That speech was full of the arrogant convictions in the assurances that he was putting forward, the plans he was proposing, the great benefits that inevitably must flow, the social changes, prosperity, full employment, end of emigration and all the same guarantees as we were promised here today by the same man, only 30 years older, but, unfortunately, obviously no way wiser. The facts of the matter are that this man who has just spoken has had complete control of the whole organisation for the past 30 years. He is no neophyte in politics; he is no new man who has taken over.
This man has sat in that seat, or next door to the man who sat in that seat and approved, presumably, of the policies which have been carried out for the past 30 years. The speech we listened to here today was about prosperity, stable prices, wage agreements, manpower policies, educational services, better social services and better health services. Instead of all that, he has watched, and his colleagues have watched beside him, while between a quarter and a half million people got out of the country. They did so because of the failure of the policies of the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Taoiseach, and all the other things we know so well which have been put up since the 1930s and, in fact, since the 1920s.
The best part of one million people have gone out of the country because of the scandalous position in relation to educational services, lack of scholarships, lack of opportunities for young people, improper school buildings, all the unemployed people—six to eight per cent unemployed—a position which in any other country would bring about a revolution. As well as all this, the old people are getting only 37/6 a week. How can an intelligent man like the Taoiseach continue to make the same speech year after year for a whole three decades, or the best part of it, and yet not feel that he is either defrauding the public or fooling himself?
Very briefly, in relation to his most recent comment on the health services, I want to say, so far as we in the Labour Party are concerned, we agree with his stricture that the Dáil Committee should have produced some positive results, which they did not do because of their belief that it was simply a time-saving evasion on the part of the Minister for Health to avoid making any changes in our health services. Notice of our resignation from that Committee was handed to the newspapers early this afternoon. We hope that other members of the Committee will take much the same action in order that we can expose the attitude of the Minister for Health, who has consistently taken every opportunity he could to see that no finality was arrived at in regard to our deliberations and that certainly no constructive health service proposals could come back to this House for implementation, presumably for the reason mentioned by the Taoiseach, that he or the Government was afraid of the cost.
These are the people who continue to talk about the expanding economy, about rising productivity, about greater prosperity, about a state of society which was never as good as it now is. I would like to refer to the Taoiseach's comments in regard to prices because they are the matters which he appears to believe are incapable of solution— the continued increase in prices. The Taoiseach seems to have overlooked the fact in his discussion of the causation of wage increases that, in fact, the Government's attitude in regard to taxation and particularly in regard to the imposition of the turnover tax was, of course, the initiating influence in the upward spiral of prices which led inevitably to the increase in wages.
We know well that price increases are necessary from time to time. It is the inflation of prices to which we object. The fact that inflation has taken place in regard to prices has been shown by the small, timid action taken by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in regard to petrol, in which it was seen that these people were trying to rob the public of another quarter of a million or half a million pounds or whatever it was. They gave no serious justification for it, and the Minister when I asked him the other day for the reason they had given showed that no cause has yet been given by those people. I am certain that if they had consistent cause for increasing petrol prices at that time we would have had that reason pretty quickly.
Again, the Minister was able to curtail the increase in sugar prices, and in regard to flour it was possible to get a tiny reduction in price in this most essential commodity. Of course, this is completely inadequate. The Minister's attitude to price increases has been flaccid, complacent, and he is selfsatisfied. He does not appear to have to concern himself at all about the impact of prices on the ordinary housewife. If he was conscious of the present effect he would know that the position is that the average housewife is becoming more and more frightened of the Friday night wage packet, which she knows cannot cover the outlay on the next day's purchases that she will have to make for her family.
The Taoiseach seemed to me to be thoroughly naïve and ingenuous in his suggestion to us that the Government believe in the operation of free compeition to reduce prices. Who in heaven's name does he think over the age of 12 or 15 believes that there is any significant competition in the prices of essential commodities? The Minister knows quite well that you can go from one end of the city to the other and you will pay the same price in different shops for the average article of clothing, footwear, food, bread and milk, petrol, cigarettes, if you smoke them, and drink. Is there any essential or quasi-essential item of consumer goods which is subject to free prices? No attempt whatsoever is being made by the Government to insist on free prices. It is alleged to be a dynamic private enterprise mechanism, but the first thing they strangle is free competition in prices, because of course the system does not work and they cannot allow it to work. There is no question whatsoever of there being this free pricing system.
