asked the Taoiseach if he will state whether any practical steps have been taken by the Government to reduce the cost of living, and, if so, what those steps are, and if he will further state when the Government expect that the cost of living will, as a result of those steps, be reduced.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Cost of Living.
I would refer the Deputy to the reply I gave in this House to a similar question asked by him on the 1st December, 1948.
Since then, the Government have continued to take all the practical steps of which I gave the Deputy particulars in my reply to the question, with results that cannot be regarded as unsatisfactory.
Among the more recent results of the Government's activities in this direction, I might mention the following:—
(1) the reduction, announced in the last Budget, in the standard rate of income-tax and the increase, on the same occasion, in certain income-tax allowances, the combined effect of which will be to save taxpayers an estimated total of £1,221,000 in a full year;
(2) reductions effected in manufacturers' prices of a wide range of articles of clothing and in the retail prices of a number of miscellaneous commodities — additional to those mentioned in my reply of the 1st December, 1948 — such as candles, electric bulbs, bedsteads, cutlery, soap and soap powders, paints and varnishes, sheet glass, putty, foundry products, chocolate confectionery, biscuits, laminated springs, calor gas, paper bags and cardboard boxes; and
(3) further reductions effected in the retail prices of the following commodities and utilities since the 1st December, 1948: sweeping brushes, fireclay goods, metal windows, nuts and bolts, concrete pipes, sugar confectionery and gas.
Furthermore, the Government's policy in regard to agriculture, which is represented by active, well-considered measures to improve the efficiency of the industry, reduce its costs of production and increase its output, is designed not only to promote the prosperity of the farmers but also to reduce the prices of food to the consumers below the level that would otherwise obtain.
Retail prices, as indicated by the official cost-of-living index number, have remained virtually static, at the figure of 100, over the past two years, notwithstanding rises in salaries, wages and wholesale prices generally, increases in the cost of living elsewhere and the inevitable tendency for prices to rise following the devaluation of the £ last September. To have held the cost-of-living index number against the upward pressure exerted by the combination of all these forces was no mean achievement. Further to assess the measure of that achievement, it is relevant to note that, since about mid-August, 1947, the cost-of-living index in Ireland has remained fixed at 100, whereas the British index has increased by 13 per cent., and that, between January, 1948 and January, 1950, wholesale prices generally in Ireland have increased by 1.5 per cent., while the corresponding index in Great Britain increased by 15.2 per cent. In this connection it is well also to recall that, in the inter-war period, trends in the cost of living in the two countries were strikingly similar—which makes the recent divergence the more remarkable.
That should satisfy any reasonable Deputy.
It does, but it will not satisfy you.