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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 1 May 1968

Vol. 234 No. 5

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 9—General (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.
—(Minister for Finance.)

Through our speakers, we have expressed our view that we consider this Budget as one the main provisions of which appear to be out of touch with social and economic realities. We have based most of our arguments on this failure which we see in this Budget. It has been mentioned during this debate that there is a possibility later this year, if the Government's nerve fails them, of a second Budget. I should be glad to know from the Minister whether he sees this as a final and conclusive Budget for 1968 because there are causes which may tempt the Government to introduce a second Budget later in the year. These are the same causes as suggested to the Government that they should push for extra Budgets and for a damping down of demand in our economy in 1964-65. The NIEC and the Department of Finance itself suggest that we may be running a deficit in our balance of payments later this year.

Since our people are supposed to be managing our economy in a modern fashion, I hope that nervousness about running a deficit in our balance of payments will not tempt the Government into trying to damp down demand in our economy this year. We should keep our nerve if we run a deficit and see that our purchasing power is kept up. This is one of the reasons for the setback suffered by the economy in 1964-65. I hope that if anything similar occurs this year, we will not by means of a second Budget—in 1964-65, we brought in a wholesale tax—attempt to rectify the position and that the Government will resist that temptation. As they are a nervous Government, at the end of their 12 years in office, I hope they will not bring in any draconian measures.

One matter referred to in the Budget Statement deals with improving efficiency in industry. The Taoiseach, when in Killarney this week, referred to this problem. He referred to it in a context in which we would be wise to remember it. He announced that we were steadily reaching the point in which more of our home market was being given over to imports from Britain—one of the results of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement. He felt that we must urge industrialists to become aware of this challenge on our own home market. Surely if it is time to realise that we have got to face these problems on the home market, it would be wise to ask for a review of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement now. It is the feeling in many circles that this Agreement should now be reassessed because not even the authors of that Agreement, the present Government, would deny now that they signed it in the belief that we would be in the Common Market before its full effects were felt on our home market. It is now openly admitted in the Budget Statement that we cannot expect to be admitted until 1972. In 1970-71, industry will be facing severe competition from our mighty industrial neighbour and there will be very few compensatory factors to make up for this battlefield on the home market for our own products.

In this situation, and honestly admitting the error of signing the Agreement, even though we may have signed it in good faith, and although certain expected external events did not materialise, we should, in order to defend our own vital interests, seek a review of this Agreement, perhaps in order to lengthen the period during which tariffs were to come down but certainly we must insist on an urgent review. Devise any formula you like, or put forward any excuses you like, the economic facts still call for a review of the Agreement as soon as possible.

There have been references to what has been described as the lack of management on the social side of the Budget but we would describe it more accurately as a Budget which is out of touch on the social welfare side. It is out of touch in the amount the Minister thinks should be sufficient to convince people that the Government were really serious about helping those who come under the social welfare code. It is out of touch in its failure to begin to outline the elements of a distinctive social welfare policy for the real cases of poverty which still exist. It is also out of touch in regard to the amount set aside this year for housing. We have been falling behind the target we set out to achieve in the matter of the provision of houses. Under the Second Programme, the figure suggested was, I think, 13,000 houses per year. We have not been achieving that target and, judging by the amount of money set aside under the Capital Budget this year for this purpose, one cannot see a sufficient number of houses being provided in the years ahead. This is a very serious situation. Anyone familiar with city areas especially knows the distress caused by bad housing conditions. The situation calls for urgent action. There must be no delay, no putting on the long finger. The housing problem must be tackled immediately. Solving the problem will require a much greater amount of money being provided in this social priority area than is provided in this Budget.

Possibly the biggest weakness is the failure to legislate for a distinctively Irish programme in social welfare. Our social welfare code suffers from the weakness of being borrowed piecemeal from Westminster. No real consideration has been given to the problem of poverty in this country and to the way in which that problem should be tackled. Whilst examination is needed over the entire field of social welfare, I do not see how we can postpone the patent necessity of improving children's allowances until such time as examination has taken place in that particular area. One has a good idea of the size of the average family and one knows that the effects of poverty are felt most frequently in the larger-sized families. Children's allowances should be increased immediately. They have not been touched since 1963. One would have expected immediate concrete action in this Budget rather than waiting for an examination to take place before taking action at some time in the future.

The whole question of foreign capital coming into the country should be examined in conjunction with the linked problem of the feasibility of getting more Irish capital invested in our economy. The Minister has indicated that he will consider the setting up of an Irish money market. Such a market is overdue. It is most essential. If prospective examinations are the excuse for lack of action in the field of social welfare, examination is certainly urgently needed in the area of foreign capital coming into this country. It is important that we should know where exactly this capital is invested and how much is what is called "hot money". It is most important that we should know how much is involved in investment here which gives a greater potential for expanding employment and how much of such capital will in the long term be of benefit to the country. Whilst there may be some short term advantage in foreign capital coming in over a particular year, in the long term the advantage of foreign capital coming in to purchase Irish assets does not seem to me to be so great as some may think it is. It does not make sound economic sense.

It is a rather strange situation to find, for example, in this capital city foreign capital coming in to take over historic areas in partnership with Dublin Corporation. It is somewhat odd to see a property company, which is mainly cross-Channel owned, taking over the area between Arran Quay and Parnell Street. That is just one example of some of the things that are happening. Irish business assets and Irish property are passing more and more into the hands of cross-Channel interests. The NIEC has sounded a note of warning and asked the Government to examine the situation very closely to see whether, in fact, we should welcome with open arms every type of capital investment coming in here and whether, in fact, the time has not come at which we should be more discriminating in the kind of investment into which we permit foreign capital in this country. Much of the foreign capital coming in is going into areas in which Irish capital should be employed, areas in which such capital could do good work for the benefit of the country and the people as a whole.

We must be very careful to maintain a close watch on price increases. There is a suggestion that, as a result of the post-devaluation situation and higher import charges, prices may increase to some extent this year. We must watch very carefully to ensure that we do not have wild-cat prices. It seems to me too little regard is had to wild-cat prices. Such prices affect the community and give rise to other problems. We must keep a very careful eye on price increases.

In this connection it is only proper to ask the Government, and especially the Minister for Finance, to take the NIEC at its word and try to frame a fair incomes policy, an incomes policy which will blueprint the relationship that should exist between the different economic interests. I suggest once more that there can be no prospect of any kind of calm in the industrial sector unless this is done and there is no point in legislating for one half of the nation's economic life—the wage and salary earning part—to the exclusion of legislation for capital-owning interests in the community. It is important that the Government should be seen to be active in this matter of framing a policy for all types of income formation. This is the only basis on which there can be orderly development in our economic activities.

Again, in relation to the type of capital coming in, such capital—welcome though it may be because of its employment-creating activities—may worsen the industrial relations climate if the companies involved do not conform to the majority practice here. It is regrettable that a large company should ignore the Supreme Court, the Labour Court and practically every other body in the country. We should call on the IDA and the other bodies involved to do all in their power to avoid misunderstanding and to ensure that all foreign industrialists coming in here are fully informed about the practices that obtain and that are expected to obtain in their relations with their employees. This is essential from the point of view of relations between our country and theirs and for the better ordering of our industrial relations. We cannot have a system built up over many years of effort put in jeopardy because a few mavericks refuse to abide by the majority rules and it is not fair to other business enterprises, which do conform, to see such practices condoned on the part of others.

This Budget does not show evidence of any definite will on the part of the Minister to introduce a Budget influenced by concepts of modern economic planning. It is a Budget which a Cumann Na nGaedheal Government could have produced in the 20's, a Budget which any Government could have produced in the history of the State. It is a Budget which, I suggested, has the look of the usual hardy annual we have seen in this House.

The Deputy is talking with his tongue very much in his cheek.

Perhaps—when I last located it. This is the fundamental feeling that one has on looking through this Budget, that it does not seek to break new ground; it continues in the same tired routine and bears all the marks of the production of a 12-year-old Government, a Government whose arteries are hardening, who appear to be trying all the old ways once more. There is no impression on reading through this Budget that it is in touch with the realities either on the social side or on the economic side. I recall once more the expansion that the Minister called for, which our economic situation demands. It is regrettable that the Budget does not strike a more urgent note to Irish business to adapt and make themselves more efficient, and so on.

This is not a Budget which suggests that we are going to have a fresh look at the economic framework in which we are operating at the moment under the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement. This should be reviewed. I would hope that the criticism that is being offered on the Budget may have its own good effects on the Minister in, possibly, the last Budget that he will be presenting in this House and that we may, with the influence of the year in which it will be produced, see some welcome changes in the next Budget.

I do not believe in the kind of criticism of a Budget, if it is a good one, that it is produced merely for shortterm political advantage. If the Budget is a good one, the Labour Party, in constructive opposition in this House will give praise where it is due and criticism where praise is not warranted. We do not believe in criticising any Budget for the purpose of this by-election or that by-election. This Budget gives this Party no room for support. We believe it is a very tired, thoughtless production, a casual thing, and one that does not show any distinctive trace of new trends in policy.

I might begin where Deputy O'Leary left off. I hope to see the present Minister for Finance introducing further Budgets here. This is not his last Budget. I hope that in ten years time he and I will be here and that I will be listening to his Budget.

It is an inspiring thought.

Let me say this much to Deputy O'Leary. There has been a general complaint in this House that the Budget is humdrum, unexciting, and all the rest of it. I have seen some exciting Budgets brought in here. I have seen one Budget that was introduced by my friend Deputy Sweetman in which the last straw was a tax on ladies' curling pins—the last thing that could be found for taxation. I admit and I am sure Deputy O'Leary will admit, that that was rather more exciting than the Budget we are now discussing. I say that this is a good Budget, that it caters for the people who—with all due respects to every Party—put us here. It caters for the ordinary worker and the ordinary individual. I make no apology for it. The men who fought the Tan War were the ordinary workers, the farmers' sons, farm labourers and industrial workers. We saw no gentlemen with spats coming out with guns in their hands to fight for the Republic. I came in here last week prepared to open fire on the Minister about certain things but he cut the ground from under me by remedying, without being asked, the very matters on which I had intended to attack him.

On behalf of my old IRA comrades, I should like to express our thankfulness to the Minister for the manner in which he has dealt with the Old IRA. One would need to see some of the letters I have received to realise what is happening. I have one here which, with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I will quote. This is a case where there was an award made in 1967 to an Old IRA man of a special allowance of £150 a year. Listen to what happened to that allowance. The yearly means were calculated as follows: estimated profit from plot, £6 a year; contributory old age pension of 107/6d a week, part of which is assessed, which means a cut of £80 16s 5d; profits from contributions of son, Edmondo, £39. Total: £125 16s 5d. So that, out of the £150 special allowance, the poor devil got £24 a year—£2 a month.

I wrote to this man asking him what "profits from contributions of son Edmondo" represented and he replied as follows:

I received the communication sent you by Mr. Hilliard. You will agree that it is very small after a long wait. I cannot understand the £39 profit you asked me about—"profits from contributions of son Edmondo". He gives £3 a week to his mother and that, certainly, is spent on food for him—a matter that has nothing to do with me.

To think of a gentleman under whom we put a motor-car and provided a fat job cruising around the country, inspecting the means of these unfortunate fellows who fought and got the job for him. One finds that out of the little £3 a week the son pays to his mother out of his earnings for food and lodging, this gentleman succeeded in extracting £39 which he assessed as profit. I do not want to comment on this. I think of many poor fellows who went out and suffered and died to give that gentleman a job.

The Minister is responsible, not the officials.

I do not care who is responsible. The facts are very dirty, to say the least of it. I am glad that the Minister has removed a large part of this grievance. There are not many Old IRA men left. There cannot be many of those who went out during the Tan War still with us. I would ask the Minister to go the further step and take these leeches off their backs. I can quite understand the feeling of that man when he had a fellow coming into him asking how much did his son pay the mother for his board and lodging. Out of the miserable £3 a week the son was paying, he found he had a profit of £39. I wonder what he thought would feed him?

I would appeal to the Minister to go a further step, take this burden off the backs of those unfortunate men and let them end their days in peace. The majority of them are over 70 years of age now. They have done their part for this nation. But for them there would be nobody here. I would ask the Minister to do anything he can for them. Again, on behalf of my comrades, I would like to express our appreciation of what he has done for them in this Budget.

The Taoiseach said there had been a drop of 61,000 in the number of those engaged in agriculture over some years. What do we expect as regards agricultural employment in this country today? Every Bill coming through this House each year is another step towards driving the people off the land. A five-day week is operated by most of industry today. Like it or not, the agricultural community must work a seven-day week. The ordinary young man growing up today, with nothing to offer but his four bones for hire, is not going to work a seven-day week when he can get one and a half times or twice the amount of money for working a five-day week.

That is the situation and there is no blinking it. I have called attention to it practically every year for the past 20 years. I called attention to it when the gap between incomes in industry and agriculture was very small and amounted only to £1 or £2 per week. I called attention to the fact that this gap was there and I asked at that time that the minimum wage for agriculture would be fixed at the same rate as that for industrial employment, letting the people pay for their food in this country. Instead you have a rate fixed which is a joke, because nobody can get a man for it. We are thankful today in County Cork to get an agricultural labourer at from £12 to £14 per week plus his board—and I promise you he will eat more than £3 worth of grub a week unless he is like the fellows the social welfare officers came after. Unless the Government and the leaders of all the Parties here realise that situation exists and act upon it, there can be no question of throwing out foolish cants about the flight from the land.

There is no good in presenting us here with a big list of the subsidies for agriculture. When we vet the list, we find the greatest number of those subsidies are not subsidies for agriculture. Take the subsidies for fertilisers and potash, amounting to £4,600,000. I say very definitely that that is a subsidy to Messrs. Gouldings and not a subsidy to the agricultural community. Year after year I have said on the Budget that those particular items should not be classed as a subsidy to agriculture. It is a subsidy to the fertiliser monopoly in this country which is not prepared to meet competition from abroad. The beet growers proved that repeatedly when General Costello was manager of the Sugar Company. Each year we got in our fertiliser and there was a wide difference between the cost of that fertiliser and the cost of the same fertiliser supplied by Messrs. Goulding. I admit we got no benefit out of it because the price of beet was fixed on costings, and the cost of the cheaper fertiliser was all we got. At the same time, we were happy in the knowledge that we were able to reduce the cost of fertilisers to ourselves. I suggest to the Minister that when preparing his next Budget he should put that item on the shoulders of those who should bear it.

The next one I come to is farm buildings. If the Minister examines at any time the cost of Irish steel and galvanised iron compared with the imported article, he will find that the subsidy paid on haybarns and other buildings of that type and the grants given amount simply to the difference between the price of Irish iron and foreign iron. That is a little item of £2,841,000.

The figure for research is £1,959,000. What is the research? A few years ago we were told by the Sugar Company that the costings we had taken in 1948 were out of date, even though they had been brought up to date each year. We were told there were more modern ways of carrying out these costings and we agreed to have new costings. We handed over the job to the Agricultural Institute who worked for ten months on it. If those boys are getting any portion of this £1,959,000 for agricultural research, I wonder what they meant by sending us a bill for £4,500 for the little work they did in finding out the cost of the production of beet. We had to chuck it: we could not afford it. It was rather a joke. I should like to know if those boys are drawing out of two pockets. Are they drawing out of the pocket of the State on the one hand, and the pocket of the misfortunate farmers on the other hand?

Those are matters I should like to see investigated by the Minister. I would not agree that any agricultural research is being done for farmers for which they should pay £1,959,000, considering that for one piece of research we wanted done—the cost of the production of our crop—we got a bill for £4,500, and I understand that the Sugar Company got another. If we had let them carry on for the three years they wanted to carry on, we could have given them the beet crop to pay them. Those are facts, and facts are stubborn things.

I now come to capital for the Agricultural Credit Corporation. I sent about 15 applications over the past 12 months to the Corporation. I endeavoured to get the Minister's assistance to help me out on a few occasions but I did not get a shilling. Is the money reserved for those who become Chairman of the National Farmers or anything like that? Is there a special reserve for it? I do not know. I know that many poor devils in my county wanted to build haybarns and wanted a loan from the ACC but did not get it. I do not know what the experience of other Deputies has been, but I suggest that £10 million which is supposed to be for the agricultural community should be classed as subsidies to industry and taken off this joke that is being passed on us.

The Taoiseach was anxious also about what was happening in relation to our incomes. I want to mention three items all in connection with tillage farmers: wheat, barley and beet. The price of wheat is less today than it was when the late Tom Walsh was Minister for Agriculture, and that was a pretty considerable time ago. It was before the first inter-Party Government. It was about 1948, 20 years ago. The price of feeding barley is far less today than it was when Tom Walsh fixed it at 48s a barrel. I admit that the palsied hand of Deputy Dillon came down upon it and wiped it down in one slap from 48s to 40s. Since then we have been trying to recover, but we cannot.

I come now to a further item on which we worked for a long number of years. Here I should like to pay an honest tribute to the man who made this possible, the man who met us across the table each year to fix the price and acted like a man. I refer to General Costello, the man who succeeded in working out such a solution that from the second year he came in there right along the line, we were able to meet each year, bring our costings up to date and fix the price of beet. There were only two occasions on which we did not get what we were entitled to. One was the first year Deputy Dillon was in office when he sent a notification to the Sugar Company that the previous Government had been far too generous with the farming community and that on no account would he stand for any increase in the price of beet for the coming year. It was thrown across the table to me by General Costello. I took great care to put it in my pocket. I preserved it carefully and I have it framed at home. I read it several times since for Deputy Dillon.

That was the first occasion, and let us see what it cost. The following year there was a reduction of 11,000 acres under beet, and we had to import 75,000 tons of foreign sugar which, despite all the shouts we heard from Deputy Dillon when he was Minister, actually cost £12 per ton more than the best white sugar leaving our four factories.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy at this stage but details which are applicable to Estimates are not applicable to the General Resolution.

The Taoiseach himself suggested that the crucial point is what is happening to the farmers' incomes. I am dealing now with the farmers' incomes in comparison with what did happen. I will shorten this portion of my contribution by moving on to three years ago when General Costello said we could get no increase unless the price of sugar was increased. We had a row that year. We went on strike, but we got what we were entitled to, exactly 5/3d per ton. We were entitled to another increase the following year but General Costello pleaded poverty on behalf of the Sugar Company. I made a bargain with him that we would accept the then price of beet for the following year on condition that he made an agreement, and signed it, that if he gave any increase to his workers in the following 12 months, the same increase would be given to the growers of beet.

The following June there was an increase of £1 a week in wages. General Costello came along with his agreement. He admitted it, and said that for the portion of the year we were entitled to 6/8d, and he paid that over and above the contract price for beet in that year. That was the year before last and we got 3/- more last year. Now, where do we find ourselves? A misguided section of our people think that the only people who should talk for our agricultural community are a couple of 400-acre ranchers who came along and pretended that they, and not those elected by the members of the Association, represented the beet growers. When, in the ordinary course of events, we went to meet the Sugar Company last November, we were met with a statement like this: "We do not know with whom we are to negotiate" and taking immediate advantage of the row being carried on by those gentlemen against the elected representatives of our beet growers they negotiated with nobody. The first item in their contracts, which carried on from 1934 up to this year, concerned 1¾ cwt. of pulp per ton of beet. They cut that by ¼ cwt. and that amounted to 1/9d per ton of beet.

The second shock we got was in relation to freight charges. Those gentlemen, who made £3 million profit last year and said they would absorb their share of the freight charges, said: "You also can absorb yours out of your losses."

The third shock we got was an increase—I am glad to see it happen— of £1 a week in agricultural labour. On costings and on agreement with General Costello, that works out at 8/9d a ton on beet. Farmers growing beet last year got £7,800,000. That is what the crop was worth. They are getting a cut this year of £420,000 due to the interference of those gentlemen in the affairs of another farmers' organisation.

When we, as farmers, come along and hear talk of the tenth round, the ninth round, the twelfth round and all the rest of the rounds, and when we come to look things in the face ourselves, we find we are expected to produce sugar for this country at £500,000 less than we got last year. People may wonder why farmers occasionally have to take strike action. Let me make no bones about it. If this matter is not attended to then strike action will be taken in this country that will be remembered. That is as far as tillage in this country is concerned: the man who ploughs is the man who tills.

