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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 15 Nov 1939

Vol. 77 No. 10

Resolution No. 9—General (resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
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.—(Minister for Finance.)

When the House rose on the last day we were discussing the Financial Resolutions, and I was following a speech of Deputy Morrissey in which he had made certain suggestions in relation to the standard of the debate and the line that ought to be taken by people who were properly performing their duties in this House and who had at heart the best interests of the country. I was pointing out that, while I did appreciate very much that portion of the speech which had that constructive purpose, the practice both of himself and of the Party to which he now belongs had been of a radically different order, and that it made it very difficult for those of us who did desire to develop that standard to meet him upon that ground. Now, various inconsistencies were pointed out, and here happens to be another. We turn back now to the speech which, unfortunately, I did not hear, but which I have heard described—the speech by Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan. Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan says that the Minister for Finance has introduced a new note into the Budget—the spending of next year's income. There is nothing new in that. If we look back for precedents to our predecessors, we have cases of the same class like leaves in Vallombrosa, some of them of a very remarkable character, some of them very small, some of them very large, some of them extraordinarily impudent. In one Budget of our predecessors, when they did not want to raise the income-tax—it would be most objectionable to raise the income-tax; that was before our friends of the Labour Party had begun to vote against income-tax——

When the Deputy wanted no income-tax.

That is exactly what I am leading up to. I always believe in following the interruptions of Deputies opposite into the path which I desire to tread. What I want to do, incidentally, is to congratulate the Labour Party on having joined the Non-Income-Tax Party. When that Party was formed in Cork, the Trades Council of Cork asked me to put their representative on it. A member of the Labour Party was then actually put on the executive committee of the No-Income-Tax Party. What I am trying to do now, with the able assistance of Deputy Mulcahy, who has been good enough to remind me of something I might have forgotten, is to congratulate the Labour Party on their long-overdue conversion. In that particular case, we were dealing with, I think, the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. I am not quite sure of that. Somebody may be able to check up on the various permutations and combinations of that Party and the dates attached thereto, in case I am wrong. But I think it was then called the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. It did not want to increase the income-tax. So, what did it do? It collected 18 months' income-tax in one year. That is the Party on whose behalf complaint is made that we are introducing a new note in spending in this year the income of next year.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary say what the rate of income-tax was at that time?

I cannot tell you, but I should be very happy to get the reference.

Mr. Brennan

Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would tell us what the year was?

I think it was about 1927. I shall find that out also for the Deputy.

It would be well if the Parliamentary Secretary would find these things out before coming into the House.

Surely, it is not necessary? Surely, the Deputy does not suggest that members of the Front Bench opposite do not remember what they did? Does he say that he does not remember what was done or is he questioning the fact?

What I say is that, whenever the Parliamentary Secretary makes a statement, I should like to know his authority.

The authority of the Parliamentary Secretary is, as a rule, quite sufficient.

I am prepared to ask the Deputy to refer to any case in which I gave a quotation in this House for which I was not prepared to find the reference. At any rate, we have the position that it is because they have forgotten their previous crimes, because they have forgotten the technique which they themselves invented, that they regard as new the spending of next year's income in this year, assuming for the moment that the Minister proposes to do so. But there was another case. We have included in our taxes a tax on beer. The previous Government, on a certain occasion, did not want to increase the tax on beer. That would be unpopular. So what did they do? They got the money by reducing the brewers' credit from three months to two months. That gave them exactly the same result. It took into one year the income of another year. These are the people who are objecting to our inconsistencies.

I alluded to another case the other day which had also been complained of—the unorthodoxy of the present Minister for Finance in that he used Road Fund money, or money borrowed on the credit of the Road Fund, for the purpose of relieving unemployment. I said that they themselves had improved on that technique by borrowing not on what was in or was not in the Road Fund, but on what they said was owing to the Road Fund.

Does the Parliamentary Secretary deny that it was owing to the Road Fund?

I do not but it was not paid.

He does not deny that it was owing?

It was a bad debt and on that they borrowed.

It was no bad debt. You cashed in on it.

They borrowed on a bad debt and left us to find the money by taxation——

It was not a bad debt.

Let the herring man go on.

The Deputies need not think that they will shout me down.

You cashed in on it and you know it.

I know what?

What I have told you.

That did not do full justice to the financial technique of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government under Deputy Cosgrave. They were going to a general election and, for the purpose of the general election, they wanted this £250,000 to bribe the electorate in the way in which they used the Unemployment Fund money. But they assumed they were coming back and, therefore, did not want to have to pay it. They wanted to get the credit of it. They wanted to get the use of it but they did not want to have to raise it in taxation. We are dealing now with——

The Supplementary Budget for 1939-40.

I am dealing simply with the question of whether or not the conventions and customs of this House in relation to finance have been violated by the Minister for Finance, and I propose to be quite brief on that point. What happened? They handed that money over for administration to the Land Commission, knowing that the whole staff of the Land Commission at that time was so completely occupied with their own activities that the Department could not spend its own money and this new money. The result was that the money was not spent. They saved on the Land Commission what they pretended to find by borrowing on a bad debt for the purpose of the Unemployment Fund, and they had it both ways. We are only children in the business of finance compared with experts of that kind.

Deputy Dillon, in another portion of the Dáil Debates—it would be a pity not to give the exact reference; it is column 1131—says:

"Every saving accumulated in this country during the first ten years of national government has been dissipated during the subsequent years of Fianna Fáil government."

Let us now see how the accumulated savings in that particular period were disposed of. The British left behind them some 30 different boards of one kind or another. The only good one was the Congested Districts Board, which, with limited funds and largely due to the fact that it had not to account to Parliament for those funds and therefore could economically administer them, was doing very good work. It had accumulated a very considerable sum of money by the end of the war, due to the fact that during that period it was not necessary or possible to spend the amount of money that they had been spending previously in the congested districts. Where is that money, and where was it when Deputy Cosgrave, after ten years of saving and accumulating, went out of office? It was used as miscellaneous revenue.

There was money which was in the possession of the Department of Education—money which ought to have been used for the benefit of the children in schools and for education generally in this country. The time came when Deputy Cosgrave and his Government faded from sight, but where was the money that belonged to the Department of Education? It also had been transmuted into miscellaneous revenue in some form or another. This is probably what Deputy Dillon meant when, in column 1131 of the present volume he spoke of all "that had been accumulated in this country during the first ten years of national government." All had been transmuted by the magic of the technique of the then Minister for Finance into alternatives to meeting out of taxation the expenditure of the country.

Now we move on to another statement of Deputy Dillon's which will be found in column 1134. I hope that the late Minister for Justice is now taking a note of all the references which he so specifically and specially asked for.

Would it be relevant for Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney to touch on those matters—relevant enough to take a note of them?

When the Parliamentary Secretary comes to defend the Budget I will take some interest in what he says, but not till then.

At the present moment I am dealing with what by inference the ex-Minister for Justice suggests does not refer to the debate. I am dealing with an actual quotation from the speech of Deputy Dillon on this discussion, of which the reference is column 1134.

The ideal discussion of the Budget would, in my view, cover only a financial year. It is however hardly possible to realise that ideal, since Deputies claim a right to consider each Budget in full perspective. To go back ten years, and spend ten minutes or 15 minutes in reply to every chance reference made by Deputies in the course of the discussion——

Or that they did not make.

——is quite feasible, but would not be orderly. A Deputy might, in that manner, speak for hours without reference to the essential matters before the House.

The reference which I am going to give refers to the actual proceedings in this discussion, and I think you will find it is distinctly ad rem. The complaint made by Deputy Dillon in column 1134 was that Deputy Cosgrave had brought forward a specific series of proposals in relation to economies which, Deputy Dillon said, had never been answered. Again, I refer the ex-Minister for Justice, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, to volume 76, columns 432 to 441, in which the then Minister for Finance, following Deputy Cosgrave, followed step by step meticulously over every service which had been mentioned by Deputy Cosgrave, and did in fact answer him. The recklessness of a Deputy who, knowing that, states that no answer was given would be amazing if it were not that it was that particular Deputy.

On the question of Gárda economy, we mentioned the Guards the other day and Deputy Gorey was on his feet at once to say that he was not having any reduction in the Guards. On the Land Commission question, Deputy Morrissey would not stand for any reduction. Deputy Dillon is prepared to build twelve new offices for the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the Public Works Vote—

If that would put some sense into them.

—on the excuse that it would reduce the cost of that Department. I think Deputy Dillon, in all his wanderings about the place, has come at some time into contact with the Department of Industry and Commerce, and has found that, in order to make an enquiry in relation to a particular matter or in relation to a series of matters, he has had to travel all over the City of Dublin. There is no Department of State, I think, in the world whose condition of scatterdom is as extreme as the physical condition of scatterdom of the Department of Industry and Commerce in this city. The Minister has no means of contact with his ordinary officials unless they are brought, sometimes, from one end of the city to the other. There is no question at all about the economy and the increase of the efficiency of administration that is going to result from concentrating all these various activities under one roof; and I am perfectly sure that Deputy Dillon would be the first to oppose any reduction on the Vote for Public Works under that head, if he investigated that matter.

Regarding the question of education, if we proposed in this House a reduction in the cost of education, and if we took the Whips off, if we took our own members out of the House altogether, would there be a majority for such a reduction?

I should be very much inclined to.

Then we will take you on.

We will give you an opportunity of voting on a reduction in Education.

We will take you on.

National Health and Forestry—a majority for a reduction on those? I am only taking now specimens out of the list of 24 which Deputy Cosgrave reeled off, and in relation to which Deputy Dillon said there was no answer. On how many of those are you going to get a vote on the other side of the House? Gárda economy, Land Commission, Public Works, Education, National Health and Forestry—the only one is Education.

And industrial alcohol.

And industrial alcohol. I do not think it was mentioned in the list, but I may be wrong.

Will you put that to a free vote of the House?

I should be very glad to.

Ask the Minister if he will do it. He is the man who matters.

This Greek chorus which we are getting——

Is putting you out of step.

I have had a look down the records and I can tell, without looking at the name of the speaker, who it is is speaking. There must have been some Government representative speaking at this point, because it is a speckled sort of speech in which the speaker gets an odd word in and in which there is continual interruption, while, if you turn to another page, you will find that the uninterrupted speaking of the abuse of the Opposition is being allowed to go on.

We will not bother you any more.

No, you can go out. Deputy Norton spoke of 120,000 untouchables. That was his contribution to the debate. What are the 120,000 untouchables? They are supposed to be the 120,000 people who will be registered, according to him, on the unemployment register some time this year. In what sense are they untouchables? Why are they on the register? What is their title to be on the register? What is the result of their being on the register? It means that there are 120,000 people there who are no longer untouchables. Is that not so? There are 120,000, everyone of whom, out of the taxation of the State and under the action of this Government and backed by the authority of this people, is receiving benefit because they are so registered. That is what they are. Everyone of them is receiving some benefit and they are there because they are receiving some benefit. Not satisfied with that, the Deputy drags in, as another regimentation of complaint, the widows and the orphans. What are those widows and orphans but people everyone of whom, as a result of the activities of this Government, out of the taxation of this State and by the authority of this people, is receiving benefit because this Government ceased to ignore, in relation to unemployment or in relation to widows and orphans, or anyone else, the problems which it was the business of a Government, with the authority and finance of the State, to face.

He says that there is an increase in the unemployed register. As the House knows, I regard myself as bound to treat the unemployment register figures entirely unpolemically. The real figure to take as the measure of distress in this country is the number of people registered as unemployed, plus the number of people engaged on artificially supplied employment works. For instance, at the middle of last year, we had something like 110,000 people on the register and, at the same time, we had 40,000 people on employment schemes, and I, in my opinion, would be thoroughly dishonest in attempting to pretend that the register of 110,000 people did represent the problem. I have always regarded the total which we have to deal with as the total of those on the register and those artificially taken off the register. If you take that standard now, which I think the House would agree is a reasonable and honest standard, and take the figures from 14th October, 1939, we find that the total of those employed and on the register was 85,000, and in last year, 79,000. There were 6,000 more this year than last year. On 21st October, the number was 85,000 and last year, 80,000; on 28th October, the number was 85,000 and last year 100,000; and for the last week for which I have the figures, the number is 103,000, and last year it was 107,000.

What week is that?

The week ending 4th November. That is the last figure I have, but if the Deputy wants it, I will give him the other figure at the earliest date on which I can get it. That does not show any tragic increase in spite of the circumstances under which we are living at present. I certainly anticipated at one time that the figures might be very much worse than that, and they are being very carefully watched to see the trend and tendencies and to see if there is any special change of the nature which apparently was in the mind of Deputy Norton. There is not any evidence at present that, in spite of the re-immigration, the problem has reached any serious temporary dimensions.

Deputy Mulcahy asked me on Friday for a reference, which I am happy to give him. It is volume 14, column 1800. The discussion taking place then was exactly the same discussion as that taking place now.

Does the Parliamentary Secretary mean the answer Deputy Cosgrave gave him on a particular occasion about the farmers?

I do not want to read too much of it—

Is that the point?

I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to understand why I asked the question because his statement at that time read:

"The answer of the then President, now Deputy Cosgrave, was: ‘The country is not bankrupt and the farmers are not bankrupt.' But they would be bankrupt if they were like the Deputy, bankrupt of intelligence, bankrupt of honesty, bankrupt of everything which was of use and value to them."

He then went on to say that that was the answer of Deputy Cosgrave. I am glad the record puts the inverted commas in the proper place and that the statement that a Deputy of this House was bankrupt of intelligence, etc., was one which the Parliamentary Secretary was making on that particular day as from himself about Deputy Morrissey. It read as if the Deputy was quoting a former statement of Deputy Cosgrave about somebody in this House.

I was, and I am, rather anxious to limit reference to this, but, as a matter of fact, Deputy Mulcahy took me on the last occasion exactly correctly, and he has now taken me exactly incorrectly. The statement which I quoted was the words of Deputy Cosgrave in relation to economy.

Column 1780?

No, column 1800. I am going to be very careful in this matter, merely to the extent of correcting the Deputy in the matter. It was a discussion in relation to economy and the Vote on Account and the President was following the speech of another Deputy.

What Deputy?

The Deputy's name should not be given.

I shall give only the words of Deputy Cosgrave. He said:

"If we were to pay attention to this ramp that had been started on economy, this brainless, useless, non-constructive portrayal of the country's infirmities—it is nothing short of it—we would come to the conclusion that this country was bankrupt. Is it bankrupt?"

There was then an interruption by Deputy Davin and Deputy Cosgrave went on:

"This is a poor country, yes; bankrupt, no, certainly not, no sign of bankruptcy. It would be bankrupt if all the people of the country were the same as the Deputy who has just spoken—bankrupt in intelligence, bankrupt in initiative, bankrupt in everything of use to the country."

But not bankrupt in honesty.

"Bankrupt in everything".

Including honesty?

I presume so—"bankrupt in everything of use to the country".

Can the Parliamentary Secretary give us the date as well as the number of the volume?

The 25th March, 1926.

Thirteen years ago—ancient history.

Was there a single Fianna Fáil member here that time?

"Bankrupt in intelligence, bankrupt in initiative, bankrupt in everything of use to the country." Now, I think Deputy Mulcahy's misunderstanding will be cleared up.

Yes, and I should also like the misunderstanding to be cleared up that the Government expenditure at that time was £10,000,000 less than it is to-day.

At the same time as the representative of the farmers was saying something which called upon him that rebuke, those who were suggesting economy were being described in the language which Deputy Cosgrave has already used in relation to those who were foolish enough to attempt to introduce economy when he was administering the State.

I wish we could get a quotation from the Parliamentary's Secretary's platform speeches at that time.

You can get the whole of my speeches in this House. Deputy Cosgrave walked out, but the man concerned stood by. So much for the untouchables. The things that the Government have assumed responsibility to do are the things that are regarded as matters of reproach for them.

Deputy Hughes complained that the agricultural community was being overtaxed. Deputy Dillon complained bitterly that wheat, beet and potatoes are receiving that assistance from the Government which acts as a subsidy for the very farmers who are taxed. We are told that is hidden and concealed taxation. Does the Opposition want the hidden and concealed taxation on wheat, beet and potatoes taken off? What happens is that one Deputy on the Opposition Benches gets up and makes a speech denouncing a particular activity, denouncing a particular tax, denouncing a particular expenditure and then goes out. Then another Deputy of the same Party, or belonging to the other group that is voting with them in the Lobby, gets up and bitterly complains that the amount of money spent on that activity is insufficient. Whom are we to deal with—the farmers who are engaged at the present moment in growing wheat, beet and potatoes and who want that assistance which they have received over a period of years, or Deputy Dillon who does not want it? Honestly, we cannot please both of them.

One portion of the House, the Labour Party, regards expenditure which is being made on various activities as completely insufficient. Deputy Cosgrave demands a reduction on every one of the services on which the Labour Party would require more expenditure. Does the Labour Party want a reduction in agriculture? Does it want a reduction in education? Do Labour Deputies want a reduction in public health expenditure or a reduction in expenditure on public works? Both those who do not want a reduction, and those who say they do until they are given an opportunity of doing it, go into the same Lobby to vote against the same Budget. The people who say the Budget is not balanced, that enough money has not been raised, go into the same Lobby as those who say there is too much money being raised. It certainly seems to be impossible for the Government to meet both sides of a case of that kind. Take a very simple illustration. Deputy Morrissey protested on Friday at the Minister for Finance getting up to speak. He asked why did he get up to speak. Deputy Dillon, on the day before, had bitterly protested because the Minister had not spoken. He said:

"Is there nobody going to defend this wretched Budget?"

If we speak, we are wrong; if we do not speak, we are wrong. According to Deputy Morrissey we had got up deliberately to waste and absorb the time of the House while according to Deputy Dillon we were not getting up because we would not make an attempt to defend the Budget which we had introduced. Right through the whole thing, it was a sort of Cox and Box performance. The man who is on his feet claims one thing; the man who follows him claims an entirely different thing. It is all very interesting, regarded from a mere debating technique point of view.

We come down to the question of what taxes should or should not be introduced. So far as I know, there has been only one tax offered to the House by anyone which it is suggested should be substituted for any of those proposed. That was a tax on ground rent. The one contribution, the combined contribution that the whole combined Opposition—the Labour Party and the White Army—have made in relation to alternative taxes is a tax on ground rents. I am asking the Fine Gael Party now if they are going to vote for a tax on ground rents. Deputy Dockrell might like to say so.

I will let the Parliamentary Secretary finish first.

Whatever tax is put forward by the Opposition they must, at least, feel that they have got a majority in the Opposition for it. Now, is there a majority in the Opposition for a tax on ground rents? I doubt it very much, and no other offer was made. Deputy Davin says that it is no business of his to defend an alternative tax which falls on jam and confectionery. I think it is. There are a whole lot of other possibilities, most of them, in my opinion, poor possibilities, but surely there is something else that they would suggest on which money could be raised. If they cannot do that, and if we cannot find it, then we have got to put a tax on those things we know, and a tax has to be put on something which will raise revenue.

