This is symbolic of the inflationary times in which we live. Today we have seen an increase of almost 30 per cent in the number of Ministers of State, we are discussing a budget which will cause inflation to rise to more than 20 per cent, and we have just witnessed the longest hour of questions I have seen in 11 years in the House—an inflation in the time allowed for Questions of 20 minutes, another 30 per cent inflation. One wonders if this time will be added on for the debate. In the consultation to extend Question Time I do not think any reference was made to the people who were going to speak on behalf of their constituents.
Financial Resolutions, 1980. - Financial Resoultion No. 19: General (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.
—(Minister for Finance)
The Deputy will get his full hour.
I had referred before Question Time to the position we find ourselves in in this country regarding the freedom of the individual. The successive policies of different Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Fianna Fáil have attempted to interfere with the freedom of individuals in the Irish Rugby Football Union, the people who make up the membership of the clubs, the following of those clubs, and the supporters and participants of this sport throughout this country—an excellent and healthy sport. Successive Government policies have attempted to interfere with their freedom in playing their sport. This is not the type of society we want here. We have seen the present Government interfere with individuals selected to participate in their sport overseas. We have seen the present Government, on the one hand attempt to give money out to sporting organisations to improve their facilities, to generate enthusiasm among up and coming athletes to participate in the Olympic Games and then, at the same time, with their tongue in their cheek, try to impair the enthusiasm for participation in this year's Olympic Games in Moscow. The people of Ireland have said in a recent survey that they do not want any Government interference in the sporting organisations here. They want the freedom of the individual retained to its optimum where individuals can, under the Irish flag, compete in Moscow, where individuals wearing the jersey of the Irish rugby team can compete internationally abroad with the highest section of their sport.
If the Minister is asking us to pay tax and he is using part of that tax and giving it to the Minister of State for Education to give to sporting organisations here, recycling that money to encourage participation in sport, the Minister should be sincere. He should not be kowtowing to the whims of left-wing organisations in this country and in other countries, the fair weather sailors of protest, the rent-a-crowd pseudointellectual left-wingers that are prevalent in this city. Fortunately for many other Deputies they do not exist in many other parts of the country. Once there is an international sporting occasion of any significance this rent-a-crowd element appears on the scene to indicate that there is some terrible injustice taking place in the sporting world. We have seen the Government interfere with an international tug-of-war competition in Dundalk a short time ago; we have seen them interfere with an international golf competition down in County Kerry; we have seen them attempt to interefere with the freedom of our organisations for the promotion of sport in this country.
I am afraid the Chair will have to interefere with the Deputy unless he relates all this to the budget.
When I was elected in 1969 it was the first time that the Taoiseach had appointed a Parliamentary Secretary with responsibility for sport and given an allocation of money for the promotion of sport. In this budget the Minister refers to an allocation for sport. I am addressing my remarks to the moneys which will be collected when this budget and the Finance Bill have been passed. These moneys have been recycled and paid out to sporting organisations for the promotion of sport, for the training of athletes, for the stimulation of physical education here. That is what this budget is for and I am addressing myself specifically to that part at present.
The year 1980 is a tremendously important year for many of our athletes; it is the year of the Olympic Games. It is the first time the Olympic Games have ever been held in a communist country and we see the Government, on the one hand, giving money to sporting organisations to improve their facilities, the fitness of their athletes and, on the other hand, attempting to discourage them from participation. Many athletes and people are confused. They do not know what the Government's stance is. They seem to think that the Government do not want them to go. It should go out from this House that we do not want any interference whatsoever in an individual's freedom to participate in any sporting organisation throughout the world. We have never heard the Government give out when our athletes, like the UCD soccer team, went on a tour of Red China. They were encouraged to go.
I know. But I doubt if any of the money raised by the budget is helping to send teams to China. Possibly the Olympic Games would get a certain amount of funds from budget.
