It would be very easy for anybody standing up in this House to-day who had attained the use of reason and who listened to speeches in the years from 1927 to 1932 to take the line that was followed by the Minister and his colleagues in their campaigns throughout the country in those years. We can all, from time to time, make allowances and excuses for certain extravagant and reckless statements that may be made on platforms and in speeches on the grounds that, perhaps, they are caused by the somewhat heady wine of eloquence and mob hysteria. No such excuse can be made, however, for the deliberate poster campaign sent out by the Minister and his colleagues from the national headquarters in Dublin throughout the whole country so that there were on every hoarding, in every city, in every town, in every market place, at every fair and at every crossroads, posters which compared in a false and in a most distorted way the salaries of the Ministers of that day, of the civil servants of that day, and certain other wages paid to other members of the community. The only way to describe that campaign is to say that it was despicable, dishonest, disgraceful and, perhaps, better forgotten. Certainly, so far as I am concerned, I am not going to follow on those lines now in this House. I have far too much respect for the dignity of this House. I have far too much respect for the people. I realise the damage that could be done to public life—damage such as was done at that time and which had such an effect that it will take many, many years before the people realise how public life should be run. If I were to approach this Bill on the grounds of what I think individual Ministers are worth, quite obviously my estimate would be somewhat small. I do not propose to approach the matter, however in any personal way like that. I propose to approach it from the point of view of consideration of the offices that are incorporated therein and the offices that are referred to and to accept it as dealing with those offices rather than with individual Ministers of any particular Government of the day, no matter what Party or colour such Government may be.
I think all of us agree that it is right and proper that there should be accorded to the Ministers of the State a sufficient salary—and here, as I shall deal with later, it is entirely a salary —to ensure that those Ministers are completely free from financial worry, that they are completely free from financial temptation and that they are able to accord to their positions the dignity and the duties that should be accorded to them. That is essential and I think we are all agreed about it. I think it is also absolutely essential that the public should know, understand, realise and appreciate exactly what the members of the Government are being paid out of the public purse. I am afraid I consider that dealing with the references as they are dealt with in this Bill as being the sole salaries, the sole emoluments of Ministers is as dishonest as was the poster campaign prior to 1932. That is not a fact. It is a fact that certain regulations were laid down in 1937, and in the Act in 1938 following the committee of 1937, and that the Minister is dealing with a portion of those. I am not at all impressed by the argument the Minister made on an earlier Bill, that because something was done in 1938 by a Dáil and a Seanad of that day it is sacrosanct and it cannot possibly be changed and it should not and ought not be changed. If we take that view then we would certainly have very little work to do as legislators because no law would ever be amended. When we get a Bill before us we must consider not merely what is in the Bill, as such, but what was done in previous times, in the whole ambit of that Bill and consider whether the Bill should be treated from the point of view of the things that are in it and from the point of view of the things that are not in it. So far as this Bill is concerned, I take the view, very strongly, that there is no justification whatever for paying any Minister any part of his salary free of income-tax. There is an argument one way or the other—I am not going to repeat what we have had on the previous Bill—in respect of Deputies and Senators. Let us consider what exactly is at issue in respect of a Minister.
In this Bill the ordinary Minister is going to be paid £2,125. Of that £2,125, £1,501 is going to be paid as salary and £624 is going to be treated as an allowance. The reason for treating that £624 which a Deputy gets as an allowance is because a Deputy has certain very definite expenditure which he must meet and which the allowance is supposed to cover. It is necessary for a Deputy to deal in some manner with certain clerical expenses. That is one of the items the allowance is supposed to cover. Of course that does not operate at all so far as a Minister is concerned. A Minister is provided by the State with a Private Secretary and the clerical assistance necessary for that Private Secretary is provided by the State. Of course, it is obvious that the Private Secretary must and does deal not merely with State matters, but with what may broadly be termed political matters as well. A Minister, therefore, is not under that expense. A Minister is not under the same expense as a Deputy in regard to telephones. Very frequently a Deputy will have to telephone to his constituents from Leinster House, or to telephone to Dublin from his constituency. Again, of course, the State does and must pay for the telephone expenses of a Minister. A Deputy has to engage, particularly under the system which we may be discussing further next week, under which he becomes more an administrator than a legislator, in very considerable correspondence. The postage is very often a considerable item. A Minister, on the other hand, has no such expenses whatever, because, of course, all the political letters that are written by the Minister go out from his Private Secretary's office and go out, therefore, franked and free from postage in the ordinary way. A Deputy has, during the sittings of the House, to come to Dublin and to stay in a hotel—that is, if he is from the country. Obviously a Minister must live where his job is and he has not therefore that incidental expense. That is something we must all admit in regard to all our lives—that we have got to live somewhere which is convenient and handy to our work. A Minister has to do the same and, therefore, he is saved that incidental expense. A Minister is not like a Deputy, either, in that a Deputy leaves his own job for certain days of the week, and, perhaps, has to get someone else to do something for him while he is away. The Minister is at his job wholetime. Finally, a Minister is in a very different position in regard to transport which I shall deal with at some length in a moment. These are all the expenses that a Deputy is asked to bear and that a Deputy's allowance is expected to cover. They are not expenses which a Minister has and, therefore, there is no case whatever for saying that any portion of a Minister's salary should be free of income-tax or surtax. I am not arguing on a question of amount, but on a question of principle. Since the Government has to take the primary responsibility for taxation, they should be liable on principle to the same taxation as everyone else. Regardless of whether it is desirable for Deputies and Senators, it is essential, in my view, that the members of the Government should be liable to every tax to which the ordinary individual man or woman in the State is liable in the same circumstances.
