I am sorry the Taoiseach has to leave the House because I wanted to ask him what does he think this Government are doing to the country.
Committee on Finance. - Financial Resolution No. 4: Wholesale Tax (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
(1) That, with effect as on and from the 1st day of January, 1969, wholesale tax imposed by section 2 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1966 (No. 22 of 1966), shall be charged, levied and paid at the rate of ten per cent in lieu of the rate of five per cent specified in sections 7 (1) and 11 (1) of that Act.
(2) It is hereby declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution shall have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, 1927 (No. 7 of 1927).
—(The Taoiseach.)
I do not want to interrupt Deputy Dunne, but may I say, Sir, that I am not deliberately leaving the House? Not anticipating that the debate would carry over into today I made a number of appointments. I apologise to Deputy Dunne.
Deputy Dunne is honoured.
I did not mean that the Taoiseach was deliberately leaving the House, but I am sorry that it so happens that he has to leave. However, in his place we have, perhaps, a greater culprit in the shape of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, Deputy Carty, who moves behind the scenes with an unerring and undeviating malevolence, especially against the people who happen to reside in the eastern portion of this country, as we all well know.
He is not that bad.
I want to ask him a question: what hand had he and what hand had Deputy Paudge Brennan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government, or anybody else in Fianna Fáil, whose bright, shinging faces light the Dáil this morning, what hand had they in this infliction upon the Irish people which we have all read about in the morning papers in the shape of a 50 per cent increase by CIE in travelling charges? Did they have any say in it at all? Was my colleague to-be in South-West Dublin, Deputy Fitzpatrick, consulted in this matter which, no doubt, he will be asked to approve at some stage by his Government by way of his vote?
(Dublin): 25 per cent.
25 per cent. The Deputy is proud of that. He speaks of it as if he were proud of it.
It is 50 per cent.
Fourpence increased to sixpence represents an increase of 50 per cent. At least it did when the Christian Brothers were giving me the leather.
(Interruptions.)
Order. Deputy Seán Dunne on the Financial Resolution.
I am glad to see that we have roused from their couches some more of the satrapy of the Fianna Fáil Party who will be having to answer, I hope, before the people for this malfeasance in the immediate future. If the people had the opportunity today to do so they would run you from office and from this Dáil like redshanks, but you do not want that. You want——
Take it easy.
I will take it as easy as I choose. Nobody will interrupt me and get away with it.
(Interruptions.)
Order. Will Deputies allow Deputy Dunne to speak?
We are talking about bus fares. Did you ever hear of them? I want to know what hand did you have in increasing bus fares on the people of Ballyfermot and Crumlin and Bluebell and Walkinstown and Inchicore, the people you will be trying to mislead again in a couple of months time?
(Interruptions.)
The Deputy should direct his remarks to the Chair instead of to the Deputy.
Listen to the exponent of the Rules of Order. He is not well in the door and he is trying to teach us the Rules of Order. Try to learn something from the master of the Cork County Council; spend 20 years at his feet and then you can come in here, but do not come lecturing us about Rules of Order.
(Interruptions.)
Is there any Ceann Comhairle here? Does this man recognise you at all, Sir?
I suggest Deputy Dunne be allowed to make his speech.
I have already asked Deputies to allow Deputy Dunne to make his speech.
Deputy Dunne is not in the least upset by interruptions.
(Interruptions.)
Order.
That was his lot when some of those gentry did not know where this House was and will continue to be, but that is the load one undertakes when one becomes a Member of this House and speaks with any truth about the condition of the people. I have often noticed that. It is a peculiar phenomenon that when you raise your voice in this House or anywhere else on behalf of the vast mass of the people who are the inevitable sufferers when it comes to a question of an increase in the cost of living, you are set upon as by a pack of ravening hounds who seek to silence you. That has happened to me time and time again, but thanks be to God, whatever else He may have deprived me of for my sins, he left me with fairly effective lungs which by dint of constant exercise at church gates have stood me in good stead.
The Deputy had better start draining the Shannon now.
No. I want to come to the matter of the green-eyed monsters. We all know, I am sure, about the green-eyed monster to the north of Katmandu.
I thought it was Ballyfermot.
It is not to the green-eyed monster to the north of Katmandu that I want to refer but the Green-eyed monsters to the north of the River Liffey, Anna Livia.
The colonel's daughter smiled.
I will not travel down that road. The green-eyed monsters seem to have collected together in one residential area, so to speak, north of the River Liffey. They are so close to each other that they are watching each other all the time. Lately we had one of the leaders of this ensemble playing the pipeman at the rising of the moon and threatening Derry's walls from Clontarf. It is puzzling to note this attack of middle aged impatience with the border from one who lived most of his life cheek by jowl with the Border. Deputy Blaney waited for the stability of middle age before becoming a violent Republican. The ghost of Brian Born is said to walk in the neighbourhood of Clontarf.
They blame Deputy Blaney but it is not really he.
It struck me as an indication of the complete lack of appreciation by Deputy Blaney of the people he is dealing with. An image of Deputy Blaney as a great politician who can win all elections has been built up. You could send him to darkest Africa and he would come out with a Fianna Fáil TD. That is the grand illusion. Of course, people neglect to observe the fact that when a by-election takes place there is a mobilisation of the self-seekers, the axe-grinders, the planning proposers, the rate collectors, existing or to be, the henchmen, the State boardsmen of every conceivable kind. They flock into the area and flood their gullets with gargle, and treat anyone within arm's reach to get the maximum electoral support for the individual who happens to be carrying the banner of the soldiers of destiny of that time. They win the election by the pressure of influence and a vulgar display of wealth and the presence or absence of Deputy Blaney the great politician is of no consequence.
Indeed, that view is confirmed by the referendum. It is a well-known fact that the chief protagonists of that disaster for Fianna Fáil were the two Bs, Deputy Blaney and Deputy Boland. Did they not lead the Fianna Fáil Party down the road of woe, down to such an extent that it is highly probable that they will never make any reasonable recovery? With his essential lack of ability to appreciate the true political situation — and this in his Achilles heel which has not yet been fully exposed — Deputy Blaney does not grasp the political situation. There is a special antenna which makes a person immediately responsive without having to consult anyone and which makes him communicative to the fullest possible extent, which Deputy Blaney has not got. I leave aside entirely his failure with the farmers. This imposture about republicanism is too much. Fianna Fáil Deputies would want to have very short memories to believe that kind of dross. Of course, some of their memories must necessarily be short since they were not even in the process of formation during the period of the war.
I will not go back over that unhappy period although I could wax very bitter about things which I witnessed myself about the Fianna Fáil Party so far as republicanism is concerned. I do not see any point in rehashing that history because as I suggested last night the people are tired of it anyway. They are too concerned with the problem of how they are going to live today and tomorrow to be immersed in the past and in nostalgia and bitterness, although I know this is the very lifeblood of some of the old survivors here. They cannot open their mouths without talking about something that happened in '98 or some similar time. Time will settle all that. Did we not have the spectacle of the Taoiseach and Captain O'Neill all "palsy-walsy" in the very recent past? Before that we had the sight of the former Taoiseach, Deputy S. Lemass, suddenly appearing in Stormont. I was there once myself on a different earned to that of Deputy Lemass but I was not made as welcome as he was.
Were you trying to join them?
I did not hear that remark. It seems to me quite obvious that there is an open fissure in this Government. It is to be expected because when you get political impostors joining together the only common denominator which unites them is self-advancement and self-seeking. However much they may preach about idealism or pragmatism the chain which links them together, these people who are political mountebanks and adventurers, is the chain of self-advancement and selfishness. When the prospect of self-advancement diminishes and there is every possibility appearing that the Government of which they are members has not a great deal of future then, in fact, the splits begin to become apparent. It is an open secret that there are splits in the Fianna Fáil Cabinet.
I am anxious to know what degree of Governmental responsibility do the Ministers accept in regard to the bus fare increases coming on the heels of the financial proposals here. One cannot but refer to the savage imposition of the increases in the bus fares. They will affect bus users all over the country and people of all classes who use CIE in any shape or form. It would appear that the increase is 25 per cent across the board.
What about the 56 per cent increase the employees got? Who will pay for that?
The employees of CIE have been grossly underpaid for years.
They got a 56 per cent increase over the last few years.
The employees of CIE have very low wages. They are working for £11 or £12 a week.
Somebody has to pay for their increases. Do you want the State to pay them?
Let me say this. The Dublin bus system has always made a profit. It may be that the other urban or near-metropolitan bus systems have done so as well. I know from Questions here and from statements made by that most reticent, taciturn and uncommunicative of Ministers, Deputy Childers, the Minister for Transport and Power, who deemed it his duty to maintain CIE, like the IRA, under oath bound secrecy that the Dublin system has made considerable profit always. Every time CIE was in difficulty, or seemed to be in difficulty, we had the policy of saying the Deputies had no right whatsoever to ask what caused these difficulties, or to examine by way of Committee the methodology or workings of CIE or any semi-State body. We, the mere elected of the country sent here with the alleged authority to go into every aspect of the national activity and economic activity of the State, are denied the right to go fully into the methods of running CIE, not that one wants to go into the day-to-day workings.
The increase in the bus fares has been calculated to increase the cost of living more than perhaps any other thing, as has been remarked in one of the editorials this morning. It spreads all through the community and will be passed on in price increases. Probably we will have to initiate another demand for wages. Who is going to blame a man looking for an increase if he lives at the top of Ballyfermot and works on a building somewhere in Milltown and has to catch two buses to get to his job? The bill for his bus fares could easily run to 35/- or £2 out of his average weekly wage of £12 to £14. This would be 35/- to £2 to get him to work and back again before he meets the cost of the very high differential rents or provides for his children, their schooling and their travelling costs, or the cost to his wife of going to the shopping centres. It is also announced they are going to narrow the stages and increase the minimum fares. In the name of God, who do they think they are? These people I refer to have made CIE a profitable institution. Now the company, in the most inequitable way possible, are still further increasing the bus fares.
If they are making a profit why do we have to subsidise them to the extent of £2 million a year?
The Dublin bus system——
It is always "Dublin" with you. It is Ireland that is troubling us.
The increases are on the people of Dublin.
Why have we to subsidise them?
There are some degrees of unenlightenment — I use the word because any other word would perhaps be unsuitable——
You mean ignorance?
——some degrees of unenlightenment which are completely unpardonable. You ask why are we being continually asked to vote moneys to subsidise CIE. Moneys have been voted here to subsidise CIE at the request of the Government. So far as the representatives of this House are concerned, we have had a minimal amount of information on this. We are presented with a speech by the Minister of the day and told that it is our duty to propose this in order to avoid a crisis in CIE. It has been perfectly plain, as has been admitted by the Ministers, that the Dublin bus system has made a profit and that the rest of the country, particularly the rail system outside Dublin, is making a loss. That is why it is subsidised. That is why the Government have to rush to its aid. The interjection of the Parliamentary Secretary, which I know was meant to be helpful to me——
Do not be fooling yourself.
——has nothing at all to do with the position. If the people had the chance in the morning, the Government would get short shrift, what with the tax on cigarettes, tobacco, beer and the wholesale tax — another pervasive tax which must surely affect the cost of living in the most fundamental way. I am sorry if I am interrupting Deputy Corry's conversation.