I do not wish to detract from any of the benefits that have been conferred on us in this Budget or recently. Let me give this as an example of what is happening in this country today. I asked our Country Manager in Cork for figures of the percentage of farmers completely relieved of rates in Cork county due to the new proposals introduced by the Government. The actual position is that 71 per cent of the farmers in Cork county pay no rates on agricultural land-and I do not count Cork county as a poor county or anything else. Only 29 per cent of the farmers in that county are today paying rates on agricultural land.

Great things are happening in our time.

We have been a long time fighting for it and it is time we got something out of it. Deputy P. O'Donnell complained of the long time it took to sanction water supply schemes. That remark took me back to the time when Deputy P. O'Donnell was Minister for Local Government and when I was endeavouring to get sanction for the taking-over of land for housing. He read out an extract from a report for me stating that the main objection to sanction for the taking-over of the land was that there was no water supply. Lo and behold, there was a water main from Ballinacurra to Midleton lying along the road. When poor Deputy P. O'Donnell left office, the next Minister for Local Government gave the sanction and I now have 28 houses built on the land. I do not mind what Deputy P. O'Donnell now says about water, considering that there was no water at all in his time.

I judge the condition of a country very largely on the demand for housing. Next to employment in this country—which, as far as industry is concerned, has been increased by 38,000—the provision of houses for our people and for the young men who, in the ordinary course, would have to go to other countries for employment, is very important. I am speaking now of those young men who have got permanent employment below in Irish Steel, in Rushbrooke Dockyard, down along in Carrigtwohill now in the new carpet factories, down along in Midleton, in the three factories there, and down along in Youghal where you cannot find an unemployed man. When they have been a couple of years working, they want to get married. The first thing they then look for is a place to make a home.

Our greatest necessity today is the provision of houses for our people and for those young men so that they can come back, after their day's work, to a decent home. That is a bigger worry now than anything else. I am not worried about employment at all because we have no unemployment problem in my constituency. If they want to know how it is done, I will tell them. Some five years ago General Costello arrived down to my constituency and had a look around him. As a result of that, I got a team of young men together. We collected £30,000 to put against £30,000 which General Costello had put up in the Sugar Company. It gave employment to 50 the first year. It went on to 120 the second year. Last year there were over 300 in employment and within the next two years there will be 700 in constant employment in that industry —that alone for £30,000.

It is an example of what can be done. We started with 358 acres of vegetables. Our contract this year is for 3,000 acres. Please God, next year we will be going on to the 5,000 acre mark. Farmers this year will have an income out of that alone of over £250,000. That is the way I want to see agriculture progressing. The openings are there and let us see them carried ahead on that line. Let us see them prosper along that line.

I remember, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, going down to the town of Cobh and trekking it from one end to the other looking to get an industry going there and I could not get it. Total employment at that time was three week's work. Haulbowline had a handful of men to prepare the machinery there for scrap auctions. That was the total employment, where today you have over 600 men walking in every morning to do their day's work and the majority of those men are earning over £1,000 a year.

There was the same situation in Rushbrooke Dockyard, which I also witnessed for a number of years. I remember at the start of the emergency a ship was brought in and they had to fill a hole in her side with cement to enable her to get away out of the dock. Today you can build ships in the Verolme Dockyard and there is constant employment there for 800 men. If this were not so, you would have emigrants being shipped out of this country, people who are in constant employment there, who get married and settle down in this country.

We have at Cobh Cross, an industry which will give employment, I am told, to 300 people. We have two small industries in Carrigtwohill which are giving employment between them to 180 men. We come to Midleton and there we have William Dwyer's factories. We have East Cork Foods and a large cold storage factory there.

Those are all advances on the industrial picture that was there 15 years ago. You can travel down to Youghal and you find the same situation. There is plenty industry and plenty employment for our people there. All that is what I consider my judgment of the success or failure of a Government.

At times we have a lot of noise if an industry fails. We hear a lot of noise and shouting about that, but any man, or Minister, who is prepared to take a chance in finding employment for our people has my blessing anyway so long as he takes that chance.

Hear, hear.

I take it that all those industries are carefully examined before there is anything done about them.

Deputy O'Donnell looks for a duty on cosmetics—I do not know whether to believe it or not.

Now, now; conduct yourself.

He made a statement here and he looked for a duty on cosmetics. I cannot understand why he did not give that into Deputy Sweetman with the one for ladies' curling pins. This was a good joke coming from an old gent like Deputy P. O'Donnell. I am glad he has a liking for the ladies.

The Deputy is getting provocative now.

That is as good as the one that after washing off all the paint and powder, the beauty was gone. The last time I heard anybody advocating that type of thing in this House was many years ago. A Deputy came in here taxing his mind to know what they should put a tax on and he suggested that they put a tax on ladies' handbags. When he went back to my constituency, the ladies decided they did not want him any more and he disappeared. Deputy P. O'Donnell's cosmetics takes me to the fair. Where is it to be put on?

The cosmetics or the tax?

This is a serious matter because he meant it, because he said there were other taxes the Minister should have gone lighter on. I suppose if the fellow with the cigarettes could have got off by taxing the paint he was taking away on his lips from his lady, he would rather have the tax on the paint than on the cigarettes. Anyway, you have that kind of balmy ideal over there. I am sure Deputy T. O'Donnell has no intention of following on that line—but you never know.

Anyway, Sir, I am happy in that the Minister has given help and relief to the poorer sections of the community. He has given his reasons and has made no bones about them. When I look back to the first time I ever sat here, about 41 years ago, I remember seeing Mr. Blythe sitting where the Parliamentary Secretary now sits, and I remember him proposing a reduction of a bob a week in the 10s old age pension. It is a long time to be here, a long time to think over, and many funny things have happened in my time in this House. There is the comparison of Mr. Blythe taking a bob a week off the old age pension with the increase of 7s 6d a week we have now given to the old age pensioners. It is a change, but it is not a change for the worse. We saw what happened to the fellows who did that 41 years ago.

I am thankful that Fianna Fáil have not forgotten, and I hope never will, that as far as this nation is concerned, that it was the ordinary worker—be he an industrial worker, a farm labourer or a small farmer's son—who went out to establish freedom here so that representatives of the people might be able to come in here to make laws and regulations. When I hear all this talk nowadays about industrial plutocrats, I begin to wonder why we did not see any of them when our nation was struggling for freedom.

I hope that programme, that idea, will remain not alone with Fianna Fáil but with whichever Government may take their place at any future time—that that knowledge will remain with them, that they will remember it was those young men who established this nation, and that they will endeavour in so far as they can to see that the ordinary worker, the farmer or farm labourer or industrial worker, will have first claim on any increased prosperity there may be.

Looked at as an instrument of economic development and social progress, this Budget is, in my opinion, a very big disappointment. There is nothing in it which could be regarded as a serious attempt by the Government to come to grips with the many serious economic and social problems which confront our people at the present time.

This Budget has been described in many ways. I look on it as a clever standstill Budget. Somebody else has described it as a clever accountant's Budget. It is a clever Budget, dictated by political expediency and completely devoid of any new economic or social concept. There is no evidence of new thinking or of a new approach to our economic and social problems. Indeed there is nothing in the Minister's Budget Statement, or in the Taoiseach's speech for that matter, or in the speeches of the other Government spokesmen, which would indicate that the Government have learned any lesson from the dismal failure of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion and that we shall have a new, more dynamic revolutionary approach to the whole question of economic development.

To me, at any rate, it is quite clear that the Government are still floundering in the wreck of the Second Programme and that they are unable or unwilling to introduce any new or revolutionary economic changes which might hold out some measure of hope for a solution to the economic ills of the nation. I have looked through the Minister's Budget Statement for any sign of a new deal for agriculture or a new approach to industrial development.

The Minister has indicated that the Government are reviewing the whole question of incentives to industry. This review or examination is being carried out by a firm of international consultants. It has been going on a long time—several months; how many I am not quite clear about—but as yet there is no indication whether these consultants have completed the examination or, if they have, whether the Government are prepared to act on their recommendations.

The worst feature of the Budget, in my opinion, is that there is nothing at all which holds out any glimmer of hope for an immediate solution or a short-term solution to the very serious unemployment situation. There is nothing in it to relieve the everincreasing burden of local authority rates, despite what Deputy Corry has just said in regard to the percentage of farmers in his constituency who pay no rates. It is very often not realised that the burden of local authority rates falls heavily on people other than the farming community.

There is one section of the community who, in my opinion, can be termed forgotten people. They are the small shopkeepers and the small businessmen in rural towns and villages who, because of the continuous decline in the rural population, because of modern techniques in distribution and retailing, find themselves with an ever-dwindling business and an ever-increasing cost of living. One of their greatest burdens is the local authority rates impost. I have seen numerous examples of business premises in rural towns and villages where valuations were fixed years ago when those towns and villages were prosperous communities and where the shops were doing a thriving business. Now they are forced to pay the ever-increasing local rates out of a business which has dwindled fast and which, in many cases, is non-existent. If there is any section worthy of help and in dire need of some type of relief, it is those unfortunate people.

The Minister's Budget Statement, beyond a passing reference to the fact that the Government are contemplating some new approach to the provision of a new health scheme, contains no details or no indication as to when the new health service, which we have been promised for so long, will be introduced. I submit this is one of the most urgent and important social needs of the present time.

Despite the fact that reference was made to it in the Minister's speech and that various Fianna Fáil spokesmen have tried to prove that the Government are conscious of the serious housing shortage in this country. I believe that this Budget contains very little and holds out very little hope of a speedy solution to the serious housing problem, particularly in our larger cities.

Another notable omission from this Budget is that it contains nothing whatsoever for the dairying industry which is the most fundamental and most important sector of our economy and which unfortunately at the present time is faced with probably the most serious crisis in its history. The Minister was unable or else did not see fit to provide additional assistance for this most important industry. He pointed out in his speech the difficulties with which he was confronted, the vast increase in milk production last year, and the anticipated increase this year, and he trotted out figures in an attempt to show that the Government are generously supporting this industry. There is nothing in the Budget for the dairy farmer and nothing in it which will enable the dairying industry to overcome its present problems.

There have, however, been small concessions to the pigs and bacon industry. Like the dairying industry the pigs and bacon industry has been undergoing a very difficult time in recent months. I believe that the additional concessions announced by the Minister in his Budget speech for the pigs and bacon industry are totally inadequate to the needs of a national industry of this kind which is daily sinking deeper into an economic morass and which nothing short of a massive rescue operation can now put it back on its feet again.

I believe this is a Budget produced by a Government who have completely lost touch with reality, a Government who lack courage, lack initiative and lack foresight. In the final analysis this Budget is the proof of the failure of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. In fact, it is the final proof of the failure of the economic policies which have been so blindly pursued by Fianna Fáil continuously since 1957. I have here the official document entitled: Second Programme for Economic Expansion —Review of Progress 1964-1967. By reference to this particular publication and by reference to the many other publications produced by the National Industrial Economic Council, and indeed by other competent bodies, we can see clearly and unmistakeably in black and white the dismal record of failure of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion.

Looking at what was described by a former Taoiseach as being the acid test of Government policy, that is employment we find at page 70, Table 16 of this Review of Progress—from which, with your permission a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I would like to quote some figures—that by 1967 total employment was 49,000 short of the pro rata projection to 1970. This total may be broken down as: Agriculture, 20,000; Industry, 17,000 and Services, 12,000. The report goes on then to comment:

The decline in agricultural employment was nearly twice that projected, and was too great to be absorbed by the increases in industry and services which were only about one-half and two-thirds of their projected levels.

Therefore, on the basis of the acid test applied to the Government's economic policy, the creation of new employment, the Second Programme for Economic Expansion has failed and failed hopelessly.

I shall not bore the House by quoting at length from this document, for the simple reason that I believe in grass-roots politics and for me the acid test of Government policy is the results which that policy produces in my constituency. My constituency of East Limerick, comprises a large urban area of Limerick city and a large strip of the county of Limerick, stretching from the Galtee Mountains to the River Shannon, containing as it does all possible, variable types of economic activity, from large-scale industrialisation to large-scale farming and small and medium sized farms and even mountain farms at the foot of the Galtee Mountains, containing small towns and rural villages, must serve as an ideal basis for judging the success or failure of the economic policy of this Government. My constituency comprises a region which is endowed with many natural advantages for economic development. We have a city which is situated in the centre of the finest agricultural region in Western Europe, a city which has a traditional industrial structure based on the processing of the raw materials of that agricultural hinterland.

What do we find after 11 years of Fianna Fáil administration? What results have the First and Second Programmes produced down there? I shall quote some facts and figures here and now which illustrate in a much more dramatic manner than would any official review of progress or any report of any survey by any academic economist. Again, let us take the question of employment which has been recognised by Fianna Fáil as the acid test of their policy. As late as last week, on 23rd April, the Minister for Labour, replying to a question by Deputy Coughlan, gave figures for unemployment. In Limerick city on that date, there were 2,333 people unemployed and in the county of Limerick on the same date, there were 1,698 people unemployed. This gives a total of 4,031 people unemployed in the city and county of Limerick after 11 years of continuous Fianna Fáil administration and after the introduction of what was then supposed to be a revolutionary economic concept, that is, the First and Second Programmes for Economic Expansion. The tragedy of the unemployment situation in my constituency is that of the 2,300 people unemployed in the city of Limerick, 2,000 are male workers. It is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of those are married men with families.

What about industrial development? What progress has been made in industrial development in my constituency? Since 1957 only one new industry of any substance has been established in the city and county of Limerick. During the same period, from 1957 to the present time, most of our old established industries have been forced to close down. Spillane's tobacco factory which employed 100 men has gone out of existence. Matterson's bacon factory closed down a year ago putting 90 men and 10 girls out of employment. The City Tannery closed down within the last year leaving 40 people unemployed. Unfortunately, as well as the closing of existing old established industries, there has been large scale and recurring redundancy. The Limerick locomotive workers of CIE have experienced large scale redundancy during several periods since 1957. As far as I can ascertain there is a reduction of 200 in the number employed there now compared with 1957.

In addition to the closing of Messrs. Matterson's bacon factory, it was announced only last week that 26 employees of another bacon factory have become redundant. There has been redundancy in varying proportions in other industrial concerns. In the rural part of the constituency of East Limerick there was one major industry. A large milk processing plant was forced to close down and is now lying derelict and in ruins. In spite of what the Minister for Finance, the Taoiseach and various other Government spokesmen might say about the progress of the Government towards the solution of the unemployment problem, the facts in so far as I am concerned and in so far as the results can be seen in my constituency can be taken into account, the record of the Fianna Fáil Government since 1957 is absolutely deplorable.

While the Minister for Finance in his Budget speech has stated that we can expect an announcement from the Government in the near future about new proposals and a new approach to the whole question of industrial development, I am convinced that unless those new proposals and this new approach are absolutely revolutionary compared with the policy pursued for the past ten years, then I cannot see very much hope of our overcoming this serious unemployment problem.

We had an announcement on the eve of another by-election last November of a new plan for the promotion of industry in Limerick. That was the proposal to extend the facilities of the Shannon Industrial Estate to include Limerick city. I find on the eve of another by-election that there is on the Order Paper a Bill to extend the activities of the Shannon Development Company. We will take convincing in Limerick of the genuineness of the Government in trying to do something to solve the serious unemployment problem which exists there. My constituency differs entirely from Deputy Corry's constituency. I cannot vouch for or contradict the facts put forward by him. He seems to be very satisfied with the employment situation in his constituency. Unfortunately, so far as Limerick is concerned it is today an outstanding and a tragic example of the failure of the economic policy of the Fianna Fáil Government. Unfortunately, it pinpoints in a dramatic way the failure of that policy not merely from the point of view of industrial development but also from the point of view of agricultural development.

Let us apply another acid test of Government policy—the provision of houses. I will not quote at length the national statistics but will refer to the housing output in Limerick. Since 1957 we find a deplorable state of affairs. I would point out, without giving the actual figures for every single financial year over the past ten years, that there have been three financial years since 1957 during which not one single house was provided by Limerick Corporation. I am sorry to say that 1967-68 is one of them. The result is, of course, obvious. There is no need for me to go into the sad details of chronic overcrowding, families huddled in insanitary buildings and tenement buildings. This situation is due to the fact that in Limerick, and as far as I can gather the situation is the same in Cork and Dublin, that the Government have failed to tackle the housing problem.

Despite what Deputy Corry might have said about my distinguished colleague, Deputy P. O'Donnell, a former Minister for Local Government, I want to state for the record that during the last financial year when Deputy O'Donnell was Minister for Local Government, Limerick Corporation built 200 new houses. That figure as far as I am aware has not been exceeded in any single financial year since 1957. As I said, there were three of those years during which not one single house was built under a Fianna Fáil administration. I defy contradiction of the facts which I have quoted here because they are facts and figures which I got from time to time in reply to Parliamentary Questions.

The Minister made certain references to the dairying industry and advanced an apologia for his failure to provide any additional incentives for the industry this year. I believe the Minister made a serious blunder in not facing up to the fact that the dairying industry at present is in serious trouble and not merely because we had a dramatic increase in milk output in 1967 and it is anticipated that there will be an increase again this year. The dairying industry is fast approaching a state of chaos, due to the failure of the Government in the past five or six years to take steps in time to rationalise and reorganise this most important industry.

We have had nothing but reports from this and that expert, surveys by this man and that man, and at present we have another survey being carried out by two American gentlemen. We had the Dr. Knapp report which was supposed to be the greatest thing ever. We had the IAOS producing a formula for the reorganising of the creameries while all the time this fundamental, vital industry was fast heading for the chaotic position in which it now finds itself.

The Government, as was pointed out at Question Time when I had a number of questions to the Minister for Agriculture on the question of the milk surplus, have encouraged the farmers here to increase milk output and, having done so, the unfortunate farmers in certain cases were faced with the situation last year when the processing industries were unable to absorb all the milk offered. We had the atrocious situation of creameries having to dispose of milk by various means other than processing it, from feeding it to pigs to throwing it down the rivers. The Minister for Finance stands condemned on this. I come down very heavily on him for not having faced this situation. The fact that he was for a period Minister for Agriculture should have made him aware of these problems and he should have used this Budget as a means of putting this important industry on a proper footing and taking it out of the difficulties in which it now is.

Twenty pounds per cow is not so bad. Every dairy cow in the country is getting a subsidy of £20 from the Government.

There was no increase in the price of milk.

It is not six weeks since £9 million was voted for the dairying industry.

It may be said that it is hard to justify giving an increase in the price of milk when the farmers are already over-producing. I I do not accept that argument. I believe, and I think it will be generally accepted, that because of the vital importance of the dairying industry, it should receive priority over all other industries and all other sectors in the matter of inducements, grants, allocations and so on. It is an industry which is providing £20 million or £30 million per annum in the export of dairy products. It is the foundation of our cattle export trade and provides employment for several thousand people in processing plants and creameries throughout the country. It provides a livelihood for over 100,000 dairy farmers and their families. Surely, if our priorities are right and if the Minister for Finance were aware of the situation, this is one of the industries into which we would be pouring the maximum effort by way of finance, technical assistance and every other form of inducement? Yet the Minister comes along in 1968, knowing as he must have known from his own experience, that the industry was in trouble and knowing as he must know the importance of the industry to the economy and apologises because he cannot give any extra assistance this year.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but does he not agree that only a matter of weeks ago a Supplementary Estimate for more than £9 million was brought in here by the Minister for Agriculture specifically for the dairying industry and that that Supplementary Estimate is continued in the Budget? Therefore, the charge the Deputy is making that the Government have neglected the dairying industry in the Budget, does not stand up.

While I have the greatest respect for the Parliamentary Secretary's views, I do not intend to engage in academic argument with him or in an argument based on statistics relating to financial assistance and incentives. I agree there is a substantial subvention to the dairying industry; I did not say otherwise.

Might I point out from the Chair that matters of detail should be reserved for the Estimates to which they relate and that we should keep in general to the Financial Resolutions of the Budget.

Deputy O'Donnell and I will have another crack at this on the Estimate for Agriculture.

