I was dealing last night with the question of industrial revival and pointing out that Fianna Fáil were the people who started the real industrial drive in this country. That industrial drive was interrupted by the last war, which made it impossible for us to obtain raw materials. Immediately the war was over, we resumed and we were getting ahead as fast as we possibly could, in face of the limitations confronting us, with the industrial drive. No one will deny that we had all the machinery available by way of legislation to proceed with the work of drainage and bog development. That was one of the things in which we had gone a long way, but of course turf development happened to be a Fianna Fáil scheme and the inter-Party Government held that it should not proceed and they killed it overnight.
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).
Did the Deputy not blame us last night because we left too much turf after us?
Deputy Killilea must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
I was only reminding him.
That is an interruption.
Well, I did not mean it as an interruption.
I am not accusing Deputy Blowick of anything at all. I would like to accuse sensible and intelligent people; I do not make accusations against people who are irresponsible. The peat scheme was closed down for the time being and so was the farm improvements scheme. They were closed down for no reason and the result was that all this led to our people not being in a position to produce more peat and more beet and more agricultural produce from the soil. Then, after Deputy Dillon had a harum scarum canter round the country they brought in a number of what they called new schemes. In some cases I admit they had made a little improvement on the old ones but in quite a number of other things they wasted an enormous amount of money.
On this question of capital development we are told that our Budget has not made any provision for capital development. When we were doing all these things years ago we budgeted for capital development and we met our debts from day to day, and we did not leave anything over to posterity. When we were budgeting in days gone by we had set a headline to any future Government as to how a country should be run, showing there was no such thing as packing the pawn office with a lot of essentials. When Deputy McGilligan came in as Minister for Finance for the inter-Party Government he discovered that the Budget he would be introducing would have to jump up from £70.7 millions, as it was in 1947-48, to £123.5 millions for the Budget he was bringing in. In order to blind the people, to hoodwink and fool them, he divided it under two headings and said: "This is only the normal Budget and all the rest is for capital development." He wanted to try to convince the people that the Budget had not jumped from £70,000,000 to £123,000,000. Those excuses succeeded, I suppose, in fooling the people for a certain length of time but day after day they got wise to it and began to see through them. Eventually the people got an opportunity and they decided that that Government was not a fit one to run this country any longer; and again the onus was thrown on us.
We came in here having to face the huge bill, the trail of destruction left behind, in the same way as we had to face something similar before. This was not the first time in our life that we had to face terrific responsibilities. When we took over from Fine Gael— or Cumann na nGaedheal, as it was then known—in 1932, we had to face a similar position. We had to try to build up then without the co-operation or assistance of any of the individuals sitting in the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches or any of the individuals supporting them at that time. As we went along with our national policy, making every effort to develop the country both nationally and economically, we had to fight against the everyday effort of destructive criticism from the Opposition. I need not go into what happened during the economic war. It does not arise, anyhow.
I think not.
Deputy Donnellan backed us during the economic war and said we were right, but he has been bought over by Fine Gael, and has become now even a greater rotter than those in the Fine Gael Party.
The Deputy should deal with the Budget.
We had to face up to these things, and now we have to face up again to a trail of destruction. Everyone must admit that the cost of public services has been and is going up. We have had to make provision for pensions, for children's allowances, for wages and salaries of public servants. All those have been increased. There are other things that were thrown on top of us— interest on sinking fund and so on. We have had to make our minds up as to the best way to get over those things. We decided that further borrowing would be destructive. We decided that we had to face up to this job, and had to do it as quickly as possible, in order to get the people a clean sheet as soon as we could, and put them in a position to go ahead with further developments. As I pointed out last night, all we might have expected was that the Opposition would at least be truthful and, if they could make any little effort, be honest in their criticism.
When Deputy Donnellan was telling us yesterday evening about what happened in the hall in Glenamaddy, I noticed that he told the Independent Deputies who support Fianna Fáil that he had nothing to say to them. I wonder what would any of those Independent Deputies say had they been listening to Deputy Donnellan in Tuam last Saturday night fortnight.
What I said in Tuam I said here.
I wonder would you tell the story here of what you thought of the Cowans and the ffrench-O'Carrolls and others?
What I said there I said here.
What Deputy Donnellan thinks of the Budget is what is relevant?
He said a lot here yesterday evening which was not very relevant.
When?
We will have Deputy Killilea on the Budget resolution.
I think that this is an honest effort to overcome the country's difficulties. It has taken a really strong Government to give us this Budget. The Minister for Finance deserves praise for having the guts to face the Party and the House in his endeavour to set this country once again on the right road. He has made an effort to put us in a solid, sound financial position. Once again we will pay our debts and pay as we go, instead of throwing on future generations the obligation of meeting something which we ourselves are able to meet. In that way the country will once again be on the road to prosperity and we will find ourselves in the happy position we were in when we handed over to the Coalition Government a few years ago: prosperity facing our people, and in a very short time an industrial revival.
It will not be long now, with the help of God.
The Budget may be described as the child of the Fianna Fáil Government. I suggest, however, that it owes its conception to the report of the Central Bank and to the wishes of a Tory Government in Britain. Early in the winter of 1951, the Ministers for Industry and Commerce and for Finance, in the heated atmosphere of the luxury hotels of Dublin, in a fragrant cigar-smoke scented atmosphere, amidst odours of rich food and wines, at dinners given by rich industrial magnates and manufacturers' associations, thought fit to advise the working people of the country that they must work harder, produce more, and accept a lower standard of living if they were to continue as they had been in the past. It is very strange that most of these pronouncements on austerity and requests for retrenchment are given to our people from amidst those luxury surroundings in the presence of people who have enjoyed these things in the past, and who, as far as we can see, will enjoy them in the future.
The Central Bank in its report indicated to anyone who had the intelligence to read it correctly that the food subsidies should be withdrawn, that consumer goods should be cut down, and that unemployment should be used as a weapon to prevent the workers from enjoying the standard they have had in the past. In this very House the Minister for Industry and Commerce assured the people of Ireland that it was not the intention of the Fianna Fáil Government to follow that programme, but, significantly enough, Irish Ministers were called to Britain for consultation. On arrival back they copied the British Government in announcing an earlier date for their Budget, and they copied the British Budget by reducing food subsidies, by taxing consumer goods, and by gilding the pill of these reductions and taxes with a coating of improved children's allowances. Surely there are very few people in the country who have not noticed the significance of those things.
It must be clear to the meanest intelligence in Ireland that there is some connection between the Central Bank report, the visits of our Ministers to England, the similarity of our Budget to the British Budget, and the fact that the Minister for Finance said here in his introductory speech that the object of our austerity was to save the £ of our principal customer. It is a far cry from the day when we were told that we should burn everything English except their coal to a Minister for Finance in an Irish Parliament justifying a hairshirt Budget by saying that it was an attempt to save the British £.
Deputies in the House and newspapers throughout the country have quoted tables showing the effect of the taxation, the reduction of food subsidies and the improvement in children's allowances on families of different sizes. I suspect that each family has worked out exactly how much it will lose, because that there will be a loss to all families goes without saying. The Budget has been described as harsh, cruel, unjust and crushing by one side and by the other as courageous, bold, honest and necessary, but no one has attempted to say that it is an easy Budget. All of us, no matter on which side we stand, agree that it is going to be more difficult to live this year than it was last year—but we are told that we must save the British £.
There are two questions which I should like answered. First, is there any assurance that the ordinary people of the country will have in the year to come a sufficiency of the ordinary foods used in everyday life in their homes—bread, butter, tea and sugar? If there is that guarantee will they be available at prices within the people's reach? I ask that because to my mind the ending of rationing in this country at this time of emergency would be a dangerous step. Is there anything to indicate that next winter, when the home supplies of milk will be at a minimum, butter will be available even in the rationed amount to every Irish working man?
Is it not correct to say that there is no such guarantee and that the man with the money can buy up every available lb. of butter in any shop, if he so desires?
He would have a big job.
He can use it extravagantly. It can be bought by the tourists who flood in here. It can be taken across to Britain and over the Border. There is no guarantee that there will be reserved for the Irish working man even 1 lb. of butter per week for himself and his family.
A ½ lb. is all you allowed them.
Not even a ½ lb. is guaranteed now. There is no guarantee of any sort that even a ½ lb. of butter per head will be available. There is no guarantee that sugar will be available. Those of us who are connected with certain industries know that butter, milk, chocolate crumb, confectionery, sweets of various types and sweetened fat are being manufactured in huge quantities for export. In the manufacture of these commodities, sugar is the main ingredient. The manufacturers of these commodities, if this Budget becomes law, will be entitled to secure sugar at a reduced price. Is there any guarantee that even a minimum amount of this essential commodity will be reserved for the children of Ireland? In regard to flour, we have been told by the Minister for Agriculture that the amount of wheat sown last week, compared with the same week a year ago, shows no improvement. Is there any guarantee that, with the higher extraction flour, there will be sufficient bread to feed the children of this country?
It is to be hoped that these scarcities will not occur but I would prefer that the working people should have a definite guarantee of a minimum amount. Even if these amounts are guaranteed, is there any guarantee that the prices charged will be within the means of the ordinary working people to pay? In assessing the prices of these foods which are essential for the working people the old controlled price has been taken plus the amount of subsidy that will be withdrawn and the total has been given as the new price. I suggest that that is merely the price that obtains at the present time. There is nothing to say that within the year to come, whether as a result of developments outside or difficulties at home, the price of butter, sugar, bread, flour or tea will remain anywhere near the price now listed because it is well known that if this matter is left to the law of supply and demand the scarcer the commodity becomes the dearer the price becomes.
I would remind Deputies who may be contemplating supporting this Budget that they will have that responsibility upon them and they will have to face up to the fact that it is their fault if, during the winter to come, Irish women and children have to do without food in a country which should have full and plenty and if they have to do without it in order to uphold the value of the £ sterling.
There is a further point to which I would like to draw the attention of Deputies. In this Budget the ordinary people are being called upon to subsidise hoteliers and guest-house proprietors. In future the proprietors of such establishments will be able to offer meals to their guests at a cost to themselves much less than would have been the case if this Budget had not been introduced. Butter, bread, sugar will be available to them at a reduced price. Will that benefit be passed on to the hotel guest? Whether it is or not, the ordinary working people will not get the benefit of any reduction in that direction because the workers who leave home for a day must take with them their mid-day dinner in their pockets or in a basket. It usually consists of a pint and a sandwich. Therefore, the ordinary plain people will have to subsidise reduced prices for hotel guests and tourists or increased profits for guest-house owners and hoteliers.
The Minister for Finance has said that the £100,000 which he could get by continuing the dance tax was scarcely worth the trouble. It must be gratifying to the old people of Ireland, to the widow and to the orphan that a Minister of State, who declares that he is badly pressed for money to run the country, can so contemptuously reject £100,000. It is difficult to believe that he could impose a tax on the working man's pint and smoke and at the same time fail to see that as much as possible would be raised from those who engage in dancing as an amusement.
Money could be raised from the people who attended Punchestown yesterday and the day before and at race meetings throughout Ireland all the year, at the cinemas of Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick each evening of the week and at all sports meetings throughout the country, no matter under what code they play. If that effort was made, if these things were taxed to their true capacity, and if additional taxes were placed on the broader shoulders that are better able to bear them I, as a Labour man, perhaps, would have no complaint, but while things are as they are I feel that I would be lacking in my responsibilities to those who elected me if I did not in this House protest in their name against this unjust Budget.
Deputy McQuillan looked for an assurance. Surely he must have heard every Labour man who spoke decrying the withdrawal of the food subsidies. I make this statement in the name of the Labour Party, that should the day come when we have an opportunity of putting any Government into office, and we decide to put a Government into office, we will not do so without a direct guarantee that the subsidies on food shall be restored. That is pretty clear Labour Party policy. It did not need to be stated by me or anybody else. But, in case any wrong impression may have been caused by the series of questions asked by Independent Deputies, I am saying that for the Labour Party.
The Independent Deputies who may be undecided as to how they vote have a responsibility placed upon them to which they must face up. There is no such thing as a middle way. You vote either for or against the burden on the Irish working people; you vote either for unemployment or employment. If they vote for this Budget, they will be voting for an increase of unemployment. It is their responsibility, but I ask them to give serious thought to it, and may God direct them as to how they should vote.
Mr. Byrne
I have listened to Budgets being introduced for practically 40 years. I heard Budgets being introduced in the British Parliament and in this Parliament. This is the most vicious Budget ever introduced into an Irish or a British Parliament. Its attack on the way of life of the Irish people is something to be deplored. From the very moment a person gets out of bed in the morning he is being taxed by the Government. The food subsidies were referred to by the last speaker and other Deputies. It is just as well that some of the Independent Deputies should put forward their views on the food subsidies question. I join with those of the group of the last speaker and the Independent Deputies in what they put forward to the present Government and to the Leader of the Opposition. I put it to Deputy Costello, or to somebody speaking for him, that it should be made clear to-day that, should they get back to power and form an inter-Party Government, the first thing they will do is to restore the food subsidies.
It is well that that demand should come from those who would be anxious to build up an inter-Party Government such as we have had for three and a half years. As an Independent Deputy, I want to assure the public, if my voice can get out to them, that the inter-Party Government was the best Government ever. It gave representation to all sections. Labour men could make their demands on that Government for what they thought was reasonable and they were always met very fairly and in a friendly way. The farmers' representatives could do the same and they were met fairly and squarely.
I hope that the present Government will see the light before this debate is concluded, admit that they have made a mistake and give an assurance that the food subsidies will be restored. Deputy Costello, Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Mulcahy have assured the House that the present Government have estimated for £10,000,000 more than is necessary. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has admitted that there may be a certain percentage of over-estimation, possibly to the extent of 10 per cent. That 10 per cent. would more than restore the subsidies on bread and butter.