The Taoiseach suggested that we should rely on the pressure of public opinion to get results. He can take it from me, and I am sure from most of the Deputies who have any contact at all with the public or are members of the public themselves, that there is great resentment at the moment at the high prices of particular commodities, particularly meat, and that in spite of the public resentment, there is no way in which they can bring down prices and maintain a reduction in prices. That is the function and the purpose of the Government. That is why we are nominated and elected here, so to order society that they will not be exploited, their pockets pillaged by those people who want to make extravagant profits at the time when the average householder, white-collar worker or any worker, is having a hard time to get his children's mouths full of even bread and tea at the present price rates.
The Taoiseach is fond of talking about the futility of looking for price control, and yet he tells us that he has a Prices Act. What was the purpose of that Act? What was its function meant to be? Surely it was meant to be a mechanism whereby the consumer would get his goods at reasonable, fair prices? If he thinks that that can be operated, why does he sneer at us for suggesting that there should be some form of price control, when he has not operated the Act which gives him the authority to interfere with unfair prices? The Taoiseach cannot have it every way. He read a little extract from a note in this new paper Financial Comment that “price increases are as inevitable as the buds in May.” I think it is about time the trade union movement, if they cannot get a guarantee from the Minister on this question, should have it equally clearly stated in their organ that “Wage increases are as inevitable as the buds in May, unless there is some price control and profit control and control of dividends.”
I do not know how many people saw the advertisement which appeared when the Labour Government were elected in Britain in October of last year in the Financial Times—a long advertisement in the corner of the paper which proclaimed “No Labour Government here in Ireland, no control of profits, no control of prices, stock exchange index rising by so many points.” Clearly they considered this country and the consuming public as a captive body and fair game—take all you can get from it. Nobody will question what they do or how they do it.
Take the reports of the various companies in this financial year. I have seen those for clothing companies, boot and shoe companies, hire purchase companies, banks—all of them showing 15, 16, 17 and 18 per cent profits. The profits are increasing all the time. Yet the consumer is told that, for the sake of the country, for the sake of the prosperity of the community, and so on, he must tighten his belt and learn to live on what he already knows is inadequate. Why should these people who represent the bankers, industrialists, Ranks, Guinness, and so on, be allowed to take these great increases in their already great wealth? Why should it be tolerated? Surely these people have more than they can spend already? They have more motor cars than they can use in a day and they have more luxury houses than they can live in. They already can go wherever they want to go for their holidays and can enjoy themselves as they please. What do they want with more money? Why should it be tolerated? Why should this man Rank, from somewhere in London or England, or wherever he lives, be allowed to tell us that he does not propose to introduce the modernised methods needed in our flourmilling industry, the result of which must be greater efficiency and then a possible reduction in the price of bread, certainly not an increase? Why should that be tolerated?
It is noticeable that the Government have been very quick where the industrialist has been concerned. No matter in what position he finds himself, whether it is price control, dividend control, profit control, nobody will lay a finger on him. Then, when it came to the British surcharge, we were practically recalled by telegram to find the percentage of the charge so that the industrialist should not get hurt or damaged in any way. Yet, while this unlimited money appears to be available for this section of the community, when it comes to finding money for the redundant worker, for his retraining, for his re-settlement, for any inconvenience that may be caused to him, it is a difficult matter. We have not got any communication from the Government as to what will happen to the worker if, for instance, any of these lazy people who have failed to take the Government's offers of help to modernise their industries take the Government's assistance and introduce mechanisation or even automation in their industries. The worker does not know. Why? Why do the Government not tell him? Is he important? We have 61,000 unemployed—the pool of unemployment which was once described as desirable in the capitalist economy as one can then pick and choose. Is it because they are available and that the unemployed can get out and get to Britain?
Why have the Government not taken any steps to announce a positive policy in relation to redundancy? I believe that the worker who takes any part whatsoever in modernisation, in improved method management or in time and motion studies to increase efficiency is a very foolish man until he gets from the Government a clear-cut statement as to what happens to him if he co-operates in working himself out of a job. I should like to see from the trade union movement a refusal on the part of the worker to collaborate in any of these schemes until the Government have been kicked into activity and a clear-cut policy in relation to the redundant worker is agreed upon and accepted by the unions, after which every assistance would be given in the creation of efficient industry. Outside of that, I think the worker is very misguided if he gives any help or assistance at all.
