Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 20 Apr 1937

Vol. 66 No. 9

Public Business. - Committee on Finance. Financial Resolutions.

Debate resumed on Resolution No. 11:—

That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.

Mr. McMenamin

On Friday last I was dealing with the question of the reduction of taxation, and the promise that derating would be financed by economies. I had quoted some speeches made by Deputy Boland, now Minister for Lands, and the Minister for Finance questioned the pledge to derate land. I have here a quotation from a manifestó issued in the Irish Press of February 27th, 1932. It reads:—

"With two of the £3,000,000 involved the farmers can be relieved completely of the rates on their holdings. Another £1,000,000 is available for the relief of taxation, or for such purposes as the Dáil may determine."

That was in 1932. Away back in 1929 there was a by-election in Longford-Westmeath, and apparently this question of derating was a hot question there. It was essential to give something hot to the electorate in order that they would catch the bait. I have here a copy of a pamphlet issued at the by-election in Longford. It sets out the amount of rates paid by the two counties at £146,607, and sets out the amount of land annuities paid by the tenant farmers of Longford-Westmeath at £177,288. Then it goes on:—

"So that if the Government elected by the people would only stand by the rights of the people—rights admitted to be theirs by British statute—the farmers, householders, shopkeepers of Longford-Westmeath need not pay one penny in the rates. The land annuities would do the whole thing and leave £30,000 over to aid agriculture."

I wonder how are the people of Longford-Westmeath feeling to-day? The pamphlet goes on:—

"Since they came into office the Free State Government have handed over to the wealthiest Empire in the world £1,400,000 taken out of the pockets of Longford-Westmeath farmers."

Of course, this was all put before the electorate to induce them to "End this robbery. Vote No. 1 Geoghegan." It is significant to notice that this pamphlet was published by Eamonn Donnelly, election agent for James Geoghegan. I am sorry that Deputy Donnelly is not here to have a look at this pamphlet. Now, the House and the country has been told in 86 pages of words that there is a reduction of taxation in this year. I question that.

This year's Estimate exceeds last year's by £49,251. It is worth while having an identification parade of the rise in taxation since the present Government came into office. The figure in the last Budget introduced by the Minister's predecessor was £21,722,888; in the following year, 1932-33, the figure was £24,217,504; in 1933-34, £26,391,880; 1934-35, £26,531,105; 1935-36, £26,050,016; 1936-37, £29,213,018, and in the current year the figure is £29,262,269. This year's Estimate exceeds the last one introduced by the Minister's predecessor by the sum of £7,539,381. In spite of that we have been given 86 pages of words to tell us that there is a reduction in taxation. We have been told by Deputy Corry and Deputy Allen about the excellent position of the farmers. I have quoted elsewhere, and will repeat here, the position with regard to agriculture. Whereas the farmer's average annual income in 1926 was £93, in 1936 it was £51, or a drop of £42. A good deal has been said in this House about the position of the agricultural labourers. There has been some criticism of the way farmers have been treating them, but it is significant that to-day the agricultural labourers are getting more out of the land than the farmers who employ them. The average annual income of the 140,000 agricultural labourers employed on the land in 1926 was £66. In 1934 the figure was £55, or a drop of £11. Therefore, the position is this, that in 1934 the agricultural labourers were getting £55 a year out of the land as against £51 by the farmers.

A large part of the Budget speech delivered by the Minister for Finance was devoted to an attempt to show the soundness of the position, financially, from the national point of view. There was one serious blank in it, because the Minister evaded dealing with the question of our national liabilities. He said that the national debt, as compared with March, 1932, has gone up by the net sum of £5,737,000. But what is the position of the local authorities? Is not their indebtedness a national concern, because in the last analysis has it not to be borne by the general body of the taxpayers? Since the present Government came into office this indebtedness has increased from £15,750,000 to about £26,000,000. Why is that figure not taken into consideration when reviewing the position in regard to our national indebtedness? That, surely, is a national liability because it is as much due by the Government as by the local authorities. In the last analysis the Government must face it as such, but whether it is faced by the Government or by the local authorities the general body of the taxpayers will have to meet it.

Not only has the indebtedness of local authorities increased by about £10,000,000 during the period of office of the present Government, but in addition about £2,500,000 in extra rates have been levied off the people. While that is so the real wealth producers of the country have had in that period their annual income reduced from £93 to £51 in the case of the farmers, and from £66 to £55 in the case of agricultural labourers. The indebtedness of the local authorities has been increased by, roughly, £10,000,000, and our national indebtedness by about £5,750,000. That is the unpleasant trail of taxation that the Government have left behind them after their five years in office, and yet they come along and say that they have reduced taxation and brought prosperity to everybody. They say that is apparent from the amount of money that is being spent on certain articles. We have the situation, therefore, that the enormous sum of round about £30,000,000 of public money is now being expended annually. That money must come ultimately out of the pockets of the citizens of this State. If you have that mad gallop in the spending of the entire resources of the country annually, and even if that is not sufficient without having recourse to increasing our indebtedness, surely we have there a situation which indicates the rate's progress. Some day we must cry halt to that.

On page 19 of his Budget statement the Minister said:—

"At this stage I must refer to other consequences of the 1933 Land Act, which as well as granting a reduction in the annuities payable under the 1923 and subsequent Acts, granted a like reduction in those payable under previous Acts. By the grant of this concession the Exchequer has lost an annual income of £1,480,000; but purchasers under the old Land Acts have been relieved of capital burdens amounting to £38,000,000."

Are we to take it that the phrase "old Land Acts" refers to the pre-1923 Land Acts? If it does, I would like to hear the Minister defend his statement that he is giving a remission of £38,000,000 to the farmers. Was the phrase stuck into the Minister's statement as a bait to the farmers to make them believe that, when they were not getting the derating that had been promised to them by the Government, they were going to get rid of this capital liability of £38,000,000. If we assume that the phrase "old Land Acts" refers to the pre-1923 Land Acts, what is the position with regard to them? The penal tariffs which are being paid in lieu of the payments to Great Britain are not in discharge of the payments under the pre-1923 Land Acts, and in respect of these tariffs England has collected a sum of at least £20,000,000. Some time ago I examined the British finance accounts for the current year. They estimated for a collection of about £750,000 over and above the amount due to them for the year 1936-37.

They have collected up to the 31st March—we will know the exact amount in a few days—approximately £20,000,000 under these Acts. It will be observed that while that money has been collected the capital sum due under these Acts remains frozen, that no part of this £20,000,000 collected during these years has been allocated to the sinking fund and that the capital sum, which, if this £38,000,000 refers to the pre-1923 Land Acts, should be doubled and made £76,000,000, is still due so far as the British Treasury is concerned and remains a frozen debt. The Minister says that he has given relief amounting to half that amount; that is to say, he has collected half of the amount originally payable. I do not want to let an item of that kind, because it is too substantial, pass with out some comment in order to get an explanation as to whether "old Land Acts" refers to all the Land Acts, including the 1923 Act, or the Land Acts up to 1909. There has been no remission, so far as the liability of the farmers is concerned, under the pre-1923 Land Acts. They have paid an amount since 1932 that would approximately liquidate about one-half of the liability under that to the British Government.

Each year since 1932, since the penal tariffs were imposed, we have a statement contained in the Budget by the Minister for Finance that he is justified in borrowing some of the money to pay export bounties on agricultural produce because it is an abnormal liability. So far as the average person can see, there is nothing abnormal about it. He is not at a loss to know how the Minister can use the word "abnormal" about a sum of this kind when the Government have entered into two agreements with the British Government in order that these moneys will be collected and paid. One could understand the Government saying it was abnormal if we had not entered into agreements with the British Government to collect these sums.

It has been stated here that unemployment is decreasing, that owing to the number being put into employment there are practically no unemployed in the country. As I have said in other places, the way to find out whether there are unemployed is to ask unemployed people. The Minister questioned a statement of mine on Friday with regard to an unemployed man working on rotational work. He said he could go anywhere he liked and find work for the other two or three days in the week in which he was unemployed. The Minister knows as well as I do that it is utterly impossible for that man to get any work in that way; that it is only by mobilising the resources of the State that he at present can get three days' work.

Mr. MacEntee

That is not what the Deputy said on Friday—the Deputy said he would not be allowed to get work.

Mr. McMenamin

If I did, I withdraw that part of it. The Minister knows that he cannot get the work.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy is withdrawing what he said?

Mr. McMenamin

The reason why he is getting three days' work is because there is no other work to be found for him elsewhere, and the resources of the State and of the taxpayer are being used to give him even three days' work.

Mr. MacEntee

Might I call attention to the fact that what the Deputy stated was——

An Ceann Comhairle

With the Deputy's permission.

Mr. McMenamin

I admit it.

Mr. MacEntee

You admit that your statement on Friday was incorrect?

Mr. McMenamin

In so far as he could not find work——

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy admits that his statement on Friday was incorrect.

Mr. McMenamin

When I said that he would not be allowed. I was told that. But he cannot get work and the Minister knows that. He only gets three days a week under this. A lot of these men have been put on drainage work and the making of bog roads. I know something about bogs, and I say that a bog is no place in which to put a man to work in the winter time. I suggest to the Minister that, so far as drainage work and work in very wet bogs is concerned, these men should be put on that work in the summer and autumn and not in the winter. I have seen men working this winter in places where it was nothing short of penal servitude for them. I was referring to the question of three days a week and to the wages paid, and relating it to the fact that that had the effect in many places of reducing the wages paid to other men, particularly agricultural labourers. It has been admitted by Deputies on all sides of the House that this rotational work is vicious, because the 12/- or 13/- a week paid in rural parts of Ireland has the tendency to become a headline for others employing labour in the district and to bring the wages of other workers down to that sum. So far as the sum itself is concerned, for a man who has to keep a wife and family the thing is futile. He cannot buy sufficient food to provide the minimum of nourishment for himself, his wife and children.

Emphasis has been laid on the fact that, as a result of the Budget, all taxes have been removed from essential foodstuffs. Deputy Dillon had a number of questions on to-day's Order Paper which had reference to this matter. While the Government may not be directly getting revenue from articles of food, there are various circuitous ways by which the prices of these essential foodstuffs are being increased. It does not matter to the consumer whether he pays directly or indirectly. The point is that the cost of foodstuffs is beyond what he is capable of paying and what his income can afford.