I should not like to transgress the rules of the House particularly with your good self, Sir, in the Chair. The point I was trying to make was that in view of the special problems that have arisen this year and which were there last year, and in view of the fact that these problems seem to be becoming more serious with every month that passes, I expected the Minister for Finance to come up with some special inducement or some additional financial assistance this year.

I want to refer to the pigs and bacon industry also. I have already acknowledged the fact that certain concessions have been made by the Minister this year to the pigs and bacon industry and I have said that these concessions, in my opinion, are grossly inadequate to effect the massive rescue operation which is the only thing that can save this industry at present. The pigs and bacon industry has been going down-hill rapidly, as I have already said. When I gave the facts and figures relating to industrial employment in my own constituency of Limerick, I referred to the fact that one bacon industry had closed down, and that as recently as last weekend 26 workers in another bacon industry in Limerick have been served notice. The fact that an old established bacon industry, Messrs. Matterson, which for over 100 years has been marketing top quality bacon products which enjoyed an international reputation and were exported to many countries; the fact that this long-established industry situated in the heart of the finest agricultural region in Europe, the Golden Vale, had to close down because there was a shortage of pigs and because the Government were not prepared to offer the right incentives to the farmers in that area to produce pigs, is a terrible indictment of the economic policy of the Government. It is the worst indictment I know of and it is the worst example of the hopeless failure of the policy we have been pursuing.

While I realise that I cannot go into matters of detail, I take it I am in order in making a general reference to agricultural development and to Government policy in relation to our major national industry. I am glad the Minister for Finance has returned; I am sorry he was not here when I was taking him to task a short time ago.

I could nearly tell the Deputy what he said.

The Minister can read all about it. I have stated here in practically every Budget speech over the past few years that one of the basic reasons why the Second Programme for Economic Expansion failed was that the Government failed to recognise the importance of agriculture to the economy. I remember at the time of the introduction of the Second Programme and when the targets were being assigned to the different sections, a low, unrealistic target was assigned to agriculture, and I argued that this clearly indicated the lack of confidence of the Government in the agricultural industry. Subsequently, when the NIEC was established, the fact that no representation was given to the agricultural sector of our economy was another indication of the lack of confidence of the Government in our major national industry. Since 1957, which covered the periods of the First and Second Programmes for Economic Expansion, successive Fianna Fáil Governments have made one blunder after another in relation to the development of our major national industry.

We have had all sorts of schemes and suggestions, and yet there has been no attempt, no determined attempt, to implement a realistic policy for agriculture, a policy which could save the small farmers. I have never accepted and never will accept the argument of the economists who say that the small farmer is doomed to extinction. I believe the small farm can be made a viable unit, provided the Government face up to the fact that the one way in which the small farmer can be maintained on the land of Ireland is by the application of the principles of co-operation. Lip service has been paid to the co-operative movement and during the past year or two we have had a Minister for Agriculture who in his various Estimate speeches here made no reference at all to the co-operative movement.

The co-operative movement, properly applied and properly organised, can keep the small farmer on the land. I do not give a damn what economists or others say to the effect that in this modern age of high-powered business, the small farmer must go and that there must be consolidation of holdings. There are numerous examples of successful experiments in co-operation, numerous instances where four or five or ten farmers have banded themselves into a group and by the application of co-operative methods made their little holdings viable.

What do we find? We find we have a Department of Agriculture which does not believe in the co-operative movement, and we have an Agricultural Institute which has cost the taxpayer a substantial amount of money and carried out no investigation or research into the principle of co-operation. Not one single experiment has been carried out by the Agricultural Institute; yet we have growing up in various parts of the country farming groups who are meeting together in one another's houses under the guidance of the agricultural instructor and producing very dramatic results.

I speak from practical experience on this, because the first such group was formed 12 years ago in my own parish in Limerick, when nine farmers banded themselves together to help one another, pooling machinery and making the best possible use cooperatively of the advice and assistance available. They have proved, and other farming groups have since proved beyond all doubt, that if the small farmers can be encouraged to work together, to co-operate on strictly business lines, they can survive.

As I said at the outset, in so far as this Budget may be regarded as an instrument of economic policy and social progress, it is a big disappointment. For the past year, we have been mourning the end of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, and it was confidently anticipated that in this Budget of 1968, the Minister for Finance would have availed himself of the opportunity of disclosing the new thinking, the new approach and new guidelines which are going to highlight the so-called Third Programme. We have waited in vain, and while unemployment mounts and unfortunate families are seeking new houses, these problems are now being put on the long finger.

I find myself in agreement with Deputy Corry, when I, too, welcome the concessions that have been made to the old age pensioners and particularly to the remainder of that gallant band of men and women who went out over 40 years ago to win freedom for this country and to lay the foundations of this State. This small added recognition for these people is long overdue. I sincerely hope that in the not too distant future the Minister will be able to give them a further concession because with every year that passes, the number of these men declines. Every Deputy will agree to whatever steps the Minister takes to make the rest of the lives of these people more comfortable.

I also welcome the concession to the old age pensioners while I do not agree that it is at all adequate to meet the needs of these people. I have in mind the fact that the Ignatian Sodality in Limerick city carried out a survey some months ago into the living conditions of old age pensioners and their report, which has received much publicity, showed that 25 per cent of these old age pensioners were suffering from malnutrition. I submit that that is a disgraceful situation and while I am sure the old age pensioners are thankful for the small mercies handed out in this Budget, I do not accept that the increase is anything like adequate.

Deputies P.J. Burke and Andrews rose.

I defer to my learned friend.

Thank you. I have been here a long time and I have been listening and learning a lot.

I thought the Deputy spoke already.

The whole theme of the last speaker's contribution was that we in Fianna Fáil never did anything for anybody. I have been listening carefully in the hope that I would learn from the Opposition Deputies what they would do if they were on this side of the House.

You will give us inspiration.

If we go back to 1958 when the Second Programme for Economic Expansion was introduced, we find that the gross national product at current market prices rose in the ten year period by 91 per cent. This is not just Fianna Fáil propaganda; it is a statistic compiled by the Department dealing with statistical returns on the progress of the economy. As far as our external markets are concerned, exports of goods and services rose by no less than 95 per cent in that period, from £175.6 millions to £337 millions, equivalent to an annual growth rate of 7.7 per cent. Imports of goods and services rose from £206 millions to £395 millions, in real terms, an increase of 92 per cent or 7.5 per cent per annum. There was a consistent pattern of growth over that ten year period, the period during which it was alleged that the Second Programme was a failure.

It has been alleged that we are suffering from stagnation but yet the volume of gross agricultural output rose by 28 per cent in the period, or 2.8 per cent per annum. The increase in the net output was 18 per cent. Where did all this money come from? We are told that this is a stagnation Budget and that we have always produced stagnation Budgets but I do not see any stagnation in these figures. In regard to employment, between 1963 and 1967 the number of new jobs created outside agriculture was 38,000. That was no mean achievement. This is not to say that we are pleased. Personally I should like to see everybody employed but may I say that if there is a better way of doing things than the way we are doing them, I would like to hear about them from the Opposition? If there is any better way of trying to improve the economy or of making it more buoyant than it is so that we will have more money for capital expenditure and the various other services we require, I should like to know about it. In comparison with other countries, I find that the economic policy adopted by Fianna Fáil and by our able Minister for Finance, is a very good one.

We were told by the last speaker that agriculture and the farmers are neglected. Here again the statistics are simple. We were trying to get out of the very tough period between 1956-57, 1958-59 and 1960-61; yet in 1961 grants to agriculture of one kind or another came to £26.3 millions. Today the figure for agriculture alone is £68.9 millions. Yet we are told that we are doing nothing for agriculture. Even my colleague, Deputy Corry, said that 75 per cent, or 77 per cent, of the farmers in County Cork did not have to pay rates.

Of the farmers in Cork?

Did Deputy Corry say this?

I am told he did. He said he got it from the manager. I am quoting off the cuff now.

I accept that.

It is in keeping with the national average.

Quite so. No Government could have done more for the farmers, large and small, than the Fianna Fáil Government have done. Fianna Fáil are concerned about the wellbeing of every section of the community. Is there any short cut to improving the wealth of the nation? Is there any means of doing that other than those we have adopted? The British Government at the present time are beginning to copy what we are doing here. Is there any way of increasing wealth except by putting more money into production, into the improvement of our industries, and into exports in order to keep our balance of payments in equilibrium? I do not know of any other means other than the means we have adopted. I have read economic histories and even behind the Iron Curtain the only yard-stick is production and keeping the balance of payments in equilibrium. Anything that is left over is directed towards improving social services, providing houses, improving hospitals, and so on. We have succeeded pretty well so far. Lloyd George said: "We have given them the agricultural South and they will never be able to carry on." But we have been able to carry on. We have done some wonderful things for the country and for our people. No Party could do more in relation to housing and social welfare. We are a Christian Socialist Party. That is what Fianna Fáil is.

A change of name would be a good thing anyway.

Our aim is to help everybody. Deputy P. O'Donnell made some play in regard to a statement I was supposed to have made in 1965, a time when there was a slight recession.

He did not talk about collecting sixpences, did he?

I did not say anything about collecting sixpences. The journalists took that out of context and so did members of the Opposition. Of course, the politician is fair game. When I was in Jerusalem, I discovered the help Israel had got from other parts of the world and I suggested that the Irish abroad could help this country in the same way. I was told in Israel that the Irish in America were very powerful. They could buy prize bonds. They could invest money in this country in the same way as they invested in the First Dáil Loan. That was the suggestion I made. I make it again now.

Due to the good management of our Government, we have succeeded, and we did not run away when things were not so good as the inter-Party Government did in 1956-57. We stuck to our guns in 1965-66 and in 1967 and now, in 1968, things have improved considerably. In 1962-63 the cost of social services was £57 million. Today it is £109,920,000. Social welfare in 1962-63 was £27 million odd. Today it is £45 million, almost double. Five years ago we were spending £18 million on education. Today we are spending over £41 million. Is that stagnation? The grant from the Minister for Health at that time was £10,708,000. Today it is £23,541,000. Expediture on economic services has doubled in five years from £35 million to £78 million. I have already dealt with agriculture. Industry has gone up from £1 million to £7 million in five years; transport has gone up from £9 million to £13 million; forestry has gone up from £1 million to over £2 million. Is that stagnation?

We have succeeded in improving the lot of our people. We are told we should do more. If we continue as we are going at present, we will be able to do more. Of course, the prophets on the far side have prophesied that we will have trouble before the end of the year. I hope the prophets will be confounded. The Opposition are a bit disappointed because the Budget is so good. The people go on supporting Fianna Fáil and they will continue their support because we represent every section of the community. I welcome the improvements the Minister has made in the position of the weaker sections of our community. The increase is a good one. We all hope that trend will continue. I will not bore the House with all the reliefs given by the Minister because other speakers want to contribute to the debate.

There was some discussion about housing here. Listening to the people who appear on television, one would imagine they were the only people who knew anything about the housing problem. They call themselves the "Housing Action Committee" and they roar and shout outside when the corporation is holding a meeting. They want to tell us what to do and how to do it. There are some intelligent people mixed up in this. They are led by some intelligent people in this city. They have the cure for all ills.

I am giving credit to all Governments when I say that since the State was founded over 50,000 corporation houses have been built in Dublin. Due to the intervention of the Government, there will be 3,000 dwellings in Ballymun that we would not otherwise have. There is plenty of money for housing. We never had so much money for the purchase of land for housing and we are encouraged to buy land for this purpose both in the city and county of Dublin. I am talking now of all Parties who have been in office since the State was founded.

One would imagine, to hear some people talking, that we were insensitive to the need for housing. We are anxious to ensure that everybody is housed. That goes for every public representative. There is misrepresentation on the part of people who appear to be very influential and who are in a position to appear on Telefís Éireann in order to make their statements. In County Dublin, since the State was founded, about 10,000 houses have been built and there is a programme for a further 2,000 houses in the county and for the purchase of the necessary land for that purpose.

Sewerage and water services in the city and county of Dublin will cost about £12 million within a period of a few years. I happen to be a member of both the county council and the corporation. Expenditure on the sewerage and water schemes in the city and county of Dublin could reach the figure I have already given within a few years. All this shows our anxiety to proceed with this work and to meet the wishes of the people. One would imagine from some of the criticism that is expressed that members of local authorities who spend tiring hours at meetings night after night were doing nothing for anybody.

I am very happy to observe that the tourist industry is playing a very important part in our balance of payments position. It might be more appropriate on the Vote for Education but I should like to say that school-children should receive an occasional lecture from their teachers on the desirability of creating a good image for the benefit of tourists. Children are naturally nice to strangers. They should be encouraged to be nice to tourists. Having travelled abroad from time to time, I am aware that one is impressed by courtesy on the part of people when one is in a foreign country. We depend to a great extent on the tourist trade. Tourists who are treated in a kindly and courteous manner in our country will publicise that fact in their own countries. Any of us here who has travelled abroad on behalf of the nation or privately will always remember the hotel in which the staff treated one nicely and the people in the street who were nice to you. We could create a good image of our country based on the natural courtesy of the Irish people.

I am happy to endorse what Deputy Burke has said.

I should like to thank Deputy Barry. We had the pleasure of travelling abroad together.

Education is an important factor in the progress of a nation. It is obvious from the figures I have read out that education is being promoted and that every section is being treated impartially. Free post-primary education is being made available to children who could never otherwise have an opportunity of such education. It is hoped to provide approximately 1,000 university scholarships. Does that reveal a state of stagnation? I am just replying to certain comments made by people on the other side of the House.

I have not here the figures as to the amount spent on hospitals. We should like to do a great deal more in this respect. Deputies on the other side of the House who are members of the local authority of which I am a member and who are also on hospital boards know that we are looking for money day after day in order that more can be done.

It is represented by all Parties— Fianna Fáil, Labour, Fine Gael—that rates are too high. The question is, are we to pay for the necessary services through local taxation or out of central funds? This is a vast problem and one not easy of solution. Various associations, political organisations and so on, urge increased expenditure for 11 months of the year but become completely dumb for about three weeks before the rates are struck.

I do not claim to be able to solve this problem. The Minister for Finance is just a human being. If he were St. Peter, he could not please everybody. The big question that must be considered is, are we to tax the people more in order to eliminate rates or are we to continue the present position?

The Minister has suggested that health authorities should encourage people to help themselves through voluntary health insurance. We have made some progress in that direction but I should like to see voluntary health insurance more widespread. A number of us, even though we can badly afford it, have to join the Voluntary Health Insurance. I did so when that body was established. These are problems which confront any Minister for Finance.

The Minister is a very efficient Minister for Finance. He has succeeded in doing a very good job. I was always confident that he would do the right thing in any job that he under-took and would have the necessary courage to make decisions which would be for the benefit, not alone of the Party, but of the nation. The Minister always has regard to the national point of view and the well-being of the country as a whole.

There are a number of other matters that I should like to mention but I shall not deal with them now because I do not wish to delay the House. I conclude by saying that, generally speaking, this is a very intelligent Budget. It will show the world that we are capable of doing something worthwhile for ourselves. I trust that our export trade will continue to improve. Our industrialists who have succeeded in getting markets for our products abroad deserve the thanks and confidence of the Irish people. By helping to keep our balance of payments right they are assisting everybody in the country. Córas Tráchtála and our diplomatic service have succeeded in building up a fund of goodwill for the sale of Irish products abroad. I am very proud to be able to say to my colleague "Good luck. You have been doing an excellent job and long may you continue. May you live to be a hundred."

The previous speaker referred to this Budget as being a very good Budget. I have already described the Budget as being a clever Budget. I give full credit to the Minister for the fact that he put to the best possible use the resources he wished to have available during the time he was framing the Budget. As the House is aware, the Labour Party supported the Budget and will do so again if a vote is called for on the final stages, because we believe there are some improvements in it. But to say it is the answer to the country's ills, to say it is a big step forward, is a gross exaggeration and I propose in the next half hour or so to point out where we think the Government have fallen down in this Budget.

We believe it should be an annual budget, not a biannual one, and should be a device by which our programme for the country for the coming 12 months should be set down. We believe that this is the first place the Budget has failed. Instead of making provision within the next 12 months to end what is becoming a greater problem every week—the problem of unemployment —the Minister simply made provision to allow things to continue as they are. I do not know whether or not it is generally realised that after all the shouting we heard over the past 12 or 18 months about the tremendous improvement in the country, we have almost 70,000 unemployed and that this figure is approximately 5,000 to 6,000 more than it was 12 months ago.

We do not seem to have realised— certainly the Government do not seem to have appreciated the fact—that the biggest task before us is the provision of employment. Even since the Budget the Taoiseach has been talking about investment in industry. He told us there was approximately £27 million given by way of grants for the purpose of providing new jobs and that only about £2 million to £3 million of that has been completely lost. If we stop to think for one minute, we will realise there is a bigger loss to the country and a bigger loss to production because of unemployment than all the strikes, lock outs and stoppages we have had over the year. We get headlines every day if a couple of dozen or a couple of hundred men go on strike. We are told of the terrible effect this will have on the country. But the fact that 70,000 people are unemployed from one end of the year to the other does not seem to make the headlines. It is something we have come to live with. It is something the present Budget has done nothing to solve.

I honestly believe that if this or any other Government got down to the problem of providing something like full employment here, it would bring in its wake such an improvement in our economy that most of our other problems would disappear. The Minister said that the finding of extra jobs was a difficult task and we are prepared to agree with that. I would pose this question to him: Has any attempt at all been made to try to find out how our surplus manpower can be employed? Has any attempt been made other than to invite in here industrialists, some of whom have pretty shady reputations all over the world, who will promise and have promised potential employment—apparently it is on the employment potential that the grants are given—in order to get Government grants, who will break every regulation and every code there is in the country and when it suits them, will pack up and get out? They have no responsibility to anybody while they are here. They most certainly have no intention at any time to try to build up this country. It is furthest from their thoughts that part of their job is to try to build up this country. They come here because they will get grants to enable them, according to what they are told, to make a better profit than they would in any other country. When they find that is not so, they get out by taking the opportunity to go when the loss to them will be the least.

We have plenty of examples of this but I do not propose to go into them this evening. The Government should attempt to find out how the manpower not being employed at present can be usefully used in this country. If we do that, I believe, mainly through the use of native raw materials, we can solve a lot of our problems. The State has come to accept the fact of somebody coming in here, importing raw materials from another country, manufacturing them here and selling them in a market where he is competing with people using materials native to them. Such a firm is bound to be in trouble from the start and, when it falls down, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Despite what many people have preached for a long number of years, we have apparently quite substantial mineral resources. We have people who have invested their money here and proved we have mineral wealth. They are, thank God, making an attempt to employ a lot of people. They pay the State fairly hefty royalties and are themselves making money. This is to be welcomed. Somebody has suggested the State should take over and deal with this development. If the State tried to encourage this sort of thing and to offer every facility for further employment, it would be in the interests of the country.

On the other side we have agriculture. For the life of me, I can never understand why it is that we are prepared to talk with two tongues when we come to talk about agriculture. We refer to it as our primary industry and brag about the amount of subsidies we give to it, and at the same time, we are prepared to say that agriculture is not the solution to the economic problems, to unemployment, or to anything else.

For many years beef and milk products have been our main exports. We are told that this year our beef exports will be much less than they were in the past 12 months and that this will have an adverse effect on our balance of payments. However, I will deal with that in a moment. So far as milk and milk products are concerned, is there any reason why some effort should not be made to try to discover some way of disposing of them without making from the milk something which is already over-supplied in practically every market in the world, and certainly the markets we get into? We hear a lot about the success of the sales of Kerrygold butter in Britain but we never seem to consider that that success means that we pay about 1s 5d, 1s 6d or 2s per pound for the sale of that butter to British buyers.

Yet it has got to be admitted that if we do not subsidise milk and milk products, the bottom falls out of agriculture. Surely it is not too much to ask that some system should be devised or some effort made to try to dispose of our agricultural products at better prices than those we are getting at present? We hear a lot of talk —although not so much recently— about the fact that we will be going into Europe shortly. That seems to be forgotten at the moment or an attempt is made to get people to forget it except occasionally when someone makes a statement because he cannot think of anything else to say.