Now, up to the present we have had two divisions as far as the Opposition are concerned, one of which did not want a tax on income at any price except by collecting 18 months' revenue in 12 months, and the other of which apparently regarded all income as money which was buckshee. It used to be a device, a very common device, of those whose business it was to collect money not merely in this country but in all countries, to drive a wedge between the two bodies of taxpayers in this matter. The ordinary, common or garden taxpayer was persuaded that he paid all indirect taxes, and the propertied person was persuaded that, to a very large extent, he paid the direct taxes. The extraordinary position was produced that in nearly any country in the world in which there was a discussion on taxation, one part of the establishment was prepared to have taxes raised indirectly, and the other was prepared to have them put on directly.

On a point of information, will the Parliamentary Secretary tell us what amount is being raised through increasing income-tax in this Budget?

Yes. As far as I know, what is going to happen is this: that there is going to be 1/- of an increase in income-tax put on.

In this Budget?

Yes. It is announced now, and it is in operation to the extent to which it is possible to put it in operation. Are we to take it from the Deputy that he is prepared to vote for the increase in income-tax put on now? Is his Party prepared to do it?

I want to know what is the amount. I have asked the Parliamentary Secretary that question.

One shilling in the pound is being put on now, to be collected as from the beginning of the next financial year which is the earliest practicable moment.

But not in this Budget?

Yes, that is the announcement. The Deputy will find that authority will be given in the Finance Act for bankers, in relation to dividends and so on, to act on this.

But what is the amount in this Budget?

Authority is being given for 1/- in the pound.

What is the amount that will be raised?

That I do not know, but I do know that it is 1/- in the pound, and what I am concerned with is that the Labour Party at the present moment are not going to vote for that or for anything else.

Not for this Budget.

Or for any Budget, and apparently they are not going to vote for an income-tax.

Would the Parliamentary Secretary tell us the amount?

In plain English, they are not going to vote for an income-tax, or for any other tax, but still they want expenditure. They want some sort of miracle by which the Minister for Finance will produce money without taxing anybody. There is not any way of doing that. What has happened up to the present is that they have joined apparently the "No Income-Tax Brigade," and are not going to vote any more for an income-tax. They voted against an income-tax on a previous occasion merely to indicate that it was not on the grounds of principle but merely on the grounds of interest. In one particular case, where they thought that the income-tax might, to some extent, fall upon those who, they thought, might possibly vote for them, they voted against that income-tax. There is no consistency of any sort, kind or description in the Labour Party. They will not vote for an income-tax and they will not vote for any other tax, and yet they want more expenditure under every heading in the list.

Another thing which has emerged from this debate, and it is well worth while having it on the records, is that Deputy Keyes, on behalf of the Labour Party, and Deputy Hughes on behalf of the farmers, have declared that they are not going to stand for any limitation in the rise in prices of the commodities which they sell. That is a very nice prospect for a Minister for Finance, backed as it is by a strike which is starting apparently in the present moment by those very poor unfortunate people, the farmers of the County Dublin, probably the most prosperous and best-off farmers in the country. However, both Deputies have given notice that neither side, as far as this Budget is concerned, is prepared to submit to any diminution, reduction or minimising of a rise in the prices of the commodities which they sell. They have both given notice that, as far as they are concerned, everything may go up until the sky is the limit. That, certainly, does not suggest that atmosphere of co-operation which we are told they desire to introduce into the finances of this State.

What is happening in this particular Budget does not aim at new taxation. There is no new taxation. There is not even—and in my opinion this is a line upon which much better criticism could have been concentrated—a complete substitution of existing taxation which has proved to be ineffective. The worst that can be said of this Budget, the worst from the point of view of anyone who has a grievance in relation to the collection of taxation, is that taxes have been substituted to the extent of about 50 per cent. for taxes which have proved innocuous to the extent of somewhere about £1,600,000. Something like £600,000 is to be raised by substituted taxes. But as the Minister for Industry and Commerce pointed out, that is not new money. That is merely £600,000 out of the £1,600,000 which is going to be left in the pockets of the taxpayers and which is being taken now instead of having that deficit at the end of the year.

Where is the new taxation? Where is the new burden? From the point of view of the burden on the taxpayer this Budget is merely a record of the fact that two-thirds of £1,600,000 has been left in his pocket temporarily at any rate. I personally see no hope that that can be left in his pocket permanently, because the ordinary services of the State will have to continue and unless people are prepared to cut, not merely to the bone, but inside the bone, this money will have to be made good. In another sense also it is not new taxation because but for the emergency which has come into being and which has cut off the revenue on these particular taxes the actual Budget would in fact have balanced. We have no reason whatever to believe that but for this disturbance, this interference with the Customs, this interference with trading and various other things of that kind, our Budget would not have balanced. All you have to do at present is to find some portion of revenue, to find that machinery for obtaining for this State some portion of the revenue which, due to temporary conditions, the revenue has ceased to get. From the point of view of people who are prepared to co-operate with the State and to get work done there is surely no complaint in that matter. I surely cannot see it. Deputy Norton made what I have no doubt he believed to have been a practical suggestion. He said that there should be a large loan raised for the purpose of reproductive work. The reproductive works which he named were: land reclamation, forestry, drainage, land development and minerals. For some reason he did not put in peat. That would have been a pretty sound proposition if any of those works would be immediately reproductive. I am speaking now merely from the point of view of the burden of taxation. But there is not a single one of those which at the present moment would, in fact, be reproductive. To borrow money does not create anything.

At the present moment we are supposed to have in England something between £200,000,000 and £300,000,000 of money. People are vague about the exact amount of this money. That money represents goods which for the period, especially the last war period, were sent to England and for which we did not take payment in exchange and for which we did not, in fact, import goods in exchange, because this is the only possible form in which you could receive payment for anything like that sum of money. It is suggested that we should repatriate a certain portion of that sum in the form of a loan for the purpose of developing temporarily industry or employment here. What you have clearly to understand is that the only way in which you can borrow that money is by the importation of goods. And very largely, at the present moment, both in the absolute sense and in the sense of its convertibility into the goods you want that money is frozen. It would not be possible for Deputy Norton to import into this country at the present moment in return even for that loan that excess quantity of goods which would be represented by the spending of that capital sum and unless, in fact, when they did come in they immediately produced goods equivalent to them, the actual position would probably be worse than the existing position. You can, if you like, exaggerate the importance of the weight of one tax or another upon various people, but broadly speaking the only taxes which are going to produce any revenue are those which represent taxes upon goods which are in large consumption and which, as I think the Minister for Supplies said the other night, represented a considerable and adequate stock of that material in the country upon which to impose a tax. Therefore, the Government when it wants to raise money has to go practically to a series of well-known and well-understood sources. It is impossible—and I think that every member in the House will recognise that—to devise a tax, some kind of burden, which will not fall upon necessities. I know of no such tax.

The custom, habit and convention of modern democratic States is to collect their money where they can get it and then to distribute it according to the necessities of the community. That, in fact, is what this Government has done with the money taken from this community. The complaint is that expenditure has increased. I should say that rather the complaint from one side of the Opposition is that expenditure has increased, and from the other side of the Opposition that expenditure has not increased enough. But practically every penny of new tax revenue has been converted into expenditure which again is to the benefit of the more necessities portion of the community. The taxes which are now put on in this Budget in order to make it balance are for the purpose of enabling to be maintained services which everybody in this House regards as being absolutely essential. If one does not want those services maintained, then it is quite easy to cut that revenue. But it is not reasonable and it is not honest to claim that that revenue must not be cut but that the expenditure itself must continue. If there has been found any tax which is capable of producing any considerable revenue of which the members of the Opposition are in favour, I have not the slightest doubt that the Minister for Finance would be glad to hear of it. If there is any expenditure which the Opposition are agreed should be eliminated in relation to these very hard and painful economies, which we may have to face in relation to the Budgets in the future, the Minister for Finance would be very glad to hear of it. Surely Deputies of the Opposition can lend us of their brains and knowledge. We admit we cannot find any more satisfactory tax than the ones we have in this Budget. We admit that if there are going to be economies we have to cut into things which neither you nor I nor any member of the House cares to cut into.

If you have a knowledge of those taxes, of those means of raising revenue, of those hidden pockets of wealth, of those people who to-day are not paying taxes, if you have a knowledge of the machinery by which at less burden to the community the duty of the community to its less fortunate members and to itself in the administration of its affairs can be discharged, surely there is a conscientious and honourable obligation on you to tell us. If, on the contrary, there are services that you know or believe can be cut out without loss to the community, surely again it is for you to say. But our difficulty is that, in relation to any economy which is proposed—apart from those to which we will all object, though we may have to face them—in any specialised Department, we have to deal with the fact that one section of the main Opposition will object as violently to curtailment as the other will advocate it.

Personally, I believe that democracy is on its trial in the world, and I do believe that the central principle of democracy is that people shall knowingly pay for the corporate services which their Government provides for them. I think that unless we are prepared to face the hard and unpopular and uncomfortable fact that the general community itself has to pay for what it gets, and unless we are prepared to face the uncomfortable position of telling the truth to the people in the matter, democracy is not going to survive. I have had the fortune, like every other Deputy in this House, of standing before my constituents at a general election and at other times, and in going over the programme of the things that were done and the things that were going to be done, I certainly in every single case have told them brutally the truth in this matter. If I have said "we will give you housing." I have also said "we will have to tax you to give you housing." If I have told them that we were going to give them more housing, I have told them "we are going to tax you more to give you more housing."

There was a programme proposed by the Labour Party at the election. I analysed it, and it was going to cost something like £17,000,000 at the lowest estimate to do the things that were mentioned, all of which were intrinsically desirable. I told my constituents at that time that, just as in relation to housing, in relation to unemployment assistance, in relation to employment schemes, in relation to public health works, and all the rest of it, anything we had done we had done in their name, by their authority and with their money; that any further social services which we would render to them in their name would be done and would have to be done with their own money. I think that people who want to serve democracy and want to see it survive, people who want to see real liberty, will have to be prepared to face up to that. If they want services, the people must pay for them, and, when their representatives tell the people they are going to do things in their name, they will have to have the fairness to tell them at the same time that they are going to take from the people themselves the money which will enable that benefit to be conferred on them.

The Minister for Finance, who intervened particularly in the middle of this discussion on Friday last, indicated to this House that, from the financial point of view, we cannot carry on further without a loan, and that we have to tell the people of the country the truth as to our financial position before we ask them to give further from their savings and their resources. I should say that the Minister for Finance wound up the second contribution on the General Resolution on that note. Various Government speakers have emphasised throughout their contributions to this debate that the country stands in a very serious financial and economic position and that, as indicated by the Minister for Finance, the difficulties of that position, both economically and financially, were very likely to be increased if the present European war continues any longer. In those circumstances, a very large number of matters that have been discussed here, particularly from the Government Benches, are matters that it would be untimely, inexpedient, and irrelevant to discuss at this particular moment. I want to implore the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, both on the Front Benches and on the back benches, to come to some understanding of the situation that they describe as serious in parts of their statements here; to give other Parties in this House and to give the Oireachtas as a whole a chance of understanding the situation, a chance of giving them the co-operation that they say is necessary here in Parliament, and of getting them the co-operation in the country that is undoubtedly necessary if all the facts of the situation are to be clearly seen, if there is to be a full and sympathetic understanding of them throughout the country, and if everybody is to get a chance of giving their contribution towards facing up to those difficulties and solving them to such an, extent as may be possible.

A big bill has been put before us here. My complaint is that, in putting that bill before us, the Minister for Finance did not tell us the amount of additional expenditure that is going to be incurred this year, and that, if there is to be an understanding of the position throughout the country—assuming as he does in his present proposals before the House that nothing very different in the war situation is going to occur between this and the end of the financial year, and that, therefore, no substantial additional expenditure on say, defence provisions, is going to be incurred—he should tell us, in those circumstances, what the increased expenditure on defence is likely to be. If we had that figure, then we would have some understanding of what our total expenditure for the year is going to be. We would be able to relate the additional taxation and the additional borrowing to that, and the House and the country would have an opportunity of getting some impression of the financial picture which the Minister has in his mind. He has not provided us with that. Can we have, before the conclusion of this debate, or can we have on the Finance Bill, a return on the part of the Minister for Finance or any of his colleagues to painting that picture for us, and to give us some understanding of why this additional taxation is necessary, the extent to which additional borrowing is required before the end of the financial year, and the purposes to which that borrowing is going to be applied?

In the discussion here the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Supplies and now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, have been complaining that, as the Minister for Supplies said, the rottenest kind of Party politics has been introduced in the speeches of the Opposition Parties in the House. The Minister for Supplies has expressed his indignation and his sorrow that, instead of co-operating with the Government in the solution of the very grave problems which confront the country, and standing by the spirit of co-operation which it was suggested by the Opposition Parties in the beginning of this emergency they were going to take up, they have been indulging in the rottenest kind of Party politics, but, while that charge is being made against the Opposition Parties in the House, every kind of matter that could possibly be brought up by the Front Bench Government speakers during this discussion to prevent the real matter that is at issue being discussed has been brought up.

I just want to come back to the Minister's statements and to give, briefly, a picture of the situation that they have created for this House. In the first place, to take them in some kind of order, I would like to ask the Minister for Finance whether this is the time or the occasion to discuss the presentation that he made to the House on Friday last of the question of the capacity of this country to maintain the standard of living that it has at the present time. The Minister intervened on Friday to say that our standard of living was a high standard, that it was a standard that, if we were starting afresh, without having been dragged into this position by the connection with, and the example of, Great Britain—if we were starting afresh, being an agricultural country in the main, we would never adopt for ourselves. He said that that standard was brought here and our people, being in close association with England so long, expected salaries, wages and profits to be the same as they are in England; they are English standards, he said, and they are not suited to this country.

I ask the Minister for Finance, in fairness to the problem he has in his own hands, is this a suitable occasion to open that discussion? It certainly is alarming to the House that the Minister for Finance would present any scrap of a suggestion that it is his belief that that is so. I admit that it inevitably challenges immediate discussion in the House, but my answer to the people who would say that that challenge ought to be taken up now and discussed is that the situation is so serious that we have to get down to the net picture of what the financial position of the country is, and to be dragged away on a discussion of these things now would be to dissipate and scatter our whole minds and prevent any kind of co-operation or common understanding as to what is the net thing to be tackled at the present moment.

I only want to put alongside the Finance Minister's statement here, just to let him see what a statement of that kind involves, two statements made by the Taoiseach—and I am not going back to 1926, like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister. I am going to quote two short statements of the Taoiseach, one made in February, 1932, and another in December, 1933, after he had been two years in office. He held, according to the Irish Times of 10th February, 1932, that the State was capable of producing its own requirements in food, housing and clothing, not only for its present, but, according to economists, for four times its present population. Two years after that, after two years of responsibility of office, the Taoiseach, on December 2nd, 1933, speaking at the opening of the Tuam factory, said they could support a population three or four times their present numbers with a higher standard of comfort than they had at present, if they set about it properly and co-operated with one another as they should. Just remember that, with a higher standard of comfort they could support four times the present population.

Now, across this critical discussion, which ought to take place on a simple net issue of the present position of the Treasury, and the reactions on the private treasuries of the people of the additional taxation that is being imposed on them, the Minister drags the statement that, even with a population that has been reduced every year for the last three years—I submit that the population of this country went down 3,000 this year, 11,000 the year before and 13,000 the year before that—with a population falling since this Government came into office, we are not able to maintain the standard of living with the wages we have at the present time. The Minister suggests that that matter is too big to ask the House to discuss when we are dealing with the present taxation. I submit it is unfair and unwise, if the Minister wants to be assisted here by intelligent discussion, or in the country by understanding, to bring that across the situation.

In his speech on the Budget he seemed to suggest that one thing it was necessary to avoid here was an inflationary tendency financially. Instead of attempting to give the House an impression of what the signs of an inflationary tendency would be, what the effect of an inflationary tendency would be, he simply issues the challenge that all classes of persons who, by reason of the rise in prices, find their incomes very small, eaten into, are going to be prevented, as far as the Government with all its machinery can do so, from attempting to secure that their wages will be increased or that the income of the family may be increased in order to meet the rise in the cost of living.

Again, I suggest it is quite unfair to the Minister and his problem, and it is infinitely more unfair to the country, that, instead of the matter being systematically and as clearly as possible explained, and sympathetic understanding of it invited, the presentation of the case was made in that particular way. Does the Minister think that no consideration of any kind must be shown to persons with a small income to enable them meet the increase in the cost of living? The Minister cannot possibly avoid it and, as early as he can, he ought to correct the impression that entirely comes of his own selection of words.

Any unfortunate impression that may have been created should be dispelled by the Minister at the earliest moment. On the Finance Bill he should make a reasonable presentation of the problem. We have had the general impression created by the speeches that have been made, that there must be a reduction in the income of the people. When the question of economy in the public services is pleaded over here, and pleaded for after a very definite line of country has been indicated where economies can be brought about, that is described by the late Minister for Finance, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, as political catch-cries and political flapdoodle. We had our economy demands described as Party catch-cries and political flapdoodle.

On that point of economy, I would like to ask if there is any truth in the suggestion that the country at the present time cannot maintain the present standard of living and that that is to be reduced in respect of the amount of money that would be available in the ordinary home for the purchasing of the necessaries of life if they continue to use the same amount of tobacco, the same amount of beer, the same amount of sugar that they have been using in the past. If the standard of living has to be cut down there, what on earth can any intelligent person think about the standard of living of the people here as expressed by the enormous amount of Government machinery that has been built up on top of them. The original estimate of Government expenditure this year, not inflated by any additional war costs or anything like that, was £11,000,000 more than the total of Government expenditure in the year before they took office. If sugar has to be cut into and tobacco and beer, or some other alternative things in the home of the workers, what on earth can we say with regard to Ministers who get up here and declare that more must be taken out of the people's pockets to be spent on the Governmental superstructure to our standard of living here, which they declare to be too high. An additional £1,000,000 is being taken out of their pockets and being spent as another part of our facade to our standard of living. Another £1,000,000 more than was spent before the present Government came into office is being spent to-day by local authorities. That is another question. That is being dragged in here unnecessarily. Instead of facing up and discussing the problem sensibly and sympathetically—sympathetically as far as the people generally are concerned—we are told that to ask for a reduction in that enormous amount of additional expenditure is nothing but indulging in Party catch-cries and political flapdoodle.

