Last Friday, intermittently and between the antics of house-gathering, I was endeavouring to address myself to the subject-matter of this motion. To view this White Paper and its implications, it is necessary to analyse in a general way the economic structure conceived by the present occupant of the Department of Finance and at the same time to point out in a demonstrably clear way how far wrong the assumptions were and how far-reaching and devastating in fact were the repercussions.
This White Paper, in itself, must have the criterion of truth. In its tables, in its general information with regard to figures and statistics, one accepts without qualifications the basis of truth. But the quarrel in the whole presentation of this paper and in the general atmosphere that surrounded its presentation was the completely erroneous conclusions that were come to by the Minister. So erroneous and so unreal were these conclusions that we press the view that the very nature of this error, the very magnitude of the mistake that could be made on these assumptions, disqualifies the present occupant from being worthy of or capable of holding his office. We had the insistent wails, taken up in chorus by those on the Government Benches, prognosticating doom and ruin. It is true that the devil can quote scripture for his purpose. In this case, I submit to the House that figures were deliberately twisted and distorted and that inferences were drawn from figures for the purpose of creating a false premise on which the Minister for Finance based his hair-shirt policy and his appeal to the Irish people to eat less, drink less and, in fact, to depress their general standard of life.
One may feel sympathy for the Minister in the resentment he might have felt at the unqualified and unparalleled success of the previous three years' administration. One might feel sympathy for the chagrin that must have permeated his being when he realised the impetus of expansion that was left as the trail of successful government— government that envisaged the needs of all sections of the community, government that embarked on a policy of immense national capital development and based its financial approach on the theory that Irish money was best and most properly invested at home in the development of Ireland itself whether it be in the building of houses for its citizens, in the continued expansion of rural electrification, in improved drainage, in increased afforestation or in other projects of national magnitude. I know that that was a deep source of torment to the present Administration. However, one has to analyse here in a realistic way the assumptions that it led to.
The kernel of the Minister's doctrine was that there could not be any appreciable expansion of exports. Never was a statement so false and never was it made on so slight a premise, because the exact contrary has been the case. It is true that the Minister may— through particular glasses coloured by spite and hate—have taken a distorted view of the work of the previous Minister for Agriculture, but the facts are now abundantly clear. The impetus given in agriculture has manifested itself in an unprecedented and unparalleled expansion of exports. The full extent of that expansion can be seen only now because, of necessity, there must be a delay in the coming to light of the full value of the impetus which was given. The Minister did not seem to appreciate the fact that Deputy Dillon, the predecessor of the present Minister for Agriculture, re-established Irish agriculture on a firm basis. We were having an expansion of live stock in the country and the pig industry, which had disappeared, was re-established on a sound basis. All the caterwauling and all the wails of Deputy Corry about various trade agreements were to fall to nought and we were to see reflected, not only in statistics but in actual financial returns, an increase of earnings by the agricultural community that reached an unprecedented height.
The Minister started, on the basis of this document, a campaign to reduce consumption. He took the view —we may say erroneously, even maliciously erroneously—that the Irish people were eating too much, that they were looking too well and that their standard of life was too good. He set about putting his dead hand on the Irish people. He immediately depressed imports—imports that we suggested here in a realistic way would find their own readjustment. The period of scarcity that had arisen from emergency and war conditions had passed and, with the expansion of our own exports, we would find coming automatically in a short period an adjustment of the balance as between imports and exports, and there was no need for alarm.
We in the Opposition asserted and fearlessly asserted our belief in the capacity of the Irish people themselves, working on the land of Ireland, to right the whole situation by their own productive effort. Thanks be to God, here, in the realism of the atmosphere before us now, on a factual analysis of the results, our faith has been more than justified. Once again, the economy of this country has been righted in the main through the effort, the industry and the increased productivity of the land of Ireland by the people working on the land and getting their living from it.
This motion gives us an opportunity of analysing the fallacies of the economic conception of the Government. The trail of misery that it has left behind is pathetic. It is infinitely pathetic to us here in Opposition when we realise that it is unnecessary and that it is a hardship that should not have been inflicted on the Irish people. We say that the results that have flown from this document, the keystone of the economic fallacies of the present Government, have been rising unemployment, a depressed standard of living, depressed consumption, increased part-time employment, trade recession and all the various other attributes that must inevitably flow when the Government and the Minister responsible for the national purse takes the line of a doleful Jimmy.