I specifically mentioned the university team and the university is financed by money which will be raised in this budget. However, I will not labour the point; I was merely drawing a comparison.
I will move on from the tour of Red China by the UCD soccer team. But it is a peculiarly schizophrenic attitude for any Government to have to pretend to promote sport with financial gifts, on the one hand, and then attempt to interfere with two of our biggest organisations, on the other hand, our International Olympic Committee and the Irish Rugby Football Union. I hope the Government can find better things to do with their time than interfere with these organisations.
There has been no interference. The Olympic Council made a statement yesterday. There has been no interference.
Would the Irish Rugby Football Union say the same thing?
What have they said?
That the Government have threatened that they would not give leave of absence to their employees and they have asked the semi-State bodies to bear in mind what their wish is.
So far as the Chair is aware there is no money in the budget for the Irish Rugby Football Union and we should not be discussing it on the budget at all.
The Irish Olympic Council are perfectly happy with the attitude of the Government.
Do they know the attitude of the Government?
They are perfectly happy.
The Government's attitude changes from day to day.
It is as constant as the northern star.
Let there be no doubt about what the present policy of the Government is. Nobody appears to understand it. One day the athletes are encouraged and the next day they are discouraged. Sometimes it would appear that there is a dichotomy of views among certain Ministers but this does not just apply to the Olympic team; it applies to the Irish Rugby Football Union who appear to be the lame duck and the organisation that the Government are aiming all their venom at.
I wish to refer to the present bank interest rate increases which have been proposed by the associated banks. We have read in the past few days that they wish to increase the interest rates for business people by 3 per cent. We have read pleas of people to the Government to interfere and ask the Central Bank to negotiate with the associated banks to limit this to about 1 per cent or 1½ per cent. I spoke earlier about the self-employed people and about the way the Minister wishes to change the time schedule for payment of tax to 1 October.
I neglected to refer to the fact that the self-employed person cannot any more register himself as a PAYE person of his own company. This is a totally retrograde step. The self-employed person will have to pay tax in advance of making his profit. Most small businesses in this country have traditionally been run on overdrafts and bank loans and the increase in interest rates which is about to take place is due mainly to Government policy. How many of these businesses will be viable during the next few years when Government policies have been effectively introduced into legislation? Certainly I would not like to be a small self-employed businessman in this city in three years' time under this Government or to be a rugby player, hoping at the same time to go to the Olympic Games.
The Government appear to be against personal initiative. In 1977 we thought a great stimulus would be given to initiative, to the self-employed and to job creation, but the opposite has happened. I had hoped that the Minister would have second thoughts and reread his statement. The last nail has been hammered into the coffin of the self-employed in this city and throughout the country, just to appear to satisfy the PAYE sector.
The PAYE sector got nothing from the budget because only the method of tax payment has been changed. Instead of paying tax on their wages and salaries they will now pay that extra tax on commodities. It is an insult to the IQ of such people—and everybody in this House pays tax under the PAYE system—for the Minister to say that they will pay less tax and will have more money in their pockets. The essential commodities and services such as fuel and transport will cost much more and the tax has been merely transferred fron one system of payment to another.
What encouragement is there for expansion? The Minister did not even mention an increase in the allowances for bank interest, motor car depreciation and capital expenditure. It is accepted that inflation this year will certainly reach 20 per cent, yet the amount of interest which qualifies for tax relief is still about £2,500, the same level as eight years ago.
Money values have deteriorated so much that one would need a slide rule to keep up to date with the devaluation of money, not to mention the further devaluation due to our entry to the EMS. The Irish pound is worth only about 90p against the £ sterling and about 95 per cent of small business transactions are in sterling. These transactions may constitute only 50 per cent on volume of financial transfers but they are of great importance to small businesses. Imports have now risen in cost by at least 10 per cent because of the devaluation of our currency against sterling.
