Before the debate on the General Resolution is resumed, may I say that I understand that, in order to obviate the need of meeting to-morrow, it has been agreed that I should rise to conclude the debate on the General Resolution at 8 o'clock. I presume that may be taken as an Order of the House.
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).
On the understanding that it will require that time for the Minister to reply, and to finish the Report Stage of the Financial Resolutions.
And to take the First Stage of the Finance Bill.
And the vote will be taken at 10.30 p.m.?
Perhaps before that. I do not want to keep the House any longer than is necessary.
I would not like to curtail your liberty.
I am sure you would not.
Particularly when it is going to be an enchanting speech.
I shall be merciful towards the Deputy.
This arrangement is subject, of course, to the time being reasonably divided.
The understanding is that the Chair will call on the Minister to conclude at 8 o'clock. Is that agreed?
Agreed.
Deputy Gallagher on the General Resolution.
I do not want to be too hard on Deputy Dunne. I was referring to his publicity stunt and I compared him to a certain gentleman —a certain heavy-weight boxer. The only difference between him and Deputy Dunne is that he pleaded guilty to fooling the people.
That is slanderous.
I must say that Deputy Dunne's effort was really a feeble one. I am sure that people outside realise that it was a stunt, aided and abetted by the Evening Herald.
Now we hear a great deal from the Labour Benches about the removal of food subsidies. We heard it in O'Connell Street and, incidentally, the incidents there will cost the ratepayers of the city a few thousand pounds. That is for the events which followed that meeting. I am not blaming the Labour people for the events which followed the meeting but it is likely that these will cost the ratepayers of Dublin a few thousand pounds.
That has nothing whatever to do with the General Resolution before the House.
It is no harm to mention it.
It is harm to mention anything that is irrelevant.
It is obvious that they were shedding tears at that meeting, at the Labour Party Conference and in this House regarding the reduction in the food subsidies. I am not sure if what Deputy Norton said in 1947 on food subsidies has been quoted before. It will be noted from what I am going to read that the Labour Party were never very happy about food subsidies. Deputy Norton, speaking in the Dáil on 15th October, 1947, at column 435, said:—
"The highlight of the documents put before us is, I take it, the subsidies to reduce the prices of tea, bread and sugar. I think these are sham reductions. I do not think they make any perceptible contribution to relieving the plight of the ordinary working people to-day and they make a less perceptible contribution in the circumstances in which they are offered."
It is obvious that they were never very happy about them. They voted against them. I will go further than that and say that neither were their Coalition colleagues. I propose to refer them to the report of their own "Flour and Bread Inquiry — interim and final report". They need not tell me that they did not adopt it. I know that they did not, but it clearly shows that the writing was on the wall. I quote the following from page 8 of that report:—
"In actual fact, the annual expenditure on subsidy has never been less than £2,000,000 since 1941-42, and as we have already pointed out, is likely to remain at the level of £5/6,000,000 per annum unless there is a change of policy regarding the level of flour and bread prices. In view of the exceptionally low level of these prices, as compared with the prices of other essential foodstuffs, and having regard to the substantial increases in income received by most sections of the community in recent years, we are satisfied that the present considerable expenditure on flour subsidy is not justified. We, therefore, strongly recommend that flour and bread prices should be increased in gradual stages towards their economic levels so as to bring the subsidised prices more into line with the prices of the other major food items, and at the same time to reduce the heavy burden of the flour subsidy."
I agree that they did not adopt that report, but it is obvious the line they were going on that it would be only a matter of time in 1947. This is their own report signed by eminent people such as Mr. Justice Cecil Lavery, Mr. E.T. McCarron and Mr. A.T. McMahon. We must assume that they are intelligent, sane people. There can be no question about that.
We can see from that report that the Coalition group, combined with the Labour people, were not altogether happy on this question of the flour subsidy. I have no doubt that is the reason why no member of the group opposite can at the moment give a definite statement as to what they would do on the question of food subsidies. We all know full well that subsidies create artificial prices. I think it was mentioned here before, and I think there will be general agreement on it that they do create artificial prices. Their removal should not create undue increases, especially when food is plentiful. I am informed that tea has come down in price on the international market since the subsidy was reduced in Great Britain. I am also informed that butter production here at the moment is quite good. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that we will have quite a good supply of butter. It is also safe to assume that the same will be true in regard to tea and milk. With a reasonable chance of plentiful supplies prices would not be as severe as they are at the moment.
It is well known in Dublin, and I am sure throughout the country, that we have been subsidising butter which has been sent out of the country, and smuggled out of it. Nobody can deny that. Why, therefore, should we pay a subsidy on butter and allow it to be sent out and to be smuggled out? That is not right, and I am sure nobody would attempt to condone it.
It is difficult at this stage to introduce anything new into this debate. It is no harm, however, to point out that people who have been buying tea and flour off the ration have been paying more for them than the ration price. I represent a working class district in Dublin. I know well, and most shopkeepers will tell you, that many of my constituents have been buying this Government black market tea and sugar and other commodities. They could not exist on the ration; they had to go outside it and pay these extra prices. I suggest that things will be better under this new system.
I think that a better approach to this whole problem would be for every Deputy to try and bring home to the people, as I have tried to prove from the Flour and Bread Report and the speech of Deputy Norton, that food subsidies were never intended to be a permanent feature in this country. It must have been obvious to everyone that rationing would have to end some time or other. To my mind, there can be no denying this, that the end of rationing has been welcomed by the business community and the people generally. I know one shopkeeper, who never drank in his life, who said that he would go off on a good burst-up the day they got rid of these ration books and of all the work he had to do in regard to keeping his accounts in order. The public themselves would be better pleased with the present system.
And go on a binge? Did you advise him to go on a binge?
I do not drink and I have no intention of going on a binge. I mentioned the case of the shopkeeper who had made up his mind to be happy when all this rationing would come to an end. The Deputy might know more about binges than I do.
Absolutely and I am very glad to be able to do so.
It is a good man's fault. The Deputies opposite have boasted about having a sense of responsibility. All Deputies have boasted of the fact that they are imbued with a terrific sense of responsibility. If we accept all that they must agree that reduced taxation means reduced expenditure. If we agree on all that we must then realise that to have drastic cuts in expenditure will interfere a great deal with existing schemes.
None of the Deputies opposite, who have been so loud in attacking this Budget, have made any suggestion to reduce the old age pensions, family allowances, the remaining subsidies and the wages and salaries of civil servants, teachers, Gardaí, the Defence Forces, or the local government officials to whom Deputy Corry referred here. Do they suggest that we should reduce the salaries of those people? If we do that we will certainly reduce taxation. Should we not discharge the arrears on the fuel subsidies and payments in regard to Córas Iompair Éireann and to the Great Northern Railway? We have got to pay for those items. Does the Opposition suggest that we should not pay the interest due on the Marshall Aid loan? The Coalition Government did not make provision in their last Budget for some of the items I have mentioned.
Córas Iompair Éireann is Mr. Lemass's baby.
The Deputy knows a good deal about Córas Iompair Éireann. If we were to reduce employment in Córas Iompair Éireann the Labour Deputies would be the first to stand up and protest, but we have the interests of the workers of Dublin, the Great Northern Railway and Córas Iompair Éireann at heart.
This Budget proves it.
I would remind the Deputy of a statement made at his own Trade Union Congress when a Derry man told him that the workers were following Fianna Fáil. Perhaps the Deputy may suggest to the House that this man was possibly in the pay of the Secret Service.
The Deputy will address the Chair and use the third person.
I beg the Chair's pardon. Deputy Davin is a past-master at interrupting to try to put people like myself, who are new to the House, out of step.
You are not bad at that.
I can do that but I do not side-step my responsibilities. Deputy Davin was completely bustled and put out of his stride when he made his speech. When he got bustled he sat down, and that is a bad sign. You cannot have it both ways. We have got to meet these things and we have got to get the cash for them, and there is no use in this hullabaloo if they will not face the facts.
We find the same situation in Dublin Corporation, where you have people who support the present Coalition group. They shout during the year for extra services but when the time comes to discuss the estimate to strike the rate they kick up billy-o. They want all sorts of services but they will not pay for them.
A Deputy
What about the cost of living?
I did not make any promises in regard to reducing the cost of living. I, for one, did not at any time say we would reduce the cost of living. Others might have done so. I did not believe at the time that it could be done. Clann na Poblachta made some wild suggestion that they could reduce the cost of living.
Labour and Fine Gael claimed that this Budget was framed in favour of the better-off section of our community. They have laboured on that a great deal. I must look upon that as not true. I could say it is a deliberate falsehood but to be charitable I will let it go as not being correct. Rich and poor have benefited by the subsidies. I am sure that Deputies will agree that the poor contributed, through Deputy McGilligan's devices, the taxes which paid for those subsidies.
The position now is that we have reliefs to ease the load on the less well-off. We hear quite a lot about the rich but I do not know whether there are very many rich persons. The rich now lose the subsidies but they still pay the higher taxes.
They get the family allowances.
All the rich people get is the family allowance, and does the Deputy object to that?
Plus many other amenities.
The rich have lost the subsidies and they still pay the higher taxes. The better-off sections are now paying higher income-tax and the ordinary workers are paying less. Nobody has denied that. They have read the figures given by the Minister for Finance and it is obvious that they could not get away with it by pointing out that this Budget was framed for the better-off section of our community.
As pointed out by previous speakers, there are provisions for children's allowances, the aged and increased social services for the lowly paid. I heard Deputy Alfred Byrne speak — very shrewdly making his speech in time for to-night's Evening Herald for his Dublin constituents. He spoke about the Budget but he did not say one word about the increased children's allowances and increased old age pensions about which he cries so much. He should be consistent in these things. Incidentally, I think that he, or his son, who, I hope, is on the road to recovery, voted against the food subsidies. He comes here now and tries to make out that we are doing this for fun or to affect the poor people of Dublin. That is entirely wrong. Nobody, knowing the people who are at the head of Fianna Fáil, could suggest that we have ever tried to be harsh on the poor. That may read well but a lot of people know it is not correct and the people who make those statements are not being sincere.
Deputy Corish was worrying about motor cars and companies. He should know that companies are now paying higher tax on their profits. If that does not satisfy the Labour Party, I do not know what they want. These people have not been forgotten by the Minister for Finance. He has taxed the companies and they are paying much more on their profits. Even those with the high-power cars are also contributing through the petrol tax. They are paying a higher petrol tax. They do not get away scot free, as was suggested by Deputy Corish.
What about the dance halls?
I do not want to get away from anything. I have no intention of hiding my personal views. Deputy Corish was also worried, because he thought this Budget might hold up housing. I can inform him, as a member of the Dublin Corporation, that we are worried about housing. Owing to the action taken by a Coalition Minister in January, 1951, a circular was sent to the Dublin Corporation regarding the submission of plans and other regulations. As a result, we now find ourselves in the position that, instead of building 2,500 houses, we can only build 1,400. That is what we are worrying about. We have been informed by the city manager that there is enough money to keep up the Dublin Corporation housing programme for many years to come. Therefore, Deputy Corish has not a great deal to worry about in that respect. The action taken by the Coalition Minister in 1951 certainly upset our plans a great deal.
Deputy O'Leary is worried about my reaction to the entertainment tax and the tax on dance halls. Deputy O'Leary should remember the outcry which we had from the Labour Benches when the cinemas were taxed. Any Labour Deputy who is interested in the trade union movement should realise that the cinemas and theatres in Dublin are providing a great deal of employment and first-class conditions for the workers. If we increased the tax on cinemas and unemployment resulted, we would have an outcry from the Labour people.
Why not tax the dances?
Why not allow Deputy Gallagher to make his speech in his own way? Surely he is entitled to do that.
He said cinemas; I said dance halls.
In 1947, you were not too happy when Fianna Fáil put the tax on cinemas The cinemas are giving a great deal of employment and if we tax them further we would hear a great deal from the Labour people. It may please Deputy O'Leary to hear that I am not altogether happy about the removal of the tax on dancing. But, as has been pointed out, the Revenue Commissioners, who are very important people, have suggested time and again the removal of this tax, not alone to the present Minister for Finance but to Deputy McGilligan when he was Minister for Finance. They have recommended that this tax on dance halls should be removed because it gives endless trouble in collection and, as has been pointed out by Deputy Maher, there was wholesale evasion of it. I agree with the Deputy who said that the Minister might at some later stage consider some method of getting revenue from dancing.
Great play was made about the dance halls in Dublin. One of the big dance halls in Dublin is controlled by a Labour organisation. I do not dance myself, but I know a little about the dance halls. Those who run the dance halls are not as wealthy as one would imagine. The dance halls are controlled by Irish people who are trying to make a living and they are doing the best they can. It is better to see these Irishmen controlling the dance halls properly than to have outsiders coming in. As I said, I think the Minister at some later stage should consider some other method of getting revenue from dancing. Now that it has been removed, I hope that the younger people will be allowed to attend these dances at a reduced price.
Some of these dance halls charge 15/-.
If a young man with a girl goes twice a week to dances in Dublin, it costs him about 14/- for admission.
Some of the dance bands get £70.
They are Irish musicians. Dress dances, of course, are expensive. I hope that in Dublin and throughout the country there will be some relief given in the admission prices.
Finally, I would point out to Opposition Deputies that we in Fianna Fáil are not fools. We realise the political implications of this Budget. We know what happened as a result of the Supplementary Budget in 1947 — Fianna Fáil were put out. Does anybody think we would do the same thing again just for the love of it?
You will chance anything.
We realise the political implications of this Budget and we are not one bit afraid to face the situation. That is what the Coalition should have done. They should have faced the situation instead of squandering the people's savings. They went very deep into debt instead of facing the situation fairly and squarely. They should have faced up to the obligation of paying for the services to which we have become accustomed. As a Dublin Deputy, immediately the details of the Budget were made known, I went into the very heart of my constituency. I went amongst the poorer type of people and explained the position to them. Naturally, they were a bit sore about the increased prices of food. I pointed out the other advantages and the reasons for the increases. They faced up to the situation fairly well. From the point of view of the Party, I say that we would not be one bit afraid to go before the people. We have been challenged on the other side to go before the people. We faced the situation as we found it. When we came into office, we found it was unsatisfactory and we tried to clean up the mess. We have done it before and anybody with any sense will realise that we are doing the same thing again, not for any political advantage, but for the good of the country.
It is rather significant that a very vital decision will be taken this evening in this House, because to-day is the 1st of May and the toiling masses of workers of the world over are celebrating in the large cities and towns of their respective countries their liberation from serfdom, their freedom of speech, and certain liberties which they secured down the years. Here in Ireland, if this Budget is passed, the workers will have very little to celebrate. Instead of marching forward, they will be going backwards as a result of this Budget. A lot has been said by various speakers on both sides of the House during the last nine or ten days and very little is left to be said by those who have to speak towards the close of this debate. I do not intend to go over the ground already covered by previous speakers.
My purpose in rising is merely to protest against this financial statement of the Minister and the Government and to try to convey to them, even at this late hour, that they should not impose the taxes which they propose to impose and should not remove the subsidies which they intend to remove in a few months. I come, not from an industrial area, but from a rural constituency of small, hard-working farmers. It has been said outside and inside this House that if the price of butter is increased, it does not affect the small farmer, and, that if he buys butter, it is due to laziness or to the mismanagement of his business. That is untrue. The small farmer with a wife and children who has six, seven or eight acres of land cannot maintain the necessary number of cows to provide him with an essential quantity of butter. In nine out of ten cases, he has got to depend on a supply of butter from the creameries or go into the shop and buy butter. In County Mayo, which is the third largest county in Ireland, there is not one creamery. It is very easy to count the number of churnings made at the present time in the villages of the constituency I represent. The reason for this is that, due to the uneconomic size of their holdings, the people cannot afford to feed milch cows so that they will produce sufficient milk to make butter. The result is that the people are forced into the shops to purchase butter.
We all know the racket that was kicked up by the present Government, when in opposition, because the inter-Party Government increased the price of butter by 1d. per 1b. However, the Government have now increased the price of butter by 10d. per 1b. with one stroke of the pen. I ask rural Deputies and my colleagues on the Government Benches—Deputies Moran and S. Flanagan—can they justify that action before the people in their constituencies? I cannot see how they can face the people and justify that increase. I cannot see how the explanation given by the Tánaiste, when he indicated to this House that, if butter was being increased by 10d. per 1b., the price of jam would be decreased, can be accepted. Jam is a very poor substitute for butter. We are all aware that when a family is being reared, an effort is being made to make sweet commodities such as jam and confectionery inaccessible. We all realise that butter is one of the main items on the table of most homes. In my constituency, at the present time, the seeds are being sown. There are no potatoes available just now because the small farmers have put their last few hundredweight into the ground as seed. Therefore, their families will have to exist on bread, butter and tea for the next two or three months. The housewife who has to budget for a family of from six to ten children will find, when she goes to the shop, that she will have to pay almost 18/- extra for a ten-stone bag of flour. I was a member of a very large family, and I well remember that a ten-stone bag of flour lasted only eight days. Remember, our valuation was less than £3 10s. per annum. In those days flour was cheap in comparison with the present time. When I endeavour to compare the prices now and the prices then and the mode of life now with that when I was being reared, I pity the mother or the housewife who will be responsible for budgeting for a household when the new prices come into being in a short time. I would ask Deputies Moran and S. Flanagan and several other rural Deputies if they can honestly justify, with one stroke of the pen, an increase of 18/-in a ten-stone bag of flour, and the increase of 10d. in the 1 1b. of butter? Let us forget about the beer, the cigarettes. These are articles which can, perhaps, be described as luxuries. Let us face the situation as it is going to affect the housewife or the person responsible for making ends meet at the present time.
We are aware that the change of Government has brought about more unemployment and more poverty than existed in this State for a considerable time. When one considers that there are more attending the dole offices to-day than was the case at any time for the past four or five years, surely we are entitled to ask the Government have they considered, in its fullest sense, what the impact of this Budget is going to be on the poorer sections of the people? Are the Government determined in removing from rural Ireland the last remnants of the people? Are they determined to close every home in the rural areas and force the people to emigrate in order to get sustenance? I have been sent up here from all classes of people, but, in particular, from the poor. I have been sent up by the staunchest Fianna Fáil supporters — those who would vote for Fianna Fáil to-morrow — and I have been asked to protest against this Budget and to try to bring home to the Minister for Finance and his colleagues the seriousness of the situation and their inability to make ends meet if this Budget is carried through. I would, therefore, ask the Minister for Finance, even at the eleventh hour, not to withdraw the food subsidies.
We have to take into account that the present Government, during the years of the inter-Party Government's régime and, in particular, during the election campaign last year, on every platform and through the medium of the Press made solemn pledges and promises that they would not impose taxation on any of these commodities on which we find taxation imposed to-day, and that they would not withdraw the food subsidies. These promises were made not by irresponsible candidates but by Ministers who have held office for 16 or 17 years. Yet, within less than 11 months, we find that these people have gone back on their pledges and have reimposed taxation far in excess of what any Deputy or any candidate, by any stretch of the imagination, this time last year, would have thought possible.
I would ask responsible Ministers and Deputies are they not ashamed to have associated themselves with and connived in the drafting of a Budget statement of this kind which imposes such drastic taxation. Surely they know what the verdict of the people is going to be, if they are prepared to face them. It has been obvious that every speech made from the Government Benches has been more apologetic than anything else. In fact, one would almost feel sympathetic towards them, because they felt humiliated. Of course, a few impertinent members of the Party sniggered and smiled, trying to cover up their guilt. It reminds one of a criminal in the dock who, when sentence of death has been passed upon him, smiles a cynical smile in order to show how brave and courageous he is. How can the Government have the courage to face the country within the next month or two, or even within the next 24 hours? We heard a lot from Government speakers about what is being given to replace or to offset the increased taxation and the removal of subsidies. The amount provided in the Budget is something around £3,000,000 in the form of social services. Not counting the imposition of taxation, almost double £3,000,000 is being taken back from the people by the removal of the food subsidies. It means that something over £7,000,000 will be saved in the form of food subsidies. For every £ you are giving to the poor man you are taking two from him with the other hand. What form of compensation or relief is that? You are doing the same thing, but to a much greater degree, as the British Government and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer did in introducing his Budget some few months ago. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. You are giving a £ with one hand and with the other you are taking £2 away, and leaving people much worse off than they were.
A lot has been said in regard to this miserable 1/6 to the old age pensioners. Ministers have gone back a number of years trying to justify their policy and trying to justify the introduction of this Budget. They have gone back as far as 1922 and 1923 and talked about the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government and what they did towards the ordinary working man and the old age pensioners. No matter what they did, it could not be any worse, and it is not worse, than what is being done in this Budget. When you consider the circumstances under which they did some of those things and the circumstances under which they are being done to-day, you will find that they are totally different. There can be no comparison whatsoever.
Deputy Childers entertained us for two or three hours on Thursday and on Tuesday. He travelled all over Europe, from Sweden to Switzerland, France, Belgium; in fact, he brought us all over the world, comparing prices, etc. He went on to tell us that anything that has been done in the field of social development or industrial development has been done by Fianna Fáil. That is an untruth. If we want to be fair in our criticism, we must admit that the beginning of industrial development took place when the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in office, whether we like it or not, when they constructed the Shannon scheme which was opposed by the then Opposition, Fianna Fáil, and when they built the first beet factory. From the Shannon scheme we got the power that has enabled many of our industries to function and to produce the goods which we are producing at the present moment. That scheme has provided the necessary power, and no matter what Government came into office from 1932 onwards the result would have been industrial development. We were very backward in that direction, and industrial development was essential in order to balance the economy. Whether it was the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, the Fine Gael Government or a Labour Government that introduced that scheme, you would have had the same outcome, industrial development. But to suggest that Fianna Fáil alone are responsible and that they alone can claim to themselves the achievement of any of the things that have been done in this country since the establishment of the State is a falsehood, and the members of the Government are fully aware of that.
If you look back to the time of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government and take into consideration the difficulties under which they laboured and carried out administration you will find that the circumstances were absolutely abnormal. If the help and assistance of the then Opposition was forthcoming instead of what was forthcoming, things might be much better and greater advances and greater strides might have been made. All the criticism of Deputy Childers and his efforts to take all the laurels and claim all the glory for everything done over the last 20 or 30 years are absolutely absurd.
He has tried to draw a comparison with countries in Europe and with Great Britain in relation to prices, in relation to the consumption of goods, production, etc. There can be no comparison. As Deputy Dr. O'Higgins and other Deputies have said time and time again, these countries have passed through two wars in the last 30 years. We have been saved at least one of these wars—that is, the last war, and we were in a position to make plans and preparations for development. Our central and local authorities were disorganised but we were in a position to make plans and make preparations for the time when things became normal.
