This Bill is in the ordinary form which Appropriation Bills have followed for some number of years and I do not think I need explain the details of it. If there is any particular provision in it, however, that any member of the House would wish me to explain in greater detail, I shall be only too happy to do so. The purpose of the Bill is to authorise the issue from the Central Fund of the balance of the amount granted for the current year. The Vote on Account which is passed in the Dáil just before the commencement of the financial year and which comes to the Seanad in the form of the Central Fund Bill covers the financial expenditure required up to 31st of this month. The Bill authorises the issue of the remainder of the appropriation required for the rest of the financial year up to 31st March next. It is in standard form, but, as I say, if there is anything which any member would wish me to deal with, I shall be happy to do so.
Appropriation Bill, 1954—Second and Subsequent Stages.
This Bill which, as the Minister has said, is in standard form is, with the Finance Bill which we have just passed, one of the few opportunities available to the House of expressing its views on the many matters involved in such measures. I do not wish to go into any details in connection with the provision made in this Bill, except to relate it to some extent to the measure which has just passed. I put at least three questions to the Minister, and I am very glad to have got one very definite answer, an answer which will, I am sure, as the Minister would desire, have the effect of making clearer to the people that they cannot now expect the promises made during the general election campaign to be fulfilled——
What were the promises?
——and that the only relief that can be expected is that which has already been announced in relation to a reduction in the price of butter. We have that very clear statement from the Minister that, until 31st March next or until whatever date the new Budget is introduced, there can be no hope of any relief in taxation or any reduction in the cost of living brought about by Government action.
I think it was Senator O'Reilly who asked what were the promises. I do not wish to detain the House very long in showing what the promises were.
And who made them?
I have here a very elaborate advertisement which appeared in the Clare Champion on 15th May, 1954. That advertisement contains the pictures of two very lovable people—the two candidates standing on behalf of Fine Gael—and it carries a comparison between the prices of tea, sugar, bread, flour, petrol, wireless licences——
Tell us about that part of it.
——and a number of other articles in 1951 and 1954. The promise was: "Once more we pledge ourselves to reduce taxation and the cost of living as we did in 1948 within six weeks." The Minister might say that we have taken him at a disadvantage when we ask him to do these things not in six weeks but in two months. If Senator O'Reilly wishes to have any more of these advertisements, from which he is prepared to run away now, read out, I have quite a number of them here. They cost something and they must have conveyed to the people that, if a change of Government was brought about, the prices of these commodities would come down to the 1951 level.
Let us have a few more of the promises.
Are they not taking £1,250,000 off the price of butter? That is a big sum of money.
Senator Baxter has drawn our attention to the fact that they are prepared to subsidise creamery butter to the extent of £1,250,000, but the Minister made a very definite statement in the Dáil that that provision was going to he brought about by the introduction of a Supplementary Budget.
No, he did not.
A Supplementary Estimate, I should have said.
I do not wish to interrupt the Senator, but it is in the Bill before him.
The Minister himself made a statement in the Dáil that the Minister for Agriculture had introduced a Supplementary Estimate.
And it has been passed.
It is for £1,250,000, as Senator Baxter has pointed out. That amount must be found either in savings under some of the provisions that are in this Bill or by an increase in taxation. We have not heard yet from the Minister which procedure he is going to adopt to bring it about.
Did he not tell you he was not increasing taxation?
Emphatically.
He is not going to increase taxation; more definitely he is not going to reduce it, and that was the promise made. More definitely still he is not by any Government action going to reduce the price of the commodities mentioned in this advertisement except the price of butter.
He is reducing the price of butter and you do not like it.
Because it does not cost anything.
I hope the creamery associations of which Senator Baxter is a representative here will be as well pleased as I am at the reduction in the price of butter. I do not wish at this stage to go any further into it but if Senator O'Reilly would like to have any further entertainment I could remind him of those advertisements, some of which I assume were issued under his name.
As I said at the outset it is, I suppose, fitting, particularly at this stage of the Seanad's life, that we should pass over these Bills as lightly as we possibly can and give the Minister all stages of this Appropriation Bill. I am very pleased to have succeeded in getting one complete answer from the Minister at least to one of the questions put to him although he has not answered many of the others.
With regard to the advertisement the Senator read out, was it not a poster to the effect that taxation was reduced in six weeks before, not a promise that it would be reduced in six weeks again? It is a question of punctuation.
"We pledge ourselves to reduce taxation as we did in 1948."
In six weeks?
The six weeks was not in it.
I did the Senator a further injustice when I said I assumed he had read the debates in the other House. Nothing could have been more clear than the manner in which I said in the other House that the amount that was necessary to provide the subvention to reduce the price of butter by 5d. a lb. as from 23rd August next was to be made by economies. When that announcement was made on the 15th of last month it was made crystal clear for anybody who read that debate either in the records of the other House or in the newspapers that that was the manner in which the moneys required were going to be found. I have yet to find or to hear— and the deputy leader of the Senator's Party would, I think he will admit, be quick to produce the appropriate quotations if he could find them—from any member of the Fianna Fáil Party a quotation correctly taken or correctly given, which would imply that any of the leaders of the Fine Gael Party suggested that these reductions or that any amelioration was going to take place forthwith or immediately. I asked across the floor of the other House on more than one occasion for the exact quotations to be given. On the contrary, the quotations that were given in the other House and the speeches that were made by the leaders of the Senator's Party and editorials written by the Irish Press during the course of the election were all to the effect that Mr. Costello was promising nothing.
Deputy de Valera, the Taoiseach as he then was, in one speech, Deputy Lemass, the Tánaiste as he then was, speaking in Banagher, Deputy Traynor, the then Minister for Defence, speaking in Dublin, and an editorial in the Irish Press—all those four sources, made authoritative pronouncements giving tremendous weight to the fact that Mr. Costello had promised nothing and because he had promised nothing people should not support him. Now we have got the exact reverse being suggested by the people on the other side of the House. That was their case during the general election. The complaint was that under no circumstances should the people support Fine Gael because Mr. Costello was promising nothing. Now they are coming along and saying that Mr. Costello promised everything. I would suggest, with all respect to my friends opposite, even, as I said before, in this, perhaps, vocational House, that they should make up their minds which foot they want to stand on. They cannot stand on one foot to-day and another foot last May during the election campaign. When they have made up their minds which foot they want to stand on, then they will be able to chart a constructive course in the Opposition. I hope I will see them charting a constructive course there in the new House that will arise.