Last night I was speaking of the plight of many small farmers, particularly in the west, struggling on uneconomic holdings and the effect this Budget will have on them. I was pointing out that these people were already badly hit. They have had a hard struggle down through the years. I see nothing in this Budget that will be of benefit to them, despite the lavish promises given to them by Fianna Fáil Ministers down through the years. Last week Deputy Lindsay quoted a speech which the Taoiseach made, I think, in Ballina. On that occasion he said we seemed to have surmounted most of our difficulties, but the problem of the small western landholder would now be a matter of very urgent and serious attention. Surely it cannot be argued there is anything in this Budget to help such farmers? A sum of £100,000 was mentioned as being made available to such areas. May I remind the Minister and the House that during the period of the inter-Party Government, under the Local Authorities (Works) Act we got in Mayo as much as £85,000 per year for doing minor drainage works?
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 12: General (Resumed).
The question of minor drainage works would be more relevant to the Estimates.
I am making a comparison.
I understand what the Deputy is making. These details are not relevant on the Budget debate but would be relevant on the Estimates.
I am speaking of the sum of £100,000 to be made available to such regions. I am pointing out that that sum is very niggardly and that during the period we were in government, we made available £85,000 per year for local drainage. If that is not entirely relevant, it is very near it.
It does not arise on the Budget debate. The Deputy will get an opportunity on the Estimates.
I also pointed out last night that it was revealed in the survey of small western farms that the incomes of many of these people are below £4 a week. With increased taxation, we now have a further imposition on those people, in spite of the fact it is generally conceded that such a niggardly income today is almost worthless and that for people in such circumstances there is nothing left but to quit the country as quickly as they can.
The tax on petrol will affect seriously the few people still in employment in the west. Their pay-packets are small enough as it is. Many of them are county council workers, some are forestry workers, and many have to go long distances. They have to use two or three gallons of petrol per day on their journeys. Therefore, you can well imagine how seriously people in that income group will be affected by that imposition alone. In addition, there is increased road tax. I believe the petrol tax is the greater imposition, but, added to the petrol tax, it provides a further imposition on these people, without any corresponding increase in their incomes.
When Fianna Fáil Deputies stand up to criticise people it is worthy of note that on all occasions all the blame must be put on the working people for their greed and for having their hands out all the time looking for increases. The majority of the people so criticised are what I would describe as underpaid workers, in the rural areas and in the cities and towns. We have at present in this country a wave of labour unrest, the like of which has never hit this island before. I note that in yesterday's Evening Press, a Fianna Fáil paper, under the headline “Strike May Cause Beer Shortage”, reference is made to the fact that no moves were made towards the settlement of a strike involving 2,500 employees of three paper mills, four breweries and a motor assembly plant. How many strikes had we this year? We had the bus strike, with all the inconvenience it caused, which went on for weeks. We had the dock strike, when goods went rotten on the quayside. This caused thousands of people to be directly unemployed and thousands more indirectly. In addition, thousands of pounds worth of goods were destroyed or damaged. Of course, there again the working class were to be blamed by the Fianna Fáil Party. I say they were not to blame. We had the strike in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and we had the newspaper strike. At present we have a threatened strike in the airlines, a threatened strike in the bacon factories and, as I mentioned, the strike in the breweries, and I could go on and on. In my opinion, these strikes have arisen because of the high cost of living, due in the main to the turnover tax imposed by the Fianna Fáil Government.
The Minister and the Government know that the people are very perturbed about the state of the country. It is all very well for Deputies on the far side of the House to try to defend the Budget here or for Deputies on this side of the House to criticise it. However, is it not true that the greatest proof of the failure of the Fianna Fáil Government is to be found in the fact that when the Government went to the United States for a loan, they were refused it? By way of Parliamentary question, day in and day out, members of the Opposition sought information on the matter. The Government were reluctant to give any information until eventually the news broke that the Government could not get the loan in the United States, from a country that was lending all over the world. It is easy for us to criticise in this House but no greater condemnation of Fianna Fáil can be found than the Government's failure to get that loan.
We have always realised in this country that the American people and United States Governments were very generous to us down through the years. When we on this side of the House were in government in the period around 1950, General George Marshall made funds available to Ireland for specific schemes. Very generous sums of money were made available in those years, and made available to Deputy Dillon, who was then Minister for Agriculture, and who is strongly condemned at all times by Fianna Fáil. He commanded enough respect in the eyes of the Government of the United States to receive funds for specific schemes to improve the economy of this country.
Yesterday I received two letters from friends of mine in New York who told me that the Irish people did not march up Fifth Avenue as proudly on last St. Patrick's Day as they did in previous years, because they felt humiliated that an Irish Minister went out there to borrow money and was refused, and that our economy was in such a wretched state. Despite all the ballyhoo and the bluff that has gone on down the years, all the talk about programmes and about economic expansion, they know what is happening because they read it in the papers there. They were mortified that we had to go out cap in hand to look for a loan in the United States which we did not get and were forced to go to Germany to borrow money. As far as trading is concerned, the Germans have something to be thankful for, which cannot be said about us. The trading arrangements are very much in favour of the German economy and certainly not in favour of the Irish economy. If they did give a few millions, it was little thanks to them, particularly when one considers the interest rates to be paid for the money we hope to get.
The Fianna Fáil Government are a Government who want to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In granting status increases to certain civil servants it was to the rich they gave it, and the poor got a niggardly sum. They got what is called in Irish an eireabaillín caol. There are many people in our towns and rural areas who are hungry; there are many people who in the winter cannot afford a fire in their hearths; I know that to have happened in the town of Ballina and in many other towns in Ireland. Some people told me that in order to try to save sufficient money to pay their rates, they were obliged to go without a fire.
Taxation is piling up every day of the week and national taxation has reached an all-time high figure. Deputy Hogan from Tipperary quoted the figure as having reached £1 million a day, £365 million a year. That is not the whole story. County councils throughout the country, for some weeks past, have been meeting to discuss their estimates. In some counties rates have gone up by anything from 18/- in the £1. In Mayo in the present year, our rate has gone up to 82/- in the £, a further imposition on our people in a very poor county where at times they are finding it almost impossible to sell their farm produce and to get a day's work. Therefore, tied up with the £1 million a day, there will be a further heavy imposition. When all the rates are struck, probably in a week or two, I forecast there will be another £1 million a week for local taxation added on to the already heavy bill. It can be readily seen that the Irish taxpayer, regardless of what the Fianna Fáil people say, will have a very much increased burden on his back.
The Minister for Health said yesterday that we were offering no opposition to this Budget. I know he did not mean that. I know he did not believe that, but he said it. He told us he was over in London recently. We knew he was because he was rather loud-mouthed when he was over there, telling the Irish people they should be good citizens and conduct themselves because they were getting employment there and telling them to be nice, obedient, law-abiding people. Good advice all right but a little surprising coming from the Minister for Health, surprising because he did not apply a bit of the advice to himself.
He also said that we must be convinced in our hearts that this is a good Budget. What happened here a couple of days ago? We were faced with a position in which no Fianna Fáil Deputy offered to speak and any speakers there were came from the Labour and Fine Gael benches. No doubt Fianna Fáil were hoping the Budget debate would fall through and the Irish people would be kept in the dark about the plight of the country, about all the borrowing that has gone on, about all the extra taxation that has been imposed. However, we kept the debate going and we kept it going in a commonsense and practical way. The Leader of our Party spoke. He appreciates the difficulties—we all appreciate the difficulties—but it does not follow from that that we should keep our mouths shut. That is not the purpose for which we were elected. It is our duty to point out to the Government that these new taxes are a serious imposition on our people and, if there are demands for increases in wages, they will be understandable demands because the workers are being forced into a position in which they have to demand increases in wages.
We have had many questions addressed to the Minister for Local Government during the year in relation to advances to local authorities for various schemes, supplementary housing grants, loans for sewerage and water schemes, and so on. All the time the Minister sought to create the impression that there was no scarcity of money; all we had to do was apply and sanction would be given. We know now that whatever sum comes at a later date will be substantially reduced because of the scarcity of money. I made inquiries from the Mayo County Council to find out if it is possible for them to pay the supplementary grants in the case of two houses which have been completed. The families have been living in these houses for five and six months respectively. I was told nothing could be done for these people but they were hoping the money would be made available at an early date and that they would then be able to cope with the backlog. They were hoping money would be made available. We were also told that the sum owed was approximately £12,000 and that within the present month the figure would probably be doubled. The grants cannot be paid because the money is not there. Let it be clearly understood now that tied up in all that is the man who has had the house built for himself; he wants to pay bills for paint and other odds and ends. The local builder is also involved and so are the builders' providers who supplied the materials. All these are held up for money as a result of the bungling and mismanagement of the Fianna Fáil Government.
We have had some experience now of what it means to "Let Lemass lead on". We know where he has led us. It is humiliating in this year of 1965-66 to find the Government so hard up for money that they have to scrap the Garda Band. It is done in the name of economy. I do not know where we will finish up. We have not had one word in this debate about the Border. At one time it used to be a great gimmick before elections: if Fianna Fáil got in, the Border would be removed.
The question of the Border does not arise on the Budget.
It arose quite a lot here at one time.
But not on the Budget.
I think it is very relevant.
It is not relevant on the Budget debate. It has no connection with the Budget.
That is extraordinary. With all due respect, there are customs huts being put up at State expense and renovated at State expense by our Government so it looks to me as if these are going to be a permanent feature of our landscape.
The Deputy should understand that a debate on the Border does not arise relevantly on the Budget. The Deputy can reserve his remarks for some relevant opportunity.
Our taxpayers will have to pay increased taxation to paint and renovate these huts. Obviously, they will be there for many a long year.
The Deputy will appreciate that these details would arise more relevantly on an Estimate, but not on the Budget and, therefore, not on this particular debate.
It is a rather important detail and I think I should be allowed to make the point that the State is going to the expense of renovating certain huts along the Border.
If the Deputy persists on that line, I shall have to ask him to resume his seat.
I accept that. I understand from yesterday's newspapers that we can no longer expect any Irish music—"Kelly the Boy from Killane,""The Boys of Wexford", and so forth—from Radio Éireann because, for some strange reason, they will not be allowed. I cannot understand it.
Would the Deputy connect that particular point with the Budget debate?
We pay in taxation for these services. We pay our television and radio licences. At the beginning of the year, I was reminded that I had to pay £5 for a radio and television licence and I duly proceeded to the local post office and paid it.
I should like to hear some Irish tunes because I always liked Irish music. I can assure Deputies there are not many feiseanna ceoil throughout the country, including Thurles, which I do not attend.
The Deputy is getting away from the Budget.
Now and again there is a temptation.
We must pipe the Budget now and again.
An impression has been created during the years by Fianna Fáil that they were the patriots, the real true-blues. Now we have a free trade agreement with Britain and Fianna Fáil have told us how important it is for the economy and for the Irish people as a whole. It looks as if they have changed their minds. On this side of the House, we have always regarded trade with Britain as of the greatest importance. Now we are being told by Deputies and Ministers opposite that we can look forward to a brighter future when we find it possible to enter a European community. It is quite a change for Fianna Fáil, quite an about-turn which I do not understand. Neither do many people throughout the country. I hope this new attitude of Fianna Fáil will result in a reduction of the national debt, now at an all-time high figure. I hope it will make it possible for our farmers, many of whom have been neglected for years, to make a living from their own land. The bungling of Fianna Fáil during many years resulted in many of our farmers being driven almost to bankruptcy. The fact that we have today approximately 160,000 unemployed people, a record number——
That is not a correct figure.
Will the Minister contradict me?
Of course I shall.
I wish to put it on record that we have approximately 160,000 unemployed people and if the Minister cares to challenge it——
Of course I challenge it. The Deputy has quoted a wrong statistic.
The figure has gone up and up. The Taoiseach some time ago said we could measure his success or failure by the number of people for whom he would provide employment. If we are to measure his success by that yardstick, he has been a colossal failure.
I listened with interest to Deputy Noel Lemass on Wednesday last and when he resumed yesterday. He was worried about the twin problems of health and education. He suggested that personal expenses involved in these two items should be exempted from income tax. I remind the Deputy that we on this side of the House last year put down a motion in relation to that matter and he and his Party voted against it.
I have dealt with most of the points I wish to speak on, but I am sorry the rules of debate did not permit me to say a few more words on the Border. It is interesting that in 1966, when we celebrate 50 years of our freedom, in Dáil Éireann a Deputy is not permitted to speak on this subject.
Standing Orders preclude it.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
The best thing I can find to say about this Budget is that it is dismal, unimaginative, and uninspiring.
I hope the Deputy will not add to it.
I shall leave some adjectives for the Deputy.
Thank you.
I do not know whether it was coincidence or Providence that inspired the Minister for Finance to introduce it during Lent. It is ironical that in a year when the Church relaxed the lenten rule of fasting, Fianna Fáil should introduce their lenten Budget, with extra taxes on beer, spirits, tobacco, dancing. It will certainly keep us to the straight and narrow path. The increase in income tax will mean for almost everybody a smaller wage packet and will underline in many unfortunate homes the necessity for fasting and abstinence. I think we can well and truly call this the lenten Budget.
The saddest and most dismal thing about it is that the sacrifice which the unfortunate people of the country are called on to bear is not to atone for their own sins but for the sins of the Fianna Fáil Government—the wastage, the stupidity, the reckless squandermania, the inability to plan clearly or estimate accurately. The result is to be seen in the inert manner in which the Government allowed themselves to be swept along by the tide of events and they are now surprised when they find themselves faced with a bill for an extra £13 million. The responsibility for that rests squarely on the shoulders of Fianna Fáil.
Ten months ago we had Fianna Fáil appealing to the voters of the country to "let Lemass lead on". That was another classical case of the blind leading the blind. Not only are the Government blind but they are apparently suffering from deafness as well. Deputies on this side have appealed to them and often warned them of the consequences of their actions and, in the case of price conentl trol, of their inaction. But Fianna Fáil knew it all. They were too mighty and arrogant to take advice. They had to learn the hard way by experience and, as is usually the case, it is the unfortunate people of the country who are being asked again to pay the price. When they pay extra for their beer, for their cigarettes, for their spirits, for their table waters, for their petrol and oil, in their car taxes, gun licences and dance taxes and last but not least in their income tax, I hope they will realise it was Fianna Fáil who made these extra taxes necessary.
I hope this Budget will be remembered the next time we have the Taoiseach appealing to the people to let him lead on, the next time he presents himself as some kind of Moses offering to lead them to the Promised Land. They should not be deceived when he does that because he will not lead them anywhere. He is only a Grandma Moses. All he will do is to paint them a picture of the Promised Land and the price of last year's picture is an unpleasant £13 million.
A Budget should have two main features, first, to collect enough revenue to pay the nation's housekeeping bill and, second, to direct the economy. Last year the Budget failed under both headings and this year's Budget does not inspire much confidence. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance have said that it may be necessary to produce another Budget when the Presidential election is over but three Budgets within 18 months do not present any picture of scientific planning or financial acumen. It is no wonder that with such a record the Government failed to raise a loan of 20 million dollars.
On this question of Government borrowing, I am a firm believer in borrowing, provided the money is spent on worthwhile capital projects. There are complaints, and there always will be complaints, that the National debt, now at an all-time high figure. that we are piling up debts for posterity, but it should be remembered that in developing and producing worthwhile capital projects, we are building up assets for posterity and nobody can think that is a wrong thing to do.
The latest Government loan is a German loan which has aroused a great deal of criticism. The Government have provided for a Sterling-Deutschemark option as regards repayment. This means that we have given a commitment to repay the loan in whichever currency the lender prefers. If it should happen that over the next 15 years the German mark is up-valued, we are committed to repay the loan in the higher currency. We have given a guarantee to make our payments in whichever currency is decided upon by the lender and if the German mark increases in value in the next 15 years in the manner in which it has been increasing, this can turn out to be a very expensive loan indeed. I do not know who sold this expensive loan to the Government but they were too shrewd for the innocents of the Department of Finance.
The 7¼ per cent interest rate is fair enough but the currency option is the kind of gambling that we do not expect from a Department of Finance. It would be far better to pay a high rate of interest and know where we stood than to indulge in this desperate gambling. We would all like to borrow money as cheaply as possible but the ability to get money when you require it is more important than the rate of interest. Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain are finding it necessary at the moment to pay a rate of 7¼ per cent to get the funds they require but this does not deter them. They believe it is better to pay the high rate of interest and develop now than to wait until the interest rates fall and pay a higher development cost later on. This is probably the best financial advice available in Britain today and the Government would be well advised to imitate these industries. It would be better to pay a higher rate of interest for the national loan that will be coming later so as to get the money now and go ahead with development.
There is a great deal of money available in this country for investment. The difficulty is where to invest it. The rate of interest on Government loans is not as attractive as that which can be got elsewhere. It is a sad thought that on the 50th anniversary of 1916, people in this country prefer to invest their money in Britain. However, people are nowadays sufficiently educated to shop around for the best offer and today we have several English companies operating in this country and offering high rates for money placed on deposit. If we wish to attract money for Government loans, we will have to give the going rate to get it.
The recent ESB loan was floated at seven per cent and it is to their credit that they were able to raise money at this rate which was lower than the prevailing rate. If, in order to get more money, it is necessary to pay more the Government should seriously consider raising the interest rate for the forthcoming national loan in order to get the money now. It is important to keep pushing ahead with our capital projects and with the building of houses and schools at the moment. We would then have the use of the assets so created, the houses and the schools, for the happiness and health of our people. There is no excuse for delay because the health and education of our people are too important to be frustrated by such academic matters as the bank rate.
One half per cent on £20 million is £100,000 and this is the sum it will cost to hold the Presidential election and the local elections on different dates. The Government do not consider this sum sufficiently important to economise on it.
I should like to mention estate duty. Last year when this item was raised on the Finance Bill, I opposed that section because I did not, and do not, believe that the way to balance a Budget and raise money is to tax widows and orphans. Unfortunately, I thought, the Minister persisted and insisted on keeping the figures at an unreasonably low level. I am glad to see that since then, he has had second thoughts and has now decided to increase these levels. This is very good and since he has decided to show a little more imagination, it would be churlish of me, as one who criticised him then, not to welcome this aspect of the Budget and congratulate him on having second thoughts on the matter. Perhaps I should really congratulate Mrs. Lynch, but in any event it is a move in the right direction.
Another matter I should like to mention is the Civil Service reorganisation which the Minister has promised. I am pleased to see that the Minister proposes to appoint a group of outside people to review the Civil Service. I do not intend this to be any criticism, nor do I wish to be associated with any criticism of the Civil Service as individuals. To my mind, they are as fine a body of dedicated individuals as you will find this side of heaven. That does not mean that the methods and ideas of administration should not be looked at or should not be changed. There is a tendency for all such bodies to get into a rut and adopt an attitude that everything is all right, or good enough, that it has been done this way for so many years and why should we personally change? Procedures and precedents can grow very quickly into sacred cows. That does not lead to flexibility and economy in administration.
Even in the very large commercial firms such as Shell Oil and Imperial Chemicals, where the whole idea of administration is geared towards efficiency and the elimination of wasteful methods, it has been found necessary to employ outside consultants to review the position and decide what is the best method of curing the inevitable administrative thrombosis. How much more so should it be necessary in the case of Government administration where there is no profit motive as a yardstick to measure efficiency against. There should be a review by some outside group who can look on the Civil Service with an unbiassed mind and see if its methods or procedures are the most suitable and, if necessary, change them even though it may mean changing long established precedents. We are all aware of the inevitable application of Parkinson's Law and that is something in respect of which we must be ever-watchful. Recently on a Labour Party motion on income tax, I appealed to the Minister to consider setting up just such a group and I am glad that he has now seen fit in this Budget to do so.
The recent increase in the remuneration of senior civil servants came at a most unhappy time. I am not trying to pretend that these people do not deserve the high rates at which they are paid; I believe they do a very good job in spite of constant abuse which is hurled at them from all sides of the community. By and large, they are a dedicated and industrious group. Yet, to give increases of £900 and downwards to these people at a time when the Government, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance were appealing to the community at large not to increase wages and salaries by more than three per cent was a most tactless method of approach and it was employed at a most unsuitable time. How a man with £8 or £10 a week can be told that all the community can afford to pay him is an extra three per cent—they could not afford an extra 6/- a week—at a time when a man with £4,500 a year is to get £900——
Will the Deputy allow me to correct an impression he may be creating? These increases for which the Supplementary Estimate was introduced quite recently were increases granted following the eighth round of wages adjustments. The giving of increases was not wrong but because of the delay in arbitration and hearings and so on, it was impossible to anticipate in advance how much these increases would cost. That was the reason for the delay in the introduction of the Supplementary Estimate.