I join with Deputy McQuillan in appealing to both Parties to come together and do something big for the country. I hold that the bread and butter, the tea and the sugar, the ordinary necessaries of life of the people, whether they be small farmers, workers in industrial centres, or tenement dwellers are being unduly taxed and I say that the food subsidies should be restored. I hope that the Leader of the Opposition or somebody for his Party will give us some encouragement to believe that that will be one of the first items of their programme when they get back to office in a very short time, because back to office they must get if this Budget goes through. It is an attack on the way of life of the ordinary individual. We all know the hospitality of the Irish people.
If you are passing through a country village and you ask for information at some house you are generally asked: "Will you not come in and have a cup of tea?" The cup of tea is generally accompanied by bread and butter. It will be a blot on the Irish people if the Government do anything to prevent that hospitality being continued.
After the inter-Party Government were deprived of office—they were entitled to office according to the number of votes cast for what the people believed would be an inter-Party Government—we had the gloomy speeches of Minister that predicted the downfall of the whole country. Nobody could understand why they started their gloomy speeches, telling the people not to buy. When they told the people not to buy, they did not buy and industries started to go slow. The result was unemployment. There is more unemployment and emigration in this country than there has been for the past ten years.
None of the economists so far in this House—and I am not one I can assure you—has told us yet the value per head of our best exportable assets, apparently, and that is human beings, boys and girls of 20 and 21 years of age. If I could get from some economist information as to what is the value per head of every person of 21 years, fully reared, educated and ready to go into any employment market in the world, it would be well worth putting on record. I would like to know from the educational and the training points of view, what the value is of each person who leaves this country, whether they be in professions, in trade or whether they be unskilled workers. To put it in another way, I would like to know what is the loss in cash value to the country when these people emigrate.
£1,000.
Mr. Byrne
£1,000. Let us make up the loss incurred on that type of export. I understand that this year 20,000 persons have emigrated and, according to the experienced mind and view of one of our respected members, Deputy Madden, it is costing us £1,000 per head.
That is the 1939 figure.
Mr. Byrne
I want to emphasise that food subsidies, so far as bread and butter are concerned, must be restored. It would be well to know from both sides of the House before the Vote takes place what is the view of certain respected members who have not spoken yet, and whose opinion is always worth hearing. It cannot be that we are going to vote rather blindly without having the knowledge of both sides that it is their intention to consider seriously, if they cannot give a definite guarantee, the restoration of the subsidies. Deputy McGilligan, Deputy Costello and Deputy Mulcahy have stated that the Budget has estimated for £10,000,000 more than is necessary, and Deputy Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce, has admitted that there may be a certain percentage of over-estimation to the extent perhaps of 10 per cent. If that is so there is sufficient to restore the subsidies on bread and butter, and we ought to have that guarantee.
I have not gone into any of the details of the other taxes. They are all a great burden on the people. As one Deputy said last night, it appears to be a crime to mention anything about the pint in this House. The pint is a valuable food to men who are engaged in heavy work. I would like you to go down to the North Wall and see a man standing on a railway wagon, and a half-ton bucket swinging on the crane. On tipping over that bucket he must shut his mouth tightly and his eyes when the slack and the gas come from the bucket that is being emptied. Is that man not worthy of his pint in order to clear his throat because of the work he is engaged on? The pint is now recognised as a good and valuable food, and I do not know why people criticise it.
A few Deputies have made attacks on the licensed trade for reasons I cannot understand. It is a good, clean, honourable trade. There are many farmers' sons engaged in the trade and they are all men of good character. Before they get their licence their character is investigated by various authorities and recommendations must come forward. There is a very good type of young men working in the licensed trade and they are in danger of losing their employment. I heard of a case only three weeks ago in which a charge hand in a certain licensed house, who was married and had two children, had entered into certain commitments of house purchase. He put down £120 to buy his house. This man accepted a commitment of £2 per week to a building society. Recently he was told by his employer that, on account of the decrease in sales brought about by this Budget, he would have to be dismissed. This man has to seek employment elsewhere but where is he to get it; the other houses are similarly situated. The only hope for that man is to emigrate.
Our drapery houses are also dismissing hands. There have been one or two men dismissed from every drapery house within the last six months due, I say again, to the gloomy and depressing speeches by Front Bench members of the Government. Their speeches have created unemployment and hardship. Only last week the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, made a speech and in that speech I noted with great interest the words: "If we are to save ourselves we must be more frugal, we must be more thrifty, we must work harder." Is there any man in this House who would have the courage to stand up and tell the old age pensioner that he must be more frugal; to tell the retired teacher who is on a small pension, the retired postman, the retired Córas Iompair Éireann official, the retired civil servant, that he must be more frugal? He has not sufficient to buy the ordinary necessaries of life at the new prices and his clothes are brushed threadbare. There are some 100,000 of that type who are on the lowest possible income. How are they to live more frugally unless they purchase less goods, less food, bringing about malnutrition and hardship? These people ought to be considered. No matter where the Government get the money to carry on I appeal to them not to obtain it at the expense of the necessaries of life.
Other members have suggested looking around in order to find luxuries that can be taxed. I do not know what luxuries there are that are not taxed at the moment. It is not my job to know. My job, and I will continue that job, is to put forward grievances every time I get the chance. I will leave it to those who are in power, and who have excellent men at the head of their staffs to give them advice, to suggest ways of bringing about taxation that will cause the least possible hardship. This Budget is bringing about the maximum hardship that it was possible to impose on any people's shoulders. I was speaking quite recently to a man—Deputy Briscoe was speaking to another or produced a letter in a similar case— who said that he was 5/11 short of getting the ordinary necessaries of life, allowing for all the concessions given. I was speaking within the last week to a railway worker and he was one of those men, too, who brushed their clothes threadbare because they could not afford to buy a second suit of clothes. He felt that as prices were, he would be able to provide for his family with the wages which he had. Due to the taxes imposed by this Budget, he has to do with three packages of cigarettes less. He informed me that he would have to find 9/6 per week extra in order to give his children the ordinary necessaries which he was giving them before the present Budget came into operation. Circumstances such as these will have to be considered.
I will ask the Government whether they have anything in mind that will produce employment. Some thousands of boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 16 leave the ordinary schools and the Christian Brothers' schools every year. I would like to know what is in store for that type of person. Have such people to face the emigrant ship? Are those boys and girls going to leave the country and are we going to lose the benefit of their brains and their abilities, which would be so useful in building up the strength of this country?
I do not wish to detain the House much longer, but I would ask the Government, if possible, to restore the food subsidies, especially on bread, on butter, on tea and on sugar. When that has been done, it will be a matter for the Government to devise ways and means of getting the money to carry on the affairs of the country. Everybody admits that a certain amount of money has got to be procured in order to carry on. Bearing in mind that the 2 lb. loaf will be increased from 6½d. to 9d., the butter from 3/- per lb. to 3/10 per lb., the sugar from 4d. per lb. to 6½d. per lb., and that we do not know what tea is going to cost, I feel that this is the most vicious Budget ever introduced into an Irish Parliament. Therefore, I appeal to the leaders of the Front Bench Opposition to give us some idea of what their intention is, if they get back to power at an early date, with regard to the restoration of the subsidies, so that bread and butter can be sold at their present price.
Deputy Maher.
May I direct your attention to the fact that I have risen to speak 14 times?
Is the Deputy making a charge of partiality against the Chair?
I am only slightly casting a reflection on the Chair.
The Deputy will not get away with that sort of side joke on the Chair. The Chair calls Deputies, as far as he can see them, in a fair and impartial manner. The Deputy is an Independent Deputy. He surely cannot expect Independent Deputies to be called in the same proportion as the Deputies who represent Parties. I intended to call Deputy Byrne last night. I did not call him to-day until an hour or so after the Dáil assembled. Did the Deputy expect to be called before Deputy Byrne? Deputy Flanagan did not offer himself until late last night.
I offered myself last week.
Deputy Maher, I take it, is speaking for a Party. Therefore, he would get preference over an Independent Deputy who speaks only for himself. I call on Deputy Maher.
Since the Minister for Finance presented his Budget proposals to the House some weeks ago, a lot has been said from the Opposition side of the House against the proposals he intends to put forward. A lot has been said from this side of the House in favour of what he intends to do. I suppose, no matter how I try to avoid it, I will inevitably find myself travelling, to some extent, at least, the ground already covered by many of the previous speakers. However, I feel I should not let the occasion pass without putting forward my views in respect of the Budget.
If we, as a community, deem social services and other services to be necessary, if we consider we must have social services in order to fortify weaker sections of our people against the ordinary perils of life, and if we are in agreement on that issue, we are automatically committed to find the necessary money to finance expenditure incurred by these services. If it takes a certain pool of money to pay our current expenses in respect of social services and other services, I feel that, no matter how you try to juggle with figures, you cannot reduce the minimum pool of money which is required to pay for these services. I say from business experience with authorities they cannot segregate successfully particular items under particular headings by reducing the original amount. In fact, if you try to juggle with figures, the ultimate amount that will emerge will be enlarged rather than reduced by any juggling or any segregation of the particular items. I would, therefore, say, as far as this Budget is concerned, to all those honest people who believe in paying their lawful debts and honouring their financial and other commitments no detailed explanation is necessary. To the people who do not believe in paying their debts and honouring their financial commitments no explanation is possible. We have been charged by responsible members of the Opposition of under-valuing revenue and over-estimating our expenses.
There was an endeavour made to substantiate that statement by many prominent Opposition speakers. I regard this, and many people for whom I speak regard this, as a trick statement of a cunning lawyer, and we feel that there is no real foundation whatever for it. I will admit that there are decent people who fully realise the necessity for this Budget and who fully realise that the burden that must be placed on the shoulders of the taxpayers will have to be a heavy one, but they are not altogether in agreement as to how that burden has been distributed. Many alternative proposals have been put forward by Opposition speakers with regard to the distribution of the Budget. Suggestions were made that bicycles should be taxed, that an additional tax should be put on wirelesses, and there were other suggestions put forward. It seems to me that there were not any real concrete proposals put forward by any members of the Opposition as to how alternative sources of revenue could be arrived at.
I say that this Budget is not as hard as would strike the eye at the first glance, and that steps have been taken to cushion its impact on the poorer, weaker and most needy sections of our community. Those people in receipt of children's allowances will find that these allowances will be substantially increased from a date after the 1st July. Let us take, for instance, a man with a wife and four children's. At the present time he receives annually an income from children's allowances of £13. He will find that, after the 1st July, his annual income from this source will have increased to £27 10s., that is an increase of over 100 per cent. That will, to a very great extent, help to offset for a man with a wife and four children the increased burden to which he will have to face up when the increased prices come into operation. The old age pensioner will find that his allowance has been increased to a sufficient degree, on the basis of present consumption, to offset the increased charges which he will have to face as a result of the withdrawal of certain subsidies.
Many speakers have mentioned the racing industry as a source from which very substantial revenue could be derived. I can speak with a fair amount of authority as far as wagering, and so forth, is concerned. The position at present is that if a man goes into a starting price office and puts down £6, six to four on, and if he wins, he is entitled to draw £10. When he goes to draw his winnings he finds that no less than 15/- out of his wining nings of £4 is deducted for the Revenue Commissioners. That is a fairly substantial amount of tax to have to pay. I do not believe there is any real scope there for any further increase of tax. As a matter of fact, an increase in the betting tax might have the effect of curtailing betting activities rather than increasing revenue. Let us examine the position from the point of view of the course bookmaker who attends six meetings a week and bets at six races at every meeting. He would not be a very substantial bookmaker if he was holding £50 a race. Whether he wins or loses at these races, he finds that after a week's attendance at the race meetings he owes a sum of £45 to the Racing Board apart altogether from whatever other overhead expenses he may have to meet. That is a substantial sum of money for a bookmaker in a small way of life to have to pay to the Revenue Commissioners. I think that the tax is already very heavy and that it is obvious that there is no possibility whatsoever of deriving additional revenue from that source.
What about the tote?
The tote is providing a lot of revenue.
A bit of a snag—yes.
I consider that I can speak on this subject with as much authority as Deputy Davin.
I am sure you can.
I suppose that the matter of the remission of the dancing tax can be described as having been worn threadbare. I should like to cite a particular case in point. A tax collector who lives in Limerick City motors to the Dingle Peninsula, in West Kerry, to ensure that a group of small fishermen there who hold a dance observe the dance-tax regulations. I wonder if the revenue derived from such small functions compensates for the expense incurred by the tax collector in travelling down to small towns in the Dingle Peninsula—Ballydavid and so forth—in order to ensure that the fishermen there will not evade the dancing tax. Surely that is a cumbersome way of obtaining revenue. I do not think a real argument can be put forward in favour of the continuance of the dancing tax.
I should like to refer to a rotten feature of that dancing tax. It sometimes happens in small towns that people may decide to hold a dance and to devote the proceeds to charity. We all know that, no matter how honest we may be in other spheres of life, we are all inclined to evade the dancing tax. Many citizens whose integrity is unquestionable in every other respect are tempted to evade that tax, and if they know you when you are going into a dance hall they will give you a ticket without a stamp. There was wholesale evasion of the dance tax, and it was a tax which tempted people to be dishonest. For these reasons, I think the dance tax was most undesirable. Some other method should be devised whereby revenue can be obtained from the managements of dance halls, because the system which has been in operation would not commend itself to anybody.
Deputies on the Opposition side of the House have described this Budget as a rich man's Budget. In that connection I should like to refer to the matter of income-tax. It is estimated that 188,000 people in this country pay income-tax. Under the proposals in this Budget, 170,000 persons out of the total of 188,000 who pay income-tax will obtain relief. Not alone will the remaining 18,000 income-tax payers compensate for the relief which is being provided to the other 170,000 persons but, in addition, they will contribute over £750,000 additional revenue to the Exchequer. That is a very fair wallop, if you like, at the higher income groups. I do not think that this Budget can, in fairness, be described as a rich man's Budget.