The members of this Party have stated hundreds of times, both inside and outside the House, that until the agricultural industry is restored to prosperity there is no hope for this State—that it will go on declining and declining, frittering away year after year the resources of the people. Ultimately, there can be only one end to that, to sink down into poverty. Time and again we have declared that it was vital for the agricultural industry, which of course governs the prosperity of this State, that the economic war should be settled. We have been asked repeatedly how we would settle it. Deputy Cosgrave stated on Friday that any settlement would be better than the present position. We have the actual loss on certain things in figures but does the story end there? Not at all. The actual decline in agricultural exports annually has been put at £22,000,000. But what about the depressed prices for the foodstuffs retained and consumed at home? Is not that an additional loss? What about the other losses? The Minister for Agriculture has figures for each year showing the number of cattle fattened, only a limited number of which could be exported, plus the number consumed in this country, and the balance the feeders had to turn back on grass and eventually sell as stores. What is the extent of the loss there? Then we have the loss that accrued from the fact that the money that could be had for these cattle was not put back into production. Any settlement that could be made by anybody, even the most fantastic settlement that could be conceived, would be better than the present arrangement.

I appeal to the Government, not on behalf of the Government but on behalf of the people, irrespective of what Party they support, to enter into an agreement and to bring about a settlement. Year after year, for the past three or four years, the position is becoming more acute. The working people are becoming poorer and poorer, and they have now reached the stage when they are driven to desperation and do not care what happens. The same applies to the farmers, many of whom do not mind what happens. Many of them were amongst the most prosperous farmers in the country. They were making money and were saving it. I quoted figures recently to show that 35,000 acres had gone out of tillage in Country Donegal. Picture the effect of 35,000 acres of land having gone out of tillage in that country. It may be assumed that that consisted mostly of land that had been reclaimed from bogs and moors, owing to the efforts of the people who had been driven to these places in the past. It was by their efforts that that land was reclaimed and kept in production, but it rapidly goes back to a wilderness, if not worked. We have as honest and as good farmers in Donegal as are to be found any place in this country. They work hard and are industrious, but their position has become so desperate, after all their labour, and having no results, that they are now selling their stock and implements, turning the keys in the doors, and leaving their places derelict. They are not even letting the land in con-acre, and the consequence is that there will be default in the payments of rates and annuities. The additional burden will fall on the remaining farmers who are carrying as much as they can bear. The policy of the Government in imposing an additional burden on farmers who are trying to carry on will undoubtedly result in crushing them out. The local rates in County Donegal have increased in the past four years by £34,000, while 35,000 acres have gone out of production, so that there is a vicious circle of increasing taxation and reduced production. If you go on crushing these people, ultimately, the entire farming community will be driven out of production. There must be an end to this thing. There is no use in the Government thinking that taking some taxation off tea or a farthing off sugar will meet the position. That is a joke. The Government must do something bigger and bolder. They must do what they should have done long ago, settle the economic war. People on the land must be given an inducement to work it, so that they will have something for their labour. Nobody expects people to continue working land indefinitely if they do not get some remuneration.

There are ups and downs in every walk of life, and in agriculture there will be bad years, but in recent years every year has been a bad one for those in that industry. Young men after four years' experience find that it is utterly futile to stay on the land and, as a consequence, they are going across to England and Scotland. That is a national tragedy, and this Government will some day waken to the fact that it has committed a great crime against these people and against the country. The Government can tax away, because they got the votes of the people by promising to reduce the burden of taxation when it was £21,000,000 by £2,000,000, but instead of that, they have increased national taxation by £10,000,000. They have increased the national debt, and the debt of local authorities by about £10,000,000, and the figure is still increasing. Where is it to end? Where is the money to come from? They will have to cry a halt when the sack is empty, and they will have to do it, as Irishmen did in the past, when the boats are burned. In that situation people begin to cry and to ask why they did it. That is not the time to cry halt. A halt must be called long before that stage is reached. It is utterly useless to quote the old phrase about locking the stable door when the mare is stolen. If the mare is gone, it does not matter when the door is locked.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Flinn)

There is one vote this country is not going to drop, and that is the vote given for the last five years for the Government. The Deputy may be quite sure of that. We have no anxiety about the country burning the boat of the Fianna Fáil Government, because the country is perfectly satisfied with it. The Deputy indulged in the usual jeremiads about rising taxation and the Kathleen Mavourneen disaster and bankruptcy which is always coming. He told us the story of how taxation is rising. I happen to be one of those people who does not like to see a State taking a very large share of the total income for its services. I like the State to leave as much as possible of the total income, that is, the total production, of the country in the hands of the people themselves to spend. I have always been of that opinion and I am of that opinion now, but, unfortunately, I belong to a generation which is past in that respect. The Government of every country in the world at present is taking—and this is the meaning of taxation—a larger share of the total production of the State into its own hands, and redistributing that production for the purposes of the general community in the way it thinks best. That is what taxation is. There is always an idea in an Opposition that taxation is the taking away of money and dropping it into the sea. It is nothing of the kind. It is merely, as I have said before, that portion of the total income or production of a country which the Government of the country decides to spend for the purposes of the country, and, therefore, merely to say that the amount of taxation has risen by £5,000,000, £10,000,000, £15,000,000 or £20,000,000, as the case may be, means nothing until you ask yourself what is done with the money.

Is there anybody who contests that proposition? I do not think there is. There was the loud laugh which betokened the very vacant mind, but the Deputy, or any other Deputy, is not prepared to get up here and say that it is not the purpose for which money is used which decides the burden of taxation. If, for instance, you take £10,000,000 and throw it away, that is a dead loss to the community, but if you take £10,000,000 and spend it, as a central and unified authority, better than the community in the whole of its diversified activities could spend it, that expenditure is a profit. It is being more profitably and better spent and, therefore, we come down to brass tacks. We treat the Opposition as honest and intelligent men when we ask: What portion of the total added expenditure which has taken place do you object to? What portion of that expenditure are you prepared to go into the Lobby and vote against?

The Minister for Finance has given me a return which appeared in the Budget showing the expenditure on social and similar services as, in 1931-'32, £9,343,000 and in 1937-'38, £15,250,000. Which item there does the Deputy or any other Deputy desire to economise? Until they are prepared to do that, they are beating the wind and beating the wind very foolishly in the face of an intelligent electorate when they merely talk of the increase of taxation. In the same way, they speak of the increase of national indebtedness. An increase of national indebtedness which went into bombs, destruction or something of that kind, by all means, but what portion of the increase of national or local indebtedness that has taken place do the Deputies object to? The money that is being spent on public health works? The money that is being spent on roads? The money that is being spent on housing? Until they come down to that very simple issue, they are wasting their time, and I do not want them to waste their time.

The Deputy, speaking the other day in relation to another matter, said that men who are working on a rotation system, who are working three days, were not permitted by the Government to work, and were prosecuted by the Government if, in fact, they worked on any other day. I am not recalling that at the moment to blame the Deputy. It was a reckless and foolish statement and, coming from a Deputy whom the general public would not know was utterly irresponsible, would convey to a lot of people a very wrong and a very dangerous impression. One of the real difficulties of the Unemployment Assistance Act, as everybody knows, was that men who were getting the dole were so anxious to retain it that they used to avoid openly taking casual work. By the system under which they are now employed, they are entitled to work, either on their own farms at home or elsewhere, or to take paid work in the interval. Why I am raising this particular point with the Deputy, having regard to the fact that he has withdrawn the statement, is not in any way to blame him, but to get rid of the damage done by publicity of that kind which has been given to a statement which is false. It is necessary that the people should understand that one of the difficulties, one of the purposes, of the rotation system is to enable a person, freely, openly and with his head up, to take any additional work that is available and every encouragement is to be given to him to do so.

I have at different times had various criticisms of rotation into which I am not going now, but there is one which I have not heard here which, in my opinion, is serious. As a matter of fact, it came to me from a priest in the West of Ireland who promised to report the fact to his bishop, including me, I take it. I think there was sound ground for his complaint and that is why I am bringing it out. He complains that in certain districts, where the men are little farmers or fishermen, the fact that they are getting three days a week and that it is continuing over a very considerable period of time is allowing them to neglect the work which they ought to be doing on their own farms and in relation to their own fishing. I do regard that as a serious consideration and one which would have to be taken up to the extent that we will go into conference with the Minister for Lands and the Minister for Agriculture, and try to eliminate the times and periods in the year in relation to the different types of agriculture in the different districts at which relief work must not interfere, and even the three-day week must not be allowed to interfere, with the fundamental matters.

I notice that I get no attack—and I am saying this to their credit—upon rotation from Donegal or from any of the poor districts because—and, again, I am giving them credit for good faith in the matter—they know that to the small farmer and people of that kind the two or three day's work which still enables him to do the work he ought to be doing on his own farm is a valuable thing, while the complete withdrawal of his labour by continuous work might very well be a disastrous thing. However, I do not want to deal further with that. So far as the Deputy is concerned, I do want publicly to remove any impression or misunderstanding which may have been caused by his statement here that the Government will prosecute men for working on the days on which they are not employed by a rotation system. I want to say that one of the objects of the rotation is to encourage them to take any other work which is available in the other time and that no question of prosecution, penalty disability or odium of any sort, kind or description attaches to any man who attempts to use that other time.

The rest of the debate has run along what I may call the ordinary, customary lines of discussions of this character in whatever country and at whatever time they take place. I think that if you were to envisage about 50 Parliaments engaged in their Budget debates, the Oppositions would be making precisely the same kind of speeches that they are making now. They might do it with a little bit more discretion and a little bit more regard for the possibility that some of their idle utterances might have ill effects on the State itself but, broadly speaking, and naturally, the business of the Opposition is to say that the particular Government to which they are opposed is the worst and that their administration of the finances is the worst piece of work that ever was done. One takes that for granted. I looked through these debates rather in the hope of finding things with which I could agree, but they do not give me much chance because they do not agree with themselves. Perhaps the one statement I do agree with is the initial statement of Deputy Cosgrave—that this is the worst Budget which ever came, the worst Budget for Deputy Cosgrave. He will not know how bad it is until he shall have lived with it through a general election. Then he will know how bad it is. I remember another Budget which was followed by a county council election. That Budget was described as a very bad Budget, and we were told that, in 23 out of the 26 councils, Deputy Cosgrave was going to sweep the field. We are told now that this is the worst Budget and that Deputy Cosgrave is coming back at the head of the Government after this election. History repeats itself. He was wrong before and he is wrong again. The Budget to which the Opposition previously referred was bad for them; the election was worse, but it was nothing to the blizzard that is coming now.