There is a quagmire on the Border affecting people doing business in the Six Counties. I am a member of a board which has employees in the North and the banks there refuse to handle the Irish pound which is paid to employees living there. The break with sterling was not wise. Is it wise to continue the rift? Did we rush in too soon to the EMS and should we now consider getting out? A responsible Minister would look at these questions and not spend his time pursuing dead policies of a pogrom nature against sporting organisations.
I refer to yesterday's editorial in The Irish Times which pointed out that two years ago bank interest rates were about 10 or 12 per cent. They have now risen to 17.5 per cent and if the banks have their way there will be a further increase of 3 per cent. Many of us can remember going to a hire purchase company for money to buy our first car or motor bicycle and anyone who borrowed at an interest rate of 21 per cent would have been committed to an institution. Hire purchase money was blood money. According to The Irish Times yesterday, anyone paying back money on an instalment basis is paying an effective rate of 40 per cent. Did we ever think we would see that? If an 18-year-old university student wants to buy a motor bicycle that is the interest rate he will have to pay. That is what the experts say, and this will increase by a further 3 per cent up to over 45 per cent when one takes into account that it will be 3 per cent on 17 per cent on the normal overdraft lending rate. Therefore the cheapest money available to any business in this country will be at 21 per cent, possibly next week or even when we leave this House this evening. Then, of course, in regard to the most expensive money, the sky is the limit. Unfortunately under this Government the pawn broker is coming back into his own; he is here to stay in this city for the foreseeable future.
When the Minister said he saw the light at the end of the tunnel—in introducing this budget—he must have been looking backwards watching the entrance to the tunnel, seeing the light there, because nobody in this House can see any light at the end of the tunnel; in fact it is so dark one could imagine being in a bottomless pit. We have shown that the housewife or her husband cannot afford to borrow money or if they do, that they are put to the pin of their collar attempting to repay it. We have shown that the Governemnt have given no consideration to increasing existing allowances against any commitments the breadwinner may have, be it mortgage or anything else. Then there is the ever-increasing cost of food. I heard the Minister answering a question yesterday to the effect that the importation of food to this country had increased by one-sixth in 1979, up to almost £300 million that in an agricultural country. We know where this food is coming from and where the relevant revenue is going—to the large, multi-supermarket owners based overseas who have their cartels of supplies, their ranches of vegetables and so on, sending them in here in large containers to be distributed to the poor unfortunate housewife who must pay for all of their economies and efficiencies. The cost of travel has increased, as has the cost of clothing, heating, of basic medicines, household cleaners and other commodities.
The cost of housing itself has increased dramatically, by 30 per cent, during the past 12 months. Then there is the cost of schooling and ancillary expenditure, sport, books, uniforms and so on. Householders are being attacked not only by the demon of inflation or by the diminution in the quality of family life here but also, unfortunately, in a negative sense by the Government, in that there is no help forthcoming.
The budget has not made any significant improvement in the situation of the married man with three or four children who may have a large mortgage, a personal overdraft in the bank, except that it has afforded him some additional income tax relief. Firstly, however, he must earn the income and, secondly, this income tax relief will be of no great help with the current inflation rate. If we could predict accurately that the rate of inflation this year would be well over 20 per cent prior to the increases announced in the budget, we must ask ourselves what has happened today, 28 days later. We have seen bank interest rates being increased further. We have seen electricity charges going up a further 10 per cent, something affecting every household because, thanks to previous Coalition Governments, we all now use electricity. At best the budgetary provisions might keep people on a par with inflation but, bearing in mind the rate at which costs appear to be increasing, I predict that our standard of living will deteriorate drastically, as we have seen happen to our neighbours in the United Kingdom.
I question the wisdom of a budget increasing payments to those who do not work to such a level that they would be almost as well off on the dole as they are working a 40-hour week. Possibly the Government have taken away the initiative to work. The trouble of going to work, of providing food at work, of travelling there and back, of clothing oneself for work, ending up approximately 10 per cent better off in monetary terms on a basic wage per week than ones next-door neighbour who is unemployed acts as deterrent to work and should be questioned. It might well constitute an immoral approach to the ills of our society.
