He ended up in the company of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with whom he spent a considerable time and, according to his own report to us, gave comprehensive undertakings in reply to which he received the very dusty answer that the Chancellor would be glad to have them in writing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was in a position to announce in the British House of Commons that he got them in writing and was in the position to tell the members of this House what we did not know, and that was, that the Minister for Finance of Oireachtas Éireann was going to make a statement in the agreed terms "to-morrow at 3 o'clock."
And remember there is not a single Deputy in this House who had any knowledge of that interesting fact until the British Chancellor of the Exchequer had to announce it in the British House of Commons that he had it in writing. The Iron Chancellor from this country was doubtless gratified to read that a murmur of approval was heard throughout the Tory benches. We have a poor fish of a Minister for Finance.
I think it is right to say at this stage that there is no Deputy in this House more solicitous than I to see Great Britain survive any trials through which she may now be called upon to pass. There is no Deputy more ready to concede and to proclaim that the future of all of us depends on the continued strength of Great Britain and the United States of America. But it is right to add that even holding those views, Fianna Fáil Deputies and Ministers ought to learn this simple lesson, that the British make hard bargains and they expect those with whom they do business to insist on the bargains being as hard as circumstances may require. You will get nothing from Whitehall by going there with your hat in your hand, and we have no occasion to go to Whitehall with our hats in our hand at the present time, for we are the creditors and we have put upon the common pool of the sterling area a lighter burden than any other participant in it.
The Minister has a duty to tell this House: Did he ask the British Chancellor of the Exchequer as our banker, to render an account to him, the Irish Minister for Finance, of what drawings have been made on the dollar resources of the sterling pool by the participants in it since June, 1948, so that their performance during the last four difficult years might be compared, when it was being determined what future access should be had to those resources, with the performance of this country which was in a position to say this: Since June, 1948, we never drew one single dollar effectively from the dollar resources of the sterling pool though every penny that was owing to us was owing to us on foot of goods sold and delivered to the British people when they could get them nowhere else; whereas the demands made by others on the dollar resources of the sterling pool were not infrequently made on foot of debts created by services rendered to the armed forces of Great Britain while they were defending the independence of those countries against the attack of the Nazi combination.
We are in this astonishing position at the present time that we are told that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has warned our Minister for Finance that all he will get is 16,000,000 dollars for the second half of this year. But the Minister that brings back that ultimatum is wholly unable to tell us what became of the thousands of millions of dollars that were in the sterling pool 12 months ago; who got them; and if all the other participants in this joint venture drew large sums in dollars during the past four years and we drew none, is there no account to be taken of that now in agreeing amongst ourselves as to the proportion of access to dollars which the participants in the sterling area shall have? Is there a Fianna Fáil Deputy in this House who feels that in failing to put Oireachtas Éireann in possession of that information, our Minister for Finance has failed most deplorably, when you realise that every other Minister for Finance has reported faithfully to his Parliament whether it is in Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, or Egypt, as to what the future holds and why? I want that information and I think I am entitled to have it and, unless this Parliament has lost all sense of responsibility, it should want that information and it should insist on having it.
Now, Sir, our Iron Chancellor's journey to London was not wholly in vain. He learned one lesson and that was how to operate a Tory bluff in Ireland. The only mistake he makes is that he has not got the technique to play the bluff out to its logical end.
The whole world has rung for the past three months with the thunderous descriptions of the appalling confusion of public finance in Great Britain. The whole world was led to believe that the foundations of Britain's economy were crumbling and that anyone associated with the sterling group stood in peril of their lives. The whole world was told that nothing but the most revolutionary and ferocious austerity could conceivably pull Great Britain back from the brink of the catastrophe towards which she had been unwittingly led. The whole world stood still when the British Chancellor of the Exchequer unfolded his Budget which everyone anticipated would be of a character unprecedented in British finance.
This mountain having roared, rumbled, smoked and groaned for three months, gave birth to the British Budget, the net effect of which was to reduce taxation by £225,000,000 and raise the bank rate. That is what the whole hullabaloo was designed to achieve, to raise the bank rate, and that is the lesson our Iron Chancellor was taught in London. That is the fraud he is trying to put on our people, but the poor, silly little man did not understand that if you wanted to put that over you should not take a Vote on Account.
He thought that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was making a magnificent gesture in setting the British Budget, for the first time in 70 years, before the end of the financial year. It never dawned on him that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was an astute man who knew you could not get away with that kind of financial burden if you had to show your hand on the Vote on Account and be held up to public ridicule between that date and the date on which you introduced your Budget.
He increased the pensions. He increased the family allowances. He removed 2,000,000 citizens from the ambit of the income-tax. He increased marriage allowances and children's allowances, and everyone so busily rejoicing that the threads and thongs were made of silken wool. Nobody adverted to the fact that for the last six months we were told that unless everybody in Great Britain was stripped naked the British would not survive. Our poor little performer flapped in here yesterday and thinks he is doing the devil in the bag when he repeats the lesson that he learned in Whitehall, and he is all bewildered because it does not seem to have clicked. It has not dawned on him yet that the reason for that is that he did not go the right way about it.
Can you imagine, Sir, I will not say in any civilised, but in any known country, a Minister for Finance coming into Parliament and proclaiming that he has in anticipation a revenue of £85,000,000 with a deficit of £50,000,000 sterling? If the recently appointed Minister for Finance of the recently established State in West Africa had come in in a loin-cloth with a ring in his nose to introduce a Budget on those lines friends would have sympathetically shaken their heads and said that he must have misread his brief and that, perhaps, he would do better the next time. When the Minister for Finance of this State holds this Parliament up to the ridicule of the world as a deliberative assembly into which the Chancellor could come with a revenue of £85,000,000 and a deficit of £50,000,000 nobody believes him here, but that is not what the world will say.
People who talk in Dáil Éireann or in Strasbourg should remember that their audience does not know them as well as we do. This Book of Estimates was designed to deceive. It was designed to do more than that, and the pathetic effort of these silly men to conceal the nigger in the wood pile is contemptible. Do not Deputies know why the double Budget has been dropped?
When we introduced the principle of the double Budget we indicated on the Book of Estimates every year the items which this Government regarded as capital items eligible for financing by borrowing. The moment we so certified, those items were brought within the grip of the appropriate section of the Finance Act, 1950, which imposes on the Government the duty of charging on the Central Fund forthwith a 30-year annuity for the amortisation of any money so borrowed. Mix these items up in the Supply Services without distinguishing them in that way and the borrowing becomes a charge on the ordinary national debt, the amortisation provision of which extends to somewhere between 60 and 70 years.
These performers described their predecessors as profligate and irresponsible. The difference between our procedure and their procedure is that, before the Vote on Account was submitted to this House, every Deputy was notified in black and white of every item in the Book of Estimates in respect of which we thought ourselves justified in borrowing. Every Deputy in this House was notified in advance of the charge that would follow on the Central Fund for the ensuing 30 years in respect of the items set out and, in the light of that information, every Deputy in this House could discuss not only the Budget but the Vote on Account itself. Is there a Deputy on either side of this House to-day who can tell me what items in that Book of Estimates it is proposed to finance by borrowing?