After the sort of jeremiad we have had from Deputy Cosgrave, it is rather encouraging to turn to the speech by Deputy Dillon. One would not expect, at first, that one would find in anything that Deputy Dillon would say anything that would make for encouragement. But he says that it will take a long time to spend that amount of money, that the productivity of this country has been steadily reduced, that the inevitable consequence of the present line of policy being pursued by the Government will be to drive our people back below a decent standard of living. But he tells us that that is not going to happen in a hurry. "The last word I have to say," he told us, "is that it will take a long time to bring this country to the stage where the State cannot meet its commitments." He is satisfied that there is a great deal of solid worth in this country. Having regard to the fact that it ought to have been bankrupt years ago, that it was going to be bankrupt every six months or three months in the interval, it is amazing to learn that we still have these reserves which, according to Deputy Dillon, will prevent us from going bankrupt. But he has not convinced Deputy Anthony. Deputy Anthony tells us that he actually sees the crash coming. Other Deputies told us that, for the past four or five years, we have been spending our substance in riotous living, selling our foreign investments, living on our fat or, as they would say, on their fat. It is encouraging to know from Deputy Dillon that our foreign investments have increased by between £100,000,000 and £120,000,000. That is very encouraging, indeed. He tells us that they have gone up from the highest estimate I had previously heard of £180,000,000 or £200,000,000 to £300,000,000 so that, on the whole, we seem to be doing fairly well.

Then, we move along to column 1071 and we find Deputy Anthony telling us that, due to the increase in the cost of commodities, all necessaries have passed out of sight and out of the buying capacity of the ordinary person. Deputy Dillon does not agree with that. Deputy Dillon says the people are so poor that the unemployed are smoking all the tobacco, drinking all the drink, and absorbing all the luxuries. Even that is not good enough, because Deputy McGovern comes along and says that all the luxuries are being absorbed and eaten by the profiteers. I was rather anxious to develop points of agreement with the Opposition and see how far we could get along together, but with which of these views am I to agree, with Deputy Anthony, who sees the crash coming, or with Deputy Dillon, who cannot see it coming—the dim, far-off event on which they have banked for years, the approaching bankruptcy which they tried to create and have failed to create? Are we to agree with Deputy Dillon when he says that all the luxuries are being consumed by the poor, and that that is why the Budget returns have gone up, or are we to accept Deputy McGovern's view when he says that the consumption of luxuries is due to the fact that, as Deputy Anthony has pointed out, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer? What am I to take—I am not particular—as the judgment of the Opposition? What is their basis of criticism? They tell us what completely unregenerate methods we use in raising the money. Deputy Dillon speaks of the dexterous devices of borrowing. Deputy O'Neill uses certain language, and this is a matter in which, now that Deputy MacDermot has gone into another sphere, Deputies on the opposite benches are allowed to indulge in blackguardism. The Deputy speaks of the bunk and humbug and fraud of the Minister. Deputy Anthony speaks of legerdemain, of dishonest methods used by my friend the Minister for Finance for getting in this money. Some people do not like to hear the devil rebuke sin, but I do. I always like to hope that this is a sign of repentance. I like to see the devil rebuking sin. Some time they may begin to practise the things they preach. I see nothing actually dishonest or unsound in this Budget nor, I think, has anybody suggested it. But when one looks back on the history of the methods by which Deputies opposite, when they were a Government, balanced their Budgets, one at any rate, commends their cheek. On a particular occasion they would not raise the income-tax. What they did was— they collected two years together. They did not raise the tax, they simply collected the two years together. I think that is a great idea. Then there were certain moneys in relation to tax which the brewers had on credit. For instance, they did not increase the tax on beer or do anything like that. They simply collected in three months credit in advance.

These might be regarded as what one might call devices, clever little things. But when it comes to the actual selling of property and calling it "miscellaneous revenue" it is a different story. There were a couple of million pounds belonging to the Department of Education which became "miscellaneous revenue." The old Congested Districts Board left money here behind it. That money belonged to the poor, I should say to the very poor. It became "miscellaneous revenue." Though it took them three or four years to engender or to excogitate a tariff on rosary beads, when it was necessary in order to balance the Budget to put on a tariff, the tariff jumped its head and a tariff was found to provide £250,000 to balance the Budget. Compared with that, the dexterous devices of borrowing became fairly innocent, and the "bunk, humbug and fraud" of the Minister for Finance in this Government pales its ineffectual fire and bows its head in humility before the great masters of these arts.

Then we are asked, and we are asked continuously, to come down to brass tacks. Deputy McMenamin ends up his speech by asking us to come down to brass tacks and to settle the economic war. Yet when Deputy Dillon is asked how he is going to settle the economic war he says: "Do not ask me a silly debating question." When we are told that one of the difficulties is that we are not buying the goods we used to buy from other people we ask "which of the industries are you going to lay on the altar of this settlement?" and all we hear is "do not ask me a silly debating question in a debate of this kind." Those are the brass tacks. What is the settlement? Someone has suggested that it is going to be difficult to settle the economic war in three days. It is not going to be difficult to settle the economic war if any settlement will do. Now, that is the little cat and all its kittens coming out of the bag—any settlement.

Deputy McMenamin is horrified by the idea that we still have a frozen debt of £78,000,000 or £76,000,000 owing to Britain. Does "any settlement" include that £78,000,000? It is not unreasonable to ask that we should get some indication, some shadowy adumbration and foreshadowing of the method of construction leading up to the proposals which may effectuate a settlement. I am not putting the matter closer than that. But "any settlement" is a bit too vague. When very shortly Deputies opposite have the pleasure of talking to quite a few people in this country, the vast majority of whom have a very clear and intelligent understanding of this problem, I hope they are going to tell them from their platforms that the settlement which they propose is "any settlement"—"any settlement" which the British will accept in three days.

The next part of the stunt by the Opposition Deputies was the unemployment figures. Everybody quoted the unemployment figures. They quoted 93,000 and they added various things to it and they got an extraordinary total, and they divided that by four and added the first number they thought of. We have been hearing about unemployment figures for quite a long time. These figures have always been quoted as if they were definitely comparable— as if you could build and work on them. I personally have protested against that proposition time after time in this House, but always I have been told: "The figures are there and those are the things that count." Well, at least that story has been debunked. I want to get this very definitely on record because I do not want to hear the unemployment figures ever quoted here again without taking into account the method of their compilation.

In column 980, No. 7, Volume 66 of the Official Debates, the Minister for Industry and Commerce is reported as dealing with those figures. The Minister said that on March 5th there were 145,000 people, about 50 per cent. more than here. He was quoting the Denmark figure. Deputy Morrissey intervened—in my opinion, quite legitimately: "Are the figures in relation to unemployed calculated there in the same way as they are here?" Mr. Lemass replied: "I do not think so." Then Deputy Morrissey said: "The figures are of no use then." We turn to column 1003, where Deputy Morrissey is speaking, and he says:

"I do not agree that the method used for compiling unemployment figures shows the true facts. Indeed, at one time the Minister declared that the statistics were prepared specially in order to shield the actual figures. The Minister has changed the method of compiling those figures very considerably and very often during the last five years."

In the face of that acknowledgment, of something that Deputy Morrissey knew and that every intelligent member of this House has known all the time— that these figures had been changed very considerably, on two or three occasions; their method of compilation —how on earth can any reasonable and sensible person keep on using figures in that way? I am glad that has come out; I am out to encourage it; I am out to create as far as possible the condition in which everybody quoting unemployment figures will quote them in the conscious knowledge that they are an algebraic sum, that they consist of pluses and minuses, that they consist of things sometimes of a different order added together and, unless you do take these considerations into account, the figures of one particular period are not comparable with the figures of another.

I think one might well take as a basis the actual figure that you now have, which is somewhere about 93,000. You could add to that the number of people who are artificially employed and say that is the immediate and visible measure of your problem. You can ask yourself how to deal with it, but then you would have to go back and ask yourself how that new total was made up. Is it an unemployment census or is it a poverty census? Until you face that fact it is no use pretending to use these figures in the way in which we are using them. Anyone who will have a look at the map which I have put up near the Library will see the story of where the unemployed are. If you pick out the black areas from the areas in Mayo, in West Donegal, in West Galway, the small portions of the coast of Clare, in North-West Mayo, the Dingle peninsula, the Bere peninsula and West Cork, and ask yourself what employment means there or ever has meant, in human memory, you will be surprised. There are no employed persons, agriculturally employed persons in the sense in which that term is commonly used in other portions of the country. There you are taking a census of endemic poverty, an age-long and historically-founded poverty, a splendid poverty, a courageous and noble poverty, I may say; a history of an heroic endurance with which I know nothing to compare in the history of the rest of Europe. But to add that, as if you are adding two things of the same kind together, to the casual employment of a city like Dublin or Cork, is nonsense and nothing but nonsense.

The employment exchanges were first set up for a specific purpose; they were set up as part of the machinery of the Unemployment Insurance Act. They had two purposes, one was to keep tab of all those who were entitled to unemployment benefit and to provide the machinery for allocating the stamps and the rest of it, and, secondly, to find out of those insured persons in insured trades for commercial employers commercially desirable employees whom they wanted to have. There was added to that as a concession the right to register all people who were called "others," who were not entitled to insurance benefit, but whose names could be recorded upon such lists in case employers wanted them. If you go back to 1931 you will find there was a total somewhere of about 30,000 people, between unemployment insurance men and others. That total was swelled under this Government by special methods of recruitment for the exchange and by special inducements to recruit. For instance, a man, instead of having to walk a considerable distance, could register at every police barracks in the country.

In addition to that, at the same time as the Government did it, they provided an unemployment grant of £2,000,000, and announced that that grant would be allocated territorially on the basis of the number of people actually on the register in those districts. Deputy McMenamin and Deputy O'Sullivan know that there were no people registered for unemployment in West Donegal and West and North-West Kerry, in Mayo and West Galway—west of the Shannon. I have a map which I got made. The first thing I did when it was my job to try to distribute the money on the basis of unemployment was to make a map to find out where the people were and, to my amazement, there was no poverty west of the Shannon. It is an unemployment register which showed no unemployment west of the Shannon that is being suggested as a basis of sound comparison, one in which we have done everything that was humanly possible to get on to the record and analyse exactly into the position of their economic standing every poor person west of the Shannon.

Now, those are facts that everybody knows. Of course, when one uses the term "everybody knows," as a rule one is saying things that are going to be highly controversial. It is the commonest thing for a man to say, "I am not going to talk politics," and then to proceed to talk about nothing else but politics. In the same way, when he says "everybody knows," it is a thing which is highly controversial. There is nobody questioning that, however. It is a matter of history. It is a matter of legal and mathematical demonstration. You might as well compare glasses of milk and elephants. What are two elephants and two glasses of milk added together? I should say they are two very thirsty elements, but they certainly do not make four. Now, that is the sort of thing which has been going on, and it is because that doctrine is now thrown away, finally and for ever, that it is openly acknowledged that these unemployment figures can never again in this House honestly be used in that sense in which I have called attention to this statement of Deputy Morrissey.