The Minister will appreciate that it was the timing of the awards that I thought was most unfortunate.
That is the point I am taking up with the Deputy. The awards had been given in respect of a previous round of wage increases.
If they were in respect of a previous round of wage increases and the National Wage Agreement was due to expire and be renewed in July, surely, having waited from the eighth round increase until now, it would have been wise to delay this a further few months until salaries generally were being reviewed for everybody. It would not have been quite so ostentatious or so aggravating to the man who is being told he can get only 4/-or 6/- a week when a man with £4,500 can get a £900 increase. I am not disputing the merits of the pay higher civil servants get. By and large they are hard-worked and do not get credit for it. I am not disputing the rights or wrongs of it. The awards were the result of negotiation and arbitration and, I assume, were justified but I think the timing of this was singularly unhappy. It is beyond my comprehension how the Minister and the Taoiseach can look the electorate in the eye, so to speak, and sincerely tell them: all you can get is 4/- or 6/-while the senior civil servants got increases of £800 or £900. That, to a man who thinks a £900 job—and one that is pensionable—is the job he is always dreaming about but knows he will never see, is a bit hard to stomach.
I also wish to comment on the industrial development loans. It was rather slyly, if I may say so, suggested by the Minister for Justice that we were against these loans. I should like to contradict that quite clearly and make it plain beyond doubt to the House and the country at large, if my words reach them, that we are very much in favour of industrial development. In fact, there should be a great deal more of it. The problem of attracting the right people to this type of investment here is not easy and I am not critical of the industrial development people in their work but some of the figures that have been thrown up recently were being used to create the impression that much of this money was wasted. There is no question that some of the money has been wasted and the most notorious white elephant ever foisted on the country is the Potez project out on the Naas Road. How any competent body of people could have passed this at a time when the aircraft industry all over the world was finding it more and more difficult to stay in business is beyond me. At a time when Britain, with all the millions of pounds she spends on military contracts, is contracting her aircraft industry, how the Government could have thought people would come from France into the middle of nowhere, to a place with no engineering experience and with no background for this type of industry and that we could attract that type of industry to this country, baffles me. The large sum of money which has been poured into this white elephant is unfortunately now, I think, down the drain. Every time I pass this factory on my way to Kildare and see the swimming pool with beautiful blue tiles and not a worker in sight, it seems to me pathetic that such gross incompetence should be on display on the main road, aggravating the people with the inefficiency of those who should have vetted the project far more closely.
There is another factory whose name is being thrown around here and in connection with which I should like to check an erroneous impression. I refer to the GEC. They did, it is true, get a loan but, unfortunately, the project fell through and they are at the moment in the course of disposing of their interest in this place and in the foreseeable future, there will be, I understand, a new manufacturing company operating there. In selling it, the GEC have not been able to realise the full amount of the grant they got. So, in point of fact, they have subsidised the new factory for those who are coming rather than have made a profit on the transaction.
I should like to contrast these two factories because where any established industry in this country applies for a grant and due to circumstances outside their control, things might go wrong, I do not want it thought that we in the Labour Party are critical of them and think they should be penalised. This was an unfortunate coincidence of market research going wrong and of a change in marketing tactics in Britain which lost the company a considerable amount of money. I should like to say that this is a factory which has been operating here for 30 years, which started with employment of 15 and is now employing close on 1,000 persons. Their salary and wages bill is in excess of half a million pounds a year and their exports this year will be £750,000; next year they will be up to £1¼ million, and the year after, to £2½ million.
This is the type of industry that we must strive to get and to which we must give all the help and advice available. This is the type of industry we must seek to attract to this country. There is no possible comparison between the white elephant of Potez and this flourishing industry of the GEC in Dunleer. I hope that, having stated these facts in the House for some of the Deputies who might not have realised the implications and what is involved—half a million pound in wages—they would be less critical of the occasional failure and more anxious to see the Government spend their energy in attracting new industries into this country and giving them grants.
There have been factories employing 200 persons getting up to £¼ million. I regard this as a lot of money for such a small employment content, unless there are very special factors. I do not want to pronounce on the matter, but as regards industrial development, I want to assure the House and the Minister that in the Labour Party we are solidly behind him in this matter and that the Minister for Justice is either misreading us or is deliberately doing so to create the wrong impression.
There was another Government speaker whose name I just cannot recall who mentioned income tax. He mentioned that Mr. Conroy of the Transport Union was in favour of an increase in income tax. As I remember it, what Mr. Conroy suggested was that income tax might go up by 1/-in the £ provided that people at the lower end of the scale got increased personal allowances and dependants' allowances. This is a similar case to the one which the Labour Party motion on Income Tax was making a week or two before the Budget. Because we say we are in favour of a higher income tax, provided that the personal allowance is increased, does not mean we are in favour of income tax being increased at the lower end of the scale for the man, if he is a single man, with £6 5s. Od. a week. On that occasion, even though the Minister said he could not make any promise because it was so close to the Budget, I was optimistic, foolishly it appears now, that even then, commonsense and reason would prevail and that we would have personal allowances and dependants' allowances for income tax purposes considerably increased and brought into line with the depreciated value of money over the past six years. It has been a matter of very considerable disappointment to me that I shall now have to say to these people that the Minister has not seen fit to adopt this suggestion, that there has been money for lots of things but nothing for income tax relief at the lower end of the scale.
The increase in income tax as it stands is a wages cut and the threat to come back in the autumn with another Budget is obviously meant to hang over the heads of people looking for wage increases. It is the big stick being waved: if you do not do as the Government wants, we will come back and take more from you.
Personally, I believe this is a time for being realistic about things. I never come in here trying to make political capital out of any unfortunate circumstances that might arise. On the night of the Budget, the Minister was very cross with me when I was trying to find out one or two facts. That, I presume, was the effect of the flu.
There is nobody in this country who is not prepared to be reasonable and to co-operate if he believes that his personal effort is being matched by the personal efforts of other sections of the community, that what he does is being appreciated and all of us, in all sections of the community, are prepared to do our bit to develop this country and to go ahead and to make sacrifices if necessary. But it is unreasonable to expect people to accept less and not to protect their own interests and their own rights while at the same time they see money being squandered on this, that and the other, —as in the case of the local elections and the Presidential election, £100,000 being frittered away with absolute disregard—and the following week an appeal comes that workers must expect to forego any increase in wages for the coming 12 months because the country cannot afford it.
The Minister and the Government will have to do better than that. They cannot expect the ordinary man in the street and the ordinary worker to be prepared to swallow that type of reasoning unless it is packaged more attractively. The worker has to feel that we are all in this together. Unfortunately, that is not the feeling in the country. The feeling is that some people are well in and others are on the outside. Unless the Government can stop pontificating to the people and get a better team spirit and get us together, the trouble, particularly the labour troubles we are having at the moment, will not diminish; I think they will increase. Therefore I hope that the next sermons which will be delivered by the Government will show new thinking and that we will have a more realistic approach. I hope that it will be the same for everybody and that we are not going to have one section treated as fish and the next section treated as flesh.
The most significant thing in the Budget, and particularly in the Minister's speech, is the great amount of moneys now being spent by the State which may be attributed to higher administrative costs in the public service. Salaries and the cost of servicing the public debt between them make up about one-half of the moneys now being spent by the Government. However, at page 32 of the Minister's speech he says:
it seems timely to arrange for a review of the existing organisation at administrative level.
The Minister also states:
Every organisation can benefit from a periodic review.
These are statements of facts and we in this House accept them as such. I am very glad to see that there has been a great amount of agreement among the Parties on what the Minister has said in this respect. I would go further and suggest that the civil servants themselves would welcome a review of the structural organisation under which they operate. I believe that they are operating under historically out of date practices and, in a lot of instances, historically out of date legislation and regulations. This has come to be an accepted fact, and when the Minister says that civil servants face responsibilities and tasks far beyond the earlier concepts of administration, this proves my point.
In my view, the Civil Service are operating (1) under out of date legislation and (2) under out of date concepts, as a result of which they could become out of touch with the realities of present-day needs and the present-day situation. The problem then arises: whose fault is this? At whose feet does responsibility lie? I believe that the fault does not lie at the feet of the civil servants. The fault lies at the feet of the elected representatives of the people, with us here as legislators in Dáil Éireann. I am glad to see that the Minister has indicated that this situation is now being reviewed and that we have finally recognised our obligations in this respect.
The Minister also pointed out that civil servants are remarkably adaptable people. I believe that if they are given a proper structure under which to operate, they will adapt themselves very quickly to it. Deputy Norton mentioned, very fairly, the standards of civil servants and I would like to add to what he said. I believe the standards of the Civil Service are very high, that civil servants are a loyal group, that their integrity is unquestionable, that their all-round ability is of extraordinarily high calibre and that the general standards within the Civil Service could be described as being second to none among European countries.
It is not fair to these people that their Departments should become Departments of frustrated hopes and frustrated ambitions. This is what will happen. The sooner the proposed commission sits to examine the whole structure of the Civil Service the better. This commission should be instructed to sit within the next six months at the latest. It should be given further instructions to the effect that it should produce the final report of its findings within one year to 18 months of its first sitting. The problem is an urgent one and an examination of it will be welcomed by the nation and, as I said, by the civil servants who are, of course, an integral part of the nation.
Deputy Norton mentioned labour relations. We have come face to face with realities and we have come to the conclusion that bickering among one another will achieve nothing. This is absolutely true. Over the last number of years, there has been created in this country an industrial revolution, although the choice of words may not be altogether apt, having regard to the present industrial situation. However, I mean this as an industrial revolution of the British type. We have industries now which we did not have. Many new industries have been created and every new industry and every new scheme means more jobs. In my view, the present industrial unrest may be attributed to the newness of this industrial growth.
Reference has also been made to the disparity in the wage structure. There is an awful lot of disparity, with so many people living on the breadline. This is a matter into which the people responsible could look and propose a comprehensive wage structure to see that everybody gets a fair piece of the national cake.
It is a well settled fact that in any young, independent country, in any young, emergent country, industrially speaking there are growing pains. We are trying at this time to find our feet in relation to what is the best approach between employer and employee and vice versa. However, it is also a well settled fact that the growth of the individual human being, which is controlled by nature, ceases at some stage. On the industrial front, the growing pains of industrial relations must also cease and must also be controlled in some manner by the Government of the day. The entity which must suffer by the poor growth of these relations is Ireland. To give an example of one of the problems, the ILO Report for 1964 produced figures which showed that 1,580 days were lost by each 1,000 industrial workers in our country, which placed this country at the bottom of 19 other European countries. Sweden lost ten days per 1,000 workers and Norway lost none. Can this nation afford to continue in this manner? I think the answer is clearly no.
Industrial relations are not bad in every sector. This was well stated by a first-class series of articles in the Irish Times recently. The author was Mr. Patrick Nolan and he pointed out that in many sectors of our community the relationship between employer and employee is of a first-class nature. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has indicated that in the very near future he intends introducing legislation but while saying this, he pointed out that you cannot legislate for human problems and there are an awful lot of human problems in this field.
There has been a lot of talk about the reorganisation of the Civil Service. Could management not take an inward look at itself and could the organisations representing the employees not do the same thing? Having done this— and maybe discovering organisational defects and correcting them—could both parties not have a joint examination of how the successful enterprises conduct industrial relations and, of course, have a look at those countries where employer-employee relations are good? The problem is not so bad here that it cannot be solved. I think that is generally agreed. There has been an air of pessimism abroad in this respect recently. Too many people are saying where we went wrong and not sufficient are telling us how to correct the position. I say: ignore these defeatists. I believe we have the capacity to overcome our difficulties—and difficulties they are. All this moralistic claptrap about where we went wrong without providing the alternative achieves absolutely nothing except that it confuses and undermines national confidence.
I should like to refer now to the reference in the Minister's Budget speech to the induction of new ideas to the western seaboard. Coming from the eastern seaboard, some may ask what interest I have in it. I have a very deep interest in it. I have spent many of my summer years in Connemara learning the Irish language and from time to time I have taken advantage of the first-class fishing waters provided by the Inland Fisheries Trust. I have spoken to the people there and I am pretty well aware of their needs. I would refer the Minister to the OECD Observer for February, 1966, page 4, in which there is an article which bears examination. It states:
One of the most comprehensive programmes of agricultural guidance is to be found in the Netherlands. It focuses on group as well as individual problems, emphasises attitudes as well as techniques and social as well as economic problems. With the help of the consultants provided jointly by the Ministry of Social Work and the Ministry of Agriculture, farming communities are being encouraged to explore their own problems, to see how their situation relates to that of the country as a whole and to examine their own attitudes to change.
I believe if the Minister or the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries got in touch with the Dutch authorities, they would be delighted to assist in some way or other. It is a well settled fact that the Dutch are first-class agriculturists, among other things. The Minister mentions at page 15 of his Budget speech his intention to recreate county development teams. He stated, in relation to measures to exploit the possibilities in each western county:
For this purpose the Government reconstituted last year the County Development Teams under the chairmanship of the County Manager, the other members being the Chairman of the County Council and leading officials in the county.
This poses the problem: is the chairman of the county council qualified to conduct a survey of this magnitude and of such significance to these people? Are these the proper people to send into the field? The county manager, yes, but the chairman of the county council—with respect to chairmen of county councils, I am just questioning their qualifications. If the Minister sent from his Department a young team of men with the necessary qualifications, they would have the proper approach.
On the Financial Resolutions, this Budget could be described as a disinflationary measure, a corrective measure. It has been said the money had to be found. This, I think, is conceded. It was an honest Budget presented by a responsible Minister and Government. However, I feel the continued taxation of the basic luxuries must cease some time. We are living in an age when the car is necessary. Is the car a luxury any more? Is it not now a necessity? Maybe the Minister in conducting a review of the Civil Service would at some later date conduct a review of our whole tax structure in this context at least?
There has also been some complaint during this debate that the Fianna Fáil Party are the Party of big business. This is not altogether untrue if you analyse the facts. If there was not big business, there would be no employment. My proposition to this House is that the Fianna Fáil Party represent all sections of the people. If it did not, I would not be a member of it. If it did not give close attention to and represent the interests of the lower income groups, equally I would not be a member of it. The suggestion in a sneering way that the Fianna Fáil Party is the Party of big business is wrong. It is the Party of all sections of the community.
Normally, the Budget is regarded as the instrument by which the Government indicate their policy, their capacity to govern and the direction in which we are going. Many things have been said about this Budget, so I suppose it is necessary for me to coin a new expression. We have now as a consequence of this Budget a new type of Lynch law —the grab-all law. Despite the many pious lectures we have got in the past from Fianna Fáil about the satiation of taxation having been reached, we find this Budget just another bludgeoning, grab-all taxation Budget. It shows a complete lack of imagination, lack of initiative and lack of conception of the immediate needs.
I will not subscribe to the view that this country is bust. I believe that what has happened is, despite the fact the economy is doing its best, we have got into financial chaos for a number of reasons which I hope to express with succinct clarity. It is time the Irish people began to realise what an inept, incompetent type of Government we have. I have always believed that the greatest curse since Cromwell has been the curse of successive Fianna Fáil Governments. I am sick and tired of listening to lectures about corrective measures when the Government themselves will do the reverse of their advice.
I was listening very attentively to the plausible vagueness of my young professional colleague, Deputy Andrews, in trying to get himself out of difficulties in regard to the heavy tax impositions by referring to some commission that the Minister proposes for an investigation of the Civil Service. Civil servants are often maligned in this House. I believe they are a very competent and willing group of people. I also believe—and I am not afraid to say it—that they have unfortunately become the focus of attention, which they should not be, because of the recent status increases, increases which may well have been a backlog. However, what Deputy Norton has said is true, that it is very hard to convince the man who is on the breadline—to use the expression of Deputy Andrews —that there is some justification for £800 or £900 increases for civil servants when he gets little or no increase in his pittance on which he is trying to rear a family. Civil servants have been put in a false position because the implementation of back awards and of arbitration decisions came at an unfortunate time. We are talking about the necessity for increased production while we are allowing to become a major problem the imbalance of administrative costs against productive activity. You can preach all you like but the only way to achieve increased production, other than a limited increase in industrial output, is to get agriculture going properly. We must ask ourselves what are the portents of the present situation.
Nobody knows better than the Minister that the Government have landed themselves in the financial cart because of their rapacious presentation of the 12 per cent in order to buy two by-election results, and then the collossal stupidity of the turnover tax. Although they were warned very deliberately that the whole price structure was going to go completely out of gear, the horse was well fled before there was any time to close the stable door. There was a drastic upsurge in the cost of living at that period, an upsurge which the unfortunate worker has not been able to overtake. Now we are getting lectures from the Government about wage restraints for these people. It may be all right to lecture the people who are in the class who can decide whether they are going to have a second car or whether the wife wants a second fur coat, but when we talk about the people who are living on wages from £12 down to £6 in rural Ireland, and who are the bulk of our people, the impact of this Budget becomes cumulative.
The Opposition are challenged to say where is the alternative to this Budget. Where would we get the money? They are easy questions for a Government to ask. It is within the province of an Opposition only to speculate on what could be done. They are not in possession of the facts, nor have they available to them what the likely extent of yield is going to be until such time as they are the Government and can find out from the Revenue Commissioners what way tax levels are running. It is apparent to anybody thinking rationally, however, that the time has come, as was naïvely said by the last speaker, to call a halt to taxation on items which are traditionally hit by taxation.
Where is the incentive in this Budget for increased production? Where is the incentive to the worker or the small farmer to do that little bit extra, when he finds that the Government have only one capacity that cannot be satiated, that is, tax grabbing? Is it not time we took an objective look at the whole situation? I do not deny the right of the man to get his proper hire, but if the economy is going out of balance, surely it is the people in the upper income group, the people who will feel the strain least, who should be asked to bear the major burden? This Budget does not do that. Take my own position. Fortunately, I was able to tax my car for the year, which will save me £6. That saving is denied to the unfortunate person who may not be able to tax his car for more than a quarter and who has to scrape up the money to tax it for the quarter. The person who can least afford it will take the greatest bludgeoning as a result of that tax increase, to say nothing of the impact of the increase in the price of petrol.
Deputy Andrews asks: "Is the car a luxury any more?" To many men working throughout the country, it is no longer a luxury. Among some of them it is a communal means of getting them to their work. It is a necessity to the tradesman to get around to his job. It has become the only means by which men can take their families away, on the odd summer day, to the seaside or somewhere else to picnic. Those are the people this nit-wit Government have hit hardest. There is only three per cent of the national cake left to them.
This Budget debate gives us an opportunity to hit hard. My greatest quarrel with the Government is the stultifying effect produced by this Budget which is only a grab-all measure, a new Lynch law. There is no encouragement given in this Budget to any section of the community. Even the miserable pittance to be given next November to the old-age pensioners embraces only a microscopic section of the old age pension group. Not only were the Government dishonest in their presentation of this alleged amelioration for the old age pensioner but they used the Government agencies of television and radio to distort, on the evening of the Budget, the whole pattern of the Budget. There was an overloaded attempt to suggest that its centrepiece was relief for old age pensioners, a miserable pittance, available to about 21,000 of them, we are told in answer to Parliamentary Questions, if some of them survive until next November.
The Minister for Transport and Power has come into the House. Once more, let us face reality. Let us use the analogy, and the anomaly, of CIE. They are told to exercise restraint in wages because otherwise the country will go bust. In other words, with the maximum of subsidy, they must live within their means. Why does the Minister not try to get his colleagues in the Government to live within their means, gearing administrative costs to the capacity of the country to pay? Why does he not direct the attention of the Government to the fact that most people still believe that they are better able to spend their own money than the Government can spend it for them?
The cause of all the economic chaos is simple. Cut out all the theory and all the nonsense. The Government are taking far too much of the available capital and not leaving enough for the advancement and the expansion of industry. They talk about solving the problems of the west and the problem of increased production from the land. Again, the Government are scooping far too much of the credit pool. The result is we are chronically and perennially under-capitalised in our efforts to put the land into good heart, restock it, and establish successfully the type of industry based on the produce of our land.
Thanks be to God, our people have a realistic approach. They appreciate the value of tourism. Despite unwarranted interference and out-of-date regulations, they have got on with the job of making us a very highly successful tourist venue. If, however, the tentacles of bureaucracy and megalomaniac control are allowed to strangle the industry, then the result will be tragic in the extreme. We shall have the pseudo-experts who have not got a clue in relation to the perfectly satisfactory type of holiday that can be provided in my county and along the western seaboard in farmhouses, modestly comfortable, reasonably hygienic and clean. The holiday-makers in these places are free to move about among the ordinary people, to learn their ways and enjoy being amongst them and with them.
