Yes. We are told that "there is a dislike for work among the young men of the country and we have got to change that outlook." That was one of the causes—that there was a dislike for work. Nobody likes work very much. The majority of people in this State, or in any other State, who have to work want to work as short hours as possible and get the largest wages they can for the hours they do work. It is because the unfortunate sons of farmers are compelled to work for nothing that they have this dislike for work which the Minister for Education said they had. If the Minister for Education or any other Minister or Deputy were placed in the position of an unpaid worker on a farm, he would quickly develop a dislike for work and go elsewhere where, if he had to work, he would get paid for it. The Minister went on to say: "If they do not go away, where are we to find employment for them?" We had that declaration from a prominent member of the Government last night. What a change! It is a pity that the Minister for Industry and Commerce was not at his side when he made that statement last night. He might have thought back seven years and remembered where, he was then of opinion, he could find work for them. I do not want to misquote the Minister for Education but, to my mind, he inferred that people must get it into their heads that the standards under which they are living must be reduced. If that is the only hope the Minister for Education can offer the unfortunate agricultural community, it would be better he had never spoken.
Deputy Childers was rather more sympathetic to the agricultural community than was the Minister for Education. Deputy Childers did believe that the people suffered during the economic war and are still suffering from the effects of it. He added, however, that if it were not for the political passion engendered in the discussions on the economic war, we might have come to recognise it as something similar to the crisis that occurred in the U.S.A. in 1929 or in New Zealand or other countries. Unfortunately, we cannot look upon it as a crisis similar to what occurred in America. Ours was a deliberately-created crisis. It was the result of a policy deliberately prepared and put into operation by the Government and they alone must accept the responsibility. We suffered for five years owing to that policy. For five years, tens of millions of pounds were taken out of the pool of agriculture. The taking out of these tens of millions necessitated the expenditure of numerous other million from State funds and in other ways to help the people for the loss of these tens of millions. Because of these two things, we have come to a stage when an annually-increasing Budget is necessary.
Deputy Childers, as I have mentioned, says that, except for Party passion, we might have looked upon the economic war as an ordinary crisis. Is it unnatural that, considering the conditions under which the great bulk of the people were forced to live in these five years, there should be vehement criticism, as there was, of the Government and its policy during that period? One Deputy said that we did not give the Government credit for the numerous things they did for the people during the five or six years that have passed. We did not extend to the Government any great credit for the attempt they made to cover up their own mistakes. They ought not to expect credit. We did expect them to make a larger measure of compensation for the losses they inflicted on the people than they did make. Our expectations are not yet fulfilled in that regard and there does not seem to be any great prospect of their fulfilment. We are referred by the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Education and practically every other would-be backer of this Budget to the tens of millions given to the farmers as revealed in that gem—Table 8.
They have the audacity to ask the people to believe that a sum of £10,000,000 has been passed on to help agriculture. What proportion of the £10,000,000 is coming out of the bills which the Minister is now presenting to us? The largest item is the provision for the wheat subsidy, £1,900,000. We have always argued that the sum that people generally paid towards the wheat subsidy was well over £2,000,000, but the Minister has now placed it at £1,900,000. It is not provided by the Exchequer, but it is one of the things that we derive from the ad hoc legislation of the Government. Do the wheat growers get benefits to the extent of £2,000,000? We are told that it is devoted towards that purpose. Will any Deputy who understands anything about agriculture be prepared to tell me that the wheat growers get £2,000,000 by way of benefit? There are about 200,000 acres of wheat grown in this country. Will any Deputy say to me that if the Minister for Finance or any other Minister declares that they will pass on £10 an acre to wheat growers, that they would not be prepared to accept it joyfully as something great from a benevolent Government? I know they would be glad to get it, but they do not get £10 an acre or anything like it; they do not get even £3 an acre. I do not want to get into an agricultural debate. If I did, I could definitely prove what I have said. Any Deputy who desires to go into the matter will ascertain that there is not £2 or £3 an acre to be got out of the growing of wheat.