We were led to believe that these post-war plans were formulated from the outbreak of war up to the end of the war but there was very little done until the inter-Party Government came into power. No matter what may be said of the inter-Party administration it cannot be denied that there is no Government since the establishment of the State which did so much in so short a time. It is quite common to hear Deputies down the country and spokesmen of the Fianna Fáil Party saying to ordinary people outside the church gate or in the fair green: "Which do you want? Do you want us to become subservient to some foreign power — Russia, America, France or Italy? Do you want us to become subservient by accepting loans or by borrowing money, or do you want us to maintain our freedom and our liberty?" They know full well that the Irish people still have a sound national outlook and they are trying to play on that sound national outlook. They know full well that the Irish people have not yet forgotten the serfdom under which they lived when a foreign power controlled this country.
They know that no matter what hardships were imposed, if they were in the national interest the people would be prepared to sustain and endure those hardships in order to maintain their freedom. But it is cruel and despicable that Deputies should take an unfair advantage of the people at church gates and in the fair green and try to convey to them that because America lends us a few million dollars we are now subservient to them and that the real motive of the American Government in lending us this money is to utilise us in some way or other to her advantage. To say that of a friendly Power and of a friendly Government is most unfair and definitely should not be said by any Deputy or by any responsible Minister inside this House.
What Deputy or Minister did say it?
It has been said by nearly every Deputy either directly or indirectly. It was said by the Minister for External Affairs.
He said no such thing.
Every Government Deputy who contributed to this Budget has postulated in one form or another that there exists two alternatives. One is to stand on our own feet and the other is to become subservient to a foreign Power by borrowing or getting some financial assistance. It has not been said, perhaps, in the simple language in which I have stated it but it has been said with one objective in mind, to misrepresent the inter-Party Government and to convey to the simple-minded folk that that was the intention of the inter-Party Government if they remained in office or if they got back into office after a general election.
It is sad to think that after only 30 years of freedom, there should have sprung up citizens of such a low and renegade type who, on being elected by the people to Parliament, would descend to such a level as to betray this country and the freedom which has been secured for this part of the 32 Counties. If the Government feel that what they have done is justifiable then they should not be afraid to seek the verdict of the people. If the Government feel that the people are quite prepared to accept this extra taxation then they should have no hesitation in facing the people for a verdict. We are of the opinion (1) that the imposition of this taxation is not essential; (2) that the people were not told by the Fianna Fáil Party during the general election campaign that if they were returned to office this taxation would be imposed and (3) that a guarantee was given that the food subsidies would be left as they were.
When the Supplementary Budget was introduced in 1947 we asked the then Minister for Finance why he required the extra money for which he imposed extra taxation on certain commodities. If my memory serves me well, we were told that he needed that extra money to subsidise food. We were told that it was for the purpose of making cheaper bread and cheaper butter available to the working people. Shortly after the introduction of that Supplementary Budget there was a general election and the Fianna Fáil Government were put out of office. Now, under this Budget, the same duties are being reintroduced but the blow is heavier and the revenue which will come in from this extra taxation will not be devoted to the subsidisation of food. In point of fact, the subsidisation of food is to be considerably reduced.
We were told by the present Minister that proper allowance for certain matters was not made by Deputy McGilligan in his Budget last year. I have listened to the speeches made by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, and the former Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, and I am prepared to take their word as against that of the present Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance has at his disposal all the information which he requires, and he has the help of civil servants and financial experts. Despite all that assistance, there have been many blunders in the drafting of this Budget—blunders which the Minister has admitted. It is possible that there are many more blunders in this Budget statement which have not been discovered by the former Ministers or Deputies on this side of the House.
In the course of his speech, Deputy Costello pointed out that this Government are budgeting for a sum in the neighbourhood of from £9,000,000 to £11,000,000 in excess of what is, in fact, required. That has not been contradicted by any Government spokesman during the course of this debate. I hope that when the Minister for Finance is concluding he will reply to the points made by Deputy Costello. The Tánaiste made an effort to do so, but he went round in circles and did not give any reply. Deputy McGilligan, the former Minister for Finance, spoke on the afternoon that this Budget was presented, and he spoke again this week. He did not receive any reply either. I am prepared to accept the word of Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan as against the word of the Minister for Finance.
Deputies have described this Budget as drastic, cruel and unreal. I describe it as a political trick. I believe every word that Deputy Costello uttered about budgeting for a surplus. I maintain that it is the intention of the Fianna Fáil Party to remain in office, if at all possible, for another 12 months. I believe that, with the surplus moneys which they will have at their disposal by reason of this Budget, they will introduce a much more lenient Budget this time next year, and then face the people with the threat that if they dare change the Government they will have the same mess as they are alleged to have had after the inter-Party Government, and that they will have to pay the same penalty again in the form of excess taxation in order to clear up the mess which will result. I maintain that 12 months after the presentation of this Budget — if they can hold on to office for another year — the Fianna Fáil Party will go to the country and seek re-election. We are aware — and most Fianna Fáil Deputies have admitted it — that the Government are not anxious to go to the country. We can well appreciate their reasons for being loath to do so.
I daresay that Deputy Moran will follow me in this debate. We are good friends in our discussions, apart from politics. I listened to Deputy Moran when he was speaking to his constituents during the last general election. He was very convincing. He spoke to large audiences in many large towns in County Mayo. They were innocent audiences. He spoke of the dual purchase prices system and, according to him, such a system was not to be discovered in any country outside the Iron Curtain except this country. He said that the inter-Party Government and the Government of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics had something in common — that they were running a black market in so far as the essential foodstuffs of the people were concerned. He pointed out that there was bad flour for the poor but that there was good, white, healthy flour for the rich — and, of course, he pointed out that there were two prices. He said that the poor man was rationed to a certain allowance and that if he could not do with that allowance he could go hungry, but that the rich man could obtain either the cheap flour or the dear flour. He said that, naturally, the rich man purchased the good, white flour which was the dear flour.
During his general election speeches Deputy Moran indicated that if the Fianna Fáil Party were returned to office the dual price system would be altered. A period of 12 months passed before the system was altered. We know what the new position will be. Deputy Moran will find great difficulty in explaining to those same audiences in County Mayo how the housewives are going to pay an extra 18/- for the 10-stone bag of flour. Which system does Deputy Moran honestly consider the more reasonable, Christian and humane — the dual-price system or the one-price system? If he is honest he will admit that, under the one-price system, many things will be outside the reach of the poor man's purse. I do not believe that Deputy Moran can, in truth, say that the one-price system is fairer to the ordinary people of this country than the dual-price system.
I am told that the back benchers and, in particular, those Deputies representing rural areas were the strongest influence on the Government in relation to the imposition of this extra taxation and to the withdrawal of the subsidies.
I could scarcely believe that, but the general rumour is that the Government would not have agreed to the withdrawal of the subsidies if it were not for the pressure brought to bear on them by Fianna Fáil Deputies from the rural areas. If that is correct, and if Deputy Moran or any other Deputy had anything to do with the moulding of Government policy in relation to the withdrawal of the food subsidies and the imposition of these taxes, they have a lot to account for, and I do not know how they will account for it when they face their constituents.
I take a bottle of stout. Deputies on all sides take a bottle of stout. The average working man takes a bottle or a pint of stout, and he has now to pay an extra 3d. for his pint. A packet of cigarettes and a box of matches now costs 2/6, minus a halfpenny. I shall leave whiskey out of it. I do not care if whiskey was 6/- a glass. It does not make any difference so far as the working man is concerned, but I do say that the blow struck in regard to cigarettes and beer is altogether unconscionable. If a penny or twopence were put on the packet of cigarettes, one would not mind it too much, but to increase the price of the packet from 1/9 to 2/4 is altogether unreasonable and unfair to the average working man whose income is from £4 to £5 a week.
This extra taxation is bad enough, but, side by side with it, we find that almost every Estimate has been slashed with the result that thousands of workers will be put on the dole. Already we have an increase of 15,000 on the number unemployed last year, not counting the 4,000 able-bodied men who have joined the Army and the 1,000 who have emigrated.
We have record only of those who have signed on at the unemployment exchange and the figures show an increase of, roughly, about 15,000. When I cast my mind back to what was said by the Fianna Fáil Party when they were over here about unemployment, I wonder what explanation they have to offer for the increased figures now. What explanation have they to offer to the hundreds of men who are lining up to sign at the labour exchanges in towns like Westport, Ballinrobe, Castlebar, Belmullet and Swinford, to get the few shillings which they are allowed? How are they now to purchase the commodities which will have to bear these increased taxes? We must not forget that, apart from increased taxation, the cost of many essentials of life has increased doubly or trebly in the last 12 months. I believe that every Deputy has a conscience and a certain amount of responsibility but I wonder what laxity affects the conscience of Deputies on the Government Benches or do they give any serious consideration to the fact that within the past 12 months the value of the £ has fallen very considerably, judged by the present cost of living? It is bad enough that the Government should have failed to exercise any reasonable control over the cost of living but, in addition, they now come along to impose this new list of duties. I ask responsible Deputies to ponder over the dilemma in which they are going to put the housewife with eight or nine "kiddies" who is faced with the problem of finding food and clothing for them. What laxity attaches to the consciences of Deputies who are prepared to walk into the Division Lobby behind the Minister, who shows such callous disregard of the necessities of the people in this Budget?
I think the greatest insult contained in the Budget is the offer of an increase of 1/6 to the old age pensioners. I came into this House in 1944 and I can recall that many motions were tabled by different Parties when Fianna Fáil were in power seeking increase for old age pensioners and for widows and orphans. The one thing that Fianna Fáil seems to forget is that whatever strides were made in the provision of social services during the 16 years they were in office came as a result of the pressure brought to bear upon them by the Opposition Parties. We know that on one occasion the Minister for Social Welfare, as he now is — he was then known as the Minister for Local Government — when a motion was tabled requesting an increase of 2/6 in the old age pension and a small modification of the means test, which it was said would cost £500,000, opposed that motion and so did his Party because, as he said, the Exchequer could not afford it. They now boast a lot of what they did in that direction but the credit is really due to the Opposition Parties who brought pressure to bear on them. During the war years, when the old age pensioners were faced with a very high cost of living, what did the Government do for them? They were offered 2/6 a week and before they could qualify for that 2/6 they had to go before the relieving officer. Deputies, including Deputy Moran and Deputy Flanagan, know that they would get that 2/6 only on set days once a month. If the relieving officer was not in good form, if he was after a night on the beer or was on a "spree"— that word has become popular now—he did not turn up at all that day and they had to come back a second day. They were humiliated and degraded. They had to admit that they were on the verge of destitution and starvation——
That does not arise on the motion before the House.
Oh, it does.
We are not discussing the supplementary allowance of 2/6.
I am discussing the increase of 1/6 allowed under this Budget to old age pensioners to offset the increase in the cost of living as a result of the new taxes and I am dealing with the provision for social services under this Budget. I am pointing out that the social services provided by the present Government when they were previously in office were due to the pressure brought to bear on them from this side of the House. I am pointing out the lack of consideration which the Government had for the old age pensioner when they held full sway and were not depending on the very delicate silk thread of support on which they are dependent at present. When the inter-Party Government got into power what happened? They abolished the existing system with one stroke of the pen and gave 17/6 a week to the old age pensioners. Legislation was passed through this House bringing the pension up to the full £1 per week when the dissolution came. That legislation had to be upheld by the successors of the inter-Party Government, with the result that the old age pensioners are now receiving £1 a week. Within a few years the pension was increased from 10/- to £1, an increase of 100 per cent.
What do we find now? A miserable 1/6 to offset the increase in the cost of living. If Deputies have any heart, if they have any shame, or if they have any consideration for the old age pensioners, irrespective of whether they live in the urban or rural areas, they cannot honestly believe that 1/6 will be sufficient to offset the increase in the cost of living. No greater insult could be offered to the old age pensioners, and if I were a back-bencher in a Government which would make that offer to the old age pensioners in such circumstances as those in which we find ourselves to-day, I would entirely disassociate myself from that Government, and I would do everything in my power to prevent any such proposal being implemented.
We will have widespread unemployment in every industry and in every trade. We will have widespread unemployment in every walk of life. There are considerable reductions in all the Estimates. One of the most important from the point of view of the small farmer was the money provided under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. That has been reduced by £500,000. Afforestation has been reduced. Present indications are that there will be a further increase in the number of unemployed, and the unemployed will have to bear an excessive burden and one that they cannot possibly carry.
We are faced with a very serious situation calling for very serious consideration. Between now and 10.30 to-night it would be well if those Deputies who are free and who are capable of making up their minds would ask themselves what exactly the consequences will be? To-night they will be free men walking into the Lobby. They can undo these burdens. Will they say to themselves: "I am prepared to shoulder my responsibility. I can prevent the Minister for Finance levying this extra taxation and withdrawing these subsidies. I believe that the people who will be affected by the withdrawal of the subsidies and the imposition of these taxes will not be able to bear the burden"? Any Fianna Fáil Deputy or any Independent Deputy who acts according to his conscience will have no need to fear facing the electorate and rendering an account of his stewardship. He must recognise that the situation demands that he should use his vote intelligently. The situation demands that he cast his vote without any consideration except consideration of the effect his vote will have on the community in general and the poorer sections of it in particular. I appeal to such Deputies at this late hour not to be whipped into the Lobby and into doing something which they know is against their own conscience. If they vote for the imposition of these new taxes and the removal of the subsidies then they will do something for which they will have to answer. How they will answer for it I do not know.
I have made my protest. I have made the few points I wished to make in relation to flour, butter, tea, sugar, beer, whiskey, cigarettes and tobacco. I am prepared to vote against these impositions and I have no doubt that if in the future the inter-Party Government is returned to power some, or perhaps all, of the burdens that have been so unnecessarily imposed will be removed.
Since June, 1951, up to the 31st March, 1952, we lived in an air of expectation of what would happen in relation to the budgetary problems with which the present Government was faced. From 1st April, 1952, to 2nd April, 1952, we were anticipating what the increases would be. There was no possibility of any decrease and some of us anticipated that limited increases would be made in the case of certain commodities. On April 2nd, the Minister for Finance gave us the details of the taxation that he intended to impose. It took from the 3rd April to the present day to realise the ramifications of those impositions. I have put the matter under four sub-heads: expectation, anticipation, taxation and realisation. From to-day onwards until some time in the unforeseeable future there will be nothing but desperation. Remembering the statements made by the present Government before the last election and their actions now, it seems to me they will take a long time to expiate their sins for the impositions they have placed on the Irish people under this Budget.
The debate on the Budget has been carried on for a considerable length of time. Indeed, as somebody said, it has been worn threadbare. In reply to Deputy Cafferky, may I say that I, as a Fianna Fáil Deputy, have nothing to apologise for and I shall have nothing on my conscience in voting for this Budget? Fianna Fáil introduced their first Budget 20 years ago. It met with the same criticism and the same sort of tactics as those which are being adopted now. Fine Gael, at that time, put every boulder they could on the road to progress. Nevertheless, the Minister for Finance presented his Budget with the same courage and foresight as he displays to-day and it was carried. We have travelled a long way on the road since those days.
We all know that there are a number of things which a Government must do, just as a businessman must do, in order to balance the Budget so as to ensure that the business of the State will be carried on as it ought to be. The most essential thing which he has to do is to submit a reasonably balanced Budget. How is he to achieve that end? We are all agreed that there are a few methods which would help him to achieve it. One is a reduction of imports. Another, which may be termed an aid, would be an increase in agricultural and industrial production. He has another aid. It may be drastic, but, for the good of the community, as a whole, he must have recourse to measures which will ensure that each one in the community will receive a fair slice of the national cake, and that is a reduction in amenities and services so as to make capital available for production. Another aid would be an increase in exports and savings, the savings to be produced by thrift on the part of the people.
In these circumstances, the Minister has to consider how he will raise taxation without causing greater depression. Some Opposition speakers do not seem to realise how he is to put more money into circulation without causing a greater trade on balance, or how to increase taxation on the higher income groups without reducing the savings for investment which those groups should normally provide for capital purposes, and, lastly, how to get our people, in a democracy such as ours, to provide more savings for capital purposes and to get them to submit to the taxation necessary towards that end. These are the difficulties which faced the Minister for Finance in presenting his Budget for 1952. I think that, in these circumstances, no Fianna Fáil Deputy need apologise for walking into the Division Lobby to-night to support this Budget. The Minister has tried, as far as lay in his power, to reduce the burdens on the poorer sections of the community.
It was easy for the Opposition, when they took over in 1948, to remit the taxes that we had imposed on beer, spirits and cigarettes in the previous year. It was a popular thing to do, seeing that, at that time, they were about to receive all this money through Marshall Aid. It was calculated that, under the Supplementary Budget introduced by Fianna Fáil in 1947, 3d. on the pint would bring in £830,000 to the Exchequer, that 4d. on the packet of 20 cigarettes and 4½d. and 5d. on hard and soft tobacco would bring in £1,960,000. These amounts would have yielded, in the years that have since elapsed, a big sum to the Exchequer, and would, I submit, have left us in the position of being able to use the Marshall Aid moneys for capital purposes instead of putting them into the Exchequer to meet current expenditure. The Opposition state that they would borrow, at least that is their alternative. I have not heard very many alternatives from them. I may say, in fairness, that, except from the trade union journal, I have not heard many solutions offered either by Labour in this House or by any other member of the Opposition.
You did.
I admit that Deputy Corish, Deputy Hickey and Deputy Larkin did make good contributions to this debate, but, apart from their contributions, we just have had a lot of tub-thumping, if you like. Apparently, Deputy Costello offers borrowing as an alternative to taxation. I am not so sure that he means that. It may be perhaps that the Opposition are beginning to see the futility of that course of action. Having borrowed to the degree necessary to cover expenditure, they conveniently forgot to make provision in their Budget of 1951 to cover a number of items of capital expenditure. They conveniently forgot the sum of £11,070,000 that Fianna Fáil found in the debris when they came to power. Experience teaches that borrowing is the most cowardly form of taxation——
You are going to borrow more.
We are, for capital purposes.
That is what we borrowed it for.
——revealing itself, as it does, in the form of inflation, which in turn causes hardships which bear most heavily on the fixed and lower income groups. Amongst those groups mention might be made of the old age and widowed pensioners, workers, and the small salaried earners. These are the people who arranged protest meetings in Dublin City. Some of these protest meetings will cost the ratepayers upwards of £3,000,000 one of these days.
It might cost some Deputies their jobs, too.
It might. We are not a bit afraid. Do not imagine that. The threat of a general election seems to be held over this House. I do not care if there was an election in the morning.
You will probably have it.
Do not imagine that we are going to be intimidated by tactics of that kind. They held protest meetings and at the same time they sought to penalise the very groups that attended those meetings.
Does the Deputy know who they were?
No Government, which will put popularity with the electorate before duty to its country, deserves to hold office. The Minister for Finance, I submit, Sir, made every endeavour to protect to the greatest extent possible the poor and lower salaried groups in the community. This fact has been completely ignored by speakers in this House in criticism of the Budget. They pointed out all its disadvantages to the House but they did not point to any of its advantages.
I submit, Sir, that in the last Budget the inter-Party Government put every item of expenditure on the long finger. They feared to ask the people to pay their way out of current expenditure. In doing this, of course, they were paying for popularity. Thus, they point to increases in foodstuffs and to the withdrawal of the subsidies. They conveniently forgot the roaring trade that was done in the black market and in off the ration foodstuffs as they were pleased to call them. We were told at the time that we could have plenty of tea at 6/6 a lb., as against our future price—and I have no apology to make for this—of roughly 3/6 per lb.
Remember when it was 30/- per lb.
That was a weakness on the part of the people and it was not the fault of the Government. The Government protected every individual by rationing and you cannot deny that. There was black market sugar at 9d. per lb. as against the future price of 6½d. per lb. In passing, how long, for instance, would two ounces of tea do a worker in Bord na Móna who has to have tea four times a day and how long would ¾ lb. of sugar do him? The people are not blinded by the wild talk about this Budget down the country. If you go to any businessman or if you ask any worker in Bord na Móna how much of the off the ration tea and sugar they bought they will tell you that the derationing of these commodities is a blessing actually.
One thousand of them are already looking for an increase in wages.
Then again, you had ½ lb. of butter at 4/- per lb. How long would that do a bog worker in Bord na Móna or a man doing heavy manual labour for the county council? As against that, the future price will be 3/10. Six shillings per stone was the unofficial price for flour as against the future price of 4/9½; 1/2 was the unofficial price for the white loaf as against the future price of 9d. You can couple with this a net saving of £3,900,000 on subsidies, that is allowing for the relief lifted off the taxpayer's back by the abolition of this form of hidden taxation. That is what it amounted to — hidden taxation. You make for better business and better living.
Every man knows what he is paying into the Exchequer and you are not taking taxes from him by reneging as at a game of cards. You are asking him outright for it. The direct approach, I submit, is the best and shortest every time. I presume that it was no pleasure for the Minister for Finance to levy taxes on our people. Rather would the pleasure be to remove them. The people opposite know that our dollar debt has got to be honoured and I presume that Deputy Costello would not have it otherwise since it is on record that he insisted it should be paid back in dollars. Are they going to stand in our way then by this sort of tactics, wild criticism and protest meetings and stop us from honouring that debt?
The Budget has been discussed from many angles, but I notice in financial reviews and reports from the chairmen of various companies and industrial bodies in this country and from businessmen that they have their money invested in this State and were not afraid to invest it when this was a very young country. Is there anyone of the Opposition who would presume to say that they were out to profit at the expense of labour in those days? Is there anybody on the Opposition Benches who would presume to say that they should not get a fair return for investing this capital in their own country? I have read a good many of these reports and I have not seen from any of them that they would be likely to condemn the policy of the Minister for Finance in trying to give back stability to our £, as it were, and put purchasing power into it.
Deputy Cafferky unwittingly made the case against his own side of the House when he spoke of the housewife going into a shop and the trouble she had in stretching her £, as it were. That is what the Minister is trying to do. He is trying to put back purchasing power into the £. Goods were so inflated and ballooned in price in this country that the housewife was in a dilemma. No matter how many pounds she had to purchase the goods, they did not seem to go any way towards the cost of the goods.
There are a number of contributing factors to our present difficulties. The Minister for Finance pointed out in his Budget statement that one of the largest causes contributing towards our present circumstances was the failure of our agricultural production to regain its 1938-39 level, while in other countries, not so favourably situated as we are, it is now 10 per cent. greater than before the war. One of the chief causes contributing towards our difficulties is that, notwithstanding all that can be done to increase output in this direction, and even with the help of the increase in the output of industrial goods, whether for export or to replace imports of commodities in this category, it is to the main industry of the country, namely, agriculture, that we must look for expansion, and for an improvement in the present position. Here again an improvement in the over-all position may be effected either by increasing exports or replacing by home production some of the agricultural commodities we now import in large quantities. It should be the function of the people engaged in industry to do everything in their power to help towards this end, so that the yeast in the national cake, as it were, will do its work properly in order that the cake will be sufficient to give everybody a slice.