One is frightened almost by the mental atrophy and lack of imagination where tourism is concerned. There seems to be some idea of forming a team here and setting up a commission there. It was amusing to listen to Deputy Andrews advising that some commission must be told to sit within six months and report within 18 months. Perhaps he will be a long time in this House. I have been a fair time in it myself. I can assure the Deputy that he will have my white hairs by the time this kind of review and dynamic reorganisation of the Civil Service takes place, a reorganisation that the service itself wants and that we want. We have a tremendous capacity for allowing investigations to meander on and ultimately get lost. Is there any better illustration of that than the Select Committee on Health Services of this House?
Consider seriatim the Government's capacity as demonstrated by the Budget. No. 1, they had to go back to beer and spirits for another bit. No. 2, irrespective of who gets hurt, we will all have to pay more in car tax and for petrol. One limited group gets a double belt. It is all very well, I suppose, to talk about private motorists when the people who carry out this attack are, as we all know, more than adequately serviced with State cars. It is all very well for the people who can recoup themselves on the expense account or the subsidy in aid of running a car. What is the impact on the unfortunate man struggling to keep a small, elderly in many cases, and rapidly ageing, car for the purpose of getting himself to and from his work and taking his family to the country or the seaside for an occasional weekend?
This is an inept Budget engineered by a Government bereft of constructive thinking, completely satiated with their own smug belief that they are competent to govern. Explosions do not interfere with their smugness. Nelson may go into orbit, unusual noises may be untraced in the city of Dublin, but the smugness of the Government remains unshaken. They have no courage to face their responsibilities. That becomes more and more obvious. They show their lack of imagination in this Budget. They go after those sections from whom they feel they can extract another shilling or another sixpence.
They hit those who pay income tax, particularly those on PAYE. They give no relief to the lower-income groups. Simultaneously, they counsel restraint in wage demands. One can argue any way one likes but the net result of all this will be that the worker will take home five, six or seven shillings a week less in his paypacket. We have the naïve statement from one Government speaker that this Budget will not have any impact on the cost of living. Of course it will. There will be five, six or seven shillings worth less food every week on the table of the unfortunate man's family. We are told that we have programmes for this and that. We have all the prodigious theorising of our economists who equate all factors and tell us we will come right at some future time. At the same time, we have the Government deliberately trying to bludgeon the community with over-taxation while simultaneously telling them: "Be good boys, restrain yourselves".
What consolation is there for the farm worker, for the forestry worker, for the tradesman in my constituency who are told that anybody earning more than £1,200 will not get the three per cent increase when they themselves, with £8 or £10 or £12 a week are to be limited to 4/- at the lowest and 6/6 at the maximum in their demands? It is rubbish and the Government know it. It all goes back to the fact that the Government are not using the resources of the country to the best possible advantage of the country. For instance, 50 per cent of the extra money being produced in this Budget will go to servicing administrative costs. This is where one gets into the realms of stupidity and atrophy. The Government need not threaten us with further Budgets. Let them do the job they were put there to do or get out and let people in who will do it for them.
In the present year we face integration in free trade with Britain with the hope that we may become part of the European Common Market. We now have before us the task of getting our agricultural economy geared to the pitch from which it can realistically face the type of markets into which it has a reasonable hope of getting. At the same time, we have to gear our industry to productive capacities that will make it competitive, not only in quality but in cost of production.
In that situation, it is not a negative Budget, with neither concept nor initiative, that will help us. We are told we have to do many things to bring ourselves into line for further development. Is there any line in the Minister's Budget speech or is there anything in the financial structure of the Budget to help us face the competition of European free trade? Where in it is the incentive for agriculture? Where in it is the hope for the western seaboard, for the constituencies of Deputy McEllistrim and myself? All we want is encouragement for the further development of these areas. The people have the capacity to do the work; in the main, they have the willingness but they are stultified and handicapped by the smallness of their holdings and by chronic lack of capital. Where is the hope for them in this Budget? How can they be expected to increase their animal husbandry? Where in the Budget is there any encouragement to develop our fisheries?
This is a dull Budget. The dead hand of an inept Government is on it from start to finish. It has plenty of pious platitudes but no constructive thought. I ceased many years ago to talk about the false promises of Fianna Fáil. Nobody takes their promises seriously any more. I do not think they can hope to get away with this bludgeoning, savage, disastrous instrument which should be a yardstick for our economic development.
Even in the disastrous situation we exist in, there are many things I should like to press on the Minister for Finance. I understand that State pensioners, many of them enjoying a borderline standard of living, are still to pay the standard rate of income tax rather than the PAYE rate. The Minister should make an adjustment here. The matter arose originally because of the paper work and administrative costs involved but surely now, because of the limited number of State pensioners involved, it should be possible to make the adjustment as between the 7/- rate and the 5/3 rate of income tax. The Minister should give this serious consideration because there is nothing in the Budget to ameliorate their position.
I should like to know why the Government have jettisoned the priorities now existing in regard to housing, education and health. Is there any more valuable asset in the country than proper and adequate housing for our people? Is there anything more vital to the State and the nation than an accelerated rate of development in education? Is there anything more vital to us than the quickest possible improvement in technological training and in scientific development in education? Is there anything more important to us, now facing competition in free trade conditions, than that our boys and girls should get the best possible education as rapidly as possible? Is there anything more important than to get the health of the nation into reasonable shape?
When one analyses the statement made by the Government that there is more money available in these Estimates, one finds that the main increases are on the administrative side, as the Minister admitted, to pay back awards already given. There is one thing we do know, that is, that the amount of money now available will provide less in the form of capital return than ever before. It is arrant rubbish to tell us that there will be an improvement in these directions when everybody knows that the bottom has fallen out of the bucket already and that the Government have been using all kinds of technical excuses for creating artificial delays in making payments, simply because the dough is not there.
No amount of codology, platitudinous rubbish or technical diarrhoea from the Government will alter the fact that the man looking for something he is entitled to get from a local authority knows that he cannot get it. The Government preen themselves in saying that there is more money available for this and that. How can they say that to the people who cannot get grants for the repair or reconstruction of their houses? How can they say that when men are being laid off, when the local authorities cannot get a loan from the banks? The reason the local authorities cannot get the money from the banks is that the dead and stultifying hand of the Government has been stretched out and the banks have been told not to give it. No one knows that better than the present occupant of the Chair who has been fighting hard to get money for projects throughout the length and breadth of Cork.
We have got to nail the Government down. They say that more plans for housing are being submitted to them than ever before but I say there will be more delays than ever before. There is no better way of getting out of having to make payments than by having another survey, another review or another look at the housing plans. In that way the Government hope to create a time-lag, in the forlorn hope that they can get more money into the kitty.
Even with the indecent haste with which this Budget has been introduced, there is still this chronic backlog and slow-up in the production of the money necessary to keep housing going, to keep our schools going and to improve our health services. It is common case that these three services need improvement but the Government will not tell us that because they ignored the warnings given them by all their advisers that they should cry some halt to their indiscriminate spending, there is now no capital for productive development.
The economy is geared to development and we should be in a position to move forward but there is a credit squeeze so tight that it has strangled any efforts at productive development. That is all for the one reason that this Government believe they can spend our money better than we can spend it. We can only describe this Budget as the new Lynch law of grab-all, grab-all to bolster up the situation into which the Government have allowed themselves to drift, to bolster up that situation with the additional threat that if we do not behave ourselves, they will be back in November to blister us again.
I was a very young politican when I made the statement in Ennis that I would be strong enough to rub salt into the blisters which this Government were raising on the backs of the Irish people. I did not think then that the day would ever come when, instead of blisters, they would seek to raise scabs and sores on the bodies of our people. Their attitude is: "We are your masters; we will take it whether you like it or not". This is incredibly dishonest because only 15 months ago this Government, led by the Taoiseach, told us that prosperity was ahead and that everything was going extremely well. He said that at a time when, and I say this deliberately, he knew that the contrary was true. Even then they were considering bringing in these surtaxes to bolster up the financial difficulties which they knew were coming. They deliberately and maliciously withheld from the Irish people the true state of affairs and deliberately used the 12 per cent increase in salaries for the purpose of bolstering up the Taoiseach's own lie in order to keep himself in office. This was a discreditable and disreputable effort by a power-drunk Government.
Among the bludgeons which this Budget has produced is one to hit the unfortunate smoker. Certain elements have been speaking of an association between disease and smoking but it is commonly known that this association does not affect pipe tobacco. Fianna Fáil were always alleged to be the considerate people who left out from increased taxation the smoker of hardpressed tobacco. They are talking about their sop to the destitute old age pensioners next November, in the light of the fact that if he smokes a bit of hardpressed tobacco, he will pay a lot more than he gets back and long before he gets it. This is Government, in a situation in which all efforts should be made to secure a solid basis on which we can advance together and in which there should be the maximum effort to keep, maintain and strengthen the good feeling that was developing between employer and employee. That is being allowed to be dissipated in circumstance of pontifical sermons from the Government and no practical approach to the problems of the worker whose difficulties have been increased by this negative, stupid and inept Budget.
I feel sick when I consider how we are blowing hot and cold about the 50th anniversary of the wonderful sacrifice of 1916. I wonder what some of these people would think if the capacity of the Government we have is to continue to exercise the sledge-hammer of taxation on the unfortunate people in Budget after Budget, without any encouragement or help or hope of attaining these objectives for which we were meant to strive so hard—a rising rate of production in industry and a sustained rate of increased output in agriculture to make it possible for us to deal with the tribulations, trials and difficulties, technical and otherwise, that we are bound to face in the foreseeable future, whether in the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area or in the Common Market.
It has been a sorry progress when you consider it analytically and objectively and see the number of the population who have gone, the areas once so populous, once hard-working centres of agricultural production in many cases now semi-derelict, starved of incentive and without the necessary credit or capital to allow them in modern circumstances to achieve an economic basis capable of meeting competition and attaining the production necessary if we are to survive. It is no use to try to fool ourselves. The basis of our real development is agriculture and it must be so. Our concentration in the future must be on improving the sale of our exports and increasing demand for them.
We have quality. The Irish farmer has always proved his capacity to develop and will always work. He even survived the asinine stupidity of the Economic War and today if we give him, particularly the small farmer, the credit facilities, the seeds, fertilisers and everything else he wants, he will again do the job. Again we will see our animal husbandry getting into proper shape and production of beef, sheep, lamb, pork and pig escalate into a first-class national effort. He will carry more than his share of the burden.
But what is in this Budget for him? Nothing but the typical concept of the windowbox Minister for Agriculture we have. We are already facing difficulties in the industrial area and we are now being threatened by dairymen's pickets outside the Dáil. We have various responsible farmers' organisations bitterly complaining of being let down. We are all aware that the country is rapidly deteriorating, aware that it is not the nation's fault but is due to the continued tragedy of the curse of the present Government that holds us back. If they do not want to work or think or make an effort to put some of their pontifical statements into practice, let them get out and let somebody who is willing to do it, do the job. Sermons are no good when the preacher says: "Do as I say but not as I do." No doubt, everybody, even the pundits behind Fianna Fáil, their big subscribers, big businessmen and so on are now hammering at the Government saying: "You must leave something in the credit pool for us or there can be no development. You will have to stop this made rush of spending."
I am sorry that the Civil Service, because of the status increases, must be made the scapegoat in this issue. When one considers the difficulties of senior civil servants, the hours they work and the concentration they have given over the years to their jobs, one cannot resent their being properly and adequately paid, but one must consider this in the context of everybody being told to tighten their belts and behave themselves while the Government are still disrupting credit policy and imparing the capital outlook.
I remember being told by the previous Minister for Finance that I was being disloyal to the country when I told him that if investigations were allowed into people's bank accounts going back over the years, it would have a bad result. He said I was being unpatriotic. I said there would be a steady outflow of funds. We now know I was absolutely correct in that. Most of the difficulties in connection with capital today are covered by three things: that stupidity, the fact that the Government jumped the gun and over-stretched themselves in the industrial field when they bought their by-election wins in Cork and Kildare with the 12 per cent, and the turnover tax. Put these three together and you have your credit difficulties and the unavailability of money.
I can assure the Minister that the Irish people, particularly the people with small deposits, resented that invasion of their privacy. They resented the fact that somebody could find out what their little hard-won nest egg was. It has been taken out. Some of it may still be in stockings or in ticks, but a lot of it has gone elsewhere. Why not? Can you blame them? They had always been loyal and faithful to the country. They had always been helpful when any issues were made. Small subscribers always gave a big proportion of the subscriptions to our various national loans. They showed their confidence freely in organisations like the ESB. They have not that confidence in the Government now, for one reason only: they know they are an inept, inefficient bunch of tired ageing gentlemen at one end and ambitious, futile dynamos at the other —a combination only to be met to be believed, a sorry tribute to the intelligence, effort and skill of our people. Their race is very nearly run. They may have to come back in November. I hope they do not, for their own sake. Let them remember the salutary lesson that was given before when we had two Budgets in one year and we had the present Minister for External Affairs, the financial wizard of the country, coming in as Minister for Finance with his Supplementary Budget that belted beer, tobacco, cigarettes, bread, butter, tea and sugar. Hearken to my words. Try it again and take the reckoning in the answer of the Irish people.
The Minister for Transport and Power.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
Deputy Collins revealed the perfection with which the Deputies of his Party discuss taxation and invariably howl when it increases and frequently make promises to reduce it and then break every promise they made.
That is what Seán Lemass did in 1957.
I must point out to Deputy L'Estrange that if he does not want to listen to the Minister, he has his remedy. I will not allow these interruptions and cross-examination to continue.
That is what Seán Lemass did.
The Deputy may not pursue that line.
Deputy Collins with his crocodile tears, reminded me of the election of 1954, when the country was be sprinkled liberally with about a million leaflets in blue ink in which the Fine Gael Party promised to bring down all the taxes which were imposed in 1952, to bring back prices of ordinary commodities to the levels at which they were in 1952, they having increased partly due to world circumstances and in some cases due to the cut in the subsidies.
That never was mentioned.
Certainly not in the 1966 Budget.
Order.
The leaflets were spread throughout the country. The Coalition did resume office for a second time as a result of gaining a few seats in Dublin and one or two other places. They came into office. There was an inflation of what looks to be a rather less serious kind than now. They were unable to deal with it. Towards the end of their period of office they imposed heavy taxation on the community. They left 97,000 people unemployed. They left a spate of emigration that lasted for four years until it could be reduced and slowed down to manageable proportions and when they went out of office they left a deficit which in relation to the total size of the Budget was far greater in proportion than the £8 million deficit which we have faced for reasons which have been given by the Minister for Finance on the occasion of the present Budget.
So, I do not know whether the Fine Gael Party are really entitled to weep tears over taxation because they have not made a particularly good hand of it themselves but they did succeed in winning an election by weeping tears to the people at large. I do not know whether they ever will again but I think it will take something more intelligent than the speech we have just heard from Deputy Collins in order to win over the affections of the Irish people. Deputy Collins knows perfectly well that, since 1956, the real income of the people of this country has risen by a greater percentage than at any time in our history since the war, by about a third in real terms. He knows perfectly well that the people have confidence in the future to a greater extent than ever before in their history. He knows perfectly well that the Government's grants and credits to the people of the West enormously exceed anything conceived of by his Coalition Government in 1957. He knows that the total aid for agriculture in all its forms, including the Department of Agriculture, rural electrification, forestry and all the other services totalling some £52 million this year, is about three times as much as it was in 1956-57 and that a great many of the services did not even exist at that time.
Yet, Deputy Collins goes on in a rather strange argument. At one time he wants the Budget to be more imaginative and says that we are not spending half enough and the next moment he contradicts himself and says that taxation is ruinous. He does not say how the taxation can be reduced. He does not attempt to tell the House by means of what tax levied in what way, can the expenditure be increased in order to provide the services which the Deputy says are lacking. He suggests that there is nothing for agriculture. He knows perfectly well that there is another £4½ million for agriculture, making a grand total for farming services in all forms of £52 million, as I have said—an amount never dreamed of before in the whole history of this country.
This is a lot of nonsense.
We are subsidising John Bull to eat our butter.
He knows perfectly well that between £6 million and £7 million is being given in this Budget for increased social welfare services voted last year. He knows there is more money for industry in the Budget. He knows there is more money for education in the Budget. What he asks for in the same voice is, apparently, more credit for the private sector, more money for the Government but he leaves us in some doubt as to where the finances are to be secured and as to how he would like to direct the affairs of the State. He merely rants at the Government, because of the fact that taxation has increased this year.
No Government likes to impose new taxation. The amount of taxation is some £12.8 million. This is taxation levied on the people whose income in the coming year will be in the region of £1,019 millions. We have never deluded the people about the need for very considerable subventions from the people, both in respect of local government and central government, if the country is to develop. We have never made any secret of it. We have made it absolutely clear that every single year it will be essential to take a very considerable proportion of the people's total incomes for Government services, for economic development.
Perhaps Deputy Collins would like to know that in the last three or four years the national income increased by some £440 millions and out of that, the Government took £83 millions in taxation. Now, the Deputy may not like it, but we are at least in good company because there is hardly a country in Northern Europe where the proportion of the total taxation to the national income is not more or less roughly at the same level as in this country. No Government likes to impose fresh taxation. Every Government would like to hope that existing taxes will yield a sufficiently growing income in order to maintain that proportion, year from year, of taxation to total national income. Unfortunately we are in good company with other countries who found, for one reason or another, that it is essential to increase taxes, indirect taxation or, in some cases, direct taxation.
Deputies opposite are talking as though increases in taxation were something phenomenal and not to be found anywhere else in the world. It would be better if we had some more constructive arguments on this subject because otherwise it is not going to help the people to understand the present position. I do not intend to go on repeating what has been stated by other Ministers and Deputies on this side, but I want to talk about a rather different subject and try to get this debate down to a constructive discussion on what the problems are.
We are going to hear something about CIE.
The major problem in this country is and has been for many years that inflation is not yet a dirty word. It is about time the Opposition Parties assisted the members of the Government and the members of our Party so that no matter what our differences of opinion may be, inflation from now on should be considered a dirty word, because inflation has never been taken seriously enough by the people as a whole. Unless they are given the right kind of advice by everybody in the community, even by those who differ from us politically, we shall not be able to get them to understand the problem.
During the whole of this inflationary period, which began in 1962 and has been going on ever since, the members of the Opposition Parties, apart from one or two quiet, conventional speeches at the time of the Budgets, have never ceased persecuting the Government to add to the inflation, to add millions and millions of pounds to every service undertaken by the State. There has never been the slightest effort by the Fine Gael Party or the Labour Party to assist in what should be a non-political exercise of avoiding the curse of inflation which has been the ruin of a great many countries in South America.
I have sat and listened to Fine Gael Deputies all through the years and at the time of Budgets they complain about increases in taxation and except for a few careful statements by their Leader, Deputy Cosgrave, the sky is the limit for all of them: the Government are denying the people millions for this, that and the other service. They do not reckon with the fact that every increase in Government expenditure can itself contribute towards inflation and that excessive Government expenditure can arouse excessive proposals for increased wages and incomes. For them the sky is the limit.
Did you not tell us that we never had it so good?
I was interesting to hear Deputy Cosgrave at the opening of this debate making, in very quiet terms, the simple statement that he approved of the general statement on guidelines in regard to increases in salaries and incomes during the coming year. I have never heard other Deputies repeating and enlarging on Deputy Cosgrave's statement and he himself did not go into it——
He asked for an incomes policy two years ago.
Any speech that was made was inflammatory and designed to make impossible the observance of the guidelines announced by the Government.
And which were announced by Fine Gael two years ago.
Order.
I referred to the fact that inflation began in 1962. The Taoiseach announced a programme in 1958 and then came the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. Every speech by Ministers of the Government and by others concerned with production, concerned with economic growth, has always included statements warning the people that earnings must relate to growth in the national income and to the growth in productivity.
I read the other day a speech made by the Minister for Finance on the Budget of 1962. Before inflation had even become serious, and seeing the warning signs before any of the controversial taxation which is alleged to have caused difficulties, such as turnover tax, before any of the major increases in taxation that have been found necessary in the past two years, Dr. Ryan, the former Minister for Finance, delivered a statement to the Dáil which was absolutely clear. He foretold what would happen if the people did not continue to observe the splendid rules they had followed from the period of the beginning of the revival in 1958 right down to the end of 1961, during which period the revival was in full force, economic growth was in full spate, but in which virtually all the rules that we have continually proclaimed to be right for the community, and above all for the working man, were fully observed.
In fact, the lesson for this community relates to the difference between the kind of progress we made from 1958 to 1961 and the progress we made from 1961 to 1964. In the first case, it was accompanied by almost no inflation and in the second case, it was accompanied by inflation which has raised the cost of government and has raised the import content which has had the direct effect of increasing imports, which is one of the causes of the difficulties we face, in addition to those over which we have no control, such as the import levy and the various credit squeezes in Great Britain and America.