Last year there was overproduction in the Common Market of over 2 per cent in milk products. This year it appears they have gone overboard completely. For that reason if we go into the Common Market, that is no solution to our problems with regard to these products. What happens? What do we do? I have already paid the tribute to the Minister that he above anyone in the country, and particularly in the Government, is the one man who knows more about the problems of the Common Market than anyone else. While the administrative heads in the Common Market are anxious to cut down on the price of milk and milk products because of the fact that they are being overproduced, the political heads will not allow this to happen. Naturally they are politicians and they have to be elected again while civil servants have not. So the politicians will keep the price up even though they know this is not a paying proposition. Eventually the time must come when the price must drop.

We are also told that we would have an export market for beef but there was a 9 per cent shortfall last year and it is likely to disappear in the next 12 or 18 months. In any case, the type of beef we produce is not much favoured in Europe. The most serious aspect of all is that there is growing unemployment in the Common Market. Therefore there is no point in looking towards Europe as a solution to that problem. So we are back again to our own resources. This country has been producing certain types of fruit and vegetable. The amount is pretty small and has been dropping. At one time it was impossible to find an Irish apple in the shops except for a few months around Christmas. Now it is impossible to find an Irish apple in the shops at any time of the year unless you make special representations to someone to buy them for you. Apples have been imported and naturally the price has gone skyhigh.

I am told that early strawberries have to be imported from the Channel Islands because we do not grow them here. We do not grow the early vegetables and we do not grow the early flowers which could be grown under glass. The reason is that no one has yet gone to the trouble of trying to find out if this can be done, and I am assured that it can be done. The result is that we are not producing the kind of fruit and vegetables which we could. We are not even supplying the home market. That is one case where there could be very substantial expansion in agriculture.

The number of people leaving agriculture has been consistent, between 11,000 and 14,000 per year. This includes farm workers, farmers' sons, small farmers and whole families. Statistics are peculiar because they do not show the true picture. At any rate something in the order of 11,000 to 14,000 human beings are leaving agriculture every year, and it seems it is now accepted that this must continue for a considerable time. We are told the reason is that production and income in agriculture are not sufficient to maintain them there, and that those who were prepared to accept a lower standard of living some years ago are not prepared to accept it now, compared with what they could get across the water, or in employment in industry if they could get that employment. I do not know whether the Government have seriously tried to solve that problem or whether they have ever set their minds to it at all. If we have reached the stage where they say these people are leaving and must continue to leave, they have not bothered to look for a solution.

There was a question on the Order Paper today about the £17 grant for a farm labourer. I interrupted Deputy Clinton at the time to say that £17 was not an incentive to employ a farm worker and I never considered it was an incentive, because no farmer would be daft enough to keep a farm worker and pay him £300 to £500 a year just because the local authority would reduce his rates by £17.

It is £17 on the rates.

It is a reduction in the rates.

It is a reduction of £17.

Presumably the man is worth his keep as well.

He is, of course, but if he were getting £500 a year, the employer would not decide to keep him simply because he would have to pay him only £483. The £17 makes no difference one way or another.

Neither will he keep a sow for £5.

I will not compare them: I am talking about human beings. Sows are in a different category. So far as employment is concerned, I believe there will have to be a better income for those in agriculture. I am referring to farm workers. I hope the Minister will persuade his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, to introduce during the year the Bill he promised he would introduce to give farm workers the same holidays as are given to other types of workers, that is, a minimum of 18 days. Farm workers seem to be considered to be second-class citizens. They get 14 days as against 18 days for others—and that is a minimum of 18 days.

There was a time when it was possible for small farmers to get certain other temporary employment to supplement their household budget. Now it is not so easy, particularly when we find that in certain areas it has been decided by the Government that a farmer who never worked for hire could draw unemployment assistance the whole year round and work his own farm, while in other parts of the country, if a farmer works for six, seven, eight or 12 months and stamps a card and pays for the stamps, he will not be allowed to draw unemployment benefit—not unemployment assistance—if it is assumed that he is able to earn over 10/- per day. I had an instance of one man who had a wife and ten children and who travelled 28 miles on a motor cycle to work with Bord na Móna. When he lost his job, he discovered at the labour exchange that he could not get any payment because the State decided he did not live in what was designated an undeveloped area. If he lived a few miles away across a county border, he could draw unemployment assistance or the dole the whole year around.

Agriculture is not getting a fair "do". The State must see to it that a better incentive is given to those engaged in agriculture. The Land Commission have set a target of a 40-acre farm for those who are lucky or unlucky enough to get a holding from them. Yet, the State apparently is prepared to decide that a man with over 20 acres should not be entitled to draw certain benefits, even though, normally, he would be entitled to them. This is the sort of double-thinking I do not understand. Perhaps the Government do not understand it themselves.

The Minister says he is doing something for people on social welfare benefit and social welfare assistance. He says he will give 7/6d per week to adults on unemployment assistance or non-contributory pension—the assistance classes, as we call them—with effect from August next and to those who are stamping cards—the benefit sections—from 1st January next. This happens every time there is an increase. It is pushed back for four, six and, in some cases, as much as eight months. I do not think this is fair. I do not think any Minister for Finance who does this is giving proper consideration to those unfortunate people. Nobody wants to draw unemployment assistance, unemployment benefit, sickness benefit or any of the other benefits unless it is necessary to do so.

It is rather extraordinary that, while the benefit was increased last year and this year for adults, no increase whatever has been given for children in either year. Does the Minister think children up to 16 years of age do not eat any more, when the cost of living goes up, or do not cost any more to keep? Is there any reason why, in the past two Budgets, he has completely excluded benefits for children? There must be an explanation for it. I do not know what that explanation is. The Minister has offered an increase to adults, but, for the second year in succession, he has left children out.

The Minister also completely ignored claims by various organisations over the years, and by the Labour Party— particularly in the past few months— for an increase in children's allowances. He commented when reading his statement, that the system of allowances for children is being reviewed. He did not say when he is likely to have the result of the review. He did not say whether or not the object is to change the whole system and to bring in a reasonable system. He did not say what it is all about.

At the present time, the 16th birthday is the highest age in respect of which benefit can be drawn for children. Income tax relief is allowed in respect of children attending school or serving an apprenticeship to a much higher age. Something should be done to try to give an allowance particularly in respect of children whose parents are attempting to keep them at school. I shall refer to the subject of education later but, again, I should just like to say that free secondary education, of which we hear so much, means not one damn thing to many parents, particularly to those with a big family, if the choice is between going to a secondary school and getting a small job at 14 or 15 years when they can bring in a little income to supplement the very sparse family income.

If the Minister could provide for an increase in children's allowances, which would encourage parents to keep them longer at school, he would be doing a good job and meeting, partially, this serious problem. As it stands, nothing has been done. My bet is that when the Minister is bringing in his next Budget there will still be a review going on: I hope I am wrong. From my experience of investigations of very many things carried out at top level, they take an awfully long time. I am afraid this is likely to take an awfully long time, also.

I think, too, the Minister made a bit of a mistake—possibly the Minister for Social Welfare is responsible for this—when he did not introduce, as was suggested last year, some type of disability assistance the same as unemployment assistance. We know that the man who has no stamps is able to draw unemployment assistance or the dole. If he stamps a card and has the minimum requisite number of stamps, he can draw unemployment benefit for 12 months. Men and women who have stamped cards and are ill draw disability benefit. If they have only 156 stamps, or less, they draw it for 12 months, after which they get nothing. If they have not any stamps at all and if they are unemployed, they can draw the dole, but if they are ill, they cannot draw anything. They are left destitute unless the home assistance people come to their rescue. It seems a reasonable suggestion that some type of benefit of this sort should be introduced. The Minister, in his wisdom, did not do it last year and did not do it this year. If he is sitting on those benches and is Minister for Finance when the next Budget is being framed, this is something to which he should give top priority. It is something which is badly needed. It is something which would very much be appreciated by very many people.

The Minister for Finance might also talk to the Minister for Social Welfare to see if some alteration can be made in the ridiculous arrangements whereby a female agricultural worker or a domestic servant must have ten years stamps before she can draw unemployment benefit. It is just plain stupidity that this situation should be allowed. There is no reason for it. It is so petty that the Minister should, if he can, take the necessary steps to have it remedied.

There is, I think, in the minds of some people an idea that workers like to be unemployed, that, if they can get something for nothing, no matter how small it is, they would prefer to be unemployed and getting benefit or assistance rather than working. I have as much experience of workers as anybody else in this House. With very few exceptions, most of the men and women I meet would much prefer to be doing a day's work and getting an honest day's wages for it than to be drawing something or getting something which, in fact, is not something for nothing but which is described as something for nothing by those who just do not understand the position properly.

Another matter I wish to raise may not directly concern the Minister for Finance or his Department but, because he is a senior Minister in the Cabinet, he might have a say in relation to the system of investigation for certain benefits. I believe that investigation officers who go down to the country and bring in sick men the week before Christmas and decide they are fit for work, and leave them without a halfpenny in their pockets over the Christmas period, cannot be called Christmas. That was done last Christmas on a fairly wide scale. The Minister should see to it—as far as he can—that that does not happen again.

Last year old age pensioners were given the benefit of a certain type of free travel. Since then not many old age pensioners whizz around the country in buses because they can travel for nothing. When people are 70 years of age they are only too glad to stay at home and have a little comfort. Some of them, of course, travel and are grateful for the facilities given to them. They have also in certain circumstances been aided in regard to electricity. We know that the ESB were not very co-operative about this because they still insist on the special service charge which puts electricity beyond the means of these old people. If they are asked to pay the monthly charge there is no hope of their meeting the ESB bill and, therefore, they have to do without the electricity.

This year the Minister says he will give free radio and TV licences to these people. However, it may be that a man who has been working all his life may not have enough to allow him to rent or buy a TV set. I think that a non-contributory old age pensioner who is living on his own, as he must be in order to qualify for the free licence, would want to be a magician to be able to produce a new set out of his pension or have the money to rent a set. It is too much to claim that this is a concession because it is not. It will facilitate certain people. Many of them would be very much happier if they got an extra few shillings now to help them keep body and soul together than the promise of a free radio or television licence. Many of them never saw a television set and many of them, even if they have seen one in a neighbour's house, will never own one.

There is another matter which surprises me and, perhaps, the Minister might think it over. If a person who lives alone finds that he is unable to carry on without applying to his local county council who usually make arrangements to have him taken into what is known as the local county home—the cost of keeping that person in the county home can range from £5 to £10 per week according to the services and the age of the home and many other things—the State is not prepared to contribute more than about one-third of that. Has the Minister ever thought about that? Would he not consider that many of these people would be much happier if they could get a little extra to enable them to remain in their own homes?

I go to these places and talk to the people in those homes. Most of them admit that they miss the companionship of their neighbours and, without exception, the reason they give for having to go into the county home— and they usually say it is a grand place to be in—is that they could not afford to live on whatever pension they were getting. Having regard to the price of coal and the price of food we can readily understand how difficult they must find it to make ends meet if they are living on their own and getting what the Department of Social Welfare allows them to live on per week.

There is one other matter to which I should like to refer. It is a matter which is far more relevant to the Minister for Social Welfare. For some extraordinary reason a system has grown up in the old age pension section and the widows section of the Department of Social Welfare whereby if a book is changed or lost or has to be altered for any reason the person concerned is left for months without getting a re-issue. I have made complaint after complaint about this. I have great respect for the officials of the Department of Social Welfare and the Minister who is most courteous but I think it is a bit much that the people depending on a few shillings should be kept waiting for months because somebody is too damn lazy to send the book.

A problem has arisen in regard to old age pensioners and to those in receipt of IRA pensions. The fact is that if they are working, as so many of them have to do in order to live, they are taxed for income tax purposes on the combined income, whatever wage they get plus the old age pension : if they are single and have over £6 10s 0d or if married and they have over ten guineas per week. Recently, in this House, there was a request that people in receipt of American pensions would not be taxed on the American pensions. At that time I asked the Minister to make a similar provision for old age pensioners here. He said he would. I wonder has he? If he has, I am sure the House will agree with me that the case for giving these people tax free old age pensions and tax free IRA pensions is unanswerable.

They are getting little enough without taking 7/- in the £ off them for income tax. Maybe it is not too late. Certain alterations were made last year to give concessions to certain people and, perhaps, the Minister might consider now if he can do something about this. It would be appreciated a lot more than the concession given to the sur-tax payers. It would mean a lot more to these unfortunate people than to people who can afford to pay whatever tax is put on them. An extra concession of £10 a year to a man with £7 a week is far more welcome than a concession of £100 a year to a man with £5,000 to £6,000 a year. If the Minister thinks over it, he will agree that that is so.

Over the years I have been arguing with the Minister and his predecessors in this House over the whole question of income tax. Again and again, I pointed out that I considered it very unfair that a man who has of necessity to use a vehicle to get to work—let it be a car, motor cycle, scooter, or what have you—should not be able to claim any rebate on his income tax because of the upkeep of that vehicle. The Minister in reply to a question in this House told me that he thought my arguments were fair but that it would be too difficult to give the concessions I sought. I hope I am not misquoting the Minister. I asked him again if he would consider it in the Budget debate and again in exchange across the House he said he had considered it but that it was not easy to do it.

I know that there are problems and that the Minister with the wave of a wand cannot do everything. I can see no reason why four or five men who club together and buy a car, pay for the petrol, the repairs, the tyres, the tax and insurance, and everything else that goes with that car, and travel 40 miles to work, work a hard day on a building site and drive 40 miles home again should not be allowed to claim a tax free rebate on the upkeep of that car, while an employer if he lives beside them can travel 40 miles in the middle of the day going to his job— to his office, perhaps—or to another job, driving home and claiming full tax rebate because the car is used in the course of his employment.

It is a very simple matter and it is a situation which is causing a lot of unrest. If the Minister wants to check, he will find that, though I am talking about the extreme case, the man who travels a long journey—I can give him hundreds of cases of people who travel short journeys of up to five or ten miles—such people would not be able to hold their jobs unless they had a means of travelling to and from work. They are people who could sign on at a labour exchange and because of the size of their families, could get as much each week as they would get for all their hard work, certainly as much as they would get after taxes had been deducted. However, the Minister says no rebate can be given to those people. I ask him to have another look at it because the case is too strong to be brushed aside in that manner.

Another problem which the Minister did not seem to see when I pointed it out to him more than once is the case of the breadwinner of a family, living with his parents and perhaps his sister. The parents get old, the father dies, the mother is not drawing the old age pension because she has not reached the appropriate age, the sister is looking after the mother and doing the cooking. That man goes out, works his day hard, brings the wages home to keep the house going and yet he can get no consideration as far as income tax is concerned because the mother and the sister are not considered to be dependent relatives. This is a case which should be and could be dealt with by the Minister and I ask him to do everything he can about it even at this late stage.

The whole question has been debated here by various Deputies of the amount of money being made available this year under different headings. Deputy P.J. Burke was satisfied with the housing situation. He was satisfied we—I assume that "we" meant the Government—were doing a wonderful job with regard to housing our people. He must not have read the evening newspapers because if he had, he would have seen a report of a certain number of people talking to the Lord Mayor in the city of Dublin the other evening. Those people did not seem to agree with the Deputy or with some of the statements he made. One woman said she was living with 14 others in a couple of rooms. There was a case of a husband and wife who had become separated because they had to go to live with in-laws as there was no other accommodation for them.

The Deputy has sufficient experience not to take cases of that kind without investigating the background and all the circumstances.

I am prepared to give the names of the people concerned and if a reputable newspaper like the Evening Press publishes the names of those people, I am sure the Minister would not say it is not the truth.

I should still like to know the full facts and the Deputy, as a public representative, I am sure, has been codded from time to time in these cases.

The Minister can be assured that I will check a story well but if, on the front page of an evening newspaper, we have photographs and names and addresses and, better still, no denial by anybody that the statements made were true, I am afraid I must accept them as being true.

I am not saying those statements are true or untrue but the stage has now been reached when the fact that a thing makes the front page of an evening newspaper makes it less likely to be the truth than otherwise. The Deputy will agree that, being a member of a local authority, being in touch with local authority affairs, he should know the full facts and circumstances in each case before accepting them.

If the Minister says the statements in the evening newspapers were untrue, I will accept it.

I did not say that at all.

Then the Minister must accept them on their face value.

That does not follow.

I am afraid it does. I have seen no denial.

I have seen headlines in the evening newspapers which subsequently turned out to be complete and utter fabrications.

Where names and addresses were given?

It does not arise on the Financial Motion.

I must bow to your ruling but we are talking about expenditure on housing, and if Deputy P.J. Burke can come in here and say everybody in Dublin is satisfied with the housing situation, I am entitled to say he is talking through his hat, a fairly sizeable one. That arises——

In fairness to the absent Deputy, he did not say that.

He did not put it in those words and I have not been long enough here or in the diplomatic service where Deputy Burke apparently served his apprenticeship, to be able to put it in the same language. After thanking the Minister profusely, he said the Government were doing a great job in regard to housing.

Generally. The Deputy is not a member of Dublin Corporation or Dublin County Council. He does not represent Dublin city or county in Dáil Éireann as Deputy P.J. Burke does.

If Deputy Andrews considers he is entitled to make comments here and nobody else is, he can do so when I have finished if he is allowed to do so by the Fianna Fáil Party.

I am annoying the Deputy.

The Deputy is not annoying me. That does not annoy me at all. I am perfectly entitled to comment on a report published in the Dublin evening newspapers, and if Deputy Andrews has any comment to make on it, he should write to the editor.

I am not fighting with the Deputy or with the evening newspapers.

The Deputy is not fighting with anybody. If Deputy P.J. Burke felt so much about this, he should be here to defend himself, and Deputy Andrews might wait a little longer before he starts to defend Deputy Burke. Though I am not a member of Dublin Corporation or Dublin County Council, I am a member of Meath County Council and we have a situation in Meath, a fairly sizeable county, that for a long time we have not been able to get houses built, not because we could not get sites but because we could not get money. Last year, however, some money started to trickle through.

Hear, hear.

However, we now find it impossible to get the Department of Local Government to sanction the schemes and we are now back where we started. If the situation is so wonderful in Dublin that houses are being built for everybody who wants them, I can assure the House that in Meath some people have been waiting ten years for houses. They may not be living in one room as they are in Dublin but they are living in very bad houses in overcrowded conditions and we cannot get houses built because the Government will not sanction the money to have them built. Anybody who wishes can check that and if he still doubts it, he can wait until Tuesday next when a question will be put to the Minister for Local Government, and he can listen to the answer and find out whether the housing situation in the country is as wonderful as some Government speakers would have us believe.

I am perfectly satisfied that as far as availability of money is concerned, the position last year was better than it was the year before, but I am satisfied also that the Government are now trying to have it both ways. The Minister for Local Government will tell us here that there is plenty of money for housing, but then when the housing scheme is submitted to him, he will get out of it by failing to sanction the money.

I shall now go from housing to roads. We find that the Department of Local Government at the present time are adopting an extraordinary attitude towards the finances of local authorities: we find the amount of money being made available for road repairs, road upkeep, is being fiddled in such a way that most local authorities are finding it extremely difficult to carry on their work or to maintain the staffs which they had on road work. Despite the fact that wages during the years have increased, the same amount, or a lesser amount, of money is being made available to local authorities to have the work carried out. Indeed because of the fact that the county council which I serve some years ago tarred or blacktopped all the roads in the county, the Department of Local Government cut off £98,000 of grant for the year and they now have to make do with the small amount of grant they get. The Department was asked to revise roads and reclassify them some years ago so that more money could be made available to maintain county roads and main roads. This reclassification has not come and the only reason for that is that if it comes, much more money will have to be made available to the local authorities so the easy way out is for the Minister to sit on it, because by sitting on it, he prevents the matter from being dealt with at all.

There is another problem with regard to employment which I referred to earlier and this is the question of State employment. We have here extra moneys being made available for the various Departments mentioned in the Budget. An amount of money is made available and the impression is being given that this should result in extra work or extra activity, but if we take into consideration the amount of this money being spent on wages and the fact that the State must some time bring their rates of wages up to a reasonable level, we find that the amount of activity will not be any greater, and as a matter of fact, it may be even less this year.

