The outstanding fact which strikes me with regard to the Minister's Budget statement yesterday is that, in the first place, he anticipates taking from the people this year £2,995,000 more in taxation than he took last year, and, in the second place, that he gave no indication whatever of what was being done as a result of this enormous expenditure to increase the real productive power of the people. A year after the end of the war, we find the Government collecting £2,995,000 more in taxation from the people's pockets than they collected in the last year of the war.
In order to realise how appalling that burden is we have to look at some figures of the taxes raised during the war. In the year before the war, the customs duties taken totalled £10,091,000; last year, they totalled £12,900,000; and this year, they are to total £15,240,000. The Government, standing at the ports where a small amount of imports has been dribbling in over the war years, took more in customs duties at the ports every year since the war began, and now, when the war is over, they propose to take £15,240,000 in taxes out of the people. In excise duty, in the year before the war, the sum of £6,110,000 was taken; last year, a sum of £9,810,000 was taken; and this year, it is to be £9,965,000. So much for customs and excise.
Before the war, the amount collected from income tax was £5,803,000; last year, it was £13,100,000; and this year it is to be £13,070,000. Corporation Profits tax before the war provided £591,000; last year, the amount collected was £4,475,000; and this year, it is to be £4,660,000. The bulk sum raised in taxation in the year before the war was £25,987,000; last year it was £43,640,000; and this year it will be £46,635,000, or £2,995,000 more than last year—and that for the year after the war is over. With all that enormous taxation and the spending of it in the Government's hands—they propose to save nothing out of it—we have a Budget statement that, so far as the economic position of the country and the future prospects of its economic betterment are concerned, gives no suggestion as to how the real people and the only people that can effect a betterment of that kind are to be sustained in any way, either the agricultural producers or the manufacturers. The Minister indicated that he realises that it is only out of an increase in the national income that this country can carry on or its people be sustained. That can only be brought about by the development of our present industries, agricultural or manufacturing, or the establishment of new ones. That is our main economic problem.
The Minister also realises and insists that there is a more urgent social problem to be faced, the sustenance and the employment of our people who are without employment. The Minister does not indicate any effective ways of giving employment to those who are unemployed. Whether he has effective ways for that or not, or whether he proposes by his new development fund or by some of the expenditure there is to be met from taxation to maintain these adequately or suitably, we cannot at this stage of our economic history and one year after the war is over feel that there is any problem as urgent both for our present well being and our future well being as to see that those who have their hands on the productive resources of the country are given an opportunity and encouragement to go ahead with their work and to increase the productive capacity of the country both in agriculture and in industry.
The recent White Paper on national income and expenditure, together with the figures that the Minister gave yesterday, has indicated that our gross agricultural production to-day is no more than it was in 1938. There is no indication from anything the Government are doing or saying that they foresee any increase in agricultural production in the near future. We cannot take it that the agricultural production figure of 1938 is a suitable one at which to remain or even to progress from in a leisurely way, because in 1938 there were 26,000 fewer men employed in agriculture than before the Fianna Fáil Party came into office and 43,000 fewer than in 1934. Therefore, when our people are having to bear the cost of government to the extent that this Budget presents to us, standing on the one leg of our agricultural production in 1938 we must feel that there is a very hopeless prospect for the country's future. The Minister indicated yesterday that industrial production last year was 86 per cent. of our industrial production in 1938. That may offer us a more hopeful prospect, and it is well that on the industrial side we should be offered a more hopeful prospect, because so far as increasing production must support an increasing number of workers we will probably have to look more to manufacturing industry to sustain an increasing number of workers than to agriculture. It is there that I find the Budget statement showing to the greatest extent a complete lack of imagination.
