This matter of the Civil Service bonus has attracted attention not merely in this House, but in very wide circumstances outside. I am aware that certain clergymen with what, I think, would be regarded as sound theological views, have addressed representations to the Government on what they regard as the immorality of their attitude towards the Civil Service, and I think it has actually gone to the point where one clergyman, addressing himself to a particular Minister, has, so I am informed, said, that no doubt the Government had learned that there was a certain theological view taken of their attitude in this matter and he asked, if the Government had any persons advising them along those lines, he should be put in touch with them so that they could have the matter argued. I understand he received no reply to that communication.
Certain representations have been addressed to the Government to the effect that what they have done is grossly immoral. That it is clearly a breach of contract needs no stressing. So clearly was it a breach that the Government had to fortify themselves by special Orders to prevent the breach of contract being brought to the courts. They knew very well what the decision was bound to be if the case had been brought before the courts and, therefore, they prevented any application being brought to the courts. They protected themselves in the event of an appeal to the recognised courts of the country on a mere matter of justice from the point of view of morality.
Representations have been made to the Government that what they have done in this connection is grossly immoral—and that by people who would be expected to pay attention to the pietistic matters we have in the Constitution, matters pertaining to the requirements of prudence, justice and charity. When it comes to the application of justice for one class of the community, then the constitutional piety disappears. The worst feature is that in connection with the Civil Service the Government have had the best of it every time. Leaving out the question of morality for the moment, they made a contract with the Civil Service. They enforced that contract when it suited them. They gained for the State through the enforcement of that contract. The gain has been acknowledged, and it is a significant one.
That was at a time when the Taoiseach was stumping the country talking about his determination to cut down salaries. Feeling he might lose the support of the civil servants, he warned them that some of the higher salaries might be cut, but the bonus would not be cut—it was automatic. He said that after he had become a member of the Government, but, prior to becoming a member of the Government, he told these civil servants that not merely had they a contract and that it was a good one, but that it was such that they should hang on to it with all their might; in the days of rising prices that he saw ahead, the bonus would be their safeguard.
May I document those statements of mine? The secretary of the Department of Finance in 1931 said:—
"The civil servants have made an outstanding contribution to national economy. The accumulated saving effected from Civil Service pay, through the bonus, since 1922, is nearly £2,000,000. No other section of the community has so substantially contributed to the national economy."
So we take £2,000,000 from them when the going was good, when the cost of living was going down. We let the automatic scale slide downwards and, over the years, we took £2,000,000. That was a gain which was expressed by the secretary of the Department of Finance as being such that no other section of the community had made a contribution equal to it.
In 1933, when he had become chief of the Government, the Taoiseach said at Ennis:—
"In my opinion it would be a bad thing for labour to agree to get rid of the sliding scale. I am as certain as I am standing here that world prices are going to go up and that the cost of living will go up, and, when prices do go up, it is a great boon to civil servants to know that their salaries will go up to meet the cost of living".
So that, having taken the £2,000,000 from them when things were going well, the Taoiseach speaks in that fashion in 1933 and tells the civil servants that his forecast of the future is that prices are going to go up and he warns them: hang on to your bonus; it will be a great boon to you to know that your salaries will go up to meet the cost of living. Later in the year he said:—
"Our promise to cut salaries still remains good but this does not refer to the cost-of-living bonus which is automatic".
If ever pledges were solemnly given, they were given in those words.
At an earlier date, the present Minister for Local Government, who afterwards became Minister for Finance, had referred to the appallingly unfair way in which the cost-of-living bonus was made up and he singled out in particular the matter of rent. He analysed the particular point taken as rent in the arrangement of the bonus and said that the average weekly rent in July, 1914, was 4/-. He brought it up to 5/2 in 1922 and said that it was on that percentage variation of just a little over 25 per cent. for the cost-of-living index which applies to the majority of civil servants living here in Dublin — and then, in his usual rhetorical fashion, this flourish came—"where you could not even get a dog-kennel let alone a house for 5/2 a week". It is on the 5/2 a week, according to the Minister for Local Government, that one part of this index figure was based, so that it was fixed on dog-kennel conditions. Mind you, dog-kennels have become even dearer since, let alone the cost of a room, the cost of a house or the cost of furniture.
As I say, we got this great saving from this section—greater than any other section gave—in the good days, and, when times became bad, notwithstanding the promise of the Taoiseach, the decision is taken by the Government to stabilise the figure. I do not know why civil servants were singled out. Of course, it was easy to single them out—they were under the thumb of the Government. It was a mere matter of passing an Order and the thing was done, but that is not the way in which morality works or should work. Some case should have been made with regard to these people as to why the payment of bonus to them, when we had saved from them in the good days, on an increased cost-of-living figure should not have been permitted, or why the payment was going to disturb the whole national finances to some appalling degree. No such case has been made. The only case made is that if civil servants were paid on an increasing cost-of-living figure, if the bonus was not stabilised, there would be inflation—that marvellous word.
I have tried to get this understood by the House on many occasions. I want to try again. I cannot understand how the £ spent by a civil servant in this country is inflationary, whereas if that civil servant leaves the Civil Service, goes across to England and gets a job at £5 or £10 a week and sends back a £, the same £ spent in this country, derived in England, will not be inflationary. Yet that seems to be the argument. If a small number of civil servants broke away from the Civil Service and went across to England, there is no doubt that in a very short period they could earn sufficient to send home an amount that would certainly very nearly equate this sum of £1,000,000 a year which Parliamentary replies reveal is the saving on the Civil Service, but apparently if a civil servant gets the money here and spends it here, it is going to send our prices rocketing, whereas if a group of them go to England and send money home to their families, and their families spend it here, it is not inflationary.
