The Budget which the Minister has introduced is one of the most depressing events which the country has had for a long time. The Minister is a jovial sort of character himself and I think it is not what was expected of him. People were wondering just what was going to happen when he was transferred to the Department of Finance. I am afraid his reputation will be rather different, to a great many people in the country. He was a very kindly and good-natured gentleman until he was put in charge of the country's finances.
I am at the disadvantage that I was elsewhere engaged yesterday and have not the benefit of knowing exactly the arguments put forward against the Bill. My own feeling is that what matters most is not the amount of taxation imposed but the capacity of the people to bear it. I think that is what is troubling every intelligent person in the country. One would expect that that would be present in the minds of the members of the Government, whatever about people on the Government side who have to say "yes" to things to which they would prefer to say "no". I believe that is true of a great many people in the Government ranks to-day. None of them want these taxes; none of them want to make people pay more for sugar. What Senator Hayes and everybody else says is true: the people are not able to bear these taxes, in addition to the increased taxation, which, year after year, has been made to the amount of taxation levied on industry and agriculture.
Industry anywhere to be a success must always have a reserve left. The farmer, the business man and the individual can only pay taxation out of what they have got from their earnings, out of some surplus that is left. What the Ministerial policy is doing and has been doing for a considerable time is to take away year after year the money which should have been left as a reserve to go into capital enterprise in the country, to replenish the reserves which keep the wheels of industry turning in the fields and in the towns. Under the present scheme people are being impoverished and a situation is being created where the capacity to produce is depreciating one year after another.
You have reached a stage to-day where you are imposing this additional burden on a country suffering now the first reactions of a war in which the country is not engaged, suffering reactions which are the consequence of the policy which you have been pursuing yourself to a certain extent. The first result is that quite a number of people who were employed have ceased to be employed. To the extent to which that employment has affected their livelihood, they are less able to bear the burden of taxation and the net result is that there is hardship and poverty in the country to a degree about which none of us can be very happy. The Minister and his colleagues talk a good deal about co-operation. As far as I am concerned, I feel anyway that this is a time in which it would be a good thing for the people of the country if we had a leadership that would be able to say to them: "Steady, let us step together," but we have not got that. The kind of leadership we have is not a leadership that will make men steady in their minds, their thoughts or their actions, or that will get them to step together. You know that when you are asking people to co-operate, you can only get them to co-operate on the basis that there is general agreement about the job that has to be done and the way you are to do it. I do not suggest that if we had to face up to the problem of Finland, which God forbid, there would not be a different set of conditions here. We would be fighting then for our very lives. The method would not count then. We would have to do things and we would have to forget the inefficiency and the incapacity of some leaders, simply because they had been thrown into their jobs. Perhaps, one would have to march out and not bother whether they were behind or where they were. We are not faced with a situation of that kind yet, but if we should have to face a situation like that our ability and our capacity to face it are definitely being worsened by the kind of policy you are pursuing. Therefore, when the Minister talks about co-operation he can only get from sane men, normal human beings, co-operation on the basis that there is reasonably general agreement about what has to be done and the way it is to be done.
The Minister knows that there are fundamental differences about the kind of things the Government are doing and the way they are doing them. I believe myself it should be possible to get a much greater measure of agreement about what the country ought to do to-day. As far as I am concerned as a countryman, my great difficulty about this Bill is that you are imposing taxes on sugar, tobacco and alcohol and you have raised income-tax. In my judgment, the country is much less able to bear these increased taxes to-day than it was seven or eight years ago. That is true, because of the policy which you have pursued. Our productive capacity has been definitely falling. The money which should have been left in production has been taken away and spent. It is gone. Now, you are adding to our Budget liabilities. You are even going to put a loan, amounting to £7,000,000, on the market. I should like to see the purposes on which that loan is to be spent. I cannot see that 1d. of it is going to be put into anything which could be called, in my judgment, a productive enterprise. Although things like what you are doing in the case of electricity, from one point of view, may be regarded by some Senators as improving the conditions of certain people in the country, nevertheless this country to-day is thrown back again on its agriculture and its farmers. Quite a number of our industrial workers and the people in our towns are going to be unemployed because the raw materials of their industry, which were imported, will not be available, so that to a much greater extent perhaps than at any time during the period of office of the present Government, they have got to depend on the farmers again.
Had the advice of some of us in this House been taken two or three years ago, had very considerable additional sums by way of capital been put into Irish agriculture, the strength and the vitality of that particular industry to-day would be very different. The total productivity of the nation in 1940 and 1941 could very easily be 25 per cent. more than it is going to be. The Minister's predecessor in office had no sympathy with rural problems. He displayed a complete lack of understanding of the problems of rural Ireland, and what was worse, he did not display any sympathy with them. I do not suggest that the present Minister would be unsympathetic, but his sympathy has not been demonstrated in a very practical way.