While we have heard time and again Ministers of State lecturing people on the necessity of having good labour relations, I think I am entitled to say here that the labour relations with regard to State employment at the lowest level, at the labouring level, are atrocious. This is a shocking situation. It takes up to two years to get an interview with a State Department to discuss wages and working conditions, and when the interview has taken place it may be as long again before a decision is made.

There are some very courteous people running those Departments and possibly if one speaks to them on the telephone or writes a letter to them, he will get a very courteous reply, but it appears that somebody is waving a big stick at the top and saying: "You must not do this." I understand that there is some kind of a body called the Inter-Departmental Group who meet for the purpose of arranging what standard of wages or what conditions should be granted to the employees of the State and these people seem to be able to prevent any move forward. I would ask the Minister as Minister for Finance, the Department which must ultimately decide whether or not the claims of the workers are granted, to get after those people and tell them to have a little bit of commonsense. I know it is grand. They can sit back and if the man out in the forest goes on strike, it does not matter. Trees are not planted or attended to and that is it, but if there is supposed to be Christian charity, and Deputy P.J. Burke was talking about the Fianna Fáil Party being, I think, the Christian Socialist Party, God bless us, if they are the Christian Socialist Party, then the Christian socialists employed by them, the top civil servants, should see to it that the people who are employed at the lower level get a fair deal. I am sick and tired of making representations on behalf of people working for £7, £8 and £9 in the year 1968, attempting to get a decent standard for them and finding myself running up against a stone wall.

There are quite a number of other matters which I would like to deal with but many of them have been dealt with already by other speakers and I do not want to repeat what they said, but I would like to pose a couple of questions to the Minister before he leaves for his tea, which I assume he will be doing very shortly. First of all, he announced that he was abolishing Schedule A and Schedule B income tax. Would he say if the abolition of Schedule B tax means that in future farmers can be taxed on income? I was always under the impression that Schedule B tax was a type of protection, that since they were being caught under one, they could not be caught under the other. Perhaps the Minister when he is replying, if he has not the answer now, would let me know if this is so and if the protection they had has been removed and if the sky is now the limit?

I have answered that : no.

OK. If the Minister says so, that is fair enough.

Secondly, has the Minister considered introducing any type of a graded rate system which would give some relief to people who are paying high rates out of a very low income? I know of people who are on old age pensions. Some of them, many years ago, had a house or house property given to them by a father or a husband and the position is that they have to pay rates on the property out of their pension.

We have abolished Schedule A for such people.

But you have not abolished rates.

Well, you have abolished them for the 20 acre farmer and the unfortunate old age pensioner, you must admit, is a whole lot worse off than even the farmer, as bad as he is.

In the case of the old age pensioner or any other person occupying his own house, the Schedule A abolition will represent a considerable easement.

The Minister is well aware that that is not so because they have got no other income except their old age pension. The Minister for Social Welfare will ensure that if they do own a house or appear to own it, they will get 5/- a week less non-contributory old age pension than anybody else. The abolition of Schedule A makes no difference to them because of the fact that the property they may own is worth very little and they have got no other income. You will find some of those people paying £20 or £25 a year rates out of a miserly old age pension. I would suggest that something might be done to improve this position without delay because these people are getting a very raw deal.

Finally, I would like to refer to the amount of money being spent on the health services. I do not know whether many people in this House are aware of the situation in regard to the health services. It appears that from one local authority to the next the arrangements with regard to free treatment—if it can be called that—change, and while one county may give a general medical services card which entitles a person to free medical treatment at all levels on a certain income, the next county, or indeed the next district, may have a different scale altogether and they may not be entitled to it according to the local authority there.

When it comes down to the question of treatment, I do not know if any other Deputy has the same experience as I have, but I get letters from all over Ireland from people who explain to me that they have been ill, have entered a hospital and on leaving the hospital, have got such a bill that they are nearly worse than they were before. There must be some way of ensuring that people are not asked to pay more for medical treatment than they can afford. In addition to that, there was the famous White Paper some years ago when the late Deputy O'Malley was Minister for Health. I am quite sure that if he had been left in the Department of Health, the Department would have introduced the system which he said he was going to introduce. The Government of the day apparently decided it would be a good idea to stall it and they transferred him to another Department. The result is that this White Paper has not yet seen the light of day, except some comments from the present Minister. As a result of that, we have a situation in many areas where a person who for one reason or another does not go to the local doctor, or dare not go to him, has to travel outside the district and pay for medical treatment.

I am not happy at all that a person who goes for medical treatment to a doctor and is sent to a hospital, if the hospital is not a local authority one, in every case gets the attention which he would get if he had been an important person. That may be a hard thing to say but I feel that our health services leave an awful lot to be desired. While there are dedicated doctors, dedicated nurses in the hospitals, and dedicated staff in most cases, there is that little weakness in the system which is causing an awful lot of uneasiness.

One other thing I want to refer to is the question of our educational services. We have been hearing an awful lot about free education. While those of us who know what has been happening appreciate that an effort was made to do something for people who otherwise would not have got a chance to avail of extra education, secondary education or vocational education, there are so many weaknesses in the present system that it leaves much to be desired. There is the bus which will not take the child out of one house, where there are two together, because it is 20 yards under the limit but will take a child from beyond it. There is the bus which does not stop at a crossroads but goes some other way because somebody suggested this is the way it should be done. There are schools which have closed down because some teacher decided that unless he moved first and got a neighbouring school closed, there was otherwise a danger that his school would be closed instead. We have all those little things.

We cannot talk about free education as long as we still have the system that when a primary school is being erected. the local parish priest has still to find approximately one-third the cost of the school. That money must be found. It is useless to talk about education being free as long as that system continues. It is useless to talk about free education when you have a system where a child who has been attending a secondary school and travelling to that school is told that because the child lives nearer to the technical school the child must go to the technical school and not to the secondary school. You cannot talk about education being free where you have that kind of thing happening and where you have a system with regard to university education that while the university authorities are satisfied that two honours in the leaving certificate is a sufficiently high standard to merit university education, this State now decides that it you want to get free university education, you must have four honours. Of course if your father is able to pay the bill, two honours will do, but if you are the child of somebody who cannot afford to pay, then four honours are necessary. For goodness sake, let us make up our minds that we either have free education or we have not.

We have a system whereby people who have a certain income will be refused free education for their children because of the fact that they are over the top. What is the State trying to do? Is it trying to ensure that too many children will not qualify? Is it afraid there will not be enough accommodation or enough money to pay for it? Is it afraid that if it agrees that two honours is sufficient to qualify, the amount of money to pay for this will be too great? There is some reason for it. The Department should come out openly and say why this step has been taken because it has left a bad taste in the mouths of an awful lot of people in this country. I mentioned here the other day, and I am repeating it now, that while it is great for the people who are preparing this scheme to lay down four honours as necessary before a pupil can get free university education, there are an awful lot of people in high places in this country who would never have reached those places if four honours had to be obtained in their leaving to get into those places.

The Minister in introducing this Budget adopted a happy note of optimism. He indicated to the House that because the balance of payments was all right, the situation was good and therefore he was in a position to present the country with an expansionist Budget. I would like to point out that every year the growth of expenditure on the part of the State is increasing but every year the growth of taxation is increasing and every year the national debt is increasing. It is quite fair to say that the reasons for this enormous expenditure are not what they should be. They are not producing, shall we say, a sound economy and equal opportunities for all.

One hears constantly of schemes that were promulgated by the Government with regard to education, health, agriculture and so on, but the fact still remains that we are now the only country, apart from the United Kingdom, which carries a large measure of unemployment. We are the only country which carries large emigration every year. Those are facts which are incontrovertible and cannot be escaped from. They are facts which do not seem to occur to those who deal in economics and finance generally. I maintain that what this Budget does is to accept the fact that the balance of payments at the moment is good, that exports recently have been improving for reasons to which I shall refer presently and as a result of that we can put increased taxation on. We can go in for increased expenditure and we are assured of expansion through the coming 12 months. In other words, everything is beautiful, and our economy is going full steam ahead.

It must have been most heartening to the Minister for Finance to listen to his colleagues about an hour ago telling him the future of Ireland was assured, things were never so good, everything was safe, houses were going to be built, there was to be free education, improved health services and so on. Most of this is on paper really. You have got to look for the tangible results. The position is briefly this. We are taxed to the capacity the public can bear. There is very little more extra taxation which can be put on except the hardy annuals we have every year of tobacco, certain types of drink which can still take it without ruining the economy altogether, and petrol. We depend largely on our trade with the United Kingdom, far too much, in my opinion. Therefore I criticise the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement for having created that situation.

Our next source of exports is the United States and after that our exports are pretty negligible. We have increased slightly our exports into the EFTA countries but that is largely due to the fact that the United Kingdom is in EFTA. Their exports to EEC have actually gone down in the past 12 months. The inescapable fact is that the United Kingdom is in financial difficulties and not paying her way at present and she is forced to take corrective measures to save the £. Those measures must directly affect us in the ensuing 12 months. The United States is in exactly the same position. So, if our two trading partners are in a position to buy from us and we can maintain our exports to them, our economy is assured but my guess is that that is not the position. The United Kingdom in the sterling area and the United States in the dollar area between them have been responsible for keeping trade going all over the world and until such time as there is a monetary change, until the principles of an international monetary fund are accepted whereby great nations as well as small ones can be cushioned against financial difficulties and balance of payments problems, no country is secure. Therefore, I applaud to some extent the courage of the Minister for Finance in trying to expand our economy. He is taking a certain considerable risk and it may well be that he will have to come back here before the end of the financial year if trade does not make the progress he envisages and impose a restrictive Budget.

There are several reasons why the situation should be made to appear a happy one. Those are political reasons and they are that the Government, exercising their own judgment wisely or not, are going to impose a referendum on the country and therefore must try to gain all the public support they can. Therefore, Deputies like myself, are perhaps somewhat suspicious in regard to this great expansion that is coming and this cheerful statement about an expanding economy. We feel it is somewhat doubtful, that it has a political background and is being utilised to secure support for the Government and that they hope to win, shall we say, the Limerick by-election and also the referendum.

Be that as it may, the Budget itself does not really make any change in our economy. The Minister has banked his all on expanding exports to Britain and the US. These latter are not very big but represent our second largest asset of external trade at present. If that does not succeed, as I envisage it will not, for the reasons I have given, it means that we can expect a slump in this country and the expansionist Budget will turn round completely on itself and the Minister will have to come back and impose a restrictive Budget. The people should realise that and think realistically of what they may have to face. I may be entirely wrong—I hope I am—but all world trade indications are on those lines.

The Budget does not in any way change our present economy with which nobody can be satisfied. Nobody can be satisfied with continuing emigration and unemployment and with mass migration from rural Ireland to the city of Dublin. When the Versailles Treaty was imposed on Europe after the First World War, Austria found herself with 6,000,000 people, 2,000,000 in Vienna, the capital, with the result that it ceased to be an economic unit and they were in financial difficulties until they discovered oil. That got them out of their deficit and they were able to stabilise and improve. We have no guarantee that such a happy development will come our way. At present Dublin city is growing beyond all bounds. We have a traffic situation in Dublin where even at valley periods, it is almost impossible for traffic to move along the streets. Factories are opening all the time in and around Dublin city siphoning people into the capital and away from rural Ireland and depopulating the West and even the area I represent, the eastern counties. We have no Government plan to deal with that; it is a continuing phenomenon and at the present rate of growing, Dublin will expand more and more and its housing situation will become worse. The rural districts of Ireland will be depopulated and that does not make for a good economy. The time will come when enormous sums of money will have to be spent to deal with Dublin's traffic problem which means that money will have to be found or borrowed for purposes for which it would not really be necessary if we had an overall plan to limit the expansion of Dublin and concentrate more on rural industrialisation even in a small way.

The Minister mentioned that the number of workers on the land has decreased by 11,000. Nobody criticises him for that because it is the inevitable result of modern conditions and the transition to machinery and better methods of production. In no country is employment on the land as great as it was previously, but, as against that, in our case employment in industry only offsets the decline on the land by an increase of 8,000 in the past 12 months. Those are the figures given by the Minister. There is no plan in the Budget to offset that development. When one plans for the future of an economy and the finances of the country, one must look to the future. If we are to siphon people off the land, as is inevitable, they will pour into the cities and towns to get work. There is no real plan in the Budget to offset that. Therefore, we must try to anchor the people where they are born and reared. It may seem unrealistic to say that but it is exactly what they are doing in European countries where they have bigger traffic and other problems than we have. They have anchored their people in the rural areas. The small farmers, whom the Fianna Fáil Government as far as I can see want to wipe out, are being anchored by the institution of small industries based as far as possible on local raw materials. That is something the Minister should consider and the sooner he does so the better. If he does not do something, another Minister will have to do it in future and the longer the problem is left unsolved the more difficult the situation will be.

The country faces a situation in which Dublin and the towns are drawing the rural population away from rural Ireland. It is no wonder that we have the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, or whatever it is, being introduced to try to fix electoral divisions, with all these people going into the cities from the rural areas where small farmers existed for centuries even though they lived on a lower standard of living than one would hope to give them today. It is the duty of the Government to try to give them a better standard of living where they belong and originally came from.

Many references have been made to the agricultural industry and the Minister made one very telling remark. He pointed out that we had exported more cattle this year than before. The prices were good and that was one of the means by which we balanced our trade. He also mentioned the fact, a very lamentable fact, that our stocks were falling, which means that we are going to run into difficulties in the not too distant future if we do not replace our cattle stocks.

Basic to that is the dairying industry, and many Deputies have referred to that. It is absolutely essential that the dairying industry should be maintained because, apart from anything else, we cannot hope to build our stocks otherwise. If we take people out of milk production, we cannot hope to maintain our stocks and keep up the exports so essential to our trade here. The dairying industry is important in more ways than one. We have a dairying co-operative society in the north of my county, on which I can truthfully say the entire county is dependent. It gives quite good employment in the society itself and is a regular source of income to all the farmers, big and small, in the district. Not only are they dependent on that, but also on the sound economy of the dairying industry.

A crisis has arisen in the last few days which never should have occurred. The French have subsidised heavily the production of processed dried milk and are exporting it out of the Common Market. The Germans are doing the same, but the French have done it to a greater extent than anybody else; they are subsidising it to the tune of £224 a ton. As a result, the world price has fallen to £45 per ton. To make it economic it is necessary to get £65 a ton. The net result of that is that suddenly the factories in this country, most of which are in rural Ireland and most of which are giving the very necessary employment to which I have been referring, have been forced to say to the agricultural co-operative societies not only in my own county but throughout the country: "We cannot take your separated milk any longer."

What did the Deputy say the French subsidy was?

My information is that the factories there are getting it subsidised up to £224 a ton. But even if it was being subsidised to only £150 a ton, it would still create the situation that exists. We export the greater part of our dried produce to the United Kingdom, as we export everything to the United Kingdom, the one market only. They are an importing country, while we are an exporting country. It is nothing to them if the price goes down; it is so much better for them, because they buy cheaply from us. I am only saying this to the Minister because he said in his speech that the dairying industry was all right and did not need any assistance whatsoever. I am suggesting that unless the Minister for Finance steps in and tells these factories in Ireland that he will subsidise them—I am not asking him to do it to the extent of £224 a ton like the French—up to £90 a ton, the situation will be bleak indeed. If he does that the crisis will be over and the small farmer, not only in my constituency but all over Ireland, will be saved.

I say that to the Parliamentary Secretary in all sincerity. This is a crisis that has occurred in the last few days and could result in catastrophe for rural Ireland. I hope he will pass on that information to the proper authority and that action will be taken within the next week. There is an agitation for an increase in the price of milk. I would be happy to see it maintained at what it is, but it will not be maintained if appropriate action is not taken. Finally, let me say that if the Government do not move in the matter they will lose the by-election in Limerick.

Another point to which I wish to refer is estate duty. I have spoken long and often in the House on this question. I believe estate duty to be an iniquitous imposition on the public in general. The Minister has given certain reliefs. I have read his speech, and I am glad he is beginning to realise that there is something in the arguments that have been produced from these benches by Deputy Paddy Byrne and myself in relation to these things. It is not equitable or just that, if there is an allowance up to £5,000 in relation to estate duty, on an estate of £5,010 estate duty is payable. I am not arguing for the big landowner. I am speaking for the person with a small estate, say £15,000, which is not very sizeable having regard to present day prices. In his speech the Minister outlines the situation whereby a widow with three children was exempt from estate duty up to £13,000. I was told by a financial expert that that £13,000 would be deducted from an estate up to £20,000. I do not know if that is the case, but when the Minister is replying I should like clarification, and a lot of other people would like clarification as to whether this deduction takes place. Furthermore, the example he gave was not a good one, a widow with three children. What happens to the ordinary individual? I take it that a widow with three children means three qualified children, that is, children under the age of 16 or at an educational institution or something like that. Perhaps it is a matter more for the Finance Bill, but I am raising it now so that when the Finance Bill comes in we shall have a complete clarification of the position.

At Question Time this afternoon, the Taoiseach was questioned by a Labour Deputy on the idea of opening up trade with Eastern European countries. We are inherently conservative in Ireland; in other words, we trade with the same people. There is an opportunity of trading with these countries behind the Iron Curtain. There is a new thought developing. I hazard a guess—perhaps I am wrong—that communism as we know it, as it existed heretofore, has failed and democratisation is gradually taking place in these countries. I know from the contacts I have had up to 12 months ago that these countries are very anxious to trade with the free world. I also know, that every country in Europe is prepared to trade with them. I know, too, that they are in the market to buy agricultural produce because the communisation of agriculture has failed totally everywhere. Some of the countries, such as Rumania, which was one of the granaries of Europe at one time, are importing agricultural material now. The Government should take another look at the question of securing trade there. After all, we buy from them, we permit trade delegations to come from there and it should be the policy of this Government to look for trade whereever they may get it. These are some of the places where it would be possible to do that.

It has become more difficult for us to sell produce in the EEC. I still maintain that the Government have fallen down on their obligations in trying to export more agricultural produce to the EEC. I believe it is possible to do so economically even against a tariff. I am drawing the attention of the Minister for Finance to the fact that there is a potential for agricultural exports to the other side of the Iron Curtain. The truth is that some years ago there were huge grain surpluses in the United States of America, in Canada and Australia and overnight they were bought by the countries behind the Iron Curtain who had not sufficient grain to feed their own people. That situation still obtains. Agricultural production there is not going up, it is still going down, and this Government would be very foolish if they did not take the opportunity of sending a trade delegation there to try to improve our trade.

Before starting my main contribution to this debate, I should like to make two appeals to the Minister in regard to two small but important items. I have been approached on many occasions by ambitious young people who were anxious to get a university education but whose parents are unable to afford it. These people found jobs that they could do during the day time and attend the university at night. The complaint they make, which I think is a fair one, is that if their parents had sufficient money to send them to the university their parents would get income tax relief on their incomes but when they themselves work during the daytime, having found jobs which will enable them to remain in Dublin, and meet their university expenses, they get no income tax relief. They are deprived of it because they work themselves and because their parents have not sufficient money to send them to the university. It is a fair request that they should get relief and it is something that should not be overlooked when we are thinking in terms of tax reliefs. The boy or girl who is ambitious enough to find a day time job in order to go to a university and obtain a degree is more deserving of income tax relief than those boys and girls whose parents would have sufficient money to send them to the university.

My second appeal to the Minister is that there should be some responsibility accepted for our emigrants. Recently I discussed at some length the position of our emigrants many of whom arrive in England at a very young age and completely unprepared for the conditions they will meet. I have spoken to a priest who has been engaged on this work for approximately 12 months. He is a very sensible, charitable and hard-working man and he feels strongly that some responsibility should be accepted by the State for these people, more especially because we are not able to offer them employment at home. We are not informing them of the conditions they will encounter.

