges that Gerry Boland and de Valera bribed and got at.

Mr. Lenihan

On a further point of order——

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

I will give way to the Parliamentary Secretary, if he is withdrawing his remark.

Mr. Lenihan

I am making another point of order.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

My point of order is that the Parliamentary Secretary has not denied using the word "perjurer" in relation to a Deputy.

Mr. MacEntee

Deputy McGilligan would not face the Tribunal.

Mr. Lenihan

He is a contemptible little man.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

That is a matter of concern to every Deputy, and the Parliamentary Secretary must be asked to withdraw or else withdraw from the House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair has already informed Deputy O'Higgins that the Parliamentary Secretary replied to that that he did not call Deputy Oliver Flanagan a perjurer. The Chair must accept the Parliamentary Secretary's word.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Might I suggest, Sir, that you ask for the record because I have been in the House all the time and I did not hear the Parliamentary Secretary say he was not referring to a member of this House.

Mr. Lenihan

I said it and I repeat it. I used the word "perjurer".

Mr. McGilligan

In relation to whom?

Mr. Lenihan

I am not under cross-examination by you.

Mr. McGilligan

No, and you are not fit to stand up to cross-examination.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Sir, I suggest that the record be obtained.

Mr. McGilligan

If the Parliamentary Secretary was not referring to the Deputy who was speaking, to what Deputy was he referring?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair cannot answer that question.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

I suggest that the way the Chair is leaving it at the moment is that we are all being accused by the Parliamentary Secretary, and I do not think that should be allowed to stay on the record.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No Deputy has been called a perjurer.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

We had one bit of trouble before the Tánaiste came in.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy is persisting in an untruth all the time.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Oliver Flanagan.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

To be called names by the people opposite is to me an outstanding compliment.

Mr. McGilligan

Hear, hear, especially by the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lenihan.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I have enjoyed it for 21 years and, please God, I will enjoy it for 21 more and, when I fade away, I hope my son will take my place to continue against Fianna Fáil.

Mr. MacEntee

Have you one?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes, a doctor, and as good a man as myself. I was saying before the learned doctor arrived to intervene——

Mr. O'Sullivan

Sons can be less embarrassing than sons-in-law quite often.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Oliver Flanagan.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

If the Minister for Health makes any more remarks while I am on my feet, I will make it the sad and sorry night he came into the House.

Mr. MacEntee

Listen, Flanagan, I know all about you from the beginning, from the time when you took bobs in the Fianna Fáil cumann to write letters to the Land Commission.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Your son-in-law is a disgrace.

Mr. Lenihan

You have the dirtiest tongue in Irish public life. That is well known.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Time is running out. Would Deputies allow Deputy Oliver Flanagan to speak? There are only 35 minutes left.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

There is no Deputy or Minister in this House will silence me, or muzzle me either—not the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach or Minister for Finance, and least of all, the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lenihan.

Mr. MacEntee

It is hard to muzzle an ass.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The strange thing is that this ass has a valuable foal in the House as well. Now that we have the Tánaiste in the House, I want to say that the Government are windy and cowardly. If they were not cowardly, they would be sufficiently courageous men to put this issue to the people, but they cannot do it and they will not do it because they have the wind up.

Mr. Lenihan

Look at the alternative Government.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

There is one further question I should like to ask and I should like to ask it without interruption. This proposal in this Bill is being brought in against the wishes of the people. The people should know the hidden facts behind it. The House is entitled to have these facts. The House should know the facts.

Mr. Lenihan

From whom?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

From the Government. I should like to know if the Press reports are correct or will the Minister for Finance deny them again? Will he deny that he interviewed Deputy Sherwin in connection with the batch bread and that he gave certain assurances to Deputy Sherwin that satisfied Deputy Sherwin to vote for this Bill? I should like to know if the papers published that interview correctly because this House is entitled to know what bargaining took place between the Minister for Finance and Deputy Sherwin and the only occasion on which we can get that information is on this Bill. Surely the Minister for Finance heard the rumours afloat in this city that both Deputy Sherwin and Deputy Leneghan got £3,500 cash for their votes. That is the rumour in this city and I want the Minister to tell the House if——

Mr. Leneghan

It was £5,000.

Mr. McQuillan

On a point of order, the Deputy behind me has stated he was offered £5,000.

Mr. Leneghan

Any money I wanted.