Then, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, instead of dealing with a matter which I say should have been dealt with, that is, what exactly the extent of the additional expenditure on the Army is, takes up the attitude that to attack the Budget is a deliberate attack on the policy of neutrality. He goes on to say that the present Head of the Government is the only man who can provide a Government here that will enable us to sleep peacefully in our beds. He enters into a discussion on a Supplementary Budget and, in column 1228, he says:—

"It is all right for Deputies who can come here. Deputies are safe and secure in their beds. Deputies can sleep o' nights. They are not living in peril of their lives, as people in other countries are. We can at least meet in this Assembly. We can discuss this matter and we can do that because we have a Government headed by Eamon de Valera in power. The great majority of the people of this country believe that to be true, but whether it be true or false, whether another Government could have adopted and maintained the attitude which we have adopted, let no Deputy in this House try to lull the people into a false security merely to gain some slight Party advantage."

Deputy Dillon criticised the mobilisation of the Army. He was told that it was a partial mobilisation. That is not true. There was not a man or a unit that this Army possessed, either by way of reserve or as a volunteer unit, that was not completely mobilised and that was not completely mobilised without any indication of any kind being given to any of the Opposition Parties in the House as to what were the circumstances that needed an Army mobilisation. When Deputy Dillon speaks of the partial demobilisation of that Army he is challenged as objecting to it and a general impression is given by the Minister for Industry and Commerce as to what the Army is wanted for, that, in my opinion, is utterly at variance with any information we have been able to get in any way from the Government as to what the Army in its present strength as mobilised is wanted for.

All I want to suggest here is that if the situation were so serious that the Army had to be mobilised in the way in which it was, it was imperative, to my mind, on the head of the Government to meet representatives of the Opposition Parties in the Dáil and to explain to them the circumstances in which it was necessary to bring about that rather dislocating and costly mobilisation. If we are to take the Minister for Industry and Commerce at his word and to accept his explanation as to why the Army was mobilised, then I think the Taoiseach should summon together representatives of the Opposition Parties in the House and explain what the cost of the Army at the present time is, his intention with regard to maintaining it at its present strength or adding to it, and the facts upon which he founds the opinion that there are dangers existing that require an Army of that particular kind to be maintained here. The sooner that is done the better, because the present Army is one of the things that are a real cause of expense at the present time. Surely if there is anything upon which there should be common understanding between the responsible heads of the various Parties in the House, there should be a common understanding of what the circumstances are that requires an Army to be mobilised here to the extent to which the Army is at present mobilised, and that require the expenditure of the moneys that are being expended on it. When the Minister takes into consideration the amount of irritation, the amount of hardship, the amount of additional poverty that is going to be created by the taxes which he has had to impose in order to maintain and pay for that Army, surely he will consider my suggestion, even though it may be difficult and awkward, for the heads of the Government to bring representatives of other Parties together and make an exposure of what is at the back of their minds on that particular subject, in confidence, in order to see whether they could not get some understanding throughout the country, even by deduction from the attitude that could subsequently be taken up by the Leaders of other Parties in the House. Surely when he considers the irritation and the hardships to be suffered on the one hand, the inconvenience to the heads of the Government on the other, should be regarded as an infinitesimal thing.

I ask, if a clear statement cannot be made publicly in this House on the Finance Bill of the position with regard to the Army and the necessity for having it mobilised, that, before the discussion on the Finance Bill takes place there should be some consultation and some passage of information to the heads of other Parties in the House as to what the circumstances are and an attempt made to satisfy them as to the continuing cost of the Army mobilisation as it at present stands. But as to going into the question of what the Minister for Industry and Commerce means by suggesting that it is only by keeping the Taoiseach as the head of our Government here that we can expect to sleep peacefully in our beds, I do not think that the occasion is a suitable one to do it. I plead with the Government Party not to bring suggestions of that kind across the discussion of what should be a simple matter although it is a most important matter.

Deputy McGilligan criticised the other day the increase in the tax on sugar to a point at which the tax will be 2½d. in the pound, and the Minister for Finance described Deputy McGilligan's attitude on that as hypocrisy, dishonesty and flapdoodle. From Radio Eireann, the Minister's opinion of Deputy McGilligan's attitude with regard to a tax of 2½d. on sugar was announced far and wide. The Minister based his case, when describing Deputy McGilligan's remarks with regard to sugar as hypocrisy, dishonesty, and flapdoodle on the fact that for three years there had been a bigger tax on sugar at a time when the Party that Deputy McGilligan belonged to was in power. Those three years were, 1924, 1925 and 1926. From 1927 to 1929, the tax on sugar was a penny; from 1930 to 1932 it was 1¼d.; in 1924, 1925, and 1926 the tax was 2¾d. In the year 1924, £9,581,000 was expended on the Army more than the normal cost of that Army should be. A sum of £1,500,000 was accepted as the normal cost of the Army. A sum of £9,581,000 more than that was spent in 1924; £1,500,000 of abnormal money was spent on the Army in 1925, and £1,000,000 in 1926.

The Minister has to go back to a time when, in three years, £12,000,000 was spent on the Army more than should have been spent, allowing the sum that should have been spent on the Army to be £1,500,000 annually, to find a tax on sugar that is anything like what it is to-day. From 1927 until he came into power the Minister was in this House. Having had during all that time a tax on sugar that did not go above 1¼d. per pound, he has to go back to that other period in order to find an excuse for charging a person, who makes the complaint here that the tax on sugar is doubled as against 1931, with being a hypocrite and being dishonest and talking flapdoodle. The Minister's case is worse when we consider that not only is sugar taxed with a tax that is openly put on it, but that in the year 1934 there was an additional tax of ¾d. per pound, in 1935, an additional tax of 1d., in 1936 an additional tax of 1¼d., in 1937 an additional tax of 1¼d., and in 1938 an additional tax of 1d. by reason of the fact that during those years our people were charged £5,000,000 more for the sugar that they consumed than they would have been charged if they had got it at the imported price.

I plead with the Minister to argue the present situation on the facts and to give us a chance of understanding them and co-operating with him. But if we are to have dragged across the discussion here the matters that Deputy Hugo Flinn drags across it; if we are going to have dragged across it that because we criticise the actions of the Government we are simply indulging, as the Minister for Supplies says, in the rottenest of Party politics, that we are directly attacking the policy of neutrality, that we are undermining the political position of the one man in this country who can keep us in a position in which we can sleep safely in our beds without any risk to our lives; that we misunderstand the resources of this country, and that the standard of living here cannot be maintained—if the Minister drags the possibility for disagreement and argument on these subjects across the simple discussion of our financial position and our possible economic position in the immediate future, then he is not only running away from his responsibilities, but he is, I might say, smashing up this House as an institution. This House, as an institution for any good in this country, cannot and will not exist unless it can sit down over its problems and can, with the official information available through Ministers, understand the economic and the financial position of this country and talk sensibly, reasonably, openly, and straightly about them.

The Opposition Parties in this House have given every evidence to the Party that is in power that they want in every way thoroughly to understand the situation here and to co-operate in every possible way. If there is any instance of any kind that any responsible Minister can point out of either actions or statements made by members of the Opposition that injure the possibility of co-operation, or the possibility of understanding the situation here, then, for goodness' sake let them be pointed out to us. Will they send for us and tell us what are the general things, either in our actions, or attitude, or our statements in public that they think are inimical to the interests of this country, so that they may be assured that there is no Deputy and no Party sitting in this House that will not be prepared to discuss these matters with them, and that will not be prepared to co-operate in every possible way to see the difficulties that the Ministers say confront them and that, obviously, are there.

I ask that this debate be not concluded, until we get some kind of report from the Government Benches of an understanding that this House is prepared to discuss conditions in the country on their merits and to discuss proposals put before the House on the merits. I suggest that it is quite possible to get that understanding here. It is not possible to get that understanding if disagreement on questions for argument, that have no bearing on what we are discussing now, are going to arise in the way in which they are arising. If, because of things said in the discussion from the Government Benches, we cannot get back to that atmosphere on this discussion, then I ask, with the initiative in their hands on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill next week, that they should endeavour to take up an attitude that will be helpful to the House and so helpful to themselves.

Some of the arguments advanced in this debate have turned on the question, as to whether the country is financially sound or not and able to bear the increased rates of taxation occasioned by the Supplementary Budget. I think in the confusion of argument, partly as to the somewhat surprising increase, we should turn our minds to this point, particularly as the country is looking for a lead from this Parliament, to give some indication as to how far these taxes affect the general position, and how far the country is able to stand the increased burden. I suggest that we are in a very satisfactory position, having regard to everything, to face the present emergency and the increased burdens it will bring. It is a remarkable thing, in spite of the very great political disturbances in this country during the past ten years, in spite of the considerable cost of a disastrous civil conflict, in spite of the acute world depression from which we are suffering, in spite of the economic conflict, in which, unfortunately, our own people were not entirely united in its promulgation or in the belief that it should be carried out, and in spite of the effects of the settlement at the end of the economic conflict, we have nevertheless managed to maintain the status of our finances.

We are almost in as ideal a position as we could be to face the conflict with all its adverse possibilities. Prior to the present emergency we succeeded in increasing our exports by £3,000,000 for the 12 months ended 31st August, 1939, over the corresponding period during the previous 12 months, and when the economic conflict with England ended we succeeded in reducing our adverse trade balance. We are no longer liquidating our resources to pay for imports. We managed to survive the whole of the economic conflict with England without, to any great extent, liquidating our considerable external assets. We lost, certainly, but in proportion to our position we did not suffer serious loss. During the whole period we managed to maintain, if not the full value of our exports, at least the volume of our agricultural production, which was unimpaired. I think these facts should be emphasised at this time. I am not trying to argue that the country did not suffer as a result of the economic war. I am arguing the case that because of our natural position we are in a safe position to face the future, whatever it brings. Every financial index in this country, the value of our National Loan, the figures of bankruptcy, the figures of court judgments, all indicate that we are in a thoroughly sound position to face the future, and all the more so since, both the former Minister for Finance and the present Minister for Finance, made it perfectly clear, that the carrying on of the national policy of the Government, and the liquidation of a great many of our outstanding national difficulties and relations with England have cost us a great deal of money and that we were accumulating a debt which will have to be considered later on.

In spite of all these things, we can say that the people of the country have confidence in the present financial position here. They have confidence in the ability to pay these taxes because of the intrinsically sound position in which the country finds itself, and because they have confidence in the future I suggest that in any discussion of this present Budget outside the emergency, we should recall to mind that having a sound orthodox financial system, our whole future depends on the confidence of the people in the Government and in themselves, in the confidence that we can pay these taxes and that we can come through this conflict and its effects believing we have incurred a debt which we can pay. Having suffered we can make up for it later on. We can restore production later on as on that the whole credit of the country depends. At the same time, the people are willing to bear these very heavy burdens, because it is the price we have to pay for national stability. It is the price we have to pay for ending many of the controversies which surrounded our national status. The reason why this burden is heavy upon us is because it is one of the increased burdens we have had to face in the last eight years. Let us be frank and admit that that is the cost and let us be thankful that to a considerable degree it has resulted in enormous benefit to the country at large.

We have difficulties to face but, I think, the former Minister for Finance, and the present Minister for Finance, are aware of the fact that we have not yet begun to do what is essential for us to do, if we are to continue the present high standard of living, and that is to increase the national income and, in particular, to increase above what it has been, not only during the last eight years but the last 20 years, the total of our export surplus and the volume of production as far as agriculture is concerned. That process has been delayed constantly, not through the fault of any one Party or any one Government, but simply because certain problems had to be solved. In discussing this Budget we can say that that is one obligation we have not carried out, that of increasing the national income to the point where this heavy burden of taxation, instead of bearing heavily will be relatively easy to absorb. That is the question mark of our financial existence.

We are entering on a period when the value of our agricultural production may have very little meaning as far as the future of the country is concerned. We may increase temporarily our production both in volume and in value, but it will not have anything to say to the final future of the country. I very much regret, from the point of view of the agricultural population, the fact that we have to go through this emergency, to go through this world crisis, knowing that we are postponing what is the ultimate problem of this country, which is to undersell the nations of the world in the export of agricultural produce to England; not to get a higher price, but to be able to take a lower price by being able to produce more and undersell these nations. That is the real problem that faces us, and it will have to be postponed during this emergency. I think it cannot be stressed too highly to the agricultural population that any benefit that accrues as a result of the emergency, through any possible rise in prices merely postpones the evil day of having to face the final situation. I have absolutely no doubt in my own mind that, if this emergency had not arisen, our Government, fortified by the advice given by the Agricultural Commission, would have continued with its task of facing that situation. Already the Government had undertaken certain measures which would have resulted in the easing of the burdens of taxation through an increase in production. You had announcements in connection with the previous pigs and bacon marketing schemes, and you had the bringing up to date of schemes in connection with egg production, and so on, all of which showed the Government's intention in that regard, and the fact that we have an artificial position created, that may exist for the next few years, is no fault of the Government.

There is another matter to which I should like to refer before concluding, and that is that I should like to ask the Minister for Finance to agree with Deputy Mulcahy when the Deputy asked for a further statement with regard to the Government's belief on the avoidance of inflation. There is no doubt about the fact that the people of this country are confused on that particular issue. The workers in industry have got the impression that there is likely to be profiteering of a considerable kind during the present conflict as a result of the rise in prices. The workers need to be assured that the Government will take steps to prevent profiteering or that, if they cannot prevent it, they will tax it in the way in which it can be taxed and in the way in which it was actually taxed by the British Government during the latter part of the last Great War. The workers need that assurance very definitely, and the employers equally need some further assurance from the Government as to exactly how far they believe this total prohibition of inflation can be carried, how they propose to do it, or whether there can be some obvious modification in the case of workers or operatives who earn very low wages and who may be very seriously affected by a rise in the price of goods or, in other words, by a lowering of their real income.

I would urge that there might be some increase in wages and salaries, in view of the rise in prices—more in the case of those with very low wages and less in the case of those with high wages—without increasing the effects of inflation. I would say, however, that practically every manufacturer in the country, and I am quite certain, every worker in the country, is waiting for a further definition of this matter, because it is terribly important in the life of this country that we should be given a lead as to how far wages and salaries can rise without bringing about inflation of an undesirable kind, and at the same time it is very important that we should have an assurance that profiteering will be controlled or that, if it cannot be controlled, it will be ruthlessly taxed, in order to avoid the possibility of any conflict between the two interests. In connection with the workers, the high cost of living that they have to face must be taken into consideration in connection with the matter of wages, and at the same time one has to bear in mind the problems that the employers have to face in their efforts to meet whatever demands the workers may make. I submit that it is desperately important to have this whole matter settled—not necessarily to-day, but certainly within the course of the next three weeks.

Not by threats.

I am not suggesting threats. I am not saying that, and the Deputy knows very well what I am saying. Obviously, the workers cannot have, and in no circumstances could have, an increase of wages corresponding to the total increase in the cost of living, but I hope that that whole question, of how far wages and salaries can be increased without inflation of an undesirable kind, and also this question of the rise in prices, and so on, will be clarified within the next three weeks, because I think it would be of immense advantage to have a general understanding of the position.

In ordinary circumstances one would expect, in a debate of this nature, that the necessary information would be conveyed to the House by the Minister for Finance and by his Parliamentary Secretary. I listened to a considerable amount of the speech which was delivered to the House this afternoon by the Parliamentary Secretary. I must confess that I do not suffer the Parliamentary Secretary very gladly, and this afternoon I found myself not able to suffer him at all. As far as he went, however, I certainly heard nothing which would tend to clarify the position— nothing indeed which, I think, could be described, except in the classic and cultured language of the Minister for Finance himself, and that is as mere flapdoodle.

There are, however, two matters, which were contained in the Parliamentary Secretary's speech, with which I should like to deal. The first of them was the extraordinary statement that, as a result of the economic war, we have at the present moment established complete and absolute economic independence from every other country in the world. It is astonishing to me how anybody could arise in this House and make a statement so much at variance with the truth as that statement. Is not one of the very gravest things we have to face, is not one of the things which gives most concern to everybody interested in the economic future of this country, the fact that at the present moment we are in the position that Great Britain has got a complete and entire stranglehold upon us and that at the present moment we are in the position that we can only get for our agricultural produce what she is willing to give? That, most unfortunately, is most disheartening to us, and I do see signs that it is quite likely that Great Britain will continue to give smaller prices for our produce than the prices she is giving in the Six Counties, and that we will have to accept those prices. That is one of the things which disheartens me. I do sincerely hope that Great Britain, in her own interests, if it be nothing else, will not adopt that extremely foolish course which will have the effect of lessening production in this country and possibly preventing us from having available to sell to her the agricultural produce which she may want very badly indeed in the future.

There was another matter with which the Parliamentary Secretary dealt the other evening. He said that a loan was not floated by a single Party, but that it was given to the whole State. That, of course, is true, but it is not by any means the whole truth. It does depend very considerably upon the Government of a State as to what credit that State has got and as to the ease or difficulty with which that State can float a loan. Persons lending to a Government are very much in the same position as persons would be who were lending to an ordinary industrial concern; and they look to the board of directors and consider how the board of directors have been conducting the affairs of their company for the preceding few years. Exactly in the same way, persons who are lending to this State will lend upon the credit of the State, but they will also consider if the persons in charge of the affairs of the State are competent to discharge their duties. I must confess that when I look around this Executive Council and when I consider the changes which have been made, I do not think it is an Executive which can give confidence to anybody either inside or outside this State.

Let us take the Minister for Finance himself. What on earth does the Minister for Finance know about finance? What training has he had in the past which would equip him to carry out the onerous duties of his office? I turn to the Minister for Justice. Is not the case exactly the same? I could go through other Departments of State. What training have the heads of these Departments for carrying out their work? Are they not endeavouring, now in a time of crisis, to learn the duties of their posts for the first time? What is going to be the result? The result must be that these Ministers, and especially the Minister for Finance, can have really no say in the running of their Departments. The Minister for Finance can be nothing more than a mere figurehead and his Department and other Departments will simply be run by civil servants. I am perfectly aware— nobody is more aware—that both the Department of Finance and the Department of Justice are manned by civil servants of extreme ability. I do not believe you could get in the civil services of the world men of greater ability than are to be found in these two Departments. If things were normal and were pursuing their ordinary course, it might, indeed, be very well, indeed, if certain Ministers did leave everything to their officials. But there are times of crisis with which the Civil Service mind has not been trained to deal. There are times of crisis when the civil servant is not a person from whom you can expect those large ideas and those new forms of policy which are necessary. The ablest man born in this country, one who devoted his life to the study of politics and of statesmanship, in a very remarkable passage wrote:—

"Habits of office are apt to give them to think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions and, therefore, persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their own order but when the highroads are broken up and the waters are out, when a new and troubled scene is opened and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind and a far more extensive comprehension of things is requisite than office ever gave or office can ever give."

Now that we are facing a crisis and that this country has very difficult years before it, we do require in the offices which are now being filled by members of the Executive Council men of imagination, men whose minds are fertile of ideas, men who will be able to devise new remedies for new diseases, men who will be able to come before this House with something better than the mere hand-to-mouth policy which carries them through ordinary times. I do not see in this executive, in the Budget or in any speech made in support of the Budget a single hope that we will get from this Government any large, comprehensive measure or anything else than a mere living from hand to mouth. If the Government did come before the House with this Budget and if they brought hand in hand with it a comprehensive scheme for improving the condition of the country, then this Budget would stand in a very different position.

