I was saying that the truth is sometimes difficult to hear and not infrequently difficult to utter but it was long established in the mythology of the pre-history of our country that in Ireland the power of truth was very special and, indeed, as I have just said, in a house where falsehood was uttered, it was reasonable to anticipate that the house might fall and that it took the utterance of truth to restore the fabric.
I think the ordinary challenge of a Government to an Opposition to "tell us what we ought to do" is the customary fraudulent clamour of anyone who got himself into a mess and then starts saying, "Do not hit me with the baby in my arms."
It is the Government's duty to formulate policy for the welfare of the country and to sponsor it in this House. It is neither the function, nor is it within the power of the Opposition, to do it, for the simple reason that if we tried to formulate a Budget in the morning. without access to the secret information in the hands of the Revenue Commissioners, without access to the whole vast paraphernalia of the immensely able civil servants of the Department of Finance, we just would not know where to begin. The process of formulating a Budget begins in November and prior to that, there are months spent by every Ministry of State preparing its Estimate. It is only when all these have been reconciled with the views of the Department of Finance that the real work of formulating a Budget can be undertaken.
It is good enough codology to deceive the unsophisticated for a Government in trouble to say: "What would you do instead of what we propose to do?" To that, of course, the real and honest answer is: "If the situation is out of your control, resign. Get out. If this is the best you can offer the country, it is manifest you have lost control. Get out and we will take over. All we can undertake to do is to do our best but we are prepared to do better than you are doing now. The details of that we do not pretend to give until we have access to what our experience in office has taught us is indispensable to a Minister for Finance and a Government formulating their financial proposals."
Nevertheless, Sir, it is as well to state quite frankly that when you are the Leader of a great Party and the Leader of an Opposition, as I was, when I chose for my own reasons and the best reasons of the country as I saw them to retire from that position of responsibility, there is imposed upon one a certain restraint, a certain difficulty of speaking out as frankly as you are free to speak when you are no longer involved as Leader, every colleague that you have in awe with what you are about to say. So that perhaps my position gives me an opportunity of speaking certain fundamental truths now that badly need to be spoken.
What is the real root of our trouble? It is not the economic soothsayers and the astrologers because if there were a competent Government, they would have correctly evaluated the advice that was offered to them by the astrologers and their soothsayers. It may be to some degree the corrupt and wicked conduct of the Fianna Fáil Party in their reaction to the dilemma into which they have got themselves by the initial error of imposing the turnover tax. But still more fundamental is this, that we simply are forgetting in our time the choice our fathers made. Our fathers chose to be free rather than rich. There is a perfectly simple remedy for most of the economic difficulties which we are at present condemning, that is, to re-enact the Act of Union.
Sometimes when I listen, particularly to some of the younger generation, I begin to wonder are they beginning to yearn for the fleshpots of Egypt. Do they want to go back to being an inferior people in their own country so that they may live better? If that is what they want, the way to do it is not to deceive themselves by talking about re-entering the Commonwealth. What they are really longing for is to resurrect Castlereagh. I do not want that. I do not want the standard of living obtaining in Great Britain or the United States of America at the cost of becoming inferior in my own country. I deliberately chose to be free, albeit with a lower standard of living than I could have by becoming again a subject person.
I have the kind of feeling that in the ears of some Deputies, and I have no doubt in the ears of such people as Deputies Haughey, Lenihan and O'Malley, such talk is sentimental rubbish. They are "with it". They believe in keeping up with the times and throwing overboard the flotsam and jetsam of outdated sentimentalities which I was reared to look upon as patriotism. Let us make the choice and make it with our eyes wide open, because that is really what is at the bottom of this whole problem. We are trying to live a champagne life on a beer income. We cannot do it, and if we want to do it, we have got to pay the price. I think, and I was shocked to hear this said to me recently, that the second shocking mistake into which we have fallen is that we have got all our priorities wrong.
I was talking recently to a friend who travels widely about being free and being in bond. He said:" I agree with you, Mr. Dillon, but when you cross the Wall, when you pass through the Iron Curtain to the other side, you may find the main roads have potholes in them, that some of the windows are still filled with cardboard instead of glass, but there is a surplus of accommodation in their universities, in their technical schools, in their secondary schools, and a provision equal in every respect in their primary schools to the best that is available on this side of the Curtain." He said: "I wonder who is right, the people with the autobahns or the people with the universities and schools?" He said that their second priority is houses. They have gone to the extent that where the methods of automation are no longer available to them, they are building madly with their bare hands, building houses and homes.
Now when I look around me in this city of Dublin—and I will not refer again to that monstrous ball which is blotting out the artistic glories of the foundations of Nelson Pillar, but I will refer again to the same instrument blotting out acres of one of the loveliest cities in Europe to occupy those vacant acres with some of the most Philistine skyscrapers the mind of man can conceive. I ask myself what has happened that we here should find ourselves building these monstrous horrors on the ruins of our exquisite architectural heritage, to accommodate whom? Is it families taken out of Griffith Barracks? No. It is to accommodate the evergrowing army of bureaucrats who no longer suffer the indignity of sitting in the old-fashioned offices they used occupy. There is not a revolting sky-scraper in Dublin, one or two floors of which have not been taken on a long lease by the Government of Ireland to cover up their scarcity of capital and to emphasise again that the bureaucrats are great people in the new Ireland and must be accommodated in accordance with their status and dignity.