There is an old saying to the effect that everything has the defects of its qualities, and when I am asking for unemployment returns to be treated as an algebraic sum, I am quite satisfied that I am going to raise a lot more. We have an example in to-day's newspaper where Deputy Norton, speaking over the week-end, says that the figure is 93,000. Last year it was 146,000. Is anybody going to say that there has been that enormous and phenomenal improvement in one year? They are not. The mere fact, however, that they are not prepared to acknowledge that drop from 146,000, the peak point last year, to 93,000 this year, is the best reason why they should not use arbitrary, casual changes and unexplained changes in the figures in the way they have been doing. However, Deputy Norton said yesterday that the figure is 93,000, but if you take in the people who have been unemployed under the Employment Order—the men over £4 valuation—it should be 130,000. That would mean that 37,000 men have gone off the register as men over £4 valuation. Now, I know what is Deputy Norton's mind in this matter. He knows that there is a drop, or was a drop last year, of 40,000 when a certain employment period came into operation, but that was the employment period which included £4 valuation men and single men without dependents. The actual drop in the case of the £4 valuation men is only a few thousand. I am not saying that in any sense of complaint, because I think the mere fact that there has been an attempt to treat these figures as figures that have to be analysed before they are used, is such an enormous advance that even a wrong result from it is commendable, but I do suggest that in using these figures care ought to be used to see that misunderstandings of that kind do not take place. We will come back to this subject again, I have no doubt, many times, but I do hope that the interchange, the very useful and proper interchange, that took place between a member of this Front Bench and that Front Bench, in relation to the reality of these figures, will not be wasted, and that we will not get back into the old habit of adding the milk and the elephants together and making four.

Another cause of complaint which has been brought up here in relation to this Budget has been the local contributions which were made by local authorities to finance the unemployment schemes. I do not propose to deal with it at any length now, because I shall have to deal with it again, but it is necessary to deal with it in relation to this Budget in so far as it is, apparently, part of the "fraud, bunk, and general criminality" of the Minister for Finance in framing this Budget. The suggestion is that the whole object of the method in which we employ a great number of men off the unemployment register, instead of a few men, out of the same money, is to save the Minister for Finance money. Well, now, I can tell you from inside exactly what does happen. It comes to a certain period of the year, and we come to estimate the amount of unemployment work which we may or may not do, and I am asked to give a return of the actual effect of that upon the Unemployment Assistance Fund, in order that, when the Minister for Finance comes down to the close estimation at the end of his Budget, in which he decides whether he is going to have a surplus or whether he is not, or what taxes he may have to put on or take off, he will be dealing with an actual net figure. Previously unemployment relief schemes were of an entirely sporadic character. They came like the blossoms in spring, and they departed in the frosts thereof. Gradually, however, over the last few years, they have been evolving themselves into a logical position: that the State was prepared to take, in relation to the submerged tenth—in relation to the poorer portion of its own population—a certain definite responsibility, measured in terms of money, for the purpose of softening and alleviating their lot. There was added to the original sporadic provision of relief votes, the Unemployment Assistance Act, under which the State agreed to pay to every person, under a certain level of financial position, during the actual period of his unemployment, and dependent upon the degree of the dependency of others upon them, an amount of money which would bring him up to a certain standard. That varied with different districts, but that is the actual general position.

Now, that costs a certain amount of money and is one of the provisions made by the State, and financed out of this and other Budgets, for the purpose of dealing with this question. In addition to that, there was the sporadic provision of unemployment Votes. However a method was attempted by which to estimate upon some logical basis what that other amount of money ought to be, and to put it upon an ordered basis, and we have evolved now towards a stage where we envisage an employment fund which would consist of these two elements: one, the provision which the State is prepared to make for people during the period in which they cannot be employed; and, second, the amount of money which the State is prepared to pay for that temporary, artificial employment; and those two together form the Employment Fund.

Now, as far as the Minister for Finance is concerned, when he comes to prepare his Budget, he has to estimate for a total of these sums and that is exactly what is being done. If, for instance, the Minister arranges for £3,000,000 as a total, he says: "I have got to spend £1,500,000 on unemployment assistance; then I have only £1,500,000 for the purposes of providing employment." If, in fact, due to the operation of employment schemes, the call upon the Exchequer for unemployment assistance is forced down to £1,150,000, then the Minister has £350,000 more to add to the fund which he requires for the purpose of giving direct employment. You may take it that is exactly the process, exactly the attitude of mind, in which the matter is dealt with. I have thought round every possible way, and I think the Minister for Finance has done likewise, and I do give it as my considered opinion, after a lot of thought on the subject, that there is no possible way in which the Minister for Finance can employ people on public works which is not dearer than giving them unemployment assistance. In certain classes of work, it might cost the State six or seven times as much to employ people as to give them unemployment assistance. The cheapest of all ways—I make this free gift to the House for criticism—to deal with the unemployment problem, if there were no social reactions in the matter, is by providing unemployment assistance. You can double it or treble it, and it will not cost you anything like as much as employing people but you will have certain reactions which are definitely undesirable.

It is because those reactions are regarded as undesirable that every effort is now being made, and will be made, to convert as much as possible of the unemployment assistance, or dole money as it is called, into work and into wages. I would be very glad indeed to see a position in which the Unemployment Assistance Vote could be reduced to £100,000 and the whole of the balance, what is called a saving, transferred for the provision of works under which employment can be given. I am perfectly sure that anyone who knows what has been going on in Donegal, in North Kerry, in Mayo, in West Galway, where literally tens of thousands of men have been working instead of drawing the dole—anyone who knows this and who has seen what is going on, as I have seen what is going on, will have no hesitation in saying that a national duty is being performed in the attempt which is now being made. Here are the actual figures over a period of years for unemployment assistance and employment schemes combined:—For 1934-35, £1,281,000; for 1935-36, £1,922,000; for 1936-37, £2,002,000; for 1937-38, £2,621,000. There is clear evidence, whatever may have been the intention of the Minister for Finance, that he certainly has not carried out any intention of saving money on these schemes. In every year he has increased the amount expended. He has raised it from £1,281,000 in 1934-35 to £2,621,000 in 1937-38. I can tell the House quite definitely that every activity in the direction of employing people, rather than keeping them on the dole is going to increase that ‘total. I was at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce some time ago, when they were all enthusiastic for employing people, instead of giving them the dole, and I told them what they would have to face if they did that, that it would cost two or three times as much, and might cost five or six times as much, as paying people on the dole.

We now turn to the point that local authorities are being put upon in some extraordinary way by being asked to contribute. I do not want to go back on the history of how the moneys were distributed previously but I shall tell you how they are distributed now. We do estimate, as nearly as we can and as honestly as we can, the relative need of particular districts. We take the U.A. figures for the districts and we take the poverty map of the country which has been formed on the best statistics we can get. From that we estimate how the total amount that is provided is to be divided between these districts. In other words, the money is distributed on the basis of necessity. Then when it comes to the question of contribution, the contribution is based on the exact opposite basis, on the basis of ability to pay. We have the position, under this method, by which a district, if it is very poor, gets a lot of money. If it were distributed on a flat rate, which would be dependent on the amount of money to be got out of a district, then it would mean that a poor district would have to find a much larger amount of money than a more prosperous area would have to find. Take a district like Donegal for instance. There you have about 10,000 people on the register. To ask the remaining portion of that county to pay 20 per cent. or 50 per cent. or whatever the estimated figure might be, of the amount of money required, justly to deal with the poverty there, is not a feasible proposition, while, if you turn to a place like Dublin, Dublin Borough has practically the same number of people on the register as Donegal, but the overwhelming wealth relatively of Dublin does enable it to stand up to a good deal of its own responsibility. The result is that as far as justice for the poor is concerned, it was met by distributing the money in proportion to the need of the district. As far as the district itself is concerned, its contribution is proportioned to its own wealth and its own capacity. The result is that there are very definite differences in the rates of contribution over the country and every one of those can be justified upon the sound ground of rigorous and strict justice in the matter. Then, why any contribution at all? I think everyone will recognise that, where money is going to be spent in a district, and under the control of the local authorities in that district, they should have, first, a definite interest in seeing that that money is properly spent, and secondly, a definite knowledge that they are contributing to it.

There is an idea that the Minister for Finance, in some extraordinary way, has money of his own. We do not pretend that during a Budget debate. During a Budget debate every penny is taken from the poor. Every single penny is being dragged out in the most deliberately brutal fashion it is possible for the misconceived ingenuity of man to devise. But as soon as the Budget debate is over, then it becomes a grant from the Government. It is very undesirable that local authorities should feel that grants from the Government are things which they do not have to pay for. They do. The Government draws its resources from precisely the same people that the rating authorities draw their money from. They draw them in different proportions and different ways, but it is the same people who pay them, and it is very desirable indeed that every local authority—in spending money or in receiving money or in asking for money, or in criticising the expenditure or non-expenditure of money on unemployment relief—should know that they pay for it; not merely the proportion which is collected in the form of rates, but the total sum. The poorer counties, as I said, do not pay as much; the richer counties pay more. Let us take a district like the Borough of Cork. The Borough of Cork is pretty well an average of the community from the point of view of the statistical position in relation to wealth. The Borough of Cork may take it that though they are directly paying only a couple of shillings, more or less, for the direct relief of unemployment, the total charge which rests on Cork at the present moment for dealing with its unemployment alone is equivalent to a rate of 14/7 in the £, and that they have to pay it. I want them to understand that they pay it. I think it is time that the local authorities freely recognised that. As a matter of fact intelligent Deputies in this House know it perfectly well, but they say "Do not tell us in that brutal fashion." Deputy Corish the other day spoke of the annoyance of having to collect this money. He said it was quite easy for the Minister for Finance to juggle with millions here, but when he went down to his local authority and tried to collect a rate of 9d. in the £ it rather blew the gaff. Deputy MacEntee shall collect the money; Deputy Corish shall spend it. The central authority shall have the odium, the discomfort, of drawing in the money; the local authority or the local representative is to be the grand almoner who gives it out. The people who really pay it, the local ratepayers, are to be kept from knowing that. That is exactly what is not going to happen. Whether the contribution is large or whether it is small, the local authorities are going to tell their local ratepayers that they, the local authorities, are openly taxing them for the purpose of paying part of their share. That may not seem good politics coming on to a general election. It would have been so much easier to pose as the kindly godfather who was distributing all that money, but democracy is a hard faith, and one of its first and cardinal principles is that the people shall understand that that which they enjoy they themselves, out of their own labour, their own production and their own sweat, shall pay for.

