The Executive Council seem to be determined not to let a week or a fortnight pass without having at least one shock or possibly two shocks for the House and for the country. Their method of proceeding with the Oath controversy was a shock to many people in the country, even to those who on the whole were prepared to look with a certain amount of leniency on the raising of the subject at all. Their Budget was a shock, and a considerable shock. The method of introducing it was a also a shock. The piling on of tariffs was a shock to the country. The Control of Manufactures Bill, and the measure they introduced here the week before last practically giving them complete control over all the resources of this country, over practically every penny of money in this country, so far as getting it into their own hands is concerned, were shocks. Each was a shock, and a severe shock to the agricultural community and to the business of the country.
Now they wish apparently to prove to the country that nobody dare say that there is a limit beyond which they could not go. The Minister has again shocked the country and not merely by the Vote under consideration, but by the manner in which it was introduced. He has given no explanation of where the money is to come from and no explanation of how it is to be spent. Nothing could be more vague than what we have in the White Paper circulated as a Supplementary Estimate. No information is conveyed to the country and no information is conveyed to the House. The acting-Minister for Finance in the House has an opportunity of explaining to the House and the country as to how this money is to be spent and how it is to be raised. We shall await with interest the opportunity of listening to his explanation.
Reference is made to the fact that the money is subject to the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General; but let the House read the vague terms of the Minute accompanying this huge Vote and then they will see what very little real control the Comptroller and Auditor-General has over this money. It is true that the President tried to suggest that there was some safeguard in the fact that the Minister for Finance has to give his consent. The President also mentioned the Department of Finance, thereby indicating that there was some control over the Minister. Surely that is not so. Surely the money will be spent in accordance with the policy of the Executive Council. The Minister will have to decide this matter with the Executive Council. It is useless to bring in the question of the Department of Finance having control.
What was the claim of the President? "You have an Executive Council and while you have an Executive Council you do not need a Parliament." That is practically what his speech amounts to. That is practically what his failure to explain this particular expenditure to the House amounts to. "If you have an Executive Council in which you have confidence, anything that they demand must be granted." No control by Parliament! It is a denial of the whole idea of Parliamentary institutions. But then after all, that is only carrying out, it is only putting the coping stone on the policy that the Executive Council has pursued in the last couple of months.
It is quite evident to anybody who has followed the actions of the Executive Council since they were elected on the 9th March last, that their policy has been practically speaking a hand-to-mouth policy. First create your difficulty and then see how you are to get out of it. Plunge into a difficulty blindly. Do not examine, do not investigate, but plunge in. When you are in, look about you, flounder about and see whether you can get any foot-hold. At all events do something that will distract the mind of the country from the mistakes you have already made.
We remember the surprise caused in many parts of the country by the manner in which the Executive Council chose to deal with the Oath. That was quickly driven out of the people's minds, not because it has ceased to be of importance. Let us remember that if there are difficulties in coming to an agreement with Britain at Ottawa it is the Oath question that stands as a barrier and not the Land Annuities question. But important as that was, it was soon driven out of the minds of the people by the financial policy of the Government, by their tariff policy and by their Budget. The country had not recovered from that particular experiment, from the shock it got, they had not time to brood over it and see what it meant when further policies were introduced to distract their minds from the mistakes already made.
The policy of the Executive Council is quite clear. It is first act, then indulge in a little thinking; not too much. This is an obvious experiment. We are in financial difficulties. Certain industries in the country are financially hit owing to the policy of, and the crisis created by, the Government. "The obvious thing to do is to create a fund"—how is the fund to be administered? We have no information on that. But at least it will have the effect of getting the mind of the country off that particular difficulty and off that particular policy. I admit the Government has an aim. To that aim I will be compelled to return in the remarks I have to make. But of a policy in the sense of having a thought-out policy, a planned, definite course of action, the Government has none. It is a case of simply mistake after mistake, and disaster after disaster. Then hurried efforts to mend or to conceal the damage done.
Difficulties that should be foreseen and a situation that any reasonable man could have foreseen are apparently deliberately overlooked by the Government. Were measures taken to deal with the question of new markets? Where are the new markets? When the Government and Press speak of new markets do they think of people buying from us? Is that what they mean when they speak of providing new markets? Not at all. They mean people selling to us. That is apparently what they mean by new markets. Now there is no difficulty in getting people to sell to us. None at all. But getting people to sell to us is all the Government has done, so far as getting alternative markets to the British market is concerned.