Again and again, in the course of this debate, as always happens, the Fianna Fáil speakers made appeals to this side of the House to say what we would do in these circumstances and in those circumstances. They are always appealing to the various Parties that make up the Opposition in this House to do the work that they ought to do themselves and to supply them with the necessary ideas. The Finance Minister tells us that he has to put on these extra taxes because revenue is falling owing to the falling-off of imports. Has he thought of any possible way in which the falling-off of imports and of the revenue derived from them can be checked? As well as applying a palliative to the country's finances, cannot he go to the root of the evil and see if he cannot bring up imports to their old level? We have a country with an immense seaboard and we have no mercantile marine. At present, thousands of tons of shipping must be lying idle. The bringing of goods to England is dangerous. English trade with foreign countries has been considerably reduced. The export trade of countries like Holland. Belgium and Norway has been reduced. Surely, now is the time when a Government thinking of what could be done in the present conditions might reasonably consider the establishment of a carrying trade and the institution at the public expense of a mercantile marine. There must be thousands of tons of shipping lying up in various harbours. Have the Government ever thought of that? Have they made a single effort to see at what price they could purchase ships? Have they ever considered the feasibility of importing what is necessary for the people of this country in ships owned by them selves? Have they ever considered that it possibly might pay to build up a mercantile marine, not for the time of war merely but for future time? We are borrowing millions of pounds— £8,000,000, I think, is the figure the Minister for Finance gave—and that is not for productive work; that is £8,000,000 spent within this year, I understand, £8,000,000 that will not produce a single ½d. Would it not be very wise to consider if one could not also float a loan for the purchase of a mercantile marine which will be in itself a paying proposition? Has that ever been examined?

The Minister again says, "I must cut down" or "I have great difficulty in dealing with the unemployment problem —the problem that no other country has solved" (which is not correct, though he stated it to be so). He has great difficulty in dealing with unemployment. Why not get to the root of the evil? Is not this the time, when you are borrowing vast sums, in which you should endeavour to borrow sums which you are going to invest, even though it may be at a low rate of interest? The cure for unemployment is not the dole, but work. What big schemes of work are the Government putting before the country in conjunction with this Budget? There are thousands and thousands—hundreds of thousands—of acres of land that could be reclaimed. It would be quite possible—and in many areas of this country it would be perfectly possible—to establish labour settlements, pay men correct and proper wages, and reclaim, as I say, thousands and thousands— even hundreds of thousands—of acres of land now lying derelict and worthless.

Has the Government any such ideas of that kind? Borrow to spend, tax, borrow, borrow, tax: that is the commonplace method of proceeding, but it is not the method which is adopted by statesmen, or by anybody approaching statesmanship, in times of crisis. Instead of that we discover no forethought. Take the Department of Supplies, the Minister for which, in answer to Deputy Dockrell to-day said that it was not question time or it was not his business to look after supplies. Certainly there was no looking after supplies during the six months in which everybody could see that this war was almost inevitable. Our country should have been stocked, when things were cheap, with everything it could possibly require for a very long time to come; but, instead of that, money was being spent without any consideration at all.

What is the meaning of the very large sums of money which are being spent on absolutely unnecessary defence forces at the present time? I know, Sir, that when I consider this question of mobilising the Volunteers the story comes into my mind which is taken from the most famous work of romance in the world's literature. I am deliberately using a wrong pronunciation of the name, I know, when I say that it is from Don Quixote. Mounted on his war horse, going out to fight anybody he could meet, he saw a number of windmills upon the hills and, mistaking them for giants, he charged against them and had a very fine battle with the windmills. It seems to me that that is what our Government were doing: not fighting real enemies—because there were no real enemies to fight— but mobilising the Army to fight against mills.

That would not bother me or anybody else in the slightest bit. The Taoiseach might get up on his war horse, Rocinante, and charge against as many windmills as he liked, and the Minister for Defence—like a good Sancho Panza—might mount his mule and gallop after him and they might do as much fighting as they liked against imaginary enemies, and the Minister for Finance might shout "Go on, Dev, you have killed thousands of Germans and tens of thousands of British". They might do that as much as ever they liked, if, unfortunately, it was not costing this country hundreds and thousands of pounds. We are told that other small countries are arming and that it is better to be out of the world than out of fashion. Because it is fashionable for other small States in danger to mobilise their forces, because it is necessary for them, we— who are in no danger under the sun and who could not be in any danger under the sun—are going to waste money which is badly needed for other purposes.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce the other night talked about the necessity for increasing the Guards owing to the I.R.A. danger. I do not know the extent of the I.R.A. danger, but do believe that there is a very considerable amount of propaganda going on especially amongst the youth, the young chaps from 17 to 19 and about that age; and I do believe, moreover, that the propaganda is not what used to be called "I.R.A. propaganda", but rather the propaganda which was put forward by the Association that we met and defeated eight years ago, which styled itself Saor Éire. I believe that the present I.R.A. are very much more definite than Saor Éire or the old I.R.A. It is necessary, says the Minister for Finance, to increase the number of police. It may be: I take it that it is. I take it, if you like, that that is a necessary expense, but how does the Minister for Finance think that he can do his part to spread Saor Eire and to strengthen the I.R.A.? He is doing his part very well. The Minister for Finance is the greatest propagandist for these two bodies that there is in the whole country. If you want revolutionary doctrines to spread in any State, you will spread those revolutionary doctrines by raising the cost of living beyond the power of the country to bear it. Discontent is the nursery in which revolutionary principles thrive: it is the only soil in which they can thrive.

The people of no country are ever anxious for domestic trouble or anxious for revolution. It is only when things are getting too hard for them to bear that revolutions can come or that revolutionary movements become strong in self-governing States. For that reason, having already the taxes on food so high and having already the cost of living so terribly high as it is, the Minister, in putting the taxes he is now putting on the cost of living, and especially the tax he is putting on sugar, is certainly encouraging unrest in the country and is doing more to propagate these doctrines against which the new Civic Guards have been mobilised than anything else. He says he is going to make £250,000—£243,000 is the actual figure—this year from the tax on sugar. It would be far better to let that go and far better to borrow £6,250,000 than to raise the cost of foodstuffs so high, and thereby make it impossible for the ordinary person to live in reasonable comfort, and bring about, as you must necessarily bring about, discontent and the spread of revolutionary doctrines and internal trouble in this State.

As I listened to the Minister for Finance on Friday, my mind wandered back over a period of 18 or 19 years to the time when the Minister represented the case for this country in the capitals of other countries. He was then a very well-spoken man, and the newspapers described him as a very well-dressed man and, so far as I remember that historic time, his presentation of the case for this country left very little to be desired. Meeting the Minister since he became a Minister, one was always impressed with the way in which the good form of that time had been preserved, and if there have been little lapses occasionally, one can put them down to that weakness in humanity which is apparent at times in all of us. I think, however, that his statement here on Friday indicated a very poor conception of what was required from a very responsible Minister. If I were again to try to find the reason for it, it was perhaps the particularly unfortunate task the Minister had in presenting to us the extremely cheerless and despairing proposals contained in this Budget.

The Minister told us on Friday of his association over many years with the workers of this city. If that is so, and I accept the Minister's word on the matter, I think he has a good deal to regret at present. There must be very many uneasy murmurings of conscience and very many unpleasant pictures when the Minister looks into the mirror of memory, because nothing so despairing, nothing so harsh and nothing so hopeless for the workers of this country has been produced for a number of years than the terms of the Minister's statement on this Budget. He tells us that the policy of the Government is that a stern face must be set against any proposals for increases in wages. Admittedly, the steps being taken in Great Britain at present to control prices are serious. They are not along the laughable lines of which we have had experience here in the last few weeks, but at present in Great Britain, where effective steps are being taken to control prices, the whole policy with regard to wages and wage increases is quite different. Papers during the last week or two report substantial increases in wages for thousands of English workers.

Hundreds of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands, I am reminded, and very properly reminded, but in this country, where prices are rising steeply, where the incomes of the people are being steadily reduced and where heavier demands are being made on those limited incomes every day, we are told that it is the policy of the Government, to be sternly enforced, that no wages increases can be encouraged or permitted, and that, if necessary, even more drastic steps in that respect will be taken in the future.

If there is one impression which many of us have firmly fixed in our minds as a result of the last few years, it is the number of illusions that have been dispelled. Very steadily, but very surely, one illusion after the other has been shattered. We had a very pathetic example of that last Thursday night in the Taoiseach's statement on another question, but surely the biggest illusion of all, the dearest hopes of thousands of people in this country, thousands of anxious and poverty stricken people, were shattered on Friday last when the Minister stated definitely that the Government had now reached a position in which they concluded that they had failed to solve unemployment, or, he might have added, to make any serious impression on the problem. When one remembers all that has been said about this question both inside and outside this House over a number of years, one realises what that conveys to the workers of this country, and one must very respectfully differ from the Minister in his conclusion that this is the experience of Governments in all countries who have endeavoured to deal with this question. Quite recently in the precincts of this House, a story was unfolded of the methods by which unemployment was curbed in another country, and the Minister might be reminded very properly that, in New Zealand, which has dealt effectively with unemployment, the work has been performed, if not by Irishmen, at least by the descendants of Irishmen in that country.

I think this statement of the Minister that the Government failed to solve unemployment is the economic death sentence of thousands of people in this country, and if we are to glean anything definite from the Minister's statement, it is that the strength of the unemployed at present is going to be added to by thousands in the immediate future, and that, shall I say, a permanent army of unemployed embracing over 100,000 people, will be alarmingly increased immediately. Members of the House know that throughout this country at present practically all housing activities are suspended. I refer not alone to schemes of housing proposed by local authorities, but the schemes under the ordinary housing grants available to people who desire to build new houses, or to reconstruct their existing dwellings, and I hope that some change at least will be made in that position in the future, because if the position remains as it is, it is going to be positively alarming. The Department of Education decided, provisionally at least, that the work of reconstructing schools and building new national schools must be suspended for the same reason, and work on the erection of hospitals, proposed but not entered on, has met a similar fate. If we turn to the Land Commission, we find that housing and land division in the Land Commission section has also been suspended, and that, in fact, large bodies of the staff of the Land Commission have been transferred to the Censorship and other Departments.

That seems to me to indicate the cessation, for the present time at least, and probably for a considerable time to come, of all the normal activities of the Land Commission that were in any way useful in relieving unemployment or giving productive work of any kind.

When we turn to the Gaeltacht services we find a similar position. Local authorities will find, owing to the difficulty in obtaining money at a certain rate of interest, that water supplies and schemes of public sanitation will have to be deferred for a considerable time. In face of that position, where are the working people and the small farmers who are living on the poverty line at present, going to turn to? They find the price of all commodities that come into their homes increasing. From the people of the country, and particularly from the poor people, £1,400,000 is to be skinned in the extra price of sugar. I find that the Minister's statement in that connection in the Budget is not the full story, because, apart from what the Sugar Company and the State gets, the price at present in many cases is not 4½d. per lb., as stated, but 5d. per lb. The newspapers recently contained a statement that, as compensation for having to pay cash for supplies of sugar in future, retailers are compelled in many cases to raise the price to 5d. per lb. I leave a somewhat better mathematician than I am to calculate what that increase is going to mean to people in the country. Bread is dearer, meat is dearer, and meat is a food that finds its way rarely into the homes of many people at the present time. Boots, clothing and all the other things that are necessary for life in this country are becoming dearer, and in face of all that the Minister suggests that no increase in wages, allowances or salaries is to be considered. That, certainly, is asking us to take a great deal for granted, and it represents as ludicrous a conception of the realities of conditions in this country to-day as does the statement of the Minister for Industry and Commerce that any criticism of the Budget, or any criticism of the Government in connection with it, is an attack on our neutrality.

I am old enough to remember the time when it used to be portrayed as part of the national policy that we ought not to embarrass the Liberal Government. We were told that the Liberal Government was going to give us Home Rule about 1911 or 1912, and that any word said in criticism of that Government was an injury to the country. I am sorry to see that that philosophy still lives in the country, and that it should be said that any members of this House who criticise proposals of this kind cannot be given credit for a desire to give whatever co-operation they can to the Government in the present difficult position, while at the same time preserving an honest right to criticise things that we consider merit criticism. After all, there can be no co-operation on the basis of rapidly rising prices for the working people, without any corresponding increase in wages. The Minister for Finance, as a man associated with the workers of Dublin for many years, must realise and must conclude quite honestly in his own conscience that no co-operation can exist while a gulf of that kind divides the Government from members of this Party on that particular question.

I must say that I consider the whole position with regard to supplies of one kind or another, and the statements that have been made here in connection with these commodities, represent a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. I heard the Minister for Supplies say in regard to one commodity, tea, that there were ample supplies in the country. The simplest inquiry amongst wholesalers in this city, or in any other city in the country at the present time, would reveal an entirely different position. The fact is, when war broke out, tea supplies in the bonded warehouses in London were evacuated to various parts of the country, and that their identity has been completely lost. At the moment they cannot possibly be recovered. The answer which wholesalers in this country have received to representations to the British Government is to send in their bills and their claims for compensation will be considered. In that position, our Ministry has been unable to do anything effective. I consider that a very bad position. It represents to me another pretty bad piece of muddling, equalled by another muddle we have had experience of, notably the one in connection with the black-out. I am glad that in that connection even now some ray of sense has percolated into the Ministerial corridors, and that they have modified their earlier decisions. The Government were asked by Deputy Childers to give, in this connection, a definite assurance to the working classes on the question of profiteering. I ask how can that be when the Government themselves have given us a notable example of their association with profiteering in the matter of sugar? I say that price control in this country is farcical, and the sooner it is terminated, the Prices Commission disbanded, and the expenses involved in its administration saved, the better it will be for the country, because then, at least, we shall know the real position.

I do not know whether it is considered treasonable or very bad form, but I have always regarded the defence proposals in this country as futile and foolish. I repeat that statement, and I regret very much that the complete powers the Government received when this emergency was declared were granted to them. I had very many reservations about the matter at the time, and I have not changed my mind since. I think that our neutrality would be just as well maintained with a nominal force and with the moral force of the strength of our people as an unarmed nation behind it. I regard the whole lot of the proposals in connection with Air Raid Precautions as equally foolish. Millions of money will be spent in the immediate or the more remote future on this matter, and that at a time when our farmers and our working people in the towns are getting steadily poorer. I think the whole policy of the Government in this connection needs review, apart altogether from other things that might be done to see what alternative could be provided in the present situation.

There was no vision shown in Government policy in the immediate pre-war period. The Government must have been aware of the fact that, in the event of war, thousands of people would come back to this country, and there was no proposal formulated to absorb them into employment, or to provide any alternative work for them in a country that was largely populated with unemployed people even up to that time. We heard recently in this House an exceedingly interesting and moving statement by Deputy O'Loghlen on the question of finance and credit.

I do not want to discuss that question at the present time, but it seems to me, from much that has been said about that matter in well informed quarters lately, that in a situation like the present this question might have been carefully examined with a view to seeing what change it could make in the present unhappy position. One fails to see how the present position is going to be improved by a Budget that aims at making the people very considerably poorer and that promises economies of a kind that one must be sceptical about, in view of the Ministerial policy that has been indicated with regard to wages and wage increases.

As I said earlier, when I look back over the last 17 or 18 years and think of how many illusions I have seen dispelled, I can say that this Budget represents the greatest disillusionment this country has yet seen. For a considerable time I, at least, had regarded the present Minister for Finance as a democrat, as one having honest associations with the workers. Because of that, I am sorry that he should be responsible for the very worst and most sinister features in the statement associated with this Budget proposal.

The Minister's opening statement in connection with this Budget might, from the Government angle, have been left to stand by itself instead of being helped, as it was, by the Minister for Supplies, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. The contributions made by each of these Ministers, as well as that of the Minister for Finance himself when he intervened on Friday, seemed to make it clear that the Government was perfectly well satisfied that there was no justification of any sort or kind for the impositions which it is proposed to place upon the backs of the people through this Budget.

This evening, and on Friday last, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance addressed the House. He is the Chairman of this Economy Committee which has been set up. One would have expected that, in the course of his speech on this Budget, he would have made some reference to the work which has been entrusted to him and that there would have been some appreciation on his part of his responsibility in connection with that work. But what did we get? We had an exhibition of what lay people say sometimes occurs in the courts: that when counsel has had a bad case he abuses the other side. That was the sum and substance of the Parliamentary Secretary's contribution to the debate on this Budget.

He did me the honour of looking up a speech that I delivered in the Dáil in the year 1926. If my recollection is not at fault, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance was at that period devoting all his energies in the direction of urging upon the people of this country the desirability of having no income tax, and yet we find him this evening addressing the House in support of an income tax rate of 6/6 in the £. He is now in office. I am not suggesting that he made that particular policy of "no income tax" a means of getting into this House, but I am rather surprised that a man who tried to establish a case for no income tax outside should come in here and violently recommend us to accept the figure of 6/6 in the £. He referred to criticisms that I made of economies that were recommended by certain people years ago. The revenue collected in the year 1925-26 was £25,207,000. The revenue collected up to the 31st March of last year was £31,883,000. The Parliamentary Secretary was one of those, presumably, who was recommending economies 13 years ago when we were spending a shade over £25,000,000 a year. Now, when we are spending £31,883,000, he seems to think that the case for economies is on the same level as it was at that time.

The Budget for this year—apart altogether from the Supplementary Budget that we are now discussing— aims at collecting from the people of this country £32,500,000—well over £7,000,000 more than was collected in the year 1926. I have taken the trouble to look up the figure relating to our agricultural exports for the year 1926. I will not bind myself to the exact figure, because I think it was in the following year that the returns relating to these exports were given in bulk sum, but I am credibly informed, and am accepting the figure, that the value of our agricultural exports for that year was £28,000,000, while the figure for last year—the latest that we have got—is something less than £18,000,000. Therefore, the case made by farmers for economies in 1926 comes to this: that in that year they got £10,000,000 more for their agricultural exports than they got last year, and were taxed £7,000,000 less. There was perhaps a little verve and vim in the criticisms which the Parliamentary Secretary read out, and which I made in the House at that time, but surveying the situation now —comparing that situation with the present situation—it does appear to me that they were rather justified, and that if those who were at that time asking for economies only knew the prosperity they were enjoying they might not have said the things which the Parliamentary Secretary was able to quote here this evening in support of the position that he took up.

The Parliamentary Secretary went on to refer to a proposal that was put before the House by the last Government—to borrow on an asset of £250,000 that was due to this country by the British Government. It was an asset. It was one of the things wiped out at the time that the present Government paid to the British Government the sum of £10,000,000 in connection with the settlement of the economic war. It was perhaps to their advantage that it was there as an asset. At any rate, they took full advantage of it. In connection with income-tax, I am not accepting the statement that the last Government on one occasion made the taxpayers liable for 18 months' tax in one year. I want proof of it.