On another occasion I will give the actual figures in relation to a number of municipalities. I will show that the total amount of money which is being taxed for by the local authorities is relatively small compared to the portion of money for which those same people are being taxed by the central Government. In the meantime, the first and chief thing is that it should be understood that this money which comes for the purpose of unemployment relief is money which is not collected here in Dublin, which is not invented here in Dublin, which is not provided merely by the Minister for Finance, which is not something that he is to be attacked for and for which he is the only person who taxes, but is money taken from the whole community, and rightly and properly taken. If the people who are going to ask for grants of that kind and the people who are going to administer them are sound, hard democrats, they will recognise that they ought to stand over the facts. I think that this Budget will improve on discussion. I am looking forward to hearing it denounced; I am looking forward to hearing it defended on the hustings. I am perfectly satisfied that, whether Deputies opposite like it or not, the people will like it so much better than any Budget which has been produced by the Opposition that as long as grass grows and water runs they will never send back the Opposition to provide another Budget.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Parliamentary Secretary, who has just sat down, in his effort to enliven the Budget debate propounded a number of interesting problems, none of which he answered. He demonstrated I should say at great length that there are Government Departments engaged in publishing figures, and the only deduction to be drawn from the very elaborate statement of the Parliamentary Secretary is that no particular use can be made of those figures. I will admit quite freely that it is not the first time he has made that particular plea in this House. Again, I will pay him the compliment of saying that he demonstrated it on this particular occasion—by example—at some length and with full cogency. Furthermore, he indicated that it was the policy of the Government to rob Peter to pay Paul, or, as he put it in more Parliamentary language—that always appeals to him—to go in for a redistribution of wealth. He pointed out that, of course, he himself belonging to an older generation—I was sorry to hear him acknowledge that—does realise that this continual interference on the part of the Government is something which does not appeal to his—I can hardly now call them principles after this speech and after his talk for the last three or four years—shall I call them, old-established prejudices.

He prefers that the money should be left in the hands of the private individual, because, as I say, these old prejudices that he seems to have shed not to-day, but shall I say from night to morning, in the year 1932, and to have shed very successfully, demand such a belief. He must give up these old prejudices, because the rising generation will demand ever and ever more expenditure, ever and ever more taking by the Government from those that make money. He said, of course, that the wisdom of such a course could only be judged in one way—who makes the best use of the money? I gather that the old out-of-date prejudice of his inclines to the belief that the private individual will. But having propounded that very interesting thesis in political philosophy he said unfortunately that it cannot be answered. Nobody can answer it, and it was the same way with the unemployment figures. We get them. We were told what they could not do, what they should not do, and what they were quite incapable of proving, but we had no indication of what precise use they were. I was rather sorry for that because, as the Parliamentary Secretary put it very clearly, this is not the first occasion on which he has brought this matter before the House. I remember having the pleasure of listening to him before, when he already brought it before the House. The important question did dawn on me then and still dawns on me now— what use does he suggest should be made of them? Having brought them before the House on a previous occasion, I was hoping that this time he would indicate to us what use he thinks ought to be made of them. I am sure he does not want them to remain in a purely negative atmosphere. Possibly he will utilise the further various opportunities to which he referred in order to enlighten us in that particular matter.

Notwithstanding the great optimism in the Parliamentary Secretary's words, if not in his manner, to-day, there are certain things in connection with the Budget statement, and with the statements of various Ministers, that are inclined to raise a certain element of despair so far as this country is concerned, one is the apparent incapacity, even now, of the Government to realise what is the condition in the country. We see them still trying to deny the fact, the blatant fact known to everybody in the countryside, of the emigration that is taking place to Great Britain. I am dealing now merely with what everybody in Kerry, at all events, knows. The Government may not know about it.

If not, I suggest it is their fault and the fault of members of their Party. But I have heard one story, and one story uniformly, in that county. I have not heard it challenged in that county. I am confining myself now to the account given me by people who spoke to me on the matter, and they were unanimous on the serious amount of emigration to Great Britain that is going on there at the moment.

It is useless, in the face of what everybody who has any knowledge of the country knows, for the Government to try to shut their eyes to that particular fact. One of the elements that makes me almost despair of any good coming from this Government is their refusal to recognise the evil. How can we expect the Government to cope with a situation, to cope with what many people regard as a serious evil, if they start off by obstinately refusing to believe in its existence? I wish that the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce would go down to country places, say, in Kerry, and tell the people there that there is no serious emigration; that they would go down to the farmers and tell them that they were never as well off as they are at present, and not content themselves with making statements of that kind here in the House; to tell the ordinary housewifes in town or country that there is no serious increase in the cost of living. Surely these are things that ought to be within the knowledge of Ministers. When the people down the country demand bread, to give them figures of the type that are published by the Government, the precise use of which has been so eloquently demonstrated by the Parliamentary Secretary—what good is that for the ordinary woman in the country who goes into the market once a week or once a fortnight, who knows perfectly well what she has to pay extra and what her cost of living has gone up by? Of what use is it to her to be told that, after all, these are only the retail prices? Is it suggested that she buys at any other price? Now, every housewife, whether she lives in the town or country, knows of the increased cost of living.

I remember a couple of weeks ago speaking in a country district in Kerry and pointing out what the Government takes in the way of taxes on foodstuffs alone from the person, say, that earns or gets 10/- a week. What was the comment I heard on that when I went down a week afterwards? A report of my speech had appeared in the local newspapers. The comment I heard was this: that the ordinary man and woman in the country were saying that I put the figure too low when I said that 2/6 was being taken in that way off the 10/-. I justified myself by pointing out that I deliberately referred only to a number of articles: to three or four of the necessities of life. Those people protested that they had to clothe themselves and to buy things for the household, and that when these were taken into account the taxes levied on them were not 2/6, but that the Government were taking considerably more than 2/6 off the 10/-. That was the only criticism I heard on that portion of my speech. In face of what the ordinary person knows, what is the use of pretending that the cost of living has not gone up? How are the cost of living figures calculated? Supposing a woman goes into a shop and she buys a couple of pairs of shoes for her children. It may be that she pays the same price for them now as she paid before, but, as I pointed out here before, the question arises—very important for her—how often has she to buy shoes for them now during the year as compared with five years ago. Everywhere you look the cost of living has gone up. In the case of coal in the City of Dublin last year the Government had to give way to the clamour that was raised in regard to that particular matter; so now I can only look on this Budget as a very poor effort on their part, but still some effort, to meet the rising wrath of the people against the cost of living.

I have listened to Ministers' speeches and have read them, and so far as I can gather from them their attitude is this: that there is no serious emigration problem, that the cost of living has really not gone up and that the Department of Industry and Commerce is ready to demonstrate that; that employment is on the upward bound, that the farmers were never better off than they are now. I wonder what kind of a Government have we? How can they be so completely out of touch with the realisties? I wonder whether they realise that they are out of touch with the realities?

I will admit that a number of factories have been set up in the country, some of them useful, some possibly with a very doubtful future before them. That difference in value is inevitable perhaps in a scheme of the kind for which the Government have gone in. But it will take many factories, and much larger and more successful factories than the Government have set up at tremendous cost to the consumer, to make good the loss that they have inflicted on the principal industry in the country. A factory undoubtedly is a boon to a town. Not merely the country, however, but the town is much harder hit by the destruction of the bigger factory, namely, the productivity of the countryside and the amount that the countryside is getting for what it is producing. As we stand at present we ought to realise that, however useful these things may be, they will have to be examined in detail to see how useful each one is. However useful they may be, they are a small thing compared with the big industry on which now, and for many years to come, any prosperity in this country has to be based.

What is the good of the President, occasionally even a Minister, the Minister for Agriculture perhaps, acknowledging that the lot of the farmer at present is hard and that he has sympathy with him when, at the same time, we have Ministers getting up here and stating in the coldest possible blood, from typewritten sheets, that the country is remarkably well off, that it is prospering? To which class of statement is the unfortunate man in the countryside to pay attention? To the lip-sympathy he gets from the President, and occasionally from one of his Ministers, or to the ignoring of the real situation as displayed in other statements of his Ministers? Surely we must assume that the latter is the real thing, when we see the policy of the Government and the actions of the Government based on and justified by the alleged prosperity of the country?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance did give what is an explanation for what his, if possible, more literary colleague, the Minister for Finance, would call the buoyancy of the barometrical character of certain taxes. There has undoubtedly been a lot of distribution— as the Parliamentary Secretary points out, there must be. If you raise one way or another, by taxes or by concealed taxes, £10,000,000 extra, that does make money circulate, and there is nothing astonishing in the fact that for the time being it will produce a better yield in certain taxes. But does it not dawn upon our literary Minister for Finance that there are various ways of sending up the barometer besides the natural atmospheric pressure, and that is what he and the Government are doing at present? Naturally, under the conditions that prevail, there is a great deal of spending. Apart altogether from the various other aspects of Government policy that lead to this spending, there is this immense amount of money that is being raised by taxation and "distributed." That will show itself undoubtedly. Men are getting money that had not it before. The question is, and I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary was going to tackle it, are you unduly taxing the productive side of your community? Are you really doing anything to improve, to the extent it ought to be improved, the general productivity of the country? In so far as there has been an upward trend, slight though it is, in the last couple of years, how far has that been due to our policy, and not simply to an improved condition of a market that we despised, that we were anxious to get out of, that was dead and buried?

There are things to which I thought the philosophic Parliamentary Secretary would turn his mind, but unfortunately he did not. Signs of prosperity —the capacity of the Government to levy more money! But go down, as I said, to the country, see the condition of the people there, listen to them, see the way, even, in which farms are kept at present. Are there signs of prosperity there? Most of the people familiar with the country fail to see them. What would, as I say, be calculated to drive the people to despair is the defence put up by members of the Government in support of their policy; a defence, as I said, that shows obstinacy on their part to face the real situation in any of the spheres I mentioned—the condition of the farming community, the question of employment, or the question of the cost of living. In none of these things were they willing to face facts. Neither were they in connection with the problem of emigration. What hope can there be then for a country that is run by a Government which ignores these things? What hope can the people have left to them?