It is obvious to us all that there was an easy and a popular way of escaping the criticism which the presentation of this Budget has caused. If this Fianna Fáil Government had not had the moral courage to face its obligations, it could have adopted the easy way out and continued to live on our capital. That is the solution which the Coalition Government had. I do not think that any country could continue to live on its capital for very long. No business establishment or anybody in a commercial line of life could continue such a system indefinitely. It is obvious that a crumbling must inevitably set in with a consequent breakdown in the economic fabric of the State. I am certain that those people who are now loudest in their condemnation of this Budget would be the spearhead of attack when the affairs of this country would become chaotic and the people reduced to an abysmal pit of misery as a result of the foolish policy of living on one's surplus moneys. When that crumbling would take place the people who would suffer most would be the poorer sections of the community. I should not like to be associated with any Government which would pursue such a shortsighted policy. I should break away from such a Government at the earliest possible moment rather than allow myself to be roped into the company of people who, for the sake of political popularity, would pursue that line of policy.
If that crumbling I have referred to did not take place, if there was not a breakdown in the economic structure of the State, there would be only one other side to it and that would be the sacrifice of the national integrity of our people. I do not think the latter would commend itself to any Government, even to an inter-Party Government.
A lot has been said about capital development. I want as a Deputy to see the capital development programme go forward without any retarding or frustration. If we desire it is it not worth while to make a little sacrifice to ensure that it will continue? Is it not worth while practising a little self-denial to ensure its success? The Government at present is asking the people to do that. May I say with all sincerity that if I have to vacate office on any issue, I should like to do so on the issue of the Budget because I could recall with pride in future years that I fell on an honest proposal? I hate public meetings and I detest holding up people at chapel gates as they come out from Mass but while this Budget controversy continues I shall take every opportunity of defending it in public, presenting it as it is in its true form and of explaining why as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party I support it. I shall accept without reserve the decision of the people when they have an opportunity of registering their feelings in connection with it.
There is no other alternative.
I have not the slightest doubt as to what that decision will be. I am as sure of it as that I shall one day dic——
Test it.
——that the people who have been led astray by Deputy Collins and his comrades for the last three and a half years have now seen the light and are anxious to co-operate in the effort to put the finances of this State back on the firm footing which they occupied some three and a half years ago.
A lot has been said about unemployment. I hate to make personal remarks in this House or anywhere else, but we had two Dublin lawyers down in my town of Abbeyleix some short time ago, shedding crocodile tears about the unemployed, but these people did not tell their listeners that they increased the national debt of this State to the tune of £70,000,000. In the constituency of Leix-Offaly, the biggest constituency in all Ireland, embracing an area from the River Barrow to the River Shannon, and from the borders of Westmeath to the borders of North Tipperary, during the period that that £70,000,000 was recklessly dissipated, not one new industry was established. Not alone did they not establish a new industry——
That is not correct.
——with the moneys——
What about the factory in Birr and the worsted mills?
A Deputy
And the Brosna drainage?
——with the moneys they recklessly spent, but they jeopardised the well-being and the living standards of the employees in the industries established by Fianna Fáil in that constituency. Due to the spate of imports of manufactured articles allowed to come in here while they were in office, people employed in the textile industry of Messrs. Salts and in the worsted woollen mills at Portlaoise are on part time.
That is not correct.
It was correct some time ago.
It was not correct.
The people who allowed in 8,500,000 square yards of manufactured cloth and the people who supported that Government were the spearhead of the agitation when the workers' destiny was thrown into jeopardy and endangered some few months ago. Such dishonesty, such inconsistency, such insincerity, has tended to degrade the status of the people occupying public office in this country. I think it is an appalling thing that it should happen. I do hope that public life in this country which seems to be passing through a transition period at present, will eliminate that kind of undesirable practice. It is a pity that it should happen, that anybody should wish to play on the feelings of the gullible sections of the people who have not the full facts before them to enable them to make up their minds as to what is good for them or what is bad for them.
Deputy MacEoin said here the other night that some of the younger members of the Fianna Fáil Party, if they could divest themselves of their Party ties, would not hesitate to go in with the Opposition to vote against this Budget. I believe that I am the youngest member of the Fianna Fáil Party, though I am not quite sure, and I can say that could I divest myself of Party affiliations and divorce myself entirely from everything that happened for the past three and a half years and, if the facts were presented to me as I see them now so far as this Budget is concerned, even if my political career and my existence depended on it, I have not the slightest doubt that I would not hesitate to go in and vote in favour of the proposals the Minister has made. I say that believing it to be true.
Deputy Allen cited the case of a county council in the operation of its finances when he was speaking here the other night. I think a belief has grown up amongst our people that we can juggle with figures, that we can avail of hire purchase facilities and other facilities and live in this way beyond our means and permanently improve our position. That is not so. I want to cite a particular case as I experienced it on a local authority in County Laois. We there were presented some few months ago with the question of laying off some men, a thing that is not desirable. We did not want to do it but the pool of money we had was not sufficient to maintain the number of men we had in our employment. I just want to cite this incident to illustrate a practice which has grown up amongst some of our people.
We decided to mortgage the incoming rates, the rates for the year 1952-53, and we did that to the extent of £16,000 in order to avoid displacing men during the winter months of the year. When it came to the question of funding that debt that we had incurred with the full knowledge of what we were doing, the Labour element in the council—at least one of them— said: "Why should we pay, why not defer it?" That sort of attitude is responsible for a lot of the cheap political nonsense that is going on in this country. That attitude is being promoted amongst the rank and file members of the Labour Party. All sorts of hares are kicked up that you can do this and do that on credit. You have, however, to face the plain fact, the courageous one, that you must pay your way or else dishonour your debts. If you do not do that, the inevitable result is there waiting for you.
We hear a good deal about the increase in the price of the pint. The 3d. increase in the price of the pint will bring in a revenue of £2,400,000. That amount would be a little more than one-third of what is required to service the sinking fund and interest on the national debt. It would take an increase of 9d. to pay for the antics and the bad debts incurred by our predecessors. The increased revenue on tobacco, amounting to £5,500,000, would not be enough to pay for the jump from £4,000,000 to over £10,000,000 in the servicing of the sinking fund and interest on the national debt. I do not think, therefore, that the people who constituted the inter-Party Government can face the people with a very positive front in the belief that they were doing the right thing, and that if they had been allowed to continue their policy they would have conferred lasting benefits on our people.
Give us a chance and you will find out.
Facts and figures will prove conclusively that that is not so.
Who gave you those false figures?
The Deputy will get them in the Minister's Budget speech. If the Deputy thinks they are false——
You have quoted one lot that is wrong, anyway.
Motor taxes and drivers' licences—was that a mistake?
Deputy Maher might be allowed to continue his speech now.
We could do what our predecessors did. We could provide a Budget that would afford easements to the toiling masses, but we will not do that for the sake of political popularity. We will not adopt a system of book-keeping under which we will put current expenses under the heading of capital expenses and shackle posterity to such an extent that posterity might well wonder why our people ever fought for freedom. That is what would happen if we were to impose the economic burdens on posterity that the inter-Party Government tried to impose on them. We are giving posterity a chance to compete at least on equal terms with other countries when their time comes. We are not going to pass the baby to them. It is our intention to pay our way, and if the people decide we should not pay our way we will accept their verdict. I have no doubt whatsoever that thinking people will throw their weight whole-heartedly behind those who are advocating this policy of paying one's way and not going, hat in hand, to every moneylender and financier who is prepared to tie us up so long as the borrower's bargaining position is worsened and so long as the lender can dictate the conditions under which we may live and get his full lb. of flesh in the end through the medium of the surrender we would be forced to make had we allowed the people now in opposition to drive the country into that situation.
We will take our stand on this Budget. If we fall we will accept the verdict. Deputy Byrne has asked the Leader of the Opposition to make a statement in relation to food subsidies. I can tell Deputy Byrne now that he will get no such statement. If he is depending on that statement to cast his vote and if that statement is one that will help him to make a decision and to vote either for or against this Budget, I have not the slightest doubt but that he will vote for Fianna Fáil, because that statement will not be forthcoming.
If the resolution is beaten the subsidies cannot come off.
This Budget is a tonic in the public life of the country. It is a tonic that the young people who have come into life badly needed.
They are getting it.
Because of its administration public life will no longer be reduced to the low level to which certain efforts that were made would have reduced it. We will stand or fall on this Budget. I am wholeheartedly behind every syllable the Minister uttered in his Budget speech. I do not like public meetings, but I shall miss no opportunity of going before the public and defending this Budget because I believe I have something worth while to defend; I have something honest, something sincere and something right. This is a serious endeavour to repair the economic fabric of the State and put it back in the fortified position in which it was some three and a half to four years ago. This Budget will require a little self-denial. It demands a little sacrifice. I believe the people will rise to the occasion and there will be no doubt about the benefits of a permanent nature that will eventually flow from it. The people will be enabled to maintain their present standard of living. It will be possible to achieve better standards in relation to the development of our national resources, in relation to the development of our bogs, the financing of rural electrification, the rehousing of our people and the many other State services we all desire for our people, and our people deserve. In order to ensure their continuance we must apply corrective measures now so that development will not be retarded or held up in any way.
I congratulate the Minister on his fearless and honest Budget. I am confident it will be successful and I am equally confident that it will be beneficial to our people.
I can quite sympathise with Deputy Maher in his objection to public meetings, after-Mass meetings and all that sort of thing. I can sympathise with him even more when he goes on this proposed tour of public meetings, particularly if he takes the line he has taken here to-day and talks about public integrity and political honesty and morality, if he has present at his meetings any of those who participated in the election some 12 short months ago: he may have some who listened to the Minister for Finance when he gave the most emphatic pledge ever given by a public man that if Fianna Fáil were elected his Government would not contemplate the reimposition of duties on beer, spirits, tobacco and all the rest.
Does Deputy Maher not recollect that? Was Deputy Maher one of the cheer leaders at the back of the crowd and did he then go down to Abbeyleix and say: "These are the men that I am proud to soldier behind and, if necessary, fall and die behind—these men, who never broke their word, with a sense of integrity in politics and careful of morals in politics."
There were votes to be got then, hundreds of thousands of votes. After the election it was not a case of hundreds of thousands of votes. Political success, the achievement of power, the capture of office did not depend on hundreds of thousands of votes. It then boiled down: it depended on two or three votes.
The campaign of some of those two or three Deputies had ranged round the vital question of food subsidies. One had even gone so far as to advocate increased food subsidies. But, whether those people, with a high sense of national integrity and so careful of honesty in political life, that Deputy Maher is so proud of, would achieve office or not depended on the votes of the people. They claimed at the election to have them elected for the maintenance of food subsidies and even for increases.
The leaders that Deputy Maher is now so proud of, that he is so proud to follow and fall behind, had such a great sense of honesty in politics that they did not rely on a speech by Deputy MacEntee or Deputy Lemass, in which emphatic pledges were given, but they had to bring out a manifesto with 17 points which was published in every newspaper up and down the land. Point 15 in that manifesto, that declaration of policy, that so-called, and accepted, honourable declaration of intentions by honourable men, pledged the leaders of whom Deputy Maher is so proud to maintain food subsidies. When the food subsidies are reduced, and when the pledges with regard to beer, spirits, cigarettes and tobacco are swallowed and trampled on in the dirt and in dishonour, this Deputy comes in and sticks out his chest, bulging with pride to be behind leaders who dishonoured those pledges and trampled on that manifesto.
So much for the fudge. You can create a fog with any kind of talk and nonsense. We have had that fog all over the country for the last 11 months. I have never accused the people opposite of stupidity. I have never accused them of not being politically alert. They were on this side when we were the Government, and they were the best attenders that ever were in opposition in this country. There was no official document ever issued that was not studied with magnifying spectacles and under a microscope. Those men, week after week, and month after month, were aware of the financial position of this country, of the American loan and its expenditure, and of how it was being expended, the balance of payments, the Estimates and the Exchequer receipts.
When the general election came, they were in possession of all that information. They knew very well what the financial position of the country was. Was there any hint of drastic crushing taxation? Was there any hint of reimposing and increasing the taxes on beer, cigarettes and tobacco? Was there any hint of reducing the food subsidies and of increasing the price of the loaf by 3d. and of butter by 10d. per lb.? Far from that, there was an emphatic pledge given from every Fianna Fáil platform that such would not be done.
I myself made a speech in the City of Cork, in the Parliamentary Secretary's constituency. He remembers the answer. I have it here. When I suggested that, when Fianna Fáil were in office before, they imposed taxes on beer, cigarettes and tobacco and I asked my hearers to be careful that, if they let them back, they would not do the same again, it was not sufficient to leave it to candidate Lynch, candidate McGrath, candidate MacCarthy or candidate Furlong to contradict me and repudiate that suggestion, but the deputy-leader of the Party, the present Tánaiste, had got to be brought down specially to Cork City to ram that suggestion down my throat, and to tell the public in Cork that they had no intention whatsoever, if returned to power, to reimpose those duties, and that at a time when they knew thoroughly well the whole financial position of the country and its inherent soundness. In case the Parliamentary Secretary may not remember the date, it was the night of the 12th May, 1951. The speaker was Mr. Seán Lemass, and his references were as follows:—
"A Coalition Minister had said that Fianna Fáil, if elected, would increase the taxes on beer and tobacco. Why should such taxes be necessary? There is no such reason why we should reimpose those taxes."
Will the Deputy give the reference?
Certainly, the Sunday Press of the 13th May.
No one will question that.
Truth in the News!
There is no truth in the promise. With regard to this Budget, I would say to those Deputies who are perturbed with regard to the new taxes, the subsidies, etc., that we have in it a clear contrast between the policies and outlook of the present Government and the past. We have running through this Budget, in comparison with the Budgets of the last four years, a clear picture of the policy and the outlook, the social outlook, of the two Governments. Here you have, in the main, a Budget that is going to scoop in big money, and that is going to scoop it in easily, without labour and without cost, but in gigantic amounts.
The only way to get that money easily, the only way to get that money in greater amounts without labour and without cost is by putting the hand into the trouser pocket or the purse of the poorest people to get it; get it from the many rather than from the few and, above all, get it through articles which the public cannot avoid buying, beer, tobacco and cigarettes.