Mr. McQuillan

I should like a sworn inquiry into whether or not that is true so that the good name of this House will not be dragged in the mud any longer. The Deputy has stated he was offered £5,000. I demand a sworn inquiry as to who offered it and on whose behalf it was offered.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I have another question——

Mr. Lenihan

On a point of order, a specific allegation has been made by Deputy Flanagan that there was corruption on the part of a member of this House. I feel this matter is one for investigation by the Committee of Procedure and Privileges and should be referred to them by the Chair. It is a matter of concern to the House generally that irresponsible allegations of that nature should not be made without proper substantiation and proof. This is a matter which concerns the House generally and everybody's integrity in the House and to that extent I am with Deputy McQuillan.

Mr. McGilligan

There should be an inquiry.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

If there is any reference to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, I trust that the conduct of the Parliamentary Secretary will also be discussed.

Mr. MacEntee

Do not bring in a red herring.

Mr. Leneghan

I will give names and there will be a few Deputies leaving the House.

Mr. Lenihan

There has been a specific allegation.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I said that I heard rumours.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Dr. Browne.

Dr. Browne

Deputy McQuillan has made a suggestion to the Chair and would the Chair be good enough to give us a decision?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The suggestion made by Deputy McQuillan and the Parliamentary Secretary will be considered by the Chair.

Mr. MacEntee

When the Chair is taking a note of this, would he take a note of Deputy Flanagan's statement which he now reiterates that he heard rumours of this kind and one of the matters which should be investigated is from whom did he hear these rumours?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It is generally rumoured throughout the city and country.

Dr. Ryan

By Fine Gael.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

What makes the thing more serious is the admission by Deputy Leneghan that he was offered £5,000.

Mr. Leneghan

By your crowd.

Mr. Lenihan

You are the lowest thing in Irish public life today.

Dr. Ryan

And the most cowardly.

Mr. Lenihan

You are the dirtest thing in Irish public life. You are welcome to him.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

May I continue, Sir? I cannot understand that when I get up to speak, I draw anger from every member of the Fianna Fáil Party.

A Deputy

Dirt, dirt, dirt.

General MacEoin

And Deputy Corry and the Parliamentary Secretary are clean. Is that it?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I am entitled to speak, provided I speak in accordance with your orders, Sir, and in accordance with procedure and no one will muzzle me on this Bill.

Dr. Ryan

Tell the truth.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Having referred to the rumours which are in circulation, a Government denial should be made and the general public should be consulted in a general election on this issue. Again, in connection with this Bill, there is a rumour widely circulating in this House that Deputy Sherwin has been given an IRA pension which is retrospective for the past four or five years.

Mr. Sherwin

That is a lie. It was the Fine Gael Party who crippled me in 1922.

Mr. Lenihan

Dirty pup.

Mr. Sherwin

That is a damned lie. I was crippled and tortured in 1922, now that you have raised the matter.

Mr. Leneghan

And they shot 77 people.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I am referring to this because I think this is the place to clear up the rumours.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

We want and we stand for cleanliness in public life and freedom of speech. We stand for honesty and decency and we stand for everything that is four-square with the electorate. The electors are our masters and we are always prepared to accept their verdict, whether it is for us or against us. Our history goes back to the earliest days when they always took the majority vote of the people—always. They always accepted the verdict of the people. You are afraid of the verdict of the people.

Dr. Ryan

What about the Blue-shirts?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

You are cowardly about the verdict of the people. I feel this is a Bill which we cannot debate with kid gloves on. This is a Bill on which we must fight, which must be exposed to the last letter. This is a treacherous Bill, a bad Bill, an insane Bill and an unsound Bill. It is a Bill——

Mr. Lenihan

You are insane.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

——that one would not expect from Merrion Street but from Grangegorman.

Mr. Lenihan

That is the Deputy's habitat. Go back to it pronto.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I am glad the Minister for Finance is listening attentively to what I have to say. This Bill is evilly conceived and evilly disposed and it is a Bill which is being passed by the majority of this House, with a majority vote of the people against the Government. Every voter in the last election who voted for Deputy Sherwin and Deputy Leneghan had Fianna Fáil candidates to vote for on the panel if they wanted Fianna Fáil, but they voted against them by voting for Deputy Sherwin and Deputy Leneghan. Therefore the Irish people are being betrayed in this Bill. They voted against Fianna Fáil by voting for the two men who are plunging this country into an additional £13½ million unnecessary taxation.

Mr. Crinion

Where are you going to get the money?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

What money?