We say now that, in the light of what happened, there was no need to retard the expansion that the previous Government had envisaged. There was no need to check the gathering strength and impetus to improve not only production but to wrest in a realistic way with the problem of housing, the problem of social development, the problem of general internal improvement in the conditions of the people and the general standards of life.
We say that but for the gloomy prognostications arising initially out of speeches made by the Minister for Finance apropos of this document, there would have been no necessity for the unprecedented rise in unemployment, no necessity for the slowing down of housing or no necessity for any Minister for Finance to have to go to the people of this country for a national loan at the rate of interest which the Minister recently had to offer. We asserted here at the period when this document was presented to both Houses of the Oireachtas that the Minister was deliberately endangering and imperilling the possibility of getting that loan. We say that this document, followed as it was by the Central Bank Report and then by the bludgeoning savage Budgets, has had the effect, has, in fact, been the root cause, of forcing the Minister to offer such attractive terms for the biggest national loan ever offered. At the same time, it has had its reaction in making the price of borrowed money for all persons very much higher, and, as we contend, far in excess of the rate they should be asked to pay. Despite the wails of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs about standing armies in England, we protested vehemently to the Government that there was no need to slow up the repatriation of foreign assets when they could be repatriated for the purpose of giving an impetus to projects of capital development at home.
We know now, only 12 months afterwards, that this Government, where it had not the courage to abandon the schemes envisaged by the last Government, initiated a "go slow" policy. We know that application after application for inspection and review under the land rehabilitation scheme is held up on technical hitches and that there is a delay in the forward impetus of liming and rehabilitation of land. We can see from the rising unemployment in the building trade that there has been a definite depression and "go slow" policy in that trade. We know, and it is a fact that even the Government themselves cannot get over, that, from the time they took office, from the time the economic policy announced by the Minister for Finance on the wrong assumptions and the wrong inferences drawn by him from that document came into being, this country has suffered difficulties and recessions in trade which are virtually unparalleled in its history.
All the assumptions of the Minister were based as I said before, on the conclusion that there could not be a rapid expansion of exports. Many tawdry excuses were used in this document to suggest that it would be unwise to draw this conclusion or that conclusion. Even the strike that was temporarily in being at the ports was used to justify the statements that it would not be safe to take the figure in September as a reliable one. All these prognostications have been proved completely false. We have reached the extraordinary position in this country that for the first time in our history exports are going to be well over the £100,000,000 mark. If this Government had realistically faced up to the fact that the Irish farmer was geared up to expand, that the farmer and his helper on the land, having improved and better conditions, were geared up to make a bigger contribution to the national effort then we could have expanded exports even more rapidly. Instead we had this woeful dallying, this succession of lachrymose prognostications by the Minister for Finance with the Tánaiste following him, and, of course, the ever-increasing wails of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs who has set himself up, apparently, as the economic genius or who purports to be the economic genius, behind this queer facade of omniscience.
The sooner this Government realise that the inferences drawn from the White Paper have brought about the state of affairs where a working-class district like North-West Dublin can give the answer it did to the Government a week ago, the better for themselves. If they are to stay in office and I believe personally they will endeavour to stay there as long as possible, we urge from the Opposition Benches here that they should get somebody more worthy to fill the office of the Minister for Finance than the present occupant. We say that the very basis and the very conclusions drawn by him from the figures set out in this paper disqualify him from holding the high office he does. The present Minister has occupied many offices in the Government of this State from time to time but none with less distinction than he has displayed in the one he occupies at present. We say that, in the main actuated by spite because of the success of the previous Administration, the Minister for Finance has set about the task of bludgeoning the Irish people, depressing their standard of living, deliberately decreasing their consumption and deliberately creating an atmosphere so unreal that it took a by-election in a working-class district to extract the real answer of the Irish people.
I am not going to labour this motion any further. I can appreciate Deputy Briscoe's anxiety to get in. I would not be here this evening talking on this motion if a reasonable opportunity had been given to me on Friday to say what I have now said. I want to say that, in the light of all that has happened, it is full time for the Minister now occupying the office of Minister for Finance to recant, if he has any sense of public duty, and to vacate that office because every conclusion drawn by him has been completely erroneous. The sooner we get the opportunity of putting the Irish people back on the road to expansion and development and of putting Irish boys and girls back into employment in Ireland, and of arresting the present trends, the better it will be, not only for the Ireland of to-day, but for the Ireland of to-morrow.