We must realise that farming is a business entailing, for the most part, a good deal of hard work, which is not always adequately paid for. On the other hand, a large section of the community who are not farmers must look to our landowners to produce at least a considerable proportion of our daily food and, in return for this, certain fundamentals must be assured to the farmer. Some of these fundamentals might be described as follows: He must have a ready market, home or export, particularly for produce surplus to his ordinary output. He must receive a price sufficient to enable him to maintain the fertility of his land, to purchase his necessary raw materials, to maintain himself and his family in comfort, and to have an over-all margin of profit in proportion to the capital invested in his farm and its contents. He must be in a position to incur the expenditure necessary in connection with the increased production demanded from him, and he is therefore entitled to adequate facilities. While the farmer may demand all these things, the community at large is equally entitled to demand that the farmer's income is not increased merely by higher prices for his produce, but by higher yields per unit per area.
The same applies to industry. The trade statistics in any journal one takes up show the place that agriculture holds in the economy of this country. In the full year, 1950, agricultural produce of one kind or another accounted for over £50,000,000 of our total exports. The exports of certain industrial products, including beer, which depends on agriculture for its raw materials, accounted for £5,000,000 extra, or a total of £55,000,000. The same trend is shown in the figures for 1951.
There is another side to the picture — the import side. The figures show a huge volume of certain products of which a greater proportion of substitutes could be produced at home. This trend seemed to have continued up to at least the date Deputy MacEntee assumed power as Minister for Finance in this country and put a check on it. Figures for January-November, 1951, show that animal feeding stuffs—coarse grains and other foodstuffs — together with fruit and dried vegetables accounted for the sum of in or near £23,000,000, compared with about £30,000,000 previously. Nobody will maintain that we could or should produce at home the whole of our imports under these heads or provide subsidies for them, but certain items representing huge sums strike the eye and I will read you the following figures. For the year 1950 we imported £4.6 million worth of wheat; maize £7.8 million; oats £.17 million. In 1951 we imported £7.5 million worth of wheat; maize £5.1 million; oats £.45 million; and butter £1.68 million. Added to our difficulty is the fact that the area under wheat in this country has fallen from approximately 660,000 acres in 1945 to 281,000 acres in 1951. It is quite possible that under normal conditions it might not be an economic proposition to insist on a large area under wheat but we are not dealing with normal conditions at the present time. World supplies of wheat are in doubt and precarious. Australia cannot fulfil her quota under the wheat agreement. Canada has had a bad harvest. The Argentine is said to be importing rather than exporting wheat. France is in the same position. Only in America has wheat production in 1951 remained at the standard it had reached in 1950.
The Deputy seems to be getting away from the motion.
I am not, Sir. It is relevant because increased production seems to be the only way out of our difficulties and that is the subject on which I am speaking. Wheat is one of the things we have to pay for very heavily and which causes an adverse balance on our trade; more especially is it important because it is one of the commodities which comes from the hard currency or dollar areas and because dollars are hard to come by. However, side by side with that, world wheat consumption is increasing and year by year, production is failing to keep pace with the demand. Therefore, it is up to us as a country of workers at least to make provision for ourselves and I think that no one on the Opposition Benches will disagree with that.
In conclusion I congratulate the Minister for Finance, Deputy Seán MacEntee, who as I said at the outset, introduced our first Budget, 20 years ago. He had to blaze a trail through the same opposition as we meet with to-day. He laid the plans for the foundation of the State. We are not long in existence as a free country — only 31 years. The country is now able to float under its own sail without any help from any outside power. Therefore, we on this side of the House, members of the Fianna Fáil Party, have nothing to apologise for to-night when walking behind our Minister for Finance and voting for this Budget which he introduced on 2nd April, 1952.
I propose to be as brief as possible in view of the fact that the House is a month debating this Budget. It is hard to believe that there are men with common sense and intelligence, elected representatives to this House, who can stand up here and congratulate the Minister for Finance on this disaster, this hunger and thirst Budget. Could any Minister for Finance bring any more disgrace on himself or upon the country than this Budget? God has strange ways of punishing people. The peoples of almost every country in the world have suffered in our own memory. The Spaniards have suffered a civil war; Japan has had its difficulties; the Abyssinians also have had difficulties. In France difficulties are arising every day of the week; England has gone through two great wars in our own memory. Germany built itself up and was blown to pieces, and the German people and the German nation was destroyed. The Italians only last year suffered severe losses through flood havoc. Mussolini assisted in the building up of the country and was responsible for the destruction of Italy and its people. In addition to that we have often read of how the Lord saw fit to punish the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah when he let down fire and brimstone upon them. He has different ways of punishing people, and the way He has decided to punish the Irish people is to leave us Eamon de Valera.
The Taoiseach.
The way he has decided to punish us is to inflict upon us a Fianna Fáil Government and a Fianna Fáil Party. Are there any people in the world to-day, any free people, who are suffering more under the leadership than we in Ireland are suffering under the leadership of the present Taoiseach? The present Taoiseach was born in 1882; he split the country in 1922; he was elected to office in 1932, and he has finished the country in 1952. This year finishes this country completely.
We have read of black '47 and that the people starved in that year because of the failure of the crops. This year can be called black '52 because where is the difference in having no food and in depriving the people of the right to purchase food by imposing an exorbitant price on essential commodities? There will be hunger for this nation because people will not be able to purchase the food they need. This is a hungry Budget and, in addition, it is a thirsty Budget. Every member of the Fianna Fáil Party, together with those four or five Independent Deputies, can be held responsible for this Budget. Deputy Dunne did not call the four or five Independent gentlemen who support Fianna Fáil "Independents" but "Dependents." They are dependents because, as far as their political life in this country is concerned, they depend on the Taoiseach. They decided to support this Budget. On every platform of the country where a Fianna Fáil spokesman stands he says: "The reason why we had to present the country with this Budget is because the inter-Party Government left us in debt." No Fianna Fáil Deputy has risen to speak on this Budget without saying the country was in debt and every one of them said that the increased taxation was due to the actions of the inter-Party Government. When the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in office in this country taxation was £25,000,000. When the Fianna Fáil Government took office in 1932 their first Budget was for £28,000,000; in 1934 it was £28,000,000; in 1935 it was £29,000,000; in 1936 it was £30,000,000; in 1937 it was £31,000,000; in 1938 it was £31,000,000; in 1939 it was £32,000,000; in 1940 it was £33,000,000; in 1941 it was £40,000,000; in 1942 it was £42,000,000; in 1943 it was £45,000,000; in 1944 it was £49,000,000; in 1945 it was £51,000,000; in 1946 it was £53,000,000; in 1947 it was £60,000,000. Was the inter-Party Government responsible for that?
Do not stop there. Continue and give us the 1948 figure.
Those are Fianna Fáil's housekeeping figures; they have dug their hands deeper into the taxpayer's pocket every year since they took office and they have studied nothing else. Now they tell us that the reason they have to impose additional taxes on the people is because of the housekeeping of the inter-Party Government. Was there not bad housekeeping between 1932 and 1947 when they put up the taxes from £28,000,000 to £60,000,000? They cannot say that the inter-Party Government did that. That is their work. That is the work for which Deputy Cogan condemned them in this House year after year. There was no inter-Party Government while the people were being fleeced. The inter-Party Government did not rule from 1932 to 1947, when millions of pounds were taken out of the taxpayers' pockets in this country. They did not study anything else. Since Fianna Fáil took office in 1932, and during their present term of office, there has never been any iota of relief for the taxpayer of this country. The only relief given was during the three years of the inter-Party Government. I challenge any Fianna Fáil Deputy to tell us what taxes they reduced from 1932 to the present day.
What did you do?
We took off the penal taxes you imposed in 1948 and which you are trying to reimpose in 1952. We reduced the tax on the pint and on the cigarette and, in addition to that, we reduced unemployment. Everybody was working during our term of office. In fact, it was difficult to secure the services of a worker throughout the whole country. At the present time there are over 70,000 registered unemployed, and I suppose there are another 20,000 unemployed unregistered, which gives us almost 100,000 unemployed, as a result of the codology and the bull of the opposite Party. Emigration has increased to such an extent that we do not know how many have left the country.
It is not the only thing you do not know.
In order to make the unemployment figures look decent, the Government started a recruiting drive for the Army. Only for that recruiting drive, what would the unemployment figures be?
I fail completely to understand the mentality of the Deputies who have supported this Budget. Of course, we all know Fianna Fáil and its leader so well that we are not surprised. On the 13th of June last they took office. People thronged outside the gates of this House, into the hallway and into the lobbies, and the hand of every Fianna Fáil Deputy was warmly shaken by their supporters. The Fianna Fáil supporters said: "Thank God, we have got the inter-Party out. Let us keep them out." The people were stretching their hands outside the door and outside the gate trying to touch the long black coat of the Taoiseach as he left to go to the President.
The Deputy will have to cease using personalities and confine himself to the motion.
The crowd that applauded the present Government when they took office are not here to applaud them to-night. The crowds that shouted: "Up Fianna Fáil" did not know that they were shouting: "Up 10d. per lb. on the butter." It is only now they realise that they did not know they were then shouting: "Up 3d. on the pint; up 7d. on the cigarettes". When people were being canvassed for the set-up which is responsible for this calamity, the canvassers did not say: "Vote for us, because when we get in we are going to put 10d. per lb. on the butter." They made sure not to say things like that to the electorate. They did not say: "Vote for us. When we get in there are going to be 90,000 people unemployed."
There would be no one idle. In the good old days it was the Fianna Fáil policy to have work for everyone. I should like to recall to the minds of Fianna Fáil Deputies the good times when their policy was one man one job, and that no man was worth more than £1,000 a year. Do Fianna Fáil Deputies remember the time when they said that President Cosgrave, who was running this country on £25,000,000 a year, was being wildly extravagant? Do Fianna Fáil Deputies remember the time when the Cumann na nGaedheal Government were condemned for wearing dicky bows and tall hats? Who are wearing the dicky bows and tall hats to-day?
It has nothing to do whatever with the motion.
I respectfully say on this motion that the present Government have, as far as they possibly could, disregarded all human respect for the ordinary workers and labouringclass people of this country. For the past nine months we have been treated to nothing but banshee wailings and sadness and gloom. If the Fianna Fáil Party are not talking of war or destruction they are sounding some other sad note because that is what they like to do. Every Fianna Fáil Deputy should be supplied with a bugle to sound the Last Post and to make things really sad.
The Fianna Fáil Government say that our people are not working hard enough, that they are spending too much, and that they are eating too much. The people of this country had three and a half prosperous years under the inter-Party Government, during which time there was work for all and taxation was lowered. That was the envy of Fianna Fáil. The moment they got back into office, they said: "The Irish people have had good times for the past three years. We shall put a stop to these good times now. We shall take the smile off the faces of those who have been smiling for the past three and a half years, and we shall make them cry instead. We shall advise those who are wearing good clothes to take them off and don, instead, the rags which they were wearing from 1932 to 1948. There are bad times and hard times coming." The Taoiseach again sounded a warning note when he said: "We may soon have war. Famine is coming. The farmers are not working hard enough. There should be more tillage." Government Ministers visited every part of the country and made speeches in an effort to disturb the peace and contentment, and to upset the prosperity that prevailed under the Costello Administration. The progress made in this country during the three and a half years of inter-Party Government was the envy, not alone of Fianna Fáil, but of the whole world.
It was a sad and disastrous day for this country when Fianna Fáil were enabled to form a Government. Thanks be to God, the term of office of that Government is coming to an end. From last June till now they have succeeded pretty well in raising the cost of living. I think all of us expected that the Budget would be severe, but in our wildest dreams we did not expect that it would be as crazy as it is. Surely the Minister for Finance must be aware of the anger of the people of this country at the proposals to increase the price of flour, bread, tea, sugar, butter, tobacco and cigarettes, beer, stout, spirits, petrol, oil and income-tax? Never before in the history of this country have the people been so enraged as they have been by the introduction of this Budget.
The Dublin County Council passed a resolution asking the President of this country to convene a Council of State with the least possible delay to ask the Taoiseach, in the name of God and all decency, to pack up and get out so that the Irish people might get an opportunity of rejecting this cruel burden of taxation that is being imposed on them. I do not know whether His Excellency has arranged for the convening of the Council of State: I expect that the Dublin County Council will attend to that matter. The increase in the prices of bread, flour, tea, sugar and butter will affect the ordinary ratepayer for whom Deputy Cogan is always crying. The unfortunate Wicklow farmer will pay higher rates in order to maintain the county home and the county hospital and the county institutions in Wicklow. The local authorities will be obliged to impose higher rates on the people as a result of this Budget. The Government have no mandate from the people to impose this heavy taxation. Surely the Government and the Fianna Fáil Deputies must be aware how unfavourably the Budget was received by the people? Surely they noted the manner in which it was described in the newspapers? One citizen, when questioned about his opinion of the Budget, inquired: "Is he mad?" The answer is "Yes." No sane man would present the taxpayers of this country with this bill. In a letter in the Evening Herald, one citizen writes: “Bread and butter are our simple diet. We shall starve now, thanks to Mr. MacEntee.”
Could we have the name of that citizen?
No. The letter is signed "Mrs. Crumlin". It is a good job for Deputy Cogan that we have not the name of that citizen. In the same newspaper we read that a citizen of Dublin told a reporter: "Your newspaper would go alight if I told you what I think of Mr. MacEntee." Another citizen described it as "the last straw—a crushing blow on the overburdened taxpayer".
Who were the citizens?
Another citizen rightly refers to him as a bandit: "Mr. MacEntee is a bandit." We know very well that never before in the history of this country has any Minister been publicly described as a bandit. Here we have the present Minister being described as a bandit.
By whom?
By the taxpayers of this country.
Name.
This is published in the Evening Herald of the 3rd April last.
Give the name of anybody who said it.
If Deputy Killilea wants the names of the people let him go to some of these areas and find out.
The areas are not given.
I can assure the House and the bandit Minister that this Budget is legalised robbery of the taxpayers of the country, something the taxpayers are condemning and will reject at the first available opportunity. Deputy McQuillan speaking yesterday said: "I cannot see any difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael; one is Tweedledum and the other is Tweedledee."
Where do you come in?
Deputy McQuillan can call Fianna Fáil anything he likes, but what we want to see is Tweedledee putting out Tweedledum. If Deputy McQuillan has the slightest doubt about it, I can assure him that at the first available opportunity the people will make that change and there will be no mistake about it. Deputy McQuillan and, I think, Deputy Alfred Byrne this morning went a little further. They asked the Leader of the Opposition for a statement. They said: "Let us know what you are going to do about these taxes if you take office." I cannot speak for the Leader of the Opposition but I can speak for myself, and if I were Leader of the Opposition, I would tell both of these Deputies to put up a running jump for themselves. They can vote for it or against it but I would commit myself in no way. Empty heads put this Government in and empty bellies will put them out. If Deputy Byrne, Deputy McQuillan, Deputy Cogan or Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll want to know what the inter-Party group would do about this tax, their memories must be very short. They have only to reflect on what happened three or four years ago when we undid the damage that Fianna Fáil had done by removing the cruel and brutal taxes that were then imposed on this country. I look upon it as a reflection on the work of the inter-Party Government that any Deputy should even ask them what they would do if they go back to office. We expect more confidence from these Deputies. Does it not stand to reason that we would not be bellowing our protests against the Budget if we agreed to these taxes?
They will make you a Parliamentary Secretary if they get back.
I will not go to Strasbourg to make a disgrace of the country, anyway. I believe that Deputy Byrne and Deputy McQuillan were not serious when they were making such queries because they have only to look at the record of the inter-Party Government and their proud achievements, the proud achievements which the people of this country approved at the last general election when they rejected the Taoiseach's call for an over-all majority and when inter-Party votes put in Deputy Cogan, Deputy Cowan, Deputy Dr. Browne and Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll. These Deputies are in this House to-day as a result of the votes that were left over from Fine Gael and Labour. The people who cast these votes for them cast them in favour of a continuance of the inter-Party Government. Remember there is an angry electorate waiting for Deputy Cogan. If they do not get him this month, they are sure to get him in four years' time. I am generally very busy in my own constituency at election times, but I am sure Deputy Everett and Deputy Brennan will not mind, if I intrude for one or two Sundays in their constituency at the next election.
You did it before in Baltinglass.
Yes, and I will be in Baltinglass again for the purpose of letting the people of the country know who is really responsible for putting 10d. a lb. on butter.
And they will believe you!
What were you put out of the Guards for?
Deputy Cogan should not inquire about Baltinglass or I shall ask him why he was put out of the Guards.
On a point of order. It is an absolutely false personal charge to say that I was fired or dismissed out of the Garda Síochána and I demand that the statement should be withdrawn.
The Deputy has stated that Deputy Flanagan's statement is false. I have therefore to ask the Deputy to withdraw it.
I said I would ask the Deputy. I made no definite charge.
The Deputy will withdraw the statement he made.
I shall obey your ruling.
I should like to point out that Deputy Everett made the same statement.
I asked were you put out of the Guards.
The Chair did not hear the remark made by Deputy Everett.
With the permission of the Cheann Comhairle, I shall now ask the Deputy if he was fired out of the Guards. That is a question.
The Deputy may not repeat, under the guise of a question, what he has withdrawn on the request of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
I should like to tell Deputy Flanagan that he is a contemptible little tar brush and I shall not listen to him any more.
I might remind Deputy Cogan that Deputy Flanagan has a little file on that and if I were to disclose the contents of that file, the Deputy would probably have to hold his head a bit down.
Should that remark not be withdrawn?
You had to withdraw one to-day.
I had not.
You had. Did the Chair not tell Deputy Killilea that he had to withdraw a remark?
If I might be permitted to continue, the Opposition has proven to this House and to the country that the present Minister has overbudgeted by £9,000,000. That is a fact that cannot be denied. We are told by Fianna Fáil back benchers that Marshall Aid has to be repaid and that in order to pay back Marshall Aid this Budget is necessary. When the inter-Party Government left office they left £26,000,000 of Marshall Aid money behind them. If the present Government wish to pay back that money they could pay back £1,000,000 a year for 26 years without this Budget. What did they do with the £26,000,000?
Then they tell us that we put them into debt? What did the Government do with the £26,000,000 of Marshall Aid that the inter-Party Government left behind? They are silent about that. There is no reply to that. The people down the country know quite well that they squandered the £26,000,000 of Marshall Aid that we left behind instead of holding it to pay back the instalments when the repayment period arrived. If they had held that money, by the time the last instalment came to be paid there would have been a profit from the investments made with Marshall Aid money. The country would have had an overwhelming profit.
They tell us that the inter-Party Government put them into debt. If anyone has plunged this country headlong into debt it is the present Government set-up. Not one of them has told us why this extra taxation is necessary. They have told us that they have to pay back Marshall Aid. We do not believe that because we know that it is not true. The people know it is not true. Both Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Costello had placed the facts before the House and before the country, and neither Deputy MacEntee (Minister for Finance or Deputy de Valera (the Taoiseach) has said that Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan were right. wrong. We know they were right. £28,000,000 was left on the table of the Minister for Finance.
£26,000,000.
£28,000,000 was left on his table. From that day to this we have not heard a word about it because they spent it. Does the city man or the ordinary country man know why he must pay more for his pint, for his cigarettes and for his beer? Worse still, does he know why he must pay more for his bread and butter after 1st July—if this Government is still in office—and for his tea and his sugar?
Estimates which benefited the country in providing work and employment at decent rates of wages in order to give our workers a decent standard of living have been cut down. But the President's establishment has gone up this year. Yet they tell us the Irish people are living beyond their means. The agricultural worker is living beyond his means; so is the widow and orphan, the old age pensioner, the blind pensioner, the unemployed and the small farmer, the coal miner and the bog worker. They are all living beyond their means. They must cut down. They must not eat so much. They must not wear so much. They must work harder. They must save. They must pay more in taxes. They must make greater sacrifices to keep the flag flying and keep those chaps shouting: "Up Dev." They must starve themselves. They must cut down, and up goes the President's establishment.
And the Secret Service.
I will deal with that in a moment. Up goes the President's establishment, which is already costing us almost £52,000 a year. There is an increase in the Vote for his establishment and the unfortunate road worker, the agricultural labourer and small farmer must pay more for his tea, his sugar, his bread and his butter. He must cut down his standard of living, but the President's establishment goes up. There is tall hat policy for you. There is the stuffed shirt and the bow tie policy. Tall hats and tails for the swanks and a hair-shirt for the poor. Starvation for the poor.
Is it any wonder that a certain Department sent out a circular relating to the repair of all county homes? They will be badly wanted. Do not forget that a large sum of money is being provided for mass radiography, so that people can go to the mass radiography centre and have a free chest X-ray. Their health records will be kept. There will be no need for the mass radiography personnel 12 months hence if Fianna Fáil is still in office, because people will have nothing to do except open their waistcoats and their friends will be able to see through them because of hunger. There will be no need for mass radiography. Fianna Fáil will X-ray the people free. Their back bones will be visible through their chest bones. They will have no trouble in seeing through each other 12 months hence if Fianna Fáil is still in office. There will be no need for mass radiography, and Deputy Dr. Maguire need not worry about his patients and Deputy Dr. Browne need not worry about X-rays.
I am worrying about you, but it is not your chest.
Another 12 months with Fianna Fáil in office and we will have no trouble seeing through each other.
A Deputy
It is not hard to see through you.
What else has increased? The Estimates for the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Department of the Taoiseach have gone up. That is the man who is telling us we must not live beyond our means. Yet, the Estimate for his own Department has gone up, and the people are to starve. They must pay more for their bread, their tea, their sugar, their smokes and their pint. They must work harder and longer so that the Estimate for the Taoiseach's Department can go up. That is Fianna Fáil's standard.
What else has gone up? Science and Art. Deputy Killilea will be interested in this. Will Deputy Killilea, who is an expert in Science and Art, tell us the reason for that increase? Perhaps Deputy Corry would make his eloquence felt on Science and Art. Perhaps Deputy Cogan would tell us the reason for the increase in Science and Art and the reason why my constituents have to pay more for a bottle of stout in order that Science and Art can be increased. Deputy Byrne's constituents in the North Wall and in the dockyard will have to leave their work of discharging cargoes with the dust in their throats and their tongues stuck to the roofs of their mouths because they must go home without a drink so that Science and Art can go up.
What else has gone up? The Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. Perhaps the Minister for Finance will know about this. He should know about the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. Perhaps he will let us know something about that increase and the reason why my constituents and the ordinary taxpayer must pay more for the essentials of life so that the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies can go up.