The effects of the war on our economic life are very different from its effects on life in England. There has been a very considerable increase in purchasing capacity there owing to war expenditure. One of the ablest economists on the other side has been advocating a compulsory savings plan for people across in England. In his judgment, the people there are earning more money than they can wisely spend after paying all taxes. The Chancellor there however has initiated a campaign of voluntary savings. I should like to see our Minister going out after this Budget to initiate a campaign of voluntary savings on the part of our people. There is no use in exhorting people to save who have no money. They have not the necessary capital to work their industry or whatever occupation they may be engaged in, even to 60 per cent., in many cases, of its total capacity. I believe myself the Labour Party are not saying anything like as much as they might about conditions in the country, but I would say to the Minister that we are definitely going to add to the numbers of "have nots" in this country. In our local paper the other day, I was reading where a deputation of working men went to the Board of Health to put their case for consideration for the Christmas season. They put before the board the fact that there were a number of married men unemployed in the town of Cavan. These men were getting 14/- a week, some of them less. They were paying a rent at the rate of 4/6d., some of them up to 5/-. They said that a cwt. of coal cost 3/6, so that there was 5/6 left to feed a married man his wife and family. What can you do in the country under conditions like these?
This country has certain things which it could exploit. It has the land, and it has the physical energy and intelligence. Therefore, there is not any justification for anybody being pessimistic if there was leadership to show the way to get work done. My complaint is that we have not got that leadership in the country. Added to that, you have a number of "have-nots" in the community. The number is being increased month after month in our towns. The unemployed are the "have-nots" from the point of view of some people. Goodness knows, they must be possessed of magnificent virtues to be as good as they are. In the country we have a number of farmers whose places are uncapitalised. The number is growing, and they will be soon thrown in amongst the "have-nots" because the farmer who cannot work his place to the full, and who is not able to meet the extra demands which the Government make upon him, is just as much a "have-not" as the unemployed workers in the towns. The Government are adding to the number of these, but they cannot continue doing so because very soon the result will be a lop-sided economy. Is it not tragic to be facing a situation like that when one thinks of all the other things that are possible for us. I am not the least bit pessimistic. Some people like to say that I am. But I am not. I prefer being a realist. I believe that the Minister and his colleagues must face up to this: that if they are going to keep peace and order and have progress in the country, if they find it essential to increase the burden of taxation on the people year after year, that can only be done if they, on their part, see to it that our productive capacity is fully utilised, and that the balance which is left to our people, as a result of their increased production, will be enough to meet the increased taxes imposed and, at the same time, will enable them to maintain a decent standard of living. What I say is, that the Government is attending to one side of that but not to the other. The obligation, however, is on the Government to do what I suggest.
We see that in England at the present time millions of pounds can be found for enterprises, quite a number of which cannot be said to be productive. Here with us there are enterprises which we know definitely could be made productive. Work on the land, for instance, holds possibilities. In present circumstances that is absolutely essential for us, but there is no good in telling me to go home and plough up my fields and to do so-and-so, if the first essential to all that is not available to me. Agriculture has been bled white, and the result is that we have not any reserve in the shape of capital, which is essential for us if we are to increase our production. To the extent to which that is lacking, our income in the future is going to be lower, and so is the Minister's capacity to rake the money off the taxpayers of the country which he wants to spend on his various activities. I am not going to say now whether the way this money is going to be spent is wise or not. That question has been argued at length. There are vital differences of opinion on it. My own judgment is that the best way to preserve our sovereignty is to have conditions created here whereby all our people will have a chance of living and working in the country, and of getting paid for their labour. To the extent to which Government activity can assist that, in my opinion, is the best method they could adopt to maintain the sovereignty of our people. I hold that the Government are neglecting to do that. They have neglected it for years as far as agriculture is concerned, and there can be no doubt about it but that we will reap the whirlwind.
The outbreak of war has definitely found us in this position: that we are not able to produce anything up to our full capacity from the land. Everyone who bothers his head to think about it knows that is true. At the moment, I am not thinking of people who have resources other than what comes off the the land. I am thinking of the man whom we style "John Farmer." The people that he is typical of are oppressed and depressed. War is costly and all peoples, whether they are in it or out of it, are called upon to hear increased burdens. We are not in it, but our burden of taxation is just as high as that which is being borne by the people in the war. The Government are not doing their obvious job to put our farmers into production in the manner in which they should, and the result is that our people are depressed. The Government and their supporters will, of course, say that that is not so.
There have been various disturbances amongst our farming community recently. However much the Government may decry the things which these people did, or however much they may disagree with them, this, at least, I think will be accepted by all, that the farmer is not a revolutionary by nature. He does not like to waste time if he can spend it to better advantage on his farm at home. The things which certain farmers did recently were done in an attitude of despair. The strange thing about it is that quite a number of those farmers were led by men who, to my own knowledge, were some years ago most active exponents of the policy of the present Government. One of our troubles here is that we find it very hard to go back on things that we did and said in the past. The Minister knows that quite well himself. It must be said, however, that he has shown more sense with regard to the past than some of his colleagues. While that is so, it must be admitted that it is very difficult to get men who espoused a particular cause or policy in the past to come out now and repudiate it. But, it is a fact that quite a number of farmers who, in a great many counties marched out in protest a week ago, had been active supporters of the Government Party in the past. Why did they do that? I put it to the Minister that they did it because they are broken, disappointed and angered. I am not saying that the banner under which they marched out on this occasion was the best that they could unfold, but we know also that the British did not go to war with Germany just because of Poland.