Deputy Dunne.
Thank you. I am sorry for interrupting the Deputies'tête à tête.
I would hate to miss a word.
The Deputy will need a lot of patience because there is a long time ahead.
Carry on.
We would not like the Deputy to miss the bus.
We will not take a bus to Rahoon.
You are welcome at any time. Solve your own problems.
The Deputy should take an example from the tolerance, the Christianity displayed by the people of Ballyfermot. Go up there while you are in Dublin, young man, and go to the place on the Ring Road near Kylemore Road and look at what we have done for these people and are proud and happy to have done.
Hypocrisy.
(Interruptions.)
I wonder in this context, will I be forgiven if I refer once more to the erstwhile best seller, the Second Programme for Economic Expansion? I remember — I do not know if everybody does — when the Minister for Finance — the very able Minister for Finance who, unfortunately, has suffered a mishap and whose speedy recovery and return to this House we look forward to — foretold — and it was printed in the paper — a golden age for Irish industry and for the Irish economy. "A golden age"— these were his words — a thing which had not been seen for many a long day. The last golden age was expected in or about 1932. It did not arrive, whatever happened, but it was forecast; the stars foretold it for around 1932 or 1933. Prior to that I do not know when the golden age was. Suddenly, lo and behold, the Minister for Finance discovered that we were heading straight, full belt, for a golden age under Fianna Fáil and coincident with that discovery there was scattered about the market place an imaginative work called the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. This programme, of course, set out endless aims and targets much as might be set out in any grandiloquent political document which would be issued by the youngest political Party today. One thing it neglected to do was to set out how these aims and targets were to be achieved. Beyond a few pious phrases about the need to muscle in, produce more, and so on, which are really meaningless, nothing was suggested in that programme. Reference was made to a percentage growth rate. All these phrases are very useful to know because if you find yourself at any time confronted by an audience of average people, whether they are emerging from prayer after Mass or in a hall, if you can assemble a sufficiency of these mandarinic phrases like "growth rate", "below the line and above the line expenditure", "expansion", "inflation" and so on, you will so confuse the audience very rapidly that they will not know what you are talking about and you baffle them. This has been the technique — successful technique — of the Fianna Fáil Party hitherto. They have had a staff of civil servants working on this phraseology and have even invented one or two words for use.
"Mini".
I do not think they invented the mini, did they? Deputy Corry, I know, is capable of tremendous inventiveness. These words and this kind of verbiage which proliferated over the last few years gave the appearance to many people that here was a body of men who knew what they were talking about; they were using such polysyllabic words that they must know what they were talking about; they would blind you with science. In fact, it was all codology, the beginning and the end of it.
The First Programme for Economic Expansion was the production of a very eminent civil servant. If you look at such copies of it as may be discovered around — it is rapidly entering into the rare books category — you will find the name of a very able and eminent civil servant appended to the First Programme but once it was seen by the Fianna Fáil operators in Government at that time, notably the very percipient Deputy Lemass, who knew a good thing when he saw it, it was appropriated by them and it was decided that instead of its being presented in future as a Civil Service report of a vague and general nature, it would be presented as the Fianna Fáil analysis of the economic situation and that that Party would be represented as its only true begetter. Events have shown that, contrary to what was guessed at and foretold in the Second Programme, the growth rate, which I think it was hoped would be in the region of four per cent — and let me say at the outset that in talking about this I am not one who claims to understand fully what is meant by the words "growth rate"; there may be others who do understand but I do not happen to be one of them nor do I pretend to belong to them — in fact, barely made one per cent and this had, allegedly, a serious effect upon our position.
To me it proved one thing, that what I had been saying for a number of years and was the first to say in this House, with all due respect to the members of all Parties, including my own — was true. This was a colossal confidence trick, nothing more, designed to baffle the people, perpetrated by the then Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass. It was a very clever political operation. Any such programme of so-called expansion which we shall see in the future must be judged with that background in mind.
When we think of this supplementary Budget in relation to the general matter of expansion, we think of the Calvin Coolidge effort in America which brought about colossal inflation and depression, which affected the situation even in England, creating there, as well, bread queues and mass unemployment in the early '30s. That was deflation of the kind clearly enunciated in this Budget, not just moderate deflation or cautionary deflation but the dangerous kind of deflation which has been the mark of this Government since the advent of the present Taoiseach. It is the kind of deflation which brought about disaster elsewhere.
It is interesting to note that the Taoiseach, to a greater degree than his predecessor, is committed to the outworn notion of free enterprise, better described as highway robbery, in many cases involving exploitation of the market by people who happen by fortune or by manipulation or by cunning or cuteness to get a corner in goods which are needed by a large number of the people. Dick Turpin operated exactly the same type of cunning. So did John Dillinger, only they were cuter about it.
Free enterprise can be another name for robbery, though not invariably. The Labour Party believe that there must be effective efforts to give justice to society in this type of economy in order to protect the weaker sections because if they are left alone to fend for themselves in the kind of world we see about us, they will continue to suffer, they will continue to get a couple of insignificant shillings every year which has been the custom of Irish Governments to throw to them.
On this matter of free enterprise, Professor Galbraith of Harvard University, by no means a revolutionary, an irresponsible student, or a person who could be said to have a vested interest in politics, had this to say, in an interview published in The Observer recently, the date of which I have not got:
Going back to an earlier comment, are you saying that free enterprise isn't what it's cracked up to be?
Right. And it never was. What is needed is for all good friends of the free and uncontrolled and unmanaged market economy — all the enemies of planning — to take a ride back, say for 35 years, on H.G. Wells' time machine. They would see a world of no controls, no regulations of any kind, very low wages, very uncertain profits, thin markets and a great deal of unemployment. They would all be clamouring hideously within 24 hours for return tickets. And the businessmen would be first of all.
There is modern thinking in relation to management of economies. After all, it is the prime function of the Government to bring about reform, radical reform where it is indicated that it is required in order to manage the economy.
Here, however, the Government have made a hopeless mess. At the beginning of the year they are not able to estimate what the revenue would produce and what expenditure would be. As a result, we have this supplementary Budget. As I mentioned last night, in the Budget we have before us there is one item which has baffled me completely. There is an item of £4 million allowed for errors in estimation. In respect of the short time between now and the next Budget, we are allowing that figure for errors in estimation. If anybody was guilty of that in outside employment he would quickly find himself looking for another job.
They made errors in estimation in the referendum.
Of course, but that is a thing we shall be able to do something about as time goes on, or rather the people will be able to do it. I do not know, Sir, if you were here last night when I drew the attention of the Chair to the fact that the Taoiseach, in his introductory statement, indicated that this Budget, being related to the previous Budget, was concerned with matters involving such Central Fund services as agriculture, education, social welfare and health. It seems to me that these are matters to which one should be permitted to address oneself if, as the Taoiseach indicated, one did so within the province of the Budget generally.
In general terms, it can be said that this supplementary Budget has been set on the classical conservative track, the kind of policy this Government have indicated they will pursue, one which is very far removed from expansionist. It will lead to restriction of credit on a wide scale with all the evils that ensue. We had this before, I recall, early in the life of the present administration. In or about the early 60's there was a complete halt in housebuilding throughout the country. It was impossible for local authorities to get money out of the Government for housing.
Regardless of what the propagandists here may say, I say it was because not a penny could be got from the Minister during a long period for the building of houses so urgently needed. The present housing situation which has built up in Dublin, particularly, and all over the country, is the result of two things. The first is that people naturally are demanding a better type of rehousing than they were accustomed to formerly. The second is unquestionably that for a time there was a stranglehold on credit in this country exercised by the Government. Local authorities could not get sanction for money from the Custom House, from Deputy Blaney or from his predecessor. I should not speak of his predecessor because he, Deputy Smith, was there while things were completely immobile. Estimable though the man may have been during his tenure in the Custom House, monumental inactivity was the sure mark of the Department when Deputy Blaney arrived to that estate. Then, ruthless constriction of credit went right down the line to stop housebuilding.
Of course, at a later stage then Deputy Boland took to blaming local authorities for the build-up in the unsatisfied demand for housing, but basically this was the situation. The Government refused to give money for long periods for housing or for practically any other purpose to local authorities. Anybody who is a member of a local authority knows that I am telling the truth. That includes Deputy Corry.
Our situation of the ever pressing need for more and more houses can be traced back to the neglect of this Government. I do not think the housing problem has ever been attacked — and certainly it has not been attacked by this Budget — as it should be in the imaginative form it demands. Immediately after the establishment of the first inter-Party Government a record number of houses was built on the initiative and drive of the then Minister for Local Government, Deputy Murphy. Over 20,000 houses were built in Dublin city in a few years. At the same time, there remained a lack of appreciation of the fundamental fact that houses, like people, have their life. They are born, as it were, they live a normal life and they die. This will remain a continuing thing. It is essential, therefore, that local authorities and the Government should have not just a housing policy which will provide an immediate temporary solution for an existing bad situation but a housing policy which will not only solve the immediate situation urgently but which will over-build in the sense that provision will be made to have houses, as it were, to spare. Each local authority should have that as their ambition, to have houses to spare. They should not complain about having too many houses on their hands but they should have houses to spare so as to encourage those who are planning marriage, to provide shelter for those who may become in need of shelter and to provide for those who may have to vacate houses which are on the brink of death, as it were, and which are no longer habitable.
The proposal which I have suggested is not new from the Labour Party. It has been put forward many times but has never been implemented by the Government. The attitude of the Government is to barely produce the minimum number of houses they possibly can, the cost at all times being pointed to as the great deterrent. Their attitude is that, if you want a free enterprise economy, to nurture the nation the important thing is to let the commercial brigand loose in order that he may build up a fortune at the expense of everybody else. You cannot solve the housing problem or any other social problem in that way. You cannot solve the housing problem under any system other than some form of socialism. That is being accepted by thinking people the world over, even by those who have a detestation of socialism because of their own happy situation in the world. The housing problem has remained unsolved because basically there has not been the proper answer to it.
I hope that following this Budget we will have no more pretence at expansion programmes. Every action of the Government is the reverse of expansion. It is restriction in its sharpest form. Then we have the scandalous increase in bus and freight fares which CIE have announced. One would almost be led to believe that this is a kind of revenge. What is being done in the case of CIE is a sort of method whereby the Government are getting their own back on the people for having given them such a hammering in the referendum. It is hardly credible that grown men should take such a ridiculous line. They have proved themselves so utterly out of touch with the people as to force the referendum on them in spite of the advice of Members of this House long before the Bill was brought in.
We have, of course, a kind of Fianna Fáil aviary in existence now. It seems to me from this Budget that the economic hawks are in the ascendancy and the doves are for the moment in a secondary position. Deputy Corry made a remark recently about the cuckoo. The cuckoo also belongs to the Fianna Fáil aviary and there are two cuckoos there who want to unseat the principal bird from his nest.
