Surely how money is spent is a matter of Government policy. We are entitled to see that no money is contributed unless there is a positive certainty that benefit will accrue from it. It is hard to see how money of that kind will produce anything commensurate with the amount paid for it or how, in the knowledge that that is being done by Government agents, people are expected to listen to the appeals of the Taoiseach.
The Taoiseach is also asking people to tighten their belts, with the exception of the chosen hierarchy of the Civil Service. One might fairly wonder why these privileged few in the community who have salaries of £3,000 to £4,000 find it necessary to apply for, and get for the asking increases of 20 per cent and more. I shall give the House and the country the answer. In March of this year, the Taoiseach wrote a letter to every high-ranking civil servant, and I have in my hand one such letter addressed by him to a civil servant, not in his home but in his office, in a Government office here in town. This letter reads:
FIANNA FÁIL
13, Upper Mount Street,
Dublin, 2.
March, 1965.
Dear Sir,
The decision to call a General Election now was unavoidable. It would not have been helpful to the National development campaign to have a protracted period of political uncertainty. This would have been prejudicial to all progress and had a dampening effect on the entire economy.
The Taoiseach continued in his letter to the civil servant:
I believe that the great majority of our people want to see the present Government continue in office, so that the progress which is at present under way may be continued and expanded. But this general desire must be translated into a majority in the ballot boxes. This can only be done by an effective, all-out election campaign by the Fianna Fáil organisation in every constituency.
Then the Taoiseach says to civil servants who are supposed to be neutral and above politics:
I am appealing to you to help us finance such a campaign. I think you can regard any contribution you make—and I hope you will make as generous a one as you possibly can —as an investment in the future welfare of our nation.
He then asked for the subscription to be sent to himself personally. It is a new depth in political activity when the Taoiseach writes a letter to senior civil servants asking them to send to him personally their subscriptions to keep him in political office. When the people want to know why certain people have now got a 20 per cent increase on salaries already £4,000, there is the answer. I want to know how much was paid by these civil servants who were impliedly threatened by the Taoiseach with this letter in contributions to that Party's funds.
What is the truth about the Taoiseach's approach to that election? He did not expect to win it; he did not want to win it. In January of this year, he was forecasting a difficult year in 1965. Within a matter of months, when the political climate had somewhat changed for the purpose of an election, he forgot about the difficulties that lay ahead. He was not going to be a bit alarmed if he were defeated in that election, but he wanted to be in a position sufficiently strong and sufficiently near the Government strength as to enable him to harass and embarrass them and, having left them with this rotten economic situation we have at the present time, precipitate a general election and then accuse the Government who replaced him of being responsible for the mess in which he had left the country. That is the real truth, the only truth and the one that we are going to rub into him no matter how much he whimpers and appeals to us not to do it.
The Taoiseach says that this is no time to apportion blame. You do not apportion blame when only one person holds the blame. To apportion blame assumes that the blame needs to be spread over different people, but that is not so and Fianna Fáil would not have it so. We remember the big orange circle that emblazoned every hoarding and was suspended from every lamp post some months ago, and some of which are still there, bearing the legend "Let Lemass-Lead On"—not "Let Fianna Fáil Lead On", not "Let the People Of Ireland Lead On" but "Let Lemass Lead On" because they claimed, and he claimed, that he alone was responsible for everything in the country. He was providing the leadership, he and he alone—that is what the orange balloon said with the legend "Let Lemass Lead On". Now the balloon has come down to earth and has burst. We heard the last squelching air and condensed spittle here in the past few days as this deflated orange balloon "Let Lemass Lead On" came to earth with a flop.
What have we now to look at? Despair. Everybody is to do something but not the Government. Everybody is to tighten his belt. Everybody is to stop spending money but not the Government. Or, if the Government do it, we, as the watchdogs of the people, may not criticise them here in this House. Then people are asked to expect that democracy is working in this country when the Government are above reproach, when the civil servants, who have become the plaything of Fianna Fáil, are above reproach, when State-sponsored bodies are above reproach. The only people to be blamed are the ordinary people who try to make ends meet and who, when they find it difficult to do so, try to secure an improvement in their income. The Party opposite are the people to be blamed if the country is in a mess at present. If the country is in a mess, the people have, so Fianna Fáil boast, been led by Lemass. He asked them to vote for him so that he could lead them again. If the country has followed the wrong path, it is because they followed that orange balloon.
