In column 1631 of the Official Report of this year's financial statement the Minister said:—
"In the White Paper of Receipts and Expenditure it is estimated that these ‘below the line' issues will amount to £19.6 million in the current financial year. The expansion in this category of capital outlay by the State is all the more marked when comparison is made with 1938-39, when the comparable outlay was only £1.5 million. Advances to the Electricity Supply Board in 1950-51 are estimated at £4,750,000, as compared with advances of £802,700 in 1938-39."
That is an increase of six times.
"Advances to the Local Loans Fund in 1950-51 are expected to reach £9,750,000 as against £450,000 in 1938-39,"
—that is an increase of 22 times.
"and advances to meet telephone capital expenditure are estimated at £2,250,000 this year as against actual issues of £240,000 in 1938-39."
That is an increase of ten times in the telephone expenditure. Let us get back to the Minister in 1947:—
"Surely it is realised that to pour more money out through the country, without adding to the stock of consumable goods in the country means inflation? We can build roads"—
I think £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 is being spent by the local authorities on roads this year.
—"until the country is riddled with straight, terraced roads. Do we add to production? Only very remotely, very indirectly. We hear of telephone extensions, putting this country on a par with Sweden, one of the greatest telephone-using nations in the world. What do we want it for? How much money is to be spent on telephone extensions? Will it get any more consumer goods produced in the country? The money we have spent on airports and the money we propose to spend will not bring any more goods in, but there will be more money flowing through in circulation.
The same applies to these luxury hotels, only we have added to it that you bring in, not merely money to make future claims on our small stock of consumer goods but bring the people to consume the goods. Yet, these are the designs that the Government have on our economy in the future."
The Minister has rather changed his attitude now about tourism. I suppose the Deputies whose parrot cry is "luxury hotels!" do not understand that in one Italian city there are more bedrooms than in the whole of this country. He says now:—
"Net receipts from tourism are estimated to have fallen in 1949 and, as holidays abroad become more popular for our own people and Ireland loses some of its special attractions for visitors, every effort will be needed to sustain this important source of external income."
I do not know what the income is, but it has been estimated to be far more that what we get from the whole of our live-stock exports.
I think this matter of tourism should be transferred to the Department of External Affairs, who have shown themselves so capable in providing entertainment. I have here an extract from the Irish Times, from a contribution by a well-known writer, on 13th August last. It shows the possibilities that exist in that Department for developing this business of national entertainment, if the Government will only properly attend to it. The writer says:—
"I saw Mr. MacBride before he went abroad—at the big reception— one just dare not refer to it as a ‘hooley'—in Iveagh House the other night. It was given in honour of the distinguished visitors to Dublin for the Horse Show and nobody can deny that it was ‘done' exceedingly well. I honestly do not believe that better catering could be provided in any other city of Europe at the moment—not even by Strasbourg, in spite of that foie gras which makes my mouth water even to think of it. Everything was perfect, and in exquisite taste. As the party was held of a Friday, as we say in the West, the buffet could not be opened until midnight, by which time most of the guests were fairly ravenous and did full justice to the excellent fare.
It was a most interesting gathering. It is a long time since Dubliners had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a real live prince..."
We continue on then and we are told that, as well as catering very admirably for the entertainment of these visitors, cultural activities are not forgotten. That is only what one would expect from the Department of External Affairs. The writer says that Mr. So-and-so
"is also quite an accomplished dancer, although I did not notice him among the performers during the ‘Walls of Limerick', which demands a certain amount of physical endurance, as well as terpsichorean grace. The Swiss Minister, on the other hand, seemed to revel in the cavorting, which evidently is an essential element in this traditional dance."
We may not have had the luxury hotels, but I suggest we have had something far better, which will add to the grace and the standard of entertainment in our capital city. If the Department would only hand over the whole of this matter of tourist expansion and development to that Department, I am sure it would provide a useful field for their undoubted talents in that direction.
In the Minister's statement with regard to investment, we are told that there is investment of the class to which I have just referred and which the Minister had certain strong views about in the past. He says:—
"There is, however, a wide range of useful capital work which private investors cannot be expected to undertake and which, therefore, must be done on a collective basis by the State. There is investment which, though expected to be directly remunerative, is beyond the resources of private enterprise to undertake or to finance; power development is an example. There is investment, such as land reclamation and afforestation, from which the return may not be immediate or conspicuous enough to stimulate private enterprise."
I think the Minister himself has expressed doubts whether the aim that he has set before himself, in these enterprises which he regards as of such a productive nature that they should be able to service the debt incurred upon them, is likely to be realised. In dealing with agricultural development, in column 1635 we are told:
"This total outlay of £6,250,000 is being treated as proper to be met from borrowing, a course suggested by its developmental character but which will, in the end, be justified only if the expected increase in agricultural output is secured and is consolidated by an improvement in competitive efficiency in the export market."
So that the investment of these Marshall Aid funds will not have repaid their expenditure unless we are in a better position to compete with the Danes than the Minister for Agriculture leads us to believe is the case at present. We have reference to the risks. The arguments for and against are so skilfully balanced in the Budget statement and the paragraphs so beautifully sandwiched—that in regard to the risks in State investment, for example, being confined to a comparatively small paragraph towards the end of the section—that one wonders whether the exposition of the principles has not been weighted in such a way that any Minister might be able to argue an entirely different point of view and even to come to conclusions contradictory of what might seem to follow from the premises in that statement.
Dealing with the repatriation of external assets, we are told that savings should increase and manpower should be gainfully occupied, but that there is a risk of a lowering of living standards if home production does not expand in such a manner as to compensate for the loss of the income derived from the external assets. One thing about this Budget statement is that it does give the country very useful information about this question of sterling assets and the problems of repatriating them which are not at all as simple or as beneficial to the national interest as some ministerial spokesmen would try to lead the country to believe. I hope the Minister will get his colleagues to study and indeed he himself might study some of these principles from which he seems to lean away and which seem to have been put in as a stop-gap lest this runaway juggernaut car of the Coalition should get completely out of control.
The national income, we are told, was £350,000,000 in 1949 and in 1938 it was £154,000,000. Was an income of £154,000,000 in 1938 not more valuable and not likely to purchase more than £350,000,000 in 1949? I have read a calculation showing that the total amount of our sterling assets at present, having regard to the fact that the cost of goods has risen about two and a half times over the pre-war level, is not in fact any greater in terms of the goods it might be said to purchase than in the pre-war period. We are told we ought to bring these assets back and apparently some people consider that the very fact of bringing them back, irrespective of whether they are spent on consumption goods leaving nothing behind or put into projects that can never hope to provide a return financially or to be described as productive in the proper sense, is better than leaving them where they are. We have the advice now of people who condemned the transfer of these assets to this country in 1938 as thoroughly unwise and foolish. They were described at that time as being a cushion, a shield or protection against our finding ourselves in the difficulties in which countries like New Zealand found themselves when they had to go with their hats in their hand to London, in the depth of a trade depression, to try to borrow moneys to make up in some way for the assets they had allowed to be dissipated.