The Taoiseach gave us at some length a breakdown of the figures in regard to the 10¼ points increase in the cost of living figure. Meat, potatoes and milk went up by three points. These are part of the basic staple diet of the majority of our people. A significant increase in their price has meant an effective reduction in the standard of living of our people. Tax increase accounted for another 3½ points. The public do not care how the cost of living increase was brought about, particularly when it concerns an essential component of consumer goods. They do not care if it is tax because if it is money out of their pockets as turnover tax, then it is money that they are not spending on bread, meat, potatoes or milk or whatever they may need for their children. Therefore, to say that 3½ points were due to taxation, as if it were a negligible or a relatively unimportant thing is to say, as far as the public are concerned, money was spent on paying the Government the turnover tax that might otherwise be spent on essential food commodities.
One of the myth-makers in the Civil Service at one time created the idea that social spending—non-productive capital investment is the name they gave to it in the First Programme for Economic Expansion—is a waste of money, that it is non-productive. It was considered that better houses, slum clearance, better roads, better schools, hospitals, better conditions for old people or whatever you like of that kind are not like a potato chip machine or something that could produce a clear-cut return for the investment and consequently are not really desirable. Human suffering, the needs of old people, of sick people or of young people were all reduced to an item in a profit and loss account and were regarded as non-productive capital investment. The result is Griffith Barracks and all the other chaotic conditions our people are enduring at the moment, overcrowded conditions, young married couples living with their families, and so on. That is all because of the advice given by this brains trust to the Minister and I am blaming the Minister for taking that stupid advice. They decided that this kind of thing was non-productive.
It has been changed in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion and now we shall have the houses. People will be able to send their children to proper schools. We shall have better communications and things of that sort. They are such self-evident needs that it is difficult to understand how anybody could dismiss them as unimportant, even on the strictly administrative or pounds, shillings and pence cash-register assessment of national needs of any society, leaving aside humanity and christianity and all these words one hears so much about and sees so little of. That has been exposed and we are now to have these things but I am surprised to hear relatively young Deputies like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Deputy O'Malley—for whom I have considerable admiration in his Department's administration— and the Minister for Justice, Deputy Lenihan, and sometimes Deputy Haughey, the Minister for Agriculture, subscribing to the new idea about taxation which presumably is being put out by their advisers. I am not blaming the advisers; I am blaming the people who accept this idea in regard to taxation policy that indirect taxation as a tax on expenditure has less of a disincentive effect on economic activity than tax on income. The general idea is that if you have high direct taxation, that is a bad thing, but you can have pretty well any level of indirect taxation and the people will swallow it. That is a most dangerous doctrine from the Government's point of view. It is none of my business to worry about the dangers besetting the Government but for what it is worth, it is a foolish conclusion to arrive at. First of all, nobody likes taxation of any kind, direct or indirect, but, as the Taoiseach said, certain social services have to be funded and consequently the money must be got somewhere.
I believe there has been a retrograde development on the part of the Government in recent years, that is, the increase in the indirect taxation ratio to the direct taxation ratio. Clearly, direct taxation had the great virtue that it soaked those who were well able to pay it: you paid according to your means. That policy has been reversed so that the indirect taxation burden has been greatly increased. What is frightening in the speech of the Taoiseach is the thought that they are now going to increase greatly the level of indirect taxation, primarily by turnover tax. The Parliamentary Secretary's recent speech on these financial matters seemed to me to hint at that, that you may increase that if you wish and it will not have any undesirable repercussions.
The Government are greatly mistaken in that view, just as the Taoiseach was when he referred to the three point increase in the cost of living and appeared to dismiss it as an undesirable but inevitable necessity. As far as the public are concerned, he might as well have said that it is due to an increase in the price of bread, tea, butter, or whatever it may be, because the money that went on the tax would have gone on those essential commodities. For that reason, any increase in indirect taxation is an increase, effectively, in the price of essential commodities and inevitably will be reflected in prices and in wage demands.
The Government have to face this choice. The worker is not the supine, bucolic, indifferent-to-his-lot type of individual he once was. Thank God for that. He has become particularly conscious of his responsibilities but also of his rights. He has become particularly conscious, above all, of his strength and his power. He knows you cannot get on without him and he knows it is quite a simple matter to prove that. He has done it before when you wanted to put us all in jail for going on strike.
Therefore, I would suggest to the Government that they reconsider this latest nostrum which they have received from their Civil Service advisers, that it is all right to impose indirect taxation but there is a great evil in direct taxation because it reduces incentives and so on. The idea that non-productive capital investment was a bad thing has been exploded and you have reversed engines on it. You may not get the opportunity to reverse engines on this mistake about indirect taxation. Bring it in in the Budget in a significant form and out you will go and out you will stay. Deputy Flanagan was right in that regard.
