This is now a very remarkable bit of legislation, which will have a very big effect, unless the country is very wide awake, not only on the political side—on the way in which the people, through their institutions, are allowed to carry on public business—but on our social and economic position. We have heard many references to history while this amendment has been under discussion, but the really important phase of history of which we have heard nothing is that since October, 1945, when this Bill was introduced and had its Second Reading in this House, which induced the Minister to introduce the amendment which has just been discussed. It is perfectly clear to anyone who has been listening to the discussion, whether to the speakers on the Fianna Fáil Benches or to those on any other benches, that we are now in the position where, when a technical officer of any local body—a county medical officer of health, or a county engineer or any other technical officer—presents an estimate for the carrying out of any work for which he is responsible under that local body, it is not the local body which ultimately will fix the rate. That rate can and will, in the last resort, as Deputy Walsh puts it, be fixed by the Minister.
Through the whole of the local government system, the State manager which the Minister for Agriculture spoke about in November last, has very definitely appeared on the scene. What, then, are local representatives to be? They are to be people who will act—if they lack the courage necessary to stand up to the situation and to their local responsibilities—as the smoke-screen behind which the Minister's will will be carried out, in certain places, as simply the public will. Deputy Dillon has drawn attention to the fact that, under sub-section (2) of the section, as amended, the Minister, if he disagrees with the rate that has been struck, can order that a new rate be made, and the local authority shall have to make a new rate. If they do not, there are two courses open to the Minister, namely, to mandamus them into doing his bidding or to wipe them out. The Minister indicates that his measure is designed to help the innocent, weak, misguided local authorities, but I think he has very definitely planned to endeavour, by threat of mandamus, to get the members of local authorities weakly to agree to his instructions. That would be even a more degrading and a weaker result, and have a worse effect on the country as a whole, than if a local authority, standing over its local responsibility regarding local problems, should decline to carry out the Minister's Order. That would expose the Minister, who has now taken up the position that, in the last resort, he will strike the rate in any county where the local authority disagrees that it is the right thing in the interests of the people to do so.
The position to which the ratepayers have been brought up to the present time, as the result of Fianna Fáil policy, has been mentioned here and, arising out of certain figures given by the Minister to a Parliamentary question within the last day or so, comparing the net expenditure of local authorities in 1932 and 1942, and the amount of money received by the State to meet that expenditure, a figure has been quoted here that would suggest that the increase in rates between 1932 and 1942 has been 46 per cent. It has been more than that. It has been 60 per cent. The net expenditure of local authorities in the year ended March, 1932, was £9,446,000 and, of that, State sources contributed £3,522,000 and the local authorities contributed £5,924,000, of which £4,677,000 was raised by rates; the other smaller amounts of £1,000,000 odd came in from other sources that the local authorities had.
In the year ended March, 1942, the last year for which we have the information, the net expenditure had risen by £4,024,000 to £13,471,000, or about 46 per cent. But of that increase of £4,024,000, State sources contributed only £1,009,000 and the local authorities had to contribute an additional £2,852,000. In March, 1932, the total amount collected in rates was £4,677,000. In the year ended March, 1942, the rates had to contribute £7,529,000, an addition of £2,852,000, or an increase of 60 per cent. The only figure we have available up to the present is the increase shown in the warrants issued for county councils and I think you will find these are up by something like £400,000.
That is the position in which the Minister finds the country, on the one hand, and in which the local authorities find themselves, on the other. The total amount taken from the rates has gone up by 60 or 61 per cent. between 1932 and 1942 and, with the additional expenditure that has come on during the last four war years, they are now facing the plan that the Government have for loading on the local ratepayers the work of one kind or another that the taxpayers find themselves unable to bear because of the extraordinary increase in taxation. Taxation went up since 1932 from £21,000,000 in that year to £39,000,000 in the year ended March, 1945.
We have had a rather formative period in our national history, politically, socially and economically. The only thing that will maintain this country will be the efforts of the ordinary people in agriculture and in industry, and the only political stability that we can have will come if the people in every part of the country address themselves to the organisation and the management of those matters which require to be managed politically in order to have a society here and to maintain our institutions.
This legislation is machinery for taking more and more money out of the people's pockets, spending it through Government channels and leaving the people to have less to spend on their own initiative and on their own planning. That leads to more poverty. Why do we hear about social services? We hear about social services here because road workers throughout the country cannot get the increase in their wages, inadequate though they might be, that local authorities consider they ought to have. I asked the Minister the other day whether any examination had been made which would suggest that 40/- a week was sufficient to maintain a family whose breadwinner was working in one of the vital services of the country. I refer to road workers. You might apply the same to agriculture although, as Deputy Morrissey pointed out, the minimum for agricultural workers is the maximum that is apparently being paid to road workers.
A country whose economy is such that persons working at necessary vital occupations in rural districts have to be kept at wages like that must, if you like, provide social services to help them to eke out a living on their wages, but it cannot and will not continue to do so. The Minister may, in order to hold up his prestige and the prestige of his Government and the dignity of doing things through an emergency period, take his powers, but it should be realised that there are no powers and resources in this country outside of those that the people handle and there is no real intelligence that can make any use of them to build up the country economically or politically except that of the people themselves.
This is a measure to cow, restrict and restrain the intelligence of the people and the intelligence of the local representatives standing over their local problems. These are, if you like, symptoms of the absolute bankruptcy of mind of the Government in approaching the political, social and economic problems that exist.