It is a remarkable thing that, as a Party goes down and is sick, it is rent asunder by this kind of thing. Similarly in other countries we see that, when Parties are on the way down, the hawks try to get in but the cuckoos come and march in. An effort is being made to do that here. The pretended unity we see in the Front Bench fools nobody at all. Everybody is asking how the struggle is going; who do you think will get out on top; do you think the effort of the Minister for Local Government was a takeover bid and how does he feel about the referendum.
This scarcely arises on the Financial Motion.
What about the magpies? I can assure you that you have more than two.
We had a Question addressed to the Minister for Transport and Power and Posts and Telegraphs, God help us, by my distinguished colleague, Deputy Coughlan, who was here until recently but who is now gone to attend to his multifarious demands——
Too numerous to mention.
——in which he sought information about the telephones at Ballynanty Beg and Ballyowen. In the Course of the irascible and irate reply the Minister for Transport and Power indicated that the Department builds 100 telephone kiosks every year, if you do not mind. One hundred kiosks a year is two kiosks a week. What a strain that must impose upon the thousands of civil servants who work to achieve this end. Two kiosks a week. It is indicative, of course, of the whole set-up that such would be boasted about. My colleague very correctly remarked: "You should be decorated for that" and, indeed, the Minister should.
One would be tempted to trace the history of the Potez factory and the Electra factory both of which were such flops, raised such great hopes in the hearts of workers and eventuated in being absolute failures and in leaving people far worse off than if they never started. However, that will be for another time. I would also wish to cover the wide field of agriculture. The Minister has so successfully antagonised the farmers and made such a mess of things it is hard to say whether it will ever be sorted out no matter what Government happens to be in office. The only thing that can be said of the Department of Labour and the financial provision we made for it is that it succeeded in doing something which had not been done since the days of Buckshot Forster and Captain Boycott — putting fellows in jail for refusing to go to work, because they picketed. I do not think we will have any more of that kind of foolishness. I hope we will not. I do not think, in fact, we will have a great deal more of this Government although no doubt they will hang on to the last possible moment they can.
I want to make this little observation. I learned from a discussion at a meeting of the Dublin Health Authority that from the moment of conception it is estimated by the experts that it takes seven years to build a hospital. I remember Dr. Noel Browne building them inside two years and three years because he brought to the job the zeal that it needed and he produced a situation wherein tuberculosis is no longer the problem that we all remember it to have been immediately after the war when young people were dying in their thousands in labourers' cottages and in houses throughout the country for want of hospital beds. This was done by the inter-Party Government, mark you, and Dr. Noel Browne.
Yes, and tell us what you did to him.
We know what we did to him but we know what you did to him. You railroaded him.
We will have a turn in a minute with that.
I know it is pointless trying to make any impression upon the fossilised remnants of the Fianna Fáil Party in the shape of Deputy Corry whose fungoid mental approach to modern problems has long been apparent. I will join issue with him on that or any other subject at any time he cares to bring it up.
The Free Trade Agreement entered into by the Government is one of the disastrous effects of Fianna Fáil policy. A complaint has been made to me that second-hand tractors are being dumped in this country and being reregistered here as Irish assembled, second-hand tractors for use in agriculture. This has come about by reason of the Free Trade Agreement and the lowering of tariffs.
I want to conclude because I have, like other Deputies, a great deal more to do in preparation for the coming election, by making two inquiries. One concerns the Department of External Affairs. We went off to Lagos in Nigeria and when I say "we" I mean, of course, the imperial "we" in the person of that great soldier of Ireland, Frank Aiken.
The Minister for External Affairs.
I am sorry, Sir, the Minister for External Affairs. We bought an embassy there. I think the price was £15,000.
Who did he buy it from?
He bought it from the natives of Nigeria for £15,000. During the course of the last year this place has been sold for £10,000.
Who did he sell it to?
Prior to the sale costs amounting to £15,068 had been incurred on foot of rent, professional costs and site work. It seems that we spent £30,000, half of which was paid during the past financial year, and we got from the Nigerians one-third of the amount we paid out. Let nobody say, Mr. Powell or anybody else, that the Nigerians are in any way a retarded race. They are not. They are a highly intelligent people. All these coloured people are markedly intelligent.
I feel that this is something that the Deputy could discuss on the Estimate for the Office of Public Works.
You may very well be right but I simply wanted to mention the fact that we squandered this money. There is no real explanation given and I should like to know if the Taoiseach has anything to say about it. The best of luck to the Nigerians if they can get this. They got little enough in their history although one might have doubts as to their activities in relation to Biafra. However, that is another matter. It is something outside the scope of this debate.
I want to make an inquiry from the Parliamentary Secretary. Could he tell me at all when will we have the Wexford by-election? Has he any idea? It does not appear that he has.
At the appropriate time, I should imagine.
I am very glad to know that.
I thought you would like to hear it. The Deputy is running out of ammunition.
I still have Ernest Blythe and you know the possibilities he opens up.
Not on the Budget.
He was an expert on Budgets.
Cumann na nGaedheal Budgets. He had a special one that endeared the Party to the hearts of the Irish people.
I believe he is now a member of Fianna Fáil and a sort of adviser to the Minister for Finance on fiscal matters, so, if the Parliamentary Secretary feels I could go on and if he thinks I am short of material I can assure him the reverse is the case. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to dissect that gentleman——
The Chair would deprecate any such action and the Deputy is sufficiently well versed in procedure to know that.
I appreciate that and I do not want to make it any more difficult for the Chair.
I do not like the way the Deputy's Fine Gael colleague is selling him down the river.
He is on the Government side now and we wish you luck with him.
It is unfortunate that he is not here at the moment but I understand that he is to be brought back, it may well be by the Taoiseach's nomination to the Seanad and brought in as Minister here. It was done before. I should be delighted to have the opportunity of a confrontation with that gentleman. The Parliamentary Secretary will find himself in a rather invidious position then. He should exercise more circumspection. He might find himself in the unenviable position of being Parliamentary Secretary to this man. So, it is as well not to provoke me into going on about him.
Is that why the Parliamentary Secretary is so kind to him?
These things may not have occurred to him. The Parliamentary Secretary said I was running out of material. I am not but "beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach".
Where did I hear that before?
Probably from the colleague who has just joined you. These are just a few remarks by way of intervention.
I can make every allowance for the disappointment of the Opposition and especially for Deputy Dunne. I am sorry he is going as I had something to say to him. I understand the disappointment when I take up this famous election address of Deputy Fitzpatrick: "A General Election will be held on 7th April not because the Government have been defeated in the Dáil but because Fianna Fáil are running away from their Budget which is due to be introduced later in April and which will blister the people with taxation and from the by-election due in Longford-West-meath". I can quite understand the hopes that the result of the referendum raised in the people opposite and their disappointment that Deputy Fitzpatrick's old election address would not serve for another round.
I am very disappointed at what has gone on here for the past week or since this Budget debate began. I am fairly old now but it would take one back to the old days of the Molly Maguires and the muck and dirt flung. There was a time when a Government and the people's elected representatives were respected but the efforts of those I have heard in the past three days seem to be directed towards dragging this House and the elected representatives into disrepute.
Last Sunday I was looking over an old file relating to those days of Deputy Dillon's Molly Maguires and I found a cartoon of an old woman stuck in a muck heap near a big whitewashed wall. She had a broom which she was slashing against the wall saying: "Some of it will stick anyway". That reminded me of what has gone on here. We had the greatest piece of impertinence ever perpetrated in this House from a big lazy hulk leaning heavily on the shoulders of the unfortunate rural workers. The nearest he ever got to rural workers was in the turkey market but he had the impertinence to come in here and talk on Partition and what Deputy Blaney said. Deputy Blaney's father, God rest his soul, fought against Partition and so did other Deputies on this side of the House. I spent my last term in jail fighting against Partition put there by the gentlemen over there, the Partitionists, and I left that jail on 14th December, 1926. We came in here and we had a lot of cleaning up to do afterwards on the ragged Treaty they made with Britain. I am alluding to this in passing. We had this impertinence from a member of a Party that came in here and sat down with the Partitionists in 1922 to bolster up Partition.
I think the Deputy has made his point.
I do not wish to go further on that. I had hoped this debate would centre around the actual position and the reasons why the Budget was introduced, that the Opposition would go through the Budget and find some of its faults and endeavour to rectify them. I came here and listened to Deputy Dunne, this worthy representative of worthy Dublin, a city where every parasite in the whole Republic collects. They are centred in this dirty city today and everybody who can get down here is running from the north also just as they came down here in 1952 and took over the Army, the northern bucks. The unfortunate fellows who went through the war, brothers of ours, and who afterwards joined the Free State Army were ground down and the lieutenants, colonels and majors came across the Border. We saw all that and I do not want to elaborate on it here.
When I come to examine this Budget, I try to find ways and means of correction. I had occasion to refer here some time ago to the manoeuvres that are going on in this dirty city and to the fact that you can go in here to one of our principal shops like Brown Thomas & Company and find that you can——
The Deputy should not refer personally to people who have not got the opportunity of defending themselves in the House.
All right, Sir. I shall not mention any names but I shall refer to an advertisement which appeared in the Irish Times of Thursday, the 14th November, 1968, headed: “Swedish Girls have a word for it”. I cannot mention the name of the firm but the advertisement was inserted by a certain firm here in Dublin. This firm, the advertisement continues:
...give you nine days to learn it too. Pingvin — that's the word that Swedish girls use to say "welldressed man".
Again I must point out to the Deputy that this has nothing to do with the Budget.
If the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will wait for a while, I will relate it to the Budget by dealing with imports and exports, principally imports, within the next two minutes. This is why we have had to have a Budget. The advertisement continues:
And for the next nine days,... are presenting the new range of Pingvin Suits and Overcoats (plus a whole new range of Swedish casual wear) in Henry Street and Stillorgan. The Stillorgan Shopping Centre Boutique will also feature for the next nine days, an exhibition of Swedish Art and Culture by well-known Swedish artists living in Ireland. You can see the new Pingvin clothes up to 9 p.m. tomorrow (Friday) as on all Friday nights in Stillorgan and in both stores on Saturday until 6 o'clock.
That is an advertisement from a Dublin firm advertising not the goods that we want here — the goods manufactured in the industries which we provided so that we would have employment for our boys and girls.
There is a thing called an adverse trade balance which has been the cause of this Budget. From January to July of 1967 clothing, textile fabrics and ready-made articles imported into this country were valued at £14,740,000. In this year, from January to July the amount involved in the import of these items amounted to £18,317,000 — £4 million of which we are looking for in this Budget. These goods were imported by people in this city and in every town throughout the country who will not buy Irish goods. The ladies must have Italian shoes.
I went into a store here recently to buy a pair of Irish-made socks but I found that Irish socks were not stocked in that store. There are people in this city who are not prepared to give an hour's work to any Irish boy or girl in the industries that we have built up for them.
From January to July of 1967 we spent £1,602,000 on the importation of wines, brandy, whiskey and spirits. From January to July of this year the amount totalled £2,293,000. It is not the ordinary working people who are drinking the wines and gins but the very gang of parasites who have to have Swedish clothes and Italian shoes and a fur coat for the lady. They are the people who are responsible for this Budget, at least the greater proportion of it. The one objection I have to the Budget is that heavier taxes were not imposed on these items. We are looking for a remedy. Those are the matters that should be corrected.
