It is a fair reply to the Minister's speech. It is quite clear that I did not falsify any figures. The fact is that the annual figure the Minister gave for 1956 did not show a true picture at all. The figure was continuously rising as regards import prices. It was continually declining as regards export prices during the whole of that year. The Minister, by taking this global figure for the year, did not convey a true picture of the situation in any sense whatever.
Perhaps a more important point on this Bill, and directly on the section, is the question of the truth of my figures as regards the history of domestic Government expenditure in this country over the past decade. I said, and I repeat, that the gross amount of the expenditure in the year 1950/51, the last year of the first inter-Party Government, was £75 million. I said that when Deputy MacEntee left office, in his last complete year of office, although he had taken £10 million on food subsidies out of the expenditure—a direct in and out transaction—the expenditure was about £105 million. So, he increased, by £40 million, the ordinary expenditure of the Government. The Minister agreed this with me a couple of years ago. It is only now, when the election is looming up, that he chooses to make a rumpus about it. However, that is £40 million and the Minister accepted it from me a couple of years ago.
The other figure is this, and the Minister did not really make any point about it. I said that the expenditure for 1956/57, the last year of the second inter-Party Government, was about £109 million and that you could knock that by £9 million approximately for food subsidies, £7 million on bread and £2 million on butter approximately, making a round figure of £100 million, and that, for the coming year, the Minister has an estimated expenditure for Supply Services of £132 million on the face of the Estimates Volume. That is an increase again, allowing for the food subsidies, of about £30 million. I gave the Minister a present of a couple of million pounds in it. There you have, for the decade, an increase of £75 million in Government expenditure. I admit the £ is not the same today as it was in 1951, but, of that £75 million increase in Government expenditure, the inter-Party Government or the Coalition Government—call them what you like—were responsible for £5 million; the Fianna Fáil Party were responsible for £70 million. There is no getting away from that. These are facts.
The Minister was talking, in relation to emigration, about reliable figures. I shall not pursue the matter with him. He first said he would give the facts and reliable figures. These are facts, subject to the elasticity of the £—and it has had very much the same degree of elasticity during the decade. The Minister was correct when he said that the inter-Party Government who were in office from 1954 to 1957 paid great attention to the cost of living.
Could I point out that though the cost of living went up, the import price index went up by 14 points between the time they came into office and the time they left office? They kept the cost of living down as low as they could. It went up 14 points all right, but the import price index has gone down systematically until recently. Since the Government came into office, owing to their particular approach to finance, the cost of living has gone up systematically, despite an important decline in prices of imports which account for roughly half our gross national expenditure. The Government have wasted their opportunity, just as they wasted a bigger opportunity still after the Korean War.
I can see, a Chathaoirligh, that you are getting restless but I have finished what I have to say on the section and I think that the latter part of what I have said was very much on the section.