I have before me a Government pub lication—the Appropriation Accounts for 1937-38. I find there, under the heading of Employment Schemes, the following: Grant, £1,500,010; expenditure, £1,200,088 8s. 7d.; surplus to be surrendered £299,921 11s. 5d. Then underneath there appears this figure— receipts payable to the Exchequer, Contribution from Road Fund, £100,000. That £100,000 was taken from the Road Fund, but the total sum voted was not spent on the Road Fund. Normally, these are not matters which ought to be the subject of discussion in this House on a Supplementary Budget or on any Budget. They represent the weakness of the case that the Government spokesmen have made in connection with this Supplementary Budget. A further demonstration of the weakness of the case is the Parliamentary Secretary's references to my criticisms of the Budget in May last. Then I pointed out something like 20 services in the State which were not social services and which had nothing to do with social services and in respect of which the Estimates for this year were over £1,000,000 in excess of the Estimates which were put up in the year 1931-1932. I said to the Minister for Finance in May last: "If you want to balance your Budget there are services upon which you can save money: go back to the policy that was in force here in respect of non-social services and you have the money that will enable you to impose no additional taxation this year." The Parliamentary Secretary referred this evening to the answer that the Minister for Finance gave me. I have read what he said and he did not answer me. He went in for dealing with the Gaeltacht Services, Land Commission, and so on, and he sought to prove that, once the money was voted here, once the Legislature authorised the Government to spend that money, that was the end of it.

Through the policy of the Government, the price and cost of this war to the people is far beyond the capacity of the country and far beyond the income that is available to the public to spend on public services. As much as £7,300,000 more is estimated to be raised this year than was raised in 1926. In addition, the Minister claims that he is not liable for the sum of £2,000,000 formerly paid to the British Government. That is, he has over £9,000,000 more to spend now than was available in 1931-32. His own estimate of the cost of social services, over and above those of 1931-32, is £5,500,000. Very good. Take him on his own estimate. He has £9,000,000 more than in 1931-32. The difference between these two items represents a sum of £3,500,000 spent on non-social services. Instead of the Parliamentary Secretary directing his attention to these non-social services, and seeing where economies can be effected, he rides off on the plea that the Minister for Finance answered the case that I made in May last. Although the Minister for Finance claims to be spending £5,500,000 over and above what was spent in 1931-32, I pointed out that these were Estimates in the case of this year against audited expenditure for 1931-32.

I am prepared to give the Minister his Estimate on this understanding, that he must deduct from it the sums that he deducted in balancing his Budget, as he called it. These sums are made up of (1) the reduction by the Minister of £100,000 on unemployment relief; (2) his proposal to borrow one-fourth of £1,400,000 provided for unemployment relief; (3) that the Minister reduces his own estimate of £34,900,000, the total cost to the public services, by £1,000,000, and the proportion to be taken off this sum for social services according to that, calculated on the basis of £200,000. This makes a total of £1,650,000. Therefore, the sum proposed to be spent this year, over and above what was spent in 1931-32 on social services leaves practically £4,000,000 to be accounted for in other services. Reference has been made by the Minister in the course of his speech to the standard of living in this country. If there is anybody who ought to give an example in connection with the standard of living, it is the Government, and that is the best they can do. That is the best that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, charged with the responsibility of finding where economies can be made, can do. Surely there is extravagance in that.

The Minister was referring to certain particular Departments of State. He was making the case for this magnificent building in Kildare Street, on which the Government is spending money. What is it for? To collect all the various staffs of the Minister for Industry and Commerce into one building. Look at the Estimates for the current year, and compare them with those of 1931-32, and what do you find? Under the heading of "Persons in receipt of Salaries and Wages" and so on, the total number employed in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in the year 1931-32 was 331 persons. The total number this year is 648 persons. Is it any wonder that it is desirable to have them all in one building, where the Minister can have them all assembled, and not in four buildings, to march past him in order to see them? Can we afford such extensive expansion of the public services? Take the Ministry of Education. We have not more children in the country—we are told that we have less now—than in 1931-32. In 1931-32 there were 407 persons in that Department. To-day there are 491.

I went at some length into these matters in May last. I have neither the time nor the desire to go into them again to make this statement—that it is the Government's duty, and it is a matter of conscience on the part of the Government, to go into every single item of public expenditure such as those mentioned, before they come along here to impose still further burdens and disabilities on the people of the country. The Minister for Supplies made rather a complaint about the manner in which this Supplementary Budget had been received by the two Opposition Parties in the House. He said there was a period when this terrible catastrophe that has befallen the people of Europe was about to take place, a couple of months ago, and that was the period when members of the different Parties here were advertising themselves and their patriotism, and were declaring how anxious they were to co-operate with the Government in the serious and difficult task which they had to face. Neither of the two Parties in this House, while I was in it or from anything I have been able to read, ever undertook to co-operate with this Government in carrying out the Fianna Fáil policy. The Fianna Fáil policy is not a national policy. It is, if anything, an anti-national policy. If there is any Party in this State that is unnational or anti-national it is that Party. What is the problem that faces every country in the world at the present moment? It is the economy of its people; the productivity of the nation; the efforts of all sections of the community towards increasing its productivity, towards increasing its wealth and its prosperity, towards improving the morale of the nation, and the resources and wealth of the nation. But what has been happening here during the last seven years under the plea of spending money—more and more money, and why should it ever stop? We have been trying to delude ourselves that, because there is expenditure of public money, we are well off. We are not well off. The best experts in this State have told the people of this country that our national wealth is decreasing and has decreased, that there is no expansion in it. Instead of having Ministers concerned with the development of the country and its resources, and with lessening the burdens on its people, we have had one continuous set of impositions on top of impositions. The only answer we have got is: "Look at what the Minister for Finance said six months ago; he gave you your answer." Is it any answer to the people of this country that you have had almost to double the officials in the Department of Industry and Commerce, and that even in the Department of Education they have gone up by over 15 per cent.?

Why is it that we object to this particular tax? For a very good reason; the economic policy that has been enforced upon the people of this country is such that it has placed immense taxation on the backs of those least able to bear it. Three million sacks of flour are consumed annually in the country, and it is costing 20/- a sack more than it costs in Great Britain. Take the case of a man with 27/- a week, who has to support himself, his wife, and four children. If they consume the ordinary normal proportion of that number of sacks distributed amongst the population, they consume six sacks. That is costing them £6 more than it is costing in England. Assuming that that family consumes 4 lbs. of sugar per week—the extra taxation according to this Budget being 1¼d. per lb.—it is costing them 5d. per week extra, or £1 1s. 8d. per annum. If that man uses 2 ozs. of tobacco per week, he pays 4d. per week extra, or 17/4 per annum. That gives us a total of £7 19s. 0d.—almost £8 out of £70 a year. Take the same proportion of the Parliamentary Secretary's salary: it is very nearly one-ninth, or roughly £130. On the Minister's salary it would be nearly £200, and on the Prime Minister's salary almost £300. If by reason of the Budget, the Minister for Finance were to impose that particular tax upon any of those three sets of individuals in this country, what a howl we would have from them? This extra £1 a sack does not affect any member of this House as it does the man with 14/- per week. Is it not our duty to criticise that particular method when there are others; when we have magnificent establishments such as it is proposed to put up in Kildare Stree to accommodate the still larger number of public officials in this country? Is this country going to be a place where only officials can prosper, and where their number must be annually increased in order to carry out the changing policies of Ministers, under which we have a black-out one week and a non-black-out the week following?

This Government started its political campaign in this country by criticising public expenditure. It is now £7,000,000 a year over that of their predecessors. The "£2,000,000 saving" has cost this country very dearly indeed. We heard a lot of rubbish spoken here this evening about the great advantage that had been derived out of the economic war. Ask any farmer in this country whether or not the Minister is right in that. We paid £26,000,000 over a period of five or six years, and £10,000,000 in cash. Is there a country in the world at present having a debt of £60,000,000 that would not take £36,000,000 in that fashion? They would, and much less. There does not appear to me, in this Supplementary Budget, to be any prospect for a development of industry or of agriculture. It is inevitable that, as a result of this, you will have discontent. You ask how is it to be avoided? I am telling you how it is to be avoided—make the economies; live within our means; do not tell the people of this country that their standard of living is too high, when the Government standard is of such an imperial republican sort as to be beyond the capacity of either an empire or a republic to stand.

It was significant that, during the course of this discussion, we were told very little about the stocks of sugar in the country, or the price, with the exception, I think, of about four figures, one of which conveyed that the British price for sugar is 19/4 a cwt. now, as against 7/- or 7/6 some couple of months ago. For something like five or six years past, the people of this country have been paying, by reason of the extension of sugar manufacture in this country, practically £1,000,000 a year more than they could buy the sugar for—£5,000,000 is a very big sum for a very poor country. Did it ever enter into the Ministers' minds to examine the implications of that policy, and see whether or not, in the best interests of the country, if they had £1,000,000 to spend annually, that money could not be better spent?

In the course of the speech of the Minister for Finance, referring to the points of criticism made against his Budget in May last, he dealt with the Land Commission. Have they examined the effects of their policy in connection with land? This year, I think, there is a figure of something like £700,000. Have these continual large sums of money which have been voted for the development of estates and so on been so expended that the productivity of the lands in question has been enhanced and the country has benefited? Is the policy one in which we see a certain number of individuals put in a better position, or is our policy a national policy, in the interests of the whole of the people? Similarly, with regard to this £1 a sack on flour, if we take into account the numbers of persons employed, the advantages derived, compared with the cost, what is the position? If one were to estimate the £9,000,000 I have mentioned, plus the £3,000,000 for flour, plus £1,000,000 for sugar, we have £13,000,000, and that, at £100 per annum, would afford employment to 130,000 people in this country. That is the average sum earned in the factories which have been established over the last few years.

When, on top of this Supplementary Budget, one reads the statement of the late Minister for Finance, now the Minister for Industry and Commerce, which he made to the Chamber of Commerce a short time ago, one is puzzled to know what the Government policy is. It was self-sufficiency, we were told at one time, and now the Minister for Industry and Commerce, after spending seven years in the Department of Finance, tells us we have a dependent economy. That is the sum and substance of this enormous expenditure, this increasing indebtedness, this increasing taxation and this difficult situation which Ministers tell us we are now facing. Co-operation will be afforded to this or to any Government which seeks to mend the baneful effects of the policy of the last few years, which seeks to deal with this situation in an honest and straightforward way, which economises in places where economies can be sought and effected, which will do something to relieve an over-burdened and overtaxed people, and which will endeavour to bring about greater contentment amongst those who are so hard hit by reason of the present period of hostility in which great nations are engaged.

This particular method of adding burden after burden and of making it almost impossible for the people to have any satisfaction in being citizens, is one to which we are opposed, and we will continue in our opposition to it. We hope that the people will back us in doing what we believe is in the best interests of the whole community of this country.

I think we should dispose of this palatial building in Kildare Street with a very short phrase. It seems to me to be a big building for big men with very swelled heads. That is the whole intention. I want to deal, first of all, with certain remarks made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. He thought it well on Friday last to refer to me by name. He said "At the beginning of the economic war in this country we who are in this House know what the position was. Deputy Gorey, who has just gone out, said that in three months 400,000 cattle would be lying dead in the field." In July of 1932 I was dealing with the then President's appeal to keep over our cattle and not sell them until we could get a good price. I said "I have been looking over our annual shipments and I make this statement, that 500,000 cattle must leave this country between the present mid-July and mid-October, or they must certainly be cleared out by mid-November. If we want the remainder of the cattle of the country to live, 500,000 cattle must go out between now and the 1st November." That was my statement. They had to go out to enable the rest of the cattle in the country to live.

Listening to the Parliamentary Secretary's statement, one can only describe it as deliberately misleading and, I must say, characteristic of the particular individual who made the statement. He referred also on Friday to another matter. He talked of a statement that was criticised here. He said: "On the benches over there was the Leader of the then Farmers' Party and he told precisely the same story that Deputy Morrissey has been telling. The answer of the then President, now Deputy Cosgrave was ...." You heard Deputy Cosgrave going into it to-day. I was the Leader of the Farmers' Party at the time. I did not make the statement that was referred to. There was no reference of that sort. I do not know who made it. As a matter of fact, there was an unhappy incident in the House that evening and I will not refer to it. It was not my statement, at any rate, and it was utterly misleading to mention the Leader of the Farmers' Party. I had nothing to do with it.

What I stood up mainly to do was to explain the position of the agricultural community, to deal with this additional Budget and the capacity of the country to bear it. On the occasion of the Budget last year the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance quoted figures covering several years in order to show that we were getting out of the agricultural depression and not going into it. Very conveniently they began with the year 1935 and they quoted from 1935 to 1938. That was, in my opinion, a deliberate attempt to mislead the people of the country.

It is not Parliamentary to charge Ministers with deliberately misleading the House.

Well, misleading. My colleague, Deputy Dillon, on the adjournment, made the plea that all Parties should co-operate to encourage confidence in public men and public institutions. How can we have that confidence in public men, that respect for public men, when they seem to have no respect for themselves and no respect for the nation? What were the actual figures? The years 1928 and 1929 were referred to as years of depression, and the period of depression we went through was stated to be from that time onwards. We were going through a period of depression from 1921, but these were, on their own showing, some of the years of the depression. What were the figures? In the year 1929 the value of our live animals was £19,694,800. In the year 1930, the value of live animals was £21,000,000 odd. In the year 1931, the figure was £18,500,000. What was the value of the live animals in 1934? It was £6,115,462. They improved a little in 1935, the year referred to by the two representatives of the Government. In that year the value of our live animals was £7,316,487. The last figure quoted deals with 1938, when the amount was just a little less than £12,000,000, leaving a gap of £8,000,000 as between that year and the three years, 1929 to 1931. It is on live animals largely that the agricultural community have to meet their obligations, and the figure was £8,000,000 less in 1938. That year, it has been pointed out, was the peak year of recovery; it was said that we had then recovered our position since 1934. I say that that is a scandalous misrepresentation of the facts.

We then come to statistics regarding food and drink, prepared. I suppose it refers to butter, bacon and the rest. Drink would probably come under the heading of "stout", and we could not lay a direct claim to that for the farming community—perhaps it would be only partly. The total figure came to nearly £15,000,000—£14,750,000—in 1929. In the year 1937, the last year for which we have complete figures, the £14,000,000 odd had gone down to £7,675,000, leaving a clear gap of over £7,000,000. In 1929 the value of our total exports from this country was £46,000,000 odd, and in 1937 it was £22,000,000 odd, representing a decline of £24,000,000. Why were all these figures withheld from the public? That is the type of statesmanship we are asked to respect. The folly began in mid-July, 1932. It covered only a half-year's operations in 1932, but it fell from the £21,000,000 in 1930 to £11,000,000 in 1932; to £7,500,000 in 1933; to a little over £6,000,000 in 1934; to, roughly, £7,250,000 in 1935; to nearly £9,000,000 in 1936; to a little less than £10,000,000 in 1937, and to a little less than £12,000,000 in 1938.

That is the actual position this country is faced with—increased expenditure, increased taxation. In the "peak year of our recovery", last year, exports of live animals alone showed a total shortage of £8,000,000, and the export value of all our agricultural produce showed a total shortage of £24,000,000. You can make whatever you like out of that.

I was glad to see the frame of mind the Minister for Finance was in the other day. I think his admission that we aimed at too high a standard of living was a frank admission, that they were led into and followed a certain precedent. Who led them into it? He started out on a standard of social services and a standard of living in 1932, when he came into office, that nobody passed on to him. They could have struck out on a line of their own. I can read nothing into his statement except the clear admission that the Minister and his Government have been indulging in the most up-to-date and expensive edition of the rake's progress that it is possible for men to indulge in. I can read nothing else into it.

My great quarrel in recent discussions here has been with the expenditure on the Army. I said it was all wrong and that it served no purpose. If a foreign Power of any description chose to invade our neutrality here we could merely offer ourselves up as a holocaust to any invading force. It is quite clear from the statement of the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the increased expenditure is to deal with something else—the internal position. But whose was the fault in that respect? If I were asked to make a choice in the morning between a strong Army and a big Army, and a strong Government and a strong Front Bench, using whatever little common sense I have, I would have no hesitation in choosing a strong Government and a strong Front Bench. We could have done without the enlistment of a single man had we that position, but we have not. The position would be that they would be pulling their weight and earning their salaries, if they governed this country as they should. Instead of that, we get I do not know how many millions— I have tried to get it and failed—of new expenditure to deal with the new position. It was to hide the weakness of a weak Government and a weak Front Bench that we have to have this strong Army. I will not refer to it further.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Flinn, talked about the great resistance that was displayed by the people in the economic war. His reparation for that was the robbing of the public purse and the emptying of the national pocket. All our resources were squandered. The people owe money in every bank from which they could get money. They owe money in all the banks of the State. They had to do it. Is any figure more eloquent than the figures I have quoted in connection with our live animals? Is it any wonder that the people of the country are passing through a period of depression? Now they are beginning to feel the real pinch. All their resources are gone. The people are robbed, and if they met their obligations in the bank half the people would not be on the land of the country. The Parliamentary Secretary claps the people on the back for their resistance, and the fight they put up in the economic war, but we know the sympathy they got while they were fighting the economic war and while they were in the trenches. Every stab in the back they could get they got from this Government—the bailiff, the flying squad, the modern black-and-tans and all the rest. That was the only help they got.

The Deputy does not propose to re-open the fight now?

I do not, but when I hear hypocrites making statements about the fight the people put up and the help they got, it makes my blood boil. It did not take much out of their pockets, or his pocket.

Some reference was made in the earlier stages here to prices, and I asked across the House—I think it was the present Minister for Industry and Commerce who was speaking—had he any sense of observation. The facts are that there is only the one buyer for any agricultural produce going out of this State, and that is the British Government. There is no competition, non whatsoever. We have to give it at the price they are prepared to pay. It is a question of arrangement, but there is no other competition and there will be no soaring prices such as there were in the last war. They have eliminated that absolutely and entirely. There is no individual competition in England. It is all State purchase, and there will be no wild benefits accruing in this war, and there will be no greatly expanding prices. You will get only the price that the British Government will give you, and they will give as little as they can. There is no other market to send our produce to. There never was.

I have heard several comments to the effect that the farmers are in clover now that they are getting great prices. Suppose they are getting £1 or £2 a head more for their cattle, if they have eight or ten yearlings that means £18 or £20. One would think that millions of pounds were involved by the way in which all the people in the country are trying to grab their share. All the sharks in the country have their mouths open, trying to grab a share.