As I said, it is interesting to see this because the Government did not change their essential policy, the Programme for Economic Expansion, with all the amounts to be provided by way of capital for various services, which were clearly outlined. There was no change of Government policy in 1962. The change took place because, in common with a number of other countries, the people became so confident of the future that they started asking two years before for the incomes which they would deserve two years later. This trend has now been confirmed by every independent economist, by the OECD and by every independent agency and, above all, by the National Industrial Economic Council who in their report made the position clear. That report was signed not only by employers but by nine representatives of the workers.
They did not say that and it is not fair for the Minister to make a categorical statement like that.
He does not believe it himself.
Order. The Deputies have already spoken.
"Alice in Wonderland" would be more interesting.
He is quite constructive.
The increase in national incomes from 1958 to 1961 was, in current money terms, without allowing for any increase in the cost of living, 20 per cent, and in terms of constant money, and allowing for the increase that took place in the cost of living, it was 15 per cent. That was under the Fianna Fáil programme, as a result of the Fianna Fáil injection of capital, of the Fianna Fáil injection of confidence, and of the constant expanding of Government grants for all the productive services. It was also the result of the feeling of elation and the growing confidence amongest the people and their determination to seek new investment for industry and agriculture, the determination of the farmers to borrow more from the banks to increase production. It was the result of a number of differing influences, but nevertheless that was the position.
From 1961 to 1964 the increase in the national income was some 28 per cent, a greater growth than in the previous period, but in terms of real value the increase was 12.3 per cent— a little bit less than in the previous three years. Exactly the same thing applied to the worker's earnings. In industry in the first three year period they got an increase of 17 per cent in money values and 13 per cent in real value. There is very little difference between the two. It is the sort of thing one sees in other countries. In the second period they got a huge increase in money terms, 28 per cent, but allowing for the increase in the cost of living it came down to 12 per cent.
Those are the fundamental facts this country has to face. We had inflation. It began in 1962 and has been going on ever since. Advice has been given in every single one of those years not only by Ministers but by independent economists, advice that corresponds with the guidance given recently by the Taoiseach in his speech, advice that corresponds with the clear indication given by the National Industrial Economic Council not only in their report on economic conditions in 1965 but in their comments on the report on the progress on economic expansion in 1965, in relation to which they made certain predictions as to what would happen to the economy if the total incomes of the people were raised by differing amounts. The NIEC, representing trade unionists as well as employers, did not materially differ from the Government's report on economic expansion in regard to what might happen in the coming year. They said quite clearly if incomes increased by between three per cent and five per cent there would be an adverse trade balance of £28 million in this year, that that trade balance could be contained, that it was not vastly excessive or dangerous. They prognosticated the increase in incomes to the people. This independent body then proceeded further to proclaim that if there was a very considerable increase such as nine per cent in total incomes the adverse trade balance might rise to the prohibitive level of £55 million. They actually recommended the Government to take remedial steps to control personal consumer expenditure in the event of incomes rising above the figure recommended in the report on economic expansion and confirmed by the Taoiseach in his recent statement.
So we have an outside independent opinion on this whole question. It is one that can be examined objectively by Deputies. That would be a far better exercise than listening to the nonsense talked by Deputy Collins. We have a perfectly clear statement made by men of responsibility, both employers and trade unionists, which fortifies the Government in their statement of policy with regard to the guidelines for the coming year. As I have said, the statements are there for everybody to read and the warning for everybody to see.
I have been speaking about this inflationary period. It has been due to many factors, but I think most of all due to the tremendous growth of confidence on the part of the people and a very natural belief that the people themselves were entitled to share on a growing and more munificent basis in the production of the community. But there again we are in very good company. I could stand up here as Minister and feel very ashamed that the advice of myself and my colleagues since 1962 was not taken on this question of inflation. I could feel equally melancholy that the advice of independent economists, of the OECD, of eminent people like Senator Garret FitzGerald was not taken by the people of this country. But, having said that, I realise that my colleagues and myself are in excellent company because every country in Europe with the exception of very few goes through this periodic inflation period, manages to survive it in one way or another by corrective measures and then for a period the incomes of the people increase in measure with the growth in productivity and all goes well.
It is very interesting to see even in countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where there is far greater understanding between employers and workers over wage negotiations than there is in our country, that there are breakdowns in the entire system. Even in Sweden and the Netherlands there can be a complete breakdown in the understanding of what constitutes income growth, its relation to the incomes of the people as a whole, and as a result there can be periods lasting two years of very severe inflation. The inflation is got over either by very rapid growth in productivity in a whole group of factories or by the fact that inflation of that kind also takes place in the countries competing with those countries for exports, so that money loses value all round and competitiveness is not lost to any great extent. Or else the inflation is got over by credit restrictions on housing, on various types of development, on hire purchase, which are put into operation in these countries, such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland where on the whole there has been a greater understanding of the guideline principle than there has been in this country since 1962.
It would be unnecessary for me to comment on the fact that for the last five years in Great Britain, under a Conservative Government but still more frantically under a Labour Government, the Ministers of that country have been begging the people cajoling them, exhorting them to observe the guidelines as they apply to Great Britain. No one in England has taken the slightest notice of it for the last five years. England now faces —to our disadvantage, and we hope the English people will emerge from it successfully—exactly the same kind of inflationary difficulty as we do, albeit there may be different reasons and different background for it.
It is really time we had more objective talk about this. It is quite possible for the Opposition to criticise the Government in various ways. For example, on their capacity for the prediction of events as they came to pass. All those things are arguable so long as we can get an intelligent attitude towards inflation and try to avoid the pattern for it in future. The Government have been criticised for not having predicted sufficiently quickly the impact of the various forces which affected the economy which began in 1962 on a fairly extensive basis and reached their climax at the end of 1964 or the beginning of 1965. I wonder what would have happened if in April, 1964 the Government by some divine prediction could have foreseen the difficulties of the British and the tremendous corrective measures required and if at the time of the Budget they had met that by a severely inflationary Budget and in the middle of the high tide in the growth of exports and production and the establishment of new industries they had deliberately proclaimed a hairshirt policy? I can just hear the howl of execration from the Opposition.
At least it would have been honest.
Governments are a little inclined not to act a great deal in advance of a difficult situation and to hope for the best. We did act in due time. We applied corrective measures whose effect is already being seen in the shape of some correction of the balance of payments, and in the shape of some correction of excessive spending by the community on imports. We believe that provided the people are reasonable in their attitude and understand, at least approximately, the necessity for the guidelines, we shall be able to get through this year and resume the economic advance some time early in the future, other things being equal. We must always allow for international circumstances, for the extent to which the British people survive their difficulties—and they are far from over. We have to allow for what may go on in Europe, for American conditions and the possibility of some further constriction in American capital investments abroad. Having allowed for all these things, we believe we should be able to get through the present year and that the advance will be resumed in due time.
It is not abnormal to have a break in the continuing growth of the economy ever since 1958. It would be very lucky for any Government to be able to have ten years absolutely continuous growth, based on a programme, without a single interruption. We could not have had it anyway, alone, because of the import levy and because of the restrictions imposed on investment coming in here, which have added to the difficulties which have already been created for ourselves here by "inflation" not yet being a dirty word in this country. I am trying to develop the theme of inflation so that people can have a constructive discussion on a matter which is of immense importance to us in the future.
I hope the Fianna Fáil Party read the Minister's speech, particularly his ministerial colleagues.
I am only repeating what has been said endlessly by my colleagues for the past five years. The Deputy has only to read the speech of the Minister for Finance in 1962 which resembles the remarks I am making now. In 1962, when inflation was hardly noticeable, the Minister for Finance warned the people about inordinate growth of incomes.
That is completely untrue. That is what Deputy Dillon said in 1962.
If Deputy Harte gets that speech of the Minister for Finance, he will see that is what the Minister said.
Deputy Dillon contintrue ually warned the Government and they ignored the warnings.
Deputy Harte should control himself and allow the Minister to make his speech.
I am only correcting the Minister.
The Deputy is just interrupting the Minister.
I want to repeat what has already been said by the Taoiseach about the level of taxation. We have been frank in Fianna Fáil about taxation levels but people do not like to hear these things and the Opposition do not like to quote us when we are frank about taxation. What was the position in 1956-57? The nearly bankrupt Coalition Government was taking just a little over one-fifth of the entire people's income as of that date, in taxation and rates, 22.7 per cent to be exact. In the passing year, 1965-66, the total percentage being taken is about 24.5, nearly 25 per cent. We have been asked about that and we have said that it is essential for us to take a quarter of the entire national income, that if anybody suggests any opposite course, he should suggest the necessary reduction of services. We have pointed out that the needs for education alone in the next five years will be an immense burden to the Minister for Finance and, likely as not, to the people in terms of taxation, if education is to improve to the level at which we would like to see it, because education is a very costly service.
We have made it clear in the Programme for Economic Expansion that we propose to take a quarter of the people's income from now until 1970 and that the amount by 1970 will be at least 26 per cent, another two per cent up. It is there in black and white. The cost of the capital services and the current services, the rise in the provision for housing are clearly outlined there for everybody to see. We are perfectly honest about it. We have not said to the people that it is likely we can reduce levels of taxation, except marginally, from one year to another for some special service. It may be in future there will be a very large yield on some particular tax that may make it possible for us to make some amendment, to give some relief here and there, to give relief to direct taxes of one kind or another, but as a whole, the Taoiseach said in his speech he did not see the possibility of reducing that percentage of money taken in taxation, and everybody knows it. When we go to the country in a general election the facts will be there before everybody. If any of the Opposition would like to take the economic programme to pieces, put it together again and reduce taxation below a figure between 24 and 30 per cent of the people's income, I should like to see them do it, be able to produce the same result in terms of new services and provide all the capital for the growth of the economy and the benefit of the community.
Let us be absolutely frank. Senator Garret FitzGerald in today's Irish Times, unlike the nonsensical approach of Deputy Collins, clearly states the position from the Opposition's point of view, that the one mistake made in the Programme was that, quite evidently, there were some unforeseen increases in costs on the Budget that were not fitted into the economic programme from the period 1960 to 1964. The most obvious ones were the status increases to civil servants. Senator FitzGerald observes that the real difficulty facing us this year is that we have this extra £10 million representing the status increases and that these increases have really put the Budget awry, necessitating fairly severe increases in taxation that none of us likes.
Senator FitzGerald goes on to point out that if we can hold the position during the present year without a further supplementary budget, if next year we are extremely cautious in the amount that will be spent on current and capital account, if we can secure the necessary capital investment and at the same time maintain essential services, we shall be able to get over that £10 million, that out of a total income of over £1,000 million, it could not possibly wreck the future economic life of our community.
There is no need for us here to defend the great majority of the status increases. It was perhaps faulty on our part that we did not notice in the five-year period that there were so many opportunities for work for the younger generation in newly arising industries, that the standards adopted at that time for the Civil Service were out of date and that it was essential to make corrections in the salary figures for a number of different groups of civil servants. The corrections have been made and it is no use for people to get angry because somebody in the Civil Service gets a status increase. When we raised the salaries of postmen, we intended to bring them nearer the salaries of other grades of workers. We did not intend that the other grades of workers should say: "Because postmen have got them, we must get them." Because we raise the status of certain groups of people, because the differentials between groups in the Civil Service have suddenly narrowed, there is no reason for people outside the Civil Service to get green with envy.
There is the £12 million increase and, as long as we are all intelligent enough inside and outside the Government, and as long as the people observe reasonable guidelines, there is nothing disastrous in this £12 million extra taxation that cannot be absorbed in the next three years, if the incomes of the people increase, if the exports of cattle continue to mount up, and if industry continues to go ahead and exports go on in the same way as they have in the past five years. Nobody can deny that and nobody can suggest that the country can be bled white by £12 million taxation imposed on people with an income of £1,019 million. It is a ridiculous statement. We recognise these are harsh increases in their immediate personal impact on people's lives. We recognise that. Nobody is particularly interested, naturally, when you tell him it represents £12 million out of £1,019 million. Each thinks of his own personal position, quite naturally, and that is why all increases in taxation are very unpopular.
Deputy Collins talked about an unimaginative Budget. He made no suggestion for altering the levels of taxation. He did not suggest any way in which moneys could be raised by other processes. As the House knows, this is not a country in which there is a great deal of inherited wealth. There are very few resources left untapped. Fewer than 5,000 people are assessed for surtax out of the entire 2,800,000. There are no enormous inherited resources of capital on which a levy could be placed in times of difficulty. Of course, we want to encourage capital investment and there would be a great doubt about the desirability of taxing capital in that way. We want to bring more capital here and have more industrial development, and so that kind of taxation might prove to be most undesirable.
I want to say something now about propaganda by certain members of the Labour Party to the effect that I and other members of the Government are somehow out against the trade unions, that we do not like them. In everything relating to industrial relations, I have made repeated statements supporting a well organised trade union movement. I have repeatedly said that the whole growth of prosperity is partly related to the growth of incomes of the workers and, in particular, the lower-paid workers, that there can be no growth and no prosperity unless the workers themselves derive benefit from increased production. Everybody knows that. The suggestion that members of the Fianna Fáil Party are trying to oppress the workers is ludicrous. Practically all the services established to help workers, all the social welfare services, were devised and put into operation by the Fianna Fáil Party.
I have made it perfectly clear— indeed, we all have—that we believe in a strong, constructively organised trade union movement. But we would like to see a general acceptance of the principles in the report of the National Industrial Economic Council on incomes, which principles are now universally accepted as authentic. We have gone further than that. Many of us have suggested that there should be more communication between employers and workers and employers should take workers more into their confidence in regard to their distributed profits, their levels of profits, so that workers will understand to what extent they are sharing in the prosperity of firms and to what extent shareholders are likewise sharing. We hear little about that from the Opposition. If there could be more propaganda for better communication between employers and workers and members of the Dáil could give practical suggestions as to how to bring that about and encourage it, we would be getting a greater understanding of the implications of the incomes policy.
Even if we do have an incomes policy, there are bound to be some variations between one industry and another. One industry may have a very high labour content and a big increase in wages could be quite fatal to the enterprise. Another may have improved its machinery or gone over to automation and have a very low labour wage content. In that case, with increased productivity, the workers can benefit in one form or another, either by being paid bonuses or being regraded in their classification. The position varies from industry to industry. I would like to hope there would be better communications between employers and workers, the kind of communications there are in a number of European countries.
One of the interesting facts about European countries is that in relation to this question of deciding wage levels, both the employers and the workers are humble enough to admit they need outside help in what are really most complicated deliberations, deliberations designed to preserve the value of the workers' increased wages without an immediate spiralling increase in the cost of living which might take away most of what the worker gains. If one studies industrial relations abroad, one finds both employers and workers frequently engaging professional economic consultants. It is not an easy job and, very often, neither the employers nor the workers have the right kind of instruction or technical education to enable them to have a hard fought fight and discussion on what should be the increase in incomes in a given industry, the national guidelines having been laid down. We do not have as yet anything like that here and I am very much afraid that at the moment, even if employers offered to disclose more of their economic position in detail to the workers, the workers might not accept because of the mood they happen to be in. I may be wrong in that but I know that in one industry in which it was done, it made not the slightest difference, even though there were very crucial exports involved. I mention that in passing.
We none of us are against workers' wages rising but, at the same time, it is just as well to be frank about what will happen. If incomes go markedly above what has been recommended by the National Industrial Economic Council, the workers will not gain any advantage. The rise will not help them. It will merely mean an increase in the cost of living that would not otherwise be necessary and the nine trade unionists and the employers on the Council have solemnly informed the people that, if there is an increase of ten per cent in incomes all round, the cost of living will go up by six per cent. That is what they have said. We warned the people of that. We have suggested that, if incomes go up excessively, the workers will not get any advantage out of that situation. That is one of the things that has not been accepted as yet.
There are two things we have to remember about the economy. One is that we import intensively. There are countries in which this is not so important a matter. Some countries bristle with coal mines, with copper mines, or with iron mines. Such a country can produce its own copper, iron or coal: it is self-sufficient. There can sometimes be quite violent fluctuations in incomes in these countries and those fluctuations may have very little effect on the fundamental strength of the economy. We share with the Netherlands and Denmark the perpetual fact of our being import-intensive and it is very essential to state, over and over again, that irrespective of any Government policy or Government budgeting or Government attitude towards the provision of capital for current services, every time a worker earns another £1 a week or a salaried man in the Civil Service earns another £1, he will irrevocably spend 8/6d of it on imports and that is one of the two most important things we have to be clear about in the economy.
This will be with us in perpetuity unless somebody discovers some raw material resources completely unknown. It will govern the economy of this country and impose sanctions on our lives which will exist in the foreseeable future and about which we can do little and it is time for people to talk more about the problem. It does not relate to what may be the mistakes or the virtues of a Government from one year to another in regard to expenditure and its effect on the economy. It is a perpetual difficulty we have to face. It means that when incomes grow excessively, the Government will be bound to cream off the excessive incomes by raising the limits for hire purchase deposits or ordering the banks to restrict credit, whether for export services or production, or by taxation, or by a combination of the three.
Every country in Europe which is financially sound and still respected for good financial conduct, where the banks pay and are able to lend money, where the economy is sound, takes this action immediately it becomes necessary because otherwise the financial standing of the country deteriorates. It is about time the National Industrial Economic Council imparted this information to employers and trade unions throughout the country so that they will appreciate this one fact we all have to face in the future and without which nothing can be done unless agricultural and industrial exports grow so massively that we need not worry. Even if the exports of this country progress on a massive basis, the demands for rapidly increasing standards of living will mount and we shall have to take care of there will be constant balance of payments difficulties. It will always be the responsibility of the Government to control the total spending of the people. It is time there was more talk about this if we want people to invest in this country.
People who come here to invest expect us to have a sound economy. It is no use imagining that we can exist like some countries in South America where conditions are completely different from here, where economies are vastly different. People come here and expect to find a stable economy, an economy which is rigidly held. They expect here an economy well managed because they know we have no prolonged industrial experience, very few traditional skills in relation to the newer types of industry, and because they are being asked to put their marketing advice at the disposal of the people of this country. They receive grants but they expect an intelligent attitude by the whole people towards the national economy and the preservation of the value of our money.
There is nothing particularly new about this. I am quite certain that other Ministers at this moment are speaking in Parliaments in Northern Europe on the same subject. I should be surprised if there was not at least one Minister from the responsible and well-run countries in Northern Europe delivering this kind of speech. There are examples everywhere in Northern Europe of rising standards of living having exceeded the actual growth of productivity in the countries in question. There is nothing unusual about it. I only hope the people of this country will listen to the exhortations of the Government and of the National Industrial and Economic Council. Of course there have been exceptions in European countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden. We have but to look at their history since the war. Occasionally the rule is broken but generally the exhortations are listened to.
One of the most interesting countries in this respect is an entirely different country, the United States of America. One has only to visit the United States with its 200 million people of different races, with no prolonged history, with a boiling economy, and a great many fearsome strikes in different sectors, to realise the absolute horror the people there have of the kind of inflation we have been going through since 1962. We are a country very much poorer, with none of the massive reserves of the United States. It will serve as a warning to the people of this country, to the NIEC and to the trade unions to read in any of the American newspapers the pronouncements by trade unions who deal with the industries not famous for strikes such as the longshoremen, who tell us of the horror they have of inflation. Some of these trade unions have fights with the bigger industries such as General Electric, the motor firms and the aviation companies but they realise the dangers of a marked increase in the cost of living. If it goes up two per cent in a year, the people there have hysteria because they fear there must be inflation. I am speaking about a country teaming with prosperity. It is a country where we find three pages in the front of Time magazine devoted to President Lyndon B. Johnson's extreme anxiety—of course he is anxious about Vietnam— as to whether there is to be inflation, how to prevent it and at what point he should begin to act.
We have got to have the same attitude. The people must be given to understand the serious results of inflation because it is absolutely of no advantage to the workers in the long run. It naturally reduces opportunities for employment. What is the use of workers getting a 12 per cent increase in their incomes if they get only four per cent after the cost of living rise takes place and if only four in a family can be employed instead of five? The workers do not benefit by excessive inflation. In fact, they are the first to suffer from it.
The Government have made a good contribution to this entire problem. They have provided some form of price stabilisation but the Minister for Industry and Commerce will be in a very difficult position in the next few months when demands for increased wages come in and when the Minister for Industry and Commerce tells an industrial group he will not allow them to increase their prices. Still the demands for wages come in and consideration has to be given to price stability, though we all realise the effect on price stability. Nevertheless, the whole question of price levels will come into the discussions that will take place and it will all be related to our ability to solve this adverse balance of payments problem.
