(Cavan-Monaghan): When I moved the adjournment of this debate I was dealing with agriculture and I pointed out that this sector of the economy is at a very low level at present. The Minister for Agriculture, who spoke earlier today, conceded that the years 1979 and 1980 were extremely bad years for agriculture. The most striking evidence of the low state to which the industry has sunk is that cattle numbers are now back to 1972 levels. The 1980 report of the Irish Livestock and Meat Board states that the breeding herd is now back to its 1972 level, whereas the beef cow component of the herd is back to the 1971 level. Could there be more striking evidence of the present state of agriculture?
The Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture claim that the sum of £35 million has been injected into the agricultural sector by the budget. I put on record item by item that instead of £35 million the real provision is at most £22.85 million. I want to compare the sum of under £23 million provided for agriculture in the budget to the allocation of £80 million for extra public sector pay claims in 1981. I am sure the amount of £80 million is a moderate one and no more than is necessary. It is important to note that the public sector pay bill in 1981 has increased by 101 per cent since 1978 while at the same time agricultural incomes have declined substantially both in nominal and real terms by about 40 per cent over that time. The only solution offered by the Minister for Finance is an exhortation to the farmers to produce more. His contribution towards increased production is to tax farmers out of existence by way of income tax, rates, resource tax and special levies and he expects the agricultural community to proceed with confidence. In the face of all these taxes it is no wonder that there is a complete lack of confidence among them at present.
I have spelled out clearly that the budget contribution to agriculture is £22.85 million, but let us consider what the same budget will take out of agriculture. Of course this is an inflationary budget and we cannot have exact figures but I am being conservative in saying that it is inflationary to the extent of 3 per cent. If we accept this figure the immediate result will be the transfer of £30 million from agriculture to the Exchequer. Therefore we find that there is an injection of less than £23 million and a withdrawal of £30 million, leaving agriculture worse off to the extent of £7 million.
The budget will also increase the cost of processing due to increase in the cost of petrol, oil, excise duty, PRSI charges and post office charges. Initially these costs may be borne by the processors but finally they will be funded by the farmers by way of lower prices for farm products. The possibility of an increase in wages and salaries above the terms of the second phase of the national understanding must be kept in mind due to the inflationary effects of the budget and this will also affect the processing industry.
To summarise, the direct effect of the budget on the business of farming is to provide additional gross income in rates and levies amounting to £25.8 million and to withdraw from agriculture £30 million due to the inflationary nature of the budget. It is inflation which is killing our agricultural industry. Farmers are accepting increases applicable to low inflation countries and at the same time they are fighting wild inflation here. This suggests a direct withdrawal of £7 million from agriculture. The indirect effects of the budget and the effects of indirect taxation on farmers as individuals are ignored for the purpose of what I have been saying.
The benefits in taxes outlined by the Minister on budget day are only part of the budget's plan for managing the State's finance for the year.
When and if prosperity is restored to agriculture the small farmers must be protected from the cheque book tycoons who are gobbling up small farms that come on the market. I have noticed that since the change of Government the Land Commission have been winding down and that they are coming virtually to a standstill. The machinery in the White Paper will not protect the small farmer from the non-farmer or the big farmer. I have known for some time that the Department of Finance do not understand the workings of the Land Commission, that they think it is some sort of social welfare operation, which it is not, and that they want to wind it up. The White Paper indicates that, because it says that the Land Commission will not be wound up as it would be necessary for some time to deal with land on hands. When I raised this question in the House over the last three or four years I was told by Minister after Minister that the Land Commission were slowing down in acquisition and devoting all their energies to distributing land on hands. It was a scandal that they should have kept so much land without distributing it.
I put down a question to the Minister for Agriculture recently asking for particulars of lands acquired and distributed from 1975 to 1980. On the acquisition side I was told that in 1975 5,518 hectares had been acquired, in 1976 7,618 hectares, in 1977 5,008 hectares, in 1978 4,976 hectares, in 1979 2,602 hectares and in 1980 882 hectares had been acquired. If I had closed my ears I would have thought that the Land Commission staff must have been killing themselves dividing land. Luckily I had asked for the division figures for the same period and they were that in 1975 14,641 hectares were divided, in 1976 12,549 hectares, in 1977 14,446 hectares had been divided, and then when Fianna Fáil put the pressure onto land division, we find that in 1978 the amount divided was down to 11,652 hectares, in 1979 it was down to 10,587 hectares and in 1980 it was down to 9,286 hectares.
What are the Land Commission doing? Have the staff been withdrawn? They must have been, because I know that Land Commission inspectors do a good job when they are allowed to. Those are scandalous figures which show that since 1977 the Ministers for Agriculture were bluffing me, the House and the country when they said that the object of winding down the acquisition section was so that the division section could go full steam ahead and get land divided and that the inspectors who were acquiring land should be allowed to divide land. Not only have the acquisition section come to a full stop, acquiring not even 1,000 hectares in 1980 but division has gone down from 14,446 hectares in 1977 to 9,286 hectares. We know that the Land Commissioners have on hands something like 60,000 or 70,000 acres.
In the time left to me I will deal with taxation. This is an unimaginative budget without innovation. It is as old fashioned as if my grandmother had introduced it. We have put tax on cars, petrol, drinks and cigarettes; we have something for the old age pensioner to keep body and soul together and that is no more than one would expect in these inflationary times, and then the Government have borrowed the lot. When Fianna Fáil were in opposition their war cry was "job creation." What we hear about now is recession. We hear that all the faults and the problems of the present Government are due to the sheiks and the price of oil. I concede that the increase on the price of oil causes some of our economic difficulties but why should we exacerbate the condition? If everybody from the Taoiseach down to the lowliest member of a town commission blames the price of oil for our not being competitive and for the loss of jobs and so on, why do they in two successive budgets have so little imagination as to put 20p last year and 15p this year onto the price of a gallon of petrol and onto diesel?