I am not an advocate or champion of the heavy drinker, but I do not think that the moderate man or the man who can even be regarded as an abstemious man or the moderate smoker should be the targets for the Minister for Finance. Here we have the masses of the people being mulcted to the tune of many millions of pounds in their beer, tobacco and cigarettes. In addition to that, we have the huge drawback on the poorest people in the land by the reduction in the subsidies, particularly the subsidies on bread and butter.
I have spent 30 years as a professional man, and I have been in and out of the houses of the poor throughout the greater part of that period. I know how they live. Apart altogether from statistical researches and returns of diets according to financial standing and according to social status, everyone knows that the lower down you go on the wealth scale the more the family depends on bread and the higher you go up the scale of wealth the less the family depends on bread. In the wealthy household, in the well-to-do household, and even in the middle-class, household, you have meat, vegetables, puddings, fruit and eggs.
The more alternatives you have in the way of diet the less you depend on bread. In the house of the workers and the poorer people dessert, puddings, the 6d. egg and the uncontrolled meat are things rarely if ever seen. They have three meals a day, three meals of bread and, perhaps, one of bread and butter.
The very movements of population make that more and more pronounced apart from the financial factor. As we build on the flanks of the Cities of Dublin and Cork, the more we root workers out from the centre of the city and send them to Crumlin and Kimmage in Dublin or to Spangle Hill in Cork the more you have workers trekking in over fair distances to their work but trekking in such distances that they cannot get back for lunch. They are forced more and more to partake of bread and butter or the bread and spread diet. In so far as bread is used by the wealthier classes it is white bread, better looking bread. In this Budget you are actually subsidising the wealthier classes at the expense of the poor. That is being done by a Party whose leaders gave every pledge, oral and written, that there would be no interference with subsidies and that there would be no new tax on beer, cigarettes and tobacco. When any Deputy bulges out his chest at such dishonoured pledges and does it as a young man new to public life, one is inclined to ask what will he bulge with pride for before he is finished?
As I have said we have a contrast in policies. What was the policy of the previous Government incorporated in one, two, three and four Budgets? What was the policy of the previous Government which lost the support of very many of its most influential supporters? That is well known to those opposite. It was a policy of keeping down the cost of living at any cost politically.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows that we faced up to a bakers' strike rather than allow bread to increase by ½d. a loaf. Perhaps, the Parliamentary Secretary had some idea at least in the City of Cork of the loss of political support, but rather than allow the price of bread to be increased by ½d. we faced up to the situation.
The next thing was a threatened butchers' strike, and rather than let the price of meat increase we faced the same situation. Right on through four Budgets there was no increase in the price of the necessaries of life. Fuel did increase in price. We had the election campaign, fought to a great extent on the increased cost of living.
Butter.
And the 2d. on butter. That was 11 months ago. What would people give to get back to the prices that were in operation last June? I should like to remind the Government that when you increase the price of tobacco, cigarettes, beer or porter on the poorer classes you do not make them teetotallers. I am not talking about the hard drinkers. I am talking of the two pints a week man, the ten cigarettes a day man and the ten cigarettes a day woman. What is the first effect? That little luxury, if you like, will cost more. There is something less for somebody behind the line. There is something less in the home. There is something less for the woman of the house, and if the woman of the house gets something less there will be something less for the children.
But if in addition to that you increase prices by decontrolling meat and bacon, you increase the price of butter, and on top of all that you increase the price of bread, and cause another huge increase in the price of butter. You increase the price of tea and the price of sugar. How is that met? Many Deputies opposite could answer that question. Any medical man opposite could answer that question. When the prices of foodstuffs go up or when income goes down in the poorer home what is the result? The result is less food and less purchasing. There must be less.
I have been in and out of the houses of men in employment, men who went sick or came out of employment. The weekly income fell. What steps were taken? What is the first step in most houses? To buy a lb. of meat less that week; to buy a few ounces of butter less that week; to buy half a pint or a pint less milk and make it up in the jug with water. When the money is not there to buy, you must stretch further what can be bought, but the end result is less food, less nourishment, less nourishing types of food.
Here we have a country in which one of the bigger courses is tuberculosis, where we have a range of malnutrition amongst children and where the corrective stage is in the early days and where two of the biggest correctives, if not preventives, are milk and butter, and we shoot up the price of butter, first by 2d., then by another 2d. and finally by 10d.; put 3d. on the loaf of bread, a couple of pence on sugar, a figure unknown on tea and tax the pint, the packet of cigarettes and the ounce of tobacco and close our eyes to the family behind all that. There is the contrast in policies.
Let us have no nonsense talked. There were four Budgets by the previous Government with none of these things interfered with. We had a régime where the political mills opposite got feeding through the political loss of the previous Government due to its ruthless standing over the prices of the essentials of life and friends who fell away from us found champions over there. Now, the end result is that the poorer families must be sacrificed. Sacrificed for what? Sacrificed for a political catch-cry that was uttered cheaply last July. Politicians got so enmeshed in their own political catch-cries that they became entangled and could not escape so that they had to give an appearance of reality to the speeches made.
As I say, last June they knew the whole financial position. It was there on record—borrowings, spendings, revenue, expenditure. Was there any hint of drastic steps having to be taken? On the contrary, there was every assurance that there would be no new taxation, no interference with subsidies, and then the first round of the political circus was when they played ball with their more powerful friends in the financial sense and prices began to rise week after week, with more increases in the cost of living than in the previous three years. What was the cry then? "Oh, the stack of price recommendations left on the Minister's table by his predecessor." That could not be nailed at the crossroads. Every Deputy over there was making the same speech. It could only be nailed here but the Dáil was not in session. When the Dáil did meet, a question was put down—what recommendations were there lying waiting? Canned peas and beans, newspaper advertisements and coal in one provincial town—but there had been three months of lies spluttering up and down the country, three months in which the back boys in every town and village had something to throw at their political opponents. It did not matter if it turned out to be a political falsehood—it served its purpose for the time being.
The next thing was that the Horseman of the Apocalypse came out and doom, catastrophe and disaster, an appalling gigantic adverse balance of trade, financially, the bottom of the barrel scraped bare and bankruptcy ahead were suddenly discovered. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance and every one of them were off to the same tune at the same moment, all marching to the beat of the drum, absolutely in step— left, right; left, right—down through the country. The Royalettes were never as well drilled as the boys behind in the Fianna Fáil Party. We had these gentlemen in every village in Ireland talking about sterling balances, the adverse trade balance and the loss of sterling assets and many of them did not know but that sterling assets were some new kind of vegetable. They were all on the same note, however, all together and all whistling the same tune.
They were all pointing to Great Britain, to France and to different European countries, with their austerity budgets and their heroic efforts to avoid bankruptcy, and making it appear to simple, honest people that our position was the same as theirs—war-blasted countries, emerging from war, even though victorious, bleeding, crippled, bankrupt and broke, with their whole economies disrupted, with their powers of production blasted, their trade gone, and their recuperative powers entirely in abeyance. Such countries had to take the most drastic steps—austerity, stop spending, and have your people producing not for themselves but for export—to steady up the adverse balance of trade, with taxation to avert bankruptcy. It is unforgivable for anyone to suggest that that was the position in our country. Such a suggestion undermines confidence and credit. We were one of the two strongest, most credit-worthy countries in Europe, one of the three strongest, most credit-worthy countries in the world. We escaped the war. We made money out of the war, big money, undreamt of money; and our only complaint was that we could not spend it, that we could not get the things that were required and that money would buy.
We could not get the wherewithal for building. We were going without houses, we were going without hospitals, we were going with tumbledown schools, because we could not buy building materials. Our land was going hungry, getting weak and debilitated, becoming rapidly nonproductive, because we could not buy heart for the land, because we could not buy fertiliser. Our industries were beginning to work at half-cock. We could not buy machinery. Transport was defective, backward, nearly primitive, because we could not buy it. On the land we had none of the modern equipment, because it could not be bought. But what had we? We had a growing, growing, growing mountain of pounds; we had a huge pile of banknotes with dry rot in the centre, deteriorating at the rate of 1/- per £1 per year, so that over a period of ten years the value of that money had crumbled by practically 50 per cent. The money was lumping up, but the goods could not be bought. That was our position. Unlike all the other countries referred to, we had too much money, too little goods—two ample factors for production—but the facilities were not available.
Then we reached the time when these things could be purchased, when we could get people the houses, when we could build hospitals, when we could build schools, when we could get fertiliser, machinery, tractors, transport. That paper money, that mountain of money, as far as was required was converted into those necessaries. As rapidly as could be, we got building materials, we got tractors, we got fertilisers, we got coal, we got machinery, we got timber, iron and steel; and that mountain was reduced in size. When that process was going on there was, naturally and necessarily, an adverse trade balance. It was retrospective buying, resulting in a temporary adverse balance of trade. On top of that, you had the serious turn some 20 months ago in the Korean war and you had more threatening clouds coming over Europe. We had the present Government, from these Opposition Benches, denouncing us for our timidity with regard to stockpiling and we had question on the Order Paper week after week to the effect that we were not doing sufficient. We did a reasonable amount of precautionary stockpiling, retrospective buying, sensible and prudent stockpiling. Then at the back of that we had a plan for increasing, and increasing rapidly, the production of our land so as to boost up our exports.
What is there to cry about there? What is there to whine about there? Was there anything unsound, financially or economically, in that policy? The only regret is that it could not be done sooner and that it could not be done on a larger scale. Mind you, that work is continuing, but while they are continuing our work they are blackguarding us because we did it better and more efficiently than they.
Deputies
Hear, hear!
That is what we are backing on, that is the thing that is disgusting decent people behind them. Then we come to this "financial bankruptcy" and we have even to-day this heat, this innuendo with regard to the United States of America, that we should not take a loan from the United States of America if we are to safeguard our independence. We had the false heat yesterday of the Minister for External Affairs repudiating that, saying that such a suggestion was scandalous.
Did he read the speech of the Tánaiste, I think it was down in Wexford, where he said that we could easily lose our independence through participating in loans? Did he read Deputy Vivion de Valera, speaking somewhat similarly? We had one of the full-blooded sisters of the Irish Press quoted here yesterday, the Derry Journal; and the Derry Journal did not put a tooth in it when they said in that article that, because we had accepted money from America, or if such money were to be accepted, the money would be so conditioned that the sovereignty of this country would disappear.
Right down through the ages, in the time of our grandfathers' grandfathers, the people of the United States of America loved the people of this country, and they still do.
Hear, hear!
Every time the little ship here rocked, the steadying hand was reached across the Atlantic, and it was never anything but a helpful hand and a friendly hand. It is disgraceful that we should have reached the day when either front benchers or back benchers of a Government Party would bite the hand that so often fed them. Yet we have that; we had it yesterday evening and we have it to-day. In the course of this debate we had a lot of suggestions that if we were the Government we would do the same as the present Government, that we would cut subsidies and tax the things that they taxed. In view of some of the things I have just read, some of the pledges, some of the protestations, in view of this manifesto sent out by Fianna Fáil on the eve of the election of the Taoiseach pledging themselves to maintain the food subsidies, in view of the declarations when there were a few votes which might be caught, the clear and emphatic declarations by the present Ministers for Finance and Industry and Commerce that they would not reimpose the taxes on beer, stout, tobacco and cigarettes, in view of the fact that those pledges, given orally and in writing and circulated through every newspaper in the country, are not yet 12 months old, and when you have a Budget such as this, well may you repeat the phrase from the speech of the Minister for Finance to the effect that the people were being asked to decide whether politics in Ireland were to be a dirty game, played by confidence tricksters who are prepared to promise anything so as to dupe the people into voting for them. That should be framed in every homestead.
The clean politician.
That was a paragraph from the same speech in which the Minister said that a number of persons in the licensed trade were spreading the rumour that Fianna Fáil if returned to power would reimpose the tax on drink which it imposed by the Supplementary Budget of 1947. He said:—
"There is no truth whatsoever in such a rumour."
Is that from "Truth in the News"?
So much for the promises regarding subsidies. All I can say is that performances are and should be much more convincing than promises. In our four Budgets there was no threat, no encroachment, no removal or reduction of the subsidies on food. One thing which we stood for and fell for was that we would not allow an increase in the cost of the necessaries of life. You had the bakers' strike and the butchers' strike but no increase was allowed. After the change of Government, however, you had decontrol: "Charge what you like, boys." There you have the difference in policy and in outlook. We were conscious of the fact that subsidies were a heavy drain on the national purse but that they were necessary so long as high prices prevailed and they will be necessary so long as high prices continue to prevail; make no mistake about that. Whatever the case for subsidies at the beginning, it is more real, more true to-day.
What was our line regarding subsidies? We have been condemned and denounced for it. Our line, our policy, our plan was that subsidies had to be given, that they were a heavy drain on the taxpayers but that as far as possible you should make the rich carry the poor on their back rather than the poor carry the rich. We blasted and throttled the black market. Every one of us remembers when tea was £1 a lb., when white flour was as precious as gold dust, when you felt like a successful smuggler when you brought home a lb. of butter at any price. Those were the conditions which prevailed when we became the Government but we got that black market by the throat and harnessed it.
Bacon was being processed in all kinds of filthy and insanitary holes and sold to the public for its weight in gold but that was harnessed. That black market was taken by the throat in the interests of the poor in order to provide part of the cost of the subsidies. We gave the subsidised bread in the same ration as before; we gave the subsidised butter in a very much increased ration; we gave the subsidised tea in an increased ration and we gave the subsidised sugar as before. We introduced, however, a higher grade whiter bread. We said that anyone with money who liked the look of a whiter loaf and who was prepared to buy it at a price should be let have it, the money going towards the cost of subsidising the bread for the poor. It was the same with sugar and tea. Was that not a more humane outlook than that which we have here? Now the poor will carry the rich on their back. In the rich household nothing has been bought but white flour at a very high price. After July the only bread will be the 80 per cent. extraction bread. The poor will pay 3d. per loaf more and the wealthy household will get cheaper bread. As we must have subsidies — and I say that we must so long as high prices prevail — was our outlook, our plan, our policy, not more humane, more Christian, than the policy announced in this Budget? We should have to be faced with dire disaster, almost with the termination of our existence, before a Budget of this type could be justified. There is no justification for it and no case has been made for it. Its background is one of steadily-circulated falsehoods: "An adverse trade balance,""bankruptcy,""the bottom of the barrel scraped bare,""overspending by the Government" and "extravagance by the Government." Those were the charges.
