The appointment we are asked to approve derives from the decision of the Government to nominate Deputy Michael O'Kennedy as the Irish Commissioner of the European Community. We have already had an opportunity, on his last time in this House, to congratulate him, with reservations. He may be glad to be out of it and into the quieter climate of Brussels.
The decision to appoint Deputy O'Kennedy as Minister for Finance, despite the fact that he would not be available for that office for more than a year, was one which is difficult to defend. It was clear at the time that appointment was made that the country was facing a very grave crisis brought about by the way in which the economy had been managed by Fianna Fáil in the preceding two and a half years. It was vital that the country should have a Minister for Finance who would have a clear run ahead of him until whenever the next election might take place and would have the opportunity to tackle those problems effectively. To have appointed Deputy O'Kennedy despite his impending appointment as Commissioner, which we have all been aware of for the whole of that year, was something which is indefensible and it has resulted in a failure to tackle the economic and financial problems of the country.
There are no doubt other contributory factors. The Taoiseach's own problems in making up his mind and taking decisions on crucial issues has been perhaps the central factor. But had there been a Minister for Finance who knew he was there until the election and whose future depended upon that general election, rather than one who knew that he had an easy let out at the end of the year, then even the unwillingness of the Taoiseach to take decisions might not have inhibited the Government from tackling some of the problems which they have failed to tackle.
Therefore, in retrospect that appointment appears as an unfortunate one. We can see part of the results of it in the expenditure over-run of £273 million in the Supplementary Estimates, almost all of it current expenditure, though it is not easy to distinguish one from the other because of the way in which these accounts are produced. This is an excess in expenditure which amounts to almost twice the amount of additional tax revenue raised in the budget. In other words, in retrospect taxes would need to have been increased by twice the actual amount to maintain the projected current deficit of £353 million, or 4 per cent of GNP.
The Minister's lack of concern about the public finance is reflected in his knowledge that his tenure was limited. We can see this in the cavalier way in which he said in the budget speech that, in the event of the £100 million provision for pay and pensions having to be increased, he was determined not to have a recurrence of the previous year's experience whereby such excess expenditure added to borrowing. In the Question Time that immediately preceded this debate he tried to get out of that by suggesting that the lower balance of payments deficit justifies his doing so. The economic logic of that would defeat even a first year economics student. Certainly if he put down such a reply to a question on that subject he would not get a pass from any economics lecturer from any university in Ireland. The Minister did not do himself any good by attempting that explanation, particularly in view of the reasons for the fall in the external deficit which reflects a 7 per cent drop in exports and the selling of our breeding stock for the year to come. The Taoiseach's action in making such a short-term appointment has contributed to the present chaos in our public finances.
The new Minister, whom we must congratulate on being appointed but also comiserate with in view of what he is taking over — and he is a courageous man to take it on — is faced with an even more short-term task than his predecessor. The situation in which over a period of a year to two years we will have had three Ministers for Finance at a time of the greatest economic crisis we have faced in 50 years is obviously unsatisfactory and damaging to the interests of the country. In fairness, the Minister who took over office when the Taoiseach himself was appointed to his post should have been given a longer run at the job, an opportunity to tackle the whole task of putting our finances straight over the whole period up to the election. The new Minister now being appointed should equally have been given a longer run at his very short-term job of presenting perhaps — that remains to be seen — a budget to this House in some weeks' time. To ask him to take over this process in mid-stream, if indeed the process is being carried on at all at this stage, does seem very unfair.
Knowing the complexity of the task and having seen a Minister for Finance struggling with less acute problems under less unfavourable conditions than the present, I must say that to expect someone to take this over in mid-stream, to assimilate all the preparatory work that should have gone on up to this point and to actually produce a budget with the full command of all the data required for that purpose is asking a lot of anyone. If it is intended to produce a budget in the early part of next year then the Minister should have been given a greater opportunity to prepare and the outgoing Minister should have offered his resignation at an earlier date to enable that to have been done.
