I want to say that none of the counties I mention need expect anything back in respect of the amount taken from them up to the 1st April this year. But the following bills are in pickle for them, together with whatever deficiency may follow between 1st August and the end of the land annuity year:—Donegal, £3,917; Leitrim, £1,808; Monaghan, £1,340; Dublin, £9,944; Roscommon, £7,956; Louth, £7,342; Cavan, £2,115; and the whole lot of the county councils put together £270,400. That being the position, with the situation in respect of the Land Commission annuities not getting better, with the taxpayer, according to the Minister, unable to support the burden of any of these deficiencies, this House should examine the condition of the various bodies and the condition of the people whom they are asking to support the burden of these non-paid annuities, and the general conditions that bring about the non-payment of the annuities.
The Land Commission annuitants are supposed to have very dishonest sections at the present time; but Land Commission annuitants met difficulties in the past and there are a couple of figures worth looking at to see what their character in the past was. When the Provisional Government was set up the total amount that had been withdrawn from the Guarantee Fund up to date was only £889,553. Then we had some of the circumstances that the Minister for Finance now suggests he regrets. We then had an order from people who did not accept the Parliamentary institutions of this country that Land Commission annuities should not be paid. Then we had a period of distress and a political repudiation of Parliamentary institutions by some people. After one year of that, the total amount that was withdrawn from the Guarantee Fund was £642,939. That was in February, 1923. When we come to February, 1931, we find that not only had every penny of the eight years' annuities that intervened been paid up, but that £89,562 of the arrears had been paid.
That is the record, as far as the honesty and character of the people paying the land annuities are concerned. It was only when we ran into a period of the repudiation of the land annuities campaign that the deficiency arose from what it was in 1932, £793,000 and showed an increase of about £132,000. Is it not worth examining what are the circumstances that prevent land annuities from being paid now? I suggest to Ministers that they should, in the quiet of their council, examine into what are the circumstances that prevent the land annuities being paid. This Bill proposes to put the responsibility upon bodies carrying out local administration in the country to collect money in rates from people, and this money is to be paid by people who cannot pay their land annuities, however willing they may be to pay them. This calls attention to the particular type of people upon whom this responsibility is to be put. They are people carrying out the administration of our rural districts and the people who support them are the farmers of the country.
But the farmers are suffering from general agricultural depression, in the first place, and, in the second place, from the economic war which has lasted from May or June, 1932. We have had voluminous statements from persons who are now Ministers, setting out the conditions of the farmers in the year 1931. They then admitted that the farmer was a struggling person, suffering under difficulties, so much so that the rates at that time were greater than he should be asked to pay. Not only did they consider that the farmer should be relieved of rates but they held that he should be subsidised in various ways to help him during the period of depression which they said was existing at the time.
Take one or two county councils and consider the position they stand in to-day, financially, when laws are being passed by this House putting upon them burdens that are not proper to be borne by them now. The Cork County Council has been mentioned. In March, 1932, the total bill that went to the ratepayers of County Cork was £287,747. What is the nature of the bill that went to them four years afterwards, when our present Ministers, who said so much about the farmers' difficulties in 1931, and had so many ideas of what could be done for the farmers, said they should be relieved of their rates. These farmers are now getting a bill, without any credit notes, for £385,365. Not only were the Cork farmers not derated, but they got an additional bill, increased by £97,846 as compared with the year when the Fianna Fáil Ministers were making such a cry about the farmers' conditions. And that does not take into consideration one penny of the £118,000 taken from the Cork County Council at the beginning of this year. That money must be found if the Cork County Council pays its way. That money must be found if the Cork County Council is to pay its debts, and, if it is to pay its workers, by the 31st of March next.
Kildare County Council got a bill in 1932 for £74,925. It got a bill this year for £108,723, hard cash, ignoring credit notes. That does not include one penny in respect of land annuities, nevertheless Kildare's bill is increased by £33,798. One wonders what thought has been given to this matter by Deputies, like Deputy Harris, by Deputy Corry, and by men in the position of the President himself, when they introduce a Bill like this and ask us to pass it. They ask us in these circumstances for the ratepayers in the county council to pass this Bill, not imposing the figures of March, 1932, but the figures of to-day, which have been very largely increased.