No effective arrangements have been made to look outside the British markets for markets to take our surplus agricultural produce. No effective steps have been taken for the country in that direction. We do not know whether steps have been taken to investigate whether any other possible markets are available for the consumption of our surplus agricultural products. The markets that this country wants are markets to which the people can sell. We are not looking for markets which can sell to us. The market we want is a market to buy our produce. What steps have the Government taken in that direction? How do they intend to utilise these two million pounds in order to induce other countries to buy from us? Surely they are not going to bribe other countries to buy from us by means of these two million pounds. That would be absurd; but everything that the Executive Council does is absurd and this would not be anything beyond their possible hasty remedies for a situation that they have deliberately created by one method after another. The remedies offered by the Government are worse than the disease arising out of the conditions which they have brought about. That is still the policy of the Government—a policy of creating a situation which most of the people of this country regard as disastrous.
We find the back-benchers of the Government and we find the Ministers themselves almost hailing with joy the situation which they have brought about. We put it up to them in this House that in reality what they are aiming atis what has happened. That follows from their statements that all the present crisis has done is to make inevitable at once what in any case they wanted to see done in the course of five or ten years. Are we to take seriously then their crocodile tears over the ruin of the agricultural industry in this country when we see perfectly well that they must have willed this breakdown of our commerce and agriculture? There is nothing else to be got out of their policy or out of their speeches. When the Ministers go down the country they are joyful about the conditions. That is in line with the speeches made by them in this House and in the country. It is very hard to know whether any country has been cursed with a policy of this kind. It is hard to believe that any country outside of Bedlam would have inflicted on it a policy such as that. So far as Government measures can do anything to bring about a state of bankruptcy in this country the present Government have done everything possible. They have not brought about that bankruptcy yet, but that is the direction in which their policy is tending. Measure after measure introduced by them can only have one immediate effect on the general economic position. Bankruptcy is the only result that any reasonable man can foresee arising from their policy. But having done that, having in so far as lay in their power in the short time at their disposal tried to bankrupt this country and tried to undermine its whole financial position, what is their remedy?
From a country so bankrupt they propose to raise £2,000,000. It is very hard to understand it all. A belief, apparently held much more strongly by the Fianna Fáil Party than even by the Labour Party, that Government action can save everything, a belief that Government control and Government expenditure can do what private enterprise cannot do, seems to dominate them. Tariffs that will hit certain interests are put forward. Then you are to meet that unfortunate situation, but how? By raising money to try and compensate in some way, for the evil done by the taxes and the tariffs, and the general policy advocated. In order to do that you have to tax somebody else. In order to meet the difficulty, the dislocation caused by these particular measures, you have to impose still further taxation, raise still further money. All that has undoubtedly one effect. It produces the impression on the mind of the thoughtless person looking on, that the Government is desperately busy. It is busy. It creates difficulties and crisis altogether unnecessarily. It helps to ruin the country and then it adopts hasty measures to counteract the effects of the measures it has already taken. That is a busy Government for you! That is a Government working whole-time, day and night, doing damage one day and hastily trying to counteract the effects of that damage the next day.
That has been the work of our Executive Council for the past four months. They endeavour to create the impression of stir and bustle, but what is it all for? The damage is first done and the remedial measures are, if possible, even worse than the damage. That is the policy that the Government has been carrying into effect and that is the policy that we are now asked to give the final imprimatur to. There has been a great deal of loose talk about the financial conditions in this country, about capitalism and the evils of capitalism. Why, the thing hardly exists here. There is an effort to bring to bear on this country conceptions that may have a place elsewhere, but that are certainly taken out of their context when they are dumped down on this country where they have absolutely no reference whatsoever. You really have even here a contradictory policy on the part of the Government. There are certain tariffs imposed in order to induce people with capital to put their money into Irish industries. At the same time, you have a confessed hostility to any capital and a confessed hostility to money got from investments. That is what this Government calls having a policy.
There was a joyful advance to the War on the part of the Government and on the part of the Government back benchers. The joy was first seen in the back benchers, but it quickly transferred itself to the faces of the Ministers. We observed that joyful advance to the destruction of the present economic system, to the destruction of the present agricultural system. The Government have largely succeeded, in the short time at their disposal, in accomplishing that. We have it from the President that he is out for the destruction of the present economic system in this country. So far as agriculture is concerned apparently cattle-raising is something unpatriotic. In his new conception of his mission, in his new conception of this country leading the world into a better condition of things, I have no doubt the President will soon describe cattleraising as anti-Christian. His principles are such that I have no doubt he will try to cloak them over by throwing over them the mantle of Christianity. It is a well-known dodge. I have been convinced, watching the methods of the Government, that all their measures are tending in the one direction. They may be hasty and ill-thought out—so they are—but they are all facing more determinedly in the one direction of State control —more and more State control.