I could not buy a pair of Irish-made socks when I went to look for them. I would say to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that people who do not stock Irish-manufactured goods should put a notice in their window to the effect: "No Irish goods stocked here." They should be compelled to do this and if I had any power over the Minister, I would tell him to run them out of this town. If the Deputies opposite studied the figures which I have quoted, perhaps, they would not come in here to throw muck.
I turn over to another page here and I think very seriously of the article I read in the Sunday Press about two months ago by a gentleman, the manager of the Irish Sugar Company, who spoke about “too much sugar” in an endeavour to prevent the Irish farmer from getting a proper price for his beet. Then I look at this document and I note that in the period January-July, 1968, there was imported into this country £866,000 worth of foreign sugar. I want to know the justification for it.
We in Irish farming have to accept Messrs. Goulding's monopoly manures and the Nítrigin Éireann company's nitrogen and pay for them what they wish to charge. When we come to put up an old shed we find we will not get a grant unless we use Irish corrugated iron in it. It is the same way right through with regard to what we have to purchase. But, when we are told to produce more, and we go and do it, we have an overpaid gentleman writing articles and telling us, in effect: "Oh, there is too much sugar being produced already. You cannot produce any more" despite the fact that we imported into this country in the period January-July of this year £866,000 worth of foreign sugar.
Then, Sir, we farmers, after 33 long years, were cut in the ration of pulp. The gentleman who said they could not afford an extra quarter cwt. of pulp, as the beet-grower's ration, exported from January to July of this year pulp to the value of £45,000. They cut the ration by a quarter cwt. per ton of beet in order to force the farmer who wanted pulp to buy it and pay a difference of £4 a ton extra. Those people who rationed pulp had so much of it that they sold £45,000 worth of it to the foreigners. That information is contained in the shipping statistics which I have in this booklet. Where are we going?
I, Sir, hold that this booklet is the most precious document issued in this country to any Deputy. With it, we can each month travel step by step with our imports and exports — from the parasites here who, through imported clothes which have cost us £4 million more in adverse trade balance in the period January-July of this year as compared with the same period last year——
Would the Deputy please give the name of the document?
Trade Statistics for August. It is very simple. Every Deputy gets it. If every Deputy spent half an hour studying it instead of raking-up mud and filth in order to turn this House and the Members in it into a seemingly disreputable mob, if they studied that document and got something to talk about, it would suit them better. They would get to the root of that adverse trade balance because they would see the causes of it. Consider, for instance, an increase of £600,000 for wines and brandies imported into this country in six months of this year. Instead of putting another bit on the pint, you could go for the wine and the brandy and let those parasites who are living here on the sweat of the unfortunate people of this country pay extra for their wines and brandies. I would make them pay for the ladies' Italian shoes I mentioned here and for the Swedish suits that this gentleman tells us he will remain open until 9 o'clock at night in Henry Street for people to look at.
Is it not time we came down to bedrock in these matters? Would one not think that Deputy Dunne's time would have been far better spent on that sort of approach than on the kind of drivel he shoved out here to us for an hour this morning and for another hour last night? Let us get down to it and take that book, examine it and work out where we made the mistake, the reason we have an adverse trade balance, and correct it. It is a very simple thing to do.
If we have a number of shopkeepers and people in this city who are living on selling foreign goods to the ordinary people of this country, to the detriment of the workers in our industries, then compel them, as I requested the Minister for Industry and Commerce here two years ago when I could not find a pair of Irish socks in this town, to put up on their windows a notice saying "No Irish Goods Sold Here." Let us get down to business instead of giving out the type of filthy muck that has been slung out here and that reminded me of the old cartoon I found in my files last Sunday where an old woman with a broom was slashing a white-washed wall with mud, some of which would stick. That is the policy of Deputy Dillon, Deputy L'Estrange, Deputy Fitzpatrick of Cavan and the rest of them here — not forgetting the eminent lawyer, Deputy Lindsay. That is the policy they have introduced into this House, the old Molly Maguire policy of mud-slinging, mud-raking and filth. I am sorry, Sir, that the House is being brought down to that level.
I came in here a long time ago with every good intention. In our time we removed practically all of the objectionable things that were forced on us under the British Treaty. We removed them all except one. I am proud to say that I was the last man in this House to leave a Free State jail after fighting against Partition. Then we have the Deputy Dunnes. I am sure Deputy Dunne was an able-bodied man sometime in his life — he is big enough at present — but he will not come in here and make a case for the people he pretends to represent. He spoke here this morning about the increase in bus fares. If any section in the community takes more than their slice of the national cake, then some other sections have to suffer. You cannot have one man with a five-day week, with so many tails on to that five-day week, and have another man who must get out to milk the cow on Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. If you have, I suggest he should be paid accordingly. It is about time we got down to thinking about that section of the community.
Deputy Dunne referred to productivity. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries told us that this year 37 million gallons of milk more than last year were produced and he gave that as one of the reasons for the Budget. He also told us that he had to provide £1½ million extra for wheat. These were the items which had to be considered in the Budget. I agree with them, but if the farmers are going to increase productivity they are entitled to know what particular line they should follow. Are we to find productivity that is not going to require increased subsidies? I know the argument that is made about the sugar imports and I suggest that the finances of that section of the community should be examined. They say that they must have cheap sugar in order to compete; but are you aware, Sir, that they are drawing two subsidies? They draw the sugar subsidy and they draw the milk subsidy as well. Let us get down to these things and have them examined properly. The farmers could very well do with the extra acreage of wheat to supply that £866,000 worth of sugar which was imported. It is not because of any collusion between the Sugar Company and the NFA in the ballot boxes in the recent election that they think they can get away with the £586,000 due to the beet growers on this year's acreage. It is a rather stiff price to pay for getting rid of me. I warned their genral manager the week before the election — he had dodged going to the negotiating table with the representatives of the beet growers to discuss the crop going in at present — that if I was re-elected on the 1st July I would be back for my 11/-.
I would ask the Deputy not to involve in the House individuals who have no means of defending themselves in the House.
I am saying that we have a demand for increased production and I am asking in what direction farmers are to expand. We cannot expand in the milk business because, if we did, we would smash it. We cannot expand into wheat because there is £1½ million extra here for wheat. We cannot expand into beet because a section of the manufacturers say that they want cheap sugar and the Government imported nearly £1 million worth of foreign sugar in the first six months of this year. I hope next week the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, when he is introducing his Estimate, will tell us the particular branches in which we are to expand. I have studied these matters as closely as I can and I have suggested as best I can the manner in which we should correct our mistakes.
We have spent an enormous amount of money by way of grants for the establishment of industries. This money was spent because one of the principles on which we worked from the very beginning, was the principle of finding work within the country for our own boys and girls and putting an end to the type of gentleman like the gentleman who was advertising Swedish clothes in Dublin. We built up those industries step by step and we are entitled to see that our boys and girls will continue to get employment in them.
This book I have referred to should be studied by every Member of this House. I do not confine it to the Government only. The mistakes that have been made should be rectified. There are matters that could be very easily corrected. This is like a doubleedged sword. It militates against our balance of payments and leaves us with an adverse trade balance. These imports deprive our boys and girls of the opportunity of earning a livelihood in industries established here at the expense of the taxpayer. I want that situation ended.
I have been faced with certain problems and, when I hear Deputies like Deputy Seán Dunne talking here about housing problems and all the rest of it, I laugh. There was no housing problem during the years of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. There was no housing problem during the inter-Party Government. Why? Because no one wanted a house. There was no work and no employment in the country and the people had gone elsewhere to find a livelihood. The more industries that are established the greater will be the demand for houses, water supplies, sewerage and so on. I suggest that the money in this Budget would be far better spent in speeding up housing schemes, water supplies and sewerage schemes rather than in building £500,000 hotels.
Hear, hear.
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but I suggest that the Estimate for the Department of Local Government has still to come before the House and that Estimate will provide the Deputy with a suitable opportunity for dealing with these matters.
I am here to discuss the Budget. I have discussed, to my own satisfaction, the reasons for this Budget and I have suggested that there are many things that could be corrected. I suggest there could be a saving of £4 million by cutting off all imported clothing, and all the rest of it. I am endeavouring to ensure that the money provided in this Budget is channelled into more urgent things. Housing, water supplies, and sanitary services are the most important priorities at the moment. As I said on an earlier occasion, I have built up right along from Dunkettle Bridge to Youghal industries in every village and I defy any man to go down to my constituency and find ten people idle in the whole of it. That was not done by the Deputies over there who spend their time snarling and snapping at Ministers. But I have done it and I am now facing the next problem. Hundreds of boys and girls who, in other circumstances, would have been compelled to emigrate to Britain or America to find a livelihood are now working in their own country. There are boys earning from £14 to £20 a week in Cork. With those wages the first thing a boy looks for is a nice girl so that he can get married and settle down. He wants a house. That is one of the reasons why there is such a demand for housing at the moment. The industries have been established.
Our first duty is to provide housing. I have a proud memory of the unfortunate fellows who, when their day's work was done, shouldered their rifles and went out into the dykes and the ditches to fight for the freedom of this nation. I have always kept them No. 1 in my mind, and not alone them but their sons and their daughters also. I have devoted my whole public life to ensuring jobs for these. I suggest now that the money in this Budget should be channelled into housing, water supplies and sewerage and not towards this lunacy of the £500,000 and £1 million hotels. I make that a demand, not a request. What benefit will accrue from the building of a £1 million hotel if, when a fellow goes into it and asks for a cup of tea and an egg, he is charged a quid for it? I remember going into the Shelbourne one night — I hope you do not ever go in there, Sir — and I was handed a menu which charged 35s for a steak.
Again I am sure the Deputy will agree that the names of people or institutions should not be mentioned.
I am sorry, Sir, but unless somebody mentions them, they will go on charging 35s for a steak. I suppose it is up to £2 now.
I am sure the Deputy will agree with me that he has now said enough about that.
That is something one is not to mention. That is the same as the individual who put that advertisement in the paper. His door should be closed. He should be kicked out of the city and so should everyone like him. We should behave as a big family, each one helping and assisting the other. You will not do that——
Would the Deputy assist the Chair now by coming to the Budget and keeping to the Budget?
I think I have kept fairly closely to it, far closer than the gentlemen who spend hours here throwing this kind of filth and that kind of filth against fellow representatives. If that continues we will wind up like the old Nationalist Party wound up after they had slung so much muck at one another. There was not the slightest difficulty in clearing them out and getting other boys in. That is what people like Deputy James Dillon are leading to.
I want to deal with one other matter. A statement was made here last week in connection with the Local Authorities (Works) Act. I want to clear up this matter. That Act was introduced by a Deputy for whom I had the utmost admiration and regard, the late Deputy P.J. Murphy, when he was Minister for Local Government. He introduced it because of his experience coupled with mine on the Cork County Council. We were charged that we did not allocate money to it. It was introduced in 1948 and we stopped it when we came into office. There was an inter-Party Government in office for about three years afterwards and they did not allocate any money for that Act. I challenge any Deputy to deny that.
What the inter-Party Government did in 1953 does not arise.
