On the last day I was discussing the lack of progress under the Undeveloped Areas Act. I want to impress on the Minister now the absolute necessity that exists for having that Act reviewed at this stage in the light of our experience over the past year. In so far as the Act has failed to come up to expectations in establishing industries in these areas, we should now review the whole situation and see how far the Bill can and should be amended. I believe that there is room for amendment. Might I suggest that while the principle contained in the Bill might be retained— that the initiative should come from the particular locality or from the people of the locality to establish an industry — it should have over-all power in respect of areas from which the initiative or the necessary capital may not be forthcoming through no fault of the people there. In so far as the Bill is framed to assist industries which would be proposed on the initiative of the local people—people with the necessary capital or the necessary experience and the enthusiasm to go ahead——
Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946 (Continuance) Bill, 1952—Second Stage (Resumed).
The Deputy is really discussing a measure which has had the approval of the House.
Yes, but I do not think——
That is a peculiarly irregular way of doing it.
I am pointing out that the failure of this particular measure to come up to the expectation of the House is a cause for unemployment, poverty and hardship, all of which should be remedied by the Bill. It is one method——
The discussion of this measure has been wide beyond the rules of relevancy. To discuss on this measure a Bill which has had the approval of this House is entirely irregular and cannot be sustained.
My purpose was to offer some useful suggestions to the Minister which might help to alleviate the poverty and hardship that is occurring in certain areas. Lest it should be the cause of widening the debate to the point of irrelevancy, I shall not pursue the matter except to repeat what I said here last year. The development of forestry in these areas is a matter to which the Government should give full attention. It can help to stop the flight from the land and it can help to stop emigration. It can help to bring work into areas which cannot be catered for by any other measure that has been passed in this House.
I should like to remind the House of what has happened in North and South Mayo in respect of three forests which were established there during my time in office. The same could apply to many country areas where other industries may not be established or where, perhaps, it would not be possible to make them a commercial success if they were established. In the course of a reply to a parliamentary question which I put down, the Minister for Lands informed me on the 5th November last, as will be seen from column 896 of the Official Report, that the amounts paid in wages in Lough Carra, Doolough and Nephin Beg forests, from the dates of establishment up to the 30th September, 1952, are:—
|
Lough Carra forest |
£9,843 |
7s. |
10d. |
|
Doolough |
£5,728 |
18s. |
4d. |
|
Nephin Beg |
£3,926 |
19s. |
6d. |
I think it is fairly easy to reduce unemployment in towns and cities. It may not, however, be so easy to devise a means of reducing unemployment or of providing employment in certain rural areas. If the Minister and the Government are seeking a solution of the unemployment problem I suggest that the Minister for Lands has the answer to it and that it will be of twofold benefit. On the one hand it will help to wipe out or to reduce unemployment in certain areas where no other industry can come to the rescue and, on the other hand, the State is establishing for itself a crop of timber which in a short time will be of immense value to the country. At present, the value of our imports of timber is in the neighbourhood of £8,000,000 per annum. If we devoted more attention to forestry, that figure could be reduced considerably in a short period of time and would confer immense benefit on the country.
The cost-of-living index has now reached 122 points as against 102 points less than two years ago. That represents an increase of 20 per cent. Quite definitely, the Government is in large measure to blame for that increase in the cost of living by reason of the fact that they have no policy. The last general election was fought on the question of an increase in the cost of living. I think it would not be out of place to ask the Minister now to mention, when he is replying, any single article of food, or any article that is taken into account in compiling the cost-of-living index, which increased in price during the period of office of the inter-Party Government with the exception of butter which went up 2d. a lb. and petrol which went up——
Bread. It went up twice. Orders were made on two occasions to increase the price of bread during the term of office of the Coalition Government.
By how much?
One farthing a loaf.
A stupendous increase. A crippling increase on the working man. Before being returned to office, it was stated that the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party was to bring down the cost of living. In particular, the people of Dublin appear to have been misguided and misled in that respect. They understood that if the Fianna Fáil Party were returned to office not alone would the cost of living be stabilised but it would be reduced. Their rightful anger at being taken-in and duped has been portrayed in the result of the by-election which was held in North-West Dublin a few weeks ago. They showed then, quite clearly, that they did not want to be taken-in. It is possible that some increase in the cost of living might have taken place even if the inter-Party Government had been returned to office but there would not have been an increase, as there is to-day, to 122 points as compared with 102 points in February, 1951.
What was the index figure in May, 1951?
What was it?
109 points. It went up seven points in the last three months of the Coalition Government.
I will take the Minister's word. However, even the increase from 109 points to 122 points is a very steep increase for the working man. Is the Minister behind his colleague, the Minister for Finance, or is it Government policy now that the ordinary working man must pay income-tax? Is the Minister aware that county council workers in Mayo have been assessed for income-tax and are compelled to pay it on £4 a week? I should like to hear the views of some of the Labour Deputies in that respect. This is the first time in the history of our country that the working man has had to pay income-tax.
Qualify that statement. Do you not mean road worker?
Yes. He is working for the county council to-day. If that work should cease he might go into the Forestry Department and get the same wage there, or he might go to work for a farmer for the same wage. In any case he is billed for income-tax. Nurses in county hospitals in every single county all over the country have also been served with assessment forms and have got to pay through the nose.
I want to point out that that policy of squeezing absolutely the last drop of life-blood from every citizen in the State, which now appears to be the policy of the Government—not a single class appears to escape — is all wrong. Even at this late hour I would suggest that the Government should examine the policy which was pursued by the inter-Party Government. They should remember that the country is pretty much the same all the time. They have to deal with the same people, the same land, the same workers, the same towns and cities and the same weather that the inter-Party Government had to deal with. What is puzzling everybody is how this sudden change has come about in the short space of 16 or 18 months. While we were in office our policy was assailed here. That policy was to give the greatest possible measure of employment and to provide as decent wages as the taxable capacity of the country could afford, to put money into circulation and to induce our young men and women to engage in the task of rebuilding the country. The country is not ours, nor does it belong to Fianna Fáil. The country belongs to every single citizen of the Twenty-Six Counties.
I think our approach to the problem was the correct approach and the policy pursued by the present Government for the past 18 months has proved that it was the correct approach. Every man and woman down the country, even diehard supporters of Fianna Fáil, now admit that ours was the correct approach. The present Government apparently believes in freezing the life-blood of the nation —in slapping down increased taxes upon those in receipt of wages and in taxing food and the necessities of the people generally. I say that is a wrong and a disastrous policy and the people will not have it. They are emigrating to countries where conditions like these do not exist and where there is not such a tyrannical Government in power. Time has shown that the inter-Party policy was the wise policy. The people of North-West Dublin have proved that and I have no doubt that the people of North Mayo and Waterford would have given the same verdict had they known what the full effect of the Budget meant. These two by-elections took place within a short period after the Budget was introduced and before the full impact of the Budget was felt but the people know it now.
They took place at the time you selected and which you thought would give you the greatest advantage.
It does not matter who selected the time; the people had not felt the full impact of the Budget at that time but the people of North-West Dublin had felt the impact of the new taxation and they have given their verdict. Might I point out to the Tánaiste that in my hearing some of the Government speakers in the North Mayo election said: "Oh, this Budget will never come into operation?"
What did you say?
That is the type of propaganda that fooled innocent decent people.
They are not as innocent as all that in North Mayo.
Fianna Fáil supporters there could scarcely believe their ears but they were anxious to clutch at any straw and they did believe that but the Dublin people did not believe it. The people of North Mayo and of Waterford would not have accepted it if they had had more opportunity to reflect. Now they know that the steep increase in the price of food is a real danger to their existence. I do think that the change in the people's attitude will serve a very useful purpose and that is that Fianna Fáil will think twice in future before they seek power on false promises— promises which they have no intention of fulfilling.
I want to say that a new Party, full of enthusiasm and with the desire to turn the country into a Utopia, might possibly be excused for making false promises, but here we have a Party who had 16 years of Government, who knew exactly what the taxable capacity of the country was and they cannot be excused for the propaganda in which they indulged during the elections. If one goes into any shopkeeper, big or small, or to any man engaged in industry at the present time, they have all the one complaint: The bottom has fallen out of their business completely and trade is stagnant. Every single phase of life and business in the country has been attacked and undermined by the policy of the present Government.
Might I repeat what I said a moment ago, that the policy of the inter-Party Government is well worthy of consideration now when the opposite extreme is being tried out. I suggest in all seriousness to the Government that they have got to change their policy, that they have got to adopt a policy which will give employment to our young people at home and utilise taxation for the purpose of rebuilding and developing our country, which is sadly behind the time in many respects. There are immense schemes of development still awaiting to be carried out even before we get level with many of our neighbours. It would be well, even at this stage, to go back to the policy of the inter-Party Government and to examine the whole position anew. Our young people who are being forced to emigrate are willing to work at home if work is provided for them.
There are very few anxious to leave the country if work could be provided for them at home but the flight from the country was never as great as it is at the moment. Simply because the passport regulations have been eased off, no statistics are now available as to the extent of emigration but anybody who watches the trains, particularly from the West, from my county and neighbouring counties in the springtime, or even now when some of these people are returning for Christmas, will know exactly what the position is. Train-load after train-load, bus-load after bus-load, is leaving the country. These young people are being deliberately forced out of the country. There is no other expression for it.
The official figures for unemployment have gone up by 10,500 in the last year. We could add another 5,000 to that so that the correct figure would be about 15,000 because I understand that roughly 5,000 more young men have been taken into the Army in the last eight or nine months. As a result of Government policy the only hope left to our young men is to join the Army or to emigrate. There is no opening outside the Army for these young men to take part in the work of rebuilding the country or to earn a decent wage in the development of their own country. I should like the Tánaiste to let the House know whether that is the policy of the Government. The Army, no doubt, provides an honourable profession for some of our young men and an army of a certain size is necessary even when the world enjoys peace, but I do not think it is wise to offer enlistment in the Army as the only means of providing employment or occupations for all our young men. I believe that many of our young men would be much better employed building up the country — doing forestry work, in factories, in Land Commission work and in a thousand and one ways besides.
Speaking on this measure last year, I uttered a warning to the present Minister. The Government at the time was seeking an increase in agricultural production. We are all trying to do that. The Minister mentioned that it was necessary to increase our exports. Our principal exports from this country are in the form of agricultural produce of one kind or another. Agricultural produce is our major export. I warned the Minister at that time that, if an increase in agricultural exports was to be brought about by lowering the standard of living of our own people, I for one would oppose it. What I suspected then has since come about. The methods that have been employed by the Government are quite plain. These are to tax the people. In other words, to completely deprive them of the power to buy our own home-produced food. That action of the Government, since the Budget was introduced, has deprived our own people of the power to buy our own home-produced food. In August last, for the first time, exports and imports just balanced each other. That position was brought about, to a certain extent, by depriving our own people of the power of being able to buy our own agricultural produce. That is a desperate state of affairs.