Universities and Colleges have gone up. The children of the bog workers in my constituency will not be attending the University, so why should they have to pay for it? Why should the small farmers have to pay so that the Universities and Colleges can go up? Why should the coal workers in Rossmore and Wolfhill have to pay more for the essentials of life so that the Universities and Colleges can have more money?
What else has gone up? The Army. A leopard never changes his spots. I suppose war was in the Taoiseach's mind again and he said: "Provide more for the Army." The workers must sacrifice their bottle of stout. What is worse, they must eat a hard crust dry because they will not be able to pay the additional 10d. per lb. for butter. The cost of the Army has gone up. What are we going to fight? Who are we going to fight? Who is there to fight? If there was war in the morning Fianna Fáil has pledged itself to neturality. What do they want an Army for? We on this side of the House have pledged ourselves to neutrality in the event of war. Why should the taxpayers be bled to the last to keep up an Army if it is not wanted?
Who says it is not wanted?
I say it.
Only you.
I am a taxpayer, and I am entitled to stand up here and object to paying for it. That is my duty as a citizen.
Deputy Cowan's Army.
That reminds me of the Taoiseach, when in opposition, accusing Deputy MacEoin of neglecting his duties because he had not Deputy Cowan in gaol. The next thing we have is wireless broadcasting which is to cost more. Who is going to listen to it? Is it the hungry people? What will they be listening to?
Symphony concerts.
The poor of this country have to cut out a meal in order that wireless broadcasting may go on. They must suffer, the poor of Roscrea, Thurles and in every part of North Tipperary, the poor in Monaghan, Galway and in Laoighis-Offaly must pay more because wireless broadcasting is up.
I now direct the attention of the House to the fact that the Estimate for Secret Service has also gone up, and that the people must sacrifice their loaf, their butter, the pint and the bottle of stout because this Estimate is up. You can picture a secret service in a peaceful country where the gaols were almost empty under the inter-Party Government. There was not such a thing as crime under the inter-Party Government. There was an atmosphere of goodwill, peace and brotherly love amongst all in this country. There was an atmosphere of peace and an air of freedom such as never prevailed before and such as has not prevailed since. There was no such thing as an increased demand for the Secret Service. But the moment Fianna Fáil got back they said: "Let us now organise the spies again; let us pay one Irishman for spying on another", and here we see that all those men who sit behind the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach are standing over the creation of spies and informers, for one to tell on another. Worse than that, this additional secret service money is to be provided this year for the purpose of strengthening the Fianna Fáil organisation because there is not a Fianna Fáil tout in the country but has his secret service.
The Deputy is now on administration which does not arise on this Resolution.
The Deputy is making the case that taxation has been raised to provide for it.
One could say that about all State expenditure.
I ask Deputies to concentrate for a moment on the points which I have put before them —the unnecessary taxation and the unnecessary Estimates that we are being asked to pay for in this Budget. But there is something worse still. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, when speaking on the Budget, said that the reason why they took the tax off dancing was because it was hard to collect. When asked how much it was he said, with a wave of his hand, £145,000. That sum was not worth collecting and they would not think twice about it. What would not £145,000 do towards solving the unemployment problem in different areas? If given to the Dublin Corporation it would go a long way towards providing work for the unemployed. If Deputy McQuillan, Deputy Finan and I had £145,000 to spend on the Shannon Valley what joy would it not bring to the flooded-out farmers in that area, which Deputy Davin has visited on many occasions. The Deputy knows that for nine out of the 12 months the farmers there cannot use their lands. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, who was born and reared in the Shannon Valley, must know that if that sum of money were spent between Meelick and Athlone it would do a lot to improve the conditions of the unfortunate people in that area. But the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs tells us that it is not worth collecting.
I do not know if Deputies have seen, or whether I would be permitted to quote from, the Times Pictorial of June 23rd, 1951, which was about a fortnight after the change of Government. The following paragraph appeared in it from a correspondent:
"I am prepared to bet five pairs of expensive nylons against a row of safety pins that the present tax on dancing will be removed as soon as it is convenient for the Government to do so."
A fortnight after the present Government took office that article appeared in the Times Pictorial. Dance halls and hops are available, and will be available to swell the Fianna Fáil election fighting fund. People are wondering and are disturbed to know why the dance hall proprietors have been relieved from this taxation. This article, which appeared a fortnight after the last election, was written by a correspondent of the Times Pictorial who knew the inside story of a promise and an undertaking — a solemn undertaking, mind you— made by the Tánaiste to a Miss Morris of the Dance Hall Proprietors' Association and stating that, immediately the opportunity presented itself, the dance halls were to be free of taxes. Because of that undertaking, practically every ballroom in Bray, Dublin and in the provincial towns was made available to the Fianna Fáil cumainn free of charge, and in cases in Dublin the dance hall owners provided the bands free for the Fianna Fáil organisation so that they might honour and undertake to relieve them of this tax.
That is entirely untrue.
The Deputy challenges the truth of that. Deputy Cormac Breathnach says that this statement is entirely untrue. I have here in my possession a copy of a letter dated the 10th May, 1951, written from this House — Dáil Éireann — by Deputy Lemass and signed "Seán F. Lemass". It is addressed to Miss Morris, the Olympic Ballroom, Pleasants Street, Dublin. He says:—
"The Fianna Fáil Party Committee has considered the entertainment duty on dances, and we have decided that, it is a most undesirable tax which we will remove."
Does Deputy Cormac Breathnach deny that? It is signed "Séan F. Lemass" and is addressed to Miss Morris, and is dated the 10th May, 1951.
After the Dáil was dissolved.
This, in my opinion, is in the nature of a bribe, and I am entitled to describe it as a corrupt practice in no uncertain manner. And then people will say of the Tánaiste that he is a smart man, a brainy man and a straight man. Here we see how they sneaked back into office. Now we know how they got the funds to put up the big posters with the Taoiseach and underneath in black print: "Vote for him. You can trust Dev." Now we know where the funds were got in relation to the poster of the unfortunate housewife about whom we heard so much during the last general election. Deputy Lemass, the Tánaiste, went on to write:—
"As to the abolition of entertainment duty for the present financial year, however, a decision must necessarily await the detailed examination of our next Budget."
"The detailed examination of our next Budget." He kept his promise to Miss Morris. Do not doubt it, Sir, but that Miss Morris will vote Fianna Fáil. Why would she not? Surely she would not be so ungrateful as to bite the hand that fed her. The dance hall owners of this country are the only one section of the community to whom Fianna Fáil have extended their sympathy. The reason was because those dance hall owners were requested to give generously to the election fund and other headquarter funds of Fianna Fáil, and they are doing so to this very day. Cheques have gone into Fianna Fáil headquarters from the Irish Ballroom Proprietors' Association within the past month in this connection, so that if a change of Government comes they will not find themselves in the position that those taxes will be reimposed again. A number of dance hall owners in this country have subscribed as generously as to the sum of £250 and £300 each. Now we know how the Government have agreed to bring about a relief in the entertainment duty.
We are told here that they had nothing to tax. They tell us in no uncertain way that they had to tax and that it was not a pleasant duty for them to tax immediately. That is the line of action they have been following up since they first became a Government in this country.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, in the course of his speech last week, referred to luxury goods. He did not seem to give very great consideration to the question of imposing additional taxes in order to get in some revenue from luxury goods. I can say, Sir, that the Government would be better advised to tax imported luxury goods than to tax the essentials of life which the people need.
Surtax was referred to. The Minister for Finance stated that there were 200 people in this country whose incomes were over £10,000 a year and that there was a large section of our people with incomes of over £3,000 a year. He also stated that in respect of those whose incomes were over £1,500 a year, 53 per cent. was taken by way of income-tax and surtax by the State. We all remember very clearly when the present Taoiseach very loudly stated that there was no man worth more than £1,000 a year. How often did we hear him say that? Were we not deafened hearing him say that no man was worth more than £1,000 a year? The same man who said that no man was worth £1,000 a year, only three years ago said that 50/- a week was good enough for a labouring man.
He said no such thing.
The relevancy of that does not seem to be very clear to me.
It is 45/-. My figure was too high.
I cannot see the relevancy of that.
I certainly advocate putting severe taxes on those whose incomes are over £10,000 a year. I would tax them to the hilt. I would tax them to such an extent as to leave them what would give them a comfortable living and a comfortable existence. Seventy thousand unemployed, agricultural workers, labourers and farmers with such a low standard of living are asked to work harder and pay more taxes while those with incomes of over £10,000 and £3,000 can get away with it. I would also tax up to the hilt those with incomes of over £3,000 and offer no apology for doing it, but the poor man's Government will not tax those people. Probably some of those who have £10,000 a year can sit down and write a cheque for £500 to Fianna Fáil headquarters as readily as they would sign a cheque for 6d. Fianna Fáil are catering for those with the big salaries and they are completely crippling the ordinary worker and the ordinary wage earner of this country.
Even since the Budget what have we seen? Razor blades have gone up. They are even depriving the ordinary citizen of a shave. The Minister for Industry and Commerce made an Order increasing the price of the ordinary razor blade within the last few days.
It is most extraordinary to hear the Government making an appeal for more production. The Minister for Health, Dr. Ryan, was addressing the Veterinary Council of Ireland in the Hibernian Hotel, Dublin, recently — note where he was addressing them — and this is what he said, as reported in the Irish Press:
"They had heard recently that this country was living beyond its means. Everybody agreed with that at any rate and all agreed that we certainly were living beyond our means."
When they read a speech of that kind being made in the Hibernian Hotel surely it must give the working classes something to think over seriously.
If the Government were sincere or genuine in catering for the ordinary man in the street and anxious to help him — which they are not — several Deputies have suggested alternative means of raising taxes. There are many ways of doing that. I have dealt with the taxation of the wealthy elasses. I offer no apology to anyone for advocating further taxation for them. I would also tax Gaelic Athletic Association matches. We read of 70,000 to 80,000 people sometimes being in Croke Park. When a man pays 2/6 or 3/- to get into a match, he is out for the day and he will pay 5/- or 7/6 just as readily. Would it not be better to pay 7/6, or even 10/-, if it went to that, to see a match in Croke Park than to have to pay 10d. extra for 1 lb. of butter and 3d. extra for a loaf?
Rugby and soccer matches could also be taxed. Greyhound racing could be taxed more. Dog licences could be increased and special licences could be given to the owners of greyhounds at £5 a year. Any labouring man with a prize greyhound at present may get rid of it, because he will have no bread for it; he will not have even a crust. Jewellery and cosmetics could be taxed more. A driving licence at present costs 10/- a year. No one would mind if it were increased to £1 so as to leave the bread and butter of the poor alone. Court fines could be increased. Dances should be taxed more, as well as all kinds of amusements.
Deputies must be disappointed — even Fianna Fáil Deputies—that during such an important debate as this the Minister for Finance has not made his appearance in the House during the whole day. It speaks very badly for the Fianna Fáil Party, who say that they are deeply interested in the welfare of the country, that their Minister does not think it worth his while to come into this House during this very important debate.
Fianna Fáil told us that one of their chief aims was to reduce the cost of living. I do not propose to go into that because Deputy Dr. O'Higgins dealt with that very ably. He is to be congratulated on the very fine constructive speech he delivered, dealing with the cost of living and pointing out the deceit of Fianna Fáil as far as the cost of living is concerned. It is very gloomy reading for Fianna Fáil supporters. When Fianna Fáil took office the people expected the cost of living to be reduced. Then they saw in the papers that coal in Dublin had gone up by 10/-. As reported in the Irish Independent of 1st November, 1951, the Tánaiste said: “There is little hope of the cost of living coming down in the near future.” That was a great change from what he said in Cork before the election.
Then we saw published in the papers increases in all sorts of goods, such as peas, cocoa, cheese and paraffin oil. There was to be stronger but dearer beer. Cement prices went up. We had such headings in the papers as: Big jump in cheese prices; further increase in coal. On the 29th August, 1951, we had these: Dublin pays more for gas; higher prices for oatmeal; laundry up in Cork; bacon and pork to be decontrolled. These things were done by people who slunk into office by giving their word of honour that they would control prices. Eggs were 5d. and 6d. each in Dublin. Deputy Dr. Browne gets up in this House and tells us that everybody, especially children, should drink plenty of milk. The Fianna Fáil price for that is 11d. per quart. He also said that all the members of a family should have an egg each day or sometimes twice a day. How can the poorer classes purchase eggs at 6d. each? Surely the father of eight or nine children could not purchase eight or nine eggs per day at 6d. each. It is a consolation, however, to know that Deputy Dr. Browne will be sounding the Last Post for these unfortunate people if he votes for a continuance of this.
On the 7th July, 1951, the Government gave notice of increased charges for electricity. Even the light is taxed. They could not tax the air or the wind, but they taxed the light. As a result of these additional Electricity Supply Board charges the ratepayer will have to pay more in rates. The farmers of Carlow, West Cork, Roscommon, Kerry and Wicklow are now paying more in rates because of the increased charges for public lighting of the towns and villages. On the 31st July, 1951, there was very gloomy reading in the Irish Independent: More price increases; milk up, gas up, coke up, oatmeal up. Even the plate of porridge that Deputy Dr. Browne told us, when he was Minister for Health, was very wholesome and which he recommended should be taken every morning in order that we may be healthy and strong, went up in price. The Government are now depriving the poor of the plate of porridge for which they were paying enough already.
On 1st September, the Irish Independent had this in big block letters: “Jump in Córas Iompair Éireann bus and train fares.” Up went the bus and train fares. The worker from Crumlin who takes a bus to and from his work, the worker in Ballyfermot, the worker in Dún Laoghaire who is working in Dublin, the worker from Kilcormac and the worker from Clara working in Tullamore, the worker from Abbeyleix working in Portlaoise had their bus and train fares increased. All that was done by the people who had given their word that the cost of living would come down. The price of coffee also was almost doubled. I was rather impressed when I took up the newspaper one morning and saw that 500 Offaly mill workers were to be put on short time as a result of the policy of Fianna Fáil. I know that Deputy Cormac Breslin is bewildered listening to this. He is inclined to think that I am bringing before this House everything Fianna Fáil put up, and not saying anything about the things they brought down. In fairness, we should mention the things they brought down. The Irish Independent of the 4th October, 1951, had this heading: “Prices fall in the Dublin market.” Fianna Fáil brought down the price of live stock fairly successfully. If there is anyone in the House from North Cork who has live stock for the Dublin market he should listen to this. It is the constituency of the Minister for Education. On the 2nd August, 1951, there was another heading in the Irish Independent:“Another slight fall in the Dublin market.” Fianna Fáil brought down the price of live stock some more, to make sure there would be a good fall. It may be asked did they bring down anything else? They did. On the 29th August, 1951, we saw in the newspapers that there would be cheaper air travel for the tourists. The bus fares and the train fares went up — services that were being used by the ordinary citizen. However, the aeroplanes to be used by the tourists, the swanks, the Tánaiste and the Minister for External Affairs reduced their fares.
Down went the fares for the aeroplanes, and up went the fares for the buses and the trains. We see, therefore, where the sympathies of this set-up lie—this unfortunate, disastrous combination called the Fianna Fáil Party, this set-up for the fatherless twins, this Cowan-Cogan, ffrench-O'Carroll set-up. Shortly after the above announcement we saw another heading in the newspaper: "Aer Lingus Cuts Excursion Fares." The excursion fares were low enough as they were, but Aer Lingus cut them down at the request of the Tánaiste, as Minister for Industry and Commerce. Bus fares and train fares went up because they were being used by ordinary John Citizen, such as the labourer and the ordinary worker. Because these sections of the people travel by bus and train, the fares must go up, but Aer Lingus must cut their excursion fares.
Next we saw that an attempt was made to put up motor car insurance. This increase had already been probed by the Prices Advisory Body, and I understand that a recommendation dealing with the question of motor car insurance is already before the Minister awaiting his signature, and that this insurance will go up if he is long enough in office.
A very interesting report appeared in the newspapers in which an appeal was made to the farmers to work harder and to produce more. Yesterday the Minister for External Affairs appealed to the farmers of this country to produce more and to work harder. However, he did not tell us that, when the inter-Party Government was in office, the cost of superphosphates ranged from £9 10s. to £9 15s. per ton and that the cost of superphosphates this year is £15 10s. per ton. He did not tell us that, in order to produce more from the soil, manures and fertilisers are necessary, that these were available at cheap and reasonable rates when Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture and that they are gone up to £15 10s. per ton due to the incompetency of the present set-up. We are told that the farmers of this country are the only people who can save us and that they must produce more.
The farmer will produce more because he always did his part. However, if he does work hard, he expects to be paid. Surely, it is in order, when an appeal is made to the people to produce more, to recall the "party"— I think it can be aptly described as a "party"—which was held in the Gresham Hotel a few months ago, to which the chairmen of the county committees of agriculture were invited. An appeal was made at that "party" to the farmers to produce more. The next day the price of barley fell. Any Deputy or any farmer who is a member of a county committee of agriculture knows the difficulties in producing more unless they get more assistance from the Government.
How does this arise on the motion before the House.
I was only referring to what the Minister for External Affairs said yesterday when he appealed to the farmers of this country to produce more.
The Deputy is referring to a great many things which seem to have very little, if any, relevance to the motion before the House. The Deputy referred to a meeting in the Gresham Hotel and to the price of barley. This has no connection with the motion before the House.
I accept your ruling, Sir. While I am dealing with the farmers, I would like to take this opportunity of referring to the speech made by Deputy Dr. Browne on the 23rd April, 1952. On Resolution No. 11, at present before the House, Deputy Dr. Browne said:—
"Again, I wonder if there is any attempt on the part of the Government to try to find some way of getting more money out of the farmers."
That is Deputy Dr. Browne's statement; he wants to explore how the farmers can be got to pay more. Deputy Cogan is his colleague on that. He represents the farmers of County Wicklow, God bless the mark!
He did represent them.
Misrepresented them.
Deputy Dr. Browne says: "Surely there must be some way to get more money out of the farmers?" I fail to understand how Deputy Dr. Browne can get away with a statement of that nature. The very people who claimed they would bring down the cost of living are responsible for putting the country into the position in which it is to-day. As I see it, every item has been increased in price except one, and that is, the ordinary Fianna Fáil membership card. It was 1/- in 1932, and it is 1/-to-day. They can have a cheap sale any time they like and they can get rid of all these cards for 6d.
During the debate many Deputies made reference to the question of butter. The inter-Party Government were very definitely criticised because of the Danish butter. On every platform, during the last general election, Fianna Fáil spokesmen spoke loud and long about the Danish butter. They said: "You see the fruits of the inter-Party policy. You have only got Danish butter on the table." They even painted pictures of the Danish butter keeping time, forming fours and sloping arms on the table and, in fact, even walking off the table. Some people felt: "We had better put this crowd out, because we will be able to get good creamery butter if Fianna Fáil comes back." What happened? They were no length back when there was £2,000,000 worth of New Zealand butter imported by the very people who were condemning the Danish butter.
I dislike interrupting the Deputy very much, but surely that is administration of a Department and has no relevance whatsoever to a Budget which seeks to collect revenue.
On a point of order, the Budget purports to show a sum of £300,000 that will be necessary in connection with this butter; in fact, it now shows that with the removal of the subsidy there will be a saving of money. Surely that is relevant on the motion?
The Deputy is referring to the fact that one Government brought in foreign butter. He is also referring to the fact that the present Government has brought in foreign butter. The statement the Deputy is making has no relevance to the raising of revenue in respect of the purchase of that butter.
Shortly after the general election the present Government decided to issue its policy to the people. That may sound quite strange but it is true. When the election was over the policy appeared, and as has already been stated by other Deputies the 17 points were placed before a number of Independent Deputies here and before the people. Number 15 was to maintain subsidies. In plain English that means to keep on existing subsidies. Nine months afterwards what had happened? It is hardly necessary for me to deal with the promises that were made and broken.
I know there are other Deputies who are anxious to speak and I do not propose to detain the House to any great extent. I want merely to protest vigorously and determinedly against this Budget. It has been very feebly defended by Fianna Fáil. The worst speech that ever was delivered in this House was that of the Taoiseach. There has not been one speech made from that side of the House in defence of it. What defence had Deputy Briscoe? He said: "They are going to have some consolation. They are going to have several varieties of tea; they will have every variety of tea they like". That is the only contribution Deputy Briscoe made. Protests have come from all over the country against this disastrous Budget. As has been pointed out by the Leader of the Opposition the present Government has no mandate from the people to impose this serious affliction on them. I take this opportunity, as one Deputy who supports the inter-Party Government, who is proud of the fact and who will do so again, that if the Government have any decency left—there was seldom any decency attached to them—or if there is anything left in the name of decency in the Fianna Fáil Party——
There is no decency in that.
——they will pack up and get out because they know quite well that the moment they do the people are waiting like hungry wolves for them. They will never see office again. They are hoping and trusting they may be able to carry on for another twelve months; if they do it will not be too bad because they will be able to take a penny off the pint, a halfpenny off the loaf, a penny off the cigarettes, and the back benchers will be able to come along and say: "The old Chief steered the ship well. We are coming back to the good old days. Things are looking well again." I say, put them out, get them out, because they have brought disgrace on themselves and upon this country which is keeping them there. The majority of those in the opposite benches have done well for themselves. They are all right. Some of the front benchers are well-to-do. Some of the back benchers have their old I.R.A. pensions.
The financial position of the Members of the Government does not arise on this motion.
I believe that Deputies will come here to-night with a full sense of responsibility and with the intention of putting this Government out before they do any more harm. I do not think there is very much more harm left for them to do. They have done as much as they could, but I say this: It seems to me the more you kick an Irishman in the face the oftener he comes back for a further kick. If the British Government imposed these taxes on us the whole country would be up in arms. If the inter-Party Government imposed these taxes you would have crowds outside Leinster House pulling down the gates and you would have the ribs torn out of every Deputy that would stand up and defend them. Because it is "Dev's" Budget it is all right. It cannot be wrong. You can trust "Dev" and Peadar Cowan, the political twins. You can trust Peadar to do the right thing. During the elections while the National Anthem was being played at the Taoiseach's meeting in O'Connell Street "Peadar on the Treetop" was being played at Deputy Cowan's meeting in Fairview. They are the political twins who are responsible for this unfortunate state of affairs.
It is a sad state of affairs because every section of the community is disturbed and disgruntled. You will have strikes and rightly so. More power to the elbow of the leaders of the trade unions. They will have my full support to see that the workers get what they are entitled to, and more power to the farmer in his demands for more for wheat, oats, beet and barley in order to meet the cost of living and pay labour. It has to be done. As I say, business men are going to have to close down their businesses because they will not be able to meet those demands. The banks have restricted credit and are restricting it. Credit cannot be given to the farmer because the interest has gone up to 6 per cent. If there is any hope for this country it lies in the removal from office with the least possible delay of Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach, with all their works and pomps.