The Minister, in the course of a somewhat lengthy statement when introducing the Budget—the Parliamentary Secretary wants as much agreement as possible in this country and we can all agree that the statement was rather lengthy—referred to the amount of money handed over to Great Britain. How much has the Government handed over?—taken from them at the point of the pistol, they say. They may call John Bull a highwayman or anything they like, but they have agreed with him as to the amount that is to be handed over, and the method of its being handed over. That is what their various pacts have amounted to. What are they doing? We have this Budget. The Parliamentary Secretary clearly indicated the purpose of it; I think the Minister for Finance will agree that he indicated the purpose of it pretty clearly—an election Budget. He taunted the leader of the Opposition with the fact that he did not know how bad the Budget was from his point of view but that he would know it at the election. Therefore, let us calmly and freely take this for what it is intended to be, an election Budget, a Budget meant to catch the votes of the people. That being so, I ask the Minister: Is that the best he can do as an election Budget? Is he not aware that the Budget, from that point of view, has already flopped, that the people, as a result of their experience—I will admit that Opposition Deputies have been pointing it out for a number of years— are finding out the inevitable that has taken place in the rise in the cost of living as a result of Government policy? That was inevitable. We could not hope to escape the experience of most other countries that adopted wild tariff policies. But it was not because anybody pointed that out that the people are now aware there is such an increase in the cost of living. It is because of their experience. When you consider the extent of the rise in the cost of living or form some vague idea of how it has gone up, I ask you is this the kind of relief which can bring joy to the bosom of any consumer—a relief the amount of which is negligible in comparison with the burdens that the Government has placed on the country, negligible in comparison with the extent to which the cost of living has gone up on account of Government taxation and general Government policy. No wonder the Budget, even for the purpose for which it was introduced, as we gathered from the Parliamentary Secretary, even for electioneering purposes, has failed to catch on. How could it?

We have here repeated a trick that the Government tried elsewhere. They are trying it now in reference to the cost of living. As a result of their general policy they brought farmers and the people engaged on the land to the verge of absolute ruin a couple of years ago by the economic war or, as the Minister for Finance put it, by winning the economic war because according to him it had been won at that time. Then they stepped in when the farmers were at their last gasp and we had the Coal-Cattle Pact, giving a certain amount of oxygen, just enough to keep them alive. That is all the Government did. They helped the farmers to that extent only, just kept them alive. What was the result? A slight improvement in the price of cattle, and an improvement in the number that could be exported. It was some relief to the farmers and just kept them alive. Then we had the Ministers going around boasting of that slight improvement. What did it amount to? They had so depressed the condition of the farmers and people living on the land that even a slight alleviation was something, as it kept them alive. As I stated a couple of months ago, it was the policy of a man who set a house on fire and boasted that at the eleventh hour he called out the fire brigade.

The Government are doing the same thing so far as the cost of living is concerned. In the course of their tenure of office they put burden after burden on the taxpayers and the consumers and they now take off something like £500,000 of the millions they put on. According to the Parliamentary Secretary the people are so rejoiced at that that they are going to sweep any critic of the Government into political oblivion "as long as grass grows and water runs," although I did not think that the Fianna Fáil Party approved of grass-growing. They are going to do that by giving the paltry relief of £500,000 and keeping on all the other millions that they put on during their period of office.

They whipped the unfortunate taxpayers and consumers so that even a slight diminution in the strength of the whipping would be regarded as a relief by them. That is what this Budget stands for. Is that all the Minister can do on the eve of an election to show that he is alive to the increased cost of living? Is this miserable contribution the only one that he can make to enable the budget of the ordinary housekeeper to balance. The Minister can balance his Budget. The ordinary housekeeper finds it daily more difficult to do so. And that is all he can do on the eve of an election. What are we to read from that? That this Budget is no performance but it is merely a promise, and a promise like all the other promises made by the Fianna Fáil Party. Had a relief of this kind been introduced under other conditions when taxation was much lower, which would cut down expenditure, there might be something to make consumers and taxpayers joyful, but that a Government having put on some £6,000,000 in taxes, or if you include the concealed taxes, well over £10,000,000, can come and boast of relief to the extent of £500,000 that they can give, that is quite typical of them and of their failure to deal with what is gradually becoming one of the most menacing factors in the situation —the increased cost of living. We had a dissertation from the Parliamentary Secretary, and I thought as he had the Official Debates before him he might have dealt with or tried to refute some figures of the prices of various articles which Deputy Mulcahy gave last week. Instead of that we had general principles of government and taxation, but these general principles of government enunciated by him do not bring down the cost of living or the cost of practically every article bought by the consumer. If there are people—and I gathered from the Minister that there are, and the Parliamentary Secretary certainly thinks there are—grateful for this Budget, I wonder what they expect from a Government. If the ordinary person, whether his income is 10/- £2 or £3 a week, sees an immense relief in this Budget I wonder what he was expecting in the way of Fianna Fáil policy dealing with the cost of living. Does the Government still maintain or will they tell the ordinary consumer, the ordinary housekeeper, that there is no such increase, that it is a mere figment of the brains of the Opposition? The Opposition could talk on that matter for a long time, and their talking would not have much effect if the facts did not support them. But it is because everybody in the country town, a lot of people in the cities and everybody in the countryside knows perfectly well what they have to pay extra for things, that anything the Opposition may say will have effect. It is only because the people feel the pinch, the merciless grip of the pincers, that anything that we can say about the cost of living can get over the people. They know it. There may be a certain number better-off now than they were before. I know that the policy of the Government does mean easy money, and large sums of money, for some people, inevitably perhaps as a result of the policy they pursue, but it certainly means a thinner time for many others.

The whole policy, I am afraid, has the effect of hitting the producer. We are now, as regards housing, the furnishing of houses and Government expenditure in various directions, still at the point of spending money. The meeting of the obligations in many cases is not yet at hand. Is it strange then that there should be in certain taxes, especially when we consider the certain type of help given by the Government, an increased yield? We have seen it in other countries where for six, seven or eight or more years they had a period of apparent prosperity and advance in the spending of money and which are now face to face in many cases with a much more serious problem.

The situation is serious from another point of view. I gather from the various speeches made by the President, at various portions of his career, and from various speeches made by the Ministers, that they do not believe in their hearts, although they sometimes seem to indulge in a recantation, in developing an export agricultural trade. I cannot understand—I cannot say the policy—the various attitudes taken up by the Government on any other basis but that. They talk of world depression and give that as an excuse for what the country is suffering and for the losses the country has suffered, but in that connection I should like to point out two things. There is recovery in the world at present and we are not getting our fair share or anything like our fair share of it. I have heard supporters of the Government give world prices as the excuse and the explanation of the increased cost of living. It is only a very slight excuse because the Government policy is mainly responsible, but supposing we take that for the moment, how are we prepared, or are we prepared at all, to meet that improved condition in the world markets? There will possibly be an opportunity of discussing that more fully on another occasion but I cannot see anything that promises well for the future in the condition as revealed by the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Finance or, indeed, by the other Ministers, or in the slight relief now offered that was confessed by the Parliamentary Secretary to be election bait. If this is the best which the Party well known for its political— in the baser sense of the word— acumen on the eve of an election can offer it is a rather poor lookout for the future of the country if that policy is to continue.

Mr. Fagan

I do not intend to delay the House long but I felt that I should say something in view of the Minister's statements. The Minister in his Budget statement said that there was a wave of prosperity over the country and that financially—I see the Minister shaking his head now—the country is improving.

Mr. MacEntee

I did not say anything about a wave of prosperity.

Mr. Fagan

That improvement is not felt in my county and I tell the Minister that things are very bad in my county and neighbouring counties. I have come across cases of poverty within the past three weeks that would make the hair stand on his head. I came across one case of a labouring man with five children who had constant work at £1 a week and who had to keep himself. He fell sick on last Monday fortnight and did not get his insurance up to last Sunday. His children went into a neighbour's house in a state of starvation and three labouring men had to go out and make a collection to keep these people from hunger. I know also of the case of a farmer's wife whose husband died three months ago. His land is set and when the doctor visited that house, where there are three children, during the illness of the wife and children, he had to go back to the town and buy food there and bring it back to them. I know several other cases of that sort. In County Westmeath there is worse want than there is in any part of Cork or the West of Ireland, and if the Minister cares to come down there I will bring him to ten, 20 or 30 houses where there is nothing but want and starvation.

I myself have had to put my hand in my pocket along with my neighbours to keep people there from starvation. The other day I had a letter from a poor woman near Finea. Her husband became ill last November, and for six months he was getting 15/- a week. Now he is getting 7/6, and that poor woman sent me a letter stating that she could not possibly exist on 7/6 and feed her husband and crippled daughter. All she asks me to get is money that would buy a stone of flour, a stone of meal, a pound of butter, six pints of milk, sugar and tea, and, as far as I remember, the amount totalled about 17/-. That poor woman beseeched me to get home help for her to get these things. There are hundreds of cases like that through the country. The Parliamentary Secretary dragged in the question of prosperity in the country, and said that the Government was going to win the election. Let me tell him that they are not going to win the election. I know that from the high cost of living within the past fortnight. That is reacting on the Government, and it is bound to do so. I am telling the Minister plain facts. There is no use talking of millions; that is no use to the people of the country. Go into any bank manager in the town of Mullingar and he will tell you that you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of farmers who had any money in the bank. All the others are up to their eyes in debt. And why? In 1934, when you had no quota for cattle, the small farmer with three or four cattle to sell always had a debt of £20 or £30 with the local shopkeeper. He always relied on his three or four cattle to pay that debt, but with the policy of the Government he found that he did not get £20 or £30 for the cattle he sold. He scarcely realised £10, and he kept that in order to keep the wolf from the door. He still has that debt with the shopkeeper, and the same applies also to the man with an overdraft in the bank, who might have 50 or 60 cattle. He, too, always thought his cattle would clear off his overdraft. In 1934 he was left with the same 50 or 60 cattle, but he has that overdraft as well as the poor man with £20 or £30 owing to a shopkeeper. These poor people cannot go to the shops because of these debts, due to the operation of the Government's policy. A priest in Moate told me the other day that the number of people looking to him for charity has increased within the last three weeks or a month. All this shows the position of the people. Neither I nor many other farmers think it is good policy to balance the Budget on the strength of the funded arrears of annuities. That is not good business, because I do not see how these arrears are to be paid.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

Listening to the Deputy who has just sat down, one would think that we were responsible for the provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Act. He has told us of the sad plight of the insured person who, for six months, was drawing insurance benefit at the rate of 15/- per week, and who, in accordance with the provisions of the law and the regulations which governed the fund, when that period of benefit had expired found that he was in receipt of only 7/6.