He quoted me a case in point, his most recent one, that of a 15½ year old boy who arrived off the boat in England having come originally from the west of Ireland. He had been told that all he had to do was go to England and he would obtain a job as an apprentice carpenter at £18 a week. He had been preparing for his intermediate certificate and ran away from school with the belief that he could obtain such a job. Fortunately, there was a welfare society there which caught this fellow and sent him back but it costs money to have people on duty there all the time. All sorts of things happen to our young people who land in England in ignorance of and unprepared for the conditions they are likely to meet. Were it not for such welfare societies far more would fall by the wayside than do at present. He said that it was a remarkable tribute to the upbringing of Irish boys and girls that so many of them lived good lives in England and succeeded in bringing up good families. We should recognise our responsibility to our emigrants because we cannot find work for them at home and some small provision should be made in the Budget to meet this expense. I would appeal to the Minister on these two points. It is not too late for him to make the slight adjustments necessary in the Budget to meet these expenses.

My main reason for contributing to the Budget debate is because of the lack of provision in the Budget for increases in the prices of certain agricultural commodities and insufficient provision in the case of other products. I was surprised, and, indeed, annoyed, to hear both the Minister and the Taoiseach express such satisfaction about the general position of the agricultural industry. It is hard to understand that satisfaction. I have been looking up the agricultural index of output and I find that in 1961, to the base 100 in 1953, it was 108. In 1962 it was 108.8, in 1963 it was 107.5, in 1964 it was 111.8, in 1965 it was 108.4 and in 1966 it was 108.9. This proves that output has been static for six years. How the Minister for Finance, who was himself Minister for Agriculture—and, indeed, not the worst one we have had—could express himself as being happy about the whole agricultural position surprises me. He was followed by the Taoiseach and how he also could be happy about the position, in a country where agriculture is the basis of our whole economy, beats me.

They both said that the farmer's income was good and that 1967 was a good year. I suppose we will not disagree that it was a reasonably good year but they said that in 1968 their incomes would rise still further. We can all recall that the farmers in the early part of 1966 were told exactly the same thing. They were told that as soon as the trade agreement was signed cattle prices would rise by £5, £6 or £7 a head and they would enjoy a very substantial increase in their incomes in that year. The outcome, of course, as we all know was that they lost £6 million and we seemed to be surprised that income increased the following year when there was a carry over of cattle that could not be sold except at give away prices in 1966. The economy had the benefit of these increased exports last year. To a considerable extent the successful year was due to the enormous increase in exports of cattle and beef during 1967.

We will not have that position in 1968 because the cattle are not there in the same numbers for export. Prices, however, are good. One of the extraordinary statements made by the Minister was "despite the upset to the livestock trade resulting from the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain". What he should have said was "because of the foot and mouth disease in Britain" and not "despite". Everybody and anybody with common sense knows that the improvement in the cattle trade last year was largely due to the foot and mouth disease. Certainly, I cannot see what else has happened. Our cattle were shut out of the EEC countries the same as they were the previous year and British cattle were also shut out as they had been in the previous year. Again, of course, supplies from the Argentine were stopped. For these reasons, and because of the loss on cattle, due to the slaughtering that took place during the foot and mouth epidemic in Britain, prices went up and stayed up. That, more than anything else, was responsible. It is not a case of, as the Minister says, "despite these increases".

I never remember a time when there was such dissatisfaction, such unrest and such uncertainty about the whole future of the agricultural industry. Up to quite recently farmers were being urged to increase cow numbers. The heifer subsidy scheme was designed with that object in view. Now milk has become an embarrassment to the Government, that is the situation. The price of milk is being pegged regardless of the increased costs of production. There is no provision in the Budget to increase the price of milk or to pay a subsidy to keep the industry going. If we do not go on producing milk, we cannot continue to produce cattle because milk is the foundation of the whole cattle industry.

Many speakers have expressed their anxiety about the present position in relation to milk. Many of us have been approached by farmers supplying milk to the various creameries; they have been told that no longer will the skim be taken and, where they were getting 4d a gallon for skim, they are now being told to bring it home. Many farmers are not geared to consume this skim at home. Many could not adjust their farming to consume the skim. No farmer can suddenly get sufficient calves or sufficient pigs to consume the skim. I agree with the Minister when he says that skim milk is more valuable for livestock feeding and pays a better dividend as compared with accepting the prices being offered. What will be done? Will the farmers be discouraged? Will they be told we have too much milk and we do not know how we will dispose of it? Will they be told we have enough cattle? Everybody knows that as soon as the production of something is discouraged, the product disappears.

It is only a very short time since the general manager of Bord Bainne told the country we would be 5,000,000 gallons short of milk requirements to satisfy customers. Overnight the entire picture has changed, and my information is that only 25 per cent of the skim milk is in the position of having to compete on a depressed market for the time being. I think this is an obvious case in which the Government should step in and subsidise in order to keep this most valuable industry going. Our ultimate aim is EEC membership. What branches of farming will pay us best, if and when we enter the EEC? In my opinion, we can produce milk more economically than any of the other countries involved. We have all the facilities. We have a suitable soil and a suitable climate, a soil and climate that cannot be beaten. I believe we could make a great deal of money on milk as members of the EEC. We know there is an enormous market for beef.

Deputy Tully expressed some concern; he said we were told that, if we got into the EEC, we would be in heaven as far as milk, beef and all the rest were concerned. Now, he says, the position has developed on the Continent that there is a surplus of these commodities. He is overlooking the fact that, if Britain goes in and if her normal supplies are cut off because of her entry, that will change the whole picture; it is Britain's entry into the EEC which will get us a market such as we have never had before. We should now be gearing ourselves for entry into the Common Market. We all hope to enter and, if we get in, agriculture will be expected to make an enormous contribution to the economy. We are wasting valuable time. It is stop-go all the time. All the encouragement was directed towards increasing cow numbers and increasing milk production. Then comes the discouragement two or three months back when we discussed the Supplementary Estimate for Agriculture. It was obvious, from the tone of the Minister's voice even, that we had gone far enough in encouraging the farmers to produce more. I do not know, and the farmers do not know, what they are supposed to do. What commodities are they expected to produce? In what direction are they expected to expand?

I should like to say a little more about milk. There have been enormous increases in the cost of production. These are not confined to the dairying areas. We have them in the liquid milk areas—Dublin, Cork, Limerick and so on. I can see a situation arising in which farmers will not be able to meet these increased costs of production. They are the only section of the community compelled to carry these increased costs without getting any increase in incomes. The price of their end product is being pegged down regardless of the increase in the cost of fertiliser and the increase in rates. Rates are rocketing every year. There is no man who is so much affected by an increase in rates as is the farmer. We all know that the price of fertilisers went up by about £3 a ton.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but details such as this——

Are not appropriate to this discussion?

——are not appropriate to the Financial Resolution but should be reserved for an Estimate.

I accept the ruling of the Chair, but, if I am in order, I just want to show that it is wrong that the Budget should not have provided encouragement for increased production in agriculture while the people engaged in the industry have to bear all these increased costs. Is it relevant to say that rates are increasing and why they are increasing. I have heard this discussed by various Deputies already and nobody said "Stop". Perhaps they discussed it in a different way.

The Chair can only point out that detail is more appropriate to Estimates such as the Estimate for Agriculture rather than the Financial Resolution connected with the Budget as such. On Financial Resolutions, the position generally is that the debate is confined to taxation, expenditure, financial policy and other matters only in so far as they are related to financial policy.

I do not want to dispute with the Chair. I understood that when the Vote on Account disappeared, it was in order to discuss almost any matter on the Budget. However, we will get back to the items that appertain more closely to the Budget.

I should like to hear the Minister telling this House and the farmers that he either wants them to go on producing and expanding in this department or that he wants them to close down and get back to a certain level. If in this branch of agriculture he wants them to get back to a certain level, where does he advise them to go then because he has pegged the price of barley and has told them that there is to be no increase in the price of barley even though the cost has to go up? I want some indication as to where they are to go.

There are two commodities in regard to which the price appears to be reasonable. One is wheat. We are told in the Budget Statement that nothing could be done about wheat because we had reached EEC levels: fair enough. That is a statement, and I think it is possible on good land to break out all right on wheat at this price, but I do not accept that the same goes for barley. The lame statement made by the Minister about barley is that if he were to increase the price, it would upset the pig situation. I do not think that barley growers who are not pig producers should be expected to carry the pig producers on their backs. That is what is expected, according to the Budget Statement. Farmers want guidance as never before and it is time the Minister gave them that guidance.

Would what the Deputy is referring to now be called "piggy-back"?

The Deputy can make his own contribution in a few minutes. I am trying to get to know what is in the minds of Fianna Fáil Ministers.

Deputy Molloy is playacting.

Quite frankly, I do not understand it.

Fine Gael have been playing piggy-back for years.

Did the Deputy say "piggy-back" or "piggy-bank"?

Last week, at the presentation of the £500 grants to the successful farm apprentices, the Minister for Agriculture made statements and really confounded everybody.

He hurt you.

The Minister for Agriculture said that he had no dispute with the farmers.

Hear, hear.

He said that he never had a dispute.

Hear, hear.

He said that his job was to do the best for everybody in agriculture.

Is that not true?

With that part of his statement, I agree. That is his job. However, I do not think he is carrying out that job. Words do not mean anything when a man says there is no dispute. This is affecting the entire agricultural production. This lack of co-operation, this lack of confidence, this absence of a proper working partnership as between the Government and the country, is doing immense harm. I hope the Minister meant what he said, that he wants no dispute with the farmers. If he says there is no dispute, words mean nothing. When he puts every member of the NFA off every agricultural board, he says there is no dispute. Some of these people had contributed enormously to the agricultural industry. I hope we have seen the end of it and that there will be bigness and generosity displayed— and bigness and generosity displayed between the NFA and the ICMSA, and that they will come together and provide what we need, a combined effort and unity in agriculture. Only then will we get production, that is, if they want production. As I say, I am confused and the farmers are confused. Even Deputy Corry is confused. He is not satisfied about the beet situation. The only time I can find him talking to the Minister for Agriculture is here at Question Time when he is expressing dissatisfaction. Even the members of the so-called NAC are in rebellion, and I do not blame them.

You are a great man for inciting rebellion.

If I had my way, I would have settled this years ago. The Minister for Agriculture is the one man who can settle it, as a member of the Government who started the row.

Give us your policy.

He can settle it by saying: "I am prepared to set up a national agricultural policy to give fair representation to the NFA and to the farmers generally," and the row is over. He is the one man who can settle it.

Give us your policy.

If you want our policy on agriculture——

You were going to throw all the rocks in my county into the sea.

You have taken slices off our policy already. Do you want another one? I am giving you a lot. Fianna Fáil have decided to take our health policy as being the only sensible way to provide health services and we are all glad that they had the courage to do it. If they want me to be Minister for Agriculture from the Opposition benches, I will be Minister for Agriculture.

We do not want you.

We would not wish such a disaster on the Irish farmers.

Deputy Tom O'Donnell is your spokesman on agriculture.

Deputy O'Donnell is a good fellow, and he has a wide knowledge of agriculture and could teach most of the people on the benches opposite something about agriculture.

Then you should listen to him. He is the spokesman on the Fine Gael side.

I think we have had enough interruptions.

The Member for Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown is becoming very unruly.

Being from a horticultural constituency, my interest in agriculture should be appreciated.

We all know that there has been turmoil generally in the bacon industry and that factories have been closing down because of shortage of supplies. In this Budget, the Minister is providing for a 12/- per cwt. increase in Grade A and Grade A Specials. I looked up the quotation from the factories last Monday. I find that the new increased prices which the Minister is giving in the case of Grade A Specials is 2/- less than what is being quoted by the factories; in the case of Grade A is 4/- less and in Grade L it is no less than 20/- less. Here we have the magnanimous Fianna Fáil Government giving the farmers something they already have. In fact, they have more. It looks to me as if the Government want to bring down the price of pigs instead of increasing it.

Guaranteed.

Is it not guaranteed when published in the paper as the price being offered by the factories— and being offered for some considerable time? The whole approach to the bacon industry and to the pig industry is quite ridiculous. The present so-called solution being put forward by the Government is the one that has repeatedly failed over the years. Every time the farmers decide there is nothing in this for them and to get out, there is a sudden increase in prices. It is easy to get into and out of pigs. Therefore, we have this fluctuation. Why do we not follow the example of a really successful country in pig production, Denmark? They do not increase the prices of pigs up and down. They subsidise the price of feed. They know they cannot control the price of bacon on the export market. They can control the quality of it. But, when the price of bacon drops on the export market, they put a bigger subsidy on feed and keep the gap between the two the same. They maintain the margin of profit an efficient producer can make and consequently stablise the industry. However, it is some contribution.

I do not think the increased farrowing grant in the west of Ireland is going to achieve the results expected. I do not think a farmer is going to decide to keep an extra pig simply because he gets £5 in the year for so doing. It is ridiculous to approach this problem in this way. When we looked at industry generally, we decided the right thing to do was to have growth centres. We built up all the necessary facilities for industrial establishment and activity. This is really an industry in the same way. There is no use telling farmers in isolated areas in the West that we will give them an extra £5 if they keep a sow. You must organise pig production in a region, providing a provender mill and all the services that go with it, to enable people to produce pigs economically. Then you will have a stable industry and a continuous supply. But you must ensure that the relationship between feed prices and pig prices is sufficient to leave a reasonable margin of profit for the efficient producer.

Where would you put these growth centres, in the West or in the grain growing areas on the east coast?

I would not be fussy. I would put it in the area that needed it most. I would put it in the area where the land does not matter.

You would bring the barley to the pig rather than the pig to the barley?

I would not consider the transport of barley an item to be considered. We import vast quantities of feeding stuffs from far distances. When it is so desirable to build up industry in these depressed areas, it would be well worth while to establish these growth centres or pig production centres. Indeed, it might be useful in the near future to locate them at a reasonable distance from the creameries where we cannot dispose of skim milk. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries says that this is a valuable animal feed, more valuable than the price now being offered for it as skim.

The next item is sheep. An extra 10s hill lamb subsidy is being provided. Here again I doubt very much if sufficient is being done to get this branch of farming to the point it should be at. We have had a drop of no less than 270,000 breeding ewes in four years and at the same time, wool prices dropped to half. An increase of 10s in the hill lamb subsidy is not sufficient to meet that situation. A great deal more needs to be done if we are to get sheep numbers at the level they should be at. Here is another area in which much more could be done if we looked on the matter as sufficiently important and urgent. We must have vast improvements in these hill areas in fencing, resettlement and fertilisation of the land. Then we must have a decent sheep breeding policy. If we are to get up to the level of production we hope to be at when we get into the EEC, we would want to be working enthusiastically towards it now.

I am also disappointed that there is no provision in the Budget to enable the Government to extend the pilot area schemes. We have been told here on numerous occasions about the wonderful success these schemes are and the progress being made in the areas. I am sure that is so. We are at it sufficiently long now to have some sort of pattern emerging, where it should be obvious that if we do certain things in these areas, we are going to get results and an economic return for the money invested. Many Deputies have been putting the case for an extension of the scheme to other areas. It appears to me that the only limiting factor is money. This money is not being provided and it is fair to ask "Why?" If we are going to get the agricultural industry geared for the EEC we have got to be starting now and doing the development we will not be permitted to do later on.

Today I asked a Question as to when the £17 employment allowance first came into being and I also asked what was the value of the £ then and now. I was told it came into existence in 1953-54 and that the £ today is worth 12/8 compared with that time. This is a matter that has been brought before the General Council of County Councils and the General Council of Committees of Agriculture on numerous occasions and supported by many counties. If it was considered good policy to induce farmers to employ people on their land and to subsidise it to the tune of £17 in 1953, it should be £35 now. There is a very strong case to be made for this. I am surprised that nothing has been done about it, despite all the representations that have been made.

A total of £17 million is being spent to relieve the ratepayers.

It is all right to make that sort of statement and indulge in that type of propaganda, but the Parliamentary Secretary knows that the people who are getting this relief in most cases are not the people who are getting the employment relief. They are different people altogether. They are small farmers who would not normally be employing a man.

The people who are getting the relief are those who need it most.

I am referring to a relief provided in 1953-54 which has not been improved since. I was glad Deputy Tully and Deputy Fitzpatrick also raised the question of the Schedule B tax. We have had letters to the papers—unfortunately not contradicted—stating that the removal of this tax caught the farmers in a net, that they would now be liable for Schedule D tax and that this would mean taking from the farmers something in the region of £10 million or £15 million, but the Minister, I think, has cleared this up to everyone's satisfaction this evening by saying this is not so and that, in fact, it will not have this effect.

I personally think that the overall provision for agriculture is most disappointing. I was looking through the Current Budget Tables, 1968, and I found that the increase for Agriculture is £920,000, while the increase for Defence is £1,267,000. That is a hard thing to believe.

It is not accurate.

There it is.

It is merely technically accurate. The Deputy is forgetting the £9 million Supplementary Estimate of a few weeks ago.

I am giving the current expenditure.

The Deputy is giving selected tendentious figures.

I am giving the figures supplied by the Government and the Minister for Finance.

The Deputy is not telling the whole story.

The figure under Defence is £1,267,000 and the figure under Agriculture is £920,000.

It is a gross misrepresentation, and the Deputy knows it well.

That is a hard thing to believe about our most important industry.

What was the Estimate this time last year?

I hope the Deputy will come in when I am finished and tell the House.

It is a gross misrepresentation.

The Deputy is not answering the question; he is dodging.

I want to get on to unemployment.

And quickly. You are badly caught on that one.

Last year Deputy Molloy spent an hour and a half reading a prepared statement. He got good publicity.

The figure for unemployment is somewhere in the region of 65,000, and we have something in the region of 5,000 more people unemployed this year than we had last year. That does not spell out a wonderful success for the Government's management of the country because if we are to judge their success or failure, it must be judged on their ability to find employment for our people. We have emigration at the same rate. We still have this unemployment situation.

Deputy Tully says he agrees that it is hard to find employment for people. I also agree with that, but it is something that must be pursued very enthusiastically, and sacrifices are required from many sections of the community until we get to the point where we can reduce that figure to very small proportions. In every country there will always be a certain number of people unemployed because they are unemployable. I am sure Ireland is no exception, but the percentage is far too high, more especially when we know that taxation is at such a high level here. Approximately 35 per cent of the national income is taken in taxation, the highest in the whole of Europe.

We were told some time ago that there was general dissatisfaction about the whole machinery for the establishment of industry and that Messrs. A. D. Little were being brought in to investigate the situation. That investigation has been going on for a considerable time, and it is surprising that in his Budget Statement the Minister was not able to give us any idea of the type of alteration he proposes to make in the machinery we have for the encouragement of industry here and for the provision of more employment opportunities for our people. We all know that the trend will continue to be that fewer people will be employed in agriculture. A good deal could be done to stem the flow away from agriculture, a good deal that is not being done, but it is inevitable that more and more people will leave agriculture.

If we are to find jobs for the large number of people who are unemployed —approximately 65,000, and the figure has been higher at other times during the year—a great effort must be made to make it attractive for people to come here and set up industry. I have always felt we have too many bodies doing the one job, and that there was not sufficient co-ordination between the various agencies which provide inducements and services for industry. I hope we will hear very soon from this team of experts who are working on our whole industrial organisation, and that they will be able to say: "We have a scheme which we believe will bring more industry to the country and find more employment for our people."

The Budget contains very few surprises. Many people, if they are appealed to in the right way, are prepared to make sacrifices for worthwhile causes. If the Minister were able to come here and say he had such a worthwhile cause, that he had plans for finding employment for those people, and plans for raising the incomes of the very lowly paid people in this country, other groups would be prepared to carry the tax burden required to achieve that purpose.

It is all wrong that the ordinary farm workers who are the lowest paid people in the community should be obliged to pay income tax.

Hear, hear.

There should be some way of overcoming this great difficulty with regard to farm labour.

This does not seem to arise.

If you hear me out, you will see it does. I want to talk about farm workers' income tax. You cannot have a five-day week in agriculture. You must get your week-end work done by someone. It is becoming impossible to get a single man to do week-end work because of the tax he has to pay.

That is true.

If he has a married man working alongside him, he sees the reward he gets into his hand.

He is working for the State.