Mr. Crinion

The money for what you declared you would do at your Árd-Fheis.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Locke's put you out. You went out flying in 1948 after that. Everyone in this House knows that this taxation is unnecessary and that already this Government have put on £63 million taxation since they got back into office. Despite that, there is record unemployment and emigration, and depression in agriculture. Today the farmers are begging. They cannot sell their wheat. They cannot sell their oats. They cannot sell their barley. They can sell nothing they produce. Fairs are becoming depressed and there was no effort by the Government to negotiate properly with the British to guarantee prices for farmers' livestock and produce. England is our nearest neighbour, the best consuming public in the world, the best people for agricultural produce.

Members of this Government went over to England and came back with their hands hanging. No wonder British members of Parliament are ashamed of those who go there with ministerial rank to negotiate on behalf of the Irish people. Is it any wonder that recently it was publicly stated that the only man who ever went over, with commonsense, ability and intelligence, went there in 1948—John A. Costello, with Daniel Morrissey and James Dillon. This Government are bankrupt of policy, of ideas for the future; they are stagnant, backward. The first time the Irish electors get a chance they will wipe them off the face of the political map forever. We have been reading the speeches of different Ministers almost every weekend to the effect that we never had it so good, that the people were never more prosperous. Side by side with those speeches was the report in recent months that we were one of the most backward countries in the world today, thanks to Fianna Fáil.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy liked that report.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Did the Minister read it?

Dr. Ryan

You liked that, did you not?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I am sorry to say I was ashamed to read it.

Mr. Allen

Impossible.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I blushed when I read it.

Mr. Allen

The humble man.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That report placed this country on a level with countries where starvation and extreme poverty are rampant. If that is the progress some of our Ministers are talking about, it is not what we in Fine Gael consider progress. I admit this is a good Government for the Ministers.

Mr. Coogan

And their col-cheathracha and their sons.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

They have their racehorses.

Mr. Lenihan

You have your five per cent.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

They have their racehorses; they are living in the lap of luxury, very far removed from the blind and the lame and the sick, far from the old age pensioners. They are concerned only about the millionaire types, their companions about whom we read so much every weekend.

To come back to this disgraceful Bill, I would go so far as to assert that in no other democracy in the world would such a measure be perpetrated without first consulting the electorate. Deputy Norton suggested a referendum. They are afraid of a referendum after the fate of the last one when they tried to steal the votes of the people so that Fianna Fáil would provide the Government in saecula saeculorum. The Irish people, thanks to the trade unions and to every other section of the community, gave them their answer. They were beaten badly on that.

Mr. Lenihan

Perjurer.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

On a point of order, is the Parliamentary Secretary to be allowed to refer to a Deputy as a perjurer?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Parliamentary Secretary may not address a Deputy in that manner. The remark must be withdrawn.

Mr. MacEntee

Why did the Deputy not give evidence at the Tribunal?

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Will the Parliamentary Secretary obey the ruling of the Chair? I understand the Chair to give a ruling to the Parliamentary Secretary and I am now asking whether he will obey it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

A Deputy may not be addressed as a perjurer. A charge has been made by the Parliamentary Secretary and it must be withdrawn.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Is it withdrawn.

Mr. Lenihan

I made no reference to any particular Deputy.

Mr. McGilligan

You are really white-livered. Say it out.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Was not a definite ruling given by the Chair that the remark must be withdrawn? The Parliamentary Secretary has not obeyed the Chair.

Mr. MacEntee

Are you the judge?

Mr. Sherwin

Have I the right to ask that Deputy Flanagan withdraws his allegation about me? If I have not the right to do it now, I shall claim that right later.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

Do not claim the right now to act as the red herring.

Mr. Sherwin

I was tortured five times in jail and crippled for life.

Mr. Leneghan

And a Black and Tan can get up here——

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

I am persisting in my point of order.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I most heartily accept Deputy Lenihan's apology.

Mr. MacEntee

You will not get away with it. It is in black and white what you are. Have I the liberty to explain what I mean?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Is that book the Minister has by Cruise O'Brien?

Mr. MacEntee

No, it is not. It is the report of three judges on Deputy Flanagan's veracity.

General MacEoin

Over 19,000 people in Laois-Offaly answered that at the last general election.

Mr. Lenihan

You are welcome to him, General.

General MacEoin

I would rather have him on my side than the Parliamentary Secretary. At least he has the courage to say what he thinks.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Flanagan, on the Bill.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I sympathise with you, Sir, that the House has fallen into such disorder. Deputy McGilligan is now trying to tell the House about the votes I got. I do not like that, for I am a humble man.

Mr. McGilligan

The people tried him and gave him 19,000 votes.