Another interesting thing is that the other day I asked the experts to advise me as to whether I was interpreting the facts of the national economy correctly in saying that over the period from 1958 to 1964 the people of this country never got in real income increases any more than were justified by the growth in productivity. I was told that it was correct. The people got, in fact, after allowing for the increase in the cost of living, approximately what comprised the growth in productivity from 1958 to 1964. If they are to try to get more in the next three years it will be inevitably whittled down to the real growth in productivity. It was that way from 1961 to 1964. They got an increase of 12 per cent for that period which was equivalent to the growth in productivity for that period. The iron law is there. No matter how people may try to climb on other people's backs, they will not succeed in getting more.
Hear, hear. You can apply that to more than the wageearners.
In asking for more, they reduce competitiveness without getting any solid advantage, at the same time. In speaking on this matter, I am speaking of the nation as a whole. There can be groups within groups who get different proportions of any increase in incomes that takes place. If incomes go up from three per cent to five per cent, that increase can be levelled out to provide a particular group with more, such as the case of certain grades of civil servants who were very badly paid and are now better paid. It is selfish for any person to say that he is going to have 15 per cent increase, whether he deserves it or not and to hell with the rest of the people. That is not the way for a community to develop. We have to have some kind of common feeling and understanding about this thing and the Taoiseach's guide line has been strengthened by the statements of employers, trade unions and the NIEC in seeking this common understanding. The Taoiseach was in good company when he spoke on these matters the other day and his views have been fortified by the views of this independent Council.
I have tried to concentrate on this problem of inflation which goes far beyond any excessive expenditure by the Government due to long delayed status claims. I am talking now about a problem that effects the whole life of the community. It is on these important matters that we should try to deliberate at the present time.
Having listened to the Minister for Transport and Power and to his prognostications with regard to the inflation that started in 1962, we must ask ourselves the question why, if this were known to the Government in 1962, in the name of honesty and in the name of the position in which he sits at the moment, the Minister did not come out and tell the people of Ireland that they were facing an inflationary period.
I never ceased to proclaim it. I have stressed it continuously.
Why did the Minister for Transport and Power come along at the by-elections and general elections and stand under the banner which said: "You never had it better. Let Lemass lead on". Where is the honesty in the Minister's statements now? If the Minister has any shame in his body, he should hide his head. Here we now have a statement reiterated over and over again that all this started in 1962. They knew it in 1962 and if they knew it in 1962, why did they give an increase of £18 a week to civil servants?
£20 a week.
He cut it fine and I want to cut it just as fine. Why in the name of Providence and in the name of the prosperity of the nation of which he is a Minister, did he concede that increase?
I have explained that. The Deputy may not have heard me.
The Minister talked about it but he did not explain it. The people are not fools. The Minister fooled them last April but they are wakening up now. The Minister knows that he sold himself to a misconception and he is running away from it now and running away from the local elections. That is the only reason he is running away from them. He is afraid to stand before the people.
I have been listening to and reading Government speeches for the past couple of days. Most of the time Government Deputies did not come into the House. There are five of them here now, out of the 71 in the Party. They are afraid to face the truth and that goes for the whole lot of them. The Minister says that if there were a ten per cent increase in wages, six per cent of it would be gobbled up by the increase in the cost of living. Why did he not say that to the fellows who stuck the gun in his chest and told him that they wanted an increase of £18 or £20 a week? The Minister will say that to the fellow who has to pay 2/2 for his pint and who has to pay more for his packet of cigarettes. That same man has to pay increased rents. In every town and village in the country, the managers are looking for an increase in rent. Is that not a reduction in wages in another way? Why are the Government not honest? Why do they not tell us the truth?
I have listened to and read speeches, and if we offer what we honestly believe to be a true statement, we are told we are back-stabbing. That is a great expression of the Minister for Health. I am sorry he has left. You are back-stabbing because you do not agree with him. He made some statements yesterday in regard to our financial position. He said every piece of legislation advancing the status of the worker was introduced by a Fianna Fáil Government and he added that if anybody denied that, he would sit down. I deny it and when I have finished with him, he will have to lie down. Who put the standstill on workers' wages? Who have been the workers' enemy for the past 15 or 20 years? The bacachs over there, and every time we or an organised trade union come along seeking what workers are legitimately entitled to—and the Minister has just said that every increase given was given because it was justly demanded—it is given only after strikes and battles, conferences and threats of strikes. Then the Minister goes to Monaghan or some such place and denounces the workers and their organisations and tells them they have no leaders and so on, and the Minister for Health says you are back-stabbing if you go against him, the great Lochinvar that has come among us.
We on these benches want to face this problem realistically. We want justice done all round and wherever the national cake has to be sliced, we want it sliced evenly among all sections. Did we get that in this Budget? Very far from it. The only "give" in the Budget was a miserable pittance of a dollar a week to paupers. When I say pauper, I am putting into brutal language what the Minister for Finance meant when he said anybody with over £26 a year would not qualify for this, a person of no means. If a person were out on the street begging, then he qualified for a dollar a week. Let us see what that would buy for him. Fish and chips cost about 2/2d and that gives the unfortunate hungry man fish and chips twice a week. This comes from the benevolent Minister we were told about yesterday by his colleague, the Minister for Health.
He must also have 6d for Deputy Burke.
Yes, to put into the tin-can to save the State. I do not mind nonsense—we all enjoy a little of it now and then—but I object to the hypocrisy and the utter deception of the Minister for Finance when he talks of the 5/- increase coming on 1st November, 5/- for a pauper. That is the benevolence of the Fianna Fáil administration and that is how thoughtful they are of the people down and out and unable to look after themselves, people of no means. I do not mind anybody making a case. I suppose every barrister going into court knows whether he is on a winner or a loser but he will fight as best he can within the rules of the game but these people come along with no rules or standards this side of hell, these members of the Establishment who try to cheat and hoodwink the people. We are supposed to take that lying down or be charged with back-stabbing. The quicker they wake up and realise this is 1966 and that people are thinking now and will not be misled any more, the better for themselves and the country generally.
I want to deal with the aspect of the Budget that affects people of the area from which I come, but before that I want to say that it is surprising that the Government have not intervened in the sell-out of the National Bank and the take-over by the monopoly. The National Bank, according to its constitution, must lay 30 per cent of its assets in the Bank of England. With the take-over, that 30 per cent of something like £300 million will now be let loose. Is it not a fact, or are we all blind to it, that the moment that money is released, the vultures on the benches over there will grab as much as they can of it to weather the storm they are now going through? Is that not the background to the take-over bid? Who blames the shareholders for fighting for their rights? Little consolation are they getting from the Government benches. Little action is taken there to see that justice and honesty will prevail. They want their pound of flesh out of the money that will be repatriated as a result of the take-over. We heard very little about that from the Government benches but that is the fact, and we shall hear all about it as soon as this deal is over and the shareholders are silenced. This is something we must realise. That will save the Government from running round the world cap in hand with the deeds of the Republic of Ireland in their satchel knocking on the doors of the banks of every nation begging and craving for money on loan and being refused. Their credit stands good nowhere and the quicker they realise it the better. Their going to America and asking for a £7 million loan is to me the same as a fellow pulling up in a Rolls Royce and asking for a half-gallon of petrol. That is the comparison made by the economists of the world and not by me alone. They sought £7 million and they were turned down. I am sorry Deputy Burke is not here; he might come to their rescue when he gets around to emptying his tin-can. We shall see what he collects.
I want to deal with the present agricultural situation. I come from a milk-producing agricultural county and I want to tell the Minister some of the matters that worry me in regard to agriculture and this Budget. We are now facing the fact that milk production is down by roughly eight gallons per cow. There is a very good reason for that. Cows are being killed before their final lactation period. They are being sent to the canner in the third or fourth year, whereas they should not be killed until after their sixth or later lactation. That represents a loss to the national herd. That loss is brought about by the fact that grass production is decreasing year after year because of the high price of fertilisers, which carry a levy of from £8 to £10 a ton. If the Minister and the Government were honest in regard to agriculture, that levy would be remitted. For the purposes of pig-rearing in the west of Ireland, imported barley would be supplied to the farmers in the west of Ireland and all along the western coast duty-free.
We are alleged to have an agricultural advisory service. This service is practically unknown to the common farmer. The only service the farmer gets is on television or in The Farmers' Journal. The officials engaged in the advisory service may visit an area once in 12 months. If properly organised, there should be four nights a week set aside, at least in the winter period, for visits. How can we increase production unless the farmer is educated in modern standards and modern methods of working? That education is not being provided. To put it brutally, we are trying to lift up the farmer with the left hand and are choking him with the right. He is lifted up with the left hand and drowned brutally with the right, because of the ineptitude of the officials of the Department of Agriculture.
The Minister may say that there is an increase in our cow population. That may be so. It may be half-true, because of the fact that there is a £15 heifer subsidy. The Minister mixes his figures and as a result alleges that the cow population is increasing. What is the result of the £15 heifer subsidy? It gave us a reduction of 35 per cent in calves this year. Yesterday at a mart in north Cork calves were sold at £1 and 30/- a head. They were not calves; they were whippets, greyhounds, because of the vulture-like attempt to get the £15. If anybody doubts me, he should look up the figures at Kanturk yesterday. A calf that made £35 last year is making £26 or £25 today. What it will make next week is anybody's guess. The figure is going down.
And the heifer subsidy has not been paid.
Farmers are still awaiting payment of the heifer subsidy. Somebody made well out of it and some in my county made very well out of it but it was not the farmer who went to the factory every morning with his three or four cans of milk. He did not make anything out of it.
The Government talk about what they are doing for milk and milk production. All praise to the men who stood up on Monday in Limerick and voiced their feelings in no uncertain terms. They did not do it for the sake of causing a scare. They did it because they were driven to it. I say good luck to them. They deserve to get what they are fighting for and it should have been given to them long ago. Then it is suggested that inflation started in 1962. Higher civil servants and those down along the line have received an increase of from £18 to £20 a week while the unfortunate fellow looking for 3/- or 4/- is said to be back-stabbing. I suppose the farmer is back-stabbing too because he is fighting for an honest living in his own land.
The cattle-breeding policy sponsored by the Minister for Agriculture with his £15 grant has set cattle-breeding in the wrong direction. There will be less and less milk production and more and more beef production, due to the bad handling and inept approach by the Department of Agriculture.
And scrub cattle.
Scrub cattle. The Deputy is correct. There is an import levy of £8 to £10 on barley. Pig production has fallen, despite what the Minister said today. I will be putting his remarks down his throat in five minutes' time. Pig production is falling rapidly. To the small farmer in the west of Ireland, pig production was the chief source of revenue. The land did not lend itself to tillage or to grass. The pig producer in the west of Ireland had to face a levy of £8 to £10 on imported barley.
Would the Deputy try to relate his remarks more closely to the Budget?
What is this?
Acting Chairman
This is the Budget debate.
What did you think I was on?
Acting Chairman
That was not clear. It seemed to be a matter that might more properly be raised on the Estimate for Agriculture.
With all due respect to the Chair, I am speaking on the biggest industry in Ireland today and the effect that the Budget has had on it. Is that not within the scope of this debate?
Acting Chairman
Yes, certainly, as long as the Deputy refers to the effect of the Budget on the industry but a discussion of the details of the industry itself would be a matter for the Estimate.
You must not be listening. What else am I doing? I have told the Minister for Agriculture that he has already put a damper on milk production. I now want to tell him what a mess he has made of pig production. Is that not as closely related to the Budget as ever you saw?
Acting Chairman
It did not seem to be closely related. I would ask the Deputy to keep that matter in mind.
Different schools, I suppose. I now return to the question of barley and pig rearing. There is an import levy of £8 to £10 on imported barley. That is the reason why pig production has ceased all along the west coast. It was their main source of revenue but because of the high price of feeding they had to get out of pigs. The result is that over the past three or four years there has been a steady decline in pig production, and this is continuing.
There is a body known as the pigs and Bacon Commission and, with all respect to them, they do not know Saturday from Sunday. One day they will give an instruction to the curers to do something and the next day they will turn their backs on it and the whole thing has to be reversed. The export of bacon was toned down to allow for the export of pork. Since the middle of last week, the export of pork is out and we are back to grade A bacon again.
Acting Chairman
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but he is straying away into a discussion which is purely on agricultural policy.
Whatever I am straying away from, I am not straying away from the farmers of Limerick and the west coast with regard to pig production.
Acting Chairman
That is not the subject under debate.
It is, in as much as the Budget affects these people.
Acting Chairman
The Budget affects everybody but we must not get involved in matters of detail more appropriately to be debated on the respective Estimates.
I submit that this is a matter of grave concern and I can see the foundations of this industry being rocked because of the action of the Minister for Finance in the Budget, by not giving relief to these unfortunate people. Is that not closely related to the Budget?
Acting Chairman
It is the first point I have heard which would be relevant.
These unfortunate people who try to rear pigs, and the Minister is aware of this because he has three bacon factories in his own city——
They are expanding.
Are they? They are closing up in Limerick.
They are building new premises.
They are building new premises because they have to. Because of the antique pieces in which they were housed and because of the conditions under which men were working there has to be a general overhaul of all bacon factories. That applies everywhere and it is to bring them up to standard. That is not expansion. If it is the Minister's idea of expansion, it is not mine.
These people in the west have to depend solely on pig production for an income. If the levy of £8 or £10 a ton were removed, and the feeding stuff were allowed in duty-free, the balance would be offset by the export of the bacon they would produce and everybody would be happy. Unfortunately, that is not the position and there has been a big decline in pig production. I will quote from The Farmers' Journal of Saturday 19th March:
Early indications of the January sow count point to a drastic reduction in Irish pig production in the current year. The fall is likely to exceed 15 per cent, bringing production for the year back to the level of 1964 or possibly even lower.
The numbers of in-pig gilts shows a particularly serious drop and are now down by about 40 per cent. The figure for gilts has always been considered critical in influencing future pig output.
Already the falling numbers is having its effect on bonham prices in the southern marts. For instance, bonhams of 40 to 60 lb. weight of reasonable quality have been making 2/2d. to 2/4d. per lb. the highest price for over 12 months.
Moreover, the entries at the popular pig marts in Carrick-on-Suir, Clonmel and Tipperary, are about half those of this time last year
Acting Chairman
I would ask the Deputy not to get involved in details of agriculture.
The Minister tells me that they are expanding in Cork and I want to know how they are expanding.
Acting Chairman
I am sure the Deputy can put down a question about that. This is not the time or the place for such a question.
I want to relate to this Budget the manner in which the farmers were treated by the Minister for Finance. Surely bacon production is an aspect of the agriculture industry and I submit that I am entitled to discuss it, and to try to impress on the Minister——
Acting Chairman
The Chair cannot agree that this is a matter which can be argued in detail. If the Deputy can relate his remarks to Government financial policy then everything will be in order.
The Minister said that things were never better in the bacon trade in Cork, that they are all expanding there and extending their premises. Did you or did you not say that?
I do not think so. I do not think that anybody in the House will agree with the Deputy.
Acting Chairman
If this is to become an argument across the House, we will not make progress. If the Deputy could proceed with his speech rather than make this into an argument we would make some progress.
I want to put the picture clearly before the Minister in regard to pig production. May I not do that?
Acting Chairman
No. The Chair is absolutely clear on that point. The matter for debate is the general Government financial policy as set out in Financial Resolution No. 12. The Chair can give very wide scope in a debate on Government policy but details which are more appropriate to Estimates may not be discussed in this debate.
Will the Chair tell me what I can talk about?
Acting Chairman
That is no function of the Chair.
If I cannot talk about the subsidy and the decline in the agricultural industry, may I not apply the same principle to any other part of our national life? As I said at the outset, I want to confine myself to agriculture. Other people have applied themselves to economics and the Minister for Transport and Power was blowing his head off about trade unionism and the relations between employer and employee and the inflation that started in 1962. Why can I not speak about pig production and the agricultural industry which is the most important matter in the country today? What is wrong with that?
Acting Chairman
It is not relevant to the particular Resolution before the House. The Chair is not querying the importance of the matter but it is not relevant to the Resolution.
How am I to put before the Minister for Finance the chaotic position that obtains in this industry? This industry is as near to me as it is to the Minister. We have three bacon factories in the city of Limerick.
Acting Chairman
I must insist that this is not the time to raise this matter. The Deputy will have ample opportunity at appropriate times to lay his views on agriculture before the House.
If the Deputy alleges there is a fall in agricultural production, surely he is entitled to give evidence, Sir?
Acting Chairman
I think the Deputy has already done that and I have allowed him to do it.
I think the Chair should be reminded, with respect, that this is also a debate on the Vote on Account.
Acting Chairman
General principles may be discussed. What I am trying to reason with the Deputy is that he should not get involved in too many details more appropriate to the Estimates.
Detail is the sign of a genius. It is the details that count. It is the details that make the genius. You might not be a demon for detail outside in Liffeybank. We are all demons for detail in our own lines. If we want efficiency, we must have detail. If I want to make a case for an industry in this country, I must be detailed. I am not going to skim over it and make wild statements without proving them. The proof and the figures are here. In justice and fairplay, I think I am entitled to that consideration. That is all I ask.
Acting Chairman
If we get involved in a discussion of a particular industry, we are straying away from the terms of the Financial Resolution.
The Minister for Transport and Power dwelt on one particular industry. The Minister for Health—I read whatever part of his speech was readable between all the nonsense—dwelt on a particular aspect. If I came in here and wanted to deal with health only, am I not entitled to do that under the terms of this debate? Is it not all part and parcel of the financial structure of the country? Is that not what we are here to discuss, to show a bit of light to these people, to show them the evil of their ways? Otherwise, why are we in Opposition?
Acting Chairman
As long as it is related to financial policy.
If you had 50 pigs last year and none this year, I can assure you it would be financial policy. Those are the people I am trying to talk about.
Acting Chairman
That is individual financial policy but not the national policy.
What is the nation but a nation of individuals?
You cannot win, Chairman.
The family makes the nation and the individual makes the family. That is the structure. It is simple economics. Am I allowed to carry on or are you going to make a farce of the thing? I am gone beyond joking now. The poor fellows standing at the street corners in Limerick going down to the home assistance officer every Friday for a couple of bob do not think it is a joke. I want to impress that on the House. We can go to the circus if we want to enjoy ourselves.
The Farmers' Journal continues:
In bacon pigs numbers delivered up to early March were actually above last year's level but in the past week indications of a decline became apparent when numbers were down about 1,400 on the previous week. This week one of the Limerick factories has given a further indication with an advertised price showing an increase of 20/-per cwt. for B1, B and C pigs. It is to be hoped in all sections of the bacon industry that as the shortage of pigs develops that factories will encourage a depression in grading standards through increased live-weight buying—such as occurred in 1964. They say "if there is to be competition among factories let it be for graded pigs with a price premium for top grades." The expected fall in bacon production could lead to some difficulty in fulfilling our British bacon quota particularly if grading or factory quality should go low.
It goes on to criticise Michael Delahunty of the Pigs and Bacon Commission because of a statement made which was true. I want to go on to our bacon exports. We now find we have a substantial fall in pig production.
Acting Chairman
The Deputy is still harping on the same line. I cannot allow him to proceed on that line. A discussion of particular imports or exports or production is entirely out of order on this debate.
With all due respect, there are 1,600 people employed in the bacon industry in my city. I do not know how many are employed in Cork. If I cannot come up here and make a case for those people, since there is no provision in this Budget to save that industry, I am neglecting my duty to my constituents and to my city. I am trying to make that case. I am trying to put before the Minister for Finance, who is now present, the urgency of saving the bacon industry. If I cannot do that, it is a sad day for the land.
Acting Chairman
There is a time and place for that. This is just not the time.
On a point of order, I understand the Chair to be concerned that the Deputy is labouring the point in respect of agricultural policy. Might I point out with respect that the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in his speech to this House confined his remarks solely and in great detail to matters peculiar to agriculture only?
Acting Chairman
There is no objection to references being made to general agricultural policy, so long as they are related to financial policy. But a detailed discussion of production, imports and exports of a particular industry, whether agriculture or otherwise, is out of order. I do ask the Deputy to honour the direction of the Chair in that respect.
Am I to take it there is one law for Ministers and another for Deputies in respect of debating matters in this House?
Acting Chairman
I think the Deputy knows very well that is not the case.
The exception proves the rule. According to Deputy Treacy, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries confined himself solely to agriculture.
Acting Chairman
A discussion of the rulings of the Chair is also out of order. I do hope the Deputy will get back to the matter under discussion.