I must confess to a sense of frustration every time I am faced with that argument. I do not know if it is seriously meant, but that is the only argument made. I think we are all agreed that this money is contractually owing to the civil servants. Apart from that, I say that it is morally owing to them, but it is certainly contractually owing, and if it were not for the stabilised cost-of-living figure, we would be paying it to them. If there were any difficulty about how it would be raised, we would meet that difficulty. We would regard the money as owing and, somewhere in the Civil Service Estimates, it would be included, and the money would be raised. We are not objecting to it on the ground that it is hard to raise the money. The only objection I have heard is that, if we gave them this money, it would be inflationary in character.
In England, they do not allow people to spend all they earn. Big wages are being earned and they have very definite controls in England. They take a certain amount of money from people by way of what are called deferred savings, and so on. They also try to attract money into certain forms of investment, but in any event they do not pretend that they do not owe the money. They pay the money, but they prevent the spending of it. Are we deferring the payment of this money to the civil servants? Are we piling up what we have taken from them as a debt due to them and are we going to loosen that some time when we get rid of this bogey of inflation, or are we, as I think is simply the case, robbing them of what we contracted to pay to them and what the Taoiseach asked them to think of as a great boon when he said that their salaries would go up to meet the cost of living?
On a very recent occasion, I gave one other example. Here we are unable to allow civil servants to get £1,000,000 between them and to spend it subject to whatever rationing control and all the other controls that exist in the country, but we are allowing any number of people, visitors and tourists, to come over to this country and to spend their money here. I notice that on a recent occasion, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England went to the meeting of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants at the Guildhall on 22nd June last, he talked about the necessity of providing work by spending money. That was his theme, but the borough treasurer of Brighton, at the end of his speech said, with reference to the idea of inflation in England, that while there was a shortage of consumer goods, it was necessary that part of the national income should be saved and not spent. He added this phrase: "The paramount need is to remove our purchasing power to a place of safety."
One of the places of safety is Éire. English workmen who may not spend the moneys they earn in England are floating over here. This is a place of safety for the purchasing power of the English pound. They spend it here, and again, apparently, it is not inflationary because an English tourist spends it, but it would be inflationary if an Irish civil servant spends it. What do the Government of this country do? Under our financial arrangements, if these English tourists desiring to come over here like to go to any of our banks, they must, on putting in an English pound, get an Irish pound. If there is any difficulty in supplying Irish pounds, the printing press is there and it is worked for English tourists. The machinery for getting money is simple—the background is somewhat complicated and confused—but there is no doubt that, so far as these people are concerned, on presenting themselves at an Irish bank and giving in a pound, they are entitled to get an Irish pound.
Suppose 1,000,000 of these pounds are brought in by tourists. We have then £1,000,000 suddenly emerging into Irish circulation, but it is in the hands of English tourists and not in the hands of Irish civil servants, and we will allow that money to be spent on our rather short stock of consumers' goods. Anyone who goes to hotels here during the summer and autumn will realise the difficulty that that means for the ordinary citizen of this country in trying to get, for his own money, some of the goods produced in his own country. There is no difficulty about getting the money as long as the English tourist wants it, and there is no difficulty in letting him spend it. What happens after that is somewhat confusing. Undoubtedly, if we allowed this £1,000,000 to flow out into the hands of the civil servants, we would have to find it for them, and it would be found in the ordinary way. We are under a duty to give to them and there is no difficulty about finding it.
What will happen with regard to the tourist money? That is somewhat problematical. Certainly, this is beyond all doubt: if those tourists spend £1,000,000 here, we will not get English goods to the value of that £1,000,000 this year or next year. It will be funded, and at some time, either in the near future or in the far future, we may get something for it. What will we get? We will get whatever the British Government decide is the value of the £ at the time it comes to be paid. At that particular period—the determination of that period does not lie with us, and the prospects are that it is a long way off—we will get something for whatever money has been transferred into Irish notes and which we will again transfer into English notes by presenting them to English banks, and it will be safely locked up in England until such time as the English like to unfreeze it. I think that, in all those circumstances, until there is some explanation given as to why £1 or £1,000,000 in the hands of the Irish civil servants is clearly inflation, while in the hands of the English tourists it is not, the civil servants have an undoubted grievance. Nobody, in fact, believes that there is any sincerity behind the plea regarding inflation.
I single out the civil servants as a class apart, because there are no other people with whom we have a contract. It is a contract made under Governmental auspices. Not merely is it a contract made under Governmental auspices, but the Head of the State, leaving all questions of contract aside, told those people: "Prices are going to go up. Hang on to your cost-of-living bonus. It will be a great boon to you." It is an amazing thing that in this country where we pretend to be inspired with all the Christian virtues, particularly charity and justice, the Government should be able to say to those people: "We have you under our thumb. You are the nearest people to us. We can save £1,000,000 a year from you people, and we are going to save it, and if any of you think about walking into the courts we will see that you will not get there." When theologians approached them about the immorality of their conduct, I understand that they took refuge in silence. The whole situation is so immoral and unfair that it is a source of anxiety and perturbation to clergymen in this country.