Mr. Fagan

I admitted that.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy brought that in on a Budget debate and ascribed to the present Government all responsibility for it. That was what the Deputy wished the people to conclude—that we were responsible for it.

Mr. Fagan

The high cost of living caused by you—6d. per stone on flour and other increases.

Mr. MacEntee

Perhaps the Deputy will bear with me as I bore with him. I want to show the sort of argument which has been advanced, time after time, in this debate in attack upon the Government and upon this Budget. Here is the position as admitted by the Deputy: that, in pursuance of the law as it has existed here since, I think, the State was established, this unfortunate woman and this unfortunate man found themselves compelled to live upon 7/6 per week; due to the present high cost of living, the Deputy says that the situation of these unfortunate people has been rendered much more grievous than it was. Supposing this poor man had fallen ill during the period our predecessors were in office, does the Deputy think his position would have been any better?

Mr. Fagan

There would not have been so much poverty surrounding him.

Mr. MacEntee

The earliest year for which I have figures in this connection is 1926. I should like to have in my hand, when I come to deal with the statement by Deputy Professor O'Sullivan, the earlier figures, because the position would have been more grievous in 1923, 1924 and 1925 than it was in 1926. In 1926, the cost-of-living index stood at 189. The cost-of-living index for the past quarter of this year was 167.

Mr. Fagan

Cost-of-living figures are no use when you are hungry.

Mr. MacEntee

No matter what the Deputy or Deputy O'Sullivan may say when in opposition, the cost-of-living index figures are compiled on a perfectly reliable basis. When the Government came into office, one of the first things it did was to set up an independent committee to inquire into the fairness of the basis upon which this cost-of-living index was compiled and its reliability. I cannot recall the names of the members of that committee now, but they included that of a very eminent representative of the Labour Party who had devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to this question of the cost-of-living indices, as well as the names of eminent statisticians. The substance of the committee's report was that our cost-of-living index figure was perfectly reliable as showing the trend of the cost-of-living. That cost-of-living index shows that the cost of living was much higher in 1926 than it is to-day. Certainly, it was much higher in 1923 when our predecessors reduced the rates of pension granted to old age pensioners.

I pass now to Deputy O'Sullivan's point—that the increased provision which we were making for old age pensions, and the allowances and concessions we have made to those in poor circumstances who had attained the age of 70, had been more than wiped out by the increase which has taken place recently in the cost-of-living. The fact is, as I have shown, that, whereas in the first quarter of 1932 the cost-of-living index stood at 162 and in the April quarter at 159, to-day it is standing at 167. There has, undoubtedly, been some increase, but we all know that depression was steadily and rapidly increasing during 1932; that agricultural prices and prices of primary products—and, indeed, of manufactured products, for that matter—were rapidly falling until, ultimately, in 1933-34 they had fallen to an entirely unremunerative level, a level so low that producers were going out of production. The endeavours of politicians and economists the wide world over, since this depression struck us, have been directed towards increasing the general price level, particularly in regard to all these things which enter into everyday competition —agricultural commodities, food stuffs and the primary products generally.

Let us say that this is the concerted aim of statesmen, economists and politicians the wide world over. The people to-day who tell us we cannot do this or that we cannot do that, and who tell us then that we are dependent upon our neighbours at the other side of the sea, are criticising us because we could not stand up against the world. That has been the general thesis of the whole criticism that has been directed against us during the debate on this Budget. I would not mind even if arguments such as that had been based upon sound premises or upon factual proof. Deputy J. M. O'Sullivan said there was a general recovery in the world at present and that we were not getting our share of it. In saying that he merely repeated what his colleague, Deputy Dillon, said last Thursday as reported in column 969, volume 66, of the Official Debates. He said: "I say now, as I have said before, that while every other country in the world is growing richer, this country grows poorer." Those of us who have listened to Deputy Dillon speaking here for a long time now— over five years—know that the Deputy often speaks without the book. The Deputy seems to make a hobby of teaching other people their own business. In the course of his speech amongst other things he said that Java tea will bear 1/2d. The Deputy's hobby is to teach other people their business. Now, on the very day that Deputy Dillon made that statement, a number of tea merchants indicated that the consumers of Java tea would not have to bear any share of the non-preferential tariff, that so far as the 2d. a lb. which was imposed upon those extra-Commonwealth teas, teas which do not enjoy the preference, so far as that is concerned the duty will be borne not by the tea consumers of this country but by the tea producers and the tea growers of Java and elsewhere. Deputy Dillon gets up and makes a statement here completely at variance with what is said by those whose business it is to know who will bear that 2d. a lb. duty. I am going to repeat the Deputy's own words: "I say now, what I have said before, that while every other country in the world is growing richer, this country grows poorer." Against that statement I bring the evidence of people whose occupation and profession it is to study economic situations not merely in Great Britain and this country but the world over. Here is what the Copenhagen correspondent of The Statist says in reference to conditions in Denmark, in an article which appeared in that journal on the 3rd April, 1937. The article is headed “Denmark's Economic Difficulties.” I do not propose to read it all, but amongst other things this well-informed student of the economic position of Denmark says, in regard to that country:—

"No wonder that the unemployment figure which is almost everywhere else on the decline is in Denmark following a curve considerably higher than a year ago. By the end of January there were about 26,000 more people out of work than at the corresponding date last year."

Then he goes on and says:—

"Least satisfactory of all is the plight of agriculture, which accounts on the average for four-fifths of Danish exports. A few weeks ago the National Council of the Danish Farmers' Association, representing some 104,000 farmers, sent the Prime Minister a petition in which the present situation of Danish agriculture was described as the most serious for many generations... The low price level for agricultural produce combined with rising prices for fodder and a bad harvest, has compelled many of the small holders in particular to use up their reserves. What makes matters worse is the heavy long-term indebtedness of Danish agriculture (due largely to its advanced mechanisation), the total of which is estimated at 4,000,000,000 kroner. The annual interest of about 150,000,000 kroner imposes on Danish farmers, a burden which many of them under present conditions are unable to bear. Hence the growing discontent and repeated cases of rioting in rural districts."

Denmark is a country which is very often held up to us as a model for our imitation, as an ideal for our farmers, and we heard last year and in the preceding years about the wonderful inroads which Danish agriculturists were making upon the British market. If everything we have heard here about the favourable position of Denmark in the British market be true, if all the golden stories be true, if all the sorrowful stories and the sorrowful admonitions which have been addressed to us about the opportunities which we were losing and which the Danes were availing of were true, it is hard to see how the conditions which are the conditions which are described in this reliable and reputable journal can be the conditions which can possibly exist there. I do not doubt the truth of the statement which I have read. The Copenhagen correspondent of The Statist has no reason and no motive to misrepresent the position in Denmark. Therefore, I think the statement I have read is true. If his statement be true, then all the things we have heard about the opportunities which we were denying to our farmers during the past two or three years are quite obviously unfounded. They were simply a mirage. These bright, golden opportunities do not exist anywhere except in the minds of Opposition speakers. So far as there were losses and so far as we are concerned, our farmers do not seem to be any worse in regard to the British market, notwithstanding the fact that the economic dispute has continued and is apparently continuing. Notwithstanding that our farmers are no worse off than the Danish farmers who had no political or economic dispute whatever with the British Government. But apart from that, this article does show that that statement of Deputy Dillon and the statement of Deputy O'Sullivan are without any foundation whatsoever, at any rate so far as Denmark is concerned.

That is not the only evidence from reputable sources which show these statements of the Opposition Deputies are not true. The statement that has been repeated here so often during the debate on the Budget is not true— namely that while every other country in the world is growing richer, this country grows poorer, or that there is a widespread recovery in the world at present. I quote now from another article in The Statist. That article is headed “Changes in International Trade.” The writer of this article points out that the general value of international trade is still far below the pre-depression level, and has not yet reached the level of 1932. The article has this statement:—

"A closer analysis, however, shows that the recovery is by no means universal."

Then the writer goes on to say:—

"It is clear that the volume of trade did not expand proportionately if at all. Germany, and probably Italy too, had forcibly to restrict imports in order to reconcile the increased costs of foreign raw material, with limited supplies of foreign exchange. In Holland and Switzerland, typical examples of the smaller States of Europe, which have not been able yet to share in the benefits of economic recovery, imports were lower last year than in 1934 or 1935. The same applies to the three largest countries of Asia, India, China and Japan."

So we see that, according to those whose business it is to study these matters and be well informed in regard to them, the one thing that is clear to-day is that the world at present in general is not enjoying anything like improved economic conditions, and that it is not true to say that most other countries are growing richer while we are growing poorer. That is one of the false premises upon which a criticism of this Budget has been based.

All of us know that, in fact, there is a highly artificial prosperity being enjoyed in one or two countries at the present moment. One is Great Britain and the other is the United States. In regard to Great Britain, we all know why it is that trade seems to be booming there. The very fact that those who are responsible for British policy decide to spend huge sums upon rearmament, and that in consequence of that expenditure conditions improve and prices rise in this country, surely is a complete disproof of all the statements and all the propaganda for which the Opposition have been responsible during the years 1932 to 1935. When the British Government was retrenching, when British manufacturers were going out of production, when wages were being scaled down in Great Britain and unemployment was on the increase in Great Britain, then our farmers, dependent upon that market, naturally and automatically suffered. There was nothing that we could do that time to improve the position for them. It has been said that we were being shut out of that market, that we were being shut out of a market which did not exist.

Mr. Fagan

Did not exist? Did you not thank God that it was gone?

Mr. MacEntee

The statement I have read is from The Statist, which is neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fáil. The writer of the article in The Statist is a man who lives in Denmark.

Mr. Fagan

Obviously he is not living on a farm in Ireland at the present time.

Mr. MacEntee

He lives in Denmark and not in the Saorstát.

Attention called to the fact that 20 members were not present; House counted, and 20 members being present,

Mr. MacEntee

I was saying that the writer of the article in The Statist lived in Denmark and that the description which he has given of the position of the Danish agriculturist shows that he was as badly off as the Irish agriculturist and that the Dane, just like the Irishman, suffered from one thing and one thing only, and that was a decline in the purchasing power of his best and possibly, as in our case, only customer. And we were blamed for that. On occasions I quoted figures here which showed that the consumption of meat in Great Britain had declined by almost 16 per cent. per head during the three or four years of the depression.

Mr. Cosgrave

Not the frozen meat.

Mr. MacEntee

The consumption of meat declined.