There has been a good deal of talk about increased agricultural production. How have we gone about it? During the time of the inter-Party Government genuine and businesslike efforts were made to increase agricultural production. One of the greatest schemes ever undertaken to do that was the land rehabilitation scheme which aimed at bringing into production 4,500,000 acres of the land of this country which previously had been completely useless. That scheme has been slowed down by the present Government.
I suppose the fact that it was introduced by Deputy Dillon was enough to have it slowed down, and to abolish it altogether if they dared do it. Deputy Dillon, who thought out that scheme, brought it to the pitch it had reached at the time of the change of Government. If this Government is sincere in trying to increase agricultural production they have these 4,500,000 acres of land, marginal and submarginal land, most of which previously had been producing nothing but rushes and weeds. There is also an amount of alluvial land that could be brought into production. Under the land rehabilitation scheme the greater part of these 4,500,000 acres could, over a period of ten or 12 years, be brought into production.
Some people seem to think that the average farmer is not producing as much on his land as he might. The fact is that agricultural production has increased in volume. For some years past there has been an increase in volume. The yardstick by which to measure agricultural production is not by the amount of agricultural produce which is exported. We must also take into account an increase in the purchasing power of our own people, that is if they have it, to purchase our own produce first. One of the most glaring instances, so far as that is concerned, is butter. In 1935, the consumption of butter by our own people was in the region of 360,000 cwt. annually. By 1950 the consumption by our own people of home-produced butter had reached over 750,000 cwt. annually, an increase of approximately 300,000 cwt. as compared with 1935. That increase in production is not available now for export because our own people are using it, and who have a better right to do so?
The same applies to beef, eggs, bacon and many other commodities which are produced on our farms. It is, therefore an absolute fallacy to think that the volume of agricultural production has not increased. It has, and anyone living on the land can see that when he reflects on what the conditions were 20 or 30 years ago. In fact, we can go right back to the time when this country got its freedom in 1921. The production from an average acre of land to-day must be very close on double what it was then, due to the advances made in many directions. Let me take cattle diseases as one example. These have been mastered by our veterinary services over those years. The mortality rate, as regards all classes of live stock and poultry has, to a very great extent, been mastered. These diseases are not now a serious thing in any farmer's budget. Away back in those days it was quite a common thing to find diseases prevalent amongst live stock, diseases such as blackleg, intestinal worms and a hundred other diseases which were then ravaging our live stock. Great strides have been made by the Department of Agriculture in that direction. I may also mention that better quality seeds are now available to the farmers while new methods for managing their land are also available to them.
The point that I want to insist on is that the volume of agricultural production has increased very considerably over that long period. The fact that our exportable surplus has not increased is due to this, that we are using more of our own agricultural produce ourselves. The policy of the present Government seems to be to deprive the townsman and the countryman of the purchasing power to be able to buy our own agricultural produce — in other words, to eat less and to use less, so that we will be able to balance our trade by sending more food out of the country.
During our period of office from 1948 to 1951 the country experienced a wave of prosperity such as it had never known before. The present Government can examine the figures and they will find that that is so. Taxation is not going to make the people more prosperous. It is not by squeezing the people, by squeezing the life-blood out of them, that you are going to get in revenue. The more you tax the people the less revenue you will get. We were never short of revenue. Our programme aimed at full employment and at giving a decent wage to workers. That meant that there was full and plenty for everyone. The more employment there was the more money there was in circulation.
The position to-day is that we are back to the stage when at week-ends I and my colleagues are besieged by young people coming to us looking for jobs. They are looking for work with the county council or in the Forestry Department or with the Land Commission if work is available. They even ask us if they can get a job in Dublin. They are looking for something to stay at home rather than go away. During the period of the inter-Party Government that system had vanished. It seems to be inseparable from the Fianna Fáil management of this country that young people have almost to go on their knees to some Senator or Deputy or to a county council looking for a job.
The Minister for Lands, my successor, is now in the House, and he can verify this in his Department, that in the year 1950 the Land Commission had to close down work in seven different areas in South Mayo alone because they were not able to find men to do the work. Gangers went out to open up jobs and they could not find men to work on them because the men were employed elsewhere. There was plenty of employment then. At the same time we had almost succeeded in bringing emigration to a complete standstill for the first time in 100 years. The downward trend in the population of the country was arrested during our period in office for the first time in 100 years. That was all due to the fact that we gave a new outlook and a new life to the people of the country. Our young people then saw that it was worth their while to remain at home and help in the development of the country. Young men found that they could get a decent livelihood at home. They found that they were able to get a fairly decent wage, not perhaps as high a wage as they could get across the water, but a wage that made it attractive for them to work in their own country. We are back again where we were in 1947.
I make a strong appeal to the Government to examine that whole question instead of taxing and fleecing everybody. They have now reached the ordinary worker drawing £4 a week from the county council and are asking him to pay income-tax. I ask them to review the whole position instead of scourging everybody in the country by higher prices for everything and by taxation of all kinds. They are bringing the work of the whole country to a standstill by this policy. I ask them to make a cool and calm examination of our policy as opposed to theirs and possibly they will begin to see some sense in it. It is a desperate situation when our young men realise that the best policy for them is to fly from the country and give ten, 15 or 20 years of the best part of their life in the service of a foreign country. If that policy goes ahead, I do not know what kind of a country we shall have in five or six years time.
Another thing which I must condemn as something which will undermine agricultural production and prevent an increase in the volume of exports is the increased interest rates on loans by the Agricultural Credit Corporation and the banks and the general feeling that the Government have succeeded in pumping into the people of the country that if they want a loan they must pay a higher rate of interest for it. In my opinion, that is absolutely unnecessary. People cannot understand why we can lend some £55,000,000 to the people across the water at 1 per cent. or 1? per cent., while if a farmer wants a loan of a few hundred pounds to restock his land, or if a young man after getting married wants to manage his land to the best advantage and wants a loan he must pay 6 per cent. interest. It is a complete puzzle to me why we must charge our own people 6 per cent. interest while we are lending £55,000,000 to British banks at 1 per cent. or 1? per cent. These are the figures which the Minister for Finance gave the other day.
It does not seem relevant to the Supplies and Services Bill.
The question of increasing agricultural production and the balancing of our trade payments would I think be relevant, and one of the things which is undermining that policy is the increased rate of interest on loans for those engaged in agricultural production. The interest on housing loans has been increased and Land Commission work has been almost brought to a standstill.
It has not. Far more money is available for it now than was available during the Deputy's term of office.
The people will be the final judges between me and the Minister when the election comes along and they know what is happening. They feel that forestry work has been reduced.
The Deputy should not make statements without giving some evidence. More money is being made available for forestry and Land Commission work than during the Deputy's term of office.
Forestry workers have been dismissed practically all over the country.
It has never been the custom to keep forestry workers employed all the year round. It is a seasonal occupation.
It is not. The forester in charge of a well-managed forest gives employment to a certain number of men from approximately the 1st April until the middle of October in preparing, clearing, fencing and draining areas to be planted the following winter. In my time every forester used to balance his work so that the same number of men got employment during the summer months in preparing for the planting season and also in the winter season. It requires the same number of men to plant the areas so prepared during the months from October to the 1st April. I admit that thinning operations are seasonal, because when it is necessary to thin 50, 100 or 200 acres a certain number of men must be got to do that and when it is finished there is no further work for them. But, in the ordinary work of establishing forestry centres which the Department should be engaged in the big lay-off of men which has occurred lately is not justified and is inexplicable to me.
The Deputy put down a parliamentary question to me about four men out of 3,500.
That was in one forest near where I live. Will the Minister say how many men were laid off in the whole of Connacht?
Not many.
They were reduced by practically one half and the same applies to other places.
The question of forestry does not arise.
I submit that unemployment and the consequences of it are matters which arise on this Bill.
We must not debate the forestry question on this Bill.
I will not dwell further on it except to say that the forestry programme was cut down by 4,000 acres last year and a further 3,000 this year and I presume that that will be followed by another 3,000, so that we will be back to the 3,000 or 4,000 acres. Forestry work is one of the most useful ways in which young men can be employed and unemployment lessened. In addition, it will be creating an increasing asset year by year and in time it will help completely to eliminate the expenditure of £8,000,000 a year for foreign timber.
The hand-won turf scheme got a great deal of publicity in this House during the period of the inter-Party Government. There is not a word about it now. An effort was made to use the stopping of that scheme against the inter-Party Government, while in 1947, before they left office, the Fianna Fáil Government sent out word that the hand-won turf scheme should be closed down all over the country. In the Irish Press and elsewhere that was depicted as being one of the savage things which the horrible inter-Party Government had brought about. The Government have now been in office for 18 months and what have they done to restore the hand-won turf industry? It is only now that the truth is coming out; the cat is out of the bag now.
It has been proved that we were right when we said that Fianna Fáil had taken the first steps towards abolishing that scheme in August or September, 1947, five or six months before they left office. What have they done to re-establish it since they came back into office? I have not asked that question up to now because we wanted to give them a reasonable period to get going. What have they done to re-establish the hand-won turf industry and to give employment? They have done nothing. It is now exactly where it was.
I hope this will serve to bring a little bit of truth into public life, particularly at the next general election. I hope it will at least teach the Fianna Fáil Party that the people cannot be so easily gulled by false promises. They can see very well whether they are being fooled or not.
Deputy Bartley, the Parliamentary Secretary, speaking on this measure last week, said it was unfortunate that Fianna Fáil took office at the time they did.
He said it was a political disaster.
Yes. Deputy Bartley should realise it was the same Ireland, the same Twenty-Six Counties that Fianna Fáil and the inter-Party group governed. They have never got any obstruction from any of the four Parties on this side of the House— Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Talmhan and Clann na Poblachta. They have received useful and helpful criticism, absolutely unlike the barrage to which we were subjected when we were on the side that Fianna Fáil occupies now. They did every possible damage they could, even to the extent of scaring the people and trying to frighten them from investing in the loans being floated in our time of office. We have not indulged in anything of that kind. We believe this House is a place where there should be a great deal of realism and sincerity. Whatever promises we make at election time we should use our time here in trying to put them into operation if they are for the good of the people.