At this late stage I shall endeavour not to delay the House very long in order to give other members an opportunity of saying something about this Budget. It is very difficult to believe that when members on the Government side endeavour to justify this iniquitous Budget, they are sincere in what they say. It is more difficult still when they congratulate the Minister for Finance for its introduction. In fact, I think that they should be in a much happier position if instead of patting one another on the back they would give a kick in the pants to one another and two kicks in the pants to the Minister for Finance. Perhaps that would save them to a certain extent from getting several kicks in the pants when they come before the electors to get their votes.
If the Government opposite—which I may call, I suppose, the Coalition Government or a sort of caretaker Government if you like—when they took office eleven months ago, simply continued the work that the inter-Party Government had been doing, they would scarcely find themselves in the position they are in to-day.
The inter-Party Government made agricultural and industrial agreements for the welfare of the agricultural industry and of those engaged in industry. They also improved the social services. They increased the old age pensions, the blind pensions, the widows' and orphans' pensions and certain other allowances to the unemployed. By removing the penal taxes imposed by the Fianna Fáil Government in their Supplementary Budget in 1947, they reduced taxation by £6,000,000. During the three and a half years of inter-Party Government not one halfpenny increased taxation was imposed on the Irish people. Still, everything seemed to prosper. The people were never more hopeful of good times to come. Farmers, workers, professional men and women, and so on, were enjoying prosperity in all directions. In fact, there was an entirely new look about the people of the country. I think these times can always be looked back upon as the three glorious years in the life of the State.
Instead of continuing the good work of the inter-Party Government, what exactly did the present Fianna Fáil Government do in the past ten or 11 months? In order to keep afloat the sinking ship of Fianna Fáil, their leaders set out to make scare speeches. They set out to try to make the people believe that the country was financially unsound so that when the disasters which they predicted did not materialise, they could say piously that they had saved the country. The Tánaiste, Deputy Lemass, ably supported by the Minister for Finance, made such gloomy and hysterical speeches that they rocked the nation. The banks became alarmed. Trade slumped and unemployment increased. Even though the country was financially sound when Fianna Fáil took office, they asserted that it was almost on the brink of disaster.
At the critical moment, and when the people of the country were really extremely worried, the former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, stretched across the path and stopped the stampede. By his speeches in Dublin, Cork and other places, and by the evidence he produced to support his statements that the country was financially sound. Deputy Costello made the actual position clear to the disheartened people, and they began to take courage. They examined the position and eventually they were satisfied that things were not as bad as the Fianna Fáil Ministers said they were. When the crisis had passed and when the Opposition in this House brought in a motion in connection with the Vote on Account, the Tánaiste not only swallowed all that he had said but he rejected the report of the Central Bank while his colleague, the Minister for Finance, maintained that the White Paper issued from his Department was correct. Though confidence was restored in the minds of the people of the country credit was restricted and the people were slow to spend. While the shops were full of goods, nobody was buying and that situation was bound to create unemployment.
When taxation is increased, purchasing power is reduced. No matter what may be said to the contrary, unemployment is bound to follow increased taxation and where there is unemployment there will be emigration. When the inter-Party Government left office there was almost full employment in this country. However, once the Fianna Fáil Ministers began to make their scare speeches and to try to stampede the people, there was unemployment and emigration. I think that it was about that time that the Taoiseach went down to Galway and made a speech there about our exiles in England—a speech which should never have been made. He criticised the manner in which our people were living in England. Though there may be some black sheep among them, it is certain that the vast majority of our Irish exiles are a credit to their country and carry with them their grand Christian way of life. Instead of causing a lowering of the morals of the country to which they emigrate, our Irish exiles set a good example in the Christian way of life.
Emigration may not be due entirely to unemployment. I read at one time that there are two tremendously powerful instincts within the human breast and that they work in opposite directions. One of these instincts is the desire of youth to unfold its wings and to fly away, to find adventure and perhaps to earn a livelihood in other lands. The other instinct is the unquenchable desire of those same exiles to return again to their old homes, to caress parents, brothers and sisters and to shake again in friendship the hands of their friends of long ago. I do not think that, at a time when speeches by Fianna Fáil Ministers were creating unemployment, it was right for the Taoiseach to make the type of speech which he made in Galway.
The Tánaiste admitted in this House that Deputy Costello, the former Taoiseach, was correct when he said in Cork that there was no crisis, but a problem. I remember that the day after that admission by the Tánaiste the leading article in the Irish Times stated that the Tánaiste's speech in this House was a repetition of the speech which was made by Deputy Costello in Cork.
Being foiled in their attempt to make the people believe that there was a crisis, I take it that the object of this Budget was to make the Irish people believe that there is a crisis and that the inter-Party Government left the financial affairs of the country in a mess. Of course, the inter-Party Government left the affairs of this country in a very sound condition but, in order to make the people believe otherwise, this Fianna Fáil Government have imposed extra, unjust and, as has been proved, unnecessary taxation. They will then be able to say, when they are leaving office, that though they found the country in an unsound financial state after the inter-Party Government, they put these affairs right. People have been asking: "What is the matter with the Taoiseach and with the Ministers? Are they mentally unsound when they produce such a Budget and tax the people to such an extent?"
It has been proved by Deputy Costello, Deputy McGilligan and others that there is no need for this extra taxation. Surely if the Government had any mercy at all on the ordinary people of the country they would not impose, or rather reimpose, the taxes on beer, tobacco, and even on petrol. Of course, the Taoiseach holds that he is infallible and that when he first imposed these taxes in 1947 there was a necessity for them and now that he has again assumed office they should again be reimposed. The Taoiseach has some kind of idea akin to the old theory of the Divine Right of Kings and thinks that he himself can make no mistake. He wants to prove now that the taxes imposed on stout and tobacco in 1947 were necessary then and are necessary now. The tax on petrol is bound to increase the cost of transport, such as bus fares. Even hackney car drivers are bound to increase their fares, and in that way the ordinary people of the country will be affected. In spite of the fact that no one can understand why these taxes were imposed it was done very efficiently and very expertly by the Government. They took good care that they did not impose all the taxes on 1st April. They staggered them, as it were, so that when 1st July comes the people will have forgotten to a certain extent the increased price of drink, tobacco and petrol. Then, before the introduction of the next Budget, with the big surplus they are bound to have, the Government can, of course, give certain concessions, reduce taxation and go to the country. That must be the idea at the back of the minds of Ministers.
I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture state yesterday evening that the Fianna Fáil Deputies for West Galway were sent up by their constituents to do away with the subsidies. It is very hard to believe that. Certainly I do not think they consulted their constituents in any way and, if they did, I believe they would not get that mandate. Deputy Killilea stated that the Opposition were trying to stampede the country. It was his own side, the Government, that tried to stampede the country and that is the cause of all the trouble now. Certainly, if I were a member of the Government Party at the present time—if by any kind of corruption I happened to become a member—and the Government introduced such a Budget, or even if the Party to which I belong were to introduce a Budget imposing such iniquitous taxes on my constituents, I would, no matter what my Party affiliation might be, vote against the imposition of such taxation.
I think there has been an air of unreality about this song-and-dance performance by the Opposition speakers, both throughout the country and in this House in connection with this Budget. That air of unreality has been continued in the House up to this evening. It was interesting to hear my colleague, Deputy Cafferky, asking the Government to go to the people on this Budget. I think that was one of the greatest signs of the unreality of the debate. I cannot visualise any Deputy who is less in a hurry to go to face the people than Deputy Cafferky.
Why not give him the chance?
Deputy Cafferky may be worried about the vote to-night but I can reassure him; I can tell him that there will not be an election. I want to reassure himself and his colleague, Deputy O'Hara, that the Budget will not be defeated, that there will be no election and that they are quite safe for another while at all events.
This Budget is a realistic Budget in the situation in which we find ourselves. Various expressions have been used in various papers and by various Opposition speakers to describe the Budget. We have heard the description "butchery"—"butchery of the taxpayers". We have heard of the "black budget" and of the "harsh budget". It is rather remarkable that none of the expressions used in the Opposition Press and by Opposition speakers in this House is new. Away back in the early days of the Fianna Fáil Government, the very same expressions were used by Opposition speakers, and particularly by Front Bench speakers, to describe Budgets introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government. For instance, away back in 1933, Deputy O'Higgins used these words: "In the face of this black Budget, in face of the Minister's dismal wail in introducing the Budget, is it not time for getting back and reviewing the position?" We have had a rehash of these words in one way or another on every Budget introduced by a Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance since. Being used to these expressions in connection with Budgets introduced by the Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance each year, we are inclined to take much less notice of them than we otherwise would. The same song has been sung, and the same tune has been played by the same people for so many years that we are now quite used to them.
We now come to examine the reasons why a Budget in these terms is necessary in the interests of the nation. I want to put this question to the House, and to the alleged economists of the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party. Do they agree with the proposition that if the adverse trade balance is greater than our export trade, and if that position continues, must the country not go burst? Not one speaker we have heard from the Opposition Benches has said anything about that proposition, but it was a proposition put to this House a few years ago by one of the Deputies now sitting in the Opposition Benches.
What is the position now? I suggest that never was the country in such a financial position as it is in to-day. Away back in 1935 Deputy Dillon is reported at column 1178 of Volume 56 of the Official Report as stating:
"If this country continues to spend £36,000,000 yearly, while its adverse trade balance is substantially greater than its entire export trade, and while its foreign assets are dwindling, any same man must know that sooner or later we will burst the country."
If that was a sound financial proposition in the year 1935 surely it is doubly sound to-day in view of the figures that we have before us because the deficit in visible trade last year, according to the Budget statement, amounted to £123.1 million with estimated invisible items of £62,000,000, making in all a total of £185.1 million. Does Deputy Dillon's dictum enunciated in May, 1935, still hold good? Will it be suggested by his colleagues now that what he laid down then in relation to our national economy was so much eyewash? If the proposition was sound then, surely it is doubly sound to-day.
There is no doubt our foreign assets are dwindling. The figures for last year would appear to show that they dwindled by approximately £30,000,000 between 1950 and 1951 mainly because of borrowing. The result is that we have here an estimated expenditure of £101.7 million this year. We have the position that our external assets are dwindling. We have a huge gap in our balance of payments. Deputy Dillon's dictum was unchallenged in 1935:
"If this country continues to spend £36,000,000 yearly, while its adverse trade balance is substantially greater than its entire export trade, and while its foreign assets are dwindling, any same man must know that sooner or later we will burst the country."
Are we to allow ourselves to go burst to-day when we find ourselves facing the present situation? Are we not to take steps to deal with it? Are such steps not necessary?
I have not heard one speaker question the position in relation to the balance of payments. Some of the Opposition speakers suggested that there was overestimation in this Budget to the extent of some millions. Every single argument advanced by all the Opposition speakers has starteo off on the basis that the Budget figures are wrong and that there is overestimation. Some said £10,000,000 overestimation; others gave different figures. If one starts off on a false premise, it is quite easy to build up a case. If one starts off on the premise that black is white one can prove anything. Every single argument advanced by the Front Bench Opposition started off on that false premise. Nobody seems to have asked himself why the officials of the Department of Finance should have faked these figures? Why should any Government or any Minister deliberately overestimate the requirements of the country?
There might have been a very good reason if the argument was put the other way round and we accused the inter-Party Government of underestimating. There might have been a very good reason, for instance, for the Minister's predecessor to underestimate. There might have been a very good reason for faking figures in a Budget when the necessary provision was not being made for current expenses. There might have been very good reason, particularly when there was an election in the offing, for underestimating, because then the Government could go to the people and say: "The Budget is not too bad, after all. If we get back we can do what we like. We can introduce a Supplementary Budget."
The Minister said there was a mistake in relation to the figures given for licences.
What licences have to do with the financial burden imposed under this Budget is beyond me. It may be plain sailing to Deputy O'Leary. This sum of money is required and the question is: how will it be found? Not one responsible Deputy on the Opposition Benches has yet ventured to show us where that money can be found if we remit the taxes it is intended to impose under this Budget. It is true that the position might not be so bad to-day had our predecessors faced up to their responsibilities. In 1947 it became necessary, in the interest of the nation, to impose extra taxation on beer and tobacco. We knew then that that was necessary. Had we continued in office it is quite possible we would not to-day find ourselves in the financial mess in which we are.
There were people who preached in those days that the pint was sacrosanct and that it should not be touched. They declared then an extra 1d. or 2d. on the pint was a shocking imposition on the people irrespective of the state of our national economy. They took that view then, and when the inter-Party Government came into office the first thing they did was to remove the essential taxation we had imposed in the interests of the community. If that taxation had continued and if our appeal had been listened to during those years we would not now be in the position of having to face this ghastly conglomeration of debt and taxation.
Now we must take the country in the position in which we find it. We must pay our way. Otherwise we will go burst. This Government has no intention of shirking its responsibilities. This Government has no intention of borrowing the country into perdition. This Government is prepared to face the situation, bad as the situation is. In facing that situation it is compelled to impose extra taxation in order to lift the country out of the financial morass in which we found it.
Suggestions have been made by Deputies on the Opposition side of the House in relation to attacks by us on the policy of the United States of America. I did not hear anybody on these benches make any attack. All I did hear was some Deputies on this side pointing out the dangerous position in which the nation will find itself if it continues borrowing. It will find itself in the position in which any borrower finds himself when he continues that policy. We all know that the position may be all right so long as the lender does not get into difficulties. We all know what happens to a borrower when he is not able to pay what he has borrowed but his situation becomes intolerable when the lender finds himself pressed and is compelled, whether he likes it or not, to bring pressure to bear on the borrower. We all know the position of the poor man in the country who finds himself up to his neck in debt in the books of the local shopkeeper. We have had examples of that for a very long time here. Every rural Deputy knows what happens. It happened to a large extent in the bad old days. Rural merchants, particularly the gombeen type, had people up to their necks in debt in their books and at election times they dictated to the people as to how they should vote and the people were told that if they did not vote in a certain way dire results would follow. We know those people were not free agents.
All that has been said on this side of the House in that connection is that we do not want to find ourselves in the position of the mortgagor. We do not want to find ourselves in the position of the borrower.
We do not want anybody, no matter who he may be, to tell us how to vote in a certain situation or what to do in a certain situation. We all realise that we have been told here time after time, what the effect is on an individual of finding himself in the hands of moneylenders. We all know that it has often been said in this House that, unless we had economic freedom in this country, our other freedom would to a large extent be negatived. If that is true, should we not, as a nation, think twice before getting into a morass of debt, as has been suggested on some sides of this House? If it is true that a nation, in order to be independent, must be economically free, then the first thing any nation should do is to be very careful before committing itself in the toils of borrowing.
Is it suggested as a long-term policy or otherwise that it is sound economically for this or any other nation to keep borrowing year after year, and not to face up to having a balanced Budget annually, or not to face up to the economic position in which we now find ourselves? I cannot visualise any sane man suggesting that that would be a good policy in present circumstances. We know that sufficient borrowing has been done. We know, contrary to what the nation was told by the then Government, the disastrous effects which some of that borrowing will have. We know the amount of money that we will now have to raise in order to repay that borrowing.
What money?
Deputy Rooney should learn about that when he has to pay for it by increased taxation. He should know that the repayment of one portion of the Marshall Aid borrowing alone is now going to cost us approximately £45,000,000.
You spent it yourself.
That may not be very palatable information for Deputy Rooney. He and his pals, when they were members of the Government, raised that money.
When the £ was devalued, they told the people that devaluation would make no difference. We had Deputy Dillon, when he was Minister for Agriculture, proclaiming that it would not affect the price of foodstuffs and that the price of maize would not go beyond £1 per cwt. We had Deputy McGilligan, when Minister for Finance, assuring the people in a broadcast over Radio Éireann that the devaluation of sterling meant nothing, and would have no effect on this nation. But we now find, particularly when we read the lines of the agreement which the boys signed with the American Government, that the Marshall Aid borrowing will have to be repaid in the lawful coin of the United States, in dollars, and that we will have to buy these dollars with sterling to pay back the money borrowed by the gentlemen over there.
On a point of order. It has been arranged, in order to facilitate business, that the Minister for Finance will be allowed in at 8 o'clock to reply. I suggest that Deputy Moran is wasting time to keep Opposition speakers from getting in before the Minister for Finance. I suggest that is contrary to the spirit in which the agreement was entered into.
I suggest that is not a point of order. Deputy Mulcahy comes in belatedly at this hour of the night, having been missing when Deputy Oliver Flanagan and other speakers were wasting time during the last three or four hours. If Deputy Mulcahy was not prepared to come in and listen to Deputy Oliver Flanagan, I am not going to blame him for that, but at least he should have got someone to tell him what was happening in the House. I was saying when interrupted —evidently Deputy Mulcahy did not like to hear it—that the gentlemen opposite had assured the people of this nation that the devaluation of the £ would not have any effect on sterling. We now find that we will require £45,000,000 to buy dollars to enable us to pay back the debts which those people incurred. We have got to pay those debts because the money was borrowed in the name of the nation.
Notwithstanding all the invitations which have been addressed to some of the responsible Deputies in the Fine Gael Party to say where they would find the money to meet this bill which the Government and the taxpayers have got to meet, there has not been one word or suggestion from Deputy Costello, Deputy Mulcahy or any of the leaders of the Opposition as to what they would do if they were faced with this position or as to how this money can be found. There has been a very strange quietness on the part of the Opposition to give a statement on this matter in answer to the questions which have been addressed to them by some of the Independent Deputies. Why are Deputy Costello and Deputy Mulcahy so backward in coming forward on this issue? Why have they kept so silent on whether they would, or would not, abolish the food subsidies if this House were dissolved to-night and they came back as the Government? Why have they been so slow to give a lead to Deputy McQuillan and other Deputies, and to answer these six-mark questions? Is it because they know quite well that this position has to be faced, that it is of their creation and that somebody must now pay the piper for the debts created by the Coalition Government? Is it not because they cannot make up their minds?
They are not anxious to get back by depending on Deputy Dr. Browne.
You depended on Deputy Dr. Browne for a long time.
On a point of order. It was agreed that the Minister for Finance would be allowed in at 8 o'clock to-night and that there would be a fair division of the time for the discussion of this matter. I want to ask again whether any Opposition speaker is going to be allowed to get into this discussion before the Minister for Finance rises at 8 o'clock. I suggest that Deputy Moran has been repetitiously irrelevant for the purpose of wasting time.
Deputy Mulcahy should be aware that, before Deputy Moran rose to speak, two members of Fine Gael had spoken. Let us have equal values.
I want to ask the Minister are we going to be put in the position that Deputy Moran is to take up all the time until 8 o'clock?
The Deputy has something to say and there is no reason, I think, why he should not say it.
Is Deputy Moran to be the first speaker in five weeks on the Government side of the House who will not be allowed to speak?
That seems to be the issue.
I did not get a chance of speaking yet.
The House came to an agreement and made an order that the Minister for Finance would be allowed in at 8 o'clock.
We can have a vote on this at 8 o'clock.
The Chair has no power to curtail any Deputy when speaking in a debate. Even though agreements may be arrived at outside the House, the Chair cannot take cognisance of them and cannot direct a Deputy to cease speaking.
This was not an agreement that was arrived at outside the House. It was an order made by the House, and it was accepted in the spirit that there would be a fair running of the debate. I suggest that it is an unfair running of the debate for Deputy Moran and the Government Party to squeeze out Opposition speakers up to 8 o'clock when the Minister for Finance is to rise to reply.
Is that a point of order?
We can ask for extra time.
I want again to point out that Deputy Mulcahy was not in this House and was not aware of all the time that was taken up by Deputies on his own benches sitting behind him. They took up the time of this House for the past three hours until I started speaking. There were two or three Deputies called in succession from the opposite benches by the Chair. I can understand Deputy Mulcahy being in disagreement on this issue with the other members of his Party because it is in the air as far as his Party is concerned. It may be that they are trying to settle whether Deputy Costello or Deputy MacEoin is going to be the presidential candidate. I suggest that they should call in Deputy Burke to settle the matter.
I think this is totally irrelevant and is for the purpose of wasting time.
Deputy Mulcahy has wasted more time in this House than any other ten Deputies.
Since you go as far as that, how is it that the Minister for Finance was not here to hear any speech made by even the members of his own Party? Let us be fair. One cannot listen to that kind of thing.
Deputy Moran will address himself to the motion.
I shall address myself to the motion so long as I am allowed to do so. There seems to be a deliberate attempt being made in this House to stop me speaking, and I have no intention of succumbing to these tactics. I suggest, Sir, that if the Fine Gael Minister in the inter-Party Government had a free hand, if he were allowed to do what he thought fit the possibility is that we would not have to face this particular bill here and now. But he found—as all the Fine Gael Party found after the last election—that he was not a free agent. They found they were in the hands of vested interests and dare not go ahead with the taxation they knew to be necessary. They found they were tied —as that Party has been over a great number of years—to the strings of the licensed trade. They found that they dare not, irrespective of whether they thought it was necessary in the interests of the nation or of good finance, tax, beer and tobacco. They found that they would not be allowed to do it, even if they thought it was necessary. Being in that situation, they had to try to tide themselves over the period they were in office and they had to try to do that through the types of Budget they introduced. They tried to avail of all the borrowing they could avail of.
This bill has been left to us and the Government has got to face up to it. It is difficult for us to have to impose this taxation. We do not like doing it but we know that the only right policy is to take the people into our confidence and to point out to them that this bill is there. We must meet it and the only honest way to do that is to face up to our responsibilities. As the people have found us to be honest with them in our dealings with them before, I have no doubt the public will realise the situation that has been left to us by our predecessors. I have no doubt that nationalist Ireland will stand behind us in connection with these matters. The people know that we have to clear up these legacies left to us by the Opposition. We propose to clean them up so that we will get the country back on that solid keel it was on before the gentlemen of the Opposition got into power.
I realise how difficult it will be for some of us to speak in the time allotted. The Minister for Finance is supposed to come in at 8 o'clock. I say that the Leaders of the Opposition Parties should not have given the Minister that concession as he did not deserve it. We are handicapped now. There are many items of interest upon which we would like to speak, but since I want to give every man a chance. I will be as brief as possible on the subject of this very important Budget. There was much discussion about this Budget and we got many lectures from the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Deputy Briscoe and others. They have condemned the inter-Party Government for the policy they operated for three and a half years and have pointed out the terrible fallacy of their policy. They tell us that there is danger of inflation.