The Taoiseach told us, in all the election addresses published by the Fianna Fáil apostles in the election, that the reason for the general election at that time was to prevent a delay which would prejudice the country's development prospects. He said that the main task of the new Government would be to maintain the momentum of the country's economic progress. Here we are, three months later, witnessing the failure of the Government to fulfil what they considered to be their main task—the maintenance of the momentum of the economic progress of the country. At the same time as they do this, they appeal to everybody else in the country, bar themselves, to help them to build up the momentum once again. I find it hard to accept the good faith of any head of a Government who approaches the people in that particular way.
The Taoiseach must accept all the criticism which now can so deservedly be laid at his door. As other Deputies have said, it is despicable in the extreme that all this wailing and moaning was left to the last few days of this session of the Dáil. We had the Budget a few months ago. If that Budget was notable for anything it was for its entire failure to do anything to solve the economic difficulties which were then so obviously facing this country. Why were the steps not taken then, it is fair to ask. The reason is that the Government did not wish to be subjected to criticism from this side of the House.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce, in introducing the Estimate for his Department, had a brief which ran to 23 columns of the Official Report. The amount which he devoted to prices in that particular contribution of his runs to something less than three-quarters of a column. Even when he does mention the subject and gives it only a passing reference, he states that he is satisfied that the workings of the 1958 Prices Act have kept the situation in control and that no further action on his part is required.
In my constituency, the Fianna Fáil Party standard-bearers, one of whom is the son of the Taoiseach, spoke about the Fianna Fáil years of Government as being full of change. This is the kind of change they talk about. Two months ago there was no need for additional price control. As far as prices were concerned, everything was rosy and perfect. Now, there is a total change and there is need to bring in this new restrictive Prices Bill. It is in now and is before us for consideration. We in Fine Gael are not going to withhold from the Government any powers so obviously necessary to prevent any further rise in the spiral of prices.
We do not believe a Bill of this kind can solve the difficulty of the price structure in this or any other country. The OECD have pointed out that our economy is like the economies of Holland, Belgium and Norway, and such that it would be relatively easy to have a broadly-based incomes policy here. Our failure has been the way in which the present administration has sought to divorce incomes and prices, to divorce costs and prices. Every price contains an element of income. It is just as important to control the amount of income in any price as it is to endeavour to have some form of agreement for wages and salaries. There have been periods here in which workers have been limited to eight per cent increases in wages and, at the same time, profit margins have increased as much as 46 per cent. How can you expect the person drawing a wage or salary of a known figure every week to accept the bona fides of a Government who make no effort to control incomes except the incomes of wages and salary earners?
To speak in this way is not to speak against the entrepreneurs who contribute their skill and capital for the development of industry and commerce and agriculture. To speak in this way is to speak rationally. It is to say that in a country endeavouring to plan the pace of economic progress and the pace of capital investment, in a society planning an increased growth of improvement in social services, we are only codding ourselves if we do not at the same time plan for an agreed and steady rate of income increases. Because we have failed to do this, as other countries have done it, we have the worst spiral of price increases in recent years in all Europe. That is the situation for which the Taoiseach, who wants us to believe he has led us and wishes still to lead us, is entirely responsible.
We criticise this crisis measure because it is not creative. What we need is a creative prices policy, a creative incomes policy and a creative economic policy, so that all these things will dovetail into one another and that we do not try to run them, as we have in the past, in entirely separate Departments.
The Taoiseach said the present scale of prices was a symptom and not a cause of our economic difficulties. I certainly would not agree with him there, and I think many economists would not agree with him. Prices are a substantial contributory factor to our present economic difficulties. They certainly have not helped us to expand our exports to meet our increased imports. The difference between now and any financial difficulties that existed seven years ago is this: our difficulties at present arise in the main from internal causes, whereas those of seven years ago arose because of causes as remote as the Argentine and Suez. Therefore, if we are to assess, in discharge of our democratic duty, who is to blame for the present situation, that blame must fall on the present Government and in particular on the man who boasted he would lead the country and got a mandate from the country only a few months ago to lead them in the future.
On this question of prices, I should like to hear from the Taoiseach and the Government exactly how they propose to control the prices of foodstuffs and other items to be found on the shelves of any grocer's shop, be it a supermarket or a one-man business. There are several disparities in the prices at which retailers can purchase goods from manufacturers and importers. Some foreign-based supermarkets have been able to arrange to buy commodities at prices which are 20, 30 or even 40 per cent cheaper than that at which the same commodities are made available to other people. If it is possible for manufacturers and importers to make commodities available at those low prices to foreign enterprises that have come in here, one would hope the Government would see to it that the same commodities are made available at similar prices to Irish retailers.