Deputy Bartley says it was a disaster when Fianna Fáil took over. I cannot see the disaster but I can see that Fianna Fáil is making no honest effort to try to run this country as it ought to be governed. They are making no attempt to get down to the good. sound management of the country. He said it was a good thing to increase the price of bread, that it was the cause of reducing a lot of waste and that he does not see as many half-loaves kicked about as he did before the price went up. Apparently the one way to save wastage in bread is to increase the price so that nobody will buy it and so that it will be left in the baker's shop. Is that the policy? Does Deputy Bartley think that anybody outside a lunatic asylum would swallow that? Anyway, I never saw any of this waste he is talking about. I know now that people are not able to buy bread which they need to consume. They are being denied this commodity as they are being denied bacon, beef, eggs and butter, the products of our own country. But of course, the Minister for Finance wants to balance his trade and, according to him, there is only one way to do it: tax the people; take all the money out of the people's pockets by excessive taxation so that they cannot afford to buy essential foodstuffs and must go hungry. In this way, the exportable surplus is swelled and our balance of trade is set right.
Is that the way to run the country? If the Government is so anxious to bring about a balance of trade, which every Deputy in this House is anxious to see, is there not at least one other way that should be tried first? My suggestion is that as an experiment we should cut out the importation of a great deal of luxury trash that the average man or woman in this country does not worry about and does not give two hoots whether it is imported or not. This would be a wiser solution to the problem than depriving our own people of decent food and clothing because of excessive taxation.
Is there anyone on the Government side of the House who can tell us what quantity of certain kinds of luxury trash is coming into this country which must be balanced by food and other essentials that ordinary men and women in the country could do with? If the balance of trade was temporarily out of adjustment why did the Government not prevent these imports before they resorted to the expedient of taxing the people and preventing them from buying their own produce? The Minister knows as well as I do that there is a great deal of luxury commodities coming into the country and he could prevent these imports.
It seems to me that the complaint which the Fianna Fáil Government have against us is that when we were in office we increased wages and we had no right to do it. When the inter-Party Government increased wages and made living conditions fairly good for the people, there was only one thing for the present Government to do: go out and tell the boys to scatter up and down the country the news that the inter-Party Government had sunk this country in debt and that now they must put on taxes. The real truth of the matter is that the taxes were put on simply because the increases in wages were given during the period of office of the inter-Party Government from 1948 to 1951. These taxes are now put on in order to take back those increases from the workers and prevent them from living up to the standard they had during our period in office. It would have been more honest and more decent for them to slash the wages of those who had received the increases, road workers, forestry workers and others, from £4 10s. a week down to the £2 8s. they were getting when we came into office in 1948. The present Government by their actions have attacked all sections of the community—the children, the housewives and the workers.
Business has been brought virtually to a standstill in Ireland. If you speak to any businessman he will tell you his trade is very slack and that he is idle most of the time. The effect of the Budget, the effect of the taxes on tobacco and drink has been to put some businessmen out of existence. That is being closely followed up now by the tax on vans, lorries and cars and the tax on petrol and drivers' licences.
In conclusion, I want to make this appeal to the present Government, to drop this method of fleecing and taxing everybody in the country out of existence. No progress will be made by those tactics. The Minister for Finance admitted in reply to a question by Deputy Donnellan a few weeks ago that the amount of extra tax which was supposed to come in from the Budget taxes on drink had fallen very considerably. I would appeal to the Minister to put the money into circulation for the rebuilding of this country. As I said a moment ago, after 700 years of conquest the country needs rebuilding in many directions. While great strides are being made in some directions, quite an amount of leeway must be made up. I believe our own youth are more than anxious to take a hand in it but it is a bad policy to ask them to stay in a country where there are little or no prospects of getting work. If that point of view were accepted, even at this stage an immense improvement would result. It would mean a complete change of face from the present policy. I believe our own youth are more than anxious to stay at home if decent employment is provided for them. The Minister for Lands is now in the House and I appeal to him again to establish new forest centres.
The Chair has already pointed out that we cannot have a forestry debate on this measure.
I do not intend to embark on such a debate. I am interested in solving our unemployment problem and this Bill deals very directly with that problem. The Minister for Lands is now in the House and I hold that there is one way in which we can solve that problem and the Minister has it in his power, more than lies in the hands of any other Minister, to relieve the unemployment problem by embarking on afforestation on a big scale.
One of the first things the Government should do is sack the Minister for Finance. His mischievous and wholly irresponsible handling of the finances of the State has brought disaster into practically every home. Citizens are puzzled as to how a Minister could bring about such disaster in such a very short space of time. Why could not the present Government have continued running the country on the lines on which it was being run during the period of the inter-Party Government? The present Government has caused half the people to be thrown out of employment and reduced the other half to short commons. Our people are completely puzzled as to how a Government could succeed in bringing about such an extraordinary change in such a short time.
This debate so far has proved to be a rehash of the debate we had this time last year on the same Bill. Listening to the Opposition speeches one can only conclude that there is a particular weakness in democratic Government in certain circumstances, namely, the tendency to create too great a desire to play up to the susceptibilities of the electorate.
Who is talking?
I believe that the disaster of inter-Party Government for which we are now paying is due solely to that particular weakness. I believe that our Government was sorely tempted on resuming office in 1951 to do certain things which would be pleasanter from a political point of view. They took over in a situation which called for certain measures, measures by no means popular from a political point of view. The fact remains that certain steps were necessary in order to make the country fundamentally sound from a financial point of view and preserve our economic development. Such steps are not always popular with the electorate but certain measures had to be taken.
The Opposition have spoken at length, including the last speaker, in connection with the measures taken by the inter-Party Government. The insinuation is that we could have continued in the same old rut in which the inter-Party Government operated without bringing ultimate disaster on the country. Naturally the people are anxious to know whether or not it was possible to so continue when we resumed office. Was there or was there not a problem? If there was a problem, then the inter-Party Government was wrong. If there was not a problem, then the inter-Party Government was right.
We have certain things to guide us in coming to a decision on that question. We have the advice of certain experts in economics who were actually responsible for our economic problems.
Who are the mystery men?
In order to put the Deputy out of pain, let me say at the outset that one of the mystery-men is Deputy J.A. Costello. In 1948 he drew the attention of the House to the fact that our position in relation to our adverse trade balance was a serious one and was bound to create serious problems unless immediate remedial action was taken to restore order to the disordered state of our finances. So far no single member of the Opposition has made any attempt to explain why our adverse trade balance in 1948 could be so serious as to bring calamity on the country according to the leader of the Government of the day, and why an adverse trade balance standing at twice the amount in 1951 is portrayed as something that does not really matter very much.
We had another expert in the inter-Party Government too. We had the Minister for Finance drawing attention in his Budget speech to the serious situation that existed and calling for immediate remedial measures. But we had no action. Why? We had no action because of the particular weakness in democracy in certain circumstances to which I have already referred. I claim those circumstances existed in the inter-Party Government. No coalition Government will introduce measures that will be unpopular with the electorate no matter how sound those measures may be from the point of view of the ultimate benefit and welfare of the country as a whole.
Will you test that to-morrow?
When Fianna Fáil took over last year the situation called for action. That action was not popular but it was essential if the people were to be saved ultimately from the situation into which they were rapidly being led, a situation in which there was a serious diminution in our savings, a situation which was adding seriously to our national debt, a situation which was inflating our adverse balance of trade and a situation in which we were consuming more and producing less. No man with any experience of economics could say there was not a serious problem calling for immediate remedial measures, no matter how unpopular they might be, in the ultimate interests of and from the point of view of the welfare of the community as a whole. It was a courageous step which the Fianna Fáil Government undertook and which the Coalition Government never could undertake. Eventually, that step will prove to have been the proper course to take, if it has not already proven so.
The tone of the Opposition speeches in this debate, as it was in the same debate last year, is such as to lead the people of this country to believe that we can lower prices, have higher wages, better services and lower taxes. I think no sane person would agree with that outlook.
Who is the mystery man in this country who said that?
That is the inference to be drawn from the attitude of the Opposition on this Bill, as was the case last year, too. They condemn rising prices and, in the same breath, they claim higher wages for all sections of the community. They condemn increased taxes and, at the same time, they advocate better services.
There is another rather remarkable omission from the speeches of Opposition Deputies in this debate. While they talk about unemployment and blame the Government for not taking proper action to prevent increasing unemployment, not one speaker on the Opposition Benches has attempted to point to any particular feature or any piece of capital development which was curtailed by the present Government. That is a most important point. If we peruse the figures we will find that more money is available to-day for such schemes as rural electrification, turf development, tourist development and so forth than was available at any time during the term of office of the Coalition Government. Bear in mind that that is the position despite the fact that when Fianna Fáil resumed office last year this country had just been notified that Marshall Aid had ceased. The inter-Party Government had the benefit of Marshall Aid during their term of office although we cannot point to a solitary piece of constructive work done by the inter-Party Government under that generous loan. We have not a single monument to which we can point as a result of the generous assistance which we got under that loan during the years when the inter-Party Government were in office.
What about the Works Act?
You had £26,000,000.
When that question is posed to the Opposition they point out that the land rehabilitation scheme was one of the things for which they were responsible. On the admission of Deputy Desmond last year, land rehabilitation was not started by the Coalition Government even though they talk a great deal about it. Facts and figures show that, during their former term of office, the Fianna Fáil Government introduced the land reclamation and the farm improvements schemes and that, during that former term of office, they spent twice as much money on those schemes as the Coalition Government did during their entire period of office and, further, Fianna Fáil spent all that money at a time when they had no Marshall Aid or generous loans from any other nation to help them.
Speaking in this House last week, Deputy O'Donnell referred to the lack of attention by the present Government to the Gaeltacht. This Government established the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Government which carried out a fairly intensive survey of the Gaeltacht and undeveloped areas to ascertain the problems which exist there and the priorities which might be given as well as a general picture of the situation. Fortunately, the Parliamentary Secretary got the co-operation of all sections of the people in those areas. He received a mass of suggestions. Material and data were provided in every area which he visited. I think that one thing which applied in every single area which he visited—the only problem which was general in the Gaeltacht and undeveloped areas—was the poor state of the roads in those areas. We who live in those areas know well that one of our first requirements is the construction of better roads to the backward townlands and along our seaboards to facilitate a better standard of living. We know that, no matter what other steps may be taken for our welfare, our first requirement is a decent line of communication into our districts. Second only to that is the housing problem in those areas. I am glad to say that, as a first gesture towards the alleviation of the circumstances of the people in those areas, the Parliamentary Secretary has announced the expenditure of £3,000,000 on roads in those areas. I am glad that he has recognised that general problem to that extent. That sum of money will give very necessary employment in the areas in question. In addition to improving the roads in those districts, it will help to solve the problem of emigration there for the time being.