The British Government have helped agriculture in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. They had no economic war. They had no robbing of their people. They had no plundering of their people. The British Government were nursing their people when our Government were crucifying them, and they have gone out of their way now and again to nurse agriculture and to pay subsidies. Nothing has been done here, and there was not even a word of sympathy from anyone except the bailiff and the sheriff. That is the policy in this war and every other war. The people of the country made the mistake of putting this Government into power. I think the Minister for Finance referred to the farmers as being monarchs of all they survey. We may be, but once or twice a week some official came down to survey the monarchs, to see how we were conducting ourselves and what we were doing, and the sheriffs were sent to see if we had anything to seize.

I for one am opposed to this Budget. I am opposed to everything that increases the cost of living and puts a heavier load on the people, knowing the position as I know it and as the Government must know it, despite all the efforts they have made to suppress the actual figures. There can be no contradiction of the figures I have given. They were taken from a Government publication and are the figures of their own officials. They disclose the true position. It is only a question of how long that can continue. I say that the writing is on the wall, and the collapse will come very soon. If it has not come up to this it is because the farming community are prepared to live on almost nothing, to do without clothes and almost without food; certainly to do without amusements and luxuries. It is because of the sacrifices that they have made that this country has been able to carry on at all with any semblance of decency.

Surprise has been expressed by Government speakers in this House because of the fact that the Labour Party are voting against this Budget. Apart altogether from the taxes imposed by the Budget, there are two implications in this Budget which would make it impossible for the Labour Party to give it its support. There were two important matters in the Budget speech—the working of the economy committee and the threats made by the Minister for Finance against anybody looking for an increase in wages in order to deal with the situation created by the increase in prices. These are two implications in the phraseology of the Budget speech which, apart from the taxes imposed, will prevent us from voting for this Budget.

Several Deputies during the course of the debate have dealt with the question of the expenditure on the Army. I am one of those who think that it is not necessary at this stage to have a Supplementary Budget at all. I think very definitely that economies could be made so far as the Army is concerned. On many occasions in this House since the Government were given emergency powers various Deputies have sought to find out what numbers are in the Army at present. We have always been refused that information, the answer being that it was not in the public interest that we should be told that. I suggest that we, as Deputies representing the people, are entitled to know the number who are serving in the Army to-day. I believe it is not at all necessary that there should be the large standing Army that we have at present. Men have been taken out of remunerative employment, men who are in the Reserve, I grant you, and are serving in the Army in many cases against their will, and receiving a miserable pittance of about 50 per cent. of what they would get if left in employment.

20 per cent. in some cases.

In some cases 20 per cent., as Deputy MacEoin says. I know a number of people from my own constituency who were in very good employment, and who have been taken from their employment and put into the Army and made serve almost against their will for a miserable pittance, while their wives and children are almost on the verge of starvation. I suggest that that whole matter should be examined. We are told by the Minister for Finance that it is absolutely necessary that we should have this Budget at this stage. As I have already suggested, I do not think it is at all opportune that we should have such a Budget. We are told that we are in a war situation. Fortunately, we are neutral and, so far as I know, the whole country wants to remain neutral. The only sign of war that one can see in this country is a war on the poor and the needy, a war on the standard of living of the people least able to bear it.

When the Minister for Finance was speaking on Friday last he told us that the taxation imposed by this Budget was spread over all the people. I suggest to the Minister that that is not the case. I know quite well that every citizen in the community has to pay the taxes on sugar and other commodities mentioned in this Budget. But I think it will be apparent to everybody, so far as the imposition of the extra burden on the income-tax is concerned, that this year at least it is only a certain amount of window-dressing, because the additional tax does not come into operation until April, 1940. One is tempted to suggest that there must have been some kind of collusion between the Minister for Supplies, on behalf of the Government, and the people who control the sugar industry in this country when 1½d. per lb. was put on sugar at the beginning of the present month, because immediately after the price was increased, although it had been impossible to get sugar immediately before the increase, the Minister gave orders to have the supplies of sugar increased, and it was possible to get any supply that a person thought necessary after the increase of 1½d. was put on. Immediately after that we had the Supplementary Budget brought in, and the Government captured half the increase that had been put on sugar a few days before that. Surely the poor of the country, especially the unemployed, were badly hit enough in recent years without an impost of this kind. We all know the medical value and the nourishing value of sugar. One would have thought that the Government would have tried other means before imposing that tax on this very necessary food of the people, and especially the poor people.

The Minister for Finance on Friday last made an attack on the Labour Party especially. He reminded us that the Minister for Supplies and himself represented more workers than most members of the Labour Party. That may be so. A certain statement made by Lincoln at one time was to the effect that you can humbug some of the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but that you cannot humbug all the people all the time. If the Minister for Finance were to go to his constituency at the present time without a bodyguard of military police, and say some of the things that he said in this House on Friday last, I think he would hear a different story. He stated definitely then that the standard of living in this country is too high. That is a complete change of front so far as the Minister is concerned, because he has been telling us for years past that the standard of living here was not at all what he would like to see it.

I wonder would he suggest that the standard of living of 130,000 people who are unemployed for a considerable time is too high. I wonder what he thinks of the unfortunate people in some urban towns who have a maximum income of 17/6 a week, and of the effect that the taxes on sugar and tobacco will have on such meagre incomes.

Not content with imposing taxation which will fall very heavily on the working-classes, and especially on the unemployed, in the speech that he delivered when introducing his Budget, he announced that an Economy Committee, presided over by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, is making an examination to see what economies can be effected in the Land Commission, on unemployment assistance, on employment schemes, and housing expenditure, as well as the local loans for various services. These are the very services which, at present, give some relief to unemployed people and one would expect that the Minister and the Government would be content with imposing the taxation they have announced without further encroaching on the rights of the unemployed, by cutting down schemes that have given some measure of relief in recent years.

I think it right, at this stage, to refer to the interest charged on housing loans. Before the outbreak of war money was advanced from the Local Loans Fund at 4¾ per cent. When war broke out the English banks immediately raised the interest on loans from 2 to 4 per cent. The rate here had been 3 per cent., and it was then raised to 5 per cent. Immediately the banks raised the rate of interest the Minister for Finance raised the interest on money advanced for the building of houses by 1 per cent., making it 5¾ per cent. The amount does not look much but, after taking into consideration the subsidy given by the Government, it means an increase of 4d. per week on the rent of a house that cost £350. That is a very serious impost, especially in the case of people who were living in slum areas and were transferred to the new buildings. When the Minister was questioned about the increase in the rate of interest a couple of months ago he said it was caused by the action of the banks in raising the rate of interest. He has not the same excuse now, because the bank rate is now at the same level as when he was advancing money at 4¾ per cent.

I notice that the Economy Committee is also examining the Employment Scheme Vote. In other years local authorities were notified prior to 1st October of the amount of money that would be available for relief schemes. In a general way they are told immediately prior to the annual meetings the amounts that might be made available for that purpose during the year, and at these meetings they insist on some money being raised, through the medium of the rates, to supplement the amount that will be given by the Government, so that they might qualify to get a grant from the Government. All the local authorities, as far as I know, have struck a rate which will enable them to collect the amount of money needed for that purpose. I presume they will now have to find the amount to the extent of 100 per cent., as they may find themselves in the position that the Government will not live up to their end of the bargain. Unemployment is a very serious problem in urban areas to-day, and week after week deputations appear before the local councils asking for employment. These people want to know why certain moneys are not being spent, and have suggested that moneys had been sent down to local authorities by the Government and that they were holding it up. I think this opportunity should be taken to explain that that is not the case and that no notification has been received by these bodies from the Government concerning the amount of money that will be available for relief schemes this winter.

The Economy Committee is also examining the question of unemployment assistance. One would think at this period when food prices are soaring. and the cost of everything that the working people have to buy from day to day is increasing, that the last thing done would be to touch unemployment assistance, but that the tendency should be, that the money available should be increased rather than decreased. I sincerely hope that the Minister will not entertain any proposal made by the Economy Committee which would reduce the Vote for unemployment assistance.

There were some passages in the Minister's Budget speech which seemed to me to be absolutely provocative, in which he referred to the position of people looking to better their position in consequence of the increased cost of foodstuffs. It is all very well for the Minister to speak in that strain. While he will have a certain amount of control over those who are in the Civil Service, or employed on local services, because eventually his sanction will be required, his statement, to my mind, has done more harm than good. If I know the trade unions of this country, they are not going to take dictation from the Minister as far as that question is concerned. The trade unions here have made sacrifices, and have had to fight their way for a number of years in order to establish themselves. If they think it necessary to seek increased wages, because the price of foodstuffs has been raised, and in consequence of the fact that the Government have shown themselves incapable of dealing with that situation, no threat of the Minister will prevent them seeking what they consider to be their rights.

On the question of employment, I ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce to examine the conditions that prevail in a couple of industries in which overtime prevails. I suggest that this is not the time to permit overtime to be worked on an extensive scale in any factory or industry. I know certain industries in which men are engaged on overtime while numbers of others, capable of doing the same work, are walking the streets of their native towns idle. Under the Conditions of Employment Act, the Minister has certain powers to permit overtime in an emergency, but I suggest that that permission should not be given at present. It should not be given to enable employers to employ workers on overtime continuously, when equally capable people are walking around. I ask the Minister to pay special attention to that matter, because if he does what I suggest, he will not only be helping the unemployed, but relieving the Exchequer. There is no reason why the Exchequer should be called upon to pay unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance if work is available. The particular work I refer to should not be kept for the select few. When there is work to be done, the ordinary people should be confined to the 48-hour week. If overtime is necessary, and if men are kept working, the Minister should intervene and secure that others who are capable of doing it should get work before any overtime is allowed.

This Budget has attracted a great deal of attention, as the taxation imposed in it is most uncalled for. When we look back on the past six or seven years, we realise what money was squandered, and what millions were thrown away on so-called factories. We also begin to realise that we are dealing with a quiet and patient people. However, I think the day has come when the people realise that this is nothing more than a Government of wasters. If ever a Government suffered from a swelled head, it is the present Government. There is no question about that. If they had only realised, ten or 12 years ago, that they were only plain people, it would have been better for them, instead of this business of going around, with cheque books in their hands, from race-course to race-course. As a result of their government, the poor have become poorer, and the farmers are no longer working with a good heart, as they worked in the past, because they realise that they get no results from their work. The present Government made promises, but the people to-day want work and not promises. We got plenty of promises ten or 12 years ago, but now the people realise that they were false promises. and that the Government, which was supposed to be the poor man's friend, is now turning on the ordinary workers because they realise that the farmer can give no more.

This Budget that we are dealing with to-day proposes a tax on sugar, tobacco, beer and spirits. Now, sugar is one commodity that is needed in almost everything in life, from the baby's sucking bottle to the poor man's drink of "punch" in a sick bed. The same applies to tobacco. When a man is up against bad times, he turns to smoking to keep his mind off his troubles, but he has got to pay for that now. The same also applies to beer. I think everybody will hold that, when a hard-working man goes with his wages on a Saturday night to buy his provisions for the week, he is entitled to a few glasses of beer after a hard week's work. He will not get that now, however, unless he can afford to pay this tax. The "poor man's Government" will not allow him to do so. I could agree that this nation of ours, with the example that it got from the Government, has been living beyond its means during the past few years, but I think that a great many changes will have to take place, because the nation is going down, as we can all see with our own eyes. Everyone of us can see that with our own eyes, with the exception of those on the Front Benches of the Government, who do not wish to see it, and yet we are asked to tax the poor man.

The argument is put forward that more and more taxes must be put on to enable the country to carry on, but only a few months ago Ministers and Deputies got up here and said that they could not live on their salaries and allowances, and that it was necessary to have these allowances increased. Is not that a grand lead to give the country? In view of the present crisis, would it not be thought that these people would stand up and say: "Yes, we did increase our salaries, but now we see the desperate crisis that is facing us, and we, who are the Government, should give a lead to the people"? Why should they not stand up and declare: "We will give back that increase of salaries now, show a headline to the people, and show that we are sincere"? But no, the hypocrisy is there all along. You have all these hidden taxes and all the taxes, that the poor cannot see, that are imposed on them, but the people can see to-day that there is nothing but hypocrisy in this country and that the members of the Front Bench of our Government to-day are nothing more than hypocrites of the first class, and bare-faced hypocrites at that. They tell us that they cannot save on the different services. I say that they can save on various services. For one thing, I say that they can reduce the Army very considerably. We do not want war in this country, because, in the first place, we are not able to fight any of these great countries that are fighting in Europe at the present moment, and if you look for fight you will get plenty of it; but I say that you could easily reduce your Army, since we are a peace-loving people and do not want to get involved in any of these troubles. You could also reduce the number of officials of various Government Departments who are going up and down the country in motorcars. You could reduce the number of officials in the Land Commission, for instance. As far as I can see, it takes about 40 inspectors to divide even a small ranch, and thousands of pounds are wasted in dividing that land, and even then there is still trouble about the division. Even after the division of an estate, an application may be made for the erection of a pump on a man's holding, and then it takes about a year before that pump will be erected, and an inspector has to come down to look into the whole matter. The same applies to water and sewerage schemes. You have water and sewerage schemes put up, in the case of small towns of 100 or 150 inhabitants, at the behest of Fianna Fáil clubs who wish for a new social service, but the people there will say that they did not ask for such a scheme, and these schemes cost thousands of pounds. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are being spent on idle schemes such as these. As normal people, we should look at these matters from the common-sense point of view, and we should not ask the ordinary plain farmer, who gets no benefits from these alleged social services, to pay for all the social services that this country has to maintain.

We have had the same kind of squandermania, during the last two or three months, in connection with this Neutrality Bill. We heard quite a lot about the lights going on and the lights going out. We have two great nations at war at the moment, Germany and Britain—one shouting for lights out, and we put them out accordingly, and the other shouting for lights on, and we put them on accordingly; but all that has cost thousands of pounds for the unfortunate people who have had to make arrangements and to buy commodities to arrange for these black-outs. I think it is time to face the facts, and for the Government to try to rule this country in a really honest and Christian way. If you do that, you will get respect from the people, but you will get no respect to-day, as things are, because you are not a Government but nothing more than a gang of "besters". We saw the scandal that occurred in connection with sugar. That was brought up here. We saw where people—and even the retailing shops—could not get a pound of sugar, but yet, at the beginning of November, everybody could get sugar, but they had to pay 4½d. a lb. for it. I say that that was a scandal that should have put any Government out of office. It has not yet put the present Government out of office, and it seems that we have got to wait, but I can assure the Government that there is an infuriated people. They are infuriated with the Government that deceived them and that promised, year after year, that better times were coming. All I can say is that they are a very long time coming.

In our lifetime we have succeeded in getting Irish self-government, and we have boasted that we put the British out of this country; but what have we got in their place? We have got nothing in their place but abandoned "chancers"—men not fit to be ruling in any Irish Government. The people themselves, I admit, are a good deal to be blamed for that, because they chose the Government themselves, but their eyes were not opened. Their eyes are open now, however, and in fact I do not think that a good many of them sleep at night. This Budget is certainly one that cannot get respect from anybody, and I think that the silence of the back benchers on the Fianna Fáil side of the House is enough to let us know what they are feeling about it, but they are too cowardly to come out into the open and say what they believe. They were put there by the people to do their duty, and not to hide behind the cloak of Mr. de Valera or to come here to blindfold the people and tell deliberate lies. That is the reason for their silence.

I can tell the Government and the House that we have more unrest here in this country at the moment than we have had in the past few years. We understand that the Irish farmers are going to strike—and to my mind rightly so—because of the disabilities under which they are suffering. We have this so-called European war going on, but our Government, instead of sending over civil servants to London to deal with this matter of agricultural produce and prices, should have sent over three or four members of the Front Bench of the Government to deal with that matter—not to go with hat in hand, so to speak, but to go as representatives of the Government to find out what could be done. We see the Northern Ireland and the British farmer getting generous concessions, but what are our Irish farmers getting? We see how Britain is strangling us economically at our ports. We hear complaints from businessmen that the English will not handle Irish goods at their ports until they had handled their own. The Irish are a second-rate people, and always were, in their eyes. It is the duty of an Irish Government to let the British Government know that, though we are a poor and small people, we will not bow to them or anybody else. Rather will we fight on for 700 years more. Let members of the Irish Government go over to England and see how we stand with them. If we do not stand well with them, it is because they see that this Government is cowed. This Government has done more to damn the prospects of this country in the eyes of the world than any other Government could have done. They have sulked for seven years. It should be their duty to go over to England and to hammer out economic problems with the British, and the country should be allowed to know how the situation is being dealt with. We are told nothing, but we learn on opening the newspaper that an agreement has been made. Nobody knows who made it, when it was made or what it cost. As time goes on, things leak out and we find that a good many national principles were sold in the making of these agreements.

This Budget should be criticised. It will weigh most heavily on those unable to bear it—the poor man, the ordinary worker and the unemployed. It is a desperate state of affairs that, after 20 years of native government, we are unable to put our house in order. We have only 3,000,000 people, and we cannot rule them without imposing tax upon tax, year after year. We all know that this thing cannot last, that a crisis is looming in the not distant future, and you may see extreme sections growing up owing to infuriation with the idea that an Irish Government should bring such crushing taxation upon us. If, in the future, you have a menace from within, it will be the fault of the House, because we are not giving to the people that which is their right—a decent living, a living free from interference of prying officials who come, one after another, to the unfortunate farmer. The sheriff comes, then the land commissioner, then a weed inspector, and a host of other officials. This country is definitely being run for officials. We are all getting a fairly good time out of it, and we are not entitled to it, because we are not giving the service we should give, and the Front Bench of the Government are nothing more than a band of twisters.

The Deputy must withdraw that expression, "a band of twisters," which is not a parliamentary expression.

I suppose I will, but it is very hard to do it.

The expression must be withdrawn unreservedly.

I withdraw.

The last statement made by Deputy Giles was the truest statement he made—that he was not giving service for the good time he was having here. One would expect honesty, at least, from Deputies who speak of hypocrisy. Deputy Giles attacked the increases in Deputies' salaries. When that Bill was before the House Deputy Giles spoke in favour of it and voted for it.

He certainly did.

Then he comes along afterwards to condemn it. That is like every other suggestion we have heard from over there. A Bill is introduced to provide extra social services, for looking after the poor and doing the things that, when Deputies over there were on these benches, they did not do —building houses which Deputies on the opposite benches left unbuilt, and so forth. When proposals of that kind were before the House, Deputies opposite praised them, blessed them, voted for them and wanted more, but they do not want to pay for any of them. That is the whole difficulty.