I can illustrate this by an example. Some time ago we had the rather Gilbertian situation of a supermarket in a street in Dublin offering bottles of salad cream at 10½d., while across the road in the same street we had another store which is also one of a chain of shops, offering the same bottles of salad cream at 11d. The second chain was able to inform the public—I have seen the proof of this —that they were selling the salad cream at the price at which they purchased it, to wit, 11d. per bottle but their competitors were able to sell it at 10½d. because it was sold to them at 9d. per bottle. How can we try to regulate prices in a Bill such as this if we have such a variation at the very start of the prices cycle?
That is why we feel this Bill is not going to solve the prices problem in the way so necessary at present. It is mainly a permissive Bill, and it is up to the Government to prove it can be worked. It is no more that a red herring. Perhaps it is a bribe to try to persuade the wage earners to stand back and not look for any increases because the Government are now making an effort to peg prices. I believe it will crumble in their hands if they try to work it, because I do not think it is suited to our conditions at present.
We are extremely alarmed by the Government's announcement of further credit restrictions. We did not think it was possible to restrict credit any further. We are aware that for the past eight or nine months the Government have been denying in the House that there has been credit restriction. We have had this subterfuge of refusing to answer Dáil questions used to prevent the Government giving an admission to the country that there is serious credit restriction. It was only within the past couple of weeks we had an admission that there is credit restriction. Not only is there credit restriction but it is credit restriction as a result of direction from the Government. They thought they were getting away with it. A certain amount of blame was attached to the banks and, in particular, to individual bank managers. Now everybody knows, as we continually remind them, that this credit restriction is the result of a direction from the Government that it should be imposed. Deputy Burke said that some years ago a person could not get twopence from a bank manager. He would not get twopence today; he would not get anything. The bank manager would almost take the twopence from his pocket before he left the bank.
There are many long-established respectable business, family concerns that for as long as they can remember have had overdraft arrangements in order to cover stock and other recurring expenses of that kind. All these long-established, respectable businesses have security many times in excess of the limit of their overdraft. As the years have gone by, the value of their security has increased because of increases in prices in the property market. Despite that, many of these concerns have been told in the past six months that they must reduce their overdraft and those who have not reduced them have been prevented from writing cheques on the banks where they and their ancestors have been customers for decades past.
Deputy Burke complained that utterances from this side of the House might damage the reputation of this country abroad in financial circles. Nothing could be so damaging to the reputation of this country in international commercial circles than the inability of traders to pay for goods they purchased. That has happened, and there are several traders and importing agencies in serious difficulties and have already been threatened with or have had instituted against them legal proceedings for non-payment. The reason they have not been able to pay is that the overdrafts which they had assumed would be left to them as in the past have been withdrawn and they have not been able to pay for goods purchased many months ago. The result is that they have lost the trade discounts to which they were entitled and always got by making prompt payment. Now they have to pay more for these goods and this in turn is going to inject new increased costs into the distributive trade.
We pressed the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Finance, on this matter within the past month and he said he was not aware of it. Then, under pressure, he said he had heard complaints about it and that he would inquire into it. He conceded reluctantly that it was undesirable, but notwithstanding that, instead of doing something to improve the situation, we have the Taoiseach coming in and saying that not only is that situation to be allowed to continue but that he is going to turn the screws even tighter. The inevitable result will be a series of bankruptcies and failures in business over the next year. One is concerned about the ultimate result. Already there has been an undesirable injection into the distributive trade by foreign concerns, who have invested their money here in chains of supermarkets and other forms of retail outlets, and as a result have damaged long-established retailers who have given good service to the community in which they were born and in which they had a stake.
If the result of all this activity of curtailing credit is to be the ruination of Irish businesses which are to be bought out by people who are able to bring money from abroad, where there is no restriction, our distribution trade will pass into hands which are not Irish. This would be an extremely undesirable development. We have been told that there are to be new hire purchase restrictions. Already in my constituency, where probably more cars are assembled than in any other constituency, we have had an amount of under-employment and disemployment in the motor car industry. I was disappointed to hear my colleague from Dublin South-West, Deputy Dr. O'Connell, speaking about the Mercedes cars and not being aware that they were assembled in his constituency. Perhaps Deputy Norton could draw his attention to this.