The Minister for Justice referred to Coalition Governments and made a comparison between his Government and the inter-Party Government and the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy O'Malley, does the same. May I point this out to them? Nobody believes that a Coalition Government, basically speaking, or democratically or politically speaking, could ever be as efficient a mechanism for Government as a single Party Government. Everybody would agree on that. When the Government speakers are criticising the multi-Party type Government, it would not be a bad idea if they considered rather more carefully the prospects for single Party Government for the next ten or 15 years. I will leave it at that. May I also put it to the Government Party that if they have been operating what we all believe to be the most efficient form of mechanism of government, that is one-Party Government, for at least the past eight years and the best part of 30 years, why is the country the way it is? Why are you gasping for support with the back-to-the-wall speech by the Taoiseach and when only three or four years ago you had the greatest over-all majority which any political Party had since the State was founded?
What did you do with it? How did you squander it? Why did you reduce it? Do you ever ask yourselves those questions? Do you ever ask for an explanation as to why you have to rely on Deputy Sherwin or Deputy Sheridan, or whoever it is you depend on? What happened that majority and the position you had? Why did you not use that power, as you tell us it is the only power that matters—single-Party Government, and full authority to implement all your plans and programmes? Where did it get you, minority Government with a diminishing support in the country? I do not expect the Parliamentary Secretary to agree with me, but I would ask Government speakers to do a little deep thinking on the question. The public have been, I think, particularly patient with and particularly tolerant of them.
Last night the Minister for Justice asked us to be fair and to plot a graph in order to determine anything. Deputy Corish made the point that in recent years the figures for emigration have gone up. There were in 1963 roughly some 22,000 emigrants. The figure for 1964 is 27,000. Where does one start the graph? Where does one finish the graph? Do we take the life of this Government, eight years or so? Do we take the life of the Fianna Fáil Party since 1932? Do we take the life of all the Governments since 1922? In 1922 the emigration figure was 16,000. That was in a situation of national chaos.
When we reach the Lemass millennium in 1970 we shall still have at least 10,000 of our people getting out each year—that is, if his plans materialise. We shall still have 10,000 being kicked out to be fed by John Bull, the man we keep kicking around. They will be kicked out to be fed, clothed and housed by John Bull, and given jobs.
Why is there no attempt on the part of the Government to plan for full employment? Why has there never been any attempt on the part of any of our Governments to plan for full employment? Is it an impossibility? The Scandinavian countries, the Central European countries and New Zealand all say that full employment is merely a device of politics and that full employment can be created with just a little bit of disorganisation of the existing vested interest of one kind or another. Full employment is not a new idea just thought up by me here. It is an accepted cliché of government in most of the civilised countries. The Taoiseach comes in here and tells us he will send out about 60,000 emigrants between now and 1970. Threequarters of one per cent is the figure for the increase in employment, which represents about 8,000 people, leaving something around 12,000 to emigrate every year. I do not think that is an achievement. It is a continuing failure. It is the chronic repetition of the old failure.
The Minister for Justice and the Taoiseach seem to think that the only source of wealth in any society is taxation. If one has to tax, then it is my belief that the Government should impose further direct taxes on high incomes of one kind or another. Deputy Corish suggested last night a capital gains tax of some kind or other. Certainly justice should at least be seen to be done, or attempted to be done, and those who are already well off in our society should be hit, and hit hard. If the Government do that they will certainly get our support.
One of the mistakes the Government continually make—the Minister for Health is an expert at it—is to query where the money will come from unless we double taxation, increase the turnover tax, or whatever it may be. It cannot be done, they allege, because the country cannot afford it. Education, health, social services, and so on, cannot be improved. The very fact that the Government cannot afford to feed the old, look after the sick, educate the young is the clearest indictment of the failure of the Government's social and economic policies over the past 40 years. Four decades, and the Government are still as complacent and as self-assured. The Taoiseach is as certain of success now as no doubt he was in 1932 when he made precisely the same promises.
A suggestion has been made by one of the newspapers—strangely enough, the Independent—that there should be deficit budgeting in order to avoid taxation. What is wrong with deficit budgeting? The Taoiseach always gives the impression that he is a goahead, courageous individual who is not afraid to try out new ideas. What is so wrong with deficit budgeting when the Taoiseach is so certain that he has a gilt-edged plan for economic prosperity——