I came in here to speak may be five or six minutes to put the case of the Limerick bacon factories before the Minister. I find I am on my feet for the best part of threequarters of an hour and unfortunately I am not half way through what I want to say. In answer to a Parliamentary Question put down by me on 23rd February, asking the Taoiseach the amount of bacon exported in each of the years 1964 and 1965, the figures I got were 547,255 cwts. valued at practically £9 million in 1964 and 524,211 cwts. valued at £8 million in 1965. According to the reply to another question on the same date, asking what was the amount of subsidy per ton, it varied from £86 to £120 per ton. Taking £100 as the average figure, which I think is fair, I found, on a rough calculation, we are now paying the British people 1/- per lb, to eat our bacon. What will be the position of the pig industry if that situation is allowed to continue?
One also finds that the expenses incurred by the Pigs and Bacon Commission last year, as compared with the previous year, went up by 25 per cent. The Pigs and Bacon Commission have been changing their chairman as often as a clown changes his tactics in the ring, because they are not up to their job, knowing nothing at all about the bacon industry. The tragedy of it is that there are so many people depending on the bacon industry, be they producers, curers or retailers. There is mismanagement from the very top, particularly with regard to the Pigs and Bacon Commission. I would advise the Minister to have another look at the manner in which that Commission has been set up and at its workings for the past three years. There is mismanagement all along the line because the Minister for Agriculture is trying to put square pegs into round holes. Men who know nothing at all about the bacon trade are in these jobs. The bacon trade is a highly specialised trade and one which cannot be jumped into overnight.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the Free Trade Agreement. The Government delegation came back from Collinstown to Leinster House with flags flying and trumpets blowing, making complete fools of themselves. On television, they were blowing up this wonderful Free Trade Agreement which they had been negotiating for the best part of two years. They boasted that at last they had solved the agricultural problem, that the Irish farmer was made for life, that at last he had found a market that is steady and secure. The Taoiseach gave full marks to the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture for the manner in which they had handled the situation. However, I should like to read a paragraph from the English Farmers' Weekly of 11th February, 1966 with regard to this great Free Trade Agreement. Under the heading “Irish Boomerang”, it says:
We have discovered an intriguing effect of the new Anglo-Irish agreement so far as it affects carcass meat and store stock imports. The Irish side appears to believe it scored a great diplomatic victory when they obtained the agreement of the British government to pay the equivalent of the average fatstock guarantee payment on 25,000 tons of carcass beef and 5,000 tons of lamb. But in fact the more money Ireland draws under that scheme, the worse it will be for Ireland's economy.
This is because of the effect of low fatstock prices on the market for store stock. With the introduction of the Ministry's new "Graduated Deficiency Payments Scheme" two years ago, with its incentives and disincentives, the buyer of store stock must now have regard to probable movement of fatstock prices in relation to the seasonal standard price scale. A proper assessment of store stock values would make store cattle anything up to £5 a head cheaper when the fatstock market prospects look bad, compared with their value when fat stock prospects are good.
Bearing in mind that the Irish republic promises a minimum of over 600,000 store cattle a year to Britain, but only 25,000 tons of carcass beef (equal to 100,000 cattle), we reckon that a guarantee payment to Ireland on the carcass beef of £2 million in one year would depress prices of the store cattle they send in that same year by well over £3 million. We doubt if the average Irish farmer has realised this boomerang effect of the guarantee they sought.
That is what the Government want to tell us here, that they have made great bargains, that the country is on the road to prosperity and that everything is all right, when, in fact, everything is all wrong and everything is going down and down. Then we are told by the Minister for Finance that the man at the bottom is the first man who must take the rap. We are all prepared to make sacrifices, provided they are reasonable sacrifices. However, we find that the unfortunate man with £10 a week is offered an increase of 3/- a week, while his drink and cigarettes and whatever else he wants have gone well beyond his means; we also find that the men who are well catered for and whose wives and families are well catered for have their demands acceded to without any question, demands not in the region of 3/- or 4/- a week but in the Mercedes and Rolls Royce class. This is what we condemn and this is where we differ from the people of the Establishment, and we shall continue to disagree with them while they act along those lines.
We come along to this House because we know the people, because we live with the people and know what the people want. We do not dream dreams; neither do we generate nightmares and come in here making scare announcements. We do not go to dinners and other functions making scare announcements. Neither do we indulge in the suspect recreation of telling the people that everything is going grand, that they never had it so good. "Let Lemass lead on." He has led on. Where has he led us?
The Minister for Transport and Power repeated at least six times that all this difficulty started away back in 1962. It was evident to the Cabinet in 1962. What did the Minister do about it? What did any member of the Government do about it? All they did was to fool the people: "They never had it so good"; "Let Lemass Lead On." The economy was never so buoyant. Twelve per cent all round. Go and enjoy yourselves. The circus will go on forever. Now the day of reckoning. has arrived. It will be a long reckoning. It will go on longer than a day and a year, and the longer it goes on, the further they will try to back away from it.
I defy the Government to put the issue to the people by way of the local elections. We will face the people tomorrow morning. When will the Government face them? They will face them only when they are compelled to. It is our business now as public representatives to agitate and organise throughout the country for speedy local elections. That is the answer. I know the Government will do all they can not to give those elections to us. I know they do not want them because it is one way of letting the people outside know all the blunders that have been made and all the deceptions that have been practised on them by the people on those benches opposite.
When we show up the deception and the hypocrisy, we are accused of backstabbing. I will repeat what the Minister for Health said: "Every piece of legislation in this country advancing the status of the workers was introduced here by a Fianna Fáil Government. If anyone denies that, I will sit down." Did anyone ever hear such trash? If the Minister were here now, I would tell him to lie down. We are not afraid to tell the truth and to let the people know the country is bankrupt, that there is not tuppence to jingle on a tombstone. Our credit is not acceptable anywhere. But we are accused of back-stabbing. The Government are hawking our credit all over Europe and America looking for money at all kinds of prices. They have one hope left. The National Bank takeover might solve their problems. Let me go on record on this 23rd of March as forecasting that there will be no opposition from any member on those benches to the National Bank takeover. The unfortunate shareholders are fighting a losing battle for their rights. When the takeover is effected and the 30 per cent of the assets held in England are released, the country will never be so well off—Let Lemass Lead On.
At this late stage it is very difficult to add anything new to the debate. The debate has covered a very wide field in relation to our financial and economic problems. However, there was an interesting disclosure tonight by the Minister for Transport and Power. It is worthy of special note. He put on record that not alone did he know, but he participated in a Cabinet discussion at the highest level, about inflation as far back as 1962. That makes me believe that when Deputy Smith resigned from the Government as Minister for Agriculture, he was in agreement with the Minister for Transport and Power. So also apparently was Deputy MacEntee; and Deputy Dr. Ryan fled from the scene, knowing that the Cabinet were divided, knowing that one section wanted to be guided by the economics of the situation and the other wanted to drive the country into financial and economic disaster. The only motive behind all that was the purchase of votes.
This Budget has been described in different ways. Putting it mildly, it is a very bad Budget. It is a Budget that gives nothing and takes all. It is a Budget that will add considerably to the difficulty of the everyday life of the ordinary citizen. It is a Budget which will collect an additional £12½ million, a Budget through the medium of which Fianna Fáil will once more stick their hands deep down into pockets. But they are not satisfied with that. Both the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach said on television that this Budget would not be the end of the raid on the taxpayers' pockets. There was every possibility that towards the end of the year we would be faced with another raid on the taxpayers' pockets and, in reply to a question, the Taoiseach said he could see no hope of any relief in taxation and that the trend of increasing taxation was likely to be a continuous process next year and every year thereafter. That was not the kind of speech he made just this time 12 months before the general election. Then the country was said to be never so well off: "The people never had it so good; do not change the Government because we are in the middle of a great period of prosperity; this great period of financial stability is only in its infancy; the only way to ensure against losing it is to return Fianna Fáil."
This set-up we now have under review is the mild half of the 1966 Budget. Nobody expected we would have the full Budget in the early part of this Presidential election year. This year it will come in two moieties. We have had the March moiety—the tax on cigarettes, beer, spirits, motor cars, dancehalls and higher income tax. The November moiety will be the real one. It will deal with foodstuffs, with bread, flour and butter. It will increase the turnover tax. I have little doubt this is what the Government have in mind.
This Budget is of evil motive. It is an ill-conceived Budget. It is extremely difficult to find words to describe the Government's conduct since the last general election. Everybody knew in 1962 that the consequences of the Government's policy of inflation would be this financial mess and the Minister for Transport and Power and Deputy MacEntee and Deputy Smith and others entered into a conspiracy in the general election 12 months ago. They deliberately went before the people with a policy of fraud, of deceit and of intrigue. They deceived the public and they did it successfully.
This time last year, after the Roscommon and the Galway by-elections, the Government were convinced that in the general election, Fine Gael, Labour or an inter-Party Government would come to office. In that belief, the Government plunged into every commitment they could so that they would rig the finances of the country in preparation for the change of government. This was also evident from the speeches made by the Taoiseach and other prominent members of Fianna Fáil during the general election campaign. The Taoiseach said that as an Opposition, Fianna Fáil would be the watchdogs of the people. Nobody was more surprised than the Taoiseach to find Fianna Fáil back in office. They had the financial structure of the country so rigged that no Government who came after them would have a chance of presenting to the country at this time anything but the evilly-conceived Budget we are now considering
In such circumstances, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Transport and Power and company—I was about to say "limited" which I shall leave until later—could stand up here and say: "You have got us into the same financial mess as you did from 1954 until 1957". It so happened that the trap did not spring the way Fianna Fáil thought it would. They are now left with the results of their own political engineering and manoeuvring. Consequently, we are facing this very sad financial spectre. This was to be our golden year, the year in which we remembered the events of 50 years ago, leading up to the freedom we achieved over 40 years ago. We had hoped that in this year we could review our position calmly.
Instead, we find our Ministers going around the world not with bags on their backs, not with notices on their breasts and backs reading "Help the Poor", but they have gone to Washington, to Germany, to Denmark, to Britain begging. Germany, war-torn and tattered between 1939 and 1945, found themselves in a position to lend money to Ireland, the land flowing with milk and honey, the great neutral country, the proud, independent State that could stand on its own feet, according to the Taoiseach. We had to go to war-torn Germany to beg and borrow. Is there any shame left in the Ministers of a Government who would do that? It may be a superior way of doing it, but it is begging all the same.
When they finished begging in Washington, they went to Germany. They went to Britain, were refused there and had the door slammed in their teeth. The same applies in the case of the two other sources from which they sought to borrow money. How can any Fianna Fáil supporter, Deputy or Minister, stand over the fact that after such a long period of Fianna Fáil Government, they had to send out the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce with the concealed notice: "Help the Poor". Are they not dragging the credit of this country into the mud? Any little respect that there was for us has been reduced by the fact that we have had to go with a poor mouth and tell the people of other countries that we were in a state of bankruptcy and beg them to give us money to keep us going.
Where is the freedom in having to drag our credit all over the world and borrow money to keep the wheels of administration running? The fact of the matter is that when we are not able to do that, we are not able to keep the show going. Why can we not be honest with the people in that regard? I am not inclined to agree with all those who say that our economy is sound. If there were any degree of soundness associated with our economy, we would not allow the name of Ireland to sink to the depths to which it has sunk in countries from which we have had to borrow to keep going. Having borrowed all over the world, having tried to get money and having been humiliated by refusals, we turn our backs on the fact that there is a continuous emigration from this country.
In this bad Budget, no effort has been made to stem the tide of emigration. In spite of all that has been said about our progress in recent years, we all know that there is still a great outflow of people from this country seeking employment abroad. I was listening to the news on Telefís Éireann last night and it was stated that never in the history of the town of Carlow was there such unemployment as there is at the moment. We have the same story to tell in every provincial town in Ireland. People say that there is no opposition to Fianna Fáil. We are part of the opposition to Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil ask us to say what our remedy for this situation would be, if we were in office. It is not the job of the Opposition to provide remedies to Governments in difficulty. That is the Government's responsibility. They are put there to rule well and to give the people good government.
Our country has been put in pawn all over the world. The emblem of this country is no longer the shamrock or the harp; it is the three balls, the pawnbroker's sign. This is all due to Fianna Fáil and their mismanagement, all due to the insane and unsound conduct of a bad Government who have been primarily looking after their own interests and those of their friends, family connections and relations, seeing that they grow fatter and richer while the ordinary man in the street is growing thinner and poorer.
This is a Budget in which the Minister for Finance has made no reference to the growing problem of emigration, in which he has made no provision for the vast numbers of unemployed. The Government have rigged the statistics of the figures of employed people in this country so that nobody knows how many are idle. In my town of Mountmellick, there were never so many unemployed. The same is true of Tullamore, Birr and Athlone, and, indeed, of every provincial town in the country. And here we have a Budget in which not one pennypiece is provided to relieve the plight of fathers of families who are desperate in their search for work.
Do the Government know what is going on in the homes of the poor and unemployed people today? The truth is that we have very rich people in Ireland today, people who are very well off, comfortable people, but we have also very poor people, people on the verge of death from starvation and cold. We have had inquests on them in this very city. Anybody connected with charitable organisations can tell that there was never such a demand on the resources of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other such societies. Every local authority has had vastly increased applications for outdoor relief and home assistance. The occupant of the Chair will agree that his own constituency is no exception.
In every part of Ireland today, you have the cold hand of poverty, and then you have the people who could not care less. These are the people who are being well feather-bedded by Fianna Fáil, the small minority, the very influential people for whom money speaks loudly and who are in the ranks of Fianna Fáil. Then you have the unemployed, the old, the sick, the disabled, those dependent on social welfare benefits, and no words of mine could properly describe the deplorable conditions in which they live.
Bad as that may be, we must have the worst housing conditions in Europe today. What is in this Budget for housing? I met a man in Edenderry last night who is living in two rooms and has been looking for a house for 16 years. I could never understand why the housing situation was not declared a national emergency long ago. Is it not true that we have tens of thousands of people who never had a roof of their own over their heads or a prospect of it or of the security of a home of their own, but we have the Fianna Fáil Government telling us what they have done and are going to do and what the position is, but I want to put it on record that the housing shortage in Ireland must be one of the worst in Europe. If we judge Fianna Fáil on their record in that respect, it is easy to give a decision. The decision can be given by thousands of people who are homeless today. Many of them have been ten or 15 years on a waiting list for housing. The manner in which the housing of our people has been handled is deplorable and no credit to any native Government.
The same applies to drainage, and as a result of this Budget, there will be no improvement. Even the little already promised for the relief of extraordinary flooding of the Shannon is not forthcoming here and no practical steps are being taken. Our health services could easily be put on a par with those of Nigeria. We know that they are very bad and completely outdated. We still have the old poorhouse system. We have had pious promises from the Minister for Health that he has a comprehensive health programme for the whole country. Perhaps he has: Fianna Fáil always have plans. They must be the best people in the world for plans; I must admit that their record for plans is second to none; but all their plans seem to be surrounded by cobwebs and covered with dust in the vaults of some Government office. They are never put into effect. They take out these plans, sweep off the dust and cobwebs six weeks before an election and then back they go again. We have plenty of plans, commissions, boards and talk but no positive action to implement the plans. The dreamers we have in Government can be described as the dreamers of the plans. They have specialised in setting up boards and commissions, waiting years for reports before they act and where any commission is likely to make an unfavourable report, it is put out of existence or steps are taken to see that no meetings are called.
While that is the position in regard to health, housing, unemployment and emigration, we have another serious problem. Agriculture is our main industry and we should be alarmed, particularly at Budget time, when we see that milk production has gone down by eight gallons per cow-Yesterday we saw a reference by the Irish Sugar Company to the serious drop in the beet acreage. We have an all-round drop in tillage. There is no prospect of even maintaining last year's tillage acreage and now we find that what grasslands we have left are becoming denuded of stock because the agricultural community cannot buy stock for their land. I know many landowners in the midlands who cannot stock their land because of the credit squeeze. The Minister for Finance should give us more information regarding the credit squeeze. Do not mind what you read in the papers about the credit corporation of about the banks lending out money. Everybody knows that a gangster with a six-shooter is more welcome at an Irish bank now than a farmer looking for a loan to buy livestock. This is an extraordinary situation in which our people find themselves, on the one hand, without food or houses and on the other, without work or security, and our farmers with their tillage down and no prospect of credit to purchase livestock or fertilisers or seeds, and therefore unable to work their lands.
The position of some small farmers in rural Ireland is desperate: they are on the threshold of the workhouse and the sooner we realise that the better. The situation must be very serious with farmers in regard to incomes when the principal farming organisation in the country some time ago decided, rightly or wrongly, on a slowing up in the payment of rates. This is what I want to come to on the Budget. Bad and all as the general raid on the taxpayers is, as a result of this Budget, what will become of people who, in addition to the Budget, find the rates in every county in Ireland at a record level? In many cases they have increased by 6/- or 7/- in the £1.
I sympathise sincerely and honestly with the members of the NFA who approached the Minister for Agriculture some time ago in regard to the relief of rates which was expected but did not come in this Budget. I have the correct information that when the NFA deputation went to the Minister to ask what relief of rates could be expected in the Budget, the Minister put up his hands and said: "Before I talk to you, you must call off your rates campaign. When you do that, I will talk to you about increasing the price of milk and about financial concessions in the Budget which will be coming up very shortly and in which I will consider recommending a certain sum for the relief of rates". Naturally, the deputation were pleased and retired. They came back and decided to call off the rates campaign and that was done. An undertaking was given. Do not mind the joint statements by the Minister and the NFA: that is what I call a political smokescreen to hide a certain amount of shame on the faces of the NFA for falling flat on a job they undertook. They were too much ashamed to admit the Minister wiped their eye. They were promised an increase in the price of milk and relief of rates, and they got neither.
I do not say that the Minister for Agriculture did anything dishonest—for all I know, he did his best—but the position now as we review this Budget is that, of the £12½ million extracted from the people's pockets, not as much as a quarter of a million is going to the relief of rates. Not one farthing is going to the farmers in the dairying districts who were convinced that if they called off the rates campaign they would get a substantial increase in the price of milk. I put it to the Government that they were promised it, that they were deceived and that now Fianna Fáil are found out again and are afraid of their lives of all the disclosures that took place which led to the betrayal of the majority of decent farmers who sincerely expected relief of rates and an increase in the price of milk. I want the Minister for Finance to tell us fully and bluntly, having regard to the fact that by ministerial and Government order local authorities were compelled to increase the rates, in some cases from 6/- to 7/- in the £, and to the fact that ratepayers could not pay their rates last year and the year before, how it is expected that they will pay them this year and next year at that increased amount without there being a penny relief coming from the State? Those people are on the verge of bankruptcy and Fianna Fáil are deliberately driving them into that state.
It is all very fine for us to sympathise with the plight of those people but, on the other hand, did the people not ask for it? The only people for whom I am terribly sorry are our own supporters who took our advice. I sympathise sincerely with those who did not take our advice and who were hoodwinked again by Fianna Fáil. Now they see the plight they are in. I speak particularly of urban ratepayers. In some instances, a farmer will get abatement of rates in respect of a permanent employee or a member of his own family but the townspeople and urban ratepayers must pay all and there is not a penny relief, in this Budget or otherwise, for them.
Fianna Fáil have another way of raking in additional cash. I feel it is the responsibility of the Minister for Finance. There is a highway raid on people through increases in valuations. In the case of business houses, grocers' stores, drug stores, licensed premises, whether there are repairs carried out or not, if they are only cleaned up, the Valuation Office is down on them and there are unreasonable increases in valuation. The valuations have been driven up as a means of rooking people and dragging money out of them that they have not got. I wonder where this increase of valuations will end. There are small shop-keepers, publicans and business people down the country who are being put out of business as a result of increases in valuations. Something should be done about it. The Government are failing in their duty. Instead of preventing increases of valuation they are allowing it and encouraging it and driving people out of business.
We are in a very strange position in this country. I feel that we are in a more serious situation than many people realise. Are our people losing interest in Parliament? If they are, it is a serious matter and there is a very grave responsibility on the Government that permit such apathy or decay to creep in. There is desperate unrest in the country. I feel that the Government do not realise that, that the Government, either individually or collectively, are very far removed from the people. I do not think they know what is going on. I do not think that they listen to their own Deputies. I do not think their own Deputies tell them in case they would embarrass them. On the other hand, maybe the Ministers would not listen to their own Deputies. There is unrest in the agricultural community, unrest in the business community, unrest in trade union and industrial circles. There is no such thing as proper relationship between trade unions and employers. A clear indication of the situation is the vast number of strikes taking place and, may I say, the vast number of unofficial strikes. Consider the loss involved in continuous strikes. Having regard to trade union discontent, increased demands, unrest in agricultural circles, the poverty that exists, is there not a glorious breeding ground for the birth of a communistic regime? Who will take the responsibility? The responsibility lies at the door of Fianna Fáil.
