One of the things that I have observed in regard to the Minister's Budget statement is that it made no attempt to face the facts. It drew a kind of polite curtain over the budgetary position, on the one hand, and the economic situation that we are going to have in the country for the next year on the other—the type of situation in which the people will have to meet the bill that the Minister now presents to the House. Whether it was as a result of the Minister's presentation, or simply failure on the part of people to face facts, we have had a lot of very soft-soapy kind of stuff talked, and written in the Press, about the budgetary situation.
On the Vote on Account we endeavoured to get clear on certain facts not altogether, perhaps, related to the present situation. It would be well to get clear on a few more facts in relation to the Budget. The Minister, in the papers he circulated, indicated what he collected in taxation last year. In his Budget Statement, and in the financial statements he presented, he indicated what was going to be collected during the coming year. In the greater part of the discussion that has taken place and the comment made outside, I see no appreciation of this fact, namely, that the Minister proposes to take out of the pockets of the people during the current year, under the heading of customs, £566,000 more than he took last year. Under the heading of excise he proposes to take £128,000 more than he collected last year and, under the heading of income-tax, he proposes to take £1,039,000 more than was taken during the year ended last March. Let us consider what we have already argued here, that the size of the bill presented to the people last year and the year before, and the amount of money collected then, has completely choked off any normal additional growth of the employment in this country that used, in the years prior to 1931, be there, to the extent of providing the equivalent of full-time employment for an additional 11,400 persons a year. When we consider that the bills that the people have had to pay to the Government last year and the year before completely choked off that increased employment, I want to know what does the Minister think is going to be the effect of taking, in taxation alone, out of the people's pockets, £1,718,000 more under the heading of customs, excise and income-tax than was taken last year.
That is one feature of the Minister's statement and the figures presented to the House that calls for explanation. I doubt if there has been sufficient mention of the fact in the House or sufficient appreciation of it outside. I think that it would have been more helpful if the Minister, when presenting his bill, brought out these facts more clearly and more openly. If we are going to face the current year with not only the internal difficulties that arise out of the financial policy of the Government, but the difficulties that are going to arise for our productive machine in circumstances that have not their seat here but elsewhere, then I think we are going to walk a bit further into the bog of disillusion, the bog of poverty and the bog of difficulty, and the prospect is one that cannot be lightly faced.
When dealing with the Vote on Account, we brought out certain facts that have not been challenged. I am stating this again in order to be realistic in my approach to the present situation. It is not challenged that between 1926 and 1931 there was an average annual increase of persons in employment, as measured by the National Health Insurance contribution fund of 11,400 persons. In the year 1931 the total amount collected in rates and taxes was £334,000 less than in 1926. On the other hand, in the year 1939 £6,308,000 more was paid by the people in rates and taxes than in 1931. If the increase in annual additional employment from 1931 to 1939 had continued at the pre-1931 rate, there would have been 16,200 additional persons in full-time employment; the 14,992 persons who were employed on part-time relief works would have been in full-time employment, and the whole of the 31,000 persons would have been in employment, not paid out of a Government purse collected from the people's purses, but paid out of employment that would be the natural type of employment, whether in industry or agriculture.
We start in this year as far as that behind a particular point of scratch, and down on top of that situation there comes the additional blow which has brought about the situation we speak about—that through customs, excise and income-tax, the principal channels through which the ordinary people pay their taxes, there will be taken from them again £1,718,000. Half a million of that represents customs, a little over £1,000,000 represents income-tax, and the rest is excise. That money is going to be taken from the agriculturists, whose position has been painted here, not only by Deputy O'Donovan to-day, but by Deputy Childers and other Deputies the other day. It is to be taken from an industry that every day is increasingly hampered by the fact that it cannot get, in the ordinary way, the raw material that it is entitled to expect and that it used to get from outside. The only assistance up to the present given by the Government to that industry is that two Ministers have gone across to discuss with the British Government certain things in connection with agriculture, and to discuss, we hope, the position of our industries.