Would the Deputy answer a question? While the Deputy is dealing with subsidies, would he like to deal with my question to the Leader of the Opposition on subsidies?
If the Deputy had been in his place he would have heard me dealing with it. But with all due respect to the Deputy, I was answering others more than the Deputy — speeches that I have listened to. They were, apparently, on the same point.
We had these charges of extravagance. For the last 12 months they were levelled. Where were the economies?—a larger Army; a far more expensive Army; a larger police force; a more expensive police force; public services up in cost. What have we in the Book of Estimates in the year coming? If we were extravagant, then we have gross extravagance outlined for the coming year. It is because of that, and because of the well-drilled, regimented troops that propagated falsehood for the last 12 months, that I say, with meaning and with conviction, that a Budget of this kind, conceived in dishonesty and put through with inhuman brutality, can bring nothing but disaster to its architects.
I believe that this Budget is a severe Budget and a harsh Budget. It is ridiculous to ask the people to contribute approximately £100,000,000 for the administration of the country. I have listened very carefully to the speeches made both by the Government and the Opposition as to the reasons for this Budget. I believe that a number of the speeches that were made were not made sincerely or genuinely. A number of speakers dealt with the grave problem that we have to face from the point of view of the way in which they could get their speeches reported in the local provincial Press rather than discussing sensibly and objectively the serious problem that is before the members of this House.
I have sought the truth. I have heard assertions made from the Government side that certain commitments have to be met. I have heard the Opposition refuting those statements. I have listened to most of the speeches and those that I have not heard I have read carefully. I believe now that the best description of the position was contained in the statement issued on 22nd April by the Trade Union Congress. I believe the Trade Union Congress approached this matter more as economists than as politicians and not with a view to what the local newspaper would report. The Trade Union Congress said:—
"Firstly, it is necessary to discover whether or not the figure of £15,000,000 constitutes a 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."
That is an objective statement. I certainly do not agree for one minute that the chairman of the Central Bank, the Revenue Commissioners or the Minister for Finance are in the pocket of Mr. Butler, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain. I believe the chairman of the Central Bank is an honest, decent Irishman who, according to his lights, makes suggestions in the interests of and for the welfare of this country. I believe that the Revenue Commissioners have not been bought by Mr. Butler and I believe that they have considered this matter as experts and economists. Even though we may not agree with their conclusions, we at least must give them credit for honesty of purpose and honesty in the recommendations that they have made to the Minister.
This is an outrageous Budget. It is ridiculous to expect 3,000,000 people to contribute £100,000,000 for administering their own affairs in one year. The Government is largely responsible for the extravagant cost of administration, but the Opposition cannot say that they are blameless. The position that at present obtains has obtained for some years past. We have, on the one hand, Fianna Fáil going around the country promising this, that and the other thing, and, on the other hand, the Fine Gael-Labour Party promising better or as much. This Budget, if it does nothing else, at least serves the purpose of letting the people appreciate the fact that neither the Taoiseach, Mr. de Valera, the ex-Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, nor Deputy Norton, Leader of the Labour Party, has a private gold mine from which to distribute moneys amongst the people. The people now appreciate that all the glorious promises that were made by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party are promises to give the people something that they will have to pay for themselves.
What did you Independents promise them?
I will tell Deputy O'Leary what I promised the people. I told the people from the election platform exactly what I am telling the people in the House to-day, that Deputy Norton had no golden sovereigns in his pocket to distribute to the people; that Deputy Costello had no gold mine from which to distribute generosity to the people; that Deputy de Valera had nothing to give to them except what he took from them, and that he was taking it out of one pocket and putting it in another; that he was charging them for taking it out and he was charging them for putting it back. That is what I told the people and that is what I will tell the people in the future. That is a fact.
That is no secret.
Deputy O'Leary asked what I told the people. That is what I told the people, and that is what I will tell the people again. As long as there is competition between Fianna Fáil and the Fine Gael-Labour Party as to who will give the greatest amount of free this and free that, codding the people that they are giving them something for nothing when the people will have to pay for it eventually, we must expect ridiculous, heavy burdens on the taxpayers.
I believe that the previous Budget was not a sincere Budget. I believe the last Budget introduced by Deputy McGilligan was an election Budget. There were certain charges which Deputy McGilligan fully appreciated should have been met in the last financial year. The Social Welfare Bill was introduced. The Second Reading of that Bill was discussed in this House on 2nd March and yet, in a Budget introduced in May, there was no provision, good, bad or indifferent, for social services.
It was well known that the arbitration board was sitting, which would increase the cost of the Civil Service. I understand that that arbitration board submitted its report in April. Yet, in the Budget in May, there was no reference to or provision for the increased cost that that would impose on the Exchequer.
What was the date of the arbitration report?
Late in April.
What date in April?
I could not tell you. I understand that the decision of the board was available late in April. The Budget was introduced in May, but there was no provision made for the increase that that award would impose on the Exchequer. Even if the report of the board was not available, it was quite obvious that provision should have been made for this commitment which was to be made retrospective.
I want to protest against the attitude of certain Parties who are fomenting and creating industrial strife by their ill-considered statements, having very little regard for the national welfare. They are made to gain a small passing political advantage. I also want to protest against the action of certain papers which are normally known as conservative papers and which are also fomenting that uneasiness and strife in industry.
In my view, this is a harsh Budget, a severe Budget, and I believe that the people should not be asked to provide £100,000,000 to administer the affairs of this country for a year. But if it is defeated, the person who will be most embarrassed will be Deputy McGilligan because he is committed to all the expenditure included in this Budget. After the very clever but indefinite statement of Deputy Dr. O'Higgins that the food subsidies will be reintroduced, that the tax on liquor will be abolished and that the social welfare scheme introduced by Deputy Norton, which Deputy Costello has taken as his scheme and Deputy O'Higgins has called "our scheme" will be put into operation, Deputy McGilligan will be in a very difficult position, if he is already committed to the expenditure — as I believe he is — included in this Budget, if he also has to find money for the more expensive Norton or Fine Gael or, as Deputy Dr. O'Higgins says, "our welfare scheme", and to find money to take the tax off beer, spirits and tobacco and to carry on the food subsidies to the full extent to which they have been carried on in the past.
A number of Deputies complained very seriously about this volume of taxation. But, while they spoke for ten or 15 minutes protesting against it, two minutes afterwards they advocated increased taxation. One Deputy last night bemoaned the fact that it was costing £100,000,000 a year to administer this country, but immediately afterwards he wanted the old age pensions increased to 30/- and the means test abolished. We have heard other Deputies complaining of the serious increase in rates. We have had serious increases in the rates. We have had a number of increases in the rates which were due primarily to Orders made by Deputy Norton and Deputy Costello before they left office after the election was announced. These Orders imposed an additional rate of 1/8 in the £ in County Cork.
There is no use in coming in here and blowing hot and cold. I do not believe there is any difference between the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Parties. I agree with Deputy McQuillan that it is a case of tweedledum and tweedledee. The Minister for Social Welfare, Dr. Ryan, boasts that this year we are spending £22,000,000 on social services. Deputy Costello says that that is not enough, that they would spend more on these services. But he also said at one time that social services are not necessary in this country, that social services are nothing more than a row of medicine bottles. In 1951, Deputy Costello and Deputy Norton were telling us that the country was never better off, that the farmers were never so well off, that the traders in the towns were never so well off—Deputy O'Gorman new tells us that people are coming in to pay bills that were due for years— that there was never less unemployment, that anyone who wanted work could get it, that the country was never so prosperous. Yet at that time Deputy Costello, who feels that social services are a row of medicine bottles, brought in this social service scheme, and he is not now satisfied with the expenditure of £22,000,000 that the Minister for Social Welfare (Dr. Ryan) is boasting he is spending on social services. I cannot see any sense or reason in the attitude of these two Parties. I heard that Deputy Dillon boasted here of spending $5,000,000 in one afternoon, and that his only regret was that he could not spend more. There is a competition in spending between the Opposition and the Government. As long as that continues we can expect severe and harsh Budgets. At one time it was illegal to bribe voters. That was when voters were very limited and there was a certain amount of bribery going on. But a much better system has been found by the big Parties on both sides of the House, and that is to bribe the people with their own money. But it is a most costly affair for the people, and the people are finding that out now when they have to face this Budget.
I believe that the Minister for Finance was wrong in removing the tax on dance halls. It may be true that the cost of collecting that tax was heavy. However as a matter of principle, I feel that the tax on dance halls should be retained, particularly after the letter which the Tánaiste got from the Ballroom Proprietors' Association. I also think that a tax should be imposed on luxury goods. It is all very well for Deputy Briscoe and others to ask what are luxury goods, and to ask what will be the cost of collecting the tax. I believe, as a matter of principle, that if the cost of essential foodstuffs has to be increased, a serious effort should be made to tax non-essentials. I would not go as far as Deputy Corry went and say that the ladies have £5 worth of warpaint on their faces, but I feel that there are various unnecessary commodities, including cosmetics, luxury cars, washing machines and one hundred and one other things that could bear a tax. I do not know whether or not Deputy O'Leary is travelling for Coco Cola, but if he is, this Budget does not seriously affect him. In my view, if essentials are being taxed and the tax on certain non-essentials removed a serious effort should be made to provide whatever revenue could be gathered from luxury and unnecessary commodities.
We have heard a great deal about Marshall Aid. Personally, I have been very nervous about Marshall Aid for a long time and, on more than one occasion in this House, I expressed my doubts about the advisability of Marshall Aid. Two or three years ago, at a meeting of the inter-Party groups, I expressed the same view. "Marshall Aid" is not new. In olden days, people feared the Greeks when they brought gifts. Some years ago the English gave loans to the Egyptians. The result was that they got a strangle hold on Egypt and were able to subjugate the economy of the country. The results of the "Marshall Aid" that was given to the Egyptians a very long time ago are still being felt. Personally, I would not like to see this country pawned to America for a smear of lime. I will deal with this lime question later, however.
The principal reason I got to my feet was because of certain comments that were made by Deputy Dr. Browne, Deputy Hickey, Deputy Corish and others. Deputy Dr. Browne said in Volume 131, column 199, of the Official Report of the 23rd April, 1952:—
"Again, I wonder if there is any attempt on the part of the Government to try to find some way of getting more money from the farmer? ...I think it is unquestioned that the farmer does very well for himself even under this Budget. He gets the advantage of children's allowances and is not very seriously hurt by removal of subsidies on either the bread or the butter. He gets the annual advantage of paying little or nothing in income-tax."
Deputy Corish said in Volume 131, column 350 of the Official Report dated 24th April, 1952:—
"Is not the farmer subsidised for practically everything he lays his hands to, whether it is desirable or not?"
Deputy Hickey referred to the fact that there was an increase in industry and reduced production in agriculture.
I would like to reply to these few points. First of all I will refer to this alleged subsidy for lime that is being given to the farmers. In fact, that is not a subsidy to the farmers. It is a subsidy that was put down in the accounts and given as a subsidy to farmers, but it is very largely, in fact, a subsidy to a bankrupt transport firm. The farmers are getting the name of having this £300,000 of a subsidy on ground limestone which is, in fact, a subsidy to a bankrupt transport company, namely Córas Iompair Éireann. We are told by Deputy Corish that the farmers are subsidised for everything. The reverse, of course, is the case. The price of barley has been depressed to 75/- a barrel in this country. We are prepared to pay the Poles £5 3s. a barrel but we are depressing the price to the Irish farmers to 75/- a barrel. Does Deputy Corish call that subsidisation? The price of milk in this country is 1/4 a gallon while the price of milk across the Border is 38.14 pence per gallon — over 3/2 per gallon. The price of eggs in this country, where we are being subsidised, we are told, is 2/6 per dozen while the price across the Border and in England is 4/6¾d.
What about the price across the counter to the poor person?
I am telling you what the farmer, who is alleged to be subsidised, is getting. He is getting half the price got by his brother across the Border and in England. Yet, the farmer is told that he is being subsidised.
The Deputy will appreciate that my comments were in defence of the principle of subsidy, because there had been critics of the application of the food subsidies.
I will quote what you said from Volume 131, column 350 of the Official Report dated 24th of April, 1952:—
"Is not the farmer subsidised for practically everything he lays his hands to, whether it is desirable or not?"
I am pointing out what the position is with the Irish farmer. He is getting ¼ per gallon for his milk. Where does a subsidy come in there? His brother across the Border is betting 3/2 per gallon. While the Irish farmer is getting 2/6 per dozen for his eggs, his brothers across the Border and in England are getting 4/6 per dozen. The same applies to a lot of other goods. On the other hand, everything which the farmer buys in this country is greater in cost for the simple reason that he has to buy from the protected industries in this country and the price of his requirements is higher than the price of the requirements of the man in the Six Counties and in Britain. Yet, we are still told that we are subsidised.
Deputy Hickey is terribly worried as to why agricultural production has not increased while industrial production has increased to some degree. The sooner we appreciate one fact the better. Irish industrial production has an advantage of a tariff or a tax of from 50 to 100 per cent. and anybody who is producing an industrial product in this country will have protection against the English produced article to the extent of from 50 to 100 per cent.: whereas the reverse is the case as far as agricultural production is concerned. The man producing a gallon of milk in the Republic of Ireland will get 1/4; a man producing a gallon of milk in the six occupied counties or in Britain will get 3/2. Is it not quite understandable then that industrial production, which is put on such a favourable basis, should increase and that agricultural production has remained more or less stagnant?