In any country that has fallen into the hands of communism, the situation that lent itself to that was exactly the same as the situation in this country at the moment. There was discontent amongst the people; there was a certain small element that took advantage of that discontent; there was a small element that was out to create destruction and to add to the economic difficulties that existed and the poor people were used as a lever. That is why I am terribly afraid that all the unrest that prevails in Ireland today has a tinge of red associated with it.
The Government are a weak Government, lacking in energy, divided on economic policy, as we heard tonight from the Minister for Transport and Power, a Government who have no practical interest in the country or in the people, a Government that are allowing unrest to develop while they sit idly by. The real danger that I see today is that we have a weak and cowardly Government that are afraid to rule. The vast majority of decent people in the country today have lost confidence in that Government. The Government know that the people have lost confidence in them and that is what makes them weaker. They are prepared to hang on to anything because of their weakness and inability to rule properly.
That is very bad for the country. There has been a very clear example of cowardice, apathy and of halfhearted efforts by the Government to deal with major problems which gravely affect the country's future welfare. We are on the threshold of danger and the failure of the Government to show their strength, to show concern for the poor, to show concern in regard to raising the standard of living and in regard to providing health services and houses, in a word, to bring our people within the scope of a just society which Fine Gael have been advocating before and since the last election, will be the means of driving our people into losing respect for Parliament. If that happens the Opposition cannot be blamed and Fianna Fáil must take full responsibility.
For 24 years, I have been a Member of this House and I have been looking at Ministers operating for that length of time. I never saw a more cowardly bunch than in this Government. They have the wind up over the credit squeeze and over industrial unrest because they are unable to solve our economic and financial difficulties. When you hear a Fianna Fáil Deputy saying that the one way in which the country can be saved is to collect 6d a man you would imagine that it was a Fianna Fáil club that he was trying to organise in some remote district where they were not fully aware of all the implications of being associated with the club. When you have a Deputy standing up and saying that the one way in which the country can be saved is for us all to put our hands into our pockets and put our sixpences into the hard hat and that all the sixpences will——
Sixpence per day would not be too bad.
He said 6d per week.
He meant 6d per day.
I do not envy Deputy Burke his job of collecting these sixpences.
Paddy's pence.
When I recall 1954 to 1957, the years of happiness and prosperity, and when I recall the manner in which the members of the present Government referred to our Minister for Finance and to the levies which were imposed in order to rectify the balance of payments and the difficulties associated with the Suez crisis, may I say that Fianna Fáil speakers cannot go down the country and say, "Oh, the financial position is bad. We were left with a mess and the country was in debt." The start of all this trouble goes back to the purchase of votes in Kildare and Cork by the 12 per cent wages increase. It was a dear price and a dear bribe. One would not expect that any political Party with the real interests of the country at heart would have shoved the country into such a position for the purpose of winning votes in two constituencies. The 12 per cent was deliberately organised for the purpose of winning these two by-elections and the 12 per cent, coupled with the turnover tax, has been responsible for putting the country in the position in which it is today. Thank God we on this side of the House can wash our hands completely of any responsibility for the 12 per cent increase or the turnover tax. The people were warned time and again what the consequences would be.
I wonder what has happened to the Second Programme for Economic Expansion? I remember getting that booklet and I heard it being quoted by every Minister. I even heard Fianna Fáil Deputies spelling out the big words at the cumann meetings in the country. They would put on their glasses and say “We will see what this is” and they would spell it out and the smart cumann secretary would help ably to get over the big phrases in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. Everyone thought that this was the most wonderful document ever issued. What has happened to it? What about all the targets that were set in it? What is contained in this Budget to expedite the terms of the Second Programme? Can we hope to hear anything more about it, because there has been no financial provision made in that regard?
The tourist industry ranks as one of the best we have got and has provided a very great financial return. May I ask if in recent months, or in recent years, we have sent our best possible advertisements abroad in the shape of our conduct at home, to attract tourists here? I am afraid that the name of our country abroad will not help the tourist trade. It is bad enough that newspapers abroad should refer to our mysterious explosions, bombings and blasts in the centre of the city. But our Ministers going abroad in the form of beggars to beg loans, that will not help the tourist industry.
We did not throw a bomb at our Prime Minister.
Our image abroad to attract more tourists has not been a very good one. Efforts should be made to restore abroad the good name of the majority of the people of this country.
We are told that if there are to be any further demands from trade unions, the economy can afford only a three per cent increase, approximately 6/- a week for a man earning £10 a week. Yet we have the Budget putting 2d extra on the pint, 4d on the glass of whiskey, a 25 per cent increase on road tax and a substantial increase in the price of petrol, making our motoring the dearest in the world today.
Reference has already been made to the licensed trade. Everybody with any knowledge of the conditions in that trade knows that it is without doubt on the verge of bankruptcy. In the Irish Independent of 10th March, 1966, Mr. Pinkerton, president of the publicans' association, pointed out that there were 12,000 licences in the country for 2,750,000 people. He went on to say that the licensed traders were very nearly bankrupt and were being forced to carry on by a lowering of their own living standards.
The licensed trade gives considerable employment. This increase is going to have a serious effect on the incomes of those in the trade. This is particularly so since the Minister was quick enough to take the necessary steps to prevent them from looking after their own interests. The publicans themselves were prevented from doing anything to assist them to eke out an existence, but no time was lost by the Government in putting 4d a glass on whiskey and 2d on the pint of stout. This is disastrous for the licensed trade, for the brewing industry, for the distilling industry, for everybody in any way connected with the trade. It will mean that considerable numbers now employed in the trade will be forced into unemployment because to make up for their losses, the publicans will have to endeavour to carry on with reduced staffs.
I was very disappointed that this Budget did not provide for an increase in the pensions of retired civil servants and local authority officials, and also in the pensions of widows of gardaí. All these people are compelled to live on very limited incomes. Everybody knows a genuine case can be made for a substantial increase in their pensions, but they have received the blind eye and the deaf ear from the Fianna Fáil Government for a case which has outstanding merit. I am keenly disappointed the Minister for Finance did not make some provision for them.
This Budget has been a bitter pill coated with a little chocolate. The chocolate was this 5/- a week increase for old age pensioners from next November. But the old age pensioner must be completely destitute before he gets this 5/- increase. I do not thank the Government for that. I say "Shame on the Government." This increase is an insult to the old age pensioners. They must be completely destitute and must wait until next November before they can get this 5/- a week. With great respect to our legal gentlemen, compare that with the treatment Fianna Fáil meted out to the judges some time ago when they gave them a substantial increase in pay and all this back money. This brings me to recall the vast amount of luxury spending there is in this country, the vast amount of high spending, the vast amount of excitement that prevails among the well-to-do and the rich and the manner in which the back of the hand is given to the poor, the feeble and the disabled, who have nobody to speak or fight for them. The well-to-do seemingly get more. Then we say that the old age pensioner must wait until November before he gets this miserable 5/-. It is disgraceful.
We see the Government sitting around the table calmly considering the motor tax and petrol increases. If the people down the country only realised that all the men around the table never have to buy a gallon of petrol themselves, that they drive around in public cars with public petrol and that the people pay the motor tax for them! That is the strange part of it. I hope that is what we will tell the people at the local elections.
If we have them.
That is what I hope we will tell the people at the Presidential election. The men who put the tax on the cars and the tax on the petrol never buy a gallon of petrol themselves and never tax a car. For that matter, they do not even own the cars they are driving around in, because they are the people's cars. There is no point in looking at the poor Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lalor. He knows that I am a very charitable man. I may not use that in my own constituency, which will be considerably to the Parliamentary Secretary's advantage. Now we find ourselves with no leadership.
What about "Let Lemass Lead On"?
I do not think that cock will crow any more. We are told by members of the Government that this Budget does not affect the cost of living. Did anybody ever hear such nonsense? This evening there are reports that CIE fares will be considerably increased. Although we were told that Fianna Fáil were going to give no more State money to CIE, I am sure there must be money in this Budget to subsidise that company. Now we find that bus fares and train fares have to be substantially increased again, although this bankrupt company has been a considerable strain on the financial resources of the country over a long period. The general public, who are now asked to seek only a three per cent increase, if any, will not stand for very substantial increases, particularly for transport. I hope the Minister for Finance will take the necessary steps to prevent CIE from increasing the cost of living for people who must avail of CIE services. These proposed increases are unreasonable. I thought, after CIE had taken it upon themselves to christen some of their railway stations after the patriots of 1916, that in honour of the baptism of these railway stations, they might leave these increases aside. I hope to deal with the christening of the railway stations in another way because I think it makes the great patriots of 1916 very cheap.
This scarcely arises on the Budget.
The next thing we shall see is that public toilets will be called after them.
That does not arise.
It is disgraceful—and I am sure you, Sir, will agree with me—to have the railway stations of a bankrupt company called after our 1916 patriots.
The Deputy will agree with the Chair it is not relevant.
I do agree.
If he agrees, perhaps the Deputy would come back to the Budget debate.
I feel very strongly about that. I feel equally strongly about the hundreds of stations they closed down and that they have not christened at all. We could call them the Childers railway station or the Andrews railway station, RIP.
The Deputy might feel strongly more relevantly on some other occasion.
I could not agree more with the Chair. I am sorry the Minister for Finance is not here because I wanted to direct his attention to an article which appeared in the Sunday Independent of 20th March, 1966. It is a commonsense article written in the public interest. It deals with the Finance Act of 1965, and now that the Finance Act of 1966 is in the course of preparation, I would ask the Minister very seriously to study the article and to ask the officers of his Department to study it. The heading is to the effect that these decisions amount to sheer dictatorship. It is quite wrong that the Revenue Commissioners should set themselves up as dictators. I am deeply grateful to the Sunday Independent for directing public attention to this matter of sheer dictatorship on the part of the Revenue Commissioners. There should be an appeal to the courts from the Revenue Commissioners. We have respect for our courts. Our courts are here for that purpose. I should like to ask the Minister why he will not allow appeals to the ordinary civil courts in cases of this kind under the relevant sections of the Finance Act.
According to this article, the Revenue Commissioners have the right to decide whether or not certain property which a deceased may never have had an interest in passes on death. By their decisions they can increase the amount of a man's estate on which duty is levied, although the money never passes into the hands of the executors. Similarly under section 26 of the same Act, they can determine the market value of a particular life policy at a given date. Against these decisions there is no right of appeal.
Surely these are details that will be relevant on the Estimate? They may not be discussed in detail on the Budget.
This is for the Finance Act.
They are details and do not necessarily arise on the Budget debate.
I am sure you will agree, Sir, it is right the Minister should be forewarned, when he is preparing the Finance Act, that this is a matter which will be raised, in the hope that he will see his way to grant citizens the right of appeal to the courts from the decisions of the Revenue Commissioners.
Again I wish to express my disappointment in regard to this Budget. It is a bad piece of work. There is nothing positive in it. There is only one solution: to put Fianna Fáil out, and having put them out, to keep them out. The Taoiseach has already told us that this trend of raiding the people's pockets is to continue year after year. At this late stage the Taoiseach has been honest enough to confess that he is going to continue that. It is only right that he should be honest with us after almost 40 years in public life. The time has come when the people will not tolerate the fleecing by taxation they have got from Fianna Fáil. They are a bad Government who suffer from lack of confidence of the people, and the people are anxious to put them out at the earliest opportunity. Now that they are facing the Presidential election, full of cowardice, in fear and dread that the worst will happen, we can only hope that, when they lose the Presidential election——
Do not be too confident. I have known very confident men over there in the past 24 years, but they are not there today. I venture to prophesy that that election will be lost. We will then take on the local elections. They will lose them too. Then we will take on a general election and again I prophesy that there will be very many vacant seats on the Fianna Fáil side of the House. If Fianna Fáil are really sincere about the interests of the country all they have to do is say: "We did our best. We failed, but we cannot do any better. We could not possibly do any better. We will now hand over and see if what was the Opposition will do any better." I venture to say that, let us be as bad as we can be but we could not be any worse than what is there at present. I am convinced that the majority of the people are eagerly awaiting an opportunity to express their opinion clearly and judge Fianna Fáil on their performance. Their performance brings no great credit to them. I am convinced that, given the opportunity, the people will put them out thereby relieving themselves of having to put up with the insane and unsound administration which Fianna Fáil have carried on for so many years now.
Before I talk about the Budget I should like to make clear the attitude of the Labour Party in relation to one particular matter, especially as it has been referred to by some Fianna Fáil Deputies, one of whom was Deputy Moore. I listened to him. Deputy Flanagan referred to the matter just now. It is this 12 per cent. I want to make it quite clear that, as far as the Labour Party are concerned, we believe the 12 per cent increase in wages and salaries in the beginning of 1964 was justified. The comment we have to make is that the 12 per cent was not effective as far as workers and salary earners were concerned. It was not effective because of the failure of the Government to control prices. We recognise, and always have recognised, that the 12 per cent was negotiated and won by the trade union movement, and by nobody else. It was no achievement of the Government—that is, as distinct from what Deputy Flanagan has just said—and we maintain that the 12 per cent was used by Fianna Fáil to get votes. They should remember that, as far as that national wage agreement was concerned, the view of the Fianna Fáil Party, expressed by the Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass, was that eight or nine per cent would be sufficient but, when the 12 per cent was achieved, the Fianna Fáil Party pretended to the voters of Cork and Kildare, and subsequently to the voters of the whole country in the general election, that it was a benevolent Fianna Fáil Government that made it possible for them to get the 12 per cent. Such was not the case.
I have neither heard nor read any adequate justification or defence of the present Budget, not even from the Taoiseach himself. He spoke here after Deputy Tully a week last Thursday. His only defence for the Budget, in his own words, was that it was essential for the economic and financial welfare of the State. I do not think that from an adult politician, or an adult Minister, like the Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass, that is a sufficient reason to justify the proposals contained in the Budget now before the House. The attitude of both the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance was pretty gloomy. It was an attitude of "Pay up and look pleasant". That was, and still is, the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party.
The Taoiseach, as he is prone to do in speeches particularly on a Budget, attacked the Labour Party. He accused them of wanting more services and, at the same time, lower taxes. If he is honest with himself, he will realise that, as far as the performance of this Party is concerned, that is not the way of the Labour Party. Of course we want more services. With all the talk of a just society and a fair deal for all sections of the community it has to be recognised, not this year or last year, in this Dáil or the last Dáil, that for the past 40 years, even if they did not have many opportunities of introducing social legislation, the Labour Party right back in 1921 and all down through the years subsequently were the pioneers in advocating good health services, better education and, in particular, adequate social welfare services. There were times when we were accused of wanting to have this a Welfare State. It is becoming a Welfare State and, if it is, it is because of the efforts of those who sat on these benches down through the past 42 or 43 years.
We want all these services and we are prepared to pay for them. We demonstrated that in the last Budget and in the Budget before it in relation to the taxation proposals contained in those Budgets which we believed were just and which we believed would be applied in order to bring about better services. Where we take exception to Government proposals is when it comes to the question of who should pay and particularly out of what incomes. Our complaint is not primarily with the Budget proposals but with the inability of the people to bear the impositions. I am not talking about all the people. I am talking about sections of the people.
Our criticism of this Budget is the criticism of the failure of the Fianna Fáil Government to develop the economy fully in order that the services we desire may be given and in order that people would be able to share more equitably the burdens of taxation laid on them year by year since Fianna Fáil assumed office. In very plaintive tones we heard speakers from the Fianna Fáil benches—indeed, the Taoiseach led off with it—asking: "What would you do?" That is a shocking commentary on the great Fianna Fáil Party but they do not seem to realise it. It is a shocking commentary that in this year, 1966, in the middle of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion and at a time when a free trade agreement has been negotiated, at a time when we are told our people never had it so good, at a time when £12 million extra is demanded in taxation, the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party and members of his front bench should ask the Opposition: “What would you do?”
When Deputy Lemass was on this side of the House he answered that question himself: It is not for us in the Opposition to tell you what you should do. You are the Government. You should know and we are not going to tell you. Yet, these are the people who plaintively ask now: "What would you do?" During the periods between Budgets these are the people who are so abusive and so scornful of any criticism, any advice or any suggestions made from this side of the House. These are the people who believe that all the political wisdom is in the Fianna Fáil Party. They believe that because Fianna Fáil have always been an arrogant Party. They believe the people are slowgoing. They get votes. They are champions when it comes to political manoeuvring. They have this arrogant attitude and this belief that all wisdom is in the custody of the Fianna Fáil Party. That is demonstrated every day at Question Time in the reluctance of Ministers to answer questions and in their smart-alecky replies when they do condescend to answer. I do not include the Parliamentary Secretary in that, and not all the Ministers. But there are certain Ministers who believe they are the lords and masters of the people affected by the administration of their Departments. If this is to be merely a parliament in which the absolute will of the Fianna Fáil Party will prevail then you must expect trouble.
Fianna Fáil have been there now for nine years since 1957. The newer and younger members of the Party should realise that Fianna Fáil have been the Government of this country for 28 out of the last 34 years. They should now, I think, take time off to examine their political consciences and ask themselves exactly what have been the worthwhile achievements of the Fianna Fáil Party. They should also realise that, whilst they have a majority—or have they a majority now? — if they have, it is a small one because of the fact that one or two people are not available, or one particular Deputy does not vote, or is not able to vote— they are not the custodians of the entire Irish economy. I will say to them what I said when I was over there on those benches as a Parliamentary Secretary, that they should be prepared to listen to suggestions from this side of the House. There is no element of that in the Fianna Fáil Party. We have it in every measure that goes through this House, that the view of Fianna Fáil must prevail. Not alone are they doing themselves a disservice but they are doing a disservice to the entire country.
Fianna Fáil believe it is important for them to keep power and they will try every political trick to ensure it. It is fortunate for them that they have a docile Party. When an inter-Party Government were in office here, some of those who were on the back benches and supporting that Government were not afraid to stand up and criticise. I remember that Deputy Tully was a back bencher at that time, and he was not afraid to speak out and be critical of the Government. I find in the Fianna Fáil Party a reluctance to be critical. That was demonstrated in this House last week when it was only because of the taunts from this side of the House that anyone came in here to speak. During that week, we had two or, at most, three speakers from Fianna Fáil.
Some of them made quite good speeches, but if they had any regard for the Minister for Finance and his proposals, they should have been prepared to come in here and defend the Budget and the Minister. It was only when they were taunted to come in and when the quorum bells were continuously ringing that they came in here at last. As I have said, some of them made good contributions but they are not listened to. They are being treated as Deputy Corry has been treated recently. The attitude is to let them blow off steam but that the Party machine must go on.
It is true that over the past number of years the standard of living has improved. It has improved in practically every civilised country in the world and it has certainly improved in every country in Western Europe. Fianna Fáil cannot take the entire credit for that. The major credit must, to a very large extent, go to the trade unions and other organisations. Everybody must appreciate that it was only by the pressure and the strong-mindedness of the trade unions and the trade union leaders that a fairly decent standard was secured from those responsible for improving the standard of living here, the employers and others.
We understand what the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party in the main has been as far as the standard of living is concerned. We can go back to 1948 when, in the election, the leader of the Party announced that £2 10s a week would be sufficient to keep a man, his wife and a certain number of children in reasonable comfort. Deputy Flanagan has already referred to the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of people on the poverty line. That is a hard fact. We can all go down to our constituencies and know that in them there is poverty amongst a certain section of the community. It would be a lie to say that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy but it seems to me that we ignore those people who have not got a small income, those who do not qualify for State benefits, and we must realise that there are hundreds of thousands of these who are at a very low existence level.
These are the people who should have been helped in this Budget and it is a sorry reflection on our planners, on our Government and on our society that in compensation for an increase in the cost of living, the destitute people of this country are to get an increase of 5/- a week from 1st November next.
I have said that the members of Fianna Fáil, and particularly the younger members, should take time off and take stock of events, not even since 1957, but for the past five years. I do not want to go into detail on this matter but merely to state facts. In these five halycon years, there are 2,500 fewer people at work. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party have been indulging in high-falutin speeches that mean nothing. We have had speeches by Ministers opening factories in which they state that 30 people will be employed initially and that eventually 400 people will be employed. These speeches have all been very nice but the fact is that the steps taken to increase employment have not been all they were cracked up to be. Since 1961, we have 2,500 fewer people at work. That is something on which we can all reflect with the Taoiseach and wonder where we have gone wrong.