I wonder did the Chancellor of the British Exchequer tell our Minister for Finance, when they had their little secret pow-wow, that in the financial year 1938-39, before the disaster of the Second World War came upon us, the national debt in Great Britain was £8,136,000,000? Did he tell our own dearly beloved little Minister for Finance that the increase in the British national debt in that year alone amounted to £137,000,000 and that a Bill was brought before the House of Commons asking that, under the Defence Loans Act, the amount for borrowing purposes be increased from £400,000,000 to £800,000,000? Did he tell him that in 1939 £250,000 per day was spent on the provision of aircraft? If he did, did he tell Deputy MacEntee, the Minister for Finance, that almost all that was got through borrowing? We are condemned for borrowing. Great Britain borrowed to win a war. She found it in her own interests and in the interests of the people of Great Britain to borrow huge amounts during that period for defence purposes and otherwise. Yet we are condemned by a Fianna Fáil Administration who tell us they are ultra-republican in outlook. We are condemned when we say we are willing to borrow for the purpose of building houses for our people.
The present Minister for Finance stated that unless he could borrow upwards of £28,000,000 from our people housing was going to be retarded and that hospitalization was going to be retarded. No member of Fianna Fáil can contradict that. Speakers in the Opposition have said—I believe they were justified in saying it—that the policy of the Government is one of full agreement with the British policy of finance as against a policy of financial friendship with the United States of America. It is no use for them to deny it. Some of their back-benchers admitted during the course of this debate that there may be a danger in getting money from America; we may be sold out economically. If any man in this country is selling our full indepdence from an economic and financial point of view, it is the Minister for Finance.
If they object to borrowing, if they object to a system of capital budgeting, it means, as we have proof already, an increase in unemployment. This time last year, the number on the unemployed list went down. This year, unfortunately, each week the number has increased. That is not a matter that I want to gloat over. It is something that I am sincerely sorry about. What will we do to remedy that position? Do we believe in capital investment or are we satisfied to continue a policy which will allow the financiers to gloat over the quotations of stock market prices in London and New York in the morning papers? Are we satisfied that Irish money is to be invested in foreign places? Are we satisfied to allow the financial system which has dominated our economic life for years to operate? Are we satisfied with a system whereby local authorities will have to pay more in bank interest?
I have mentioned but a few points. I will curtail my speech to allow other Deputies to speak. There is an extraordinary degree of similarity between the policy as advocated by the Minister and the Government and the words of a famous statesman. I leave the House to judge. At a period when the British Government were talking about raising huge loans for defence, a famous person said, on 21st February, 1939:—
"This is no time for financial pedantry."
He went further and said:—
"This massive loan bill had added to confidence at home and was a factor on the side of stability abroad."
He concluded by saying that the Prime Minister had only to ask for whatever was necessary. That famous individual—famous, at least, from the viewpoint of the British people—Churchill —said that the Prime Minister had only to ask for whatever was necessary.
At that stage the British financial policy was based on borrowing, to finance a war. Now, because the Chancellor of the British Exchequer has told our Minister for Finance that we should not borrow, that we should adopt a policy which will bring us into a period of deflation, our Minister and our Government have accepted that policy.
Deputy Corry mentioned one particular matter. He was entitled to do so. He was sitting beside the Minister for Finance and the Minister gloated over the words of Deputy Corry. Deputy Corry drew attention to the letters which were sent to local authorities dealing with increases for staffs. Deputy Corry said that that meant robbing this country, as it were, by giving increased allowances. I would like to have it recorded in this House now that neither Deputy Corry nor any member of the Fianna Fáil Party on the Cork County Council objected to the request for increases in salaries at that time. I give them credit for supporting the increases. We believed that these staffs were entitled to an increase. But, considerual—famous ing that neither Deputy Corry nor any of his Party opposed those increases, is it not right to draw attention to the hypocrisy of condemning something now with which, 12 months ago, Deputy Corry agreed completely?
It is said that we are living beyond our means. It is said that the removal of the subsidies means an increase of only 1/6 in the cost of living. I wonder does the Minister for Finance still maintain that it means an increase of only 1/6. I am sorry that he is not here. If he does so maintain, then another prominent member of the present Government must be wrong, because the Minister for Agriculture has admitted that, on a request from the Agricultural Wages Board, he is giving the farmer an allowance of 4d. a day, which means 2/4 a week in the case of an indoor man, out of the recent increase for farm workers. If the cost of living has increased by 2/4 a week to the farmer, the producer, then the Minister for Finance knows that his 1/6 is not correct, or, if he believes it is correct, he had better consult the Minister for Agriculture and find out which of them is right or wrong.
I could expect nothing better from the Minister for Finance. There are decent men in his Party but, when a Party is controlled by a junta and when you have a Minister for Finance who had the audacity to offer 2d. a day to the honest road workers of County Cork, it is only natural to believe that he has no respect or regard for the workers. Perhaps he is more in line with the gentry, with the people who may be living beyond their means and who found pleasure in being at Punchestown for the last couple of days.
The Chair understands that the Minister is to be called on at 8 o'clock to conclude the debate.
He can listen to two minutes' talk, anyway.
I have listened a long time. It is 8 o'clock.
Another two minutes will not do you much harm.
It will not do me much harm. Deputies had better toss up for it.
There is very little time for me to contribute to this debate. I have listened very carefully to the speeches made by members of the Government and by the leading lights in the Opposition. The speeches made by the Opposition were very convincing and I feel that the speeches made by the members of the Government Party exaggerated the position. It has always been noticeable that the Fianna Fáil Party have tried to make the Irish people believe down through the years that they and they alone are capable of running this country rightly and properly.
I think the hour has come. I do not want to be discourteous, but it is now 8 o'clock and we still have a great deal of business to transact before the night ends. It was an order of the House that I should rise to conclude at 8 o'clock and perhaps Deputy O'Hara will permit me on this occasion.
In conclusion, I want to put on the records of this House an expression of my most emphatic protest against this attempted imposition on the part of the Fianna Fáil Government.
The Budget on which the debate is now concluding has been criticised mainly on two grounds. The first is that it is unduly severe, and the second, that it is lacking in imagination. Let me deal with the second of these first. In an attempt to distinguish between the real and the imaginative, a philosopher has said: "Our simple apprehension of corporeal objects, if present, is sense; if absent, is imagination." Am I, in framing the Budget for the nation, to exercise my imagination and to deceive myself and the country with the idle fancy that our liquidated assets, the assets which the Coalition squandered, are still in our possession? That is an exercise to which the imaginative ex-Minister for Agriculture has devoted himself in recent days. Am I to visualise as real things the plant and capital equipment upon which the Coalition pretend they spent the £46,000,000 of Marshall Aid?
A poem or a play requires imagination in an exceptional degree, but a Budget, let me remind the gentlemen opposite, is neither of these. It is a business document which embodies proposals relating solely to an important business, the business of calculating what the State is likely to have to spend and of devising ways and means for meeting that expenditure. That is a job not for the over-imaginative person, because, as we have been told by the poet:—
"The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact."
When we think of the three years of Coalition Government, we may well suppose that a triumvirate of that kind had the destinies of this country in its hands over that period.
The framing of a Budget is a job which requires, in the first place, that whoever should attempt it will have a firm grip on essentials, will have a realistic appreciation of what his proposals involve, what their effects are likely to be on trade and employment and last, but naturally with politicians by no means least, the reaction of the ordinary man in the street to them. The framing of a Budget therefore, is not a job for a visionary, nor for a man supercharged with imagination, nor for one who thinks that he can, by some monetary miracle, transform this harsh old world into an earthly paradise. It is a job primarily for a competent man of business, endowed by Providence with some commonsense and fortfited by comprehensive experience and close study of public affairs. I do not claim to meet my own specifications fully under any one of these heads. All I can claim is that I approach the difficult task which I have inherited with a full appreciation of its difficulties and its dangers, but with a determination, shared fully by my colleagues, to discharge it honestly. As a Government, we shall fulfil the duty which rests on men and Governments alike to meet all our obligations and to pay our way.
Now, as to the alleged harshness of the Budget, we in this Government and those who support us on these benches are no mere neophytes in politics. We know how unpopular the measures which we propose may be; but we also know how essential they are, if the independence, the political and economical independence of this State and the peace and wellbeing of its people, are to be assured. When we talk of people, we mean the decent, hard-working, selfrespecting men and women of Ireland, the people whose devoted loyalty and support, in good days and in bad, made this part of Ireland free. They won that freedom; it is necessary for us to take the unpalatable but the wholly necessary steps which will enable them, under Heaven, to keep it.
This Budget, we are told, is unduly burdensome. Will those who say that answer me one question? Will they tell me why I, who depend and always have depended for my seat in this Dáil mainly on the wage earners and white collars of my constituency, on the people with the smaller incomes in it, should impose unnecessary burdens upon them? They have been my friends, my supporters, for almost 30 years? Why should I be so foolish, so wrongheaded, as to tax them more heavily than the dire need of the time requires? Sooner or later, within four short years or so at the most, I shall have to go before them again and ask them to re-elect me, to judge me on what I have done. I know the Budget is not popular—no taxation ever is. I know that my intimate association with it will constitute a very heavy handicap for me personally. I accept that handicap because my duty to the people and the nation requires it but why should I increase it, why should I commit political suicide by taxing the people unnecessarily? Not even the imaginative Deputies opposite can think of an answer to that question; not even they, with all their powers of invention, can fabricate a plausible one. They know well, as every man and woman in the country knows, that it would be absurd for me to do as they are alleging, that it would be the peak and zenith of political folly.
Their allegation, therefore, that we are taxing the people unduly sounds so hollow even in their own ears that they set themselves to concoct a series of faked figures to support it. I use the word "faked" advisedly, because Deputy McGilligan himself told us why the figures were faked and how the whole plan of the Fine Gael attack upon this Budget was concocted. Speaking on Tuesday evening in this debate, my immediate predecessor as Minister for Finance gave the game away on his own Leader and his own Party, when he disclosed that Deputy J.A. Costello's figures were worked out—and these are his own words—
"not by people who thought they had discovered an overestimate here and there, but by people who considered the reasoning that was in the back of the Budget, that the scheme was to balance for a surplus and then this surplus had to be hidden and shown as a deficit."
I interrupted Deputy McGilligan at this point to say:—
"That is not very fair to Deputy Costello."
Then came back the surprising rejoinder from Deputy McGilligan:—
"It explains how he arrived at those figures, and it is an explanation that he will accept from me, because I know it to be the correct explanation."
I do not know why Deputy McGilligan should have spilled out the whole bag of beans on his colleague in this way— and in any event, the Deputy's motive is not of much importance. What is important, however, is Deputy McGilligan's disclosure that the figures, which Deputy Costello, with such an air of authority, has put before the Dáil and the people, were deliberately faked in order to support a thesis, the thesis that we are budgeting for a surplus. There is no truth in that suggestion. We are not budgeting for a surplus. Neither, however, are we budgeting for a deficit. We are budgeting for a balance.
Will the Minister answer the question on the figures put before him?
Our ambitions this year do not go beyond the lowest possible target that will make ends meet. We cannot in honesty and in prudence aim at less than that.
Will the Minister challenge the faked figures?
The Fine Gael Opposition——
Definite figures have been put before the Minister and he has been asked, as being responsible to this House, to answer the questions that have been put to him.
The Minister is in possession and should be allowed to proceed.
The questions raised cannot be suppressed in that way.
The Deputy will have another opportunity, I hope.
This is the Minister's opportunity and he ought to take advantage of it.
Is the Minister going to be allowed to make his speech?
The Minister, without interruption.
I was saying, Sir, that we have been condemned, that there would seem to be something wrong about this idea of a surplus. But the Fine Gael Opposition, in the course of this debate have been loud in their praise of a Chancellor who is budgeting for a surplus and of his predecessors who budgeted for surpluses. They have been loud in laudations of Mr. Butler, because Mr. Butler did certain things. Why was he able to do them? Because Mr. Butler's predecessor in the Socialist Government had budgeted for a surplus and had left him a surplus of no less than £500,000,000.
And who praised him?
I am not in that position. I am not following in the footsteps of Mr. Gaitskell. I have told the Dáil that I am aiming at the lowest possible target, the target which will just enable us to make ends meet. The Fine Gael Opposition, while they have praised British Chancellors, present and past, for budgeting for a surplus on current revenue, think that our people would regard a surplus as in some way reprehensible and so they have been making the allegation that we are budgeting for a surplus and then set themselves to concoct the evidence to support it.
That is the first thing that Deputy McGilligan wishes us to understand; that is the first disclosure that Deputy McGilligan has made in the course of his speech on this Budget. The next thing is—and it is perhaps no less important than the first—is the fact that he disclaims any responsibility, this ex-Minister for Finance disclaims any responsibility, for the figures which Deputy J.A. Costello has produced.
Now, with this knowledge at our disposal, let us consider the case made by the Leader of the Opposition. Never was an elementary knowledge of simple arithmetic put to such poor use as it has been put by the Leader of the Opposition and those like him who have been fumbling with figures and stumbling over statistics in the course of this debate. The performance of the Fine Gael Deputies in this discussion has been so absurd that it has provoked even some of their usual allies and normal supporters to confute them. The Leader of the Opposition made the case that the Estimates on which the Budget is framed are gravely in error. He spent hours of parliamentary time in a fantastic endeavour to prove that. He has been followed on the same lines by all the Fine Gael speakers, except the ex-Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan. Even that eminent backwoodsman of the Party, Deputy McMenamin, has been moved to break his long years of silence and to write a letter to the papers repeating what his Leader has said.
That, however, was not the line taken by Deputy Larkin. He did not challenge the Estimates, though he is much more competent, as most people will admit, to deal with these matters than Deputy Costello has shown himself to be. Implicit throughout, Deputy Larkin's speech was the acceptance of the cold fact that additional taxation and heavy additional taxation is necessary if the Budget is to be balanced. He admitted frankly and unreservedly that "quite clearly, if we are going to have certain standards of social services, the money must be found to pay for them." That is precisely the principle on which this Budget is based. It is not because of the fact that the Budget involves increased taxation that Deputy Larkin criticises it but only that it does not provide for the sort of taxation that appeals to him. But then Deputy Larkin's concept of taxation is very much like expropriation. He thinks that the primary use of the taxing power should be to penalise the better-off, to punish people for earning too much; and the alternative forms of taxation which he suggested in his speech are all designed to that end. However, whatever be the kind of taxes Deputy Larkin would impose, he did not follow Deputy Costello in the line which the latter took, for he recognised that it is necessary to raise a great deal of additional revenue. The acceptance of this fact is implicit also in the document which was issued by the Irish Trade Union Congress last week.
When the Leader of the Opposition opened his attack on the Budget proposals he alleged that they were based on misleading estimates of expenditure and of revenue. He made specific charges in this regard and purported to substantiate each and every one of them by open calculations. Deputy McGilligan has told us how these calculations were made and what reliance is to be placed on them.
They have been shown to have been specious and misleading but it has remained for the Irish Trade Union Congress to pass final and crushing judgment upon them. In the document to which I have referred and, beyond any doubt with the allegations of Deputy Costello in mind, the Irish Trade Union Congress says:—
"Firstly, it is necessary to discover whether or not the figure of £15,000,000 constitutes the gap in the current Budget. We do not doubt for a moment, despite suggestions to the contrary, that the various Estimates both of revenue and expenditure were made as accurately as forecasting of this nature would allow."
"We do not doubt" retorts the Irish Trades Union Congress to Deputy Costello, Deputy Morrissey, Deputy Mulcahy and the lesser fry in Fine Gael. "We do not doubt for a moment... that the various Estimates both of revenue and expenditure were made as accurately as forecasting of this nature would allow."
That statement is, in itself, a sufficient and convincing rebuttal of Deputy Costello's charges and I should leave the matter at that but for the fact that I think the public interest will be served if some further consideration be given to such of the Deputy's assertions as have not yet been fully exposed to the House. I do not propose to go over in great detail the ground which has already been covered. I do not intend to embarrass the Leader of the Opposition by demonstrating again how wrong was the method of calculation by which he endeavoured to support his charge that the savings on food subsidies had been underestimated. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Health have refuted that allegation.
Utter nonsense.
10 per cent. out.
I must, however, refer to Deputy Costello's endeavours to mislead the public in regard to the provision which is made in the Budget to cover the estimated cost in this year of the Social Welfare Bill. In that connection it is relevant to recall that it was just about this time last year that, according to column 748, Volume 125 of the Official Report, Deputy J. A. Costello, then Taoiseach, confessed to Dáil Éireann that he had informed representatives of the medical profession that "it was obligatory as a matter of law... to have a free service for mothers and children under Part III of the Health Act", while he himself, after a study of the Act, had come-and here I quote again the Deputy's own words—"to the conclusion that there was no binding obligation on this Government or any other Government to have a free scheme or this free for all and no means test".
With that fact—I do not want to reopen the controversy—with that admission from Deputy Costello firmly fixed in our minds, let us consider his performance in this debate. If we turn to columns 1273 and 1274, Volume 130 of the current Official Debates, we shall see for ourselves how clearly the Deputy's speech paralleled his disingenuous statements to the doctors. In column 1273 the Leader of the Opposition is reported as follows:—
"I pass to the third item, which amounts to a sum of £1,000,000. Again I point out that in the ‘Table Explanatory of the Budget, 1952', item 4, the provision for proposals in the Social Welfare (Insurance) Bill, 1951, is stated to be a sum of £3,000,000."
That statement in itself is a falsification of the actual printed text of the Table Explanatory of the Budget which the Leader of the Opposition had before him when he was making his speech. In relation to item 4 of that Table the actual text reads:—
"Add:
Provision for proposals in Social Welfare (Insurance) Bill, 1951, and for other current services... £3,000,000."
"And for other current services." These are the significant words which, as the Taoiseach pointed out in his masterly speech last week, Deputy J.A. Costello carefully omitted to utter——
The Taoiseach will make a bow.
——though they were before him plain for his eyes to see and for his tongue to speak if he wished to be honest and truthful with the House and with the country. These are the words which he dropped from their context in order to bolster up his allegation that I have overstated by £1,000,000 the amount actually required for social services.
Yet Deputy J.A. Costello has the hardihood to suggest that the figures in the Budget have been falsified.
Let me consider this item 4 further and explain the basis of it to the Dáil. It is intended, as I have said, to provide for the cost in this year of the new social welfare benefits when they become effective and for other contingencies on current services which will undoubtedly arise. With regard to the new social welfare benefits, these, as the Minister for Health has stated, will cost something under £2,000,000. Let us take the cost at about £1,900,000. That will leave £1,100,000 or perhaps something more to cover other expenditure.
Very adequate.
In his Budget last year Deputy Costello's Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, included £1,500,000 for the same purpose. The Deputy's £1,500,000 proved to be much too little, however, for the actual current expenditure unprovided for in the Budget came to over four times that figure at £6.8 million which is more than six times what I have allowed for in this year's Budget.
Blatherskite.
Deputy Dillon should cease interrupting and allow the Minister to proceed.
On a point of order, when the Minister states categorically that something is true which is not true, may not a modest remonstrance be uttered?
Nobody would ever associate the quality of modesty with the Deputy.
It has succeeded in directing attention to your misrepresentations.
I was saying that the deficit last year was £6.8 million which was more than six times——
Get your arithmetic right.
——four times——
That is right.
——what was provided for. In the previous year the provision which my predecessor made under the heading "Increases in Supply Services" was only £600,000 but the actual excess of expenditure over the original Estimate was £1.44 million which is again more than I have allowed for this year.
In his Budget for 1949-50, Deputy McGilligan, with a pretence at nice and precise calculation, allowed £676,000—it was not £675,000 nor £677,000—to cover unforeseen increases in Supply expenditure; but the total amount required to meet these increases was, in fact, almost six times as much at £3.8 million. Now the Deputy will see where the six came in instead of the four.
If we take the last three Budgets of our predecessors on the average, the amount overspent annually on current services was £4,000,000. Thus if past experience is to be a ground for criticism of the provision made for supply service contingencies and unforeseen, unavoidable expenditure, the criticism should be, not that I have budgeted for £1,000,000 too much but that I have budgeted for £3,000,000 too little. If the Leader of the Opposition has considered the matter at all, he must know that it is there the danger lies and not where he suggests.
Another criticism made by the Deputy is that I have failed to take any account of what he describes as "the traditional item known as overestimation. In column 1275 of Volume 130 of the Official Report, we may read his statement, that this item "has been taken into account by every Minister for Finance in connection with his Budget proposals. Experience has demonstrated over the years that there has never been less than a saving of £2,000,000 each year on departmental expenditure." Both these statements are demonstrably untrue, and I propose to show that. Let us take the first—the Deputy's statement that every year since the establishment of the State provision has been made for overestimation.
I did not say "provision has been made". You are misquoting me.
Has been taken into account by every Minister for Finance in connection with his Budget proposals. I have here the Tables issued with the last three Coalition Budgets, those for 1949-50, for 1950-51 and for 1951-52. In not one of them—and surely Deputy Costello must have been familiar with them—must have refreshed his memory by studying them before he made his speech—is there any reference made to possible overestimation or any allowance made for it. On the contrary, so far from allowances being made for overestimation, in all these Coalition Budgets allowances were made for underestimation. Not only that, but even the allowances made for this contingency in them from year to year was much too small for that purpose. In the three Budgets to which I have referred, the allowance to cover underestimation—not overestimation as Deputy Costello has stated—averaged £925,000 per year, whereas the overspending on the Supply Services over the same period averaged £4,000,000 per year.
The Leader of the Opposition when he was making this speech was very emphatic in the manner in which he levelled these accusations at me. He thumped his desk. He may thump his desk again in his mock forensic fury and may declare "that there has never been less than a saving of £2,000,000 each year on departmental expenditure," but the truth, and that is what we are out to get in this discussion, is, in fact, the other way round. The Leader of the Opposition in that one statement has been guilty of a statistical inexactitude to the extent of £6,000,000 a year.
That is new.
The next charge made by Deputy J.A. Costello is that the probable charge for the service of the Public Debt has been overestimated by £500,000. It is typical of the woolly outlook of the Opposition on these matters that its Leader makes no attempt whatever to back up his allegations with the relevant figures. He makes a reference in col. 1276 to the first interest payment due on the Marshall Aid loan but he slurs over the fact that in my Budget statement on the day before he spoke I had stated that, even after making provision for the ordinary public services I had still to find a further £35,000,000 to finance prospective capital expenditure. Details of the purposes for which this sum is required were given fully by me and may be found in cols. 1150 and 1151 of the current Parliamentary Report.
The Minister intends to borrow it.
They were also set out in full in the typescript copy of the Budget speech which Deputy Costello had in his possession. One might think that the Deputy did not grasp the significance of the figures, but that might be a charitable view. On the other hand, I think we all agree that it would be to rate the intelligence of the Leader of the Opposition much too low. He understood and appreciated their significance fully; but he wanted to mislead the public on this matter and so we find him, according to col. 1276, telling the people:—
"No explanation has been given of that increased figure for interest on the public debt. We have had no loan. There is only hope of a loan."