Effectively people are being encouraged—not intentionally, I accept —through welfare payments and the dole not to get up and go to work in the morning. Any human being would prefer to remain in bed until the afternoon rather than get up at 7 or 8 o'clock on a cold winter's morning and go out to work. What is the reward at the end of the week? Approximately a 10 per cent financial benefit over ones unemployed neighbour who has all the ancillary benefits of a medical card, free school books, no travelling expenses, who has the advantage of having hot meals at home while the labourer may have to travel some 10 to 15 miles to a building site, stand at a bus stop on a cold morning for a long time, have a cold lunch, perhaps not getting anything else to eat until 7 or 8 o'clock that evening, noticing very little improvement in his material gains. This should be questioned. Social welfare benefits should be given to the genuinely needy, to widows and orphans, not to healthy, able-bodied men who may make a consious decision not to go out to work. A system should be devised by the Government under which those people who deliberately and consciously refuse to go to work, refuse jobs offered them—we have all seen this in our constituencies—should be drafted into a work force and brought to sites, beaches, canals or bogs and made do a day's work. If you are going to pay an able-bodied, healthy man £60 a week he should be asked to do something for the State in return. Otherwise, it kills the spirit of those living near such people. It also kills the spirit of children in the house who watch the father staying in bed all morning, roaming around the house for the day, perhaps going to the pub, but never short of cash. The Government should have the courage to do something about this ailment affecting our society. The work group could take the form of an unarmed work corps in the military forces. There are many possibilities. It could also be in the form of an unskilled type of industry. The more one thinks about it the more possibilities arise for such a work force.
I wish to say something about the astronomical increase in the cost of our health services. Ten years ago we spent approximately £50 million on our health services. Now the figure is a little under £600 million. When the health boards were being introduced we knew they would be monsters, that they would gobble up money as quickly as or even quicker than you could provide it. It does not take a genius to predict that once again there will be a deficit in the health board budgets and that next December we shall have to take Supplementary Estimates for the Department of Health to finance these deficits. For years we have known that these boards are cumbersome, bureaucratic and over-elaborate. The Eastern Health Board is the largest health board in these islands, larger than any in the UK. In the UK, health boards have been shown by the McKinsey advisers to be failures. One of the best examples of bureaucracy gone wrong was when McKinsey were brought in to advise on the setting up of the UK health boards and their financial structure and ten years later had to come back and advise the Government on where McKinsey's advice was wrong in the first place—a lovely business to be in. It was the health boards that brought them back.
We have seen the expenditure of our health boards increase from £50 million to £600 million in ten years. Obviously, the Government should have a subcommittee in the Department of Health to investigate this expenditure which is certainly not going to the patients. There has been little or no improvement in health care in the past decade. We have had one or two hospitals built in Cork. We have seen a long overdue investment in the Beaumont hospital on the north side in Dublin. But as regards equipment, we spent, I think, four or five years haggling to get a body and brain scanner for one hospital at a cost of £300,000.
Do we suffer too much in the health services from duplication in administration? Is there an unfortunate grinding of gears between the Department of Health, the health boards and the old health authorities? With the increase indicated in the recent census in the Dublin area, the Government would be well advised to take another look at the size and structure and the administrative complications of the Eastern Health Board, the greatest consumer of funds in the service. The personnel of these services are dedicated men and women of the highest integrity, tenacity and ability; but where a structure is too big it cannot be made work efficiently no matter who is controlling it.