We have 40,000 fewer people at work in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. I was interested to note that not only is there not an improvement in the Estimate this year for forestry and fisheries, but there is some reduction. When the Taoiseach and the Minister for Transport and Power are confronted with that figure of 40,000 fewer at work, they say it is a phenomenon. That is no excuse for people who have no work. It is not sufficient to tell them that this has been happening in Europe because when this happens in Germany or France, these people are absorbed into industrial employment. Here they cannot console themselves that they can find employment in Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Roscommon, Sligo or Galway. They have to go to Britain to look for work and that is where we have fallen down with regard to the Second Programme.
This phenomenon has been known since 1961 and in every Budget we have got the reply from the Government that there is nothing they can do about it. The Fianna Fáil Party said they had plans to increase overall employment by 7,800 a year. I am glad to know that the Department of Finance has decided to take another look at that. It is time they did. Overall employment in agriculture has fallen by 39,000 in the past five years and I am only going back to 1961. I do not believe in going back to 1932.
Even 1956 would shake them.
As far as the people who were promised 39,000 new jobs are concerned, there is no use in going back too far, to 1932 or to the twenties. I am talking about the people who today are affected by Fianna Fáil policy. Instead of having 39,000 more people in jobs, there are 2,500 fewer people at work. Now the Department of Finance tell us it is virtually certain there will be 4,000 fewer people in work in this country next year. That is not a very pretty picture even when people go back and remember the optimistic speeches made by the Taoiseach and the various Ministers in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 and up to the general election last year.
I wonder if the Government realise the advantages to the economy of those 39,000 extra jobs, apart from the fact that there would be that many more people at work. In the first place, it would mean greater production and this has been realised by the NIEC in their Report. From the extra wealth, there would be more taxation flowing to the Government—more people being paid wages would mean more people with money in their pockets all paying their contributions to the services I mentioned earlier. The Fianna Fáil Party cannot hold others responsible for the failure to create more jobs here. That is their responsibility alone. This has not been explained or defended by the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach always accuses people from this side of the House of making boring speeches. I did not hear the Taoiseach's speech last week, but I read it. Perhaps it may have been better in delivery——
Indeed, it was not.
It was merely a rehash of his speeches on another occasion in respect of which the Government want to disclaim responsibility. The main interest of the Government at the moment is to acquit themselves of responsibility for the situation which their incompetence and mismanagement have brought about. They say now quite boldly that the people are to blame for the problems with which the country is faced. They say this new taxation is required not because the Government failed in their administration of the affairs of the nation, failed to check the rising prices, but because the people have been misbehaving themselves. Perhaps Deputy Andrews will tell us whether that is fair comment on the present situation. It is a reversal of the attitude of the Taoiseach when he spoke on the Budget on 17th May, 1956 as Deputy Leader of the Opposition and said the Government were blaming the people. It might be well for the Taoiseach to look back at some of the statements he made when he was Deputy Leader of the Opposition.
We have had this attempt to blame somebody else from several members of the Government in this debate. We had it from the Minister for Justice, from the Minister for Health —this crying of tears, saying the people were letting the country down. They say the farmers, the trade unions have let the country down, have stabbed the Government in the back. And this is the Government who said less than a year ago that they would provide leadership. Now they refuse to take the responsibility they undoubtedly have. They are having recourse to every trick the Taoiseach, then Deputy Leader of the Opposition, accused the inter-Party Government of in 1956. Now the Taoiseach tells the people they are misbehaving themselves.
I said I should not go back any further than five years. In this period I shall refer to the target in the Second Programme of 7,000 new jobs in industry. Where are they? The Government appear to have become complacent about the establishment of new industries. It has now been realised by all Parties that if we are to create new jobs, they will not come from the land. The people have been flying from it. It is therefore from industry that the extra employment must come. Therefore, greater efforts must be made to establish new industries. In 1962 and 1963—indeed, up to 1964—we had numerous foreigners coming in to explore the possibilities in practically every town with a view to establishing industries. Perhaps the Minister for Finance will explain what has happened in this respect. Why have we not so many applying for grants? Is more money needed? How have Fianna Fáil got into a situation in which money is scarce? They have always protested that as far as any worthwhile projects were concerned money was no object. This was made known not only by the Taoiseach but by the head of every Department which had the giving of money.
The Taoiseach spoke of saving as a method of establishing and helping industrial endeavour. We all know that saving is desirable on a national scale. The Taoiseach only touched on these things. He spoke of the need for increased national production. He should have expanded on these points and if he had any detailed views on them, he should have given the House the benefit of these views. He did not attempt to do it. In fact, particularly in view of the situation, the speech of the Taoiseach was a very scrappy affair. The speech of the Minister for Finance was a long litany of our difficulties but he did not touch on employment or unemployment. I heard the Minister for Health speak and he did not touch on employment or unemployment.
Or emigration.
The Minister for Finance did not once refer to these three matters. The Taoiseach's speech may have been more off the cuff than that of the Minister for Finance and it is therefore suggested that the Minister's advisers were not doing their job because, in a situation where unemployment is rising, employment is decreasing and emigration going up, there was not a single word about these matters in the Minister's Budget Statement. The Taoiseach told us there must be restraint in earnings. These things have been dealt with fully in the NIEC Report and while the Taoiseach seems to have endorsed every proposal of the NIEC, he never said when it was proposed to implement the more important of them.
It must be pretty well known by now that the Labour Party differ from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. We are not against private enterprise. We believe that while much can be done by private enterprise, it cannot do the whole job in our circumstances, having regard to our type of economy and the problem of creating more jobs. The vital problem here is not to increase profits but to increase employment and production and we are not doing the best possible in that regard. It must therefore be obvious that the present methods employed for the establishment of industry have failed; if they had succeeded we would not have the decline in all-over employment, the increase in unemployment and emigration. As far as the individual is concerned, this is not a country of investment and differs from Britain, and particularly from America or any European country, in that our people, as individuals, do not invest. They do not play the stock exchange and are not prepared to invest in any venture, gilt-edged or not. If people do not do it voluntarily, we believe the Government have a duty to raise that money and that stronger measures and greater initiative in the establishment of industry are required. There are not many people I know who are anxious to establish industry. In our circumstances with the shadow—for good or ill—of the Free Trade Agreement hovering over us and operative from 1st July next, Irish people will naturally be reluctant to engage further in establishing new industry.
We in the Labour Party believe in the utilisation of all our resources, physical and human. We believe our economy must be planned so that none of these are idle or wasted. On reflection, we must confess that many of our physical and human resources are lying idle. Many people talk about economic planning merely to pretend they are modern and to show they realise that they live in the second half of the twentieth century but we said this years ago. We did not wait until the last election or the one before it to talk of economic planning. We have always spoken of it and now more than ever I believe it is necessary, as distinct from the economic forecasting the Department of Finance and the Fianna Fáil Government have engaged in since they introduced the First Programme for Economic Expansion. We believe economic planning will ensure that by a combination of public enterprise, co-operative effort and private initiative, all our productive potentialities are realised.
Let me repeat: we have not done that. We have resources physical and human that are idle or wasted as evidenced by our export of manpower to Britain and elsewhere. I believe we could have a planning body. I said this a few years ago. I believe the National Industrial Economic Council could be transformed into such a body. It represents, with one exception, all sections of the community, the employers, business people, Civil Service, trade unions and the manufacturers. It is not representative of agriculture and I believe it should be. I think there was an inference in their last report that they would welcome representation of agriculture. I believe that such a body, divorced, if you like, from the political arena, could work out a flexible economic plan in the implementation of which the Government would play a big part through investment. It is not sufficient for the Government to announce, as has been done, that if persons are anxious to establish industries here, certain facilities are there for them. I believe we have not done enough in the way of going out and getting people to come here to establish industries. These inducements are generous but inducements by way of grant or loan or other facilities are not sufficient in our circumstances because while we are offering these inducements, people are leaving the country. Surely we cannot afford to lose any more in view of all we have lost over the past 25 or 30 years?
One of the comments in the NIEC Report issued in November was to the effect that if the Second Programme or indeed any programme for economic expansion is to be successful, it must be brought down to the factory floor and there is no evidence that that recommendation has been accepted or will be accepted by the Government, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, or whoever is responsible. We should realise, particularly Ministers such as the Minister for Transport and Power, that when a man is working in a factory, in the field or in the forest or fishing in the sea, whatever his occupation, but particularly the manual worker, he has not got at the back of his head the idea of the success of the Second Programme. What he has in his head is the amount of money he will get per week. But we know the problem of the country is how to produce and export more and create more wealth so that every individual will have more.
How can that message be put across? Some time ago I suggested that in a debate like this the Minister for Finance was not concerned—I trust this Minister will be different—with what suggestions may come from myself, Deputy Cosgrave, Deputy Tully or anybody on this side of the House. If somebody makes a suggestion to do this or that, it will be ignored by the Minister for Finance when he replies. What he is concerned with, and I suppose his officials, is what Corish said that contradicted what he said in 1957 and to see how they can make a laugh of that particular suggestion. They want to see how they can come up with something Fine Gael or Labour did in 1952 or 1956 and there is never an attempt to deal in any constructive way with suggestions from the Opposition, whether Fine Gael, Labour or Independents. It is for that reason I ask the present Minister for Finance and the Government seriously to consider the introduction of a real economic plan and not just the facade that we have had over the past few years, which is meaningless and which is no cure and which can never achieve anything.
I believe expansion plans have been worked out through the Industrial Development Council. I was encouraged recently to know that in Cork city, I think, the Irish Productivity Council had established a local committee. I presume that the local committee is representative of workers and employers and that it will be able to trickle down to the humblest worker the idea of greater production for export because a very small percentage of the people of the country understand basic economics or what is the fundamental need in order to get this country out of the mess in which it is at present.
I think also that under the NIEC and these development councils, each industry should know what is expected and what assistance it can get from the State. Perhaps if Deputy Dillon were here, he would think I was talking in terms of establishing a socialist State or a communist State or he might talk about interference with private enterprise. So would Deputy MacEntee and the Minister for Transport and Power but these things are done in countries that have not the slightest tinge of any of these "isms" in them. It is particularly important in our country. We are not an investing country like Britain. We have no tradition of industry. We have to build it up. We built it up through protection, by one method, from 1932 up to recent times, but if we are to create more jobs, I am afraid whatever Government may be in power will have to work out some sort of economic plan and take far greater initiative in the establishment of industry. Broad, vague exhortations for greater production are not enough. Action must be taken to ensure it and, above all, as I said before, the humblest worker must have some idea of what it is about.
I believe also—and we advocated this in the last election—that a Ministry of Economic Affairs should be appointed in order to co-ordinate the policy activities of such Departments as Finance, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce and Transport and Power. With all due respect to those who are his critics, I do not think it can be said that George Brown in Britain is doing a bad job. He has a very tough assignment but he is not doing a bad job. We have, one may say, a surplus of Ministers and have had over the past 25 years, some of them running Departments that do not really warrant a Minister, some Departments that could be run by a Minister in charge of another Department. Therefore, if we have regard to the waste that we have as far as some Ministries are concerned, we could well afford to think in terms of a Minister for Economic Affairs who could be in charge of the type of planning I have referred to.
I do not think we should be afraid of public enterprise in this country. On the contrary, we can be proud of their achievements. I know there can be some examples trotted out. People can talk about the failure of CIE and of this venture and of that venture by the State. It can be said as far as Dundalk was concerned that it was a failure but if we look at all public enterprises and have regard to semiState bodies, we can say that they have been, in the main, outstanding successes, beginning with the Electricity Supply Board. The Irish Sugar Company, Bord na Móna, Aer Lingus, Erin Foods—these have been worthwhile projects. These have been the big ones. If one has regard to the overall investment, I would say that the establishment of these public enterprises was well worthwhile and one very important factor is that they give considerable employment. Their field of operation could be extended. We saw an example of this in the extension of Erin Foods.
These enterprises will have their ups and downs. People will be critical of them when they are down and will be silent when they are up, but many of these enterprises can be expanded and certainly can be operated in such a way that they will give not only increased production but, certainly, increased employment.
In an economic debate, the emphasis always seems to be on greater exports in order to redress the balance of payments. I suppose that is the obvious problem that should be tackled but there is too little attention given to the question of a reduction of imports. This can be achieved by various ways and has been achieved since the Government decided to impose the ten per cent import levy. Imports have been reduced by this method but I want to talk about consumption goods as distinct from food, drink and tobacco. This is one of the areas where the Government have failed to take appropriate steps in time. In 1960, "Other consumption goods" as on Table 17 B, page 110 of the Progress Report of the Department of Finance on the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, amounted to £33.6 million but by November, 1965, that had risen to £51.2 million. Therefore, during that five year period, there was an increase in the importation of goods under the heading “Other consumption goods,” that is, excluding food, drink and tobacco, to the tune of £17.6 million, an increase of over 50 per cent.
Perhaps somebody, either in the Department of Industry and Commerce or the Department of Finance, will be able to tell us whether there is any possibility of these goods, or some of them, being manufactured in this country? While that may appear to be a simple proposal, the possibility of manufacturing some of these goods should be explored. It would have a three-fold purpose—increased production, increased employment and the correction to some extent of the balance of payments. It may be that only a very small number of these goods can be manufactured here but at least the possibility should be investigated of having them manufactured here on an economic basis. I am sure that private enterprise would not engage in that sort of venture but if the State is confident that it can be done, the possibility should be considered.
I am not one to pretend to be an expert on agriculture. One can only be depressed when one thinks about the agricultural industry in this country. I say this as a townsman—one might say, a bystander—but I am not impressed by the fact that from 1953 to 1964 the net output in agriculture increased by only 12.7 per cent whilst the volume of industrial production increased over the same period by 63.2 per cent. I can appreciate that there must be some difference owing to the fact that the emphasis has been on the establishment of industry. Money has been poured into industry. I am not saying that money has not been poured into agriculture. I wonder what is wrong. Have the policies that have been pursued by Deputy Smith, Deputy Dillon, Deputy Haughey, the late Deputy Walsh been successful policies? I do not think a change in policy can be expressed by respective Governments saying: "We gave 2d a pint for milk"; "You took a penny off the pint"; "We gave a subsidy and you did not give a subsidy." The matter of the agricultural industry must be gone into much more deeply than merely bandying around talk about subsidies and various other supports.
I do not think it is very encouraging either that in these times when everything was flying high for the economy, agricultural output, in 1964-65, fell short of the increased targets set out for it in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion.
It is not good, and certainly was not good for the country, particularly for the farmers, for the Government and particularly for the Minister for Agriculture, to pretend that the new Free Trade Area Agreement will be the beall and end-all. I do not believe it is. I do not notice from the Minister or from any member of the Government any new ideas as far as the agricultural community are concerned.
In his speech last week, the Minister said he has all the money he needs, that this year he has over £35 million for various supports and aids to the agricultural industry. I have talked about the flight from the land. I reckon that as far as males engaged in agriculture are concerned, while they had an income of £335 per head in 1960, the figure has increased to £502 per head in 1965. I suppose it is true that there is a bigger total income for the fewer persons who are working on the land.
I do not believe that all farmers are badly off. I do not think it is right for anybody to talk about the agricultural industry and farmers being bankrupt but I would say that there are very many farmers who are not so well off. In regard to the money being provided, I wonder if the Government ever asked themselves whether or not they were satisfied that it was being spent in the right direction.
I have said this before: as far as assistance for agriculture is concerned, as far as the disbursement of this £35 million is concerned, much greater emphasis should be put on giving a relatively greater amount to the farmer who needs it. It seems to me that the big farmer—and you can take whatever acreage or valuation you like— can, because he has the capital, the stock and the land, qualify for every single subsidy, every single price support or aid that he wants to apply for. The small man, however, because he has not got the capital, because he has not got the starting money, as it were, cannot avail of many of the grants offered by the Department of Agriculture.
I have seen it happen in my own county in respect of drainage. The man with the hundreds of rolling acres can get very generous grants while the man without the starting money, whether it is one-tenth, one-quarter or one-third, cannot have his land drained. One of the peculiar things about our system of State aid is that while there is a means test for the smallest and meanest pension, there is no means test at all for the big assistance and the big aids. As far as agriculture is concerned, we will have to make a greater effort to have better marketing arrangements, to have an increased use of fertilisers and, above all, to have cheap credit facilities.
I know there are many who will defend the Agricultural Credit Corporation. I have had the experience of people approaching me in regard to obtaining loans. Some of them did not deserve to get credit because they were worthless and would have spent the money in some other way than that for which it was intended, but I know of many other applicants who, because they had not got security, did not get the money. It is peculiar that in the case of some of these loan agencies, you have to have money before you can get money. If you have not got money, you do not get a loan. There are many poor farmers who want to buy some more land, perhaps, or to get stock, or to do this, that or the other job on the farm, but who because they have not got any security, cannot get a loan from these agencies.
I believe that we should also have better advisory services. I know that many farmers are reluctant to change. Above all, we in the Labour Party believe there should be much more use of the co-operative system and that this should be encouraged. It has not been encouraged. It is true that as far as the co-operative societies are concerned, these big stores in the towns and villages, they have received encouragement and help to some extent, but I am talking about the co-operative system as far as agriculture is concerned. There is an effort being made, and I trust it will be successful, in Donegal and in North Mayo, and perhaps in other countries, in Connacht, by a priest, Father McDyer, to get the farmers to engage in the co-operative system for the purpose of helping production on the land. This could be done in practically every parish. I believe that many of the farmers have beggared themselves purchasing expensive machinery, in most cases on the hire purchase system, and which they could not use fully. One of the most tragic things is to see this expensive machinery lying idle, having worked for one farmer. If that machinery had been bought under the co-operative system, it could be used by various farmers in the locality and there would be a far greater return and less expense to the individual farmer.
They were not paid sufficient for their produce. That is the explanation.
In my county I have seen farmers, for some reason or other — possibly pride — buying expensive machinery for which they did not have a full use.
What about the 40-hour week for farmers?
We support the 40-hour week.
That is a matter for themselves.
While there is £35 million available this year, there could be a review of this expenditure. I am not saying that this review should be confined to the agricultural industry. There could be a review of all State aids, whether they are given in industry or by this Department or that Department. It should not be left entirely to the Committee of Public Accounts to see whether or not the money is spent to the best advantage and to discover whether deserving farmers are getting their fair share of the £35 million.
We seem to have drifted a long way from a discussion here on an incomes policy. The Taoiseach did not give us much enlightenment on the Government's view on such a policy. The National Industrial Economic Council in their report of November last said that in order to correct any of the errors made in 1964-65, they would recommend the adoption of an incomes policy, that they would recommend action to prevent aggregate monetary demands from rising at an excessive rate and, thirdly, a check on credit policy. I want to remind the House, and particularly the Taoiseach, the Minister for Transport and Power and, if necessary, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that this report stressed—and this seems to have been forgotten by the Government— that the incomes policy was meant to be a policy in respect of all incomes —I did not think it was necessary in March, 1966 to have to emphasise "all incomes"— including wages, salaries, farm incomes, the incomes of self-employed people, professional earnings, rents, profits and capital gains. The NIEC warned that it did not mean wages and salaries only. They said they would repudiate anything else. It appears to me and to the members of my Party that despite the warnings, the Government want to implement an incomes policy for wages and salary earners only. They talk about an increase of three per cent for wage and salary earners and again they say that there should be no increase for those earning over £1,200 a year.
I did not hear the Taoiseach or the Minister for Transport and Power talking about other incomes. There is no talk about professional earnings. There has been no reference in this debate, by Government speakers, to profits. There was a reference to capital gains to which I shall refer. If the Government think that the trade union movement is going to accept an incomes policy which applies to wages and salaries only, they are very much mistaken. The NIEC were very specific in regard to what they meant by an incomes policy. They recognised the difficulties but they also made suggestions as to how an incomes policy could be operated in respect of people other than wage and salary earners. I do not think it would be an unfair comment to say that this Government want to implement an incomes policy in respect of wage and salary earners and to defer for years an incomes policy in respect of all the rest.
The Taoiseach with his usual scorn for other Parties, speaking about their lack of suggestions to him as to what should be done, said that there had been a recommendation by Mr. Ruaidhri Roberts of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions about a capital gains tax. Members of this House must remember that the Labour Party advocated a capital gains tax two Budgets ago and their election policy document last year advocated the introduction of a capital gains tax. Of course, it is no good when it comes from a politician, from a member of the Labour Party, but in order that he might keep in with part of the trade union movement, the Taoiseach says that this suggestion is a fairly good one.
It just happened to be current.
It was not current. When it was advocated by this Party last year, it was pooh-poohed by the Taoiseach. However, despite his laudatory remarks about the proposal, it is to be put off. There is not much money in it. I want to say that even though you get no money from it this year, it will want to be included in the Finance Bill because it will not be too long before another Budget comes around, and if there is money to be got by a capital gains tax, it would be far preferable to get it from that source than from any of the sources proposed by the Minister for Finance.