I beg your pardon, Sir. It was alluded to yesterday in the course of debate. It was said that we did not provide money for the Local Authorities (Works) Act.
It was ruled out of order as being irrelevant.
I do not want to be too irrelevant. Deputies should be honest with themselves. If they found there were so many flaws in an Act that they were not prepared to allocate any money to it, they should not blame the Governments that came after them. That is my argument.
I do not want to hold up the House. I have suggested what I consider to be corrective measures. I have also shown what I consider to be faults. Why rush to put an increase on the pint when imports of the stuff the Dublin parasites drink have increased? There is an increase of £673,000 in imports of wine, whiskey and brandy for the Dublin parasites from January to July of this year. Why not tax them?
They are taxed.
They are not taxed half enough. Those people draw an enormous amount of money in salaries. You must remember that all the civil servants and the rest of those parasites have been gathered in not only from all over the Republic but from across the Border. All the money is concentrated here. It is all spent here and this sad table of our imports has led to this adverse trade balance. We find an increase of £4 million for clothing and textiles. That is the difference in those imports between 1967 and 1968. We also find an enormous increase in imports of Italian shoes. Those gentlemen's ladies would not be satisfied with boots or shoes made in this country. The third item is an increase of over £600,000 in imports of brandy and whiskey for the first six months of this year. I say that is where the taxation should lie. Tax those luxuries and you are doing a good day's work. Tax the devil out of them.
We have a surplus of £4½ million on drink, a surplus of exports over imports.
The Deputy should read this little book for himself.
I have read it.
If the Deputy burned it or tore it up when he got it he can get it in the Library and read it and study it. He should do that instead of coming in here with a couple of buckshee lawyers who could not earn anything outside and who came into the House to sling mud and dirt and bring the House into disrepute as they have been doing for the past few days. I saw another political Party which went on with the same game. I saw the old Irish Parliamentary Party and what happened to them. They were so busy slinging mud at themselves that when in Sinn Féin we started the Volunteers we had no bother in wiping the beggars out. Now Deputy Dillon has brought in the same Molly Maguire filthy tactics. There was a rumour that so-and-so did so-and-so, and that so-and-so was one of our Ministers. When you hear that kind of filth and dirt you are ashamed to be a public representative. They should have some respect for the House. They should have some respect for themselves. If they have no respect for themselves they should have some respect for the people who sent them here, who will be kicking them out when the next election comes. I do not wish to hold up the House.
That benediction was addressed to all the Members of the House.
In dealing with this debate one must make some reference to the type of speech one has to listen to delivered here by Deputy Corry. He talks continually about mud. He described some cartoon he saw in some paper in which a lady was sweeping the floor and throwing the dust over her back in the form of mud and some of it was bound to stick. That is the attitude adopted by the Government Party in this debate. The whole attack seems to be launched on what happened during the period of office of the inter-Party Governments and usually the statement is made: "They ran away." Let us think about this.
The inter-Party Government came into power in 1948 and stayed until 1951. They came back in 1954 and stayed until 1957. They were three-year periods and that has been the normal lifetime of every Dáil since this Parliament was established. When people are offering criticism let them offer fair criticism. One then goes on to hear about the failure of the inter-Party Government. One must then ask what was the situation in this country when they came into office in 1948. The farmers were ridden and driven by inspectors. There was compulsory tillage which was not necessary. It was abolished a few weeks later. There were fewer cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry in Ireland than ever before. That was the achievement after 16 successive years of Fianna Fáil Government. These problems had to be tackled by the inter-Party Government and nobody ran away.
The first thing that was introduced was the 1948 Trade Agreement which gave our farmers the same place with the British farmers in the market for Irish cattle. After that they introduced the Land Project which drained the land of Ireland and brought it into shape after its handling by the previous Government. As Deputy Corry has mentioned, the Local Authorities (Works) Act was introduced in 1948. In Roscommon alone £60,000 was spent every year trying to give employment under that particular scheme to people who needed employment. It drained land that required drainage. It is completely wrong for Deputy Corry to say that the Government did not provide money when they came back in 1954. They provided further money in 1954 under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Just as the people of this country have now to face division of the constituencies through spite, when the Fianna Fáil Party came into power, aided and abetted by a limited number of independents, they did away with that scheme.
We also introduced the lime scheme. Up to that time there was never a cupful of ground limestone available to the farmers. Deputy Corry talked about the dockyards in Cork. I should like Deputy Corry to remember that it was the inter-Party Government who introduced the Whitegate oil refinery which gives employment to people who need employment. They built houses. They had not sufficient people to live in the houses but they cut out the red tape and provided the money. More than that, they gave freedom to the people. The people for the first time got freedom, and they got away from the dictatorship of the various Ministers in the Fianna Fáil Party. They also built hospitals and sanatoria. Deputy Dunne referred to this. Up to that time if a person struck with TB wanted to get into a sanatorium his name was put on a list with perhaps 30 or 40 names before his. Not alone was the household infected with TB before the sufferer was isolated but the whole townland was infected.
The Fianna Fáil Party can very easily forget about these things. I do not think there is any harm in reminding the House of the achievements of that Government. I did not happen to be a Member of the House in those years. They also gave a reduction in the price of butter and of various foodstuffs. One often wonders if the electorate gave them the thanks to which they were entitled.
We introduced the voluntary health insurance scheme which is doing a tremendous amount of useful work today. There is not much point in the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries speaking in this Budget debate and telling the farmers that £80 million were pumped into agriculture. He says that is much more money than last year or the year before. Does he realise the plight of this particular section of the community? Does he realise that they have to face much higher charges for their feeding stuffs purchased for their livestock? Many of them who employ people have to pay them much higher wages. They have to pay more for insurance stamps. The cost of the foodstuffs required for themselves, their wives and families is much higher. Prices for clothes and footwear for themselves, their wives and families have risen considerably. There is no good talking of increasing the figure above £80 million in the form of subsidies if the farmer, totting up his end of the expenses, found he was becoming poorer each year under the Government.
I often think and wonder about the sense of Parties preparing policies. When you look back over the years you find that the Fianna Fáil Party usually fight elections with slogans. One of those slogans some years ago was "Put them back." During the following general election they had a slogan which was: "Wives, put your husbands to work." During the last general election we had the famous slogan "Let Lemass lead on." I wonder what benefit, if any, has come from these slogans. Let us examine the last one for just a few seconds. I want to ask this country where did Lemass lead? He was not long elected as Taoiseach before he resigned and we all know what has happened the Fianna Fáil Party since then. They seem to be all jockeying for position. In particular, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries seems to be jockeying for position, whether for love or hatred of the Taoiseach. One now wonders whether he is jockeying to be appointed to the position of Deputy Leader of that Party.
I was listening here the other night to Deputy Briscoe who made another attack on the inter-Party Government. He talked about their policy in 1948 and he said that they promised to reduce taxation by £10 million. They reduced taxation substantially but I do not think the figure of £10 million was ever mentioned. I should like to remind Deputy Briscoe — he was probably not born or at least was too young to remember the Fianna Fáil policy in the 1932 election when they came into Government for the first time — that their policy read something like this: "If you want to reduce taxation, if you want to end emigration, if you want to bring back the emigrants, vote for the Fianna Fáil Party." Was any one of these things done? It is rather amusing to listen to Deputy Corry speaking about Partition and blaming this side of the House for it. I want to ask Deputy Corry what have Fianna Fáil done about Partition from 1932 to 1968. We have the Taoiseach speaking one way and the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries speaking another way about it and we have every other Member silent about it.
The question of Partition scarcely arises on the Financial Resolution.
Deputy Corry was speaking on it.
That does not make it relevant.
He can answer Deputy Corry.
We then heard the statement after that election: "Burn everything English but her coal" and "the British market is gone and gone forever, thank God". The Irish people have a short memory.
I think this year of 1968 will go down in the history of this country as the year in which the Fianna Fáil Party played politics at their lowest. The Minister for Finance introduced a Budget on 23rd April, 1968, which could be described as an "as you were" Budget. The Minister gave an increase of 7s 6d — nominal enough — to old age pensioners, blind pensioners, widows and orphans and to recipients of unemployment assistance. On that day he also increased the price of cigarettes by 2d per 20, petrol and diesel oil by 2d per gallon, beer by 1d a pint, wine by 1s a bottle, imported spirits by 6d a glass.
In his Financial Statement of 23rd April, as reported at column 66, Volume 234 of the Official Report, the Minister said:
Revenue receipts from Irish-made spirits in the year just ended were lower than in the previous year and I have decided that the home products could not be asked to bear additional taxation this year.
That clearly indicated that in this year, 1968, the Minister would not increase the price of home-produced spirits. Funnily enough, in introducing the Budget of 1963, the then Minister for Finance, Dr. Ryan, as reported at column 82 of the Dáil Debates for 23rd April, 1963, said:
This necessity has now arisen. It is not safe to rely for substantially increased revenue on the duties on only four commodities — tobacco, beer, spirits and oils — the yield from which is liable to be seriously affected by changes in demand.
These were indications by two Ministers for Finance on two different occasions that they would not increase the price of home-produced spirits. Deputy Dr. Ryan went a bit further in 1963 and conveyed clearly in his Financial Statement that he would not further increase the price of tobacco, cigarettes, beer or spirits.
In this supplementary Budget of 1968 we find that the price of the popular size packet of cigarettes has been increased by 4d; the price of beer has been increased by 2d. a pint and the price of spirits by 2d. a glass; wholesale tax has been increased by five per cent, making that tax ten per cent and, for the first time in the history of this country, the 2½ per cent turnover tax will mean 2½ per cent on a ten per cent wholesale tax.
The axe hit heavily enough the other day, but then we find that the charge for local phone calls has gone up by a penny and in the case of coin boxes, which most poor people have to use, the charge has been increased by 2d. The price of the stamp has increased by a penny. The situation is that every day is Budget day.
There was a Parliamentary Question put down by Deputy L'Estrange on 31st October to ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he would give details of the price increases approved by him since 1st January, 1968, and the commodities and services affected. There are over 300 items in respect of which the Minister for Industry and Commerce has approved an increase in the period 1st January, 1968, to 31st October, 1968. I estimate that there are 300 more increases that the Minister knows nothing about on items varying from food commodities to what might be termed in the hardware business as a needle to an anchor. I do not wish to delay the House so I shall mention only some of these. The price of drugs and medicines has gone up with the consent of the Minister for Industry and Commerce from one penny to 6/6d per item. Coal has gone up by 1/6d per cwt. Neaves food or baby food has gone up by 1/6d per dozen packets. Underwear, stockings and socks have gone up by four per cent. Biscuits have gone up by 2d. per 1b. Salt has gone up by 20/- per ton. Soups, spring and thick vegetable, have gone up by from 3d to 7d a packet. Fertilisers have gone up by an average of 7½ per cent. The price of milk has gone up by one halfpenny per pint. Bakers' flour has gone up by 6/2 per sack, shop flour by 4/2 per sack. Wheaten meal has gone up by 6/6 per sack. Soap and soap powders and toothpaste have been increased by five per cent; sugar by £8 per ton ex-factory and not more than one penny per 1b. The price of packaged and tinned foodstuffs has increased by eight per cent; jams and marmalades by 3d per lb.; bottled foodstuffs by 8/- per case; cornflour by 2d per packet; laundry charges by 12 per cent.