The salary of a Minister is going to be £1,501, with an allowance of £624. The fact of that allowance being tax free makes it equivalent to £947 on top of the £1,501. On a salary of £947 plus £1,501, the income-tax would be £308 and the surtax about £32. The Shanley Committee, which sat in 1937, strongly recommended—it is the only part of their recommendations that was underlined in the report—that no part whatsoever of a Minister's salary should be free of income-tax, that the allowance he gets as a Deputy should be deducted and his salary adjusted accordingly.
Apart from the tax-free salary, there is the question of transport. That was considered at some length in the 1937 report, but the position appears to have varied considerably since then. As far as I can ascertain, there were 19 motor cars available then for Ministers and, presumably, Parliamentary Secretaries. The latest authentic information available to me is given in reply to a question in the Dáil on the 12th December, 1945, reported in the Official Debates, Volume 98, column 1683. According to that answer, the number of cars available in 1945 for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries had jumped from 19 to 38, the average annual mileage per car run over the four years was about 10,000 and the average quantity of petrol used was about 670 gallons, while the average cost of servicing was about £113. The price of the cars in use must have varied considerably. We know that new cars have been bought—and very properly bought. I have tried to make a calculation on the last official information available to me as to the value of this perquisite of free transport. I appreciate that part of the transport is a necessary protection, but I am afraid that what has happened since 1937, and which is quite clear from the figures in the Shanley Report and in 1945, is that the purpose has been extended from one of free transport for a Minister, as part of a necessary protection and as part of his duties, to transport for the wives and families of Ministers and for other persons they may designate. As a matter of principle, that is undesirable and it should not be dealt with in that way. We should ensure that Ministers are paid adequate salaries, taxed in the same way as those of any other citizen, sufficient to enable them to pay out of their own pockets for such transport as they may deem desirable and necessary for themselves and their families.
So far as I can find out, on the last figures available, it would probably be a fair guess to say that the car depreciation cost for a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary who has the use of those cars is about £500 a year. One of the most extraordinary things is that it is quite clear from the figures that the amount the Taoiseach gets out of transport is very much less than the amount his Ministers get. The Taoiseach is provided with an allowance of £350 to cover his cost of transport plus his drivers and I understand he has to pay for his petrol, oil and servicing, and buy his new cars, and so forth. There were 38 cars and the number of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries was 15, excluding the Taoiseach. Probably £500 a year is a fair depreciation cost. There are two drivers appointed for each Minister and as they are Guards, with a plainclothes allowance and other allowances for this form of work, it would work out that their salaries at present are about £6 a week, which gives a figure of £600. We must remember that petrol rationing was much more stringent in 1945 than it is now and it is to be hoped that Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries at that time were exercising considerable restraint in the use of their cars and petrol—though it is common knowledge that one who is no longer in that position was most flaithúlach in the way he used his car on all possible occasions. On the 1945 figures, it would seem that about £250 a year is spent per Minister on petrol and oil. The cost of servicing, as set out, gives us an average of £113 for each of the 38 cars, which would work out at about £250 for each person entitled to use a car. The cost of workshop staff was about £20 a week, according to the answer, and that seems to work out at about £100 per person entitled to use a car. The whole of that makes a total of £1,700.
I admit at once for the Minister that there is a large part of that proper protection cost. I shall not be so foolish, so childish or so mean as to suggest that that is not included but, over and above that protection cost, there is a very fair proportion of that sum that can quite fairly be described as a perquisite, particularly when it is a question of using the official car for persons other than the Minister himself and the Minister alone. I think that that, as a matter of fact, is undesirable and is a bad practice. It is a practice that apparently was not adverted to in the Shanley Report nor, so far as I can find from a member of the commission, was it known to the commission at that time. It is a practice that must have crept in since that date.
Supposing one takes, say, about half the cost of transport involved as being protection cost and about half the cost as being perquisites, that would mean a figure of approximately £800. In the case of the ordinary citizen, he would have to pay that £800 out of his own pocket after his pocket had suffered from the Revenue Commissioners having a little dig at it——