But there is going to be a loan, if the Opposition will permit it. I pass over the importance which a psycho-analyst might attach to Deputy Costello's use of the word "hope," in this context. The word "hope," as he uses it, suggests the over-optimistic and always importunate borrower, and the basis of Deputy Costello's Coalition was improvident and lavish borrowing.
That is not how I approach the question. For Deputy Costello's word "hope" I substitute the word "need". I say we need this loan in order to ensure that the programme of electrical development will not be interrupted, that the credit of the country will not be damaged by the Electricity Supply Board having to seek relief from its commitments to its suppliers. I say that we need it in order to ensure Bord na Móna against the same contingency and to enable that organisation to go ahead with its programme of turf development. I say that we need this loan in order to ensure that our housing activities will not be impeded.
I would rather that our need for it was not so great, that we were in a position to provide to a larger extent out of current revenue for the more speculative and less reproductive and remunerative, in a financial sense, elements in all these projects. That was our policy when we were previously in office. It was a policy which enabled us to leave behind to our successors a fair inheritance in a State free from external debt, in pawn to no man, and with its public credit standing the highest in Europe.
We should build the future of this country on a much solider and surer basis if it were possible to revert to that policy now. But in present circumstances it is not possible to do so. The public finances have been reduced to such a state of confusion by the maladministration of our predecessors that the utmost we can do now is to make the barest provision possible to meet current and recurring expenditure out of revenue and to borrow for the rest, to borrow for the rest to the full extent of the public's capacity to lend.
The need for a new loan, therefore, is not, as Deputy Costello thinks of it, "only a hope"; it is a certainty, an inevitable, unavoidable, undesirable certainty. And because we know it is a certainty, we have made provision to meet our obligations in regard to it. That, of course, is the honest and prudent thing to do, but apparently the Leader of the Opposition takes the view that we should not have done it.
You are bound to do it by the 1950 Finance Act.
He appears to hold that the State should propose to contract obligations, but has no need to budget to meet them, hoping, like Mr. Micawber, that something would turn up.
You are bound to do it by the 1950 Finance Act.
But Fianna Fáil was not put into office to make the Coalition mess worse, but to clean it up; and, therefore, this Budget is framed on the basis that our obligations must be honoured as they arise.
But the new loan is not the only item in respect of which we shall have obligations. Last year, as I pointed out in the Budget statement—the reference will be found in column 1131—the State had to borrow over £35,000,000—exclusive of the Budget deficit of £6.8 million. Of this sum, £9.7 million was for what Deputy Costello and his Coalition colleagues described as voted "capital services"—including Deputy Dillon's day-old chicks—those extraordinary birds for which the country will be paying on an annuity basis for the next 30 years. Let me say a word about these chicks because it throws a search-light upon the loose idea that pervaded the position in regard to what was capital expenditure. These day-old chicks cost, I am told, about 30/- per dozen, yet the finances of the Coalition had become so over-strained that Deputy McGilligan could not pay that for them on the nail but had to borrow the cash and repay his borrowing, by an annuity spread over 30 years, and the country will continue to repay his borrowing for those day-old chicks for that period.
Blatherskite!
No doubt many of Deputy Dillon's chicks were eaten by rats or vermin; many of them never laid an egg but for the next 30 years we shall be paying for them all the same.
Does your colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, endorse that?
This was done under what Deputy Costello described as his Capital Budget.
That is absolutely untrue.
In addition to this £9.75 million for voted "Capital" services the Government had to find £8.8 million for the Electricity Supply Board; £9.12 million for the Local Loans Fund; £2.6 million for Telephone Capital Development; £1.26 million for Turf Development; £0.48 million for interest on Córas Iompair Éireann Stocks.
And £3,000,000 for Deputy Briscoe's coal.
£0.88 million for Stocks; £2.13 million for redemption of National loans; and £6.68 to cover the deficit on the last Coalition Budget——
How many pounds a year for the day-old chicks?
——including £2.73 million to cover the arrears of fuel subsidy which the Coalition had permitted to accumulate ——
"Fuel subsidy" is a euphemism.
——and £1.82 million for last year's working losses on Córas Iompair Éireann. This made in all about £41.8 million, against which we were able to set certain repayments so as to leave a net borrowing of £41,000,000. Now this £41,000,000 odd was not, of course, all borrowed at once. It was raised in instalments from time to time as payments fell due and had to be met. By the end of June, that is, after the Coalition were elected, we had to borrow £6,000,000; at the end of July a further £5.56 million, and so on each month until the end of the financial year when, as I have said, the total net borrowings exceeded £41,000,000.
And you borrowed £24,000,000 in three months.
And every penny was raised to meet commitments which had been entered into before we took office. But, of course, in no case did interest on these separate borrowings run for a full year. The amount of interest chargeable last year in respect of Ways and Means advances depended not only on the amount of each advance but on the date upon which the money was obtained. In the case of the Ways and Means advances, taken in at the end of June, 1951, interest for six months was chargeable in the financial year 1951-52; in the case of money borrowed in the last quarter of the financial year nothing fell to be paid in that year. But in the year which is now running £30.1 million of that £41,000,000 will carry a full year's interest and the balance from nine to 11 months' interest. Are we to believe that the Leader of the Opposition, when planning his attack on the Budget, never thought of that? It is scarcely credible that he did not; but if he did not, what status has he as a critic at all?
It would take much too long to enumerate and deal with all the other factors which Deputy Costello ignored when he made the allegation that we have overestimated the amount required for the service of the Public Debt. Before I pass on, however, I will just mention one of them. Our predecessors, in 1950, initiated the procedure under which the expenditure on that part of the supply services which they classified as capital should be spread over 30 years on an annuity basis. I do not wish to deliver a long disquisition on the merits or demerits of that procedure; but I should point out that under it, where there was, say, an original expenditure of £20,000,000, the people will by taxation have to provide a total of £32,000,000 in respect of it. That is, at present interest rates.
On the other hand, since the difficulty of making full provision for those services which must be met out of current revenue is so great, and since the Government is anxious furthermore that the facts of the position should not be obscured by avoidable controversy as to the wisdom or propriety of the procedure initiated by our predecessors, we have decided this year to borrow for the same items in the supply services as they did.
Good man.
A very convincing alibi.
It is necessary, accordingly, to set up a corresponding annuity of £501,922, and this amount is, of course, included in the increased provision which we have to make in the current Budget for the service of public debt. I come now to the last ground on which the Leader of the Opposition attacks the Budget. His criticism is reported in column 1276, again of the current volume, as follows:—
"The Minister has made no provision—or if he has made any he has made inadequate provision for the buoyancy of the revenue."
I pass over the absurd conception, inherent in Deputy Costello's statement, of the revenue as something which with every year becomes more buoyant than in the year preceding, in order to deal factually with this manifest misstatement. The actual revenue collected in the financial year which closed last month was £83.9 million, which was £2,335,000 more than my predecessor had budgeted for. The taxes actually collected, however, included the accumulated arrears of taxes which ought to have been collected before the 31st March, 1951, but which due to the bank strike were not collected and paid into the Exchequer until after that date.
That is a non-recurring source of revenue. We cannot budget for another windfall like that this year, but nevertheless we are budgeting for a substantial increase and are taking the probable revenue for this year as £86.6 million. A simple subtraction, therefore, will show that in framing the Budget we have assumed that we will secure £2,700,000 more revenue than last year.
Why? National income has expanded.
Because we were anxious to take the best view we honestly could take of the position. Perhaps the ebullient Deputy would allow me to proceed?
Yet the Leader of the Opposition complains that I have made no provision for the buoyancy of the revenue, when the truth is that I have been optimistic enough to write-up the yield by £2.7 millions. They query which might indeed be raised is whether, taking world conditions as they are, such optimism is justified. It is the question which I have put to myself, the question which I am in duty bound to put to myself having regard to the sources from which our tax-revenue is obtained.
In this matter the Leader of the Opposition and his followers are in truth trying to have it every way. He and his Party tell us that a deflationary condition has set in, while at the same time they go out and tell the people we are underestimating revenue and they criticise us for not taking that highly optimistic view of the customs yield which only the admitted existence conditions would justify. Of course, in matters of this sort, we are not inspired prophets and we do not pretend—as apparently the Opposition do—that absolute accuracy in these matters is attainable by ordinary men.
The Leader of the Opposition may be in a position to foresee every event at home and abroad throughout the year which will react on the finances of the State, and may be able to assess those reactions in terms of pounds, shillings and pence. I make no such pretension. Instead, I state the simple truth that the estimate of revenue has been based on the best advice available to me, that it is the highest that on any rational grounds we should be justified in making, and that the danger is that in our anxiety to avoid imposing unnecessary taxation we have overestimated the yield. However, the Leader of the Opposition, without adducing a single authoritative calculation to prove his point, makes the assertion that we underestimated revenue and savings. And all up and down the country the Fine Gael chorus is quacking on the same note, like so many geese following a gander.
Pause for laughter from Fianna Fáil.
But on the other hand we have the emphatic statement of the Irish Trade Union Congress that they "do not doubt for a moment, despite suggestions to the contrary, that the various estimates, both of revenue and expenditure, were made as accurately as forecasting of this nature would allow". In so far as there can be any controversy as to the size of the gap between current revenue and expenditure which had to be bridged, I think that the view taken by the Trade Union Congress is the view that will be taken by all sensible men and women.
It being admitted, then, that the gap to be closed is of the order of £15.1 million, the duty of the Government and the responsibility of the Government is to close it. The question we put to ourselves and the question we had to solve was how was this to be done? Not even the Opposition, with all its predilection for borrowing, has suggested that we should borrow for it. On the contrary, the Leader of the Opposition, when referring to my assumption that it was common ground that the current Budget must be balanced, solemnly declared with his hand on his heart and his eyes turned to heaven:—
"To that principle we on this side of the House, in or out of government, have always subscribed."
So at least the Fine Gael Party and the Government are at one in their determination to balance the current Budget without recourse to borrowing. Borrowing being, therefore, by common agreement ruled out, what remains? What other course is there except to balance the Budget either by reducing expenditure or increasing taxation, or by an equitable combination of both courses?
Or correct the estimates.
Fake the estimates is what you did.
Naturally, before accepting the inevitability of increasing taxation the Government scrutinised all forms of expenditure which were chargeable against revenue. The one service which appeared by its very nature to call for examination and in which any appreciable saving might justifiably be secured was the provision for food subsidies. The attitude of the Government in regard to these subsidies has been a matter for some discussion in this debate. Perhaps I might add to what I have already said about them in my Budget statement. In that statement I examined in some detail the history and development of this service since it was first introduced during the Emergency period, when a Wages Stabilisation Order was in force. Just as the Wages Stabilisation Order was intended to be only a temporary expedient, so also was the system of food subsidies. The one was originally interlinked with the other; and both were, in the view of the Government, highly undesirable even while in the conditions then prevailing they were unavoidable.
Subsidies were introduced as a short-term expedient to deal with what was hoped would be a short-term problem. They were introduced with great hesitation as an experimental measure and with great doubt as to their over-all advantage. In the circumstances of the time the experiment had to be tried; it was worth while trying it, but it must nevertheless be conceded that it failed to achieve its original purpose. Experience of the subsidies in operation has shown up their many disadvantages. They are, as I have said, cumbersome, wasteful and expensive to administer and, so far as the majority of the taxpayers are concerned, they yield no over-all advantage.
They make rationing unavoidable and thereby tend to tie up consumers to their individual suppliers and because of the difficulty and inconvenience of retrieving ration books to leave them subject to their goodwill. They stifle competition and deprive consumers of the benefits of it; since there is no incentive to reduce costs, every increase, whether avoidable or not, can be passed on to the taxpayer. They facilitate the formation of trade rings and the development of restrictive trade practices. They foster the illusion that food is cheaper to the consumer than it really is, since the subsidy which now pays a great part of the food's true cost is provided by the consumer himself as a taxpayer. Thus, in order to continue to sell bread, tea and butter at their present prices over the whole year, to pretend—for that is what it comes to—that these things cost the consumer very much less than, in fact, they do, we should require to raise in taxation from the general body of consumers no less than £15,240,000 nett. And then, while raising it we are busily engaged in giving most of it back again.
On a rough computation, which I have made merely for the purpose of illustrating the argument, that £15,240,000 represents a combination of taxes somewhat like this:—1/- in the £ income-tax; 8d. per packet of 20 cigarettes; 4d. per pint on beer; 6d. per glass on whiskey; 4d. per gallon petrol.
By a tax scheme of this kind the £15,240,000 is collected without any highly elaborate machinery. But to give it back again to the million or so persons from whom it was originally collected requires a most elaborate organisation, heavily staffed with civil servants, millions of ration books and millions upon millions of coupons, each of which, in theory at least, must be carefully kept, then surrendered and checked, and finally given up to those who first issued it.
It costs quite an amount to collect the £15,240,000 from the taxpayer but it costs a very great deal more to give it back again in the subsidised tea, bread and butter. The consumer, as taxpayer, pays the cost in both cases.
On top of all this, there is the worry and trouble which the whole system imposes on those who are in the grocery trade. It slows up the whole business of buying and selling, records have to be kept, returns have to be made, forms have to be filled and a large part of the shopkeeper's time is spent trying to satisfy some civil servant instead of trying to satisfy his customers. All this means additional costs to the shopkeeper, and these costs, naturally, with a percentage added, are passed on to his customers.
The whole of this elaborate machinery has been devised, as I have said, in order to delude the consumer with the belief that his food is costing him less than it really does.
Who devised it?
And this applies to all the consumers, to the old age pensioner as well as to the surtax payer. Everyone who smokes, takes a drink, rides in a bus, goes to the cinema pays his share of the subsidy for everyone else—for all draw it, rich and poor alike.
Not only do the food subsidies mask the real cost of living but they distort the cost-of-living index as well. The taxation which enables the goods to be sold over the counter at less than their real cost is not taken into account when computing the cost-of-living index, but the artificially low price of the goods over the counter is used as the basis for the calculation. In a system where wages tend to be related to the cost-of-living index this is hardly to the wage-earner's advantage.
Listen to the honest man.
Would it not be better to get away from this whole system of make-believe in regard to the real cost of food? Better to cease, as I said in the Financial Statement, to foster "the illusion that food is something that can be provided cheaper for everyone at the expense of others rather than something for which everyone who can should be expected to work and pay."
Why did you not say that to the Taoiseach when he was drawing up the 17-point programme?
Why did you not say that last May?
I believe that it would be better. I believe it would be better for the workers, in particular, that they should know what their real wages are in terms of the true cost of commodities rather than continue the present wasteful and cumbersome and expensive system which has so developed that it now exists to conceal from them that fundamental fact. In altering the food subsidies we have acted on that principle. At the same time we have recognised in our proposals that the change should be accompanied by an extension and improvement of existing social services.
Where did you drop point 15?
Accordingly we propose to increase existing children's allowances and to extend the scheme to the second child; we propose also to increase the old age pensions and to improve unemployment assistance.
Now, these are—unlike the subsidies which will inevitably go whether this Government remains in office or not— to be permanent benefits. Any person who listened to Deputy Dr. O'Higgins's speech to-day, or who read it, noticed how evasive he was in dealing with the plain questions put to him by two Deputies. Is it not far better that we should have these permanent increased social service benefits than have these temporary subsidies? They are, as I have said, to be permanent benefits. They will be embodied in legislation and will continue thereafter to be paid as a statutory right. They will cost in a full year no less than £3,750,000. Thus, apart altogether from the additional benefits to be provided under the Social Welfare Bill, we are making this further supplementary provision.
It has been suggested that we might have done more for certain sections. We should have liked to do so. It has been the aim of this Party since it was established to ask the people, through the State, to do the utmost they can to relieve those who may be in necessity, penury or want. We should have liked, therefore, to do better than we have done but the hard fact is that we could not do anything more that would be worth while with the resources at our disposal than give compensation at the average rate which the changes in the subsidies represent.
We have been asked, in particular, why we do not propose to do more than this for the old age pensioner. In considering that question, we cannot disregard the fact that there is a wide diversity of circumstances among old age pensioners. Many, undoubtedly, particularly in the cities, are in necessitous circumstances. On the other hand, many, particularly in rural areas, cannot, in honesty, be said to be in that condition.
To give compensation to all pensioners at a greater rate than the average increase in charge which the changes in the subsidies represent would over-compensate very many whose living conditions would not justify it having regard to the rights of the other members of the community.
The Government, I may say, gave long and serious consideration to the problem in an endeavour to find a solution for it which would be administratively practicable.
At the end, we had to admit defeat and to rely on the important fact that if, in a particular instance, the cash compensation of 1/6 per week fails to obviate real hardship, the obligation still rests on the local assistance authority to deal with the case.
It would not buy two ounces of snuff.
I come now to deal with some suggestions which have been made for alternative ways of dealing with the Budget problem.
Will the Minister not deal with point 15?
Drown yourself in eggs.
In that connection I am giving the place of honour to my predecessor in office, the former Minister for Finance, who did recognise that there was a Budget problem. He recognised that a critical position was facing this country and made a most remarkable suggestion to meet it. He started by declaring that: "It is well known that there is a vast amount of money in this country illegally acquired during the war. It has never been subject to income-tax." Note Deputy McGilligan's general statement that there is "a vast amount of money"—not a figure, "a vast amount of money," a real atomic bomb of money so far as purchasing power is concerned. Well known to whom? Deputy McGilligan did not even seem to suggest that he had any particular knowledge of it.
He went on to say that it was illegally acquired. We had there three assertions by the Deputy: that there was this vast amount of money, that it was well known, and that this vast amount of money had been illegally acquired. Like Deputy Costello, when Deputy Costello was dealing with the charge that we had falsified the Estimates of revenue and expenditure, Deputy McGilligan had not even a tittle of evidence to support any one of them. On the basis, however, of these unsubstantiated hearsay statements, statements I think of his own fabrication, Deputy McGilligan advocated that the banks should be compelled to give information as to deposit receipts and money on deposit on which tax had not been paid.
Let us hear, before the Finance Bill is concluded, if that is the official policy of Fine Gael. If it is, the public ought to be told. Deputy McGilligan, moreover, does not intend to confine his inquisition to the banks and bank accounts alone. He is prepared to go further and institute household searches. "If," he declared in justification of his proposal, "that little device applied here, it would drive out quite an amount of money that is in deposit or kept around the house".
If the Minister is quoting, what is the source of his quotation?
I am quoting from the typescript of the Official Report of the speech which Deputy McGilligan delivered on Tuesday evening last. The printed volume is not yet available, therefore I am not in a position to quote from it.
On a point of order. I understand that you, Sir, have ruled in this House that the typescript, to which the Minister has referred, is not a source and cannot be quoted as a source in this House and that it is disorderly when a Deputy quotes from it.
I have no recollection of having made any such ruling. The Minister says that he is quoting from the typescript, as the printed volume is not available to him.
Look at it here. I have it in my hand.
Deputy Costello had the Table Explanatory of the Budget in his hand when he was making his speech.
I had.
In any event, I stand or fall by the printed records.
On a point of order. The Minister purports to quote the spoken words of Deputy McGilligan. I asked him for the source and he said the typescript, because the printed report was not available. Now that we find that it is available, why does he not produce it?
I regret that I did not see it but I shall stand or fall by the printed report.
On a point of order. The Minister stood or fell by the typescript of his own speech which contained mistakes and omitted lines. I would ask him, now seeing that the Official Report is available, to use that and not the typescript which contains lines that are notoriously unreliable.
The Minister must use the Official Report or cease quoting.
I shall say this, that I heard Deputy McGilligan declare that this little device of his would drive out quite an amount of money that is in deposit or around the house. Deputy McGilligan wants the tax collectors to go snooping around and searching out the cash which is "kept around the house". Once more I want to know, because this is important, if that is the official policy of Fine Gael. Do they wish the officers of the revenue to be given power to take steps that would bring out amounts of money that are kept around the house? Are safes to be opened, cash boxes emptied, even children's money boxes plundered to find this money which is "kept around the house"?
The proposal is to break all the china pigs in Ireland, to get at the children's savings in Ireland's desperate crisis.
The next step would logically be, if Deputy McGilligan and the Fine Gael Party were to have their way, that the collector should stop you in the street and ask you to account for the cash in your pocket. Then heaven help the man who is caught with a £20 note. He would be told that it was illegally acquired.
Woe betide the child with the china pig.
It is reputed that the ex-Minister for Finance and the ex-Minister for External Affairs were the two members of the Coalition who were closest together. What a thrill then Deputy McGilligan's word must have given to the founder of Saor Éire! With what joy his heart leaped as he learned of this new convert! A few years ago Deputy MacBride was engaged in sending fraternal greetings to Moscow. No doubt last night a cipher message went out saying: "It is all right, Uncle Joe, McGilligan is with us."
And Deputy Cowan.
The Red Nuncio.
I should like to know what will the farmers and shopkeepers think of this new Fine Gael policy? What will the honest people think who have their money on deposit? What will they think now that they know that, under Deputy McGilligan, their accounts and their affairs are no longer to be confidential but are to be placed at the free disposal of the Government, just because in this country as in every other there happen to be a few rogues.
Who are now going for the child's china pig.
Is this the rod which Deputy McGilligan had in pickle for the taxpayers if the Coalition had got back to power?
No, the china pig.
I know he discussed a proposal of this kind. He has now come out publicly in advocacy of it, so it must be his policy and the policy of the Fine Gael junta. I wonder is it the policy of the Fine Gael back-benchers also?
The rape of the china pig.
That was one suggestion which Deputy McGilligan put forward, as an aid to the State in the exceedingly difficult position in which it finds itself. He made one other suggestion which, likewise, was intended not to help but to confuse. Deputy McGilligan, as everybody knows, is a prolific fabricator of false charges from which, when one pins him down to proofs, he scurries away. He has explored more bolt holes than any rabbit in this country. In his speech on Tuesday he suggested that the Government was in some way making a gift to tobacco manufacturers. The manner in which that suggestion was made clearly implied that in Deputy McGilligan's view there was some impropriety involved.
And quite right.
Let us see what are the facts. The Dáil will remember how, with a flourish and loud music from the Labour Party, Deputy Norton, when Tánaiste, announced the establishment of a Prices Advisory Body. This was a body which, according to Deputy Norton, was specially chosen by the then Government to put manufacturers and others who sought increases in prices through all the processes of the Inquisition in order to discover the truth about their costs and profits. Deputy McGilligan, as Minister for Finance, played a very large part in the selection of the personnel of that body. The Prices Advisory Body has been kept in being by the present Government and functions as effectively under us as it ever did under our predecessors. Last year, the Prices Advisory Body, having duly considered an application from the tobacco manufacturers, recommended that they should be permitted to increase the price of the standard cigarette by 2d. per packet of 20.