Mr. MacEntee

They tried you, too, and gave you a reprieve by nine votes.

Mr. McGilligan

The people tried him. He got the biggest first preference vote given in the general election.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Even though I beat Mr. de Valera once, I am a humble man and I shall not brag about it.

I was dealing, before these rude interruptions, with the question of the referendum. It was suggested by a Deputy that this issue should be put to a referendum of the people. This is an important and an urgent issue. I respectfully say that equally as much afraid as the Government are of a general election, they are clouded in cowardice on this issue. Every single one of them, without exception, has cold feet.

Mr. MacEntee

Hyperthermia.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I challenge any Fianna Fáil Deputy in my constituency to resign from this House along with me.

Mr. Reynolds

It is a fair challenge.

Mr. Lalor

Let him finish that.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

If all the Deputies for Laois-Offaly resign, I shall gladly do so and they will come back one or two less.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

On a point of order, I want to ask a question in relation to a remark by the Tánaiste. Are the Government prepared to have a general election if they are defeated in a by-election arising on this? If they are, any Deputy on these benches will provide them with the opportunity.

Mr. MacEntee

A question was put to me and I presume I may answer the question. The Government will abide by the Constitution. So long as they have the support of a majority in this House, they intend to govern in spite of slanders and people whose veracity has been found to be unbelievable.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Since the Tánaiste has now satisfied himself by his latest explosion, I may continue. From the point of view of the Government, a referendum is out of the question and a general election is out of the question because they are afraid. I want to deal with what I consider to be the most dangerous aspect entirely of this Bill, that is, the right of any civil servant to break the bond of confidence between a bank and a customer. Here we see that in this Bill the secrecy and confidence that has always prevailed between the business man, between the farmer, aye, and the thrifty labourer if he has £1 in the bank, and the bank no longer exists. I put it to you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, that there is a political move behind this, as well.

Mr. MacEntee

You would be found out, anyhow.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

There have been widespread withdrawals of deposits from the banks and it is only right that people who have money on deposit in the bank should know that the Government have a right now fully to investigate their affairs and to impose taxes upon them.

Mr. Lalor

If they did not pay their income tax.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is the type of legislation——

Mr. Lenihan

That was your policy a few years ago.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is the type of legislation you would expect from Khrushchev. That is the type of legislation you would expect Fidel Castro to implement. That is the type of legislation you would expect Marshal Tito to implement. But when you have Tito and Castro and Khrushchev all together in Fianna Fáil, it is only right that those who have money in this country should know that, from any church gate now, any Fianna Fáil tout can announce what they have or what they own.

Mr. Lalor

Only a scoundrel would say that.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is dangerous for business people. It is dangerous for people in commercial life and for people in important positions in this country who never had their financial position made known to anyone. It is a bad and a dangerous precedent to set here and no Government should interfere with the privacy that exists between bank and customer. I want to object to the infringement of that privacy.

Mr. MacCarthy

Except the Monetary Reform one.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I want this on record that it is the first step towards Communism for the State to examine the bank accounts of any citizen of this country, no matter who he is.

Mr. Coogan

Red China.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Whether he is on the right side or whether his account is in the red, the State should not interfere and I object strongly to any such inspection.

Mr. MacEntee

Be careful of the furniture.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I object strongly to any legislation passing through this House which deprives any citizen of his rights and I object to breaking the confidence that exists between him and his bank. It is wrong and unjust. It is legislation that is ill-conceived and evilly disposed. As I have said, if we have now sitting in the Department of Finance or as the head of this Government an Irish Khrushchev, an Irish Castro or an Irish Tito, the Irish people should be given an opportunity to put them down.

Mr. Coogan

On a point of order.

Mr. Lenihan

Is this tout to be allowed to make such statements. He should be liquidated.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

This matter is something which should be taken very seriously.

Mr. Lenihan

The gas chamber is the place for you.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

To give any Government the right to handle anybody's bank account is wrong.

Mr. Lenihan

You are good manure: that is all you are.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It should not be tolerated. I do not know why, with all the speeches delivered on this Bill for the past month, I should have been picked out for the barrage.

Mr. Galvin

The clown must be left to the last.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy O.J. Flanagan.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I say this, and I say it without the slightest fear of contradiction, that any Party, no matter what kind of a tail is wagging it— whether a Sherwin-Leneghan tail or any other—that tries to impose Communist rule in this country will be beaten and must be beaten because I feel that this is the first serious invasion by the State of the rights and the privacy of the citizen. I think it is wrong.