I could go on and on. Even since that date, ESB charges have gone up and the price of tea has increased by 4d per lb. The insurance stamp has gone up in price and we read in yesterday evening's newspapers that bus and rail fares and freight charges are to go up.
Deputy Corry spoke at great length this morning. He began by wondering what the reason was for a Budget at this time of year. God knows, it is not hard to tell the reason. The Government prepared their Budget this year on 23rd April, knowing they were facing a referendum, realising in their hearts that they had no other way of holding on to Government than by the single seat system with a straight vote. It should not have been hard for them to calculate the result. All they had to do was to look at the Presidential Election and the local elections and it would have been obvious that they were on the way out.
However, the Leader of that Party decided he would take a gamble and go for the straight vote. He took that gamble but the people of the country resented the power Fianna Fáil sought to acquire. I want to warn them seriously that the electorate are hungry outside this House waiting for them. In the interests of the country the electorate should get the opportunity they are entitled to. If Deputy Corry wants to know the reason for this Budget, the story is easily told. In April, the Government wanted to keep the tax as low as possible. At that time the Minister for Finance knew in his heart that he would have to come before the House with another Budget but he did not tell the country because he had hopes of securing a majority in the referendum.
Deputy Corry amused me this morning when he spoke about the adverse trade balance. He spoke about the wagtails in Dublin. I do not know who they are. He talked about people purchasing clothes from Sweden and shoes from Italy and about imported wines and gins. He said these should be taxed. I want to remind Deputy Corry that after the 1961 General Election Deputy Lenihan, now Minister for Education, who represents the same constituency as I do, found time to go to the town of Boyle in Roscommon, to address a Fianna Fáil cumann. It was in 1962 and he told them he had not been long a Member of the House. He said everybody was worried about the next Budget and went on: "I will tell you now what will be taxed in that Budget — fur coats, expensive jewellery." Deputy Corry was on the same thing today. The funny thing about it is that when the inter-Party Government were in power they put an import tax on fur coats and expensive jewellery. Who took it off? The present Government Party did. Still, we have Deputy Corry talking about putting it on and we had Deputy Brian Lenihan, after a general election, talking about putting it on. Who is preventing them? It is not us: they would have the full support of this Party. We submit that it is much better to tax these articles — it would help our adverse trade balance — than to put threepence on the pint and threepence or fourpence on the packet of cigarettes. We had Deputy Corry and the Minister for Education saying one thing before a Budget and on Budget day doing another thing.
This Budget will have awful effects on the building industry. When the £ was devalued, we were told by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey — I hope he will improve, that he will be back to normal health and that he will be here with us soon — that it would not have any effect. I want to tell the House about the effect it is having on the building industry. Let us take timber alone. Last June, the price of imported timber went up by five per cent and in August by ten per cent because of devaluation. Those increases will drive the cost of an ordinary four-roomed house up by £35. Last week, with our eyes open, we put another five per cent tax on, which will drive timber alone up by £35 10s per ton.
The story does not end there. The price of several other items has gone up — asbestos, nails, tanks, plumbing are all caught. From all these increases it looks as if the price of a four-roomed house will go up by more than £150. It will have a desperate effect on the building industry at a time when, as everybody knows, people in most towns are crying out for rehousing.
Another thing that came under the axe is the provincial newspaper. The price of provincial newspapers has increased substantially through the years because of taxation. If democracy is to operate in a country like this, the people living in rural parts, particularly poorer people living in remote places, are entitled to get provincial newspapers at a cheap rate. They are the people who cannot afford to buy televisions and many of them cannot afford wirelesses. I have done so before and I again appeal to the Minister to take his axe off provincial newspapers.
In this Budget there is not a word about the proposed new health scheme. I wonder what is the intention of the Government in that respect. Do they know the plight of the people living in rural areas? Do they know that some county councils have advertised time and again for dispensary doctors and that they cannot get applications? With Departmental sanction, they have increased the salaries offered to a higher level than they should be in order to attract applicants for vacant rural dispensary districts. I do not think the Government can shut their eyes. The situation is worsening. We are being told about White Papers and all sorts of papers with regard to the Health Act. It is time the truth were told to the people in rural Ireland. If this Government are not prepared to do that let them get out and make way for a Government that will do it.
We hear talk about unemployment. In 1963 we had 56,000 people unemployed. In the Second Programme for Economic Expansion it was estimated that in 1970 the figure would be down to 42,000 people unemployed and that in 1967 it would be down to 48,000. In 1967 the figure was actually 57,000 people. In mid-January, 1968 it was 65,246; in mid-September, 1965 it was 50,124; in mid-October, 1965 it was 53,619. Unemployment is rising and this Budget will cause it to rise higher. We all know that unemployment is always at its highest during winter. In my opinion it will revert to the record figure of 65,000 people during the coming winter, despite the fact that we were told in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion that the figure would be only 48,000 people.
I remember when Fianna Fáil fought the last General Election with the slogan "Let Lemass Lead On". Deputy Lemass had time during that election campaign to visit my adopted constituency. He spoke in Carrick-on-Shannon and he referred to rates. He said that the present system was outmoded and outdated and that as soon as they were elected the Government would revise the whole thing. Rates in most western counties, on an average guess, are 80s in the £. It is three and a half years since that election and I wonder have the Government done anything about this outmoded and outdated system of rate collection. If they have the country is entitled to know about it.
The collection of rates would seem to be a matter for the Estimate.
One problem which presents difficulty to all of us is the delay in the payment of grants. No matter what Department is involved, whether it be the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for farm building grants or the Department of Local Government for housing grants, something should be done to speed up the payment of these grants. It is quite evident to applicants that the money is not available. If that is so, why are the people not told that the money will not be available for some weeks or months? Why have people queuing up at my house and at every other Deputy's house trying to get payments to which they are entitled and which have been held up because there is no money to pay them?
What have the Government done for the west of Ireland in this Budget? Before I conclude I should like to refer to emigration. The Budget of 1963 was introduced by Dr. Ryan and in his Budget speech he referred to emigration. From volume 202, page 62, of the Dáil Debates for 23rd April, 1963 he had this to say:
Emigration continued to decline in 1962. Net passenger movement outwards by sea and air totalled 20,800, compared with 26,800 in 1961. The consequence of the drop in emigration was that in 1962 for the first time for many years, the population rose. There has been a further improvement in 1963; in the twelve months ended February, 1963, the figure for net passenger movement outwards fell to 12,200. Even if some of the reduction is associated with present economic conditions in Britain, emigration has now been consistently below previous levels for long enough to justify expectations of a permanent improvement.
With regard to emigration from the west of Ireland, when Fianna Fáil took up office there were 552,907 people in the province of Connaught. In the last available census, that for 1960, the figure dropped to 401,950 people, which represents a net decrease, or emigration rate, of 150,957 people. This is more than the entire population of Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo in the last census, the figure for which is 146,248 people.
That is not a good achievement for any Government. Let us look at the trend of the figures for emigration. I give those as per 1,000 people of the population. From 1926 to 1936 it was 5.1; from 1936 to 1946 it was 6.4; from 1946 to 1951 it was 8.8; from 1951 to 1956 it was 11.2; from 1956 to 1961 it was 12.4 and from 1961 to 1966 it was back to 8.5. The figure got back to 8.5 not because the Government did anything to solve emigration but because all the people are gone from the west of Ireland. It is as simple as that. It is all very fine to see Government speakers shedding crocodile tears during election time and saying that something will be done for the west of Ireland. I have said before that if this Government are not prepared to do something about this they should get out and make room for a Fine Gael Government that will do it.
I should like to make one further reference to the turnover tax. A statement was made here by the Minister for Social Welfare, Deputy J. Brennan, on the introduction of the turnover tax. At column 442 of volume 202 of the Official Report of 25th April, 1963, when he was speaking of how the turnover tax would operate and replying to the sensible criticism that was being offered by this Party, he said:
The Opposition always try to pick out the unpopular parts of a Budget and attack them in order to blacken the whole structure. This turnover tax of 2½ per cent may be carried in one way or another by the retail trade. It is a matter for themselves how they offset that payment. The Opposition have been seeking to stress what this means on every article sold in order to create an impression in the minds of the people that there will be an increase in the price of every item. That need not necessarily be the case. They may offset the payment in any way they wish. They may reduce overheads. They may decide to charge something extra on a particular line of goods. They may decide to reduce their margin of profit in a particular direction. I know traders who will put up a sign in their shop windows saying: "Prices here remain the same."
I would love to know where those traders are. Are they in County Donegal? I wonder are they still available after another rattle of five per cent and after an increase in selective tax? I do not think they are. Deputy Martin Corry used the word "mud." I think that type of mud is getting us nowhere.
We are supposed to be speaking on why this last Budget was necessary. It seems to me that the first thing we have to realise is that the higher the standard of living becomes, the more money has to be raised to sustain it. In this country we enjoy a reasonably high standard of living but we have got to pay for it. Every increase in salaries and wages means increases in taxes and prices. We heard a lot of talk today about the increase in the bus fares. It seems strange to me, and I will not say anything stronger than strange, that the very people who are loudest here in advocating that the salaries and wages of the operatives of the transport system should be increased should be the first to complain because that increase has to be found. It seems to me that there are a good many people, unfortunately many of them in public life, who want to have it both ways. They want to give increases but they do not want to support any method of tax that will pay for those increases. To give this higher standard of living Fianna Fáil have provided extra millions to different Departments of State during the past ten years, to the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare. They all benefited considerably but we also know that that is not regarded as sufficient. We know that there are strikes, official and unofficial; there are protest marches by various sections of the community who still feel that they need more money. Maybe their case is a just one. Maybe they do need more money but the extra money has to be found and then we find that those who clamour loudest for the increases are also those who clamour loudest against any measure that has to be taken to raise money to give the increases.
I am sure nobody minds hard hitting and legitimate criticism. That is the prerogative of Opposition Deputies, but unfounded and unproved charges of graft and corruption against unnamed members of the Government are the surest way to undermine public confidence in our democratic institutions and particularly in Dáil Éireann. We know that there are undesirable elements, subversive elements, in all communities and it ill behoves Members of this House to say or do anything which will aid those international troublemakers. I am sure every decent Member from all sides of the House will deplore such charges as have been made unfortunately during the last week or two. When the increases in salaries for Members of the Oireachtas came before us a few months ago speakers from all Parties expressed the hope that the increase would induce decent young people to choose public life as a career. Certainly what we have listened to in the last couple of weeks has done nothing to encourage that hope, just the reverse.
We work under a democratic system of government because it is the best system we know and because it is a system that suits our people and fits in with our traditions best but, of course, democracy is a very delicate institution and has to be guarded very carefully. It has very many weaknesses and people in this House particularly should be alive to those weaknesses and should be always anxious to guard the democratic institutions. The alternative, of course, is a dictatorship and that cannot be contemplated with any peace of mind by the people of a country that has suffered so much for the right to express its opinion and to govern itself.