Now the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not immediately give full effect to that recommendation. Instead he went at first only half of the way and granted permission for an increase of 1d. last October. That, however, could only be regarded in all fairness and in all justice as an instalment since it did not meet by any means the increase in the cost of the tobacco leaf and other charges which have occurred since the former standard price was fixed. It is necessary because of the continued rise in these costs to concede now the full increase recommended by the Prices Advisory Body. These are the circumstances under which Deputy McGilligan alleges we are making a gift of 1d. per packet of 20 cigarettes to the tobacco manufacturers.
How much would the tobacco leaf in a cigarette cost?
His suggestion that something improper is being done in giving effect to the recommendation of the Prices Advisory Body is, as we all know, a typical example of Deputy McGilligan's political technique. Perhaps, however, the Leader of the Opposition might address himself to this question: If it is improper for the Government to act on the recommendation of the Prices Advisory Body, is there not something improper in the recommendation itself, in the proceedings of the body which made it and in the conduct of its chairman? That, in fact, is the real charge which Deputy McGilligan, by innuendo, has made.
Deputy Corish, I think to the surprise of most people, has associated himself with this charge against the Prices Advisory Body. Deputy Corish is a follower of Deputy Norton. It occurs to me that that, perhaps, may not be the real position as recent events suggest that Deputy Corish is one of those members who, like Deputy Larkin, are dissatisfied with the role which Deputy Norton played as cloak and dagger man for Fine Gael in the late Coalition, when Fine Gael was using every opportunity to strengthen its electoral position—"Not only in the open light of day", but, as Deputy Larkin discloses, "in the dark of night."
That worried you.
Whatever be the attitude of Deputy Corish, whether it be that of a loyal follower of Deputy Norton or that of a rival on the steps of the throne, the fact is that Deputy Corish was one of those who was instrumental in setting up the Prices Advisory Body. The Prices Advisory Body, according to Deputy Norton, on 6th December, 1950, speaking at column 1818 of Volume 123 and subsequent columns, was not to be:—
"an inconsequential advisory committee ... but a price tribunal, a virile, vibrant representative body of three or five citizens, selected on the basis of their competence and on the basis that they are citizens of standing.... That tribunal will be expected to undertake the most critical and the most microscopic examination of every claim for an increase made to it and there must be no increase given by that tribunal unless the case for such an increase is proved beyond all possibility of doubt."
He went on to say:—
"The Government will assist that tribunal by making available to it ... the group of profits of the manufacturers, or the individual manufacturer, who go before the tribunal looking for an increase in price: in other words, the tribunal will not deal with these matters in vacuum."
Thus spoke Zarathrusta in the person of Deputy Norton.
The Prices Advisory Body which our predecessors established is the "price tribunal", as Deputy Norton decribed it, which heard the application of the Irish tobacco manufacturers for permission to increase their prices. It is the tribunal which, having made in Deputy Norton's phrase, "the most critical and the most microscopic examination of every claim for an increase made to it," has advised that this increase must be given if the manufacturers are to continue in business.
I do not know what evidence the Prices Advisory Body had before it in arriving at their decision but I do know that Deputy Norton told us at column 1819 of Volume 123 of the Official Report again on 6th December, 1950, that:—
"There must be no increase given by that tribunal unless the case for such an increase is proved beyond all possibility of doubt. If there is to be a doubt, it is the public and not the applicant who will get the benefit of the doubt."
Even Deputy Corish will scarcely have the nerve to suggest that the tribunal composed of his own nominees departed from that principle when considering the application of the Irish tobacco manufacturers. He will scarcely charge them, even in this place of privilege where he can speak with immunity, with being biassed in favour of the manufacturers and against the consumers. He must accept the inevitable conclusion, therefore, that there was absolutely no doubt in the minds of the members of the Prices Advisory Body that, by the most rigorous standards of justice, the application of the tobacco manufacturers must be conceded.
Deputy Corish objects to this decision. He objects to justice being done by the tribunal in this case. Now, will the Deputy tell us why? Is it because the applicants are tobacco manufacturers? Is it because they happen to be Irish tobacco manufacturers? Or is it merely because they happen to be manufacturers and employers that Deputy Corish objects to them getting justice? Even the Deputy's biassed class-hatred cannot carry him so far that, rather than see justice done, he will put the manufacturers out of business and put, in particular, the Irish-owned concerns out of business.
The Deputy, by some method of calculation, has arrived at the conclusion that this additional 1d. per packet on the price of cigarettes means £900,000 per annum to the tobacco manufacturers. I do not know how the Deputy has arrived at that figure. It is, in any event, too fantastic to be correct. The increase recommended by the Prices Advisory Body is given merely to cover increases in the cost of the tobacco leaf and other charges.
When was the leaf imported?
Yet, the Deputy's speech was designed to lead the public to believe that the Prices Advisory Body had given this huge sum as an extra profit to the manufacturers. Is there any justice in that suggestion? Is there any social justice in the suggestion? The fact is that the increase in price has been granted in order to enable the manufacturers to remain in business and this Deputy Corish well knows.
He does not.
Will he tell the House what the position would be if the increase were not granted? Let him take his own figure of £900,000 per year. Does he suggest that the tobacco manufacturers as a body could continue to carry losses at that rate for any appreciable time? If they could not, which of them would go first to the wall? The native-owned concerns, the smaller Irish-owned companies in Dublin, Limerick, Cork or Dundalk? The native-owned concerns would be the first to die.
The Imperial Tobacco Company.
The smaller Irish-owned companies in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Dundalk would be broken and only the subsidiaries of the foreign combines would be left. Is that what Deputy Corish and his Party want?
He wants cheaper tobacco.
Is that what he desires? Does he want the ranks of the unemployed in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Dundalk to be increased by the present employees of the Irish-owned concerns? Is that what he wants or is his criticism of the recommendation of the Prices Advisory Body, on which there sit two trade unionists, simply based on cold, malign class-hatred?
They did not advise that the leaf should be dearer.
Now, let the Deputy take his medicine. Suggestions have been made that the additional revenue required could have been secured more easily by taxes other than we have proposed. I cannot deal exhaustively with all these suggestions. That would require several volumes, but I can assure the Deputies who have put these suggestions forward that they were considered—every one of them— very carefully before they were rejected for the taxes upon which we are relying.
There are certain conditions which, in my view, it is desirable any particular form of tax should fulfil. In broad general terms the tax should be equitable, effective, economic and convenient. No tax that man can devise will fulfil any or all of these conditions except in a loose and approximate way; but some taxes more nearly fulfil them than others, and it is on that basis that we must proceed.
If time permitted I would show how those taxes which I have rejected fall much further short of fulfilling the conditions than those which I have adopted. So perhaps I might deal very briefly with one example. It is the one which is most commonly offered as an alternative to other taxes. It has been suggested that profits should be taxed more heavily, preferably by the introduction of an excess profits tax. Now, experience has shown that an excess profits tax is a bad tax. It is arbitrary; it is inequitable as between one taxpayer and another; it does not differentiate between profits which might correctly be described as excessive and profits which have increased because of greater enterprise, more efficient management or other desirable cause, and it lends itself easily and readily to fraud and evasion. Finally, it is a tax on marginal earnings, and marginal earnings are just the type of earnings which must be encouraged if we desire to have an efficient, expanding economy.
It was on these grounds that the Labour Government in Great Britain decided first to reduce the tax in October, 1945, and, finally in April, 1946, to abolish it altogether. In doing so, Dr. Dalton who was at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Socialist Government passed this judgment on it:—
"Moreover, once the standard profit has been earned, this tax encourages extravagant and wasteful outlay, and even downright dishonesty, since if this expenditure were not incurred it would be the Treasury and not the owners of the business who would take the money. Under those conditions this tax works against incentive and against efficiency."
Now, whatever groundless allegations may be made that this Government is biassed in favour of or against any particular section, no one will suggest that Dr. Dalton, once Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, is biassed in favour of capitalists, industrialists or profit-makers. Yet he condemns the excess profits tax unreservedly. As against this tax, so strongly condemned by a socialist chancellor, we find that the most effective tax on profits is the income-tax. There is not the fine propagandist ring about its name that there is about the excess profits tax, but it is a fairer, more effective way of collecting revenue, particularly when it is associated, as it is now, with an equitable system of earned income and reduced rate reliefs.
I should like to deal with other suggestions which have been made, but it is necessary to get on to a more general aspect of the problem. I have referred already to certain statements made by Deputy McGilligan in the course of his speech on Tuesday evening. The more closely I study that speech the more doubtful I become as to what the Deputy's real purpose in making it was. At first reading, it might appear to be the sort of slick parliamentary performance we are accustomed to from the Deputy. But there are passages in it that appear to be of deeper significance.
The "give-away", for instance, of the manner in which Deputy Costello's figures were prepared does not suggest that Deputy McGilligan is prepared to continue to serve the Party with a complete disregard of the public interest. More suggestive still were the Deputy's references to the advice which he received from his advisers when preparing his Budget for 1951-52, the Budget, that is, for the last financial year. No Deputy, no Minister or ex-Minister could speak in higher terms of the advice which he received or of the competency of his advisers than did Deputy McGilligan on Tuesday night. But how did he treat them? He told us that they had warned him of the rapidly aggravating balance of payments problem. He told us that—
"because the country is not supplying all the goods it requires we have a vast import of goods... there is this terrifying gap in the balance of payments."
"I was told last year," he said, "that the public and the Government between them are spending more than the nation can afford." He told us, "that advice came to me from people who have very good standards to give advice." He told us again on Tuesday night, "that was very good advice; taken by certain standards it was impeccable."
Let us see how did Deputy McGilligan act on that advice. Seven million pounds were the additional amount that his advisers told Deputy McGilligan he would require if the Budget of last year was to be balanced. It is an indication, a significant indication, of the soundness of the judgment and of the advice which Deputy McGilligan's advisers gave to him, but which he rejected, that, in fact, the deficit on last year's Budget, on the Coalition Budget submitted to the Dáil just 12 months ago by Deputy McGilligan as Minister for Finance, was £6.86 million. His advisers, whom Deputy McGilligan admits gave him "impeccable advice", put last year's probable deficit at £7,000,000. It turns out now to be £6.68 million. A more accurate forecast than that of the out-turn of events 12 months ahead could scarcely be expected, even from a prophet.
Let me ask again, how did Deputy McGilligan react to this figure of £7,000,000. He himself has disclosed that he did not turn down the advice out of hand. "When I began to consider", he confessed on Tuesday, "the sources from which that might be derived"—"that" being the £7,000,000 —his advisers "fell back on what is now before the Dáil"—increased taxes on "beer, tobacco, whiskey and petrol. These were certainly suggested to me." Beer, tobacco, whiskey and petrol: more ominous words than the first three could not be uttered in Deputy McGilligan's hearing.
As soon as he heard them last year, the blood in his veins turned to water and his previous resolution to do his duty by the people and bring in at least one honest Budget vanished like snow. He knew what the Fine Gael Party in Dublin owed to the five publicans who had raised a considerable sum for the 1948 election— £30,000 it has been suggested. He knew that he owed his own seat to the support of that particular vested interest in his constituency and so he turned down the advice which he himself has admitted—and I am quoting his own words—"was very good advice and which taken by a certain standard was impeccable."
What is the "certain standard" to which Deputy McGilligan referred when he declared that that was "impeccable advice"? It is the standard of objectivity set by distinguished public servants, chosen for their knowledge and experience of public finance, who are bound to advise their Minister to the best of their ability and in a purely objective way as to what financial or economic policy will best serve the interests of the people and the State. That is the standard to which the advice of Deputy McGilligan's principal advisers must be related. That is the sort of advice which they must give. They must tell their Minister, without fear or favour, what course, in their opinion, will best advance the interests of the people. Their Minister need not take it. He need not take it even though he recognises that it is "impeccable advice," as Deputy McGilligan himself has admitted it to be.
He may be afraid to take it. He may shirk his duty, as Deputy McGilligan now discloses he did last year, but that is not their responsibility. Their Minister carries full responsibility under the Constitution and that responsibility is accompanied by freedom to reject good advice—even "impeccable advice" if the political difficulties of the Minister require it. It was according to that canon of public conduct that Deputy McGilligan acted last year. He could not do otherwise, indeed, unless he wanted to weaken the Coalition still further by himself being driven from the Cabinet.
He knew that the then Minister for External Affairs dominated the then Taoiseach and that he would get no support from that quarter. He knew that Deputy Dillon treated him and his Department with almost naked contempt. And so, instead of facing up to the situation, he allowed a Cabinet Committee to cook the Estimates for the Supply Services, and to write them down arbitrarily by £4,000,000, and he himself failed, deliberately failed, in his Budget to make provision for charges which he knew would inevitably arise. That is how the £7,000,000 deficit, which Deputy McGilligan's advisers feared, was, in fact, realised. In order to salve his conscience—and he betrayed his public trust in this—he came to the Dáil, faint and bleating, uttering plaintive warnings in regard to the growing and alarming deficit in our balance of payments account, such as these:—
"The position is, however, far from satisfactory"—
I am quoting from Deputy McGilligan's Budget speech of 12 months ago—
"inasmuch as the basic £10,000,000 deficit of 1949 was repeated in 1950.... The outlook for 1951 is, I fear, that the deficit may be even greater than in 1950.... The present position on external account is by no means satisfactory, and if it continues to develop unfavourably, the application of corrective measures will be called for. At the moment these might be premature."
Might I interrupt the quotations to emphasise the importance of that last statement which was made 12 months ago, not by me, but by my predecessor? "If it"—and by "it" Deputy McGilligan meant the balance of payments deficit—"continues to develop unfavourably, the application of corrective measures will be called for. At the moment these might be premature." Quite clearly, than warning presages the grave and serious situation which has since developed.
We are now in the position in which "the application of corrective measures", which Deputy McGilligan foresaw 12 months ago, can no longer be evaded. The need for these measures was, indeed, manifest 12 months ago. Even though the duty falls on us to deal with the position, it falls on us only because he and his colleagues shirked it. They shirked it even though they knew the full consequences of doing so, even though as their Minister for Finance warned us one year ago:—
"Only if the gap in the balance of payments is narrowed so that external disinvestment is balanced by additional home investment—rather than by excessive consumption—can we be satisfied that as a nation we are making ends meet and not wasting our past accumulations. One of the great benefits conferred by the possession of external assets is ability to ride out periods like the present of exceptional difficulty and stress, but this external mass of manoeuvre is the mainstay of our economic independence."
—which we are rapidly frittering away. It is the mainstay, I would say, not only of our economic independence but of our political independence also. Later in the same speech, in that tentative way in which he always spoke on these matters, as though he feared an attack from Deputy MacBride or Deputy Norton, he ventured to say:—
"Making all allowance for the exceptional conditions now obtaining it is to be feared that we are not producing and earning enough to pay our way. The implication is obvious. We cannot have both consumption and capital development on the present scale unless we save more and produce more."
This is the position with which we have to deal to-day. Deputy McGilligan knew it existed last year. He knew it existed not only then but in the year before and in the year before that again. So did Deputy Costello. In fact, as the Minister for External Affairs reminded the House yesterday, Deputy Costello, then Taoiseach, uttered this warning in regard to it in August, 1948:—
"The adverse trade balance has grown to an extent which must cause anybody who thinks about it for one moment, or looks at the figures, the utmost alarm for our economic and financial stability."
"The utmost alarm for our economic and financial stability." It is to preserve that economic and financial stability that we have brought in this Budget. We are acting on the warning which ought to have been acted upon years ago—the warning which Deputy Costello uttered almost four years ago. If it was not necessary, if he did not believe it, why did he utter it? And since he did utter it, since it was necessary, why did he not act on it? The reason, of course, is simple. The wild men in his Cabinet, the Dillons and the MacBrides, would not let him.
Throughout those fearful years when Deputy Dillon was spending millions in an afternoon and Marshall Aid dollars were being thrown away like farthings, Deputy Costello, the ex-Taoiseach, and Deputy McGilligan, as Minister for Finance, resembled nothing so much as a demented captain and demented mate on a ship whose crew had gone out of control. The only thing they did in that situation was to career up and down the deck shouting: "We'll be on the rocks! we'll be on the rocks!" Now that situation has developed and we must ask ourselves how did it develop?
In October, 1947, the Fianna Fáil Government decided, in an effort to deal with the price situation, to increase the then existing subsidies to rates which would require the Minister for Finance to find an additional £5,765,000 for the balance of that year. In order to obtain that sum, it was necessary for them to increase existing rates of tax to bring in £4,770,000 at the same time. They allowed for a prospective surplus of £1,000,000 in the Budget. The principal increases were made on income-tax, spirits, beer, tobacco, wines, entertainments and stamp duty.
Following the General Election of 1948 and the formation of the Coalition Government, the increases in the taxes on beer, tobacco and entertainments were rescinded; but the increased rates of food subsidy were retained. The taxes were taken away but the expenditure was kept on. Thus, the total cost of the subsidies was increased from £4,436,000, at which it was estimated in May, 1947, to £14,680,000 for 1948-49; to £12,580,000 for 1949-50; to £13,070,000 for 1950-51. But there was not any additional revenue provided to cover these increases in expenditure. The reductions in the tax-rates, to which I have referred, resulted in a loss of revenue of at least £8,000,000 or £9,000,000 a year to the Exchequer. This £8,000,000 or £9,000,000, if it had been collected, would have gone a long way to help the State to balance accounts and would have prevented the present critical situation from developing.
As our experience since has shown, the remission of these taxes was quite unjustified. Our predecessors, however—everybody knows it—were coerced into making the remission. They had made themselves subservient to a certain interest——
Were they dance hall proprietors?
They had made themselves subservient to a certain interest and they were not free to serve whole-heartedly the interests of the nation. No matter how essential it might be to the well-being of the people and to secure the independence of the State, they dare not do an unpopular thing and so, instead of facing up to the responsibilities when they were confronted with them, when there was no longer any escape from them, last May, they dissolved the Dáil, went to the people, then, having been thrown out, they have left behind them a state of utter confusion in the public finances. It is our tough and unpleasant task to straighten things out and, if the people support us, we shall do that.
I have been accused here of making certain promises during the election. I made no promise and gave no undertaking that would be inconsistent with my public duty or that would fetter me in the discharge of it.
Have you lost your memory?
Here, in fact, is my election address, issued over my signature. It went to every household in my constituency. It sets out the basis on which I sought election and here is what it said:—
"It is on this basis that we offer ourselves to you in this election. In doing so, however, we wish to make it clear that Fianna Fáil makes no rash promises. We do not know the extent to which the credit and solvency of the State has been undermined by the Coalition; we suspect, however, that, bad though the position in this regard appears to be, the worst has been concealed. Therefore, if Fianna Fáil should receive a mandate to form a Government, its first task must be to reorganise the public finances and to set them in order. When this has been accomplished, Fianna Fáil pledges itself to pursue a progressive, social and economic policy, always, however, with due regard to the resources of the State and the individual rights of its citizens. It will look, too, to the nation's defences, which the Coalition has so foolishly neglected. Thus Ireland will cease to be both in grave peril herself and a source of weakness and danger to others. On this programme we submit ourselves to you, and ask for your vote and general support, so that a disastrous phase in our public life may be ended."
Is that what you said in Rathmines Town Hall?
This is what went to every voter in my constituency over my signature.
On a point of order. The Minister is quoting from a document. Will a copy of that document be placed in the Library?
God forbid!
It will be found in the burnt-out archives.
With the greatest of pleasure.
On a point of order. Surely the intelligence of the House and those using the Library is not to be insulted by having to read that document.
There are parts of that document which it would be useful to get another look at.
You would not learn anything from it.
It might not be any harm if I did place it in the Library. Think of the period when Deputy McGilligan was making one pronouncement as Minister for Finance and Deputy MacBride was making a directly contrary one. Think of the period when Deputy Norton was making one statement and Deputy Dillon another one. Here is what I said—if you want the whole of the document:—
"It is imperative that the constitutional principle that the Government as a whole is collectively responsible for all the actions and pronouncements of its members in the sphere of public affairs should be made effective again."
Including point 15.
"You have the power to do this by putting in office as Taoiseach Mr. de Valera and a Government who will accept the principle of collective responsibility without reservation and on whom responsibility can be squarely placed for the actions and utterances of each and every Minister."
Including point 15.
"After three years of collective irresponsibility of the Coalition, it is only by this means that order will be restored to the public services and to the public finances."
"Trust Dev."
Mr. O'Higgins
What about your pledge to maintain food subsidies?
The pledge which I gave to my constituents is the pledge which I am now endeavouring to honour.
Mr. O'Higgins
What about collective responsibility?
I am endeavouring —when I say "I" in this context, I speak for the Government—we are endeavouring to reorganise the public finances and to set them in order. We are endeavouring to do that because we wish to fulfil our pledge that, when this task has been accomplished, we shall pursue a progressive social and economic policy——
A Deputy
You will not be there.
——always with due regard to the resources of the State and the individual rights of the citizen. That is the purpose which this Budget is designed to fulfil.
I want to know if the Minister was quoting from the Van-guard?
Before the question is put, I would like to ask the Minister a question.
Put the question.
I want to get some information before this vote is taken. Will the Minister tell the House what in fact will be the price of butter from July 1st? Will it be, as announced previously by him, 3/10 per lb., or will it be more?
I shall not answer any further questions.
Say "I do not know".
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 72; Níl, 69.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Breen, Dan.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Carter, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Cowan, Peadar.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Michael J.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- de Valera, Eamon.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Duignan, Peadar.
- Fahy, Frank.
- Fanning, John.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Gallagher, Colm.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).
- McCann, John.
- MacCarthy, Seán.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Maguire, Patrick J.
- Maher, Peadar.
- Moran, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Thomas.
Níl
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Cafferky, Dominick.
- Cawley, Patrick.
- Coburn, James.
- Collins, Seán.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Costello, John A.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Crowe, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Desmond, Dariel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Anthony C.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finan, John.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hession, James M.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- Keane, Seán.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, James.
- Leary, Johnny.
- Lehane, Patrick D.
- Lynch, John (North Kerry).
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- MacBride, Seán.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- McQuillan, John.
- Madden, David J.
- Mannion, John.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.)
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Rooney, Eamon.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tully, John.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Killilea; Níl: Deputies P. S. Doyle and Breanndán Mac Fheórais.
Question declared carried.
Get out!
Resign!
Resign—get out!
Dissolve now and go to the country.
Order!
It took Deputy Peadar Cowan to do it for you.
The "busted flush" is down to "threes".
Financial Resolutions reported and agreed to.