Industrialists who have kept industrial production going during the war have done so by almost superhuman exertions and by astonishing ingenuity and persistence and very great courage. The system of taxation of industry adopted during the war was such as to undermine men's courage and to make them feel that it could not be worth while taking chances, because taxation was so imposed that it put as big a burden on the extension of an industry as it did upon the excess profits accuring in an adventitious way as a result of war circumstances. While the Minister takes a shilling off the income-tax and says that the excess profits tax is to be abandoned after the 1st January next, he does not offer the industrialists the kind of hope or spur that they are entitled to get. The Minister knows that if we are to have industrial expansion here we must have an additional amount of capital put into industry. He must know that the most effective and satisfactory way of developing an industry is that such profits as the industry can make and can profitably use in the expansion of business should be put back into the business.
The Minister, as I say, raised a very considerable amount from the excess profits tax, whether on profits made adventitiously or by expansion of industry, and I think that it would have been only right that the Minister should have indicated that the taxation of profits in industry would be so changed that there would be a reduction of taxation on those profits that went back into the business.
The Minister has also indicated that he proposes to allow a relief from income-tax in respect of money spent for research in industry, even where that research involves the expenditure of a certain amount of money on capital works. The industrialists, who are being told to-day that they are going to be relieved of income-tax on money which they spend on research for the purpose of improving their industry ought, in my opinion, to be told that when, as a result of their research, they see ways of extending their business and they put into the extension of their business the capital profits they have made, that they will get a certain relief of income-tax in respect of the use of these profit for the extension of their business. But the Minister has simply taken a shilling off the income-tax. That may help. He is stopping excess profits tax this year but he is giving no encouragement of any kind, through any statement of his, to industrialists to speed ahead with extending their industries now. The man who is going to put profits made last year and the year before—whatever he has left out of them after meeting taxation—into industry will automatically have these profits taxed.
I submit to the Minister that there is urgent need to inspire those, who are bearing the burden of organising and managing industry and who are prepared to take the risks involved in such industry, if industry is going to expand here; and the Minister ought, before the discussion on the Budget this year concludes, review the whole matter to see whether he cannot make a more hopeful statement to those who are going to use their profits for the purpose of expanding industry. We cannot have increased employment in this country unless those who organise industry and who establish industry in this country are, in the first place, fully competent to do that and, in the second place, are encouraged by circumstances, created through Government policy, to go ahead and do it. There is no other way by which we may effectively maintain our people except by means of our agricultural and productive industries. The amount of industry or the amount of employment that the Government itself can carry out is of a very limited nature; and it is not going to be as productive of employment, nor is it going to have the same organic capacity to increase itself, as industry managed by the entrepreneur.
Yesterday I asked what steps the Taoiseach, on the one hand, or the Minister for Industry and Commerce, on the other, were taking to ensure that we will stand in line in connection with the conferences and the discussions that are going on at the present moment throughout the world amongst other countries for the purpose of improving our trade position and, as a natural corollary, our employment position. The answer I got yesterday would suggest there is complete inertia of mind on the part of the Government in these matters. We had to gather our chairs from all over this city—from the Dáil here and from Civil Service offices—in order to accommodate the members of all the nations of the world who took part in the conference on air development some months ago here. That was probably very important. But in every country in the world to-day, not only the politicians and the members of Governments, but representatives of agriculture, commerce and industry are being brought together to consider with the utmost intensity of purpose how in the interests of their own country, and in the mutual interests of other countries, they can plan, organise and work to increase employment for their people and to raise the standard of living of their people.