At the commencement of this war, it was hoped that prices would be kept under control. A short time ago, I remember putting forward proposals on behalf of tillage farmers for increase of prices for wheat and beet this year. We were asked if the farmers were going to be the people to start inflation. It was pointed out that it would mean increased prices all round. On that account, these proposals were not pressed. What do we find? We find that, having got the wheat and beet crops at pre-war prices, the prices are raised. The Sugar Company gets roughly on this ¾d. increase in the neighbourhood of £700,000. I said here previously that a company which was entrusted with providing a vital necessary for this country and which failed in that duty should no longer be entrusted with it. We had statements from Deputies opposite during the past few years that the beet factories should be wiped out and that no more beet should be grown. Taking the figures of the Minister for Supplies as correct, if the beet factories were not there, the public would be paying £1,750,000 more for sugar this year than the farmers are getting for it. If we had Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture the public would now be paying £1,750,000 extra. That is on the basis that the farmers are this year supplying roughly 60,000 tons of sugar and that the Sugar Company, allowing for manufacturing costs, can sell that sugar at 3d. per lb. The price of sugar is 4½d. I am not objecting to the tax on sugar. I say that if social services are to be kept on— and it is our duty to carry on the social services—the people must be prepared to pay for them.

It is the duty and the responsibility of the Government (1) to see that this country is properly protected, and (2) to see what provision can be made for meeting the cost of government here. That is their duty and their responsibility. If they do unpopular things, well and good, they are unpopular; but when it comes to £700,000 more being paid for inefficiency, incompetency and mismanagement, I say, Sir, that last February and March it was pointed out to the Sugar Company that the price of beet for last year was not economic, and that they would not get their full acreage.

The Deputy seems to be anticipating two motions dealing with the price of sugar, and I think his remarks would be more appropriately reserved until they come up for discussion.

I am dealing with the extra cost of living.

The Deputy is making particular reference to sugar. Perhaps he does not advert to the fact that these two motions have to be dealt with.

We must only take our chance as we get it.

I would like if the Deputy would come on to taxation.

I will not press further, A Leas Chinn Comhairle, but I will call attention to that fact and point out that it has a very serious effect. When the farmers asked an economic price from the Sugar Company last year, they considered that the price they were offering was sufficient to get a 12-months' supply of sugar. Owing to their miscalculation—to say the least of it—the public has now to pay to the tune of £700,000. Anybody who is not an idiot would have known, from last April to September, that there was going to be a war. Still, these people, responsible for an essential supply, made no provision for a war; they put in no stocks of sugar for a war, and left the country to pay the piper now to the tune of £700,000. I am not going to deal further with the matter at the moment, but would like to call attention to a few other matters.

In my opinion, a tax should have been placed on cinemas and places of amusement. It would not have hit the poor so much, and it would have brought revenue from those who can afford to go to those places of amusement. I would also suggest a tax on cosmetics; I think it would be very advisable to tax lipstick and face powders. When we, country boys, come up here and see 90 per cent. of the ladies in this noble City of Dublin painted and powdered, we think they could much more easily afford to bear the burden than the agricultural labourer can afford to pay extra for his ounce of tobacco.

There is no use in pretending that we can hold wages at their present level. This week-end I briefly went into the budget of one of my workmen, and I found that he will have to pay out of his very meagre pittance somewhere around 7/- a week extra—7/- a week more than he had to pay on the 1st September last. The ordinary agricultural labourer with 27/- a week, and a wife and family to support out of that, knows that that 7/- a week is a lot to him. That 7/- a week will, in my opinion, have to be met by increased wages, and that increase, together with the increased cost of production to the farmer, will have to be passed on. There is, therefore, no use in living in a fool's paradise in this respect. There is no use in expecting that the unemployed man can live on the 14/- a week he was expected to live on previously. He cannot do it, and there is no use in pretending that he can.

I hope these matters will be realised. I want, as far as I can, to be fair to everybody. This Budget and the increased cost of commodities since the war started are undoubtedly hitting the ordinary worker fairly hard. We are expected—for farmers are all workers —to endeavour to keep some kind of a controlled price. It cannot be done. They can have some kind of control in Britain, but Britain is a different country altogether. The farmer in Britain to-day finds his cost of feeding-stuffs pegged down: maize is £6 a ton, which is the controlled price there; the British Government pays the difference. It is the same way with every other class of feeding-stuffs. Can we expect the farmer in this country to produce bacon, paying somewhere in the neighbourhood of £11 a ton for maize meal, and sell it at a price fixed by the British Food Control Board on a basis of £6 a ton for maize? You cannot do it, and there is no use in pretending that you can. The price we must get from Britain for our products must be based—and definitely based— on the cost of production here, not on the cost of production over there, where Britain is subsidising foodstuffs.

I cannot find out if the ordinary worker in this country, be he farmer or farm labourer, is expected to suffer something by the war. I cannot find out where the control comes in on the merchants and the rest of those people. I gave last week, I think, certain information here to the Minister for Supplies in connection with a gentleman in Macroom who had amassed 30 tons of sugar owing to the manner in which the Sugar Company distributed that very essential commodity. I asked if there was any way of dealing with hoarding or any power of entry and search, and was told that there was not. I asked if there was any penalty for that offence and was told that there was none at all. If there are to be sacrifices in this country in this period let them be made by everybody. Let the rich man make sacrifices as well as the poor man. Let us not have the position in which merchants in Cork City, and, I suppose, in every other city and town in the country, are drawing money out of feeding stuff which they never see, and never even look at. For instance, some time ago, millers were given a licence for wheat flakes which had to pass through the hands of the maize millers. They simply passed them through their hands, but they did so with from 8/- to 10/- a ton and, in some cases, nearly a £1 a ton on them. If my information is correct, they went direct from the flour millers to the merchants, but the maize miller's name had to be tacked on to them and the maize miller charged from 8/- to 10/- a ton for the loan of his name. It is time that kind of thing stopped definitely. If the people of this country are going to be asked to make sacrifices, let the sacrifices be levelled all round, and let us stop this kind of wretched work.

And start with the millers.

I will deal with Deputy Linehan in a moment.

Start with the millers. You have forsaken them at long last.

It is not a question of the millers. The position, so far as the miller was concerned, was that he had to guarantee that this article would be sold ex-mill at a definite price. Unfortunately, owing to the machinery set up, it had to pass through the maize miller first, then to the merchant and, finally, to the retailer, and each one of the thieves put their own slap on to it, and each one of the thieves knocked more out in a day than would pay an unemployed man for three months. The majority of them never even saw it.

Better sack the Prices Commission after that.

As I say, it went direct from the millers to the merchant. The maize miller never saw the stuff at all, but the maize miller had to be used in the machine, and he charged 8/- or 10/- a ton for his name.

Mr. Brenann

Who set up that machine?

I can assure the Deputy it was not he, because any machine that Deputy Brennan set up would be such a wreck that it would not move. However, that is the position we have to remedy, and the sooner those things are dealt with, the better for everybody concerned. There is no use in our surrounding ourselves with a paper wall or a glass house, and saying that prices will have to remain at their pre-war level, and on the other hand, that the worker will have to work for a pre-war wage. He cannot do it; it is a physical impossibility. The agricultural labourer in this country was the worst paid man in the nation because he found himself in the position of having to work for a master who is getting "dang all" himself. I expect by the time this war is over, there will be a little bit of change and if it lasts three or four years, as I expect it will, it will do one good job anyway. It will get rid of the civil servants because we will not be able to pay them, and I am sure they will not stop too long for nothing. If we are going to see the end of this war without being bankrupt, we will have to get rid altogether of the British system of Civil Service.

Do not blame the Civil Service.

I am not speaking of the individuals; I am speaking of the system which was brought from a manufacturing country and put on the backs of an agricultural community, and which they cannot bear. The sooner that is realised by everybody, the better.

That is something better than accusing the Civil Service.

I am not accusing the individuals, although the only truth I heard from Deputy Giles was his statement that when something goes into a Department, you do not know when it is going to come out. I have seen Deputies opposite, who have spent the last two days howling about the cost of living, going the length of trying to throw out the Government a short time ago in order to increase the salaries of civil servants. Deputy Linehan was one of the leaders, one of the high priests, in that job.

And I did not forsake the millers. Accuse them of being thieves now, as you accused the others.

That effort by the Deputies opposite failed.

I do not think it is fair to attack civil servants who have not an opportunity of defending themselves.

The Deputy has not attacked any individuals. I think he is making general charges.

The Deputy does not want to attack the Government, so he attacks the Civil Service.

Deputy Hickey seems to be rather troubled about it, but I say this much to him, and I say it honestly, that the money which is being spent is being spent unwisely, in my opinion——

By whom?

——in keeping up one of the legacies left to us by Deputy Coburn's Government when they were kicked out.

By the Government of which the Deputy is a member.

It is being spent unwisely in keeping up one of the legacies left to us by the Deputy's Government when they were kicked out.

So far as I am concerned, I was never in a Government. I was elected on my own, and would to-morrow be elected on my own personality, without any Party. If the Deputy set up that republic which he told us he set up, he would settle all these grievances.

We would settle a lot of things if we had a few of you settled. I suggest to Deputy Hickey that the extra money spent on these people would be far better spent in increasing the dole for the unemployed, in finding some work for them, or in increasing the amenities of the poor. After all, if we had not to find the money, we would not have to put on a tax to get it.

I do not for one moment believe that the Civil Service is swallowing any excess money in this country.

I advise Deputy Hickey to get that little bible called the Book of Estimates and have a look at it.

Did the Deputy ever vote against one of the Estimates?

Repeatedly.

Not for the last seven years.

I am tired of calling attention to them. If we are to enable this country to survive and to carry on, we will have to start, and I suggest we start there and go right through. There is no use in pretending that a man with 14/- a week can continue to live on 14/- a week, and there is no use in expecting my farm labourer to continue to work at 27/- a week when he has to pay 7/- and 8/- extra for the necessaries of life. He cannot do it. Those are the matters about which we must get down to brass tacks.

We heard a lot from the Minister for Industry and Commerce recently in regard to industries which were being mismanaged. I suggest now that he evidently had some experience of the Sugar Company last year, for he was kind enough on one occasion to allude to the political farmers who were endeavouring to drag an extra price——

The management of the Sugar Company does not arise on the Budget.

I am pleased to see that the Deputy realises that.

I was only making a remark in passing on the increased cost of living, portion of which has been caused by the mismanagement of this particular company.

The management of the company does not arise.

But the ¾d. per lb. does, unfortunately, arise.

The Deputy has risen and, I presume, desires to remain on his feet.

I do not intend, A Chinn Comhairle, to delay the House further, because I have dealt with all I wanted to deal with. I suggest that in future Deputies condemning increases of salary should look at the Division List first and see whether they have already voted for what they are now speaking against.

This, I think, is the worst Budget that has ever been introduced in this House. It is one that is going to try the people of the country very severely, and they have been at full stretch trying to meet the burdens imposed by previous Budgets. I do not say that some increase in expenditure was not inevitable, but certainly it was not necessary to impose such a large increase in taxation in connection with neutrality. Judging by what we have heard about these neutrality measures, it would pay us to go to war rather than preserve neutrality in this country. It is ridiculous to suggest that the maintenance of neutrality should be so expensive, or that there was any necessity to increase our small forces. If any big nation wanted to attack us, I do not think the preparations we have made are going to make any difference at all. The worst feature about the Budget is that the people, after being taxed to full capacity year after year for the last seven years, find themselves now not in a position to meet these further increases in taxation. Everybody has taken alarm at it. The people are in serious difficulty down the country, and there are going to be privations amongst a lot of them. The cumulative effect of the last seven years of over-taxation and squandermania in every Department of the State is bearing so heavily on the people now that they are unable to meet this extra burden which is being imposed upon them— imposed in such a manner that no section, even the very poorest section, of the people can escape it.

The policy that has been pursued here for the last seven years was to upset every industry and every institution that was functioning properly and that was standing on its own feet, and to replace such industries and institutions with others which imposed an extra and unnecessary burden on the country. Old officials who were discharging their duties properly were paid off in order to make room for other men, new men—in short, to find jobs. That has been the policy of the Government. They have started industry after industry that has gone, such as the industrial alcohol industry, briquettes, and others of a similar kind. All these things count. The taxpayers' money has been put into these industries, and they have turned out a very unsound investment. Industries that were paying their way, that were the sources of all taxation in the country, that provided exports by which we were able to purchase our imports, out of which we were able to help other new industries that were being established, have been so injured and weakened that they are unable to carry on. They are now, so to speak, on the dole themselves and they need assistance from the Government. The Government is unable to give that assistance because the taxpayer is no longer able to meet even the ordinary burdens imposed upon him. That is the position in which we are left to face this crisis.

It is very difficult now, I admit, to do much to improve the position. Whatever was possible, the Government has not made any serious attempt to relieve or improve the situation. It is not now that the Government should have made some effort to bring down expenditure and to relate it in some way to the ability of the taxpayers of this country to bear it. They should have been doing that for a number of years past. Instead, they were digging their hands deeper and deeper into the unfortunate taxpayers' pocket, until now they find that there is nothing to get there. I am afraid the Minister for Finance will find that he will be very short of his estimate of the amount of revenue he will be able to scoop in this time. The sources from which revenue has been raised are diminishing from year to year. Some of them are doomed to disappear altogether in the very near future, and the Minister knows that very well. Some sources of taxation that should have been closed long ago —revenue that might have been collected years ago and that is being collected now in order to balance the Budget—are disappearing, and in the very near future they will disappear altogether. The position, therefore, is becoming more serious.

The Minister told us about the very straightforward, honest statement he made to the House, but I have examined his Budget speech very closely, and I cannot find any evidence of that straightforward, honest, full statement, because, while he told us about what he expected the revenue to fall short of in the present financial year, he did not tell us what the increase in expenditure was to be. He only told us that it would be very heavy. He gave us four items on which expenditure would increase very much. He told us that the total cost of these and other measures necessitated by the war would be very heavy. He did not tell us the total amount involved, so that we do not know how far we are likely to fall short of balancing the Budget for this financial year. We do know that there will be a very wide margin between expenditure and revenue at the end of the year, and I am afraid that it will be higher than the Minister is estimating at the moment.

The Minister also told us in his Budget statement that, in comparison with other small countries, expenditure in this country is very low. That may be. In fact, I am sure it is so—that expenditure in connection with defence is very low in this country, because we have really no defence. Why should there be large expenditure when we have practically no defence as compared with other countries? In my opinion, taxation here is very high in comparison with other countries. The Minister should keep taxation low in keeping with our low expenditure on defence, but the Minister and his colleagues have not taken steps to do that.

There is another matter, and it is that the Government have not taken steps to see that the prices we get for our principal products would bear some relation to the heavy burden that is imposed upon our people. As other Deputies have pointed out, not one of our Ministers has gone across to the other side to try to make an advantageous settlement with Great Britain. I think our Ministers should have done that, because Great Britain, in the present crisis, should be, and must be, as much concerned with production here as we are. If the Minister or some of his colleagues had gone over and put that point strongly to the British Ministers, there is scarcely any doubt that Ministers on the other side, in their own interests, would be prepared to offer such prices as would encourage production here, because it is really as much to their interest as it is to ours that production should be increased here, since they are the only people that we can sell our surplus produce to. They require all that we can produce.

With regard to sugar, we have been told again and again in this House that the retail price of it is 4½d. per lb. It has been pointed out, and the Minister has given no satisfactory answer, that the wholesale price of sugar in some parts of the country is practically 4½d. per lb. All the profit that a wholesaler has on 2 cwts. of sugar, selling it at 4½d. per lb. is 1/-. That profit would not pay for the paper bags it goes out in. Does the Minister suppose that retailers down the country, in our small villages, can afford to spend their time weighing out sugar, bagging it and selling it at what is practically cost price to them? It is ridiculous to suggest that the retail price is 4½d. It is being sold at 5d. and 5½d. The retailers cannot sell it at less than 5d. In my district some are selling it at 5½d. and the rest at 5d. None of them can afford to sell it at less than 5d. unless they are prepared to work for nothing. Surely, nobody expects them to do that. The Minister should keep his word on this, and see that every part of the country will get sugar at the price he promised, namely 4½d.

The county I have the honour to represent gets no benefit at all from the sugar factories because no beet is grown there. Why should we be compelled to pay a ½d. or 1d. in the lb. more for our sugar than the people here in the City of Dublin or in the districts where the sugar factories are planted? I put it to the Minister that he should see that a flat rate operates with regard to sugar, and that it be delivered to merchants in all parts of the country at a price that will enable them to retail it at 4½d. per lb. The Minister has promised again and again that he would do that.

The Minister, when speaking in the House on Friday last, said that some of his colleagues and himself get more Labour votes in the City of Dublin than the members of the Labour Party. I have no doubt they do, and in consequence they have tried perhaps to give to the labour people in Dublin a standard of living that they have always denied to people of a similar class down the country. Perhaps that is why the Minister and his colleagues have got so many labour votes in Dublin. But I would remind the Minister and his colleagues that, while as Deputies they are entitled to do the best they can for their constituents, as Ministers they are not Ministers for any particular constituency but for the 26 counties of Eire. They should do what is fair and just as between one section and another of the people. They are not doing that.

It is no use for the Minister, or other Ministers, to get up and tell the House what they know is not true. The people in the rural districts are not getting anything like fair treatment. They are treated as beasts of burden for the rest of the community. They have gone through a very serious time during the last seven years. The Government should have taken steps to see, when the economic war was finished, that the people in the rural districts would get justice. Farmers and farm labourers, and everybody dependent on them, are all treated as an inferior type of people, and get no consideration and no justice whatever. The Government got an opportunity a long time ago to have a discussion on this. I know this is not the time to bring it up. The Government got an opportunity to discuss this in full, to go into the whole matter, but they are trying to avoid a discussion on it. They are running away from it and do not want to discuss it. They are afraid of the shadow of their own injustice staring them in the face. They are afraid to defend their action because they know it is indefensible.

The Minister for Supplies, the other day, talked about rotten politics. I want to say that there is no rotten politics on this side of the House. Deputies on this side are entitled to criticise this Budget because it is a very serious Budget. We are criticised very strongly by our people down the country when we meet them. They complain that we are not doing more and say that we should criticise it in much stronger terms than we have been doing. I think that in all the circumstances we could not offer much stronger criticism than we are offering. Nevertheless, our people are very dissatisfied, and say that we are as much to blame as the Government for letting these things go on. What can we do? It certainly is not rotten Party politics to discuss this rotten Budget.

Hear, hear!

If the Minister and his colleagues want to know where rotten Party politics is to be found they will find it in their attempt to run away from discussing the problems that concern the people of this country, problems that the people are entitled to have discussed here by their representatives. The Party on the Government Front Bench are running away from discussing those problems and cannot attribute action of that kind to Deputies on this side of the House. The Party opposite are the people who are stooping to rotten Party tactics. I am sorry to have to say that because I would much rather see all Parties in the House pulling together in trying to solve the difficulties of this country in the serious crisis in which it finds itself at the moment.