If the Minister wants to help wheat growing properly he could do it at much less than £10 an acre, much less than £2,000,000. If he gave a direct subsidy he would get a lot of it grown. If the Minister would offer a direct subsidy to the farmers of much less than £10 an acre he would get a lot of wheat grown. He did not offer any subsidy except for a while, but he did make the people pay the subsidy through the nose or, rather, through their mouths, in their bread and other things. It was bad enough to mulct the unfortunate people through their flour and bread in order to find the millions for the development of wheat growing. Incidentally, a great proportion of that money went into the pockets of people who were benefiting on a greater scale under the Minister's development of the wheat industry. One would not refer to that matter so much if the Minister had not the audacity to put it in a White Paper as one of the things that in this Budget he is providing for the people.
The same applies to beet. There are 50,000 acres grown in this country, and if the Minister presented anything less than the £20 an acre that it would seem to be costing, he would have a lot of people growing beet. The Minister is not presenting £20 an acre, although he attempts to bamboozle the people into that belief. He is again making the unfortunate consumers foot the bill in regard to beet growing and sugar production to the extent of something like £20 an acre on the acreage grown. That £20 an acre is not reaching the growers of beet. I can say practically the same thing as I said about wheat. If the Minister were to offer a much less sum than £20 an acre he would get all the beet he wanted grown. Practically the entire sum of £10,500,000 that the Minister says is being given for the benefit of agriculture comes from every source but direct taxation. While we are on that subject, it might be of interest to some Deputies on the Government Benches to remember— and this brings it forcibly to our minds in connection with the advantages which the farmers of the country are supposed to be receiving from this beneficent Government—that to the £35,000,000 of taxation there ought to be added the many more millions that the people are indirectly bearing and which the Minister attempts to hide from them.
Now, let me say something as to the method in which the Minister proposes to find the money. During the past five or six years he has found it necessary to increase taxation. This year the sole defence which the Minister made in regard to his Budget was that there is an unfortunate development in other parts of Europe which necessitated raising our expenditure this year. The unfortunate situation in Europe has been a blessing in disguise for the Minister, because it has kept back much of the criticism that would have been levelled at him if it were not for the international situation. But the international situation need not have caused the people of this country the anxiety that apparently the Minister would like it to cause them. I think the Minister said we were spending £5,000,000 on defence—that we proposed to spend nearly £5,000,000 one way or the other. Even if we do, what contribution are we going to make to the defence of Europe? Might we not just as well have left it alone?
What contribution can we make towards the defence of this country by an expenditure of £5,000,000? So for as preventing any enemy who wanted to come in here, or attacking any enemy, is concerned, the expenditure of £5,000,000 would be just as effective as the expenditure of 5,000,000 halfpennies. The Government know that, but they have not the courage to say it. We could preserve our neutrality, if it has ever to be preserved, with our ordinary little Army, just as well as with the proposed extension of that Army. Either would be equally ineffective. I am not saying anything derogatory of our present small Army. They are perfect in their way, but as an effective machine to preserve this country, even if the proposed additions were made, they would not serve a useful purpose. For all the good we are going to get out of the millions we propose to spend, we might as well leave the money unspent. If this country is going to be preserved, much as I dislike saying it and bitter as it is to swallow it, we will have to depend for our integrity as a State, not on any Army that we can reasonably organise, but on the goodwill of our neighbour across the water.
The Government have taken out of the pool of wealth in this country in the last five or six years tens of millions of pounds. These millions have been taken out of the pool of agriculture, or rather if one puts it the other way, the Government have prevented those tens of millions of pounds from coming into the pool. But millions of pounds have been spent in these five or six years in trying to off-set the position created. In the name of goodness, how could it have been otherwise, and why should we not have arrived at the position which we have reached? But is it not time that there should be some effort made to resuscitate and fill the pool that is now empty? One would have thought that there would be some effort made to reduce the annual burden placed on the people, particularly on the people who have lost the greatest portion of their wealth in the five or six years of the Fianna Fáil Government.