We have had a number of inquiries initiated by the Government and initiated by other people during the last few years directed to considering what are those things which vitally affect our social position and our economic condition here. We have had the report of the committee of inquiry into post-war agricultural policy. We have had the report of the commission of inquiry into vocational organisation. We have had the personal report of the late chairman of the National Health Insurance Commission. All these things point to fundamental facts in our economy here. So far as we can judge, they have been completely ignored. If we are going to have any kind of decent social order here the wages that are paid to our workers must be a wage capable of maintaining them in reasonably comfortable home conditions. The Minister, in reply to Deputy Norton the other day, told him that the amount withheld from the body of civil servants as a whole as a result of the Stabilisation of Bonus Order during the emergency was £5,900,000. The Minister for Finance, when he was speaking on the Budget last year, gave the figures as to the cost of the Civil Service. He stated that in 1943 the cost of the Civil Service was £6,100,000. We find ourselves in the position, therefore, that our civil servants have had one year's pay deducted from them in the six years of war. There was £5,900,000 stopped from them through withholding from them the cost-of-living bonus. There might be some kind of case for stabilising wages throughout the country; but does anyone realise that civil servants—a considerable proportion of whom are in receipt of very moderate scales of income—have had a complete year's wages deducted from them; and the greater incidence of that has fallen on the old fabric of the Civil Service which was there long before the temporary staff, recruited for the emergency, was brought in. Throughout the country we have had the Minister for Local Government strenuously resisting the unanimous opinion of local bodies as to what should be the wages of the lower-paid permanent workers working under local authorities. A long-drawn out fight has taken place between the Department of Local Government and county councils all over the country with regard to the rate of wages to be paid to road workers. They are a group of people that will eternally be wanted so long as we want roads. They will be eternally the employees of public bodies. Their rates of wages are such that not one of them could maintain a decent home or feel that they were part of a progressive, happy or stable society of any kind.
The committee inquiring into postwar agriculture emphasises the position in which we now are and the position in which we will find ourselves unless there is increased production in agriculture and a stable trade policy between ourselves and Great Britain, such as would enable us to pay the agricultural workers in a more satisfactory manner. All those things hinge together—increased agricultural production, a proper rate of wages for our people throughout the country, increased industrial production. All these things have been co-related in such a clear and concise way that they can neither be denied nor argued against. In the vocational organization report it was put clearly before us that there are people in this country who follow a variety of vocations requiring great skill and great tradition; and that the country has no service in building up its economy or in strengthening its economy except the service of those men who grow up in particular avocations and who, through co-operation with one another, perfect themselves and strengthen their own group, both by their qualifications and by their work in order to make a contribution to the building up of society here. Just as we have a complete squeezing down on wages by the Government, which prevents a reasonable social standard being adopted by the workers of the country, in the same way we have a complete closing down of the mind of the Government on those organisations, associations and avocations that can, and that only can, guide the Government in the carrying on of its economic business.
I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce yesterday what representations had been made to various industries and to various organisations, or what inquiries had been made of them so that this Government could have expert information and first-hand knowledge that would enable it to take part in international discussions so that every interest in this country would be safeguarded. In May, 1946, the only reply of the Minister for Industry and Commerce was that they would be consulted in the appropriate time.
I would ask the Minister for Finance, during these discussions, to tell us what the Government is doing to see that the farmers get a reasonable opportunity of extending their production. I would ask him whether he accepts the recommendations of the Majority and the Minority Reports that have been presented to the Minister for Agriculture by the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy. He will find there that they argue very strongly that if the export price that we get for agricultural produce is less than the price that is paid for domestic agricultural produce in Great Britain then we will be in a position that we will have to export our agricultural labourers to Great Britain instead of our agricultural products. He will see there that they say that if we make no particular effort to develop export capacity now, the United Kingdom market will become adjusted to doing without our contribution. He will see that the committee is of opinion that progressive increase in output per person occupied in agriculture is a fundamental and inescapable condition of any considerable increase in our industrial development; that the committee is of opinion that since appreciable extension in our agriculture can be effected only through increasing export, output must be raised, the quality of products improved and standardised and the costs of production, purchasing and marketing reduced and to this end, of course, comprehensive educational progress is an imperative necessity. He will see that a Minority Report says that increased economic stability will in post-emergency years continue to depend to a large degree on the export of agricultural commodities and the production of these must therefore be developed to the limit of the availability of profitable markets. But, throughout the whole report, he will see that a fair arrangement with regard to the price of our agricultural exports is necessary in order to keep our population here, that increased agricultural exports are necessary in order to maintain our agricultural population here and to increase our industry and that a better general education policy, and better education in certain aspects of agricultural training are necessary.