I wish to mention telephone service problems and the failure to implement certain promises made by Governments that the service would improve. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs are a disgrace. Reports travelling from one firm to another are delayed; confusion reigns supreme. The excuse for inefficiency that is constantly used is that there is a strike or go-slow in the Department. We have not heard of any progress by Fergal Quinn or Michael Smurfit in this area except that one of them had difficulty in getting a telephone for his office and I think the other could not find his office. There is little point in whitewashing the situation. Deputies here know that by the weekend half the telephones in the House do not work. They are overburdened and staff have to come in at weekends and oil them or gear them up for the following week.
It is with reluctance I speak on this budget of 1980. I warn the self-employed to read it with interest and I would ask the Minister to look at the ominous section of it relating to Schedule D tax under which he wishes to collect £24 million from the self-employed. Once more he is creating a most unfair anomaly as regards those in our society who have the initiative, energy and ability to create their own livelihood. This should not be regarded as a liability or defect in our society but should be encouraged rather than discouraged. A country that attempts to tax its businesses out of existence is taking the heart out of our society. It is wrong to tax people so heavily that they lose initiative, to send that tax money throngh the different machines of Government and attempt to redistribute it when it has lost about 20 per cent of its value in the process. That is what is happening and it is one of the greatest mistakes the Government have made. They are absorbing more and more money into the jaws of administration where it is being chewed up and devalued before it gets to the intended recipients. We should seriously consider what is the maximum amount of tax a person should pay, if there should be a blanket of 10 per cent of income paid in tax so that at the beginning of the year a person would know that if he made £1,000 during the year he would have to pay 10 per cent of that in tax. There should be a simple format. This book, Budget 1980, is very complicated. There are many different methods of collecting tax and many things are taxed in so many ways that if one wanted to make things more difficult one would need a new Minister, a Minister for Complications.
I ask the Minister of State to try to clear the air in regard to the sporting problems——
The Deputy should ask the leader of his own party who has boycotted the games.
At least we have made up our minds.
I was hoping not to have to embarrass the Deputy——
Fianna Fáil are neither going nor coming.
Deputy Byrne to conclude. He should not ask questions of the Minister of State.
I was not asking a question——
I did not want to embarrass the Deputy, but he should ask Deputy Garrett FitzGerald about this. I do not know if they are still talking?
I wanted to ask the Government, through the Minister, to clarify the attitude of the Government towards the participation of Irish athletes in the Olympic Games. That is a simple question. I am not asking the Minister to answer it now; he can answer it sometime in the future. The Minister of State has been very dedicated to promoting sport but if he gives as much attention to the Olympic question as he did to my last sentence everything will be amicably resolved.
I was surprised there was such a song and dance about the social welfare increases, 25 per cent in some cases and 20 per cent in others. With the present rate of inflation these increases will soon be insufficient.
I would like the Minister to make a special case in the near future to improve the situation of people living alone. A widow in receipt of a non-contributory pension gets £15.80 and this will be increased by 20 per cent. A person on unemployment assistance and living alone must exist on £13.15. These people have to provide food, clothing, heat, light, rent and all other essentials. Everyone must agree these allowances are inadequate and this area requires special attention. I could dwell for a very long time on social welfare payments but I will not delay the House too long.
I want to bring to the attention of the Minister for Social Welfare the inadequacies of the services provided by his Department. That Department is not and has not been functioning for quite some time and the service is deteriorating by the week. The Minister is active around the country promoting new ideas in health and social welfare but I suggest that he spend some time in his Department examining the day-to-day mechanics of the Department in relation to the payment of benefits.
From experience I know one cannot get in touch with them by telephone. The unemployment exchanges throughout the country cannot get a reply from 786444. If one gets a dialling tone the phone is not answered. If one complains to the Minister's office one is told it is a matter for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs because they service the switchboard, which is operated satisfactorily.
It is very difficult to get information about a complaint. I had a case this week of a man who is waiting three weeks for his social welfare payments. I was told his certificates had not been received. He told me he delivered the certificates by hand to Store Street and still he did not get his social welfare benefits. This is not an isolated case. I could give many instances of this type of thing. I have on my books today 12 cases of people waiting for benefits and I am finding it more difficult to get any service from the Department.