It can be argued that it does not matter who is the Minister when no decisions of consequence are being taken, but it is this very failure to take decisions which is at the core of our problems. We have drifted through 1980 without any of the necessary economic decisions being taken under Deputy O'Kennedy as Minister and I cannot say we have any confidence that the change in Minister will halt this drift. There is every sign that it will continue until there is an election and we have a new Government. It is the prospect of continuing drift and the damage being done to the country's economy, finances, credit and creditability abroad which makes it clear that a general election is desirable at as early a date as possible. We naturally hope and believe that we would succed in such an election, but whoever succeds it is vital that this country has a Government with a mandate to govern for a long enough period to tackle the problems which have now been allowed to accumulate in the last year and which were created during the past two and a half years.
I fear the new Minister may be as shadowy as his predecessor and we cannot but fear that under the Taoiseach's direction he will produce as irresponsible a budget as this year's, one in which the estimates of expenditure bore so little relationship to the obvious outturn, a budget which was dishonest in its failure to provide adequately for expenditure needs. Perhaps it will be otherwise; it remains to be seen. Nothing in the history of this Government under other leaders suggests that facing into a general election they will be willing to take the kind of action necessary to put our finances in order.
I will ask in due course that an issue which arose during Question Time and caused some confusion be clarified because, contrary to what we understood from the Taoiseach to be the case on a number of occasions and in his original allocation of functions, we were told that economic planning was the function of the Department of Finance and not of the Taoiseach's Department, despite the Taoiseach having told us something rather differently when he made the original changes and despite the transfer of the economic planning staff to the Taoiseach's Department.
I wish Deputy Nolan well in his new appointment. He is a popular Member of this House and someone whom all of us are glad to see being rewarded by promotion to the Cabinet. He has been given a difficult task, one which has been carried out with less than total success by his predecessor. I do not wish to be unduly critical of an individual because Governments act with collective responsibility and no individual is entirely free to carry on his Department in the way he wishes because of the constraint of Cabinet responsibility. Deputy Nolan's predecessor was not very successful in maintaining industrial peace during his first two and a half years in office and during the past year he has done so at immense cost to the nation in the settlement of claims on terms and in a manner which have stimulated a new bout of inflation at a time when there was some prospect that inflation might be brought not to but towards single figures. In those circumstances Deputy Nolan has a difficult task. He has inherited a runaway inflation situation as far as pay claims in the public sector are concerned and he will not find it easy to cope. He will have our good wishes and co-operation in tackling the problems he has inherited and it is important in the interests of the nation that we should extend this co-operation.
He will be aware that we have twice offered the co-operation of this party in legislation in the industrial relations field on an agreed basis without any response from the other side of the House. We ourselves have published proposals for legislative reform in this area which evoked very little public dissent from any side and considerable commendation from some of those in this area. Deputy Nolan will be aware that we offered then and more recently our support for such legislation along the lines set out in our policy statement and that there has been no response to that offer. He will be aware that the Taoiseach, upon his election to that office, promised such legislation but withdrew the promise by omitting it from his first radio and television address to the nation. The Deputy is taking over a ministry in very difficult conditions with an indecisive Taoiseach whose indecision is particularly marked in this area and in a situation where the policies pursued by the first Fianna Fáil administration under Deputy Lynch of trying to control public service pay within reasonable limits has been abandoned. Deputy Nolan is the person who will have to carry the can. He would be less than human if, on being offered membership of the Cabinet, he did not take it despite the fact that it has these intimidating features and he may well feel that he may not hold this position for very long before a general election, so there will be little time for him to get into difficulties due to problems he is inheriting. Perhaps that is the case. In any event, we wish him well in his new position and we can only hope that the new Minister for Finance who has also taken on a difficult task will, for a change, bring in an honest budget which will honestly assess revenue and expenditure prospects and take the first steps to putting this country back on the course towards economic growth, from which it has been driven by the incompetence and mismanagement of the Fianna Fáil Government elected in 1977 and the indecision of the Fianna Fáil Government which came to power a year ago.