I would like to hear Deputy Harris on this question. On the 3rd of March, 1932, Deputy Harris is reported as having put before the Kildare County Council a motion which drew attention to the utter impossibility of the ratepayers meeting any demand for rates in the coming year. That was in March, 1932, when the bill that had been given to the Kildare ratepayers was £33,798 less than this year's bill. Deputy Harris, now a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, with others is pushing this Bill through the Dáil, although he spoke of the utter impossibility of the ratepayers of Kildare meeting their demands for rates at the time when that demand was less, and when the ratepayers were better off than they are this year, with increased demands to meet. He pointed out that, instead of taxation, agriculture needed assistance in the form of increased grants and subsidies for production, and complete derating was demanded also. Complete derating was promised by Deputy Corry, who said that Fianna Fáil would certainly give them complete derating, and he added: "Every pledge we gave is to be kept." The President, addressing himself to this matter, in an interview with an English Press representative, was reported in the Irish Press, 1932, to have said: “The overhead charges on the farmers are too heavy and must be lightened. One of the heaviest of these is rates, and we propose to derate agricultural holdings. They derated in Great Britain and in the Six Counties, and the £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 taken from us in land annuities will suffice to finance derating.” The President thought that the farmer ratepayers of the country ought to be relieved of their rates. Now first of all the whole bill given to the farmers generally, irrespective of land annuities, is of a cash value of £310,040. It has gone up by £240,688 arrears carried forward. They have squeezed out of them in arrers of rates, in all £600,000, that is, £568,000 already squeezed out of them and £54,000 squeezed out of them after the 1st September. It may have been squeezed out of them already. In a year like that, when, without counting the land annuities, the farmers have had to support that burden of rates, the President—when an opportunity is given him and his colleagues to review the condition of things and to see whether this burden can be borne by the ratepayers, apart altogether from the desirability of using the ratepayers to support this burden, or the desirability of taking retrospective legislative action such as they are taking—sends his Minister for Finance into the House here to go brutally through the work of pushing this Bill through the House as brutally as they ever tackled any work they have ever done, whether inside or outside this House. The local bodies have very delicate and very difficult responsibility. They have to deal with the home assistance side of things; they have to deal with the poor law relief side of things; they have quite a number of other important and costly duties which require a very considerable amount of tact on their part, and very close and harmonious relations with the people with whom they work, and from whom they collect money. The past Acts of the Government, and now this one, will put them into the position where they will not be able to carry out their duties. They will not have money enough to do the work which requires to be carried out. They will not be able to continue between themselves and the ratepaying community the type of harmonious relations that it is essential should be kept up if local administration is going to go through effectively, and if the results of local administration are to be brought home to the people.
Local bodies' difficulties on the financial side have been growing, as I have indicated. Their difficulties in respect of carrying out their work have also increased. The Ministry proposes that they are going to relieve local authorities of a very large part of the cost of home assistance, but the remarkable thing is that in spite of the fact that an extra £32,000 was paid out in unemployment assistance in October of this year as compared with October of last year the burden of home assistance on local authorities has gone up this year by something over £1,000 in the month, over last year. There was £32,000 more paid out to support the unemployed under the Unemployment Assistance Bill, but nevertheless the condition in the country is such that a heavier burden falls upon the local authorities in the month of October this year than fell upon them last year for the maintenance of the destitute poor. In spite of the fact that the Unemployment Assistance Bill has been running for two years, the burden borne by local authorities during the current year in respect of home assistance is bigger than the burden they bore for home assistance in the year ended March, 1932. The burden of local authorities in respect of the poor law system in the country is increasing. In respect of roads the Government are leaving the local authorities completely in the lurch. It is most remarkable to see the way in which the Government has treated local authorities in respect of road improvement. In the year 1933, through special improvement grants from the Road Fund, the local authorities throughout the country got £1,082,114 paid to them—not money allotted but money actually paid out in respect of improvement work on the roads. What has that been reduced to in the current year? In the year ended March, 1935, they got only £386,011. The local authorities got £696,103 less paid into their hands during the year ended March, 1935, for work on the roads than they got in the year that Fianna Fáil were going for their second election. What is the position this year? They are getting less. The amount allocated this year is £778,069 less than the amount allocated to them for the year ended March, 1933. The Minister, no doubt, has his difficulties on the revenue side; the taxpayer has difficulties, and everything the Minister says points to it, but here you have a fund which is specially paid for the maintenance of the roads, and instead of handling that money over to the road authorities to carry out the work of maintaining and improving the roads the Minister is withholding from the Road Fund substantial sums to help him in the difficulties that his general policy has created for him as between himself and the taxpayers. Last year the Minister actually paid out to the local authorities £145,000 less than he got in during the year to the Road Fund.