I should like to remind Deputies who refer to what they claim to be lack of attention by this Government to the congested areas and to the Gaeltacht that the Fianna Fáil Government, through a Bill in 1952, remedied a serious omission in the 1950 Housing Act which the Coalition Government passed into law. In that 1950 Act, the Coalition Government completely neglected to provide anything whatever for the congested or Gaeltacht areas of this country. That was a serious omission. Not until it was rectified in 1952 by the Fianna Fáil Government were the local authorities enabled, by way of retrospective payment, to make good the omission in the 1950 Act. These are some of the things which, I think, point the way to what this Government intend to do for the Gaeltacht and congested areas and which are bound, eventually, to bring a measure of benefit to those areas. We have many roads—and I am sorry that the Deputy to whom I referred in speaking last week neglected to give due consideration and credit to the Government—which will undoubtedly be repaired under that scheme to give necessary employment in the areas where it is so badly required—and give decent lines of communication to areas which did not enjoy the amenities which midlanders and people in more wealthy areas have enjoyed for years past. Deputy Blowick stressed very much the question of forestry——
And the Chair endeavoured to rule him out on the ground that it did not arise on the Bill.
I have no intention of outstepping the scope of the debate, which is very wide indeed, but I think that Deputy Blowick, the ex-Minister for Lands, did succeed in getting away with a good deal of irrelevancies and a good deal of misrepresentation on the same question.
Is that a reflection on the Chair?
It is an unconscious reflection on the Chair.
Some of the Deputies who are directing the attention of the Chair to this matter are themselves adepts at making statements which are out of order. They know that there are ways and means of doing that, ways and means which Deputy Blowick applied rather successfully.
The Chair pointed out to Deputy Blowick on three or four occasions that a debate on forestry would not be in order on this Bill.
Regarding forestry in general, to which I think I am entitled to refer, I want to say that we were very much disappointed in regard to the promises we got from Deputy Blowick and in regard to the action taken on these promises. I could give facts and figures to show the justification for that disappointment.
Agreeably disappointed.
Certainly not agreeably. We are anxious to see afforestation carried out and we are getting afforestation now in Donegal. As I said at the outset, there are things which appeal very much to the individual for the time being and there are things which, although they may not be very palatable at the time they are carried out, are strictly necessary for the future success and welfare of the nation. That particularly applies to the measures which were taken by the present Government in order to put the country on a sound economic footing. Sometimes a patient needing an operation is slow to consult a doctor. He does not like to take the serious step of having the operation carried out to ensure his future health. It is the easiest thing in the world to put off a distasteful or unpopular measure from day to day but the correct thing, of course, is to submit to the proper solution of a problem immediately in order to enjoy improvement and better results afterwards. The Coalition Government were perfectly well aware, as was indicated by the statements of Deputy Costello, the then Taoiseach, that they were up against the serious implications of the adverse trade balance, as was shown by the Minister for Finance.
The Coalition Government were perfectly well aware that there was a serious problem developing rapidly which would ultimately call for serious measures but they were prepared to postpone the evil day and to leave the burden for somebody else to bear. In this country, posterity will read in history of the courageous measures taken by the Fianna Fáil Government to solve that problem handed over to them and time will vindicate and justify the action they have taken, as being the only sound action at the time, although it did not appeal to the immediate susceptibilities of the electorate.
When the Minister was introducing this Bill on last Thursday he was most polite and people who were beginning to know him immediately got suspicious. Was there anything constructive in this Bill to redeem the promises that had been made by this Government during their three years in opposition? So far as I heard his speech and read it afterwards, it was a most apologetic performance. He was sorry for having gone off the straight and narrow path while he was in opposition, for having criticised unduly and wrongfully the actions of the inter-Party Government —a title which I think would be somewhat more appropriate than the Coalition Government. The present Government, on the other hand, may be termed the balanced-ration Government, held together by two doctors, a solicitor and a farmer. But let me say the country is getting fed up with the particular material it is getting from the Government as it stands at the moment. It is a new departure when we hear Deputy Brennan speaking about playing on the susceptibilities of the Irish people. I think the present Minister for Industry and Commerce at one time was responsible for the famous poster of 1931 or 1932—"We have a plan."
The Deputy is going back a long time.
I should like to bring the Minister just a little bit back. I am sure he has not forgotten the old tactics, judging by his psychology at the moment.
The Deputy should come to the Bill.
The Minister immediately after getting into power removed certain controls. One of these controls was the control of the price of milk. As a result of that, in a certain institution in Munster for the period between the 1st April and the 30th September, the price of milk was 3/4 per gallon. It was pure blackmail on an institution where the patients had to be provided for. That was all made feasible by the Minister's decontrol of the price of milk. We had various promises from the Minister's Party in the constituency I represent. The cost of living was to come down and an immediate Utopia was to be created. The farmers were to get 6d. per gallon extra for milk. Oats was to be 50/- a barrel and barley 75/-. The farming community were to be put in the position in which they could produce more. We were to have a balanced economy and production was to be improved.
That is the picture that was presented by Fianna Fáil. It was to cure all our ills. Instead of that being so, the farmers got 48/- a barrel for barley, which was the lowest price since 1940, and for oats they got 30/- a barrel. That, too, was practically the lowest price on record. As a matter of expediency, the Minister for Agriculture gave a penny a gallon increase in the price of milk. But, against that, the prices of tea, sugar, butter, bread, stout, beer and whiskey were increased beyond all proportions.
Deputy Brennan, if he did not actually say it, certainly implied that we were doing all we could to obstruct any progress that is to be made in the very, very distant future by the present Government. I want to assure him that we did not put out any pawn signs when the Fianna Fáil Government were looking for a loan. Neither did we obstruct the rural electrification scheme, such as happened in my part of the country when the inter-Party Government was on the job. At that time, the Fianna Fáil Cumainn, on orders from headquarters, did all they could to jettison or sabotage the schemes promoted by the inter-Party Government. They did all they could to impede their progress. The result of that has been that schemes which could have been completed by now will not be completed for the next ten years.
The Minister, in his opening speech on Thursday, built it up from the foundation on bread. He mentioned the increase that was given by the inter-Party Government in 1951 and the increase that he gave in 1952. I asked him a question to-day about the wages paid to bakers, to boardmen and foremen, and despite all the statistical information which he has at his disposal from the Labour Court in Griffith Barracks, he was not able to tell me what one baker is paying his men in all of the towns in East Cork which I mentioned. The Minister is a very cute man and perhaps may have smelled some of the rats which Deputy Cogan was speaking about at one time. A very modest baker in one of these towns employs four bakers. In 1951 they each got an increase of 15/- in their wages from the Labour Court. The master baker was allowed to offset that increase in wages by increasing the 2-lb. loaf by a halfpenny. The Minister must know that there are approximately 90 loaves to a batch. He mentioned last Thursday that a farthing on the 2-lb. loaf would bring in 3/9 a batch. Allowing 2/6 of that for the increase in wages given in 1952, that meant in or about £6 gross for the master baker. The amount of the increase in wages at that time was 12/-.
To go back to 1951, 7/6 per batch was the amount which the master baker gained by the increase of a halfpenny on the 2-lb. loaf. His target was 48 batches a week. The increase in wages actually cost him £3 per week. As against that, he drew a gross sum of £18 extra which left him with a net profit of £15. Those figures are incontrovertible. A further increase was given by the master baker to his workmen of 12/- per week. As a result of that we are paying a farthing on the 2-lb. loaf. The master baker makes a profit again of 3/9. The Minister says that he is allowing a half-crown of that to equate the rate of wages that is being paid, and that 1/3 goes back to the food subsidies. In my time at school, 48 half-crowns amounted to £6. Four times 12/- amounts to £2 8s. That leaves the master baker with a net profit of £3 12s. on that transaction, of, on the two transactions, an aggregate profit of something like £18. That is not bad.
According to Deputy Bartley, the people are kicking half-loaves around Galway and Connemara. If, by any chance they have an opportunity of reading my statement in the newspapers in the morning, they will think twice before they again kick half-loaves around. I challenge the Minister to contradict the statement I have made. There must be something very wrong in the bread trade when some of the port-miller-bakers in Dublin can sell bread cheaper in towns 50 miles from Dublin than they can sell it in Dublin. I am sure the Minister, when replying, will give us some indication, one way or the other, as to how it has come that he has allowed this thing to happen. I think that, even before he replies, he should investigate the whole facts as I have given them as to what has happened down in East Cork. Yet the farthing increase was made. That public-spirited master baker, who was making a profit of £15 out of the increase he got in 1951, religiously put on the farthing on the loaf again. The Minister for Industry and Commerce allowed that to be done, not through the Prices Advisory Body, but through his Department, as he said he was convinced there was a justification for it.
There is no justification either for the monopoly which is operating at the moment in the importation of tea. I do not know where the Minister's tea importers are procuring their tea, but I am sure that the tea we are getting is the first run through the sieve. Three-quarters of it is dust and the rest of it consists of small leaves, and that is what we are paying 4/- a lb. for at present because the Minister for Industry and Commerce says we should never place ourselves at the mercy of Mincing Lane.
I ask the Minister to give some answer to my statement with regard to the bread. If he wishes, I will give him the name of the master baker and of the town. I do not intend to be as obstructive or obstreperous as the Government back-benchers were when they were on this side of the House. I would be prepared to co-operate with the Minister and to give him all the information at my disposal if I thought it would have the slightest effect in bringing down the cost of living. I know a master baker in another town who refused to put on the ¼d. increase and immediately an ultimatum was issued to him. Through esprit de corps, or perhaps from dread, he put on the ¼d. increase.
Although butter is being sold at 3/10 a lb., we are not able to produce sufficient to supply our own needs. It was always well recognised that it would pay us better to export chocolate crumb, cheese and dried milk and import from Denmark or some other place a supply of butter in the winter time. We had not to wait for the present Minister for Agriculture to tell us that and to explain what would happen.
Whatever promises were made about constructing autobahn roads in Donegal to make it easier for the Gaels to fly out of the Gaeltacht— they will only use them once and that is when they are clearing out of it— it is very noticeable that we have not heard from Deputy Brennan or Deputy Brady about a market for oats or potatoes or various other things in Donegal for the past 12 months while conditions were never so bad as they are now. Surely it is not necessary for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government to make a survey of the housing problem or of the road situation. We have county council officials and county councillors in these areas who realise that the roads are bad and who can make that point to the Minister for Local Government. If the Minister for Finance can see his way to make a grant of money the roads can be improved and houses built. The Fianna Fáil Party never played so much on the susceptibilities of the people of the country as at the last election. Never was so much said and so many false promises made by so few.