It seems to be a popular policy at the moment to advocate income-tax for farmers. That is nothing new. It is something that has been thought about by Ministers for Finance for a very long time and Ministers for Finance have thrown it up because they found it is not worth dealing with. I want to point out this, that the farmers of this country are paying colossal taxes. They are paying taxes on every requirement, every raw material that they use in their business. They are paying heavy taxes on that because they can only buy from a small sheltered home market while they must produce their commodities for export in competition with world prices, when they are allowed to do that; but they are not allowed to do that in many cases because there was a serious restriction put on the export of hides. If you take the hide of an animal weighing 50 lb. while it might be sold in the Six Counties or in Britain at 4/- a lb. it was pegged down to 11d. a lb. here in order to give another subsidy to the tanneries of this country.
Apart from that and apart form the taxes they are paying in restrictions on the price of the commodities they produce, which compels them to sell those commodities at less than their world value, in addition they have to pay considerably more for their requirements and they are paying taxes in that direction as well. They are also paying what are called land annuities. There is no such thing as land annuities at the moment. The land annuities so called are purely a land tax and the farmers are paying the land tax because annuities have been finished. They were finished by a certain agreement made by this House. There are no land annuities in existence at the moment and what are called land annuities are nothing else but a land tax.
In addition to that, since this agreement that we made with Britain some time ago and since it was stated:—
"Britain will settle all this land question and they will give us the ports in Cobh on payment of £10,000,000",
the Irish farmers are still paying land annuities. Every beast exported from Ireland is carrying on his tail 5/- per cwt. That never existed until after this arrangement was made. Every fat beast going into England is being paid for at 5/- a cwt. less than is being given for the home produced animal. That is an innovation that was introduced when we were told we were getting rid of the land annuities. The point is that farmers are still paying the annuities in that tax and, as well as paying the annuities in that tax, they are paying the land tax that is called annuities.
Deputy Dr. Browne thought that the farmers were much too prosperous. He said:—
"I think it is only fair that the farmer should pay a fair contribution to the national purse."
I have tried to point out already, in reply to the statement of Dr. Browne, that the farmers are making a very considerable contribution to the national purse. They are also paying considerable sums in the way of rates. It has been suggested that there is a certain rebate in the rates as far as farmers were concerned. There are certain reductions from a huge bill. There is a discount, if you like, given, but the farmer has to pay very considerable rates. The gentleman living in town with an income of £2,000 or £3,000 a year lives in a house with, possibly, a valuation of £15, whereas the farmer who would have an income of £500 a year might have a valuation of £100. The farmers are paying very considerably in the way of rates to the local exchequer.
While Deputy Dr. Browne, Deputy Corish, Deputy O'Higgins and some of the Fine Gael Deputies, and the financial adviser to Fine Gael, Professor George O'Brien, want to increase the commitment on farmers, I would like to read an opinion that was given on the 27th April, published in the Cork Examiner of the 28th April by a very well-known sociologist, that is, Dr. Lucey, Coadjutor Bishop of Cork. His view is:—
"I deplore, above all, the fact that there is no living in farming, the genuine mixed farming of the small holding, or in fishing, comparable with that obtainable in the Civil Service, the professions, industry, commerce and the rest. The young people here are alive to that; hence the flight from the farm. I do not blame them for going. It is the system that is responsible."
That was the statement of Dr. Lucey, Coadjutor Bishop of Cork, speaking in Bantry lately. Dr. Lucey is not a man who is going to talk irresponsibly. He is not a man who does not know what he is talking about. He has been a member of the emigration commission which has not yet presented its report, but Dr. Lucey has the facts and the evidence that was given before that emigration commission before him. As a member of the commission he knows what he is talking about. I am sure the Bishop considered that statement carefully before he made it. That should be an answer to Deputy Dr. Browne, to Deputy Corish and to Professor George O'Brien and to anybody else who feels that the agricultural community are not being taxed heavily enough.
I think the Deputy is doing me an injustice. He may quote me again but I do not think he will gather from it that I was advocating taking more money from farmers by taxation or otherwise.
"Is not the farmer subsidised for practically everything he lays his hand to, whether it is desirable or not?"
Whether subsidisation is desirable or not.
"Deputy Allen: In what way?
Breanndán Mac Fheórais: By way of grant, bounty or premium."
Deputy Lehane stated a few moments ago that some Fine Gael Deputies stated that the farmers were being let off too lightly. He also said that Senator Professor George O'Brien is financial adviser to the Fine Gael Party. I am sure Deputy Lehane will admit that Senator Professor George O'Brien is not a member of the Fine Gael Party. Further, no member of the Fine Gael Party ever advocated that the farmers should be mulcted for income-tax.
Do you want another quotation? Have you ever heard Deputy McGilligan advocating income-tax for farmers? To come back to the Budget, I believe that, generally, the taxation is too heavy on the people. I put a great deal of blame on the Government and I also put a great deal of blame on the Fine Gael and the Labour Parties. I believe that so long as the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party are outbidding Fianna Fáil, and so long as we are auctioning the people to themselves, the only result will be increasingly savage Budgets on the people.
I am perfectly satisfied that we are spending too much money by establishing embassies all over the world. We are sending too many people round to see what is happening in other countries when, in fact, we have plenty to do in the way of cleaning up the mess that exists in our own country. I think there is no justification for the colossal increase in the Civil Service staff in this country. It has been increased in a few short years by about 33? per cent. I consider that we cannot afford to turn ourselves into a State where a big percentage of the people are civil servants.
I believe that this country cannot afford the luxury of a Córas Iompair Éireann. If Córas Iompair Éireann is going to extract millions of pounds from the taxpayer then we shall have to say to Córas Iompair Éireann: "We can do without you because the people of the country cannot afford to provide the millions of pounds that you require for the inefficient manner in which you are operating a service which is of doubtful benefit to the country as a whole." I believe that there are hundreds of ways in which we could economise and that our first economy should be in relation to the presidential establishment. It is important that the President of the country should have all the necessary facilities for carrying out the functions of his office in the proper way. However, when we have to inflict a harsh burden on the people of the country I think we should ask the President to give a headline and that he should take a reduction in the Vote for his establishment. If we are still here after to-day, and if that Vote comes before this House, I intend to move that, as a gesture to the people of the country, the Vote for the President's establishment be reduced.
I cannot put full blame on the Government and I cannot put full blame on the Opposition. So long as there is a competition to buy the people and to buy their votes with the people's money we have nothing to look forward to but harsh Budgets which, ultimately, will have a very serious effect on the poor of this country generally.
I agree with the last speaker in his assertion that the Trade Union Congress statement is the nearest approach to objective criticism of the Budget proposals which, so far, he has seen. The statement by the Trade Union Congress was, I think, the first of the few which sought to make some attempt to indicate to the Minister for Finance how he might explore alternative avenues as a means of obtaining revenue.
It is significant that the Trade Union Congress statement accepted that there was a gap of at least £15,000,000 between expenditure and estimated income at existing tax rates. I do not want to quote what has been said in that document in reference to the £15,000,000 extra taxation.
It would be a good thing to quote it because it has already been misquoted. I have in mind Deputy Briscoe.
Mr. Lynch
I am afraid that I cannot find the quotation at the moment. I think, however, that it can be accepted that the statement took for granted the assessment of the Minister and his financial advisers of the probable gap between estimated expenditure and revenue at existing rates. The Trade Union Congress statement made some attempt to suggest how these extra millions might be brought to account. Despite that fact, the Fine Gael Party, assisted by Deputy MacBride, have tried to indicate that the Minister and his advisers, either deliberately or by accident, have miscalculated to the extent of £10,000,000.
I think that these attempts were largely nefarious tactics in order to undermine the confidence of the people in the institutions of the State, in the institutions that have existed since the inception of the State for the purpose of advising the Government and the Minister for Finance as to what revenue and expenditure might amount to in any particular year. As well as that, I believe it was an attempt to evade answering questions that are now being pertinently asked as to what they would do if they were faced with this gap. By trying to establish that there is no such gap, they can very well say: "There is nothing we need do" but, nevertheless, they have not, in any degree to my satisfaction or the satisfaction of the Independent Deputies or other people who are posing these questions, established that there is a miscalculation to the extent of £10,000,000 or even to the extent of £5,000,000. If they admit that there is a gap even to the extent of £5,000,000 they have not indicated how they propose to make up that deficit.
Frequent reference has been made in the same connection to the statement of the Tánaiste in which he mentioned figures of 5 or 10 per cent. I think it is better that, like the statement of the Trade Union Congress, the statement of the Tánaiste should be quoted in its full context. Speaking on the General Resolution on the 3rd April as reported at column 1290 of the Official Debates he said:—
"At this time of the year, it is not possible to calculate to the last penny the probable cost of a variety of Government services or the probable yield of a number of taxes."
He takes together the cost of services and the yield of taxes and he goes on to say:—
"However our experience suggests that the margin for error is not much more than 5 per cent. one way or the other. Even if we assume that it is in this year as great as 10 per cent. it is obvious that a very substantial addition to the revenue must be secured by higher taxes or alternatively that expenditure must be drastically curtailed."
Right through the tenor of his speech and the context of that statement there is, on the one hand, expenditure and on the other revenue. If there is a mistake to the extent of 10 or 5 per cent. I believe that what the Tánaiste had in mind and what the Revenue Commissioners had in mind was that a mistake on one side would be counterbalanced by a mistake on the other. If it is possible to miscalculate revenue to the extent of 10 or 5 per cent. surely it is possible to miscalculate expenditure to a similar extent? I do not think so much play should be made on that statement of the Tánaiste, particularly in view of the fact that this is a situation which might arise in any particular year. The experience is that one balances the other and therefore generally speaking the Estimates that are given to the Minister must be taken to be as nearly correct as possible.
In addition, it is no harm to remember that we have established a fairly expensive machine for the purpose of making these calculations. I am sure the method of recruitment to whatever staffs are here necessary to make these calculations are very competitive and that only the best brains are allowed into the services. I am not saying that by way of palavering the people concerned. I want to say that these are people trained in statistics, and by reason of achieving that grade and of learning something about statistics, they must necessarily be among the very best mathematical minds in the country.
We recruit these persons into the Civil Service and surely we, as responsible people, must accept their opinions as those of responsible and qualified technicians. Therefore, even though Deputy Costello and Deputy MacBride have had some short experience of Government and the means of examining these accounts in detail, I do not accept for a moment their contention that they feel they can pit their ability against that of the experts employed by the State. Therefore, like the Trade Union Congress and like the vast majority of normal thinking people in this country who are trying to make an honest approach to these Budget proposals, I accept that there is a gap of £15,000,000. Deputy McQuillan as an Independent Deputy, and Deputy Lehane — I did not hear Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll but I think the same statement applies to him — accept that there is a gap and they posed the question to Deputy Costello, the ex-Taoiseach: "What in fact would he do in the event of his return to power in the immediate future, in order to meet this necessary expense?"
First of all, I should like to remind Deputy McQuillan and any other Deputy who expects answers from the ex-Taoiseach that, even on the statement of the Labour Party which was the biggest Party supporting Fine Gael in the Coalition Government, the ex-Taoiseach has no right whatever to speak on their behalf. I assume similarly that he would have no right to speak on behalf of Clann na Talmhan or on behalf of what is left of the Clann na Poblachta Party. Therefore, any statement no matter how categorical, from the ex-Taoiseach or from one of his ex-Ministers, could not be taken, I suggest, as indicative of what any Government that could be formed out of the inter-Party group would do in certain circumstances. They are not in a position to make such a statement, unless before making it, the representatives of the various Parties come together and issue it as a joint statement. As well as that, the Trade Union Congress decided that their parliamentary branch or their parliamentary wing would have no power to coalesce with any inter-Party group without a mandate from the Trade Union Congress or its executive council.
The Trade Union Congress did not come to that decision.
Mr. Lynch
There was a motion passed at the annual meeting of the Trade Union Congress.
Not of the Trade Union Congress.
Mr. Lynch
By the body that controls it.
I merely mention, by way of correction, that it was not the Trade Union Congress.
Mr. Lynch
I accept the correction but I do not think that the truth of what I say can be denied, that whoever controls the Parliamentary Labour Party decided, and has given a clear indication that, from now on, there must be no amalgamation or no coalition with Fine Gael unless they get a clear mandate from the people who really matter in Labour circles.
Or with Fianna Fáil either.
Mr. Lynch
Deputy Larkin, generally considered as one of the most responsible Labour Deputies — and certainly his statements would lead one to that belief — has stated in no uncertain fashion what he thinks of Fine Gael.
And he carried his views with him at the meeting.
Mr. Lynch
He certainly did.
It was not like a certain packed Fianna Fáil convention in Cork.
That is not true.
Mr. Lynch
Seldom we hear from Deputy Keane lately, so perhaps he should be forgiven. Deputy Larkin has stated, as published in the newspapers about a week or ten days ago——
On a point of order. When a Deputy makes a statement and it is refuted by another Deputy, I think the Deputy making the statement should be asked to withdraw. Deputy Keane stated a complete untruth here now.
I made a statement that a certain Fianna Fáil convention was packed against the present Parliamentary Secretary and I shall not withdraw a word of it.
That statement is entirely untrue.
It is certainly totally irrelevant.
It should not be made here.
The statement is totally irrelevant and the Parliamentary Secretary is in possession.
I think the Deputy should be asked to withdraw it.
Mr. Lynch
I think I could deal with this more effectively. Certain allegations have been made and my name has been introduced into the debate. I was connected with only one by-election in Cork and that was the occasion when Deputy McGrath was first elected to this House. On that occasion approaches were made to me to the effect that I might be considered as a candidate for the Fianna Fáil Party. I said I might be interested. I asked who were the other members of the Fianna Fáil Party who were letting their names go forward for selection as candidates at the time and, amongst other names, I was given Deputy McGrath's name. I said I understood that Deputy McGrath had been a member of the Fianna Fáil Party for a considerable time and I said I did not, therefore, feel justified in letting my name go forward. Those are the facts. My name did not appear before that convention and there was no question of packing it against me or anybody else. I think Deputy Keane should now have the decency to withdraw his statement. I have given the true facts.
Deputy Keane will not withdraw one word of it. I did not make any allegations against any individual; I made them against a Party. There was a convention in Cork and it was packed.