Now I come to a few quotations of what was said in the House as to the incidence generally of taxation. We come to the point where the Minister proposes to tax the people in different ways. Deputy Childers told us the maximum we can eat into our resources without the danger of financial breakdown. Quite true. But in God's name, how long? The Minister himself on another occasion said that taxation and the general charges on the people went down to the very poorest of the people. In the Minister's beautiful phraseology—and nobody can phrase a sentence more beautifully than he can—
"The incidence of taxation is rarely restricted to those on whom it is imposed, for it is passed on in the general social scale until ultimately all the burden is transferred to the producer and wage-earners."
I offer the Minister's maxim to-day to the back benchers of the Government Party.
One would gather that in this matter of the increase of income-tax the Minister hopes that the country will believe that the incidence of that income-tax is only going to fall on the rich and that they will forget the maxim so beautifully phrased by him that any tax cannot be imposed on the rich or on any other section that will not be passed down and down the social scale until at length it gets to the man that Deputy Hurley represents. Of course it will. Every man who is in touch with reality knows it will be passed down. The Minister for Industry and Commerce knows it better than any man in this House and I am sure he regrets it more than any man in this House. The Minister is a shrewd man and he knows the probable—I will not say the possible— effect it will have on very many of the Minister's own pet activities.
Now I come to the petrol tax. Some of the Deputies appear to think it is only a tax on the rich. Of course they tell you that the incidence of that tax will not get beyond the rich. It will not be passed down and down the social scale until it reaches the poorest. They appear to think it will not have any effect on transport fares. Of course it will not have any effect at all even on the indirect cost of commodities! That will be the argument from the Government side. The argument is, of course, that merchants whose expenses are to be increased because of the increase in petrol and oil, will not pass on these increases. They think, of course, there will be no effort made to pass on that tax to the consumer. But does any Deputy really believe that? Does any one of the silent enthusiasts on the Minister's side of the House believe that? Not one.
We come now finally to the one tax that might possibly be called the poor man's tax, that is the increase on the duty on tobacco. Of course, it will not do to call the tobacco tax a poor man's tax. It is, therefore, to be called a luxury tax. It is a tax on luxuries. From what we can hear we may take it that putting a tax on the portion of tobacco that might be called a luxury is not to be regarded as putting a tax or increasing the tax on the poor man. But the cost of common shag or plug that the poor man uses is to be increased. The chances are that the increase in the price of tobacco is not to be limited to the 8d. a lb. that the Minister has put on it. I am quite sure that in some districts in this country, and I will not say the remote districts either, it will be found instead of a ½d. an ounce extra being put on the price of tobacco, as much as 1d. the ounce will be imposed on the purchaser. That is a commodity that has almost become a necessity for the working man. One may call tobacco, in the case of certain people, a luxury. I do not refer to well-off people who can enjoy their cigar or cigarette, but when one comes to the case of the working man down the country, or the small farmer with a holding of five or six acres of land who works 14 hours a day, one will find that the probability is that his only solace in this world is the pipe. Deputy Meaney smiles because he agrees with me. Bad and all as the Budget is we might have suffered it with satisfaction—perhaps I should not say satisfaction, for it would be impossible to suffer anything with satisfaction. What I mean is that we could have borne it if we could take into account and bear in mind what the Minister said at the end of his Budget speech. Here are his words:—
"Stringent and straitened as our position is, I believe that we can endure it so long as peace is maintained."
We can endure it! Stringent and straitened as it is we can endure it if peace is maintained. And if war comes or if there is any disturbance in Europe, God help you. These are the words of our Minister. If peace is maintained, "stringent and straitened as our position is," the Minister believes we can endure it. He is not certain that we can endure it. But "stringent and straitened as our position is," owing to his policy and the policy of his Government, there is a hope that we may be able to endure it, but only a hope. That is the prospect that this Budget offers us.