As this was the Minister's first Budget I should have liked to have been in the position to offer him some words of congratulation and encouragement in what was obviously the very difficult task which he had to perform. I regret that I cannot do so. The Minister is usually most genial; most courteous, most pleasant and good-humoured. I think the solution is to be found not in the Minister but in the action of the Government. I think the Government have come to the conclusion that they would put into the front rank to carry their burden on this occasion the most genial member of the Executive Council. So far as the idiom of the Budget statement is concerned, so far as the beautiful English it contains and the method by which it was brought to the notice of the House are concerned, I have nothing but the highest praise and congratulation to offer to the Minister. In fact, he did his job extremely well in covering up like sugar-coated pills, as one might say, the evils that were in the Budget itself. We on this side of the House have been twitted with not facing up to the facts on the question of expenditure and revenue.

I quite appreciate if the country is to be run on a proper basis the Government have to find the money to run it. If there is a gap between expenditure and revenue that gap has got to be bridged by additional taxation. But so far as the Government are concerned they have asked us to take it as an accepted fact that this additional expenditure is necessary. They have asked us to point to one or other service in respect of which expenditure could be decreased. Before I come to that there is one service to which in particular I will draw attention. I would like just to say a word on the question or method of raising taxes at the outset. Granted that the expenditure is necessary—but in this case I do not admit it—there is no other way in which the Minister could have raised the taxes except in the way he chose. Taxation will always come back to the poor man, who has to pay whether it is by direct tax, especially by such a tax as that on sugar or things of that kind. It comes back to the poor man, who will have to pay for this extra expenditure. I would not quarrel with the taxes which the Minister has imposed if in the circumstances this tax happened to be necessary. The Labour Party have been challenged because they voted against an increase in the income-tax. I think the Labour Party were quite right. I have always held the view that any person who by inherited wealth or by reason of the fact that he was in a position to earn a large income should contribute equitably to the public expenditure by way of taxation. But once the income-tax goes beyond one-fourth of one's income, that is, 5/- in the £, then the Government is indirectly putting people out of employment. They are taking away from the prospective employers the possibility of their being able to give employment. I will say that, so far as the method of the Government in getting in money is concerned, there is no way out of it. There is no reason why they should not get their money but, first of all, the question arises about the necessity for this large increase in the taxation. We on this side of the House have been asked what services should be cut down. We unhesitatingly say that the Army should.

On every Army Vote here while I have been in the House I have opposed the Estimates because of their size. I am aware that ever since this State came into being we have had an Army. We have had a magnificent Army. Viewing that Army on the parade and at the manoeuvres, I was proud of it. During the past 16 or 17 years we have asked ourselves what was the object of this Army. We have asked why were we to pay over £1,250,000 a year for the support of that Army. The answer was because at some time or other that Army would have to perform some effective service for the State. Possibly apart from having to keep order in the State, the function of the Army was that when an emergency arose it would be ready to step into the breach, take over and perform certain functions, such as watching the coast, and so on. I submit that it was not necessary to increase the size of the Army. For years we were spending about £1,250,000 a year on it. The amount varied a little from year to year until 1938-1939, when the Vote went up to £2,000,000. The object of voting that money was that when an emergency arose the Army would be there to take over. But what do we find? That at the end of that period we have a Vote for the year 1939-1940 of a sum amounting to £3,252,000, and that at a time when no war had broken out—when war had only been anticipated. Now I submit that every penny spent on the Army is money lost. It brings no return to the community. Of that sum of £3,252,000 on the Estimate for 1939-40, a sum of £1,121,000 was in respect of the purchase of warlike stores and in anticipation of a war emergency. Anyone who studies the Army Estimates must realise that additional expenditure was there and, of course, in order to meet that additional expenditure additional taxes were necessary. But we are entitled to ask ourselves why did we actually spend in the year 1937-38, £1,500,000 on the Army: in 1936-37, £1,373,000; and in 1935-36, £1,339,000? Why did we do that if the Army was no good to do its job, when it had a job to do? Why, at that time, should it have become necessary to go to the taxpayer and ask for £3,000,000 odd for the Army? The present Estimate for this year, 1939-40, should be about £1,250,000. If that were so, we would be saving nearly £2,000,000 and, in addition, there would be no need for this Supplementary Budget. That was one way of having dealt with this emergency. What happened was that we lost our heads at the commencement of the war. That is what happened as far as I can see.

The men directing affairs lost their heads. They felt jealous apparently that we were left out of the war. We were behaving in the matter of the Army in every way as if we were right in the theatre of war, and, I will add, we were behaving very much to our own detriment. We started with black-outs; we mobilised our troops; we imposed restrictions on people coming into and people going out of the country. Everything we did was read with keenness and eagerness in the United States of America. All that happened in face of the fact that everyone should have realised the great opportunity that lay before this country. Everyone must have realised that here was a neutral State. They must have realised that it was the terminal connection between Europe and America. Everyone must have realised that it was the terminal for American ships coming into Northern Europe. But what did we do? We blacked-out and we created the impression in the United States of America that we were part of the belligerent zone. Now, as a result of having created that impression, we have been excluded by the Americans from the neutral zone. No American ship can come into our waters. The result of that is that we have lost millions of pounds in this cutting off of shipping that was coming to our doors. Now that it is too late, the Government have recognised their mistake. They have taken off the black-out restrictions, but in the meantime the people have spent a lot of money in complying with the Government's requirements, and we have been put in the war zone so far as the United States is concerned. We have only ourselves to blame for that. If we had behaved with some sort of reason and commonsense, and had waited—the ball was at our feet—the City of Cork and the port of Cobh would have been a Southampton or a Liverpool so far as the United States was concerned. Instead, we went around playing at war, mobilising the reserves and blacking-out the country.

So far as my own constituency is concerned, I want to know whether there is anyone at all in this Irish Army, for which we have been paying during the last 15 years, who is capable of watching the coast? All over the coast of Wexford there are people who have been put there to watch the waves like King Canute in the days of old. Those people are being paid out of the taxpayers' money. So that they will not be lonely or get lost there is another gentleman going around on a motor bicycle, using up petrol. Could not some member of the Irish Army whom we have been paying all these years perform that simple function? I do not like to think that the Government does not wish this country to be considered really neutral. I suggest that they should take time by the forelock; that they should get our Minister in the United States to impress upon the American Government that we are really neutral in this conflict, and will flood-light our country if necessary if it will bring American ships here and make our ports terminal ports.

Another way in which we could economise is by cutting down the number of inspectors. It is all very well to have our eggs clean and our butter in a nice condition and so on, but I think that, for the sake of economy, we could do without a few of the inspectors. After all, the great agricultural tradition of this country and the skill of the people were built up before those inspectors were ever heard of. I have nothing against the individual inspectors; I know they do their jobs very well, but we have to make some sacrifice for the public good, and I suggest that we could do without a few of those inspectors.

The State, in the preparation of its Budget, is in the same position as a family sitting down to work out their annual expenditure. What would we think of a family with slender resources who, feeling jealous of their neighbours who lived in larger houses, insisted upon budgeting far beyond their means? That is what the Government is doing at the present time. You cannot tax people beyond their capacity, and that is what the Government are seeking to do.

I know there are other Deputies who wish to speak before the conclusion of this debate, and I do not wish to delay the House any longer. I should like again to impress on the Government that they should try to reduce the Army expenditure. I have only one further remark to make. I regard the attitude of the Government and of the Minister for Finance in connection with the financial position of this country and the taxing of the citizens of this country as being properly illustrated by a little incident which happened in the 16th century, if I may be allowed to refer to it. It will not take very long. The Duke of Alba had been in the Low Countries and had been guilty of a great many atrocities there, having inflicted many indignities on the citizens. They remonstrated by deputation to Phillip of Spain who was then monarch of the Low Countries. Amongst other things they objected to the execution of many of their leading citizens. Phillip of Spain, in his reply to the Burghers of the Low Countries, stated that so far as this grievance and that grievance were concerned be would readily do something for them, but, so far as chopping off the heads of their leading citizens was concerned, he regarded that as a mere pleasantry. I think the Government regards the taxation of the people of this country in a somewhat similar vein—as a mere pleasantry.

Mr. Brennan

I had the privilege of listening to the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, during the course of this discussion. I listened as attentively as I could for some case to be made to the House in justification of this Supplementary Budget. So far, whatever has been said, there has been no attempt in my opinion to justify the Budget, or to justify the taxation upon the particular articles which have been singled out for taxation. In addition, we listened to Deputy Corry to-night, and previous to him we heard Deputy Childers. Deputy Childers, I think, is a good student of current affairs and a good student of politics. I remember hearing Deputy Childers speak in this House not very long ago, and he made what I consider a very original speech.

I considered that he had at least thought out the matter; that he had consulted the various statistics; that he had consulted in particular the statistics relating to trade and shipping and all the other matters that have so closely affected the position of this country for the last few years. Considering all that, I was amazed to hear Deputy Childers to-night say that in his opinion the financial and economic position of this country left us at least without any fear of going under in the present situation; that, in fact, we were in an ideal state, even for further taxation.

Deputy Corry does not think that. As a matter of fact, I think the most shocking criticism of any Government I ever heard came from Deputy Corry to-night. We heard Deputy McGilligan here the other night say that he certainly would not agree to any taxation being put upon sugar or tobacco or beer until the pockets of those who had been held by Government Commissions to have plundered this country—that is the flour millers and the bacon curers— were first emptied. Deputy Corry has added to that to-night. He has brought in the maize millers, the maize sellers, the maize importers and the Sugar Company, and I think Deputy Corry is right. I am sorry the Deputy is not in the House at the moment. He seems to have his knife in the civil servants; at least, I believe the Labour Party thought he had. I do not exactly know whether he has or not. The peculiar thing about it is that it was pointed out here to-night from Government figures that in one Government Department alone—that is the Department of Industry and Commerce —since Deputy Corry and his colleagues sat on those benches as the Government, the personnel employed had increased from 300 odd to 600 odd. Yet, Deputy Corry comes into this House and treats us to a tirade against civil servants. Year in and year out, every time the Estimates came up, we have tried to point out to the Government the appalling increase in expenditure on administration. As far as I possibly could, on every occasion I spoke on those Estimates, I myself have drawn the Government's attention to that. Take, for instance, the Department of Agriculture. Agricultural profitable production—the price that the people got—dropped from 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1929 by over 50 per cent., and yet the cost of the administration of the Department of Agriculture went up two-fold or threefold. It is no wonder that Deputy Corry would complain; the pity is that he does not complain in the right place.

We had from the Minister for Finance the other night figures with regard to the sugar tax in the years 1925, 1926, 1927 and 1928, and bringing them up to date. I think that, in mentioning those figures, relative figures would be those showing the incomes which the people had in those days, so that we would be able to find out what the strength of the backs of the people was at that time, as compared with to-day, to carry the burden. We had the Minister for Industry and Commerce speaking here the other night on this particular matter. I rarely have sympathy with the Government, but I had sympathy with the Government that night; I had sympathy with the Government when I heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the former Minister for Finance, endeavouring to make a case for the Government. It was really humiliating, the type of case the Minister for Industry and Commerce endeavoured to make for the present taxation.

The same Minister has lucid periods, and occasionally he gives expression to ideas which are largely the ideas that have come from the benches on this side of the House during the last seven years. One of these occasions was when he made a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Dublin. On that occasion, if we are apt to put a right meaning upon the words we read in the ordinary papers, the Dublin daily papers, we came to the conclusion that the Minister was convinced that there was only one staple thing in this country, and that was agriculture; that everything depended upon the profitable earnings of agriculture, and that any attempts that were made to establish industries without due regard to that were futile; in fact, that there had been brought into being some industries that should never have been started here. That is true, and that was always the viewpoint of the late Minister for Agriculture. No matter what Bill was brought into this House, he always inquired what would be the reactions on agriculture.

Apparently, that is now the conviction of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. If that is his conviction, and if it is the conviction of the Government, how can they justify the increases in taxation over the last seven years, having regard to the income of agriculture, and how can they justify the further burden which they are now placing upon the country, mainly upon agriculture, because that is the basis of the Minister's statement? When they make a comparison between the taxation on any particular article like sugar between the years 1926-27 and 1937-8-9, it ought to have relation to the incomes in the same period. I am relying again on the lucid period of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he made the speech to the Chamber of Commerce, and I am going to give the figures which the agricultural community had by way of income on one item alone, live animals, during these years, as compared with the present time. In 1926 there were exported from this country live animals to the value of £18,000,000; in 1927, £18,000,000; 1928, £19,000,000: 1929, £20,000,000; 1930, £21,000,000. Coming to later years, there were exported in 1934 live animals to the value of £6,000,000; in 1935, £7,000,000; 1936, £8,000,000, and 1937, £9,000,000. These are the figures that I got out of the Government publication, "Trade and Shipping".

There is a good picture of the decreasing wealth of the people of the country. If we are going to have in this country an Army, and if we are going to have the charges of that Army increasing, the people are entitled to know why. They ought to be told it, but they have not been. If a crisis occurs, it is the duty of all citizens to stand behind the Government, but they are entitled to be taken into the confidence of the Government, and that has not been done. It is very hard for the people to have confidence in the present Government, because the Government have not yet realised that it is an essential condition towards compliance with the law and Government effort to establish confidence. If they did realise that, we would not have the situation developing as it has developed. For instance, quite recently, when this House was called together in haste, the Minister for Supplies stated that there was then a two-years' supply of wheat and flour in this country. That was a definite statement, and it is to be found in the official record. The following week in the Seanad the leader of the Government Party there, Senator Quirke, questioned that such a statement was ever made. He said that the Minister never made such a statement. That is to be found in the records of the Seanad. When we met here after that we had the Minister for Agriculture telling us that there was at least a seven months' supply of wheat and flour in this country. That is the way the Government are trying to establish confidence.

Then we had a reference to the sugar supply, and the Minister for Supplies told us there was no shortage of sugar or cement; he could assure the Deputies on the opposite side that there was no shortage, and the following week, at the beginning of November, all wholesalers would get their normal supplies of sugar and cement. If there was an enormous supply of sugar then forthcoming, the Government are even more guilty, because they allowed those people to hold up the sugar until it increased in price. A peculiar thing about the situation was that while a woman could not get 2 lbs. of sugar at 3½d. a lb., immediately the price was increased she could get a ton of sugar at 4½d. a lb. I wonder who was behind that? That was happening at a time when the Government ought to be all out to create that confidence which is necessary to get through a crisis. When Deputy Flinn was speaking here a while ago, one wondered if there was going to be any attempt made by the Government to inform Deputies, Parliamentary Secretaries or Ministers of the absolute necessity there is at the present time to create confidence, because if any speech could have gone further than Deputy Flinn's to create lack of confidence, I would be surprised.

We on this side of the House are quite prepared to stand in and do our part with the Government in any crisis, but we expect the Government will do their part, and the country expects it, and the Government must be prepared to tell the country exactly where they stand, to tell the country exactly why it is necessary to have this extra taxation, and why it was necessary to have that further £7,000,000 taxation which they have imposed since they came into office. They have had all that to play with.

After all, the Government got into their present position by offering to reduce taxation by £2,000,000. Look at what they have created in this country—look at the enormous losses which the farming community suffered during the economic war. Then we are told here to-day by Deputy Childers that enormous benefit has accrued to the people by the settlement of that question. Apparently it seems to run in the minds of some people that all you have got to do is to create some kind of conflict, settle the conflict and then claim success. That is not so.

If the Government is going to enforce further taxation upon this country that further taxation can only be borne out of further profitable production. What has the Government been doing towards achieving further profitable production? What has the Government done at any time for profitable production? They have turned the attention of the people of this country as far as they possibly could from profitable production and they have pursued a haphazard industrial policy in this country in the interests of self-sufficiency. Immediately the war came and immediately that we were thrown into a position of isolation, to some extent, the policy of self-sufficiency went sky-high and then we became, in the words of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, people with a dependent economy. It took a crisis to get the Government to see that. Now we are faced with a crisis. We are faced with a new Budget. We are faced with new taxation, and the people who are singled out for taxation are the people who smoke tobacco, the people who use sugar, and the people who drink beer. In to-night's paper there is a report of a meeting of the Dublin Corporation at which somebody said that the present Government claim to be the poor man's Government. It is. They will have everybody poor in this country before long.

If we are going to have increased taxation, if we are going to have increased burdens, the Government ought to have made an earnest endeavour to have increased production, and increased production of a nature that would return profit to the people. What have they done for the people? We are faced now with a problem. We want to produce more in order to bear this burden; we have to produce more in order to pay our way and we find, with all our talk of producing more and of increased tillage, that we have no manure to manure the crops. There is the Government that comes along lightly and airily, to-day, to ask the people to bear increased burdens. They ought to put their own house in order first. They ought to have the money to carry on. They have inflicted taxation enough. They have collected enough. If they have not got it at the present time they ought to make the economics to find the money. The increased taxation is unjustified and, as far as we on this side of the House are concerned, we are going to oppose it.

Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 69; Níl, 51.

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Allen, Denis.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Boland, Patrick.
  • Bourke, Dan.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Breen, Daniel.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Buckley, Seán.
  • Carty, Frank.
  • Childers, Erskine H.
  • Cleary, Mícheál.
  • Cooney, Eamonn.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Crowley, Tadhg.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Flinn, Hugo V.
  • Fiynn, John.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Fogarty, Patrick J.
  • Friel, John.
  • Fuller, Stephen.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Hogan, Daniel.
  • Humphreys, Francis.
  • Kelly, James P.
  • Kelly, Thomas.
  • Kennedy, Michael J.
  • Kissane, Eamon.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick J.
  • Loughman, Francis.
  • Lynch, James B.
  • McCann, John.
  • McDevitt, Henry A.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • Meaney, Cornelius.
  • Moore, Séamus.
  • Moran, Michael.
  • Morrissey, Michael.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • Mullen, Thomas.
  • Munnelly, John.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Loghlen, Peter J.
  • O'Beilly, Matthew.
  • O'Bourke, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Rice, Brigid M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Martin.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Victory, James.
  • Walsh, Laurence J.
  • Walsh, Richard.
  • Ward, Conn.

Níl

  • Bennett, George C.
  • Benson, Ernest E.
  • Brasier, Brooke.
  • Brennan, Michael.
  • Broderick, William J.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Browne, Patrick.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Byrne, Alfred.
  • Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
  • Coburn, James.
  • Cole, John J.
  • Cosgrave, William T.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Cogan, Patrick.
  • Costello, John A.
  • Davin, William.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Henry M.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Esmonde, John L.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Giles, Patrick.
  • Gorey, Denis J.
  • Hannigan, Joseph.
  • Hickey, James.
  • Hughes, James.
  • Hurley, Jeremiah.
  • Keating, John.
  • Keyes, Michael.
  • Linehan, Timothy.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McGovern, Patrick.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • Mongan, Joseph W.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, Timothy J.
  • Nally, Martin.
  • Norton, William.
  • O'Donovan, Timothy J.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Neill, Eamonn.
  • O'Sullivan, John.
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Reidy, James.
  • Rogers, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, Jeremiah.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Smith and Kennedy; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
The Dáil went out of Committee.
Resolutions reported; Report Stage to be taken now.
Barr
Roinn