If agriculture has been neglected in the way that Deputy O'Donovan referred to, our industrial interests have been neglected in the same way. It is on the carrying on of our industries here that the Minister is depending for even the amount of money he got last year. There is a most perplexing and disturbing situation, to my mind, shown there, and it makes that situation no less perplexing and disturbing that the Minister has been so generally accepted as a person who presents very mild bills. There was never a bigger bill presented in this House in a way than the present, and it is presented to people who were never in a worse position to meet it because until last year we never had the position in the country that the ordinary growing employment from agriculture and industry did not add to the gross number of people who were kept in a normal way employed in the country. That is one of the aspects of the present situation. The other aspect is that anybody who has been in touch with the City of Dublin for a number of years past must realise the difficulty that young men and young women have of getting employment of any kind in the city. The coming about of the war situation has intensified that. Not only has it intensified that position, but it has thrown a number of people who would otherwise be employed, into unemployment. That is very marked in Dublin and it is no less marked in any urban centre in the country.
I am wondering where the Minister in presenting this Budget thinks he is to get the money for which he is looking. I am astonished that the Minister did not address himself to the future with regard to industry and agriculture. No plan has been made to deal with the unemployment problem in general. I think the year cannot advance very far before it will become absolutely necessary to review that situation and to make some attempt to deal with it. As far as we can see the only plan the Government have for dealing with it is the continued payment of unemployment assistance. There is no doubt that the payment of unemployment assistance for a period may be of great social benefit, but the continued payment of unemployment assistance over a large number of years can do nothing but rot the whole mentality and the whole morale of a very large number of people in the country. We here appreciate that while it may be required for the relief of certain classes of unemployed the more it has to deal directly with employment the weaker and the more unhealthy will become the whole social and economic situation in the country. Nobody questions that we cannot have a satisfactory and healthy people materially, morally and spiritually in the country unless these people can find normal commercial and agricultural occupations in employment that will keep themselves and their families.
In modern times the Government is called upon to take money from the pool produced by industry and agriculture and dispense it by way of Government relief or employment through Government agencies. But we are convinced that if that goes beyond a certain point, it is going to undermine the whole social fabric in the country. The more money that is taken by way of rates and taxes, the weaker does the industrial or agricultural fabric in the country become. The more money that is taken in this way, the weaker will be the industrial and agricultural fabric in maintaining its normal growth. We expect that both agriculture and industry should year after year increase the normal amount of employment in the country. But before ever the war situation was reached we had come to the time, as I think the facts presented to the House have shown, when through over-taxation we were injuring the normal development of agriculture and industry. Without the development of the European situation that has come about we had come to the point where in this matter of taxation we should have to stop and retrench. It would be a very disastrous thing for us here if the development of the present European situation brought about such an increase of unemployment in the country that the Government would have to take more from normal agricultural and industrial development so that agriculture and industry could not get back their normal strength. If that happened over a substantial period it would be very bad for the country. Nevertheless there is the situation to-day in our urban districts that must be faced by the Government. There must be some plan of one kind or another adopted to set to work young people and some of the older people who are to-day without employment and even without the hope of employment. That problem calls for consideration by the Government as to the type of public works they ought to start and whether anything is to be done outside giving unemployment assistance. That problem also calls for a review by the Government of the industrial situation in the country with a view to informing themselves and the House what additional absorption of persons in industry may be expected during the next year or two.
I doubt, unless something is done radically to improve the position of a large number of farmers, whether agriculture itself is going to be able to absorb during the next two or three years as many people as were put out of agriculture during the last four or five years. The agricultural situation has been dealt with in a particular way from the Fianna Fáil Benches. The farmers have been called upon to improve their methods and to reorganise their industry in a way that would suit modern circumstances best, but the fact is that our agricultural industry here has suffered so badly during the last five or six years that while a large number of farmers have their fields and a certain amount of their machinery they have not the resources to start their machines working. Criticism has been made here that, while other countries have developed their agricultural production, our farmers have not. A review has been made of the position from 1926 to 1936. One may say that the agricultural industry in this country met with its main set-back during the period of the present Government's life. At about the end of the term of office of the last Government, the position with regard to agriculture in this country, as compared with other countries, was reviewed by a committee specially set up by the League of Nations. That committee reviewed the position of the agricultural industry throughout the world, and the effects of the depression that followed the last war. As I have repeatedly pointed out, that committee found that there were only two countries in the whole world that had withstood, in the best possible way, the depression of that time, and these were Ireland and Denmark. It was found that we had withstood the great blow caused by the depression from 1929 to 1931 by reason of the way that our farmers had carried on their industry, and by reason of the fact that the Government of that time co-operated with our farmers in urging them to develop a better policy of production, especially in the matter of live stock and live-stock products, as well as by giving them free access to outside markets where feeding stuffs were cheap. That was done at a time when prices for live stock had come down. But, when we consider the position in the last few years, we find that there has been a definite falling off in what used to be some of our main lines of agricultural production. Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches who are interested in statistics can find all that out for themselves in our own statistics without going to Rome or elsewhere for the information. I do not want to criticise Deputies who study the statistics of outside countries. I think it would be a definite advantage if a greater number of Deputies interested themselves in activity of that kind. If, however, they desire to do that they should not ignore a certain amount of detail that is available for them at home.