I have no doubt the President and members of his Government believe that you can combine the financial, the economic and the social system of Russia with Christian principles and I have no doubt they will try it. Such is the pride of the Executive Council, I have no doubt that they think they can do it. In my opinion the thing is impossible. The financial, the social, the economic system of Russia is based, and inevitably based, on a distinctly anti-Christian basis. The President is making a fundamental mistake if he thinks he can take the economic policy of that country and dump it here and pretend to our misguided people that he is simply remodelling the country in accordance with Christian principles. In other conditions the thing would be simply ludicrous but in the present circumstances it means not merely the destruction of the economic system we know but it means, ultimately, the moral destruction of the country.
The President may delude himself— I give him the credit of believing that he does delude himself—that such a thing is possible. It is not possible. It is not the present Government that will suffer; it is the whole fabric of this country. Morally, socially and economically that will suffer through this policy. We have the gradual unveiling of the aims of the Government. It is only gradually they advance. They "try on" what they think the country will stand. They find the country so bewildered that it does not know where it is and then they advance with a statement of their policy. They speak about mandates. What have they got mandates for? For the Land Annuities and the Oath Bill. I understood in the first instance, the mandate was for the removal of the Oath. Do they claim to have a mandate in the sense of a definite approval from all the voters for every item of their policy? I quite admit the Government are in control. Their is the responsibility. When they talk of mandates it is in my opinion simply an effort on their part to throw a share of the responsibility on to the shoulders of the people.
It is not true to say that they have a mandate for all the wild things they are doing. It is their responsibility alone. The people never had it put before them that there was going to be an economic war with England. It was said here on another occasion that the position was such that an ordinary person with ordinary foresight, could have foreseen it. The Government took good care to see that the position is such as it is now. They did not neglect any effort to bring about the present position. They spoke about the failure of negotiations. They took good care from the 9th March that there would be such failure. As was stressed before, all this merely brings their particular policy much nearer. The farmers are led to think that they are going to get some benefit out of this situation. At whose expense? At the expense of themselves and of the country. Is the money to be raised by loan or by taxation? In any case it will have to be paid by the country. Feeding a starving country with a portion of its own tail, so to speak. That is now the heaven-sent policy that the Government is indulging in and for which they ask from this House, practically, a blank cheque for £2,000,000.
We are told that the farmers are hard hit, yet in regard to the land annuities the Government must be paid to the last penny. The time comes in the course of the collection of the land annuities when the Government think it well to talk about a moratorium. That is possibly after a large number of people have paid their annuities. We had, and we need not be surprised for it was bound to come, the advice given to the people that times were so hard that they should be slow in paying their debts to shopkeepers. That was bound to make its appearance in print some time. The Government, however, must get its last penny. In the case of the land annuities at the very best the Government is merely a conduit pipe; the money is paid through them to those who originally contributed it. The main point is, at any rate, that this Government must be paid to the last penny. But for ordinary commercial debts, times are so hard, shopkeepers have been so oppressive, and have been making such a large amount of money out of the people, that their debts are to remain unpaid! That was bound to come out in public some time.
International repudiation of obligations and of treaties; internal repudiation of debts—that is the basis on which the new Christian State is to be built up! As days go on, it will be seen that there is very little difference between the economic aim of this Government and the economic system set up in Russia, and also between the moral results of the policy of this Government and the results of the system set up in Russia. It is here now before the House. In the manner in which it was introduced, in the complete lack of any knowledge on the part of the Government as to how they intend to use this £2,000,000 to deal with the crisis, we have an example of the complete lack of thought, the lack of capacity, on the part of the Executive Council. What is it all but histrionics? What is their policy all along in dealing with these serious matters but histrionics? Throwing their sword on the table! A new Silken Thomas! That is practically what it amounts to. Histrionics at the negotiations; histrionics now; doing things on a big scale; £2,000,000 and nothing less; if necessary, more; no indication as to where it is to come from. You set up a situation of bankruptcy, and you try to relieve that situation of bankruptcy by getting more money from the bankrupt. The policy is absurd.
