——knew the seriousness of the situation a long time ago, but those working on the problem allegedly kept this information to themselves because it conflicted with earlier assessments to Ministers.
That is a feedout from the Government, from the handlers, trying to put the blame on officials. The Government should be ashamed of themselves. The Sunday Press goes even further. They say that an official of the Department of Finance is suggested as having given advice to the Minister on the basis of which he misled the Dáil on 7 February of this year. Again, this is an attempt to blame officials of the Department of Finance. Now we have a rather peculiar comment from the political correspondent of the Sunday Independent. He claims that the withholding of information, the cover-up if you like, was deliberate. He states:
In the earlier months of this year, the Department of Finance was negotiating its borrowing for 1984 and also renegotiating some existing loans to take account of falling international interest rates. The Government then identifying a problem to which as yet they could offer no solution, would serve only to raise fears, reduce international confidence and prejudge the terms on which borrowing could be secured.
This argument of political expediency was presumably put to him by some Government source but in effect means that the honesty and credibility of the Government's figures will inevitably be suspect in future. It is a strange standard of journalism to suggest that it is all right for a Government to mislead the country and the world about the budget and the balance of payments deficit provided they are doing it for some peculiar purpose of their own.
I regard it as scandalous that the Government should, as a matter of policy, seek to blame officers for ministerial error. It is an attempt by the Government to subvert the principle of ministerial responsibility on which parliamentary democracy is based. Is the Minister for Finance accountable or not accountable to Dáil Éireann for the budget, for the information he gives in reply to questions in the Dáil, for the speeches and statements he makes? Or should we invite officers of the Department of Finance to answer this debate, and to present the budget in future? Is the Minister just a cypher, a mouthpiece for his Department, without independent judgment? Is the Minister or is the Minister not in political control of his Department? If the Minister for Finance is not responsible for the nation's finances, then he should not be Minister for Finance. That is why we are expressing no confidence in him and that is why he should resign. I want the Minister, first of all, here this afternoon to state publicly that he accepts responsibility for the error, and to repudiate the aspersions that have been cast on his senior officials — something never done in this House before, as far as I can recall, by any Minister for Finance.
We in this House are going to hold Ministers accountable for their actions. The functioning of democracy requires Government accountability. We cannot allow blame for misleading statements by the Minister for Finance to be passed on to individuals or institutions not directly accountable to us.
It is clear from what I have just quoted that the true situation was known for a considerable time. The Minister presented a budget based on information known to be false. That is quite sufficient cause for demanding here tonight that the Minister should resign.
In condemning the Minister who is responsible to this House for his Department, I am not implying that other institutions are free of blame. The information that would explain the "black hole" that grew enormous in 1983 was apparently available in the Central Bank. The Central Bank's latest report published last week was written as if the now discredited figures were still valid. I would accept, too, that the operational methods of the Central Statistics Office require examination and updating. But I reject imposition of the form of political control by means of a Government appointed Statistical Council as the correct way of doing this. The liaison between the Department of Finance, the Central Bank and the Central Statistics Office definitely has been shown to be in a lamentable position.
I want to point out to the House the trick which this Government are now attempting to perpetrate. Day by day, week by week and month by month the statistics going out from the Central Statistics Office make it abundantly clear that their economic and financial policies are a disaster and that they are leading this country into economic ruin. Now they decide that perhaps they should have a say in these statistics. Up to now in this country we have always had totally objective, impartial statistics produced by a completely independent office. Now the Taoiseach proposes to appoint a politically appointed board, or council — call it what you will — to supervise the Central Statistics Office. We reject that. That is not acceptable to us and I believe that it will not be acceptable to the country. Whatever else we may argue, dispute or debate about in this House, at least we should have totally reliable statistics from non-political sources.
This episode is the second major blow to confidence for which the Minister for Finance has been responsible this year. His Budget Statement, you will recall, brought the Stock Exchange to a standstill. As a result of that he had to go and do the very thing that he had been preaching against since he became Minister for Finance — borrow abroad. He cut off from himself, by his own stupidity, the resource, access to domestic borrowing. As a result, in January to March of this year he has had to rely to an unprecedented extent on foreign borrowing and, as I pointed out last week, in the first three months of this year alone he borrowed about 80 per cent of last year's total foreign borrowing.
The sad reality is that the Government have not succeeded, even by the crushing taxation which they have imposed on the country, any worthwhile improvement in the public finances. The current budget deficit is now into four figures for the first time, and as far as ever from being phased out. The national debt increased by a record £3 billion last year, and the foreign debt by a record £1.7 billion. Since June 1981, indeed, the foreign debt has grown from less than £3 billion to £7½ billion.
Last year's budget came, by the Minister's own admission on budget day, as a "shock to the economy". What did it achieve? The Minister's Budget Statement, if he were honest to this House, should now be amended and the crucial sentence in that Budget Statement should now be amended in the light of the facts which have been disclosed to the following: "While inflation has come down somewhat — not significantly — and the balance of payments problem has been slightly alleviated — not greatly — consumption has declined, investment has fallen, unemployment has risen and growth has been stifled". This treatment had all the primitiveness of mediaeval medicine. Bleed the patient to death, if you call it a cure.
In my view, the recent reduction in the unemployment figures reflect increasing emigration. I do not think there can be very much doubt about that. A reduction in unemployment achieved by increased emigration is the hallmark of failure, not of success. One of the achievements of which we can be most proud over the last 20 years was that not merely did we halt emigration, but we actually made it possible for thousands of Irish people to return to take up jobs in this country. I remember being in Donegal when a teacher of a class pointed out to me with pride that one out of every five children in that school was the son or daughter of a returned emigrant. Is it Fine Gael strategy now to deal with unemployment by means of emigration? Is that what it has come to?
Lack of confidence in the Minister for Finance is not confined to this side of the House. On a number of occasions last year the Labour Party and their Leader showed that they had not confidence in this Minister for Finance, in relation to the size of the deficit, in relation to tax reform and in relation to expenditure cuts. There is virtually no group in this country, be they the farmers, the trade unions or the employers, not to mention those on social welfare, who have any confidence in the Minister for Finance, as shown by their comments following the presentation of his two budgets. The collapse in private investment last year and the size of the profits repatriated in 1983 show that investors have no confidence, either, in the Minister for Finance.
In conclusion, I want to return to where I started. The Minister for Finance, misled this House in his Budget Statement and in reply to a question by Deputy O'Kennedy on 7 February 1984. He made statements which were known at the most senior levels in his Department — and as far as we know, by the Minister himself and the Taoiseach — to be false. He not merely made misleading statements, he actually made claims which can now only be regarded as fraudulent, not once but on several occasions. He has undermined trust and confidence in the national finances. The principle of ministerial responsibility is fundamental to the operations of parliamentary democracy.
His attempt to deny or to sidetrack that responsibility cannot and will not be accepted by this House. That is why we have no confidence in the Minister and that is why we are calling upon him to resign. Before this debate ends, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance must deal with one very important issue — that is their credibility in this matter. I point again to the document published before the budget "Economic Background to the Budget, 1984," on page 8, of which it is stated:
The coverage of the statistics for the national balance of payments is being reviewed and the results which may be available later this year could require the estimates of the current accounts deficit for recent years to be revised. However, the revisions are unlikely to alter significantly the improvement in the trend in the period under review.
The key word there is "current" and I want to direct the House's attention to it. They knew before they brought in the budget that there was something wrong on the current side. I want to suggest that if they knew it was on the current side that the mistake was, they must also have had some very good idea of the size of the mistake. I want the Minister to come clean with this House in the course of this debate——