The circumstances in which we approach the consideration of the powers proposed to be continued by the measure before the House are entirely different now from what they were when the original Supplies and Services Bill was enacted by the Oireachtas. It may be said that at that time there was a very considerable shortage of goods and a comparative plenitude of money. To-day we find ourselves in almost precisely the opposite condition where there is an abundance of goods and a serious shortage of money, with rising prices and rising unemployment. In those circumstances, it would seem that it is not really powers which are required to be conferred on the Government but that the Government should have proper policies for the changed circumstances.
In the course of his opening on this Bill, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, as reported in Volume 135 of the 27th November, said that he would wish that the House should join with him in his desire not to conceal economic realities from our people. Earlier in his remarks he made use of the expression, as reported in column 168: "Perhaps some time there may be a different approach to these matters, but not yet." He had, I think, somewhat ruefully recalled the time when he was on the opposition benches and had indulged in rather biting criticism of those of us who were then on the bench which he now occupies. While he said that he could not resent what was done by him and his colleagues when in opposition being done by opposition Deputies now, nevertheless he seemed to express the hope that some time there might be a different approach. I do not know why he added the words "but not yet." I think the considerations that arise on this Bill, the conditions that face the country, the economic and financial plight of our people, require from us on this side of the House a constructive approach to the problems involved and which fall to be considered on this measure. In present circumstances, when the structure of our economy is so gravely imperilled, we, on this side of the House, feel we have a serious responsibility and that our duty here is not merely to indulge, however great the temptation might be, in the recollection of the past treatment we received at the hands of those who now occupy Government benches—we resist that temptation—but to do what in us lies to make constructive proposals.
I, therefore, propose, in some measure at least, to meet the Tánaiste in what perhaps may have been his desire, in those expressions to which I have referred, for a new approach to these problems. We have to consider in the circumstances facing us here now discussing this Bill, really the whole economic state of the country, but we confine ourselves, as far as possible, to the consideration of the level of employment, recession in trade, the prices position and the cost of living. I hope I will approach the consideration of these problems in a serious and responsible mood, fully conscious of the fact that in our democratic institutions one of the most important functions, paramount even to its duty to serve the country and of exposing evils in general Government policy and arising out of defects in Government proposals, is the duty of the Opposition to be available for the people as an alternative Government. I approach the consideration of these problems in the serious mood to which I have referred because of the fact that we are fully conscious that the people as a whole are looking for a lead and seeking anxiously for at least some hope being held out to them of the solution of the difficult problems facing them and some early alleviation of their anxiety and difficulties.
I adopt this approach also because of the fact that there has been in recent times a certain amount of criticism of our politicians and of our Party system from publicists who seem free to impute to our politicians and our system any motives, however unworthy, and who apparently completely misconceive the functions of this House and the significance of our debates. I think it will be agreed that while we, in opposition, criticise Ministers or their policies or Deputies of the Government Party, we do not impute to them unpatriotic motives nor do we believe that, while we disagree with their policies and point out the defects, that our political opponents are not as alive to the defects in these policies as we are.
I hope, therefore, in the remarks I have to make on this measure, that so far as I indulge in criticism I will base that criticism on facts and deal with facts factually and not in a destructively critical fashion and that I then will give by constructive suggestions and the indication of a policy, at least some intimation that there are remedies which can be applied with some hope of curing the economic ills which are afflicting us at the present time.
Another reason for the adoption of this attitude by me is my great realisation and appreciation of the fact that the situation which has developed in this country will sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, require that important changes should be made in our financial and economic institutions. It would be a very useful thing if all these desirable changes were brought about, if not with the agreement—and perhaps it might not be desirable that there should be full agreement on matters of that kind—at least with the goodwill of all Parties in the House. Whether these changes will fall to be made by the present Government, if they continue in office, or by a Government formed of the Opposition if the Government falls and there is a change of Government, it is of extreme importance to the welfare of the people that in regard to those changes, which may be very fundamental when they take place, all Parties should be agreed upon the fact that no unfair campaigns would be launched against the authors of such changes by those who happen at that time to be the political opponents in opposition.
We have difficult economic and financial problems to face and to solve. It would be desirable in the public interest that in meeting those problems and in trying to solve them through our economic controversies, each side of the House should maintain towards its political opponents an attitude of scrupulous fairness, that any arguments put up should be relevant and constructive and that Ministers and others should refrain from the political polemics of a trivial character which are so frequently indulged in by the present Minister for Finance.
An approach of that kind towards most of our problems is desirable. It is vitally necessary in dealing with credit and credit institutions. It does not require any emphasis from me to underline the importance of dealing with credit in a responsible fashion. Credit is such a fragile institution that the consideration of matters and problems dealing with it should be approached by every side of this House in a responsible, cautious and patriotic fashion.
Having made these preliminary observations I would like to say that the manner in which I hope to deal with these problems which seem to me to fall for consideration in this debate will be that I will very shortly state what I conceive to be the facts of the financial and economic situation and the evils from which we are at present suffering and with which both the country and its people are afflicted. Then, having dealt very shortly with those matters, I hope to unfold or to give at least the indication of a policy which will be concerned with the creation of wealth, the maintenance of employment and the securing, if possible, of a relatively stable price level.
Those who have spoken before me in this debate have referred at length, and very properly so, to the problems of unemployment, the high cost of living, the recession in trade and to some extent the restriction of credit. Very shortly, without, I hope, wearying the House, I propose to summarise the position in relation to unemployment. In the month of October of this year there were 8,400 more unemployed than in the same month last year and in that month in last year, 1951, there had already begun to be apparent an increase in unemployment following the recession in business and in industry which manifested itself during the autumn of last year. In the month of October of this year there were almost 11,000 more unemployed than in the month of October, 1950, and in the month of October, 1950, there were 6.5 per cent. of insured persons on the live register who were unemployed. This figure had risen to 6.7 per cent. in the month of October last year. This year it has risen to 8.1 per cent.
In that year, when it ought to have been quite favourable, it stood higher than it had ever stood save in the two worst months—that is, the two opening months—of the year 1951. That position, from the point of view of unemployment, does not reveal the extent of the trouble because of the numbers of persons who suffer from part-time employment, no employment and the constant fear and anxiety of complete unemployment. It is, indeed, an understatement to say that the position is very bad.
The position with regard to prices can be very briefly stated because everybody, irrespective of the walk of life in which he finds himself, has felt the impact of the rising cost of living and the rising price of every commodity and practically every service. Deputy Norton referred to this matter, as did Deputy Blowick to-day. At column 203 of the Official Report of 27th November Deputy Norton said:—
"The cost-of-living index figure in February, 1951, was 102. It is now 122.... In other words, the cost of living has increased by approximately 20 per cent. over the past 18 months."
Being, perhaps, a little fairer to the Minister than these figures might reveal, and taking for that purpose the figures for the last months of the inter-Party Government's régime, between May, 1951, and August of this year, which is the last month for which figures are available, there was a rise of 15 points — in other words, a rise of 12 per cent. roughly. That is, I think, giving as fair a picture as the figures allow of the situation that has been created in the last 12 or 18 months. It is not, perhaps, without its own significance that, while the British Government removed food subsidies relatively to the same extent as our Government did this year, the rise in price level in England has been less than it is here.
The third point to consider is the recession in trade and business. That matter has been dealt with fully by those speakers who preceded me. There has been a recession in trade, business and industry generally. That is beyond all question. There is an abundance of goods but notwithstanding that abundance our people are unable to buy because of the fall in the purchasing power of the community and the rise in the cost of living. There is, consequently, a recession in trade, business and industry with consequential unemployment.
The level of economic activity is to be found by reference to the volume of industrial production. In the second quarter of the year 1950 the volume of production rose by 25 points over the volume in the same quarter in the previous year. In the year 1951, during the first part of which we were in office, there was a rise of nine points in that quarter over the same quarter in the year 1950. This year there has been quite a remarkable drop of 15 points. Industrial production should always be an ascending factor but it was actually in that quarter below the 1950 figure. That is very clear evidence of the condition in which trade, business and industry find themselves to-day. The people who are engaged in industry and business and trade do not require statistics in order to appreciate the serious position in which they find themselves.
Our total external trade—that is the total of exports and imports which, as the Minister knows, determines the level of our employment here—is very much down on last year's figure. Recently we had the officials of the Department of Finance appearing before the Arbitration Tribunal for the Civil Service and maintaining there that the yield of taxation had declined, indicating at the same time a recession in business and a fall in business profits. If any further evidence is required we have the reports of our public companies in recent weeks which would dispel any illusion that there was not a serious recession in trade because in every instance a substantial decline in profits is reported.
We have had controversy on the subject of the restriction of credit and as to whether or not the Government was responsible for credit restriction by the banks in relation to business, industry and agriculture. Whether or not the Government is responsible, the fact remains that such a restriction is in existence and has been unduly harsh. That is beyond all doubt and all controversy. I do not know whether the Minister—knowing the serious condition of our economy, as he must know it—will take steps under the powers that will be given to him by this Bill to see that that restriction of credit stops and stops at once. On numerous occasions I have drawn attention, in public utterances, to the serious effect which heavy taxation has on the cost of living and on business and industry. I do not want to repeat what I have said over and over again since this Government took office. In speeches before the last Budget, I took every possible occasion to warn the Government against the consequences of heavy taxation and certainly to make as emphatic as possible our view that heavy taxation was unnecessary and unjustifiable in the circumstances, difficult as they were, facing this country in the past 12 to 18 months. Heavy taxation has a very heavy impact on the cost of living. It encourages tax evasion, as everybody knows, and, in consequence, the burden of the tax is very inequitably distributed. Some people who are easy marks for the Revenue Commissioners' activities have to bear more than their fair share of the burden. Heavy taxation leads to spurious and quite useless expenditure. It destroys initiative and enterprise and leads to less work and less production. It adds to costs, increases prices and makes it more difficult for us to sell our goods abroad. Part of the troubles from which we are suffering here at the present time is due to the entirely unnecessary and harsh taxation that was imposed by the Minister for Finance in the Budget of this year.