On a point of order. The Parliamentary Secretary has refuted the statement and the Deputy now insists that the statement is correct. I think the Deputy should be asked to withdraw.
On a point of order. Before you give a decision, Sir, may I say that the statement was made not against an individual but against a Party? There is no question of withdrawing that.
The statement is a definite untruth.
I do not know whether it is or not, but it was made against a Party and not against an individual.
I know it is untrue and I want to make the position clear.
I am merely making a point of order to the Chair. I am entitled to make a submission to the Chair. There is a distinction between a charge against an individual member of the House and a charge made against a Party.
Naturally such a charge must be taken as against the man who was selected, and that is myself.
Not necessarily at all.
The matter under discussion at the moment is totally irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the motion before the House and arises out of a disorderly interruption by Deputy Keane. The Parliamentary Secretary has pointed out that what Deputy Keane has said is untrue and the Deputy should accept that.
I bow to your ruling, but will the Parliamentary Secretary withdraw what he said with regard to the decision of the Trade Union Congress?
That does not matter.
That is how the question first arose.
The Parliamentary Secretary on the motion.
Will he withdraw?
Mr. Lynch
I have nothing to withdraw.
Neither have I, then.
He said he had nothing to withdraw.
He has already withdrawn the statement.
Mr. Lynch
Deputy Morrissey corrected me on some detail in relation to the manner in which I said a certain resolution was passed, and I accepted his correction. I do not think the principle is in issue; the members of the Labour Party have been directed not to coalesce with any group unless they are given a mandate by all the other trade union groups.
We have our own minds.
Mr. Lynch
I will let it pass. I am sorry that Deputy Keane should try to misrepresent the situation. I have given the facts.
Before the interruption I was dealing with the point as to whether or not there was a gap of £15,000,000 in the moneys to be raised by existing taxation and the sum necessary to meet the present bill of expenditure. Assuming it is necessary to raise £15,000,000, apart from making suggestions as to what other fields of taxation could be explored, the Trade Union Congress suggested that we should budget for a deficit in the coming year and that, as well as that, we should not be alarmed as to whether or not there continues to be a gap in our balance of payments position.
I think both are interrelated. I think there is a relationship between a deficit Budget and permitting an adverse gap in our balance of payments and I suggest that both are in turn linked with the provision of Marshall Aid. Let me illustrate it in this way. When Marshall Aid was first introduced it was introduced deliberately by the Americans because they foresaw in certain European countries a huge deficit in what these countries could collect by way of taxation and the amount necessary to meet the ordinary expenditure of these States.
That was particularly true in the case of Great Britain where the people had parctically spent themselves in providing materials to fight the last World War. Then a new danger arose, a danger to the continuance of American dominance as one of the greatest world powers. The western democracies were menaced by the Soviet Union and America foresaw that England, like all other European countries, could very easily fall a victim to Communism unless certain help was forthcoming from America, she being about the only country that could give such help.
This help was given by way of Marshall Aid. It was given because since the country could not pay its way it was foreseen that investment in industry in that country and in the development of the country generally would practically cease. There is very little likelihood of a bankrupt country, any more than a bankrupt concern, attracting outside capital. In order to preserve a certain balance the Americans presented England with as much as they could afford to bridge the difference between income and expenditure there. That is how I interpret Marshall Aid.
For that reason I maintain that a deficit Budget would be equally bad for this country. It would undermine the confidence of investors and they would cease to invest their money in worth-while projects of capital development. Therefore, unless we could establish ourselves as a credit-worthy nation and one willing to meet its revenue commitments out of revenue resources, it would mean that the present trend towards unemployment would be considerably accentuated in the future, possibly to such an extent that it would subsequently take many years to arrest it.
There is, admittedly, a certain amount of unemployment, more than we have experienced for a considerable time, and more than is good for the country. Nobody denies that. But it is useless to suggest, as attempts have been made here to suggest, that that is entirely due to the fact that Fianna Fáil Ministers made certain forecasts of what our financial position was likely to be at the end of the year when the accounts came to be made up. Deputy Alfred Byrne, who is very anxious to believe anything uncomplimentary about Fianna Fáil, reiterated that point of view this morning. He said that these gloomy forecasts were responsible for a large measure of the unemployment that we have now. He went a little further and quoted the Tánaiste as saying that the people ought to cease buying goods in the hope that prices would be depressed. I think that Deputy Byrne is about right in the effect of his quotation, but that he applied it to the wrong man. If he throws his mind back about four years, he will remember that is exactly what Deputy McGilligan, when introducing his first Budget as Minister for Finance, advised the people to do. He advised the people to cease buying in order to bring down prices. I believe that was the first seed sown in this unfortunate recession of trade which is now being experienced in the country.
It took a long time to develop.
Mr. Lynch
It took some time to develop, certainly, but Deputy Morrissey knows that there was a certain amount of credence given to that statement, and that a certain falling off in purchases by the people took place at that time. I understand from businessmen that that statement did have some adverse effect on sales at the time.
On the contrary, sales were booming.
Mr. Lynch
I am not trying to suggest that that was the total cause of the present rate of unemployment. It has been suggested elsewhere that, even though we were not concerned in the war, we could not escape the natural economic consequences of it. Situated as we are just on the fringe of Europe, we were, to a certain extent, part of Europe's overall economy and, therefore, we could not escape the recession in trade and in employment which has been taking place in England and in Europe and even throughout the whole world. Therefore, this unemployment phase is, I hope, a passing phase. It is a world-wide phase, and I am sure that it is one that is bound to pass within a very short period.
With regard to some other suggestions which were made by the Trade Union Congress, such as the methods by which money could be found, they suggested the reimposition of the excess profits tax. Deputy McQuillan last night read from a book which, I think, is entitled Irish Industry. He said the editorial in that publication was the only statement that he had read in favour of the Budget, and he expected that this publication spoke authoritatively on behalf of a general group of Irish industrialists. So far as I know, that publication is the property of one individual and, generally speaking, it is not accepted by industrialists as being their mouthpiece. That is my information about it. I see that Deputy Morrissey nods approval and so, therefore, I accept that as a fact. Nevertheless, I do not agree that, just because a person happens to be called an industrialist, he is to be the butt of every politician or of anybody who seeks to speak on behalf of working men. If we had not a certain number of industrialists in this country, there would be no working men. Without a certain number of men who had the courage and the initiative to put their money into worth-while industries, employment would be denied to many of our people, and many more of them would be forced to go abroad than are going at the present time.
I am told, too, and I believe, that to reimpose the excess profits tax would put an unnecessary and an undesirable brake on the desire of those industrialists to expand, that there would be no initiative to improve methods of production or to improve overall production in any industry. Without these initiatives and without that improvement in productive capacity, there would be no means of improving the amount of employment to be made available in existing industries.
In addition, I think it is well to point out that it is not all jam and honey for the industrialist who puts his money in jeopardy. I, personally, am aware of a group of Irish industrialists at the present time who are trying to open a new field. They have placed all their available money at the disposal of the company which they are trying to set up. They have pledged almost every shred of their credit and resources, and still find themselves faced with a deficit of some tens of thousands of pounds in order to complete the building of their project. They are at their wits' end to see where the money can be found. I think that if profits are eventually to accrue to those individuals who have sunk their money, their credit and their resources in a worthwhile industry, in an industry that is bound to help the country generally in its overall economy, in bringing down the adverse balance of payments, and, above all, in providing employment for people looking for employment, they are entitled to those profits, and people like them should not be made a butt for irresponsible attacks by anybody, whether inside or outside this House. If, however, undue profits are made because inferior goods are put on the market at too high a price, then by all means let them be taxed; but, generally speaking, there is such competition in trade at the present time that very few commodities find their way on to the market and into the houses of consumers unless they are put there in a competitive form as regards price and quality.
Another method suggested in relief of the present Budget is that we should rely on borrowing. Well, our capital programme for the coming year is of the order of £35,000,000 to be met by way of the loan which it is expected will be floated and from the ordinary savings of people. Well over half that amount will have to be collected from the people to finance these capital projects, but these projects are dependent largely on what can be got from borrowing. I do not think it could be seriously suggested that the sum of this bill of £101,000,000 should be met by some of the moneys which it is hoped to raise by borrowing. No one has suggested that our capital development programme should be cut down. The difficulty will be to find within the capacity of the people sufficient money to finance our capital programme.
Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, making his first appearance in the House since his illness—I am glad to see that he appears to have preserved all his old vigour—made a long speech about the effect of the subsidies. He apparently came into the House in order to try and allay any fears that certain Independents might have with regard to what the Coalition would do with regard to the food subsidies if they got back to power. I listened carefully to him but I could get no categorical statement to the effect that these subsidies would be maintained. I took a note of what he said on the occasion which was to this effect: "So long as we have high prices there should be subsidies and there is more reason for them now than when first introduced." He did not say anything which would satisfy either of the two Independent Deputies who were listening to him that his Party or any Government of which he would be a member would ensure that the subsidies would be maintained.
Plain language must not have any meaning for certain Deputies so.
Mr. Lynch
I listened to the Independents' comments afterwards and, judging by what they said and the questions they put, they were not satisfied that plain language was plain enough for the answers for which they were looking.
That does not necessarily mean that they misunderstood him.
Mr. Lynch
I do not think I misquoted Deputy Dr. O'Higgins. He said:—
"As long as we have high prices there should be subsidies and there is more reason for them now than when first introduced."
He said a lot more than that.
Mr. Lynch
I admit I was out of the House for a while. Deputy Dr. O'Higgins made a few statements which were not quite in accordance with the facts. Deputy Dr. O'Higgins is an astute politician. He is a vigorous speaker and he has the knack of bringing with him and enthusing people who are willing to see his point of view. He apparently enthused those who sat above him to-day but I suggest that in at least one instance he implied that the Tánaiste, Mr. Lemass, before the last general election, made certain statements which he construed as promises which were flagrantly violated and that the Tánaiste had an opportunity of putting them into effect. I refer in particular to a statement attributed by Deputy Dr. O'Higgins to the Tánaiste that there was no reason why we should reimpose these taxes. He was referring, of course, to the taxes on beer, tobacco and cinema seats. There are many ways of misrepresentation but misrepresentation by implication is, I think, one that should not be resorted to under any circumstances. The thing to do is to see exactly what the Tánaiste, Mr. Lemass, was reported as having said at the time. In order to give the statement in its full context I will read it out. I think it will be quite clear what he said and meant when he made the statement attributed to him by Deputy Dr. O'Higgins. Quoting from the Sunday Press of 13th May, 1951, which Deputy Dr. O'Higgins referred to, Deputy Lemass, as he then was, is reported as having said in Cork:—
"A Coalition Minister had said that Fianna Fáil, if elected, would immediately increase taxes on beer and tobacco. That suggestion seemed to emanate from guilty consciences. Why should any increase in taxes be necessary? The Coalition had presented the Budget for the present financial year before dissolving the Dáil. Mr. McGilligan had claimed that it would yield a small surplus of revenue at the end of the year.
If it was an honest Budget based on bona fide expectations of expenditure and revenue working out as Mr. McGilligan had estimated, then it was clear that no further increases of taxation of any kind were necessary. Why then should Coalition Ministers be forecasting a need for higher taxes? No Government would increase taxation for the fun of it. Did they allege that Mr. McGilligan's estimates had been phoney?
Taking it for granted that the Budget Estimates for expenditure and revenue that year were correct there would be no question of an increase in taxation of any kind, much less on beer or tobacco."
Is it not quite clear that the Tánaiste— he was then Deputy Lemass—charged the Coalition Government with estabishing whether or not the Budget which they introduced was, in fact, an honest Budget? He said that on the assumption that expenditure and revenue were as indicated by the Minister for Finance there would be no necessity for an increase of taxation but since the suggestion was made by Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, that Fianna Fáil would reduce these taxes if they got back into power, Mr. Lemass suggested that that intimation came as a result of a guilty conscience and that Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, when Minister for Industry and Commerce, knew well that the Budget proposals were not honest and knew that there was a certain deficit budgeting and if commitments which had been entered into for expenditure were to be properly met that some form of taxation would be necessary. That is what he meant.
That is what he conveyed to the crowd that was listening to him.
Mr. Lynch
That is what he conveyed and I do not think I need read the quotation again. The Tánaiste is a forthright speaker.
The Deputy should not be insulting his own intelligence.
Mr. Lynch
I am certainly not. Any person listening to him would get no meaning other than that which I have applied to it and which I am sure the Tánaiste got over to his public on that occasion.
Particularly when taken in conjunction with the speech of the Minister for Finance.
The people of Cork have receptive minds.
They will have receptive pockets after this Budget.
Mr. Lynch
Deputy Dr. O'Higgins also referred to the policy of the inter-Party Government while they were in power. He said that four successive Budgets were devoted almost entirely to keeping down the cost of living. He said that during that period they faced two threatened strikes in two essential food industries, a strike from the bakers and one from the butchers who were seeking increased prices for their produce. I forget the circumstances of the threatened bakers' strike. I take it that it took place when he said it did and that there was some agitation for increased prices all round. I have certainly a recollection in connection with what happened at the time of the butchers' strike. When Deputy Dr. O'Higgins was Minister for Industry and Commerce, he accepted the butchers' figures that a certain increase was necessary but rather than make an Order that meat was to be a certain price from that date in excess of what the controlled price was and in order not to face criticism which might be forthcoming by permitting an increase in the price of meat, he told the butchers they could go and charge a price which they considered would give a fair profit and even if it did exceed the controlled price there would be no prosecution. Is that an honest attempt to keep down the cost of living? It was certainly not honest and it was certainly not being honest with the butchers or the public.
I would like to refer to one or two other statements I heard uttered during the past few days. Deputy Coburn, speaking last night, made some reference to the unemployment position. He said that Deputy McGilligan, when Minister for Finance during the 1920's, showed great pre-vision in regard to the erection of factories. He said that if his advice had been listened to on those occasions there would not be the same number of factories in the country now working on short time. I think it is well to recall also what Deputy Norton had to say about Deputy McGilligan at that particular time. I have not got the quotation but I can get it if I am asked to produce it. Deputy Norton referred to Deputy McGilligan, who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce, as an industrial tank going around the country levelling one industry after another. I do not think that policy could be referred to in any way as showing vision. If it is vision, it is very bad vision. It showed a complete lack of foresight when more and more industrialisation should be achieved side by side with more agricultural production.