Again I ask the Minister to spend time in his Department to improve the operation of the social welfare schemes. In the long term he should look into this problem and have the system changed so that payments can be made at local level so that people can claim their benefits at their local exchanges.
I want to refer to the disgraceful bank rate. Because of the high interest rates farming, industry and all sections of the community are suffering. In these times when profits are hard to come by, these high interest rates are not encouraging industrialists or farmers to borrow. I condemn the kite flown during the week by a spokesman from one of the commercial banks seeking a further 2½ to 3 per cent increase in interest rates. The current rate is 16 per cent. A large number of people can make arrangements for only small loans, and for people who cannot make other arrangements the banks make a further 6 per cent surcharge, bringing the repayment to 22 per cent. The 3 per cent on top of this which the banks are looking for brings it to 25 per cent and this is disgraceful and should not be considered. Over the last few years the banks have made phenomenal windfall profits and these should be channelled back to the people either through extra taxation by the Government, through allowances to people who have accounts and must pay interest, or through any other way that can be brought about so that the people who provide these profits will benefit from them.
I refer now to the £70 interest on savings which is tax free. This at present is a joke. It is encouraging people to take evasive action in relation to tax. People are being advised by all lending agencies, whether they are commercial banks or not, and even by some of the State bodies to take action to evade tax. People who save from their earnings, who have paid tax on these earnings, should get special consideration in relation to the tax which they must pay on interest earned on these savings. If people make savings and invest them and then invest the further savings which they make on the accrued interest on those savings, they are paying tax four and five times on the same money. That should be looked at and action taken to bring about relief and also to encourage saving among the community.
I could talk about the telephone and postal services but I do not want to do that this evening. Instead I will refer quickly to some of the housing problems. The Exchequer is not in a position now to provide sufficient finance for house building in respect of either local authority houses or SDA loans. We must encourage people to save in order to build their own houses. This matter has not been given sufficient thought by successive Ministers for Local Government and for the Environment now. I read in the Estimates that the cost of providing houses is now an average of £600 a year per tenant in subsidy. This takes into consideration that a lot of houses are on very low subsidy and that gives a clearer idea of the subsidy required to provide houses at present.
It is up to the Minister for the Environment to launch a campaign to get people to build their own houses. First of all, sites must be provided. This operation is carried out by certain local authorities but not on the scale at which it should be undertaken. A campaign should be undertaken to sell the idea of saving to young people who are the ones who have the spending power and who spend a lot of money before they come to marriageable age when they must have houses. If they were encouraged to save for their houses there would be a good response. This is not just a matter of putting an advertisement in the papers or the Minister making a speech exhorting young people to save. I envisage a high-powered advertising campaign to bring about the idea of saving for houses.
As well as that special consideration in relation to tax allowances for people who save for house building and a special savings scheme could be set up where this money would be channelled into where it could be used by the Exchequer until required by the people wishing to build their houses. The moneys channelled into this could be given to the savers tax free. In other words, they do not pay tax on it and the Exchequer could have the use of this money at a small interest rate. With a scheme of this nature large numbers of people in the country would be only too willing to save for house building and would be grateful to the authorities for suggesting this to them and channelling them into this type of situation so that they could be housed when they would be married.
I want to refer to health. I am very disturbed at the amount of funds provided for health this year in the regional health board in my area. There is a reduction of £1.5 million to maintain services at 1979 level. This amounts to a reduction of 5 per cent on the Estimates required to maintain services over the nine-month period which remains. There are only a few very small areas where these savings can be made. These are in lighting, heating, prescriptions and food. Nobody would suggest that savings should be made on heat, lighting and food but these are the only options open to the board. I am afraid that if these options are taken and savings made we are going to have major problems in health over the next two-and-a-half years.