I have just indicated those few topics. I hope I have not overstated or exaggerated anything: I think I have not. For the purpose of indicating what the country is suffering from at the moment, I want to say now, before I proceed to make certain comments upon them and to offer my constructive suggestions, that the tragic feature of all these matters and the anxieties, miseries and human sufferings that have been unnecessary, as we believe and are convinced, brought about in the past 12 months is that they have been due to calculated and deliberate Government policy. The basis of all that policy, what has brought about all that suffering and all that misery and anxiety, has been the erroneous view of the Government and particularly of the Minister for Finance, that the conditions of this country require that the consumption of our people should be drastically reduced and that the way that consumption should be reduced is by raising taxation, increasing prices through the dropping of the food subsidies and reducing the income of every section of our people. That, unfortunately, is the basis of the policy which has brought in its train the consequences to which I have very briefly referred in connection with each of the four or five topics that I have mentioned just now. All the results of that policy are making it impossible for people to live. We heard a lot in the course of last year and early this year to the effect that people were living beyond their means. We were told by the Minister for Finance in his Budget statement that the incomes of people had advanced beyond the cost of living.
The policy that was enshrined in his Budget, and which found its expression in the heavy taxation imposed by that Budget, was directed to scooping up that supposed excessive income over the cost of living which he thought existed in the incomes of our people. The position, as I have said, is serious beyond exaggeration. I think it is no matter of mere hyperbolic utterance to say that the patience of the people has been strained to breaking point, that the temper of the people at the present time — particularly in the urban areas— is such that unless there is some alleviation of their anxieties and their troubles and some hope is held out to them soon of lower prices and better times, we may very easily face something very nearly approaching to social revolution. That dangerous situation requires that there should be an immediate and drastic change of policy on the part of the present Government or, if they do not change that policy drastically, that they should get out and leave way for some other Government whom the people will select to carry out the only kind of policy which can give any hope of alleviation to the sufferings of the people at the present time.
In the course of what I have now to say, I hope to give some indication of the lines along which that policy should be directed. Before I deal with those suggestions, however, there are just one or two comments which I should like to make in connection with some of the topics to which I have to refer. I have called attention to the facts in connection with the price rise. We do not accept that the rise in price and the rise in the cost of living need necessarily have been so sharp, that the recession of business ought to have been so grave or that the increase in unemployment ought to have been so considerable. I realise at once that some of the rise in price is due to factors beyond the control of the present Government and beyond the control of any Government. I appreciate that the rise in import prices was bound to bring about an increase in the cost of living but we think that it should not have risen to the extent which we have experienced. The rise—which we say was unjustifiable—was due entirely to the policy of the Government in the sudden withdrawal of the food subsidies and to the unjustifiable increase in taxation. There has been a recession in trade. For that recession in trade the Government is not entirely responsible. There were certain outside factors which would have had their impact upon trade and industry in this country no matter what Government was in office.
Some of that recession in trade was inevitable, was likely to follow, and did follow, the post-Korean inflation, but unfortunately the present Government, particularly the Minister for Finance — I doubt very much if the Minister for Industry and Commerce really believes in his heart in that policy, but at all events that was the policy that was put into operation—did not realise the real nature of the problem or appreciate the kind of disease they had to treat. By their policy they have pushed that recession in trade and industry further than it need have been pushed.
The Minister for Finance was undoubtedly, and apparently still is, obsessed with the problem of the balance of payments. We endeavoured to point out to him during the time when he first made his somewhat frantic expressions in connection with this so-called disorder in the balance of international trade and payments, that that was a serious enough problem but that it was not as serious as he made it out to be, that it was certainly not a problem calling for resort to the drastic remedies which he subsequently applied. There was certainly, as we believed, no necessity whatever for the imposition of those-drastic measures which he applied in connection with that problem of the balance of payments.
In the course of this debate there was at least one amusing incident. At one time last year, we were told that there was no stockpiling during the term of the inter-Party Government. It is now recognised that there was stockpiling. We were told in the course of this debate by one speaker that the-stockpiling that was carried on in the year 1951, the existence of which was at one time denied, was responsible for the recession but last year when the Minister for Finance was cavorting round the place, in regard to the balance of payments, he did not once allude to the fact that whatever was wrong with the balance of payments was due to that stockpiling, that it was a matter that would be merely temporary and that when the very causes which produced an inflation in that balance had passed there would be an automatic readjustment in the balance of payments. Of course, the real reason for the policy which has been pursued by the Government is one which they dare not announce in this House or outside it. They have only one justification for that policy, a policy that they allege did not permit them to keep people employed in industrial, business and agricultural activity at the level which existed in 1951 when we left office and to keep prices even at the level which they had reached as a result of the post-Korean inflation. That according to Government policy and according to the Minister for Finance's determination to adhere to that policy, was something that could not be afforded by the country because it enabled our people to live too well and because they were using up our external reserves, which according to him and his Party had to be preserved at all costs. That justification we do not accept.
The condition of affairs as they are at the moment, in my view—and I submit it to the Minister as the correct view— requires that there must be a complete change of policy immediately, that the policy of austerity and restriction must be replaced by a policy of financial easement and economic expansion, otherwise matters will go from bad to worse. The policy put into operation by the present Government has released forces which have since gained in impetus, and which the present Government will not be able to control unless there is a complete reversal of financial and economic policy.
I have said that I hoped to give some indication of steps which should be taken and policies which should be adopted. These suggestions, of course, turn very largely upon the necessity for capital development. I am an unrepentant believer in the policy which we adopted of productive capital investment for the cure of the economic ills from which this country is suffering. It is the amount and the degree of capital investment, its pattern and direction, that determine the measure of business, industrial and agricultural activity. For that reason, there is urgent necessity for capital development and before I finish with this matter I shall give my own view on the type of capital development that should be adopted as soon as possible. Not merely should there be Government capital development under the auspices, control and direction of the Government, through the means of public loans, but there should be the fullest possible co-operation in capital development by all institutions and private individuals in this State, if possible to ease governmental activity in capital development. It should be the aim to increase the flow of capital from the main sources from which capital can be acquired and that is through savings. Of course, you cannot have savings if incomes are depressed by heavy taxation and by the policy of austerity of the present Government.
There must be also what I have very frequently referred to as the prudent repatriation of our external assets through deliberate planned deficits in our balance of payments. There must be achieved for our banking system the liquidity which they insist upon and which is desired, through the medium of the setting up of a money or bill market in this country, in Dublin or elsewhere, and through the creation of a proper stock exchange which will work in the national interest, and the formation of a capital investment board to regulate and order the flow of capital, such as I referred to in the various speeches I have made in the last 12 months. That is an outline of the means with which I hope to deal further at a later stage. These suggestions if carried into effect, certainly if carried into effect by a Government formed from this side of the House will go very far, if not the entire way, in reversing the trend that exists at the moment and in securing employment for the people who are suffering from the ills which had been inflicted upon them by the present Government, ills which have been wrongly diagnosed by the present Government and particularly by the Minister for Finance and which have been accentuated by the application of wrong remedies to the real disease by the same Minister. The cure is to impress on the mind of the Minister for Finance and I believe on that of his colleagues, that they must bring this problem of the balance of payments into proper perspective. That is a problem, but it is not the only problem nor is it the greatest problem we have to face in this country. We have repeated that again and again since we started in 1948 to formulate our policy of productive capital investment.
I think it was Deputy Brennan who, this afternoon, referred to the fact that I had drawn attention to this problem, and of the very serious character of it, as far back as 1948. I drew attention to it in that year in one of the earliest speeches which I made to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. I have on another occasion quoted that speech. It will be found in the Dáil Debates for the 19th July, 1951, at column 2048. I said this shortly after the inter-Party Government was formed:—
"The two main long-term economic problems confronting this country are the necessity for greatly increased agricultural and industrial output and the rectification of the unhealthy condition of our balance of international payments. The first of these problems is the more important."
That is the problem of increased agricultural and industrial production.
"If we can solve it, we will have gone a long way towards improving the balance of payments position as well."
Those words have been proved this year to be true and accurate in every respect. It is not entirely, I agree, but very largely, through the operation of the increase in our agricultural exports, that our balance of payments is about to, and probably will, be brought into almost complete equilibrium towards the end of this year. In the speech which I made to the bankers, I again referred to the matter. I am again quoting from the Debates of the 19th July, 1951, at column 2051. I there referred to this problem of the balance of payments and to our policy of deliberately creating a deficit in our international balance of payments for the purpose of financing our policy of productive capital expenditure. I said:—
"A temporary disequilibrium in the balance of payments is inevitable according as repatriation of capital takes place. There are greater evils, however, than a temporary deficit in the balance of payments. This Government — I was, of course, referring to the inter-Party Government—believed that impoverished and unnecessarily infertile land, lack of housing and shortage of hospital accommodation are far worse evils, evils which we are determined to extirpate, and which would even justify short-term economic loss for the sake of social and long-term economic gain."
Every word which I uttered there in 1948 I am proud to stand over, and proud to be able to justify. The facts which have since taken place prove that beyond all controversy. But that problem of the balance of payments must be got into its proper perspective. We had to watch our balance of payments, but we have far greater problems to watch, far more serious matters to direct all our attention to, than the balance of payments. But, unfortunately, the Minister for Finance was so obsessed with that particular problem that he was unable to see or appreciate that what we told him is a fact: that the problem of disequilibrium last year was a temporary one, that it had, even when he was talking, righted itself, and that our increase in agricultural exports and in our industrial exports would right that matter automatically, and that the trend at that time showed and demonstrated that the disequilibrium was automatically being adjusted. Until that problem is got into its proper perspective by the Minister for Finance and by his colleagues, we will have no proper economic or financial policy in this country.
I should also like to point out that, when we speak of the problem of the balance of payments, we are speaking of a payments problem. I do not know whether the Minister for Industry and Commerce—I rather think he does— appreciates the importance of the word "payments" because, in the course of his speech—unfortunately I have not got it with me—in which he was making a case in connection with the balance of payments and the results that were likely to accrue, when he was adding up and prognosticating what it was likely to be, he did subtract from the £61.6 million, which was the reputed adverse balance of trade for last year, the sum of £4.9 million from the deficit which was a grant from the E.C.A.
That is a matter which, I think, the Minister for Finance does not understand. Neither does he understand what really appears from the report of the Central Bank which is published for the year ending 31st March, 1952, which is the most recent publication of that august body.
It will be observed from that report, page 7, that, in spite of all the hullabaloo about what was happening our external reserves—that our resources were being dissipated by the awful policy of the inter-Party Government in repatriating our external assets and in spite of the stockpiling and all that happened in 1951—a sum of £37,000,000 only was required to be taken from our external assets to help defray this deficit of £61.6 million for the year 1951. Having set out a table of the estimates for the balance of payments during the past five years, the report of the Central Bank shows how that £37,000,000 was arrived at. It was arrived at by taking the sum of £17.3 million, which was the amount that the associated banks or what we call the commercial banks, realised of external holdings—£14.5 million representing the degree of realisation of external holdings of the Central Bank, £3.3 million representing private holdings abroad and £2.2 million representing the proceeds of external securities of State funds. But £37.3 million was all that was required to be resorted to of our very considerable holding of external resources and external assets in that year when the Minister for Finance said that our payments account and our financial position was such that it was desperate to the point of despair, or something of that description.