What has happened? When I first became a Minister, I used glory in the fact that every officer in my Department was proud of the term "civil servant". I used to rejoice in receiving deputations of people, who came into the room with the customary diffidence of people who frequently enter a Minister's room, by beginning the conversation by saying: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, let us remember that we on this side of the table are public servants. We are working for you and proud to be serving you". We used be very conscious of the fact that the noblest title known to man was "the servant of the servants of God". We are drifting slowly into the position in which there will be no more servants at all except the sovereign people of this country who are to be labelled servants and who are to be told "From now on, your masters inform you it is to be all take and no give. You can like it or you can lump it, but that is the way it is going to be."
I warned this country two years ago not to drift into a position in which we would be hawking the credit of Ireland through the world and finding no takers. Beware lest you are drawn into a position in which we are hawking our nation through the world and finding no takers. That could happen. If we are to avoid it and survive free, the plain truth—the truth capable of restoring the crumbling walls—is that the Government must spend less. Everyone else—and I say deliberately "everyone else"—the trade unionist, the shareholder, the salary earner and everyone else must spend less and share together the common burden of building up the small savings of our people into a citadel from which the Government can carry on the essential work that requires to be done.
If we had only faced that fact two years ago we would have never known the humiliation of standing in the streets of New York begging: "Brother, can you spare me a dime?", coming home with an empty cap and transferring our petition to the Federal Republic of Germany and to the financiers of London, to whom we undertook to pay the highest rate of interest ever prescribed, if we are to accept the calculation made by Deputy MacEntee, a rate of interest equal to ten per cent on a domestic national loan. I say the Government must set the headline by cutting down their own spending. My colleague here today, a Deputy of the Labour Party, proceeded to enumerate the ways in which that could be done. He threw the Leas-Cheann Comhairle into distress, who said these were matters appropriate to the Estimates. I think the world will laugh at the situation in which the Government are shouting over the House: "Tell us where you can economise", and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is warning the House that that is the one thing we must not do. At least, a Chathaoirleach, I suppose it will be permissible to suggest that one of the ways they could begin is to recognise that better men than any bureaucrat today have done great service for this country in less luxurious surroundings than are considered indispensable for the Government to hire on long lease at present.
They have got to reduce the cost of living. People who face the problem of their profit ratios appearing to be in excess of what reason would allow should be given the opportunity by trade unionists not only to share that excess with their employees but to remember there are such people in this country as consumers. We have all got to make our contribution to leave sufficient money in the pockets of the people to enable them to save if our Government are not to be perennially on the paupers' road to Washington, London, Zurich and Berlin. Some time, somehow the vicious circle into which the Government have led this country—and in the perambulation of which at present the Minister finds himself with the despairing cry of "What went wrong with my last Budget?"—must be broken. That circle must be broken if we are not to perish as a nation.
Somebody must give the lead, and it is the duty of the Government to give it. It is the duty of every other section of the community, if the Government give that lead, to make their contribution. But there is no use in the Leader of the Government telling the people of this country that they have an obligation to the nation to tighten their belts and live on less if he claims there is to be only one exclusion to that general rule, and that is himself in his capacity as Taoiseach of the Government. So I say to the Minister for Finance, when he asks us: "Tell us what you would do," that my answer is perfectly simple. This vicious circle that your Government started with the turnover tax has to be broken. Nobody can take the initiative except the Government that started it off. They must demonstrate that they mean and are able to spend less. Then they can turn with propriety to the merchants and bankers of this country and say: "We are doing with less. We have had to make painful decisions to achieve that. It is your duty to do as much." When these two elements in our society have set the example, we have the right to turn to the trade unionists and say to them: "You have to shoulder the responsibility that goes with the kind of power that has been thrust upon you. Perhaps you never sought it but the march of history has thrust it upon you." Then we are entitled to say to the wage earner, the salary earner, the merchants and the bankers: "We are all together in this so that we may stay free. We have our lessons to learn from east of the Iron Curtain and from west of the Iron Curtain, but there is one simple requisition the Government of our people are entitled to make upon you: if the cost of government is being brought down, the burden of taxation relieved, the cost of living stabilised or pushed downwards, then instead of spending the surplus left in your pockets, we ask you to lend it to your own Government so that essential work may be done without making us beggars before the world." Our people still love their freedom and their dignity enough to answer a call of that kind.
I want to see survive in Ireland the rule of law and the sovereignty of the Irish people. I see both disintegrating under my eyes at the present time. Partly, if not wholly, on the testimony of Deputy MacEntee himself, the Government of the Fianna Fáil Party are too weak or too woolly to take the decisions required to be taken, too weak to control the potential anarchy that threatens this country, too woolly to sort out error from the truth in the advice tendered them by their astrologers and soothsayers. If that is their situation, the only remedy is for them to get out, and from the rest of this House I hope a Government can be found which will take their place and have the courage and the wisdom to do what Fianna Fáil have so signally failed to accomplish.