This House should reject this Bill. This House should now put the nail in the coffin of this Bill for all time and those of Fianna Fáil whom I have so worried tonight by the striking movement of their conscience. I hope there may be a lasting striking of conscience on their part and that they will take the right step in the Division Lobby within the next few minutes and will see to it that this disastrous Bill which is unwanted——

Mr. MacEntee

Like you.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

——and uncalled for——

Mr. MacEntee

Hypocrite.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

——will be beaten by this House as it will be beaten by the country when the people get the opportunity. Thank God, we have a James Dillon in Ireland to-day——

Deputies

Oh!

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

——to help and to give the lead to the country——

Mr. Lenihan

The ringmaster.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

——in showing the serious defects of this brutal, unnecessary, unwarranted, bad and cruel legislation.

Mr. MacEntee

A tremendous performance.

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 69; Níl, 66.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Lorcan.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Blaney, Neil T.
• Boland, Kevin.
• Booth, Lionel.
• Brady, Philip A.
• Brady, Seán.
• Brennan, Joseph.
• Brennan, Paudge.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Burke, Patrick J.
• Calleary, Phelim A.
• Carter, Frank.
• Carty, Michael.
• Childers, Erskine.
• Clohessy, Patrick.
• Colley, George.
• Collins, James J.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Cotter, Edward.
• Crinion, Brendan.
• Crowley, Honor M.
• Cummins, Patrick J.
• Cunningham, Liam.
• Davern, Mick.
• de Valera, Vivion.
• Dolan, Séamus.
• Dooley, Patrick.
• Egan, Kieran P.
• Egan, Nicholas.
• Fanning, John.
• Faulkner, Padraig.
• Flanagan, Seán.
• Gallagher, James.
• Galvin, John.
• Geoghegan, John.
• Gibbons, James M.
• Gilbride, Eugene.
• Gogan, Richard P.
• Haughey, Charles.
• Hillery, Patrick.
• Hilliard, Michael.
• Kennedy, Michael J.
• Kitt, Michael F.
• Lalor, Patrick J.
• Lemass, Noel T.
• Lemass, Seán.
• Leneghan, Joseph R.
• Lenihan, Brian.
• Lynch, Celia.
• Lynch, Jack.
• MacCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• Meaney, Con.
• Medlar, Martin.
• Millar, Anthony G.
• Moher, John W.
• Mooney, Patrick.
• Moran, Michael.
• Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
• Ó Ceallaigh, Seán.
• O'Malley, Donogh.
• Ormonde, John.
• Ryan, James.
• Sherwin, Frank.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Timmons, Eugene.

Níl

• Barrett, Stephen D.
• Barron, Joseph.
• Barry, Anthony.
• Belton, Paddy.
• Blowick, Joseph.
• Browne, Michael.
• Browne, Noel C.
• Burke, James J.
• Burton, Philip.
• Byrne, Patrick.
• Casey, Seán.
• Clinton, Mark A.
• Collins, Seán.
• Connor, Patrick.
• Coogan, Fintan.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, Declan D.
• Costello, John A.
• Crotty, Patrick J.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry P.
• Dockrell, Maurice E.
• Donegan, Patrick S.
• Dunne, Seán.
• Dunne, Thomas.
• Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
• Everett, James.
• Farrelly, Denis.
• Finucane, Patrick.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Gilhawley, Eugene.
• Governey, Desmond.
• Harte, Patrick D.
• Hogan, Patrick (Tipperary).
• Hogan O'Higgins, Brigid.
• Jones, Denis F.
• Kenny, Henry.
• Kyne, Thomas A.
• Lynch, Thaddeus.
• McAuliffe, Patrick.
• MacEoin, Seán.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McLaughlin, Joseph.
• McQuillan, John.
• Mullen, Michael.
• Murphy, Michael P.
• Murphy, William.
• Norton, William.
• O'Donnell, Patrick.
• O'Donnell, Thomas G.
• O'Higgins, Michael J.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F.K.
• O'Keeffe, James.
• O'Reilly, Patrick.
• O'Sullivan, Denis J.
• Pattison, Séamus.
• Reynolds, Patrick J.
• Rooney, Eamonn.
• Ryan, Richie.
• Sheridan, Joseph.
• Spring, Dan.
• Sweetman, Gerard.
• Tierney, Patrick.
• Treacy, Seán.
• Tully, James.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies J. Brennan and Geoghegan; Níl: Deputies Crotty and Tully.

Question declared carried.

An Ceann Comhairle

This is a Money Bill for the purposes of Article 22 of the Constitution.