Now, when you find that that is the position, it must be realised that in his effort to balance this payments account, all he succeeded in doing was to balance our sterling payments. We had last year, which was supposed to be a desperate year, a surplus of £20.5 million with the United Kingdom. We had to pay our way with Great Britain and we more than paid our way with her. If we had a surplus of £1,000,000,000 to balance our sterling account we would still have the problem of balancing our international payments as long as sterling is not convertible. That is the mistake which the Minister for Finance made. He balanced it with sterling, but we still had the problem of getting hard currency from the sterling pool. Therefore, from the point of view of our payments, the position of our external assets is quite irrelevant. It has been put into a position of pre-eminence entirely unjustified in Government policy, and particularly the policy of the Minister for Finance.
Deputy McGilligan, when speaking in the Dáil a few nights ago, referred to the reason why he and the rest of his colleagues in the inter-Party Government reappointed the chairman of the Central Bank and some of his colleagues with whose policy none of us was in agreement. He did it in order that they should be in a position, I think he used the phrase, to flash the red light when they thought it proper to do so in accordance with their particular and peculiar views, if I may say so, and then the Government of the day could take into account to such an extent as they wished this view on the flashing of that red light.
The position is, however, that the financiers in this country have so long been looking at the red light that they have become financially colour blind, become so obsessed with the necessity for restriction that they have not yet realised that when our balance of payments is in balance, or almost in balance, as it will be this year, our actual payments problem will remain completely unaltered. But the position where we have a surplus of sterling, where our payments problem from the point of view of paying for those goods that we get from hard currency areas remains unsolved by our solution of the balance of payment problem, has been brought about by the assault which has been made on personal incomes through the financial policy of the Government, by the lowering of our standard of living and by the unemployment which has been such a marked feature of our economy during the last 12 or 18 months.
Might I on certain aspects of this case draw the Minister's attention to an article which appeared in a responsible British journal last Sunday, The Observer? There appeared in a recent edition of The Banker, an article dealing with the pattern of sterling area payments and that article is remarkable for the fact that the figures given for the deficit in our balance of payments in each year are given in the most pessimistic possible way. They lead to the most pessimistic possible interpretation of our financial position from the point of view of our international balance of payments. The table in that article in The Banker was reproduced in last Sunday's edition of The Observer. We find that where the table purports to set out our sterling area balance of payments Ireland is put down as having an adverse balance of £70,000,000 for the year 1951. Even the Minister for Finance had to admit that he was wrong in that figure. But it appears in the Central Bank Report for 1952 that our adverse balance of payments in the year 1951, our deficit as it is called in the table on page seven of that report, was £69.9 millions. Obviously that table rounded off the figure at £69.9 million, entirely overlooking the fact, which was not properly brought out by the Report of the Central Bank because of the particular view they appear to have about the matter, that there should have been deducted from that £69.9 million a sum of £8.3 million under the heading “balance unaccounted for”.
Here in a responsible newspaper, which has a comment on the Commonwealth Conference which is taking place during this week and the issues of an important character which are likely to be discussed there, we are put down as having an adverse balance on our balance of payments of £70,000,000 instead of £61.6 million, and that error is repeated in the table right through to the year 1946 because of the particular way in which the Central Bank insist upon presenting our national trading accounts. That £8.3 million, which ought to be deducted from the £69.9 million, is called a "balance unaccounted for". It is believed to be the fact by responsible people that the attitude of the Central Bank towards that figure of £8.3 million, which should have been deducted to arrive at our trade deficit, is that it is something in the nature of a capital figure, something for which we must provide a reserve, that it is really a debt and not, what in fact it is, a receipt.
It is of course well known also that the very experienced and expert officers of the Central Statistics Office took precisely the opposite view to what is taken and persisted in by the Central Bank and its members to the point that this method of presenting our trading accounts may operate and, we believe, will operate this year, to the injury and detriment of the Irish economy and the Irish taxpayer. That balance unaccounted for appears in the report of the Central Bank for 1952, and there is a figure for it going back to 1947. You have on page 7 of the report something which is called first a deficit and then an assumed current deficit. They call it an assumed current deficit, but The Banker and The Observer do not call it even an assumed current deficit. We are credited with having a deficit of £70,000,000 last year while the real figure is only £61.6 million.
That is of importance for this reason. We all know that the Minister for Finance last year went over to London, or was summoned over, apparently, by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. None of us knows at present, except perhaps his ministerial colleagues, what took place at that conference. All we know is what happened as a result of the conference. We know that when the Minister arrived back he put into operation a certain policy, and the excuse or explanation offered in defence of that policy was that it had been put up to him, by the British, apparently, that something was absolutely needed by our economy, some drastic steps were necessary to redress the disorder of our economy because of what is revealed by these accounts, because we were £70,000,000 "in the red" in our balance of payments. We were told, if we are to make what is probably a reasonable deduction from the subsequent conduct of the Minister for Finance and his colleagues and their policy, by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, that our balance of payments must be put right because we were in such a disordered state that drastic remedies were necessary before we would be entitled to draw upon the sterling area pool for the requirements to which we are entitled as a right in connection with our purchases in hard currency areas.
These accounts are put in the most pessimistic form, and they give to our opponents or people who are entitled to take advantage of them, if we put them in that way, the opportunity of saying: "There is something wrong with your economy. Go and put it right." We say there is nothing wrong with our economy except that the proper steps are not being taken to develop an underdeveloped economy and that what is wanted is expansion and not restriction. We happen to look beyond what the British themselves do. Would they bring in an item of that kind? Would whoever is the counterpart of our chairman of the Central Bank and his colleagues adopt this extraordinary method of economy and put in this super-cautious item? Not at all. The British always state their position in terms very different from ours, and show, month by month, the effect of the varying economic situation upon the state of their reserves. If they get any money by way of capital account, that is put in as a method of strengthening sterling. But cautious as we are, we put it here in our national accounts as if it were something we owed instead of something that comes in.
They have control of their currency. We have not.
Mr. Costello
South Africa, for a half-dozen years at least, has been paying its way, not by doing as we have been doing, but out of the capital funds that are invested there. I do suggest—and I will have to revert to it very shortly—that when we come to consider the effects of any decisions that may be arrived at in connection with the Commonwealth Conference being held this week, what we have to do is look after our own interests, first, last and all the time, and let the Commonwealth look after itself.
Deputies
Hear, hear!
I hope we will get agreement on that.
Mr. Costello
When we restrict imports, as we apparently have been doing, either by direct order or direct restriction, which apparently is the foundation of the Budget policy, or by cutting incomes, which obviously is Budget policy, and by these methods bring our international balance of payments into account, what we really are doing is not assisting ourselves to get hard currency, because we are only accumulating sterling which is inconvertible, but making it easier for the sterling area to carry on at our expense. We do this by making smaller demands, because of reduced imports, upon the sterling area pool. Therefore we have given freedom to the British to increase——
What did you agree to in 1948? What was the precise wording?
Mr. Costello
I will tell you exactly what we agreed to in 1948. I do not know what you agreed to this year with Mr. Butler, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I have stated what I agreed to in a public speech which is on record. I cannot put my hand on it at the moment but it is there. We agreed that while we had the proceeds of the Marshall Loan we would make no net draw on the sterling area pool but we got from Sir Stafford Cripps this undertaking that if and when we required to draw for our dollars or for other hard currencies, whether by reason of lack of dollars from Marshall Aid or at the conclusion of Marshall Aid, or when we wanted it, then we would be entitled as a right to draw upon the sterling area pool. It was not a suppliance or a question of going with hat in hand or doing what the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us to do but going as a customer.
Do not forget your scrupulous honesty and scrupulous fairness. You have forgotten that.
Mr. Costello
Every single thing I have said is accurate.
The Deputy knows what he said is a falsehood.
Now we are getting it.
I cannot allow a Deputy of this House to use the expression "falsehood" in that manner, which means calling another Deputy a liar.
I did not mean he knew it was a falsehood. What he said is a falsehood. He knows quite well no Minister of this Government or any Government would accept the dictation of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer in matters of this kind.
You had agreed in 1947 to reduce your expenditure.
When Deputy Costello, as Taoiseach, agreed there would be no net draw on the sterling pool in 1948 was he thinking of the interests of this country or the sterling area?
Mr. Costello
I was thinking of the interests of this country.
What is the difference between then and now?
Mr. Costello
It was you who dragged in this question at all.
If the Deputy had not started to speak by saying he was going to be scrupulously fair and then proceeded to attribute the vilest motives to his political opponents I would not have intervened.
Mr. Costello
I am not imputing the vilest motives to the Minister for Industry and Commerce or to anybody else. I am discussing——
The Minister for Finance is far less likely to take dictation than Deputy Costello was.
What about your agreement in 1947?
Deputy Costello is in possession.
Scrupulous fairness.
Mr. Costello
What I have said I believe to be an absolutely accurate statement of facts. Perhaps the Minister is hypersensitive that I was accusing him or any of his colleagues of the vilest motives. What I was doing, when he interrupted, was speaking about what we were supposed to have done in 1948, in consultation with the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. I did not refer to the Minister at all. These accounts were prepared in such a way that anyone who wanted to take advantage of our so-called difficulties in connection with our balance of payments was given that opportunity by the form in which these accounts were prepared. It would have been perhaps better for the people of this country had we been told what occurred between the Minister for Finance and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer rather than be left to speculate.
You were told. You refused to believe it.
We were never told. We got no answers to questions put down.
Do you not take my word for it? If you do not you can go be hanged.
You were not there at the time.
I was. The Deputy will have to take my word for that, too.
You were there for the luncheon.
Why not reply to the questions asked in the Dáil?
Mr. Costello
Would the Minister for Industry and Commerce calm himself down and listen.
As long as Deputy Costello does not talk about scrupulous fairness.
Mr. Costello
Will the Minister for Industry and Commerce give me one single instance in the course of what I have said of having transgressed the bounds of accuracy or fairness and I will apologise immediately?
I will give the Deputy several instances of that.
Mr. Costello
Let the Minister give me one—not several—and I will apologise here and now. So far as I could I have kept to the facts. Apparently the Minister cannot take the facts. He has spoken about the arrangements we made with the late Sir Stafford Cripps. The actual details of all that have been given by me and my colleagues on several occasions. I believe I stated those details accurately. I was present throughout the entire discussion with the late Sir Stafford Cripps. That arrangement was come to with him in the full realisation that we were doing what was proper and right for our people and we secured for our successors the right to go to the sterling area pool, not with our hats in our hands but as a customer to a banker and as a matter of right and justice. That is what we secured.