He is working for the State and the usual answer is: "I'll be damned if I will work for the State." There should be some way to overcome this difficulty because it is hard enough, even paying over the odds, to get single men to do this type of work. Something must be done in the very near future about the lowly-paid farm worker. His income should be raised to the point at which he is on a level with the industrial worker. This is just making work for everyone, and making for endless dissatisfaction.

We have had a lot of discussion about strikes. One of the things responsible for much of the discontent in industrial and other employment is the difficulty of housing. Many people are going on strike today for more money because they have to get more money to meet their commitments. They have to pay £5 or £6 a week to keep a roof over their heads. This is what is causing discontent. There should be some way of relieving that load, some way of subsidising the cost of housing for most working-class people.

We have a shortage of houses and there is more discontent due to the fact that people cannot get houses. They are in general revolt. It is all right for Deputy Burke to say Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council have been doing an excellent job over the years and that they could not have done more. That is all nonsense: they could have done more. I have been a member of one of those local authorities for the past 12 or 13 years and I know there were many long spells when we simply could not get money for housing. There were many long spells when we could not get money for the extension of services and land prices rocketed. He talks about the number of houses we are endeavouring to build. In the period since 1957, I have seen the number as low as 32 houses a year in the whole county. We have to catch up on that backlog. It is nonsense to say that the whole situation in relation to housing is satisfactory. There is a small increase in the provision for housing but it will not produce any more houses because the cost of housing is increasing rapidly and because insufficient land is serviced to bring down the price. It will take some years to extend services to open up sufficient land to bring prices back to normal.

One idea which is a good idea, if it is followed through completely, is that of Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council going out and buying all the serviced land and serviceable land——

The Deputy will appreciate that that does not arise on the Financial Resolutions.

I think it arises in this way. It arises in the building industry. The building industry is extremely important in this country in so far as it employs an enormous number of men. It is extremely important that it should be kept going. I know that a large number of small builders in the general region of Dublin simply cannot get land for building and there is consequent unemployment. That is because this good scheme has not reached the point where local authorities have started to give land to the builders. Anything that would expedite this would be a very important move. I think I have said all I want to say in relation to this Budget. I am glad I got much assistance from the Deputies on the far side of the House.

We are always ready to give advice and help.

Perhaps they might enlighten us further when they stand up now to make their contribution to this debate. I missed Deputy Molloy very badly the other day when we were discussing the Wool Bill. Certain friends of his were expecting him to be here.

Deputy Clinton does need a lot of guidance.

The shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries on the Fine Gael benches has totally misrepresented the farming situation in this country.

"Spokesman" is the term normally used.

Coming, as I do, from a non-farming constituency, I am very glad the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is present to refute Deputy Clinton's baseless allegations. It is a sad day for the future of Irish agriculture when the shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries has not his facts at his finger-tips.

It is grand to be enlightened on agricultural matters by a Deputy from the constituency of Dún Laoghaire.

The shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries on the Fine Gael benches came in here to have his arguments shot down in flames by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Deputy J. Gibbons, who is a farming man. I think he made one point, which the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out——

The Parliamentary Secretary did not get on his feet yet.

Deputy Andrews must be allowed to speak without interruption.

Deputy Andrews was very difficult when I was making my speech.

I shall leave that point now. Deputy Clinton should have his facts at his finger tips when he discusses farming statistics.

The Parliamentary Secretary is a gentleman farmer. Is the Parliamentary Secretary trying to be a farmer or is he a farmer who is trying to be a gentleman?

It took me a long time to get into possession. Facts and statistics can be confusing. A person should have them on a par in order to make his case. That is just a point which I make. I do not wish to be abrasive or contentious about the matter. I am glad the Parliamentary Secretary was here to answer Deputy Clinton's baseless arguments.

This Budget has been described in many quarters as miserable, miserly and unexciting. I always wonder what is meant by the word "unexciting" in this context. Do they mean that when our excellent newscasters appear on the television screen they are breathless with excitement in announcing that this is an exciting Budget—or what do they mean? It is not a confusing and complex Budget to give food for thought to our theorists and our intellectual television soothsayers. This is a straightforward, honest and quiet Budget. It is a Budget for the times. It is a non-complicated, honest Budget. It represents the present situation and provides for the coming year in the economic life of the nation. I think it should be considered in that light. It is not an intellectual's paradise, as some people would want it to be. It is a reasonable statement of the present position and of our prospects for the coming year and it should be considered in that light.

There are three factors in this Budget on which I should like to dwell. The Minister is very conscious of the desirability of a new taxation code. I think he will favour—and rightly so— indirect taxation to direct taxation. The more money that is put into the hands of employees and, indeed, employers, the more likely they are to spend it. Consequently, if this money can be caught by indirect taxation all the better.

As I see the position at the moment, the workers in the factories in my constituency are not getting the greatest wages in the world. If they have not large families they have to pay considerable taxes on the wages they receive. It is a pity they are not given, as it were, more wages in their pay packet and whatever money they spend could be caught by indirect taxation. I think that system would be a better spending incentive.

The Minister for Finance points out that he intends to overhaul the rating system. This is a very welcome development. It has been mooted for a number of years but, to date, nothing has been done about it. We now have a firm undertaking from the man responsible for the nation's housekeeping that he will review the rating system.

The third point applies to most newly-married and not so newly-married people and concerns children's allowances. The whole children's allowances code will be examined by the Minister. In the Budget of 1969, we may have a new children's allowances code.

I should like, now, to dwell in some detail on the foregoing three significant points in the Minister's Budget Statement. Let me deal first with the second point, the rating system. I believe our present rating system is totally immoral. It makes no allowance whatsoever for those in the middle income group, and especially for the lower income group. It is a penal tax unrelated to the capacity of the ratepayers to pay and it is a source of annual worry to too many people. It is about time we got the health charges placed on the central Exchequer. Here again the money will have to be found but it would be a better system.

I know of quite a number of hardship cases in the constituency I represent—and I only speak for the constituency I represent—where people are assessed for a considerable rate and they have to pay the whole thing in one slap. In many cases, through hardship or through different circumstances, they may have to be brought to court to pay the rates. It is unfortunate that this situation should be brought about by a penal tax code, because this is what it is. I would appeal to the Minister for Finance to review as a matter of urgency the whole rating structure. There is no use in talking to me about a local rating code. This has to be handled on a nationwide basis and the first move should be to take the health charges off the rates and place them on the central Exchequer.

I do not think the matter to which I am about to refer relates to the Budget, but I am sure, Sir, you will bear with me when I mention the position in the county of Dublin at the moment in relation to the appointment of rate collectors. These men have to literally haul their personality from one councillor to another. Perhaps the councillor will have received half a dozen aspirants. Promises may be made and promises broken but it is my opinion that the aspirants experience humiliation and squalid experience in going from one councillor to another to become a rate collector. This should cease.

The matter under debate would not appear to relate to rate collectors.

That is why I prefaced my remarks with the hope that you would bear with me. However, to conclude my remarks, there should be a board similar to that of the Civil Service Commission. That is of course with no reflection on the local administration, the local authority, or indeed on the present rate collectors. There is no suggestion of their integrity being brought under scrutiny. I am attacking the system per se and nothing else, and I should like you to recognise that.

In dealing with my third point, children's allowances, I believe a means test or a selectivity test should be established for the grant of children's allowances. At the moment there is the amount for the first child of 10/-per month and that, I think, is of course ludicrous. Many wealthy people do not bother collecting their children's allowances. The less well off should be given more in children's allowances and those not in need should cease to be given the allowances. It should be graded to the person's needs, rather than to his means. From each according to his means; to each according to his needs. This has always been my philosophy and at this stage of development I see no reason to change my attitude.

The British social welfare structure is a blanket type structure. One can realise the reason for the unfortunate economic difficulties there and I believe their social welfare structure is possibly responsible for their present financial predicament. I have great sympathy for the British Labour Government. They are in grave financial difficulties and they are getting the sympathy of the world. In relation to children's allowances the blanket type system should not be allowed here.

Socialism and social justice are two distinct concepts, in my opinion, and I do not want this country to fall into the same situation as Britain. It is not necessary for me to develop the theme that socialism and social justice are two distinct concepts. They are: that is irrefutable. The Labour Party profess the socialist theme but they are 22 decent men who are elected fundamentally on their own personality and I wish we could recognise that fact. Setting themselves up as socialists is one of the great political jokes of our time.

Those of us who have done a little study of the various philosophies of the world will recognise that true socialism as such cannot work in this country: social justice and its pursuit, yes. I believe that up to this the Fianna Fáil Party has been the vehicle of social justice in this country. I am not going to say that everything in the garden is rosy. In many areas more could be done and there is no question about it. In many areas there are certain weaknesses. I think our social welfare structure could be modernised. The whole concept of payments to various people who are entitled to social welfare benefits could be modernised and brought up to date.

That is a generalisation and when one makes a statement like that one has to be broad but, generally, that is my point of view offhand. There has been general agreement in the House on the question of social welfare benefits. These social welfare benefits all come under our social welfare structure.

I was gratified to see that everybody in the House was glad that our Old IRA who are living, all those great revolutionaries, are being looked after. This is what they deserve. I think it is difficult to compensate them with money. We can never compensate them. The House will in a way be able to show their real appreciation of what these men did for our country, truncated though they may be at this time. They gave us the 26 Counties: they have not done badly. Some have laid down their lives to give us independence and those who survive should be looked after and, as far as money can pay them, they should be given a comfortable ending to their days.

This would be expected in any Christian country, to recognise the work of those men. Very few, and it is a well-known fact in the history of the world, have performed such a service. I am glad these heroes have received their reward in a small fashion. It is only what they deserve. It is only fair to say of the British that they have always looked after their old soldiers: they have social welfare benefits and they have rest homes for them until the end of their days. We have fallen down in this instance. I know a number of Old IRA men who are not living in the best possible conditions and I, as a young Deputy who came in here in the last general election, having to call on them, feel rather ashamed. We should provide as much as we can to give them the basic comforts.

The British are good in that respect to their old soldiers. They look after them, but we fall down not only in regard to our Old IRA men but to all our old soldiers, to those who have given a lifetime of service to our National Army. We should recognise their work by making provision for them, and indeed for their wives, because in the normal course their sons and daughters go away or get married and the old couple are left.

I am very glad to see that free television licences and free electricity are to be provided for these people. Equally, if I may make the point in relation to electricity and television licence entitlements, in the constituency I represent, there is an institution run by nuns, catering for 243 people. To the best of my knowledge, this institution does not receive free electricity or free television licences. It is a charitable organisation and, as a native of Dundrum, County Dublin, having lived close to that institution all my life, I know that on many occasions the nuns have had to go into the hinterland looking for assistance to enable them to take care of those people. I appeal to the Minister to extend free electricity and free television licences to such institutions which want all the help they can get. At least it would be a recognition of the great work done by those nuns who in the case I have mentioned, look after 243 people. I understand those people are of all denominations and that is important in itself. It is in the true spirit of ecumenism which we hear so much about and which is so little practised in this great Christian country of ours. However, I will deal with that at another time.

On the question of old age pensions, I believe the age limit is too high at 70 years. It should be reduced to 65 years. Deputy Murphy mentioned this and said he had put down a number of questions in relation to it. Independent of him, I have asked that the old age pension age limit be reduced to 65 years. It should be a normal thing. I know the costs of the readjustments would be great, but it is something we should move towards by reducing the age to 68 or 67 years first, ultimately arriving at 65 years. It is something that must come. We are being told that people are retiring from their business occupations at 60 years of age and at 65 sometimes. Is it reasonable, then, to expect that old people, living on their own in many instances, should be given some comfort? I again appeal to the Minister to have another look at this.

I also, as you well know, Sir, asked a parliamentary question in relation to the term "old age pension". This should be changed. Old age is a dignified condition and even I, in the normal course, must grow old. At the same time, we could use a little dignity in our terminology: "old age pension" should be substituted by the term "retirement benefit". As I have said, old age is a dignified condition and few of us have to be reminded of our advancing years. Therefore, anything that can be done in this respect should not be overlooked.

I mentioned the suggestion that the name of the Department of Social Welfare should be changed to the Department of Social Security. Again, this would be in line with the Treaty of Rome which sets out certain terms in relation to entitlements under the various social security codes. "Welfare" is not a modern term. It is a Dickensian term, a Victorian term which reeks of the welfare given to the so-called lower orders by the so-called upper orders in the middle of the 19th century. It is a legacy of the old welfare thing which should go and I ask the Minister for Finance to use his influence with the Minister for Social Welfare to become the Minister for Social Security. The benefits those people receive they are entitled to and we have a duty to ensure that where needs be, we shall give with dignity and without offence.

In common with a number of Deputies who come into the House from time to time to bring up their pet subjects, one of my pet subjects is the position of paraplegics in our society. First of all, I should like to thank the Minister for Health for instructing local authorities to give a sum of money to paraplegics who wish to convert their cars. This was a beginning, a step forward. I fear some paraplegics who work in gainful employment are not taking advantage of their entitlement from the State, thinking they are a burden on the State. People who are physically incapacitated or mentally ill cannot be so described. The State has an obligation to ensure that these people are looked after properly. That is why I used the term "entitlement".

When paraplegics work, they should be given free car taxation. That suggestion is not unreasonable because if those people had not a car, they would not be able to get to work. The implementation of my suggestion would be a tribute to their willingness to work. I believe also they should be given income tax allowances. I am not an expert on income tax law but I have been pressing this during the past three years, and if re-elected, I will continue to press it to its rightful conclusion. It is being done in England. Comparisons with England at the moment are odious but it is fair in this instance. I should like to think we are moving towards a more socially-aware era, towards a society aware of its obligations to its less well-off citizens. That which I have been advocating should be encouraged. They could be put to work by giving them these concessions by way of entitlement.

Our free education scheme came into being and without question it has been an unqualified success all over the country. Deputy Tully mentioned free buses being used down the country and the difficulties arising from this. I should like to ask Deputy Tully if those free buses were not available what would his cry be. The buses are there. In fact, Lord have mercy on the man, they are now known as O'Malley's buses. This is a great credit to the late Minister. He really opened up education in this country unknown before.

And in spite of Fianna Fáil.

I do not wish to be contentious about the man——

I have the highest regard for his memory.

He did it in spite of your Party.

Do not interrupt.

I do not see how he did it in spite of our Party. That is a point of view.

It is a fact.

These buses, which are known as O'Malley's buses, have brought people to schools who could not have gone to school but for the fact that these buses were available. This should be recognised. I have never paid tribute publicly to the late great Minister but I think we will be inheritors of the O'Malley legacy in the years to come and I do not think we should forget that. However, to get back to the question of free education and its unqualified success there is one area of weakness which I am afraid I must mention to the House. That is the position in respect of those schools which were built shortly before the building grant scheme came into operation as announced by the then Minister for Education, Deputy Lynch, now Taoiseach, in February, 1964. The problem here is that just before the scheme was announced a number of schools had begun building and they discovered that they have now got vast capital debts and, of course, the consequent interest charges to be repaid. I know of one school in the constituency I represent. It has an overdraft of £150,000 and it just missed this building grant scheme by a matter of months. I think that the Minister for Finance, through the Minister for Education, should do something for these schools, even if the Department were to make a grant on a £ for £ basis against the capital charges and against the interest rate charges so that for every pound collected by the school the Department of Education would give a pound. There are a number of parents very confused about the free education scheme as such because in some instances they have to pay £20 a year and they have to help in the running of bazaars, bingo, carnivals, et cetera and this is a pity. Education should be free in the total sense. I would ask the Minister to examine this problem as I believe he would like to see it totally free.

With regard to the question of trade unions, I do not want to be contentious but I think everybody will agree that one of the basic problems is the lack of proper communication between employers and employees and the fact, of course, that there are too many trade unions—I think the modern term is a multiplicity of trade unions—on the shop floors. Of course, there are many different employers' organisatons, too, and this should be recognised and the employers should give a lead before they start casting stones at the trade unions. This disparate number of unions on one shop floor is rather analogous to four or five Deputies in the same constituency all in competition with one another. There is too much waste in needless competition, instead of having one executive dealing on behalf of one union with one employer. This proposition of one union to one floor may be over-simplified and may be too rational but I would imagine a man of the quality and calibre and, indeed, integrity of Mr. James Larkin of the Workers' Union of Ireland recognises this and appreciates it because he has done a very good job for his own union. The idea of one union representing all interests is far better than many unions representing all interests. This is a well-known fact in any situation.

In this respect, Sir, there has been little or nothing done to improve industrial relations. We are all standing up as laymen from time to time and giving our own opinions on what should or should not be done but there has never been a statement, a sort of employer-employee charter drawn up. I feel it is important that this should be done. I should like to draw the attention of the House to a small booklet I have in my hand. It is a booklet called Development of Labour Peace in Sweden by a gentlemen of the name of Stig Gustafsson. He is legal adviser to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. Before I quote from the booklet, I want to say that I believe an answer in this instance would be a public committee of inquiry into the whole field of industrial relations with employers and employees examining their consciences and examining their shortcomings. I am not one to stand up here and say that I have no short-comings myself. I have and I recognise them and I try to do something about them. I think that if I did something wrong it might affect my constituency but what is happening in the trade unions affects the whole country. This is unfortunate. I shall quote from this booklet Development of Labour Peace in Sweden a short paragraph. It should be placed on the record of the House. It says:

In the spring of 1936 the LO Executive Committee....

LO means Landsorganisationen i Sverige which, of course, is the statutory trade union federation—

.... recommended to the general council that unbiased discussions with the Swedish Employers Confederation (SAF) be undertaken "with a view to making an inventory of such labour market questions as might be regulated or adjusted by agreement between the two organisations". The initiative resulted primarily from the activities of a public Committee of Inquiry, the Nothin Committee, to enquire into the working of industrial relations and labour peace, which published its report in December 1935. A series of proposals were presented, dealing with Government intervention in matters concerning the labour market. At the same time, the Committee proposed the alternative of voluntary agreements between the parties which would make further legislative measures unnecessary. It was this declaration of the Committee that gave rise to the subsequent discussions between the two central organisations.

That would be the employers organisations on one side and the union organisation on the other side. One can see that this booklet was published in 1968 and this report of the committee of inquiry was published in 1935 so one can see how long it takes to evolve proper industrial relations.

I should like to quote another small passage from this booklet to ensure that I am not in any way prejudiced. To indicate to the trade union the basis in principle for the deliberations and the agreements subsequently concluded a few lines from the agreement may be quoted.

It is of major interest to those gaining their income from industry and trade that work be allowed to continue. They....

—the trade unions....

are mainly the persons who suffer losses through open conflicts.

He goes on then to say:

Both parties also realise that the results gained through an open conflict very rarely stand in proportion to the costs and other sacrifices connected with the conflict. The guiding principle of the two parties has in this instance been to preserve undisturbed labour peace in view of its importance to industry and trade and to the national economy.

I would add a little bit of my own and say "to the wives and families of the trade unionists." They are doing an honourable job and they are honourable people. I would like to conclude by this further quotation:

In reality, the Basic Agreement did not deprive the workers of any negative weapon in the disputes of interest. It only deprived them of certain methods of industrial warfare that might be discrediting to the trade union movement. Furthermore, it meant increased security and better protection of the workers' rights at their place of work. Finally, it relieved them of Government intervention in the organisational methods and activity of the movement.

Deputy Tully has come in late and did not hear me on this. I will present this little pamphlet to him because I have two of them. I presume he will accept it from me because it is well worth reading.

I would be delighted to accept it. It is rather a pity you did not give it to me before I finished my 1½ hours speech.

I will conclude on that question of industrial relations. There is one other point which I would like to make and it is in relation to married allowances. The Minister has very kindly given the newly married couples £100 extra allowance. I do not know whether this will encourage people in our country to get married.

They could get that before if they got married before the 5th April.

There is some sort of survey conducted by the universities which might produce some statistics in relation to the reason why people in Ireland get married late. I often think it is the men's fault rather than the ladies' who are always anxious to get married and settle down. The Minister refers to the arts on page 50 of his Budget speech. I think the Minister will receive the thanks of all right-thinking members of the community for the manner in which he has faced up to the need to improve, by way of cash injection, our arts and to ensure as many artists and actors as possible remain in Ireland. We have a proud heritage in regard to artists and actors here and indeed some of them were connected with the revolution in 1916. I would impress on the Minister the need at all times to continue to recognise the pre-eminent place the arts have always held in this country of ours.