I said I believed that the recession in trade we were experiencing, which is a world-wide trend and which is largely responsible for much of the unemployment we are suffering from, is bound to pass. Industrialisation is proceeding apace in this country. New factories are being built and methods to develop the resources of our country are being devised and put into effect. This Government have a big scale capital development programme in hands. The rural electrification programme is being pressed forward. Side by side with that and part and parcel of it is the development of our turf resources. In one instance alone it is hoped in the course of a couple of years to give employment to at least 800 people in developing bogs and preparing them for two generating stations which it is hoped to erect in County Mayo, one of the areas in which employment is most needed by the people. Our fisheries are being expanded. Then we shall have the social welfare scheme which was publicised, I should say, by the Coalition Government but never brought into effect.
I could refer to many more projects and many more developments which the Government have achieved and which they have in hands which will increase the resources of the country and the productive capacity of the country. But, as a forerunner of all of them, we must have an honest Budget and honest financing of the country. We must be able to show investors, whether from at home or abroad, that we are a credit-worthy country, that we are able to pay our way and that we will not try to dupe people into thinking that we can have everything by way of social services and other amenities such as drainage, housing, hospitalisation, unless we can afford to pay for them. I agree that a certain amount of capital expenditure is necessary to finance some of them, but there are many recurring items of expenditure which must be met out of revenue. Unless they are met out of revenue, people who have money to invest in the country will not be prepared to do so. Unless we can get investment in the country, investment based on confidence in the country to pay its way and to see that the country is properly developed, unemployment will not only increase but will go to such an extent that the very existence of our population will be in jeopardy.
The policy of deluding the people into the belief that we are better off than we are really will eventually lead to the destruction of our economy, to the undermining of our credit and of our reputation at home and abroad to the detriment of the country in the long run. Therefore I believe that the people are willing to bear a certain amount of hardship at present. They appreciate now more than ever that, if certain benefits are to be given, it is the people themselves who will have to pay for them. The Government have no hidden sources from which to find the necessary money to finance expenditure on the capital resources of this country. It is true that the poor people will have to pay more for bread, sugar, tea and butter.
Is not that a sad state of affairs, after all these years?
Mr. Lynch
That is one side of the picture that has been presented from the other side of the House. It is one side of the picture presented by Deputy Dr. O'Higgins. It was in order to present the other side of the picture that I mentioned it now. Deputy Dr. O'Higgins said that the dual-price system was introduced to relieve the poorer section of the people. Can any Opposition Deputy point out to me any poor family which did not on some occasion or another, and I believe more frequently than they would care to admit, have recourse to buying at the higher prices? Tea had to be bought when there were certain shortages of rationed tea. Butter had to be bought at the higher price and, particularly in the rural areas, bread had to be bought to an extent that imposed a great burden on the people.
It was not as cruel as it was when these had to be bought in the black market.
Mr. Lynch
Bread at the Government increased price had to be purchased by bog workers, agricultural workers and road workers because they could not get sufficient of it at the rationed price.
They were paying £1 for 1 lb. of tea under Fianna Fáil.
Deputies must allow the Parliamentary Secretary to proceed.
Mr. Lynch
I am sure it will not be denied that there were no families, even city families, that did not have occasion frequently to go into the Government black market to purchase necessary commodities. I live in an area in County Cork which is not very wealthy. There are very few families there who did not have occasion to resort to this means of keeping enough food on the table. They will now get their food and they will not have to pay black market prices.
As well as that, in order to present a true picture, it should be remembered that subsidies naturally had to be provided by the people themselves. It cannot be denied that poor people were providing subsidies for wealthy people who did not have occasion to buy bread, tea or butter to the same extent as the poor people. Deputy Dr. O'Higgins said that bread and butter were the staple diet of the poorer section of the people. That is true. But many of the richer families could afford to buy alternatives and they often bought far less than the amount of the weekly ration permitted them to buy because they could buy other more expensive means of sustenance. Therefore, the obligation of the poor people to pay subsidies for the rich people's food will be abolished.
In addition to that, we have the increased social welfare benefits which will come into operation simultaneously with the proposal to remove the subsidies. I have some figures here which I worked out. Accepting that the average family in this country is a family of husband, wife and four children, a working man, an insured man, is getting £13 per year by way of children's allowances. After the 1st July, he will get £27 6s. per annum, which is more than 100 per cent. increase, and which I think everybody will agree is a rather substantial increase. An unemployed man with four children at present gets £1 4s. for himself and his wife and 2/6 extra for two of his four children, bringing his weekly income to £1 9s. From 1st July onwards he will get 2/10 for himself and his wife and 10/6 for his four children, 2/6 for the second and 4/- each for the third and fourth, bringing a weekly income to £3 0s. 6d.
How many pounds of butter would he want?
Mr. Lynch
Deputy O'Leary will agree that that is a very substantial increase—from £1 9s. to £3 0s. 6d. Of course, he will not agree that it is enough but it is an increase of more than 100 per cent., which surely goes more than halfway in offsetting whatever disadvantages he will suffer by the withdrawal of food subsidies. I am sure he will agree with me that they are the weaker sections of the community and those are the people to whom assistance should be given out of any revenue that the State is bringing in. If the food subsidies have to go he must agree that the benefits given in these particular instances are far better than the maintenance of food subsidies.
But the rich man gets the same in children's allowances.
Mr. Lynch
All the rich man gets is children's allowances. He will not get the same by way of increased social benefits generally because he will not qualify for them.
There will be no rich man left.
Mr. Lynch
The Deputy is not that innocent. Referring to the rich man reminds me of a point I intended to make and omitted to make, and that is in reference to income-tax and excess profits tax. The net result of the income-tax proposals in this Budget is that almost £1,000,000 extra per annum will accrue to the Exchequer. I think it is a significant fact that 170,000 people will have to pay considerably less income-tax in the current financial year. One hundred and seventy thousand out of a total of 188,000 people must surely imply that the ordinary person will get the benefit and only the wealthy persons will have to pay. But included in the 18,000 people will be the big farmers who will, perforce of these impositions, have to pay more out of their annual profits; therefore, to impose excess profits tax on top of this increased taxation on these 18,000 people, amongst whom are these big farmers, would tend to cripple any initiative that might be left to those farmers to expand production and provide employment.
There are many other matters I could refer to but I am sure I would be covering much the same ground as has already been covered, but by and large, I believe that even though some extra taxation has been imposed, the people are willing to bear their share. They do not want to pass burdens on to posterity. Deputy Hickey said yesterday that borrowing did not mean prosperity or would not bring prosperity or something to that effect, if he was properly quoted in the papers to-day. The people realise that the nation's housekeeping account is much like their own housekeeping account. Outgoings must be paid for so far as possible from current income, otherwise a state will have been reached when the house can no longer exist. That state could soon be reached and I believe sooner than we could expect if past trends had been continued, if we continued to live out of borrowings and put our country in jeopardy by way of political or other ties.
What about the £15,000,000 we are paying in interest on loans?
Mr. Lynch
Deputy Hickey is a much greater financier than I am and I should like to hear him tell us sometime how he proposes to harness credit in this country.
We would want to be in control of it first.
Mr. Lynch
The Deputy is expert in attacking the present system but I have never heard a sound proposal from him as to how the present system can be changed.
We must get control of it first.
Mr. Lynch
It is very easy to criticise but to cure the ills is another matter. However, this Budget is an honest attempt to cure the ills from which we are suffering at the present time. It is an honest Budget and a fearless Budget. It is not trying to hoodwink the people. There is no attempt to make them feel they are better off than they really are. The people realise it is an honest Budget, a genuine attempt to put our economy on an even keel, and I believe the people who are now opposed to it will come to realise that and will feel the benefits accruing to them.
I have listened to or read most of the speeches which have been made on this resolution during the past ten days. We appear to be agreed that this Budget is a very severe Budget. Every person on all sides of the House will agree on that. But we disagree as to the necessity for it. The main argument for it by the Government is that it was necessary on account of the spending of its predecessors. That appears to be the main argument of the Government speakers. Let us cast our minds back over the past 12 months. After all, we are living in a democracy and, prior to the introduction of a Budget, a Book of Estimates is published which members on all sides of the House have an opportunity of studying. I remember when Deputy McGilligan introduced his Budget last year I never heard a word of criticism from the then Opposition—
There was no opportunity, Deputy. You remember, there was a general election.
Even bearing that in mind, I never heard on the public platform or in this House a word of criticism about the spending of that Government, but I did hear a lot of criticism about its lack of spending of money on arms, police force, luxury hotels, transatlantic airlines, and about the high cost of living. These were the main arguments of the then Opposition against the Budget of 1951. Prior to the present Government taking up office and after the general election, the Government published their policy, and I now quote from the Irish Press of 5th June, 1951, point 15 of that policy: “To maintain subsidies, to control the price of essential foodstuffs and the operation of an efficient system of price regulation for all necessary and scarce commodities”. That was immediately prior to their taking office.
The present Minister for Finance then knew what was budgeted for in Deputy McGilligan's Budget of 1951 and despite that fact he still said, on 5th June, 1951, that they would continue subsidies. If the Minister was honest, immediately he took over office he would have introduced a Supplementary Budget if he found there was underestimation in the 1951 Budget. But he did not do that and we never heard one word of complaint about subsidies or otherwise until the Central Bank Report was issued. Then, of course, Deputy Lemass, the Tánaiste, warned us and prepared us in many ways for the hardships which are now being imposed upon us. I remember reading in the Irish Independent of the 15th May, 1951, an extract from a speech made by the present Minister for Finance, then Deputy MacEntee:—
"A number of people in the licensed trade were spreading the rumour that if Fianna Fáil were returned to power the tax imposed on drink by the Supplementary Budget of 1947 would be reimposed. There is no truth in such a rumour."
We find just now that not only have the taxes of the 1947 Supplementary Budget been reimposed but that, in many respects, they have been doubled. Yet, we are asked to accept the fact that this is a courageous Budget. I say that it is a dishonest Budget. The Minister was aware of the position in 1951 and he should have exposed it if what he states now is the truth. We have also been told that there has been no constructive criticism from this side of the House. One person to whom relief has been given is the dance hall proprietor. The excuse put forward for that is that it cost too much to collect the revenue which was obtained from this tax.
In my opinion, there is a simpler method of collecting that tax, and that is by increasing the duty on the licence issued to the dance halls through the District Court. I feel that if the Revenue Commissioners had every dance hall in this country revalued, imposing a stamp duty on the dance hall proprietor when the licence is renewed in September, and had that imposition in proportion to the poor law valuation of the hall, a considerable amount of revenue would be brought in. Further, we would be making the proprietor of the hall pay —the person deriving the revenue—and not the partisan. The Revenue Commissioners could use their old trick and ask the solicitors to collect the tax, and it would not cost the State anything.
Take the box of matches. I am sure there is nobody who would object to pay an extra halfpenny per box. There would be no outcry, and a considerable amount of revenue would be derived from that source also.
I feel that bicycles should also be taxed. I know the argument will be raised that it would cost too much to enforce the law whereby each cyclist would have to take out a licence. I think it would be a simpler method of collecting the tax if the Revenue Commissioners made the assembler or the manufacturer pay 10/- or £1 on every bicycle manufactured or assembled. Nobody would object. One only buys a bicycle now and again.
You would have to buy one every day in order to bring in any money.
We cannot afford to snigger at these things, because they are all bringing in money. A considerable number of bicycles are manufactured in this country, and if a tax of £1 or 10/- were imposed on each, something would be done to ease the burden of the poor taxpayer.
I think it is outrageous that beer should be taxed. I am in full agreement with the tax imposed on spirits. It is a luxury drink and, in my view, it could bear even higher taxation. I think it is very unfair that the working man must pay more for his pint of beer or ale. We could surely have left that as it was. The present Minister for Finance gave a guarantee that he would leave it as it was before the 1947 Supplementary Budget.
In my view petrol could bear a higher tax. Hackney men and other such people should get a certain ration but once that ration had been exceeded the increased price should be paid for any surplus petrol required.
I would like to say to the Minister that this Budget has done more harm, and will do more harm, to the congested areas in Ireland, and particularly to the Gaeltacht areas. It has done more harm and will continue to do more harm to the question of emigration than has been done for the past 25 years. In the majority of the congested areas in this country, there is a lack of employment. How are the inhabitants of these areas going to bear the additional burdens imposed upon them as a result of this Budget? I am afraid emigration will be their only solution. I feel that something should be done by the Minister to encourage our emigrants to remain at home. This Budget will only give them an excuse for leaving the country.
I must say that from the moment the Minister for Finance sat down on the 2nd April, the members of the Opposition come out from their corners fighting from the word "go." I must give them credit for not having pulled their punches. Some of them have hit a few low blows.
The Deputy is still in the ring.
I play the game in the ring too. The Opposition tried very hard to hammer people groggy by their shock tactics. However, the people outside did not need to have great recuperative powers to recover from these attacks because they realised that the Opposition were not fighting a clean battle. The people outside realised that the Opposition were not fighting for the country's interests but only fighting for their own political advantage. I could keep on that subject for quite a long time.
Take, for example, the tactics of Deputy Dunne. He would like us to believe that the people who walk down Westmoreland Street have criminal minds and that if they look at a picture in the Irish Times window they can read backwards. One of his main contributions in this discussion was that the people who would look at a photograph could read backwards or upside down. He accused the Minister for Finance of being a very vain man. However, it is well known that he was seen in the corridor with this famous photograph in his hand. I take it he was arranging to have his own photograph taken, and it appeared that night.
That incident has been disposed of.
The Deputy reminds me very much of a certain Irish heavyweight boxer.
I am sorry to interrupt the story but will the Deputy move to report progress.
I move to report progress.