If some of our complaints are due to the price of oil why does the financial wizard who heads the Government not let his own expertise be known and show a bit of imagination and get tax from elsewhere if necessary? The effect of this 20p last year and the 15p this year on petrol and diesel will be inflationary. It will penetrate through to every section of the economy and will make us less competitive at home and abroad. That is all the imagination and the innovation that we see in this budget. We then go to the hardy annuals, as they are called, and find that this year, after last year, drink is taxed and cigarettes are taxed. It may be said that these are optional purchases. Do we completely forget tourism? Are we not pricing ourselves out of the tourist market to such an extent that if the púnt had a reasonable value, people could go to England, pay the cost of transporting themselves and their cars and have a cheaper holiday than if they stayed at home? When people are trying to make up their minds about where they will go on their holidays they consider the cost of petrol and the cost of drink and cigarettes. The tourist industry is being taxed out of business.
There is a 9 per cent increase provided in the budget for tourism but this is actually a cutback. If we want to encourage people to come here and we want to turn the weakness of the punt to our advantage we must exploit the tourist market. Many people regard us as out of our minds because we are taxing things which will drive tourists away. We have enough difficulties here in attracting tourists and in differentiating between the 26 counties of the Republic and the six counties of the North East without driving up the cost of holidays here.
The allocation to local tourist boards has been cut this year. It is difficult to understand that. The budget demonstrates the mismanagement of the country by the Government over the last four years. When I spoke about agriculture I said that of the £22 million provided, £3.5 million represents an increase in administration. The following items in the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture show a reduction: lime transport subsidy, farm modernisation scheme, marketing, scholarships and training, technical assistance and general disease control. We have only one agricultural instructor for every 500 or 600 farmers while in the EEC countries, notably Holland, where our competitors are, there is one for every 200.
We joined the EEC in the full knowledge that there would be swings and roundabouts and that we could suffer from losses on the industrial swings but if we managed our economy and agriculture properly we would increase considerably on the agricultural roundabouts. We are not fighting hard enough in Brussels for our farmers and we are not organising technical training and supports at home to enable them to compete on the home market. There are huge quantities of food imported from abroad. It is a disgrace that in an agricultural country such large quantities of food should be imported. It shows how badly the country is being managed.
An increase of 25 per cent has been given to the social welfare recipients. We must not forget, however, that the cost of living in the last two years has increased by 37 per cent. I do not believe one can estimate the requirements of the lowest income sector by any yardstick. It is impossible to say how much it takes to keep an old person who lives alone. I do not consider that enough has been done for those people. Fianna Fáil did not reduce the qualifying age for the old age pension. It had never been reduced from 1907 until the National Coalition Government reduced it on taking office. During our period in office it was reduced down to 66 years but Fianna Fáil have not reduced it since by even one year.
Fianna Fáil talk a lot about their performance in relation to social welfare but it was the National Coalition Government who uplifted the social welfare classes during their period in office. They gave huge increases in children's allowances and old age pensions. We gave an allowance for single women who were destitute when we took office. I welcome what has been done for the social welfare classes but we should not clap ourselves on the back because, like the farmers, they were poor people for far too long. They have got no more than is necessary to keep body and soul together.
I want to refer to the restoration of car tax. The Minister for Finance on budget night stated on television and on radio that it was not a tax, that it was a registration fee. It does not matter a lot to the person who goes into the tax office to pay £20 whether it is called a registration fee or taxation. When this tax was removed from cars after Fianna Fáil took office in 1977 car owners were not told that it would be replaced by another tax under a different name. That is a cynical trick. Maybe the Government thought they should throw it out with Deputy O'Donoghue. This is the imagination and the innovation of the Taoiseach.
The PAYE people are worse off under this budget. Fianna Fáil played on the sympathies and fears of a certain group of young people before the 1977 election and told them they would look after them. It cannot be denied that a young person who is lucky enough to have a job and who is earning £60, £70 or £80 a week is better off to the extent of £70 per year under the budget. The first thing he has to pay out of that is about £15 for a stamp. The next thing he has to pay out of that is an extra £10 for his car, because he has to get to work. That is £25. The next thing he has to pay is an extra 15p for every gallon of petrol he buys. Bang goes the £70. It is gobbled up. If he takes a drink he has to pay 12p on a glass of whiskey, or 6p on a pint of stout, and if he smokes he has to pay an extra 10p for 20 cigarettes. This is all before he starts to cater for the increase in the cost of living.
Is it not true that this budget is inflationary? Is it not a fact that it will generate demands for wages and, if they acceded to — and it is difficult to see how they will not be acceded to — the cost of production will go up? That has to be added to the tax on petrol and oil, and there is hurdy-gurdy going again for the financial wizard of the century. We will be less competitive at home and abroad, and unemployment will increase.
It is very difficult to see how such a budget could be introduced. I want to put on record that this budget is faulty and deceptive. Minister after Minister has refused to say how the cuts will be justified and where provision is made for inflation. With the notable exception of the Minister for Energy, who seems to be a sort of independent republic on his own, other Ministers refused to answer. The answer is that with all the taxes and with borrowing of £515 million, the Estimates are inadequate. Before the end of the year there will either have to be a cutback in the health services, the local government services in every Department, or Supplementary Estimates will have to be introduced. Last year Supplementary Estimates to the tune of £463 million were introduced.
There is great speculation as to when the general election will be held. I would have a bet with anybody that the general election will be held before the normal time for the re-assembly of the Dáil after the summer recess. If the Dáil re-assembles after the summer recess without a general election, Supplementary Estimates will be flying in and borrowing will be astronomical.