Mr. Cosgrave

The consumption of frozen meat went up.

Mr. MacEntee

I showed that the consumption of meat had declined and the consumption of cheaper articles had increased in Great Britain. The purchasing power of the British people had declined and all the criticism and all the propaganda of the Opposition during the period of the depression was directed to heaping coals of fire upon our heads because we could not do for the British population what the British Government during that period was not able to do.

Mr. Fagan

You thanked God that the British market was gone and now you are crying for it back. Two years ago you said you wanted no market there, and now you are shouting for bullocks.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must listen to the Minister and not interrupt him.

Mr. Fagan

I cannot listen to nonsense. It is hard to listen to him.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must allow the Minister to make his statement.

Mr. Fagan

I cannot listen to such nonsense. They broke down the market, and now they want to put a different complexion on things.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Every Deputy and every Minister should be allowed to speak without interruption.

Mr. MacEntee

Everybody knows and I suppose even Deputy Fagan knows, that if there is a restriction of purchasing power people are not able to buy so much as they at one time were. If the people who formerly supplied them continue to produce at the rate they were formerly accustomed to, and the demand falls off and purchasing power decreases, then prices must fall. Everybody is going to try to get out of a surplus stock at the lowest possible cost. Like everybody, he tries to cut his losses. Often people who are dealing with bookmakers are compelled to cut their losses, sometimes at a very heavy discount. It does not matter where you are, however, if you are up against that situation you have to reduce prices in order to get out quicker, and that happened in Denmark, just as it happened here, and just as British manufacturers, in regard to manufactured products and industrial products, had to cut their prices, so, too, our farmers were compelled, with all the farmers the world over reducing prices, to follow suit.

Until this year, we have been blamed because the trend of agricultural prices was downwards, but the Opposition, which has no difficulty in putting on a blue shirt one day and taking it off the next, no difficulty in prating about Fascism one year and preaching about democracy the next year, no difficulty in calling itself Cumann na nGaedheal one year and calling itself Fine Gael on another occasion, has likewise no difficulty in turning round now, like a vane on a weather-cock, and condemning the present Government now because agricultural prices, upon which the cost of living is based, happen at the present moment to be rising in this country.

Mr. Fagan

You were republican at one time in this country and you are all English now. First, you went to join the British Army to fight for England, and then you joined the Republican Army to fight for the Irish republic, and everything is for England now. Talk about the Blueshirts! They put you in your place.

Mr. MacEntee

Here, again, is the position. We were blamed, as I said, when agricultural prices were falling, and now we are being blamed when they are rising, and the people who come here, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce said, and condemn us because the cost of living is going up, who talk here of the people in this great city of 500,000 population being affected grievously by the rising cost of living, are the very people who will go down the country and tell the farmers that, under the Fianna Fáil Government, they are not getting enough for their butter, their beet or for their cattle. That is the sort of opposition we have. They are not even consistent in their inconsistencies. They talk here about the rising cost of living and go down and tell the farmers that they are not getting enough for their products. Naturally, if the prices of agricultural products go up in the country, the cost must go up in the towns also. However, I would not mind that. We have been condemned during the past five years because, in order to help the agricultural population when agricultural prices were falling, we adopted the policy or device of subsidising certain products and making subventions in one form or another to help the agricultural producer. Admittedly, we granted subsidies to a considerable amount. We have subsidised the production of beet and the manufacture of sugar in this country, and we have subsidised the production of creamery butter, so that we have paid away almost £6,500,000 in subventions and subsidies to that industry. We have been condemned for doing that, but while we are being condemned for doing that, the Leader of the Opposition, on Friday last, answered this question in a way in which the Dáil will hear for itself in a moment. I am quoting from column 1162, volume 66, of the Debates of last Friday. Deputy Cosgrave was speaking and I said to him: "That is to say, the Deputy wants to subsidise pig production?" And Deputy Cosgrave answered "Yes." We have been condemned because we have subsidised butter production, but now we are being told that we ought to subsidise pig production and bacon production.

Mr. Cosgrave

Would the Minister please read that again?

Mr. MacEntee

Certainly. Deputy Cosgrave said:

"There is enough money to spend on calf skins and there ought to be money there which would enable the Bacon and Pigs Board to make up the difference between, let us say, the factory price and the price which would compensate the farmer for raising the stuff."

I then said: "That is to say, the Deputy wants to subsidise pig production?" And Deputy Cosgrave answered "Yes."

Mr. Cosgrave

Would the Minister say what is the purpose of the Pigs and Bacon Act?

Mr. MacEntee

I then went on to comment on that, and I said:

"I thought that subsidisation and all that sort of thing was anathema to the Deputy's Party? We have been subsidising butter production and we have been attacked for it; we have been subsidising wheat production and we have been at-attacked for it; we have been subsidising sugar production and we have been attacked for it."

Now the Deputy wants to subsidise pig production. One of the principal points in the Deputy's speech——

Mr. Cosgrave

Did I not go on to say that the Pigs and Bacon Act made for a general level of prices which would be remunerative, and that when the price was low the people should have an increase in the price, and when it goes high you could give a lower price than the high price and make it up to the fund? The provision was to keep a general level of prices, and if the market price of a pig was not sufficient, the funds would make it up.

Mr. MacEntee

Where does the fund come from?

Mr. Cosgrave

There is provision for borrowing.

Mr. MacEntee

Oh, I see! And the borrowings have not to be paid off, I suppose?

Mr. Cosgrave

I think I explained it to the Minister on Friday last. Apparently, however, he does not understand the meaning of the Pigs and Bacon Act. If he does not understand the meaning of it, I suppose I am not in order in giving it here.

Mr. MacEntee

I gathered that when prices are low a loan is to be raised?

Mr. Cosgrave

Yes.

Mr. MacEntee

Which is to be paid, when?

Mr. Cosgrave

When the prices are high.

Mr. MacEntee

And the levy must be imposed on pig producers or bacon consumers in order to pay off the subsidy to be granted out of the loan when prices are low?

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister is criticising the Act.

Mr. MacEntee

I understand the mechanism and the provisions of the measure just as well as Deputy Cosgrave does. The only difference between Deputy Cosgrave and me is that he is concerned to throw dust in the eyes of the public and I am concerned to tell them the truth.

Mr. O'Leary

It is you who are concerned to throw dust in the eyes of the people. What put you where you are except that?

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister's statement on beef shows that he does not know anything about it at all.

Mr. MacEntee

Here is the position. We are urged by the Deputy to subsidise pig production and bacon production——

Mr. Cosgrave

To operate the Act.

Mr. MacEntee

——in order that we may make pig production profitable to the farmer and to raise artificially—let us be plain and blunt about it— the price which the farmer will get for his pigs.

Mr. Cosgrave

Yes.

Mr. MacEntee

We are urged to do that here in 1937, and when we tried to do that in regard to butter, and did succeed in doing it by an Act we brought in in 1932, the Deputy split his Party on it.

Mr. Cosgrave

That is the purpose of the Act.

Mr. MacEntee

When we brought in a measure which would enable us to subsidise butter production, in 1932, the Deputy split his Party on it, because he went into the Lobby, and one of his principal fuglemen—one of the Deputies most frequently put up to make the Opposition case in regard to these agricultural questions, Deputy Bennett—went into the Lobby against Deputy Cosgrave, and Deputy Cosgrave's Whips.

Mr. Cosgrave

There is a tariff duty of 3d. in the £ on that butter that the consumer is paying here. The Minister will not advert to that. Three-pence a lb. on every lb. of butter puts it into England.

Mr. MacEntee

What is the purpose of paying an inflated price for pigs except to put them into England at a lower price, that is, the world market price in England—that is to say, as the Deputy has told me, to make up the difference between, let us say, the factory price and the price which would compensate the farmer for raising the stock.

Mr. Cosgrave

That is right.

Mr. MacEntee

On what is the factory price based? In general, it is for the exportable surplus; it is what it will fetch in the English market, and if it happens to be unremunerative to the farmers, the Deputy's suggestion is that we should tax our domestic consumers in order to sell bacon cheaply in the British market. We have done that in the matter of butter—quite frankly because it was necessary to keep the industry going—and now Deputy Cosgrave, who voted against that, urges us to do it in regard to bacon. As I have said, let them be at least consistent in their inconsistency. If they now believe in export bounties and subsidies, let them apply them through the whole gamut; but if they do, let them not come in here and talk to us about raising the cost of living, because if the cost of living has risen in this country, it has risen for one reason, and for one reason only, and that is because of the measures which the world depression compelled us to take in order to help the agricultural community.

Mr. Cosgrave

Will the Minister answer about the profits?

Mr. MacEntee

There is another point with which I want to deal——

Mr. Cosgrave

Deal with the profits.

Mr. MacEntee

——before I sit down, because I have not very much time. Unfortunately, I am talking against a time limit, and so much time was taken up by Opposition speakers that I would like to have a straight answer to this one question——

Mr. Fagan

What about the bonuses the factories pay?

Mr. MacEntee

We have heard a great deal about the hapless position of the unfortunate consumer of agricultural products in this country. We have been listening to tales about the price of bread, the price of wheat and of flour. We have heard stories about the price of sugar and butter and the price of all the other agricultural commodities, the production of which, admittedly and undoubtedly, this Government has been subsidising. A very depressing picture has been painted as to the future of this country, if these conditions continue to prevail. There will be a general election shortly. I suppose we shall be on opposite hustings. Deputy Cosgrave will be depicting, with all that command of figurative language which characterises himself and Deputy O'Higgins, the situation of the people. They will be telling the people about their sorrowful plight. They will be pointing to the depression which Fianna Fáil policy has brought on them. What is the remedy they are going to offer the unfortunate people of this country in that terrible and horrible position?

Mr. O'Leary

An open market for their products.

Mr. MacEntee

What is the remedy?

Mr. Fagan

Change the Government.

Mr. MacEntee

Is that all the remedy? What about the Government's policy? Deputy Cosgrave says that it is going to go on and on. Not merely are we going to have sugar beet subsidised, but that subsidy is going to be heavier still and we are going to subsidise the production of pigs and bacon as well. Change the Government! But we are going to have the same old policy. That is the alternative. It is not going to be a change of policy; it is not going to be a change of personalities. I do not think that the people who suffered in this country during the period 1922-1932 are simply going to vote against us in order that Deputy Cosgrave may come back and fill once again his old seat here on the Government Benches.

Mr. Cosgrave

The lowest price to the farmer and the highest price to the consumer—that is your remedy.

Resolution put and agreed to, and reported.

Report Stage ordered for Thursday, 22nd April.