Much has been said during this Budget debate about the results of the recent referendum. I do not want to dwell on it because I doubt if it is in order at all in a Budget debate but I do want to say that the result of the referendum can be interpreted in many ways. I suppose it depends on which side of the House you are sitting. Although on this side of the House we should certainly feel that the people had no confidence in the advice tendered to them by the Fianna Fáil Party, and at this stage I hope the people were right, I doubt it but I do hope they were right, but there is one way I do not think it should be interpreted. I do not think either of the Opposition Parties should engage in wishful thinking and imagining that the result of the referendum was a vote of confidence in themselves or in their policies. That is going to the extreme in wishful thinking. However, time will tell and in the meantime it seems to me that until the people make their decision at the next election we should all resolve, while maintaining our right to criticise and to oppose, at least to do our best to maintain the dignity of the House and the dignity of public institutions.
I am one of those who welcomed the extra money that was provided for health, education, agriculture, industry and social welfare. For that reason I feel I am duty bound to support a Budget that raises the means of providing that money. I am sorry for and I hope the Government and especially the Minister responsible will take cognisance of the people whom I think are hardest hit by all these measures and increases of all kinds and that is the people with static incomes, the person who gets no increase and does not belong to any organisation and has no weapon to fight his case and suffers most through the increases in the cost of living. Therefore, much that has been said in spite of rulings of the Chair was completely irrelevant.
I wish to repeat that I welcome the increases given, particularly in regard to education, which involve millions of pounds. We still see that the students are marching and want even more money. I am not satisfied they are not entitled to it; they have a case. They need more money but a Government can only give it when they can raise it and the higher the standard of living becomes the more money will become available. In countries where taxation is low it usually means that the standard of living is low and consequently the cost of living is low.
I have pleasure in supporting the measures taken in the Budget. I regret they hit some people harder than others but that seems to be inevitable until such time as we can devise a new way of raising money. Taxes are never popular but they are necessary to provide money for the various things that must be done and for which we would be greatly criticised if they remained undone.
During the debate Government speakers have spent more time criticising the work of the inter-Party Government during their two terms in office than in defending the Budget proposals. That is hardly strange because this tactic is designed to take the people's minds away from the harshness of the Budget and the real issues facing the country at present. The Government have been told that soft Budgets were introduced last April because the referendum was in the offing. Government spokesmen have been very vocal in their denial of that charge and have pointed out that it was impossible last April to foresee the difficulties that would arise as the year went on. If we examine the Government's record over the past two and a half years in regard to Budgets we find we have had not three but five Budgets. It is reasonable to say that the soft Budgets were introduced because on both occasions the Government faced an election. In 1966 we had the Budget in March. The Presidential election was held on 1st June. On the 14th June we had another supplementary Budget. This year we had the Budget in April. The referendum was held in October and now we have a supplementary Budget in November.
If, as members of the Government claim, the Budget was not introduced with an eye to the referendum it is reasonable for us, on this side, to claim that the Government are incapable of foreseeing 12 months ahead what are our requirements, and this in the case of a Government that in the last few years produced five-year programmes for economic expansion. When it came to Budgetary proposals we had two supplementary Budgets introduced in the last three years. This is one matter that the Government cannot have both ways. They cannot claim on the one hand to be introducing honest Budgets and coming along with supplementary Budgets and, on the other hand, that they are capable and competent with all the data available to them of introducing Budgets that would meet the national requirements for 12 months ahead.
The Minister for Transport and Power, in his defence of the Budget, said production was only 50 per cent of what is required if we were to meet the increases that the Government granted and that it was essential, as a result of these increases, for the Government to cut back on the people's spending power. The extra millions that had been injected into the economy by these increases were responsible to a large extent for the Government's difficulties at the moment.
The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries had a different explanation for some of the problems facing the Government. In his speech last week he pointed out that the increase in milk production was one of the Government's main problems and also the very high yield of wheat recorded this year. Nobody would deny that the Government have a problem as regards milk production but if we examine State expenditure in regard to agriculture since 1966, as far as subsidies on butter and other milk products are concerned, we find that between 1966 and 1967 the amount rose from £13,781,000 to £19,295,000. The Government felt it necessary from 1966 to 1967 to increase the amount of money required to subsidise milk and butter by £5.5 million but when they came before the House with their proposals last April they allowed an increase of only £1.75 million. Surely it must have been apparent to the Government then that if a £5.5 million increase was necessary between 1966 and 1967 a similar increase would be required between 1967 and 1968 for a variety of reasons. The slump in the price of store cattle in 1966 brought about a situation in which farmers, particularly small farmers, had to turn to milk production.
If these people had changed over to milk production, the heifers that they had in 1966 would have yielded more milk, as cows, in 1967 and 1968. There was no reason why the Minister should have come in here and said that his Department could not possibly have foreseen the situation that would have developed. He did not take much credit for the increase in his defence of the Budget. He said that the very good weather we had was responsible to a large extent. But I believe that, if they had foreseen the situation as it was to develop, the necessary moneys would have been provided last April. This would have eliminated the necessity for coming in here now looking for an extra £4 million.
The Minister, seemingly, in his defence of the Budget proposals, blamed the weather. He asked the Fine Gael people, who could take it to the chin, as he said himself, to come in here during the debate on the Vote for the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and to listen to his claim that the farmers never had it so good. Have we arrived at a situation in which, when the Minister or the Government want money from the people, they are prepared to blame the weather, but when they are introducing Estimates for their Departments they take the credit for whatever money they have to dole out to the people?
This Government, to my mind, were returned to power in 1965 because the then Taoiseach told the people that, if Fianna Fáil were returned to power, the national advance would be so great — these are the words that the Taoiseach is reported as having said:
The national advance will be so great that no forces, either internal or external, can ever again impede the onward march of this nation.
As I have said, that was the statement which was largely responsible for the present Government having been returned to power at that time. However, that Government were no sooner back in office and the dust of the elections had no sooner settled than we were in the throes of an economic crisis. Now, after a period of relative prosperity which lasted for 18 months, we find ourselves back again in the same position, in spite of what the then Taoiseach claimed would happen if Fianna Fáil were returned to power.
Deputies might often wonder why young people are becoming cynical, why there is a lack of confidence and a loss of hope throughout the country. I believe one of the main reasons why we have this situation now is because the people believed the then Taoiseach in 1965, but they have since discovered how false these claims were.
Government speakers, as I have said at the outset, have criticised the work of the inter-Party Government and particularly the work of the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy James Dillon. But it is true to say that the increased production we have now is mainly due to the schemes that were introduced by Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture — to name but a few, the 1948 Trade Agreement, the Land Rehabilitation Project, the Lime Subsidy Scheme, the Pig Progeny Testing Scheme and many others, all introduced by the inter-Party Government. After that, we had to face a situation in which, as Deputy Reynolds said some time ago, there were fewer pigs, fewer cattle and fewer sheep in the country than ever before after 16 years of Fianna Fáil rule and the land was in the greatest state of dereliction since the days of the Famine. I am sure many people in Fianna Fáil will agree with me when I mention some of the improvements that were carried out by Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture.
We are told that, if our people are to get the opportunities to which they are entitled, we need 12½ thousand new jobs every year. The only time in the history of this State during the last 20 years when an extra 12,000 people went into industrial employment every year was between 1948 and 1951. The number of new jobs created in industry by the present Government during the last 11 years is roughly 35,000 that is 102½ thousand fewer than the number required if we are to provide the necessary opportunities here for our people.
Surely we must have reached a stage when old age pensioners, widows and people living on fixed incomes should be considered no matter what type of Budget is being introduced? No matter what time of the year Budgets or supplementary Budgets are introduced, the incomes of these people should be increased. Those of us who are living in reasonably comparative comfort and snugness should certainly be prepared to play our part in ensuring that these people are neither neglected nor forgotten.
I realise that the Government cannot solve the problems of everyone and that there is no substitute for personal endeavour in the solving of any problem no matter what it is; but, at the same time, there is a duty on the Government to create the conditions necessary for the prosperity of our people. This Government have failed in that regard. We have heard on many occasions during this debate of the courage of the Government in introducing the measures which they have introduced now. But after what one might call the "Easter Egg Budget" of April of this year, the one courageous thing the Government should do is to go to the people and find out exactly what the people think about their achievements.
We have been told here by Deputy Martin Corry that luxury items should be taxed at a considerably higher rate than they are; but when the second inter-Party Government faced the balance of payments problems in 1956 and when they introduced measures at that time to curb imports they did not receive any support from the members of the present Government. Not alone did they not receive support but every effort was made by the then Opposition to discredit the work the inter-Party Government at that time were trying to do to resolve the balance of payments situation. Certain measures were introduced, certain temporary measures, and the money that was secured from them was used to provide employment. The only thing the present Government did when they came back to power was to include these measures as part of the permanent taxation system of the country.
I feel that this Budget was introduced by the Government in an effort to make amends for the mistakes and the errors they made earlier in the year. I feel that they themselves were well aware last April of the coming difficulties and that now, when the referendum is over, a severe and a harsh Budget of this nature has had to be introduced. I feel, as I said before, that what the Government should do is to take their courage in their hands and go to the country and find out exactly what the people think about the Govarnment and their work.
In rising to speak on this Budget, I shall not attempt to make any excuses for it. It was harsh and undoubtedly it was severe. We must ask ourselves what necessity brought this about. I believe it was forced on us mainly by pressure by certain organisations looking for increases in wages to the exclusion of other sections of the people. A very large sum of money was required to meet the increase in wages of civil servants. I think we have reached a stage at which some thing must be done to curb this type of approach. It is desirable to apply a brake to enable everybody to have at least a reasonable amount of money to purchase the necessaries of life. I think those increases are reflected in the vast increase in the importation of consumer goods since April last.
A very noticeable increase has taken place in the importation of biscuits. If our men and women have reached the stage in this country that biscuits are a necessary of life to them then, as a nation, we should look at ourselves and the path we are marching along and consider what we are heading for. In the past we have produced great Irishmen, great workers, great people, without any biscuits at all. What is even more dangerous is that outside firms are selling their biscuits here while we have one of the finest biscuit factories in the world ourselves, which is rightly world famous. In practically every shop in the country one will find that biscuits manufactured by McVitie and Price are on sale. This is surely a terrible state of affairs. The nation must try to curb the importation of materials that are totally unnecessary. I think the Irish Countrywomen's Association should play a very important role here. They have organisations in every parish. It should be brought home forcibly to our people that the utilisation of our hard-earned money and wealth for the purchase of goods from outside to the exclusion of the purchase of our own products is something we must curb as otherwise we must work all the harder, in some other direction, to find the necessary means to pay for these imports. This is a matter that concerns Deputies on all sides of this House. Indeed, it is a very serious matter for the nation. I believe it has stemmed from the fact that some sections of our people have plenty of money, maybe more money than they need, and, because of that, something must be done to try to curb the tendency to purchase imported goods while the same types of goods are manufactured in high quality here.