I will make one protest in relation to health before I sit down. In the southeastern area we have received only £20,000 for the coming 12 months out of the capital allocation for health. This is unfair and discriminatory. I hope that we shall never again have the situation where one health board is discriminated against to such an extent.
A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, my time is limited this evening.
Very, this evening.
I should like to speak now, for a very short time, on Irish agriculture. The Budgets of 1980 and 1979 will be remembered by the Irish farming community for many years to come. In the 1979 Budget, the then Minister for Finance, Deputy George Colley, brought in the infamous 2 per cent levy, which had serious consequences for our agriculture. It was a great error on the part of the then Minister. That error has not alone been equalled, but surpassed, by the bringing in by the present Minister for Finance. Deputy O'Kennedy, of the resource tax. I draw the House's attention briefly to the fact that, at that time, Members on this side of the House, in Fine Gael, members of the IFA and of the ICMSA and all the farming organisations warned the then Minister that he was making a great error in bringing in the levy. Nevertheless the Minister persisted.
I have here before me this evening the returns of livestock enumeration up to December, 1979. Those figures from the Central Statistics Office, issued by the Government Information Service, are the saddest reading that I, as a Member of this House since 1969 have seen in regard to Irish agriculture. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle will ask me why and I shall tell him that, in these figures, cows are down in number by 33,000—a drop of 1.7 per cent. Dairy cows are down in number by 10,200. Other cows are down in number by 23,000. Heifers in-calf are down by 17,500, a drop of 5.2 per cent. These cows are divided into different categories, total heifers, dairy and others. Dairy heifers are down 16,000, a drop of 6 per cent. These dairy heifers in-calf are the future of our dairying industry and they are down by 16,000. That is a frightening figure. Bulls are down in number by .7 per cent. One year old and under are also down in number. There is a very fractional increase of .6 per cent in total cattle, because there is an increase in 2 year olds and upwards and there is a marginal change as well in one year olds. Overall, the situation in regard to cows and heifers in-calf is very serious.
Total sheep are down in number by 58,000, a drop of 2.4 per cent. Pigs for breeding are down in number by a total of 2.6 per cent, but gilts in pig are down by 23.8 per cent, which is a massive decrease. Those are frightening figures for the future of our agriculture and ones which the Government should take note of at the earliest possible opportunity.
I have here a report in regard to vegetable production. In 1974, there were 10,310 acres of vegetables growing. In 1979, this had dropped to 7,196 acres and, as far as I am aware, the figures for 1980 will be down even further.
Imports of fruit and vegetables into Ireland in 1970 were £2.29 million. In 1979 that figure had increased to £4.8 million, plus another £3.3 million for frozen chip potatoes.
I further draw the attention of the House to imports of food into Ireland, which went up from £158 million in 1975 to a total of £318 million in 1979. Basically, the position in regard to cattle production gives cause for concern. The situation in regard to pig production is nothing short of alarming and that in regard to sheep is, also, very serious.
The Minister, in his speech, stated that farm incomes in 1979 were estimated to have fallen by about 4 per cent. In regard to cattle, sheep and pigs, the whole area gives cause for concern.
Regarding sugar beet, there are problems with the EEC with regard to the annual Price Review, which problems are causing concern. The position as regards vegetables is very serious and in barley production, surpluses also cause difficulties.
On almost every front, farming is faced with a difficult situation. Unless the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance take serious note of the position of Irish agriculture, we shall be faced with a grave situation in one of our most important industries. At this late hour, before the Dáil adjourns for Easter, I have one request to make of the Minister for Finance and of each and every Member of the Cabinet, that is that they seriously consider withdrawing the resource tax. I can assure the Minister that a lack of confidence among the Irish farming community led to a lot of the figures I have mentioned. Farmers were upset and annoyed and felt that the levy was a mistake. The resource tax, if persisted in, will lead to a farming community faced with a serious situation and a serious drop in income.
Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 15 April 1980.