Take last year, when one may say we were at the end of a 12 month period of preparation by the Government to face a war situation, what do we find with regard to agricultural production. We have had the information from the Government that, before the war ever broke out, they had set up a committee to review the circumstances in this country in the light of the possibility of a European war, and to make the necessary preparations for it. At the end of that 12 month period of preparation for a war situation, the position was that not only had the acreage under oats fallen by 86,000 acres since 1932, but that the acreage in 1939 was less than the acreage in 1938 by 34,000. Our production in oats had, therefore, fallen substantially in the year in which we had been making preparations for war. But the position was worse than that. As compared with 1931, our acreage under barley, was down by 43,000. The greater part of that decline had taken place between 1938 and 1939, the year in which we were preparing for war. Never in our whole history had we a smaller acreage under potatoes than we had last year. We were down 29,000 acres as compared with 1931. In a year in which we had been preparing for the possible effects of war, we never in our whole history, as I have said, had a smaller acreage under potatoes, or a smaller acreage under turnips. The latter had fallen by 40,000 acres as compared with 1931. It is further to be noted that we never had a smaller acreage under cabbage, the decline being from 25,000 acres in 1931 to 14,000 last year. The decline in 1939 as against 1938—despite all the talk there has been by the Government about increased tillage—in respect of corn, root and green crops, was 76,000 acres. The acreage under first year hay was down by 45,000 acres, and, as I have said, after a year of war preparation our acreage was down under oats, barley, potatoes and cabbage.
I ask the Government and Deputies opposite not to say that the skill of the Irish farmer, his application or his technique, his mental interest in his calling or his material interest in his own well-being, grew less from 1931 to 1939. I want to put it that nothing affected that situation but the circumstances in which the Irish farmer was placed by the present Government. But, even assuming that the Irish farmer was placed in that situation through circumstances arising out of special Government policy, which the Government considered paramount to everything else in the country, surely that was brought to an end when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was made, and what we are entitled to ask the people on the other side to consider is this: that when the Government knew that they might have to prepare for a war situation, and when their difficulties with regard to the economic war were over, why nothing was done to assist our farmers to improve their position in 1939 as against 1938. In 1939 our total acreage under corn, root and green crops was 76,000 below what it was in 1938. In that position, I think our farmers are entitled to ask why, even since the outbreak of the war when they were facing production for the year 1940, no lesson was learned from the unfortunate year 1939, and why something was not done to realise that there were so many farmers in the country who could not carry on. It is true that there are many farmers doing well at the moment. That is because they had a certain amount of capital and were in a position to husband their resources. Because of that they were not caught napping, but think of the many others who were not in that fortunate position.
We have been told, in the course of this debate, that the Government expect that we are going to have 400,000 additional acres of tillage this year. That is going to mean an expenditure of at least £2,500,000. The farmers cannot expect any return from that expenditure until the autumn of this year. I wonder does the Minister for Finance who has presented this bill to the House so lightly, so mildly and gently realised what the effect of that is going to be on the commercial community, on the industrial community or even on the farmers themselves whose capital and revenue losses have been so severe during the last six or seven years, and who are being asked to find this additional £2,500,000 in order to carry the Government's programme through in this current year. One aspect of that situation is that I do not believe the Minister will get his 400,000 additional acres. Therefore, the Minister's statement and the way in which it has been covered over seem to disclose to us more problems than if he had put the financial and economic situation a lot more plainly, so that we could know that he and the Government understood the kind of situation we are dealing with.
I see very little hope that the pressing problem of unemployment in urban districts is going to be tackled. Taking one of their problems such as that and facing up to it definitely and straightly would help them to see the rest of their problems in a better perspective, and then we might have a more informative discussion. What is wanted is not talk or even the presentation of facts, but an application to the facts of definite policies and the taking of definite action. There is no possible chance of our being satisfied that we can help towards the taking of definite action to deal with the situation unless the Government show that they appreciate the facts. If they could show that they appreciate the facts, then we could come down to a discussion of the matter and of the action that should be taken.