I am perturbed that it is made very easy by Government organisations, by lending authorities and particularly through local loans, for white-collar workers, and so on, to obtain a substantial sum of money to build a house. One frequently notices that very expensive timber material is used in the facings of a house — possibly to give it a status beyond that of the ordinary. In most cases, cedarwood is used and it is a very expensive material. That represents a very heavy drain on our economy. Certainly, it tends to leave less money available to the middle income sections and to the lower income group of people who need money for housing and who, I believe, would build more houses at a lower cost. This point should be examined by the authorities concerned. Some Department should be set up to watch this type of importation and to curb that type of activity. If a person is in a position to lay hands on anything up to £3,000, between grant and loan — a sum of money which would quite easily finance two houses — then I think that type of person should be channelled into some other lending group. Certainly local loans and money expensively raised should not be made available for that particular purpose.
One of the most serious problems facing us is the over-production of milk to which many references have been made here in the past few days. A serious position faces us. To some extent it must be curbed if the livelihood of the traditional milk producer or small-holder is to be saved and preserved for him. With the advent of the very big type of landholder, we note that he is going into this type of farming because he has the means. He has the broad acres on which he can put a large number of cows. As far as he is concerned, it is the safest method of farming here today. He has not to worry about the vagaries of the weather. To him, it is a safer bet probably than to grow the feeding materials we need.
This year, we face the highest amount of subsidisation for milk in our history — nearly £25 million. This would seem to mean a subsidy of £25 per cow, for the sale of milk in this country. If we go much further into the production of milk this figure could reach £40 per cow because every extra gallon of milk would have to be exported and then we would be nearly subsidising the value of the milk. If we had to pay a subsidy of £40, milk production would be at the end of the road.
It is incumbent on the Minister to bring in a system of quotas in regard to the production of milk. I would suggest that the Minister take as a basis the whole milk output of each farmer and then put a percentage production on him which would compel the farmer to feed the skim milk or some of the new milk back to calves, or something like that. At present something like £7 million worth of imported feeding stuffs are required to produce milk here. Certainly, we will have to have some measure of control over milk production particularly if our smallholders in the West are to survive. They will be the people who will be in real trouble. The big farmer can always switch to something else but the small man is left with his cows and has no outlet to turn to.
In view of the large numbers who come within the eight-cow bracket it is very important and urgent that something should be done to protect their interests. If less milk was produced there would be a better chance of subsidising it in order to help out the small farmer. I cannot stress too much the necessity for having a look at this because in 12 months' time it will be too late and the bottom will have dropped out of the market. The smallholders form a very important part of our set-up. They are the people who always have the least amount of money and they try to use it to its maximum benefit to bring up their families and keep their homes going. As I said earlier, this drive for increased wages and salaries by organised groups, whether by the trade unions or the Civil Service bodies, is leaving these people very far behind. It is putting up their cost of living and leaving them with a diminished purchasing power for the money they have. It is time that we tried to help these people in a drive for a better income. We should be much more advanced than we are in backing up their production and their value in this country.
This year we have £130 million for capital development and we have some £50 million of capital inflow coupled with tourist earnings of around £80 million, a total of £260 million outside our normal production estimates. If anything happens to the European situation, particularly if anything happens to our neighbour, it would leave us in a very serious position. We can see what has been happening to France, a country which was on top of the world six months ago. Yet they were brought to their knees in the past week or so and it took their age-old enemy Germany to come to their assistance to keep them upright. It is a serious situation from our point of view because whatever happens in Europe has its repercussions here.
The section of the community in my constituency which is in real difficulty at the moment is the section involving home assistance cases. We in the Kerry County Council have been providing the maximum amount of money we could for them, but in recent times the position has become very difficult as so many are laying claim to the limited amount of money available and in some cases there have had to be reductions. The Government must come to the assistance of those people. Some sections of the community, while they are not well looked after are getting some help; but the people in Kerry who are claiming home assistance from the local authority cannot be given anything further because of the high rates that obtain there. The Government should make moneys available to the local authority to help these cases. They should at least make £ for £ available.
Many of the people involved are aged people who, for one reason or another, were not able to make their way in life and they are caught out now without any means, living in cottages on the side of the mountains or in small houses. There is a grave necessity to help these people immediately. I have tried to get help for them — I have written on behalf of some 100 of them — and I am sure other Deputies have made representations on their behalf also. This problem may only be common to the western areas. I would ask the Minister for Finance in particular and the Government to take note of this and try to channel some extra money into the local authorities so that they can give some little bit of assistance to those who badly need it.
The disability cases are reasonably met because there is a 50 per cent grant from the Government. The old age pensioners have supplementary allowances. I am referring in particular to normal home assistance and I would ask the Government to channel £ for £ to the local authority in an effort to help in those particular cases.
I heard references made to the houses built by the inter-Party Government. The amount of money provided for housing today is many, many times in excess of the sum provided for housing in the days of the inter-Party Government. We have now, unfortunately, to face a backwash from the kind of houses built in those days. I have come across cases of people trying to get their houses and cottages repaired by the local authority, but the local authority will not do the necessary repairs. The houses are far from comfortable. Last week I visited a group of houses in Killorglin; these houses have steel window frames.
I am sorry to interrupt the Deputy, but details in regard to housing can be dealt with on the Estimate for Local Government which will be before the House shortly.
I raise this in order to try to get the Government to take the matter up with the council. The council are backing out. The tenants are trying to get the council to repair the windows but the council contend such repair is a matter for the tenants. Glass put in in the morning is gone again that night.
Where are these houses?
In Sea Road, Killorglin.
The tenants must be pretty healthy people.
It must be bad glazing.
For the Deputies' information, a tenant got in 12 panes of glass in the morning and they were gone again that evening.
There must be a railway line with trains passing close by.
No. They are steel window frames and the houses are on the edge of the sea and the steel is corroding.
There must be some heavy traffic.
There is not.
I am sure the Minister for Local Government will be interested in this on his Estimate.
The increase in the wholesale tax will have serious effects on the building trade. Some speakers said there are only two items which will not be affected by this tax. These are the inexpensive items. There are many other items concerned. I find that two-thirds of the material cost will be affected and, if one takes £1,500 as the normal cost of material, then £1,000 of that will be affected and that will impose an additional £50 per house. That is a serious imposition on an already high outlay. The matter should be re-examined to see if building materials can be exempted from the wholesale tax. Anything that affects building affects employment. Increased costs will bring demands for more wages. This tax cannot serve the purpose for which it is intended.
I should like to comment again on the burden of rates. Rates are a serious problem for the poorer people and, in particular, for the small shopkeepers. These are finding it impossible to meet the demands made on them.
One of the most stressing needs is much more drainage. In the mountainous areas of Kerry there is dire necessity for the cleaning of small streams and rivers and a scheme should be introduced——
The Local Authorities (Works) Act.
That would not serve the purpose at all.
Of course, it would. Is not that what it is for?
No.
Yes.
As a member of the county council, I tried to get work done on the small streams but I was unsuccessful. The local authority claim they can do only those streams which affect roadways. I am talking of those which affect farms and small holdings.
We got them done in County Meath under that Act and we got work done along the seashore, too.
What has happened since?
The Board of Works would not do anything about it since.
Who maintains the streams now?
Unfortunately, the part that should be done by the Local Authorities (Works) Act is not done at all.
That was money down the drain. It was a typical piece of Coalition wastefulness.
That is so much cod. The Government have not introduced anything to replace it.
Order. Deputy O'Connor.
Money is needed to do this work. These small streams do a great deal of damage. I am not now thinking of arterial drainage. I am thinking of small streams carrying water down into the valleys. The damage is immense.
Is this relevant?
Deputy Harte was put out last night for that.
Some scheme should be introduced to remedy the situation. We have made a great deal of progress. We are making progress at the moment. Unfortunately, certain sections and certain organisations are managing to lay their hands on certain things to the detriment of the rest of the nation. Small producers are not getting the value they should and to which they are entitled in return for their production. A very serious position is facing the nation, and we must bring about some correction. The people who have a reasonably good way of living must be prepared to wait until the weaker sections can be brought up to a reasonable standard. We should not have any political quibbling from either side of the House.
This challenge is facing the nation. We must get the productive power of the whole nation marching forward, and the poorer sections of the community must get a fair return for the amount of effort they put into their work. The Lord knows they are not getting it now. Many of them are far from having a 40 or 44-hour week. They work a 60-hour week for onethird or one-quarter the money some of their brethren are drawing. That is the position that must be adjusted. It must be the concern of the House. Whatever attacks we make on each other from either side of the House, we must face up to this and try to help the ordinary people, the honest-to-God people, the people who have to go without biscuits and other fancy goods for which the luckier and better-off sections are able to pay. That is the challenge facing us in 1969. The opportunities are passing by quickly and we must try to organise them.
I want to appeal again to the Irish Countrywomen's Association. They are the people best fitted to try to bring home, in every town and village where they have an organisation, the importance of our people purchasing Irish goods, and nothing else, where they can get them. That is the message that should go out from here. It is necessary that the message should go out from here that we should take pride in the products of our materials and our industries because we are producing as good and, indeed, in many cases far better material than can be got in any part of the world. It is necessary to approach our purchasing from that point of view. The Irish Countrywomen's Association are best suited to do this. I would ask them to try by every means in their power to bring about a reduction in unnecessary imports of goods, goods which are not necessary for the health or wellbeing of the population.
The first reaction I found in my constituency to this harsh Budget was one of stunned silence and incredulity. The people could not believe that the Government who had already told them we were entering into an era of prosperity, that we never had it so good before, that we have had the best two years in our history, that we were taking everything in our stride, should suddenly realise that there were clouds on the horizon which should have been seen long before now.
The reaction to this Budget reminded me of a book I read and a picture I saw some years ago called "The Cruel Sea". This was a cruel Budget. If I may draw an analogy, it appears to me that the ship of State is rocking very badly and very perilously in a stormy sea. In such an emergency it is usual for the captain to be in full command and for everyone to obey his orders. While our ship of State is rocking dangerously in perilous waters we have the captain challenged by his first lieutenant as to how the ship should be controlled. That is a deplorable state of affairs in an emergency such as this.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion that this may have been a planned exercise. It may have been done intentionally in order to deflect the attention of the people from the severe and heavy defeat the Government suffered in the recent referendum, an attempt to deflect the attention of the people from the criminal wastage of public money in an exercise of trying to stampede the people of Ireland into reversing a decision made just a few years ago. It was an attempt to divert attention from the many matters of greater public urgency, matters which require immediate Government action, such as the uncontrolled rise in the cost of living, growing unemployment, disruption of industry, realistic negotiations with European countries to prepare for entry into the EEC, the development of agriculture, a realistic farm incomes policy, the introduction of modern comprehensive health services and, of course, increased taxation. The criminal wastage of public moneys and the criminal wastage of time spent in useless discussion demand retribution. I have no doubt that retribution will come when the people get an opportunity at the next general election.
The Government should have thought of those clouds on the horizon and if the energy and time spent in discussing that useless and futile attempt to change the method of election had been put to better use, perhaps we might not be in the position which we are in today. The Government seem to have lost contact not only with the people but with the grass roots of their own organisation also. They led the people to believe we were entering a long period of prosperity, that we have had the best two years in our history — and I am quoting from the Minister's statement that Ireland has enjoyed two excellent years.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.