I move:—
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Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £468,310 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun ioctha an Mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta 1926, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí na Roinne Ioncuim. |
6.—That a sum not exceeding £468,310 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1926, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Revenue Department. |
As Deputies are aware, the primary functions of this Department are the assessment and collection of various duties: customs and excise duties, estate duties, stamps, excess profits duty, which is a disappearing item; corporation profits duty, income tax and super tax. In addition to these primary duties, the services of the Department are utilised for many other matters. The stamping branch, for instance, is responsible for the manufacture of postage stamps, national health and unemployment insurance stamps, entertainment and other revenue stamps, and various impressed stamps. It prints the old-age pensions orders, stamps prepaid postal stationery, prints savings certificates, etc. The customs and excise branch has also many duties in addition to the collection of revenue and the suppression of smuggling. It does the bulk of the work in connection with old-age pensions, and the cost of that particular work amounts to about £91,000 per annum. On the customs side the services of the staff are utilised for a great many matters not affecting revenue. They prevent, for instance, the importation of reprints of copyright works, the importation of obscene literature, goods contravening the Merchandise Marks Act, anthrax-infected goods, dangerous drugs, illegal medical drugs, fictitious stamps and coins and dyes for their manufacture; fish illegally caught, lottery advertisements, unsound meat, matches containing white phosphorus. It also has duties in connection with the enforcement of health and quarantine regulations, with the importation of explosives, alien emigration at certain ports, wreck inquiries, and the custody and disposal of wreck; the collectors are generally receivers of wreck, and other officers are deputy receivers; registration of ships and fishing-boats, engagement and discharge of seamen, as agents for the Department of Industry and Commerce; collection of light dues, harbour dues, quit rents, publicans' licence duties, etc.
The increase in this Vote comes mostly under subhead (a) and subhead (e), which are of a like nature. As to the £55,740 coming under sub-head (a), the following are the factors:—First, normal annual increments of salary. These amount to £16,576. That may seem a very large sum for salary increments, but it must be remembered that this is practically a new service. There was very little customs work done here before the establishment of the Saorstát. Some of the estate duty work and the super-tax work was not done in this country. New and additional establishments had to be provided to deal with this work. That means that men who were experienced had to be promoted to controlling grades, and to take charge of new recruits. The result is that very few men are actually at their maximum. The £16,576 due to increments in salaries is divided over 1,756 people. The average increment, therefore, amounts to about £9. There is a bonus increase, due partly to new staff and partly to increase in the rate, of £4,654. There was additional staff employed mainly as a result of last year's Finance Act, amounting to £15,300. There was additional overtime, due largely to the same cause—£12,450.
The new duties last year did result in a very considerable addition to the work of the revenue department. We reduced the duty on tea, but we did not abolish it, and no reduction of work was occasioned by that change. We imposed new duties on boots, soap, candles, motor bodies and glass bottles. These were ad valorem duties which involved a great deal more labour than specific duties. It is easy to weigh out so many hundredweights or tons of sugar, and pass them through. Chemical tests may have to be made out, but the amount of work involved is comparatively small.
Importations are likely to be very often in large quantities. But when you deal with ad valorem goods, documents have to be examined, the value has to be established, and the amount of labour involved is very considerable indeed. As a matter of fact, it was estimated that, in Customs officers alone, apart from preventive men and clerical labour, the changes in last year's Budget would necessitate the employment of forty additional Customs officers. We got those forty additional Customs officers by taking men away from certain other duties.
The collection of arrears under Schedules D and E was formerly done by Customs and Excise officers. That work was put on the Collectors of Income Tax, who had previously only concerned themselves with Schedules A and B. It was possible by employing additional collectors and by giving existing collectors additional pay for extra work, to free some forty Customs and Excise officers for work at the Ports. But even with those additional forty, the staff was very short. Since our own Customs Service was set up, there has been hardly a Customs officer who has got anything like his full leave. Some of them have scarcely got leave at all. Various types of work, partly in the nature of preparation of complete statistics, but of such a character that an officer with technical knowledge is required to deal with it, has actually fallen into arrear. We have all the time been very short of Customs officers. We had sixty officers on loan from the British Service. Most of them have gone back. By 1st October, they will have all gone back. We have recruited certain numbers by examination. We had one examination in August, 1923, when we recruited fifty men. We had an examination in January, 1924, from which we recruited fifty men, and an examination in October, 1924, from which we recruited forty men. We would have taken a great many more but only forty men, or thereabouts, qualified. The examination was rather disappointing in the quality of the candidates who came forward.
With the imposition of the new Customs duties and in view of the shortage that already existed, it was necessary to secure additional officers to those provided for in the Estimates. We have had a Selection Board sitting and have taken from various Departments, clerical officers of a good type, with some years' experience of official work. About fifty of those are being promoted to be Customs officers and it is believed that in the course of six months or a year they will be able to give fairly satisfactory service and will enable us to deal more expeditiously and satisfactorily with the public. They will also enable us to give members of the staff their leave and prevent the state of discontent and the possibility of breakdown that must be present when men are, for too long a period, overworked and denied their leave.
Sub-head (B) covers travelling and subsistence allowances. There is a slight reduction under that sub-head, due to various economies and to closer scrutiny and greater care. Travelling and subsistence allowances are payable to officers whose duty involves the covering of large areas. The average annual mileage travelled on duty by an Excise officer is about 6,000. A good deal of that is over roads that are not served by any system of public conveyances. That involves the use or hireage of motors. There is a very wide distribution of the Revenue staffs. They are in all parts of the country and they are dealing with money and carrying out responsible duties. To get efficiency and uniformity of action, adequate provision has to be made for inspection. That involves considerable travelling and subsistence allowances.
Sub-head C deals with removal expenses. Where officers are removed from one part of the country to another which course is necessary where you have Departments with large provincial establishments, they are paid the reasonable vouched costs of removing themselves and their families and effects to whatever new station they may be assigned.
The next item (D) is due to a slight change in the commission paid the distributor of stamps, who is the Secretary of the Dublin Stock Exchange.
Sub-head E deals with allowances to assessors and collectors of income tax. The increase arises out of last year's Budget, and from the necessity of employing more tax collectors, in lieu of the Customs and Excise officers who were freed from their income tax collection. That involved the addition of a sum of £8,750. The other part of the increase is attributable to the fact that, in last year's Finance Act, provision was made for remuneration of the banks for keeping records of British dividents paid, and for deduction and remission of tax on foreign dividends. That amounts to £12,000. As Deputies are aware, if taxpayers or receivers of dividends are willing that particulars of the dividend paid should be furnished by the banks to the Revenue authorities—dividends that have suffered British tax—then, the banks are not bound to deduct our income tax. The result is that people have not tax deducted at the source but are assessed in the ordinary way. At all events, they do not suffer the double deduction of tax. That involves a very considerable amount of work on the banks. As a matter of fact, the banks have supplied nearly 150,000 separate statements, and it is really more troublesome to supply statements than simply to deduct the tax.
Sub-head F deals with carriage on parcels and so forth. That is an item that requires very little explanation in the case of a Department like the Revenue Department, which has offices all over the country.
Sub-head G deals with machinery and repairs in the Stamping Branch. I have already dealt, to some extent, with the working of the Stamping Branch. It has only been set up since we took over the duties, and the expense of the first years in connection with the acquisition of plant, dies, and other types of machinery were greater than they will normally be. There will probably be a further decrease. The next sub-head deals with uniform clothing. We have a considerable number of officers in uniform belonging to the preventive and watcher grades, and the messenger staffs also wear uniform. The number is, I think, 345.