With this appalling bill in front of us, higher than last year, we get no information at all as to what is being done in order that our agriculture may extend itself. Our industrialists, as I say, are given no encouragement that they will be relieved in any intelligent way of taxation in order to induce them to improve and to extend their industries. The Minister hopes to become self-sufficient in quite a number of things, including fuel. On the 11th April last, Fuel Importers Limited addressed a communication to a firm using 60 tons a week of industrial turf, which they were getting at 25/- a ton, indicating to them that that was to be increased to 30/- a ton. That increased the weekly expenditure on fuel to that firm by £15. But, on the 16th April, five days afterwards, they got another letter stating that the price of industrial turf would be increased to 40/- a ton. So that, within five days, one industrial firm here had the price of its industrial turf increased by £2,340 a year. Private consumers of turf are being given a certain concession with regard to the price of turf. Are we to understand that the concession that is being given to private users is not, in fact, going to be met by the Government at all but that it is going to be squeezed out of industry or, can the Minister give any adequate reason as to why a firm, within a period of five days, should have its expenditure on fuel raised by £15 a week and then by £30 a week, a total of £45 a week or of £2,340 a year?
It is very difficult to think that the Minister and the Government are bringing any kind of vigorous or even intelligent mind to bear on the general condition of the country. The Minister has shown that he is adopting a more intelligent line with regard to interest rates than the Government were prepared to adopt in the past. We have argued from this side, ever since the opportunity was provided by discussions on the Central Bank, that the Government were paying unnecessarily high prices for money. The Minister has indicated a change of mind and we welcome that. The Minister gave figures showing what it would cost per week to repay £100 borrowed at 35 years or at a period of 50 years, and he rather suggested that for certain purposes the Minister might be prepared to borrow at 2½ per cent. at 50 years' repayment instead of at 35 years.
I would ask the Minister, now that the Government is adopting a new policy with regard to interest rates, to give us an opportunity at some stage of the finance discussions here to have a freer and franker discussion of interest rates than we have been able to have in the past. The fact that the Government was resisting so strongly the arguments put from this side of the House in regard to interest rates in the last two or three years, prevented reasonable discussion. I would put this to the Minister, if he is thinking of borrowing for a period of, say, 50 years: He told us yesterday that it would take 1/4 a week to repay £100 borrowed at 2½ per cent. for a period of 50 years. It would take 1/7 a week to repay it if the period of borrowing was 35 years. If the period is 50 years, by the time the loan is completely paid off, the Minister will have to repay a total of £171 for the £100 borrowed, whereas if the period was for 35 years, the total repayment would be only £151. That means that by extending the borrowing period from 35 to 50 years the Minister is unnecessarily putting a payment of £20 on the borrower.
Now is the time to discuss these things and to get a clear idea about them, because, when we are having a change in policy with regard to interest rates and borrowing, let us have the last word of common sense and let us have the fullest possible understanding about it, so that we will not at any time in the future get back into the condition that we were in this House in the past, when no one would be allowed to discuss interest rates with any reason or common sense or a clear looking at the facts. Again, I say, it is a crushing burden that the country is bearing and it will find it very difficult to support and understand it.
The Minister is giving £1,000,000 to the farming community in respect of relief of rates. The Minister's Party originally promised to wipe out all rates. Between their coming into office and the beginning of the war, they added £1,000,000 to the county council rates. Since the war began they have added another £1,000,000. One of these millions is going to disappear but, in disappearing, it will be collected in a way which, perhaps, in more than any other way will increase the cost of living. We are going to collect in customs duties this year £2,307,000 more than we collected last year. It will be of interest to see how the increased taxes are going to be collected this year.
The Minister will take £2,307,000 more in customs duties. £155,000 more in excise duties, £94,000 more in estate duties, £60,000 in stamp duties, £185,000 in corporation profits tax and £224,000 in motor vehicle duties, with the income tax payer paying £30,000 less than he paid last year. I submit that in collecting the £2,307,000 more in customs duties this year, the Minister is doing something which, more than anything else, will persist in maintaining the cost of living here, so that as regards those things that we expect the Minister to do, that is, to reduce the cost of living, to increase production, and take away hardship from the ordinary workers of the country, the Minister is doing nothing in this Budget, although the war is more than a year over.