I was glad to hear the Minister's announcement in regard to his decision to set up three councils instead of the present Comhairle Ealaíon, one for the visual arts, one for drama and literature and a third for music, opera and ballet. The Minister stated that a sum of £60,000 has already been provided in the Book of Estimates for An Comhairle Ealaíon. He is now very generously adding another £100,000 to this sum as the amount that may be required during the coming year to meet the new expansion of activity. The legislation to establish the new bodies will be proceeded with as quickly as possible. I would ask the Minister to introduce this legislation as a matter of urgency. As I say this is an important thing, that we protect our cultural heritage for ourselves, for our children and for our children's children.

In relation to the decimalisation of the £ the Minister again has indicated that he looked for the views on all types of currency and that he received the views from a number of sources but that it had now been decided to introduce the same system as that which will be in operation in Britain. I often think that in this country we should break the psychological link with Britain. At the moment if you tender an Irish penny in any part of England it will not be accepted and if our decimal coinage will not make any change it means that an Irish citizen going to England will not have our coinage accepted. The British coinage is accepted here. I ask when this new currency is introduced that we should have it accepted in Britain otherwise it will introduce a second-class monetary system. I would ask the Minister to look particularly at this thing.

The Minister has abolished the Schedule A and Schedule B tax and in this regard I would like to thank him on behalf of the constituency I represent. I would like to appeal to the Minister to look into this question of rates. For God's sake let us get away from the present rates system. This has been going on too long and it has caused a great amount of hardship to a large number of people. This punitive tax system should be changed. I have made this statement before in many places and I will continue to make it until such time as the health charges are taken off the rates and placed on the Central Exchequer. The Minister has given some hope in this Budget that this situation will come about. I would ask him to do that in common with the introduction of a selectivity tax for children's allowances and to introduce indirect taxation rather than direct taxation. I appreciate, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, your indulgence with me for having gone sometimes outside the ambit of the Budget speech. I would ask you to convey this to the Ceann Comhairle, who was present most of the time.

I will give way to Deputy Dowling, if he wishes.

No, it is all right.

What is the reason for all this outstanding courtesy? It is very disconcerting.

Deputy Dowling and I have a perfect understanding as is indicated by the interruptions. If you read our speeches, you will see how understanding of each other we are. This Budget has been described in many terms. I would describe it as an inoffensive one. In recent times instead of using the instrument of budgeting for the benefit of Government imagination to improve the economy it has been used for other things. Instead, the Minister for Finance, on this occasion, politically, probably was well advised not to offend anyone. In fact, he had offended everyone by recent Budgets which reached saturation point and people were beginning to become fed up with the Government. It can also be described as a popular Budget, in a manner of speaking. No doubt it is popular when one looks at recent Budgets introduced by different Ministers in Fianna Fáil Governments. But what does it do? It lacks imagination; it does not stay within the scope of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, and we can guess that it gives us no idea of what it is supposed to implement under the Third Programme which is now promised.

Much has been said in the debate and there is little I can add. Most of the taxes that we use to service State-sponsored projects are regressive taxes. Deputy Andrews made what could be set down as one of the finest speeches made by a Government Deputy. He should have been speaking from the Opposition benches because most of what he said is very close to the views expressed on certain aspects of general Government policy by members of Fine Gael. He said that it was time to come to grips seriously with the present rating system. If he lived in a constituency like mine, he would have come to think more seriously on these lines long ago. However, it is nice to know that we have now converted Deputy Andrews and that he will use some influence with the Minister for Finance and his colleagues in Fianna Fáil to have this matter dealt with with the least possible delay.

Rates in Donegal at present are 4d. short of £5 in the £1. Deputy Andrews spoke about socialism not working while social justice might work in this country. People in the lower income brackets pay rates and people living in county council cottages usually pay about 10/- a week in rates alone in County Donegal. In many cases the rent is lower than the rates. A minimum rent is 7/6d while the rate would be still 10/-. This is the situation in which we find ourselves and in which the Fine Gael Party issued its policy document: "Towards a Just Society." Social justice was the main theme of Deputy Andrews' speech and I want to ask where is the social justice in charging a county council cottage tenant 10/- a week rates? That tenant is paying £26 a year to Donegal County Council. I am not the richest person in Donegal, but I live comfortably and can keep my head above water, and I want to put on record that I pay approximately twice that amount. On my home, I pay almost £60.

Let us look at the incomes of the county council cottage tenants. Out of an income of £8 10s a week in many cases, and certainly below double that figure when members of the family are working, they have to pay approximately 10/- a week or £26 a year in rates. Deputy Andrews and other members of Fianna Fáil continually preach social justice and here is something that cries out for attention, something which members of Fine Gael have been preaching since they left office. I am quite confident that had they been fortunate enough to stay in office, this matter would have been attended to more quickly. Members of the Parliamentary Party of Fine Gael have had this matter under very active consideration for the past ten or 12 years and recently in their policy document, "Towards a Just Society", this was one of the major matters dealt with. Under every heading, when it was first published the responsible Fianna Fáil Minister in the Government took the document to task and tried to make it look ridiculous. Now, these Ministers have got over the first shock and they are sorry they did not think of our ideas first. We shall deal with that later.

The rating system is wrong. I say categorically that if I were ever charged with the responsibility of being a Member of a Government or of being a Deputy supporting a Government, I would use every force at my command to have this system, which is so antiquated and which was never intended for the purpose it is now serving, abolished. There are many ways in which the burden could be alleviated, for instance, by having health and roads transferred to the Central Fund. There must be some system of rating but the present system is penal, unfair and unjust. No Deputy can say it is the best system of financing central or local authorities. I venture to say that if the calculation were made per head of the population, it would be quite obvious that the people in the lower income brackets, those earning less than £10 per week—in many cases that is a pretty handsome income in a county council cottage— pay proportionately more than people earning £1,000 or £1,500 a year. This is not a fair system and it must be corrected at some future date. There is no reason why it cannot be done now.

The Minister for Agriculture is on record as saying, when he was Minister for Local Government some two or three years ago, that the Fianna Fáil Party had under active consideration a revision of the whole rating system. Yet, at a recent meeting to strike the rate for Donegal County Council, when a motion was put forward that the council should refuse to strike a rate and become rebels in a society controlled by the Fianna Fáil Party, the Fianna Fáil group in the council refused to support the proposal. It may be said that it was popular for the Fine Gael members to adopt the attitude they did adopt; people are entitled to that opinion, but let me say categorically that when I spoke to this motion, I was quite prepared to accept the consequences. If the Minister for Local Government wished to abolish that local authority, he could do so. Sooner or later some local authority will defy central government and refuse to strike the rate. At that stage the Government will have to take action, so they may as well do so now.

The other tax which the Government introduced recently is the turnover tax, another regressive tax, a tax which again has hit the lower income group more severely than the people who are better able to pay. It would be interesting to work out how much turnover tax the average working class home pays per week as against, say, the average Deputy. In my opinion, more turnover tax is being paid by people in the working-class section of our community than by Members of this House, and they are not the best paid section of our society, in spite of what appears in the newspapers at the moment.

When the turnover tax was introduced, the Minister for Finance, who was then Minister for Justice, spoke on the subject. He was the second member of the Government to speak in that major debate. The main view he expressed—I am speaking purely from memory—was that this was a new system of taxation; it was taxation which the community would not know they were paying, 6d in the £. It was a system which would replace the traditional taxes, what he called at the time the hardy annuals, taxes on cigarettes, tobacco, spirits, petrol, etc.

What has happened? In the past three or four years we have come back to the hardy annuals, but the turnover tax remains. This turnover tax has done more to aggravate inflation than any other single factor in the present generation. No doubt it was a new idea. Certain members of the Fianna Fáil Party swallowed the pill easily and found it pleasant. When it was first introduced, many Members of the House did not really understand it, least of all the Minister who introduced it, the former Minister for Finance, Senator Ryan, who constantly referred to his civil servants during its passage. I only mention this to highlight the fact that not alone did members of the public not understand it but that Members of this House did not understand it. Even the national newspapers greeted it with acclaim the following morning and pointed out that this was an innovation, a new idea in taxation. But when the fog disappeared and when it was seen in its reality, the position was somewhat different. I give credit to the late Deputy Norton who was the first Deputy in the House to grasp the nettle and to say, "Watch it."

Immediately after the introduction of the turnover tax there were protests by all organised bodies in the Twenty-Six Counties, from the National Farmers Association to the Irish Countrywomen's Association. Everyone protested that this was a penal tax. It was not because people were refusing to pay 6d in the £; it was not because people in the higher income group thought this was going to be a penal tax; basically it was because people in the lower income group would be paying more on foodstuffs, clothing, footwear and indeed on every other commodity going into the average home. That was the reason there was such a rebellion against that system of taxation which the Minister for Finance now seems to believe is not just as popular as he thought it was when it was introduced.

The turnover tax started a spiral of inflation, and while inflation will take place in any economy no matter what Government is in power, I believe the function of the Government is to battle with inflation. I am quite satisfied that if the Government fought inflation, they could arrest it and the effect would not be as severe as when the Government avoid their responsibility, and we get the inflation this country has known over the past five or six years and which hurts the people in the lower income bracket. This is what Deputy Andrews and other Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party call social justice. I believe that the turnover tax was not only unjust but immoral. When the Fianna Fáil Party found themselves so unpopular immediately after it came into operation in November of that year, they refused to fight a by-election pending in the city of Cork until the spring of the following year. Then the ninth round wage increase was given purely to buy the votes of the people in Kildare and Cork. Might I put on record the noted fact that the people who were refused increases first were members of the Defence Forces and the Garda Síochána? I do not have to point out to the House that the vote of the Defence Forces is more noticeable in the County of Kildare and the city of Cork than in any other constituencies in Ireland. However, this was not done because the Fianna Fáil Party believed that the ninth round increase was necessary. It was because they were so unpopular with the electorate if they had lost the two by-elections, there would have been a general election and they would have been forced out of office. This is the cost the Fianna Fáil Party asked the country to pay so that they might cling to office, which they did successfully.

They did not hurt the higher income group in the same way or to the same extent as they hurt the lower income group. This was, as it were, a secondary consideration. It was not any more than that. This is the consideration the Fianna Fáil Party have given to the lower income group. Deputy Dillon coined the phrase "while the poor grow poorer and the rich get richer" and this is what has happened since the turnover tax was introduced.

He borrowed the phrase from James Larkin.

Would you abolish the tax?

I would.

Check with your leader on that point. He would not.

I speak for myself and for my Party and we have put on the records of this House that we will remove the turnover tax from food, clothing and footwear.

Why not take it all off, if you feel so badly about it?

We will give serious consideration to that, and we will send the Deputy notice of it. Your partner has said that Fine Gael have as many policies as an insurance agent but Fianna Fáil have as many programmes as you would find outside Croke Park.

(Interruptions.)

The income tax code is neither fair not equitable when you consider the position of the lower, middle and higher income groups. The code has not been changed for ten or 12 years. Ten years ago a single man earning £6 10s or less a week was free of income tax. That was a reasonable wage in those days, certainly more valuable than it is today. The adjustments in Schedule A and Schedule B tax are not going to help the single person who is paying tax. It will not help the lower paid workers, the county council labourer, the farm labourer or the builder's labourer. The working classes will not benefit by removal of these taxes. However, some of the people in the higher incomes group will have a definite advantage.

The Minister mentioned that the social welfare benefits are being increased, but so are the contributions. If we examine the position, we find that people earning £1,200 plus are not in insurable employment and therefore do not contribute to this fund. If the Minister promised an increase in these benefits, he also indicated that the contribution will be increased. This is robbing the poor to pay the poor; it is not robbing the rich to pay the poor. There is an old Donegal saying that it is giving a drink to a man out of his own bottle. This is in keeping with the theme of Deputy Andrews' speech when he talked about social justice. Under the heading of social welfare, we should examine the various systems on the Continent and get away from the traditional system here, which is linked with the British system which we have attempted to copy. The British system is envied by many nations not because it is the best but because it is the longest in existence and it has been developed. Other countries have social welfare problems of their own and I believe it would pay us to get away from the traditional system which has been very much influenced by what happens in Great Britain.

With regard to social welfare, it is suggested we should examine the Continental system. Deputy Andrews mentioned the new decimal coinage. We have no difficulty, apparently, in accepting this monetary system. Why then, should we have any difficulty in accepting the social insurance system operating on the Continent? Has any serious thought been given to that system?

There is another aspect and I am grateful to Deputy Tully for prompting me here: if we introduce the decimal coinage, the smallest unit will be 2½d.

Not at all.

Would the Parliamentary Secretary enlighten me?

You can have half of 2½d.

The smallest coin is the one-hundreth part of a £ and the £ is the unit.

If the £ is the unit and it is worth 100 pennies——

We used to have farthings, you know.

Not in decimal currency.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary suggesting we should have a new halfpenny?

So the smallest unit will be a 1¼d.

I agree it may be beyond the ingenuity of Fine Gael to grasp that one could have a smaller unit.

Let us examine the decimal coinage systems of other countries. They are all units of 100. You have the one-hundredth part of a dollar in the United States. Every decimal system is one unit, but now the Parliamentary Secretary introduces half or the two-hundredth part of whatever system we operate. Another Deputy from the same constituency as the Parliamentary Secretary had a system of monetary reform.

(Interruptions.)

The Parliamentary Secretary should get in touch with the Treasury Departments in other countries and advise them that their systems are out of date and we have no intention of copying them. We will improve on theirs.

It is a pity the Deputy did not read the Budget Statement.

I did read it.

The Deputy obviously did not read about the new halfpenny.

Then read it again.

I will. But the real point I want to make is that this currency system may impose a heavy burden when it comes to price increases and turnover tax. The lowest unit will be 2¼d. If the turnover tax is increased from five per cent to ten per cent, how will the Minister work out the calculation on one unit of a new penny, if I may so describe it?

Fianna Fáil published two programmes for economic expansion, not plans for but programmes for economic expansion. Both programmes have been failures. The word "social" has recently been incorporated into the title. No doubt the "Third Programme", like its predecessors, will also be a failure, not because the people will not want to make a success of it but because of the Government's deceit; the Government feel that, if they can convince the people they have something to offer, then the people will vote them back into office.

It was Deputy Seán Lemass who first introduced this idea, though it was not actually conceived by him, in 1959. He did not call it a programme; he called it a five-year plan. This five-year programme promised many things: 100,000 new jobs was one of the catchcries. All sorts of catchcries were used in the general election of 1957 to capture the imagination of the general public: "Wives, bring your husbands back from England"; "Get your sons and daughters out to work."

The first one was an inter-Party Government one—"Bring back the emigrants,""Come back to Erin," and so on.

That was different: they came back.

But they went again.

When Fianna Fáil got back.

Deputy Lemass got his overall majority in this House as a result of those promises—one of the biggest majorities Fianna Fáil ever enjoyed. He had 76 Deputies and there were a few Sinn Féin who did not take their seats. He got a clear mandate to implement all the promises. But it is not the success or failure of programmes that matter to Fianna Fáil; it is getting into office and staying in office. No matter what the cost, stay there! When history comes to be written Seán Lemass will not have his name engraved therein very deeply because his contribution is too small to merit any worthwhile recording. When he reached the point at which he could promise no more he bowed out. He probably has other ideas in mind; I suspect he has not fought his last major election. Reading the report of what Deputy Faulkner, Minister for Lands, said in Louth recently, it is obvious he is slightly off beam. I know he is a Pioneer so I cannot accuse him of being drunk but, when Deputy Lemass introduced his five-year plan, he was not very concerned about who would be President in 1973; he may be more concerned now though.

I said the Second Programme was a failure. Its biggest defect was the lack of planning in the field of education. Maybe this is because when it was introduced the Fianna Fáil Party and the draftsmen directly concerned with that programme were not alive to the requirements in regard to facilities for education. When the policy document, "Towards a Just Society," was published, one of its first critics was Deputy Seán MacEntee. He was reported in the national press as having said in the very early stages of the general election campaign that was proceeding at that time that the idea contained in the document was good but that it was beyond the power of the Irish taxpayer to pay for it; it was too ambitious and would collapse because it was too costly.

That criticism was nailed by Deputy Declan Costello in a speech made in the city of Dublin. Deputy MacEntee had spoken in Limerick. The late Donogh O'Malley, who was then Minister for Health, said that the policy document, "Towards a Just Society", would require closer examination and there was no further criticism from the Fianna Fáil Party. I have the highest regard for the memory of the late Donogh O'Malley, a man who gave great service to the nation and whom I respected and will always respect.

We all do.

He was a realist. If a positive plan was presented, it did not matter to him who the author of it was. It did not matter to him whether it was a Fine Gael or a Labour production or a private Member's motion moved by a Fianna Fáil back-bencher. There were forces within his Party which were inflamed or no other reason than that it was a document devised and submitted for public scrutiny by an Opposition Party. This was the only reason why Deputy MacEntee criticised the document, "Towards a Just Society". Of course, Deputy MacEntee is on record as having criticised many ideas. He jumped in first to criticise that document. I wish to go on record as saying that I believe that when the late Donogh O'Malley examined that document, he felt that it was something with which he agreed and that, irrespective of the author, if he were given the responsibility of implementing that policy he would do it.

Is it not true to say that having examined it he said he agreed with most of it?

Exactly. I do not wish to take away from the late Deputy O'Malley but there is another name that must be associated with the present policy in education that Fianna Fáil are operating.

He also said that there was no mention in the document "Towards a Just Society" of education.

It is certain that there is no mention in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion of education.

That is the trouble.

When he said it, Deputy Lindsay was not in a position to contradict it.

When Deputy O'Malley's name is used in connection with this advance in education, there is another name that must be coupled with it, the name of Deputy Declan Costello. I do not wish to to diminish the stature of Deputy O'Malley. He was a realist and in spite of certain political forces he implemented 95 per cent of the points made under the heading of education in the policy document "Towards a Just Society".

There is one aspect of education in respect of which Fianna Fáil have remained dumb. The Irish language is dealt with in the document "Towards a Just Society." The Fianna Fáil Party have accepted every other aspect of that policy. They have improved on it slightly but, basically, generally speaking, the policy now being implemented by the Fianna Fáil Party is the same policy as spelled out in that document, except with regard to the national language. I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to put on record the Fianna Fáil attitude towards the national language.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but at this stage such detail is not relevant.

I do not wish to come in conflict with the Chair. I wanted to say those things and, having said them, I am prepared to leave it at that. The Budget has done nothing at all to help agriculture. Deputy Clinton, the spokesman for Fine Gael on agriculture, has dealt in great detail with this aspect of the Budget and I should like to deal with it in a general way. I want to point out, as a Deputy representing a rural constituency, that most of the schemes which appeared to have promise that were introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government in the last four or five years have been failures. The heifer subsidy scheme which was introduced by a former Minister for Agriculture prior to a by-election in Roscommon promised so much that the members of this Party criticised it as being unreal and unattractive and on the ground that it would benefit only the larger farmer and would do nothing for the livestock industry which, basically, is promoted by the small farmer, there were cries from Government benches that this was criticism solely for the sake of criticism.

Let us examine the situation. When the heifer subsidy scheme was introduced, any farmer who increased the number of heifers he had in his herd in a previous year by a certain number could claim £15 for every heifer he had on his land. I know farmers who took full advantage of this scheme. It was their opinion that because farmers get so little, this would not be a matter that would disturb their conscience. These farmers produce bullocks. They got out of that side of the livestock industry for one or two years and introduced heifers, drew the £15 subsidy for each heifers and went back to bullocks again. This did nothing at all to improve the livestock industry. There is an old saying that the economy of the country rests on a bullocks, you back. If you must have bullocks, you must start with heifers. When they suggested that a straightforward £5 heifer calf subsidy would be much more beneficial to the agricultural community than the confused idea which Deputy Smith, as Minister for Agriculture, had about a £15 heifer subsidy scheme, the people on this side of the House were criticised during that by-election campaign from public platforms and were told that this was criticism for the sake of criticism.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 2nd May, 1968.
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