There was never any question of securing that. That was never in dispute.
Mr. Costello
That is what we secured and I fail to understand why the Minister deems it right or proper to interrupt me in that sinister way he has with the question: "What did you arrange with Sir Stafford Cripps?" Had I not been in a position to answer there could have been the suggestion here or outside that we had done something improper and arranged something detrimental to the interests of the country.
But the Deputy undoubtedly suggested that any similar arrangement made now would be because of the vilest motives——
Mr. Costello
I made no such suggestion.
The Deputy did not suggest it. He said it.
Mr. Costello
If the Minister will show me where I suggested that, I will withdraw it at once. I was pointing out that because of the form of our accounts an opportunity is given to those people who, if they like to do so, want to take advantage of the fact that our accounts appear to show that our adverse trade balance is in such a state of disequilibrium that there is something wrong which must be set right and, in order to set it right, we require the policy of the present Minister for Finance, apparently with the concurrence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, causing such anguish to and such harsh repercussions upon every section of our people. That is the point I am trying to make.
I have referred to the necessity for the repatriation of our sterling assets so often in the past that I do not think I need repeat my arguments again tonight. We have now to look for the source of the capital that is required. That source in the first instance lies primarily in the savings of our people. We cannot have any savings until we stop the assault that has been made on the incomes of our people because of the heavy and unnecessary taxation imposed by the Budget this year.
It is a matter of gratification to know that this year despite all the dismal features of our economy there have been considerable savings by our people. Whether that is due to the stocking up because of the Korean War or to anticipatory buying for other reasons I do not know. Again and again, I have given details of the methods by which a savings campaign should be initiated in order to get capital. I do not wish to go over the ground again. The ground has been covered in several of the speeches I have made in the course of the last 12 months. I have suggested the establishment of a central savings office, the help of trade unions, industrialists and local groups all over the country. Changes in taxation should be made and directed towards encouraging private saving. It has been suggested that industry and business should be encouraged to build up savings instead of paying out dividends. Further reliefs should be given with suitable safeguards on life insurance premiums.
We have a source of capital in the money deposited by our people and particularly by our farmers with the commercial banks. Our farmers have a tradition of putting their savings on deposit receipt in the banks rather than of investing them in Irish industry and the banks act as savings institutions and not as investment institutions. Deputy McGilligan in the course of his speech on the Estimate for the Minister for Finance analysed and expounded the motives of the commercial banks in their investment policy in connection with deposits. Their excuse for the enormous amount of money they invest in British and foreign securities is their desire for liquidity. One might concede that there is some necessity for something like liquidity. How can that liquidity be secured? It can be secured in three ways. It can be secured by the co-operation of the Central Bank. It can be secured by the establishment here of a money market and by an improvement of the stock exchange. We discussed with the representatives of the commercial banks the necessity for their giving the moneys required by the Dublin Corporation to finance their housing operations and we told them that they had failed in their duty of setting up a money market here and improving the operations of the stock exchange. We believe that is a policy that any Government—certainly any Government from this side of the House—would take immediate steps to implement in order to ensure that capital would be provided for the establishment of such a money market.
It is encouraging to notice that the bankers of India who are, I am informed, very conservative financiers have recently set about establishing a short-term money market. We pressed upon the representatives of the commercial banks the absolute necessity for their co-operation in connection with these matters which would, in effect, very shortly give them the liquidity they so much desired without the necessity, which they so much insist upon, of investing the savings of our people in British and foreign securities. If steps were taken to establish a money market and create jobbing houses, which act I believe as wholesalers in stocks and shares, and if the Central Bank was prepared to co-operate in these, too, then the necessary liquidity would be very easily secured at a very early date.
The stock exchange at the moment is in its structure a barrier to industrial progress. Had we the institutions to which I have referred the moneys that now go into the commercial banks would by-pass those institutions and be diverted into Irish industry and into the schemes of capital expenditure necessary for the development of our own resources. The present stock exchange is a barrier to that progress. That body if it was working in the national interest should provide the motivating force for an expanding Irish economy.
You want something else. You want agreement that Irish industry can earn the same profits as British industry.
We should attempt to do our own job in our own way.
All the rest of the machinery will not work if we do not get that. People will still seek investment in Britain.
If the Minister objects to the suggestions I am making he can deal with them when he is replying.
The Deputy is leaving out the one thing that matters.
The Minister can add to or correct anything I have said when he is replying. If there is anything wrong or inaccurate in what I have said let us hear it.
You may be sure that he will do that.
I take it that all Deputies will agree that an efficient stock exchange could be a useful institution and could act and should act in providing perfect competition for the sale of stocks and shares. I am not talking about a matter that has occurred to us in the past few days. It is nearly two years since we raised this matter and pressed it upon the banks when we discussed the necessity for the financing of the housing loan for the Dublin Corporation. It was not yesterday or to-day that these considerations were pressed upon the banks. Until this liquidity that they desire and that, apparently, is necessary for their operations, or until some degree of liquidity is provided for them by the method I have suggested, we will still have the position where the depositors' money is invested through the medium of the commercial banks in every institution except Irish institutions and in every industry except Irish industry, with the possible exception of a very small amount.
I said at an early stage that I favour capital expenditure. I do. I favour it also by all institutions whose duty it is to co-operate in spending the capital necessary for the development of the land, industry and the resources of this country. I am informed that here in Dublin we have no real competition in the sale of stocks and shares. There is nothing but an auction from time to time, which largely serves to punctuate the stagnation of that concern. I believe, as we believed years ago, in the necessity for recreating the institution of the stock exchange and in the creation of a short-term money market. With that would go a wish to co-operate by the Central Bank, and with that would be given that necessary liquidity which would give safety, security and investment of Irish money in Irish land and Irish development.
I have already said that, in the course of speeches which I made throughout the country, I suggested the formation of a capital investment board. I gave details of it in several speeches. Its duty would be to see that there was an orderly and regulated investment of capital that was being put into Irish industry and Irish land, and generally in the enterprises of a protective character which were the subject of our policy in our programme of capital expenditure which we initiated in 1950. That board could take away the matter from the arena of Party politics.
We are right into it.
The Labour Party advocated it years ago.
It is a normal socialist device.
Of course. It is a capitalist device.
Deputy Cowan was called a Communist for advocating that.
Do not pretend that it takes it out of the arena of politics. It brings it right into it.
I can refer the Minister to the speech I made when I adumbrated this matter and developed it. Actually, I made the speech in February last—almost 12 months ago. I will read the relevant part of it now. Deputies can then choose between the Minister's view and the views that I put forward. I will quote my own words now so that judgment can be made upon them:
"Recognising that the wealth of Ireland depends upon the skilful application of Irish labour to the exploitation of Irish resources a high and well-ordered programme of investment must be maintained to provide Irish labour with the capital required. The dual Budget must be continued and extended. If the system of the dual Budget is to be a success its principles must be clearly understood, and that system must be placed as far as possible beyond politics and beyond misrepresentation. A new administrative machine could well be fashioned with the duty of sifting and passing all projects which are proper for financing as capital projects out of capital and not out of the proceeds of taxation. By the use of this instrument it would become impossible for political opponents to allege that money was being borrowed which should properly be raised by taxation.
There are no constitutional difficulties in the way of a national investment board constantly concerned to relate the level of investment with the rate of saving and the state of the balance of payments. To such a board would be entrusted the general control and direction of national investment, and such control would include the exercise of any power required in a matter such as the expansion or restriction of credit. Treasury control would continue its useful but strictly defined purpose of financial watch-dog."
There I expounded in public the policy which I now repeat for a capital investment board. If the Minister says that that brings it into the arena of politics let him say how that is so. When I first expounded it in that speech it was for the purpose of bringing it outside the arena of politics. When the Minister himself was in opposition he tried to bring the matter of productive capital development in this country—which was such a success under the aegis of the inter-Party Government—into politics and to make political capital out of it. I said that the country requires something to be done at an early moment to alleviate the anxieties and the miseries which we are facing.
We have been waiting a long time for something to be done.
I am aware of the difficulties that will face any Government in connection with prices and price control. The present Government threw the matter into chaos early this year by their sudden withdrawal of the food subsidies. As time goes on, that withdrawal will create not merely for themselves but for any Government that may succeed them difficulties of an almost insuperable kind in connection with price control and the reduction of the prices of food. I drew attention to that matter in Athlone last June. I have the fullest appreciation, as have my colleagues, of the difficulties of rising prices and price control, and of the task of bringing about anything in the nature of price stability. The only way in which that can be done is by a drastic reduction in taxation. The only secure way in which any impression can be made on the cost of living and on price structure is by a drastic reduction in taxation. How can that be achieved, having regard to the policy pursued by the Government in its financial concerns? To bring about a reduction of taxation in this country it will be necessary to curtail Government expenditure.
The problem will be to reconcile the curtailment of Government expenditure and the task of increasing capital productive enterprises which are essential to cure unemployment, to raise the standard of living of our people and to bring some measure of price stability into our country. The only real way you can do that is by decreasing taxation and in order to get decreased taxation, and at the same time carry on a policy of productive capital expenditure, it is essential that the greater part of that productive capital expenditure—perhaps not the greater part but to a very great extent—should be undertaken by other institutions and other individuals within the State. That should be encouraged. Private citizens should be encouraged to put their money into Irish industries and into productive enterprises of the character to which we have referred. In that task, I say, the banking concerns and the Central Bank must play their part if there is to be a continuation of the policy of productive capital expenditure which was initiated by the inter-Party Government. We must have the co-operation of all institutions and private individuals. The last loan which was issued was issued at such a rate that it will be, to say the least of it, extremely difficult for any Government in the near future to obtain a substantial amount of money at a lower rate than 5 per cent. That rate is so crippling that it will not be possible to carry out anything in the nature of a forward policy of expansion.
I want to conclude by repeating what I said in the earlier part of my remarks. The public temper at the present moment is such that it will not bruit any longer the anxieties and the worries that are affecting every section of the people. I have endeavoured, no matter what the Minister in his truculent mood may say or think, to approach this matter in a constructive fashion. I say, whatever the Minister may say in reply, that if the Irish people impose upon us the very burdensome task of resurrecting this country from the desperate situation into which it has been plunged by him and his colleagues, at least it can be said that we have declared in opposition the policy which we will put into effect as a Government. We believe, and sincerely believe, that that policy will do what the Minister and his colleagues have failed to do—give some hope to the people of the country, give employment to those whom they have put out of employment, that it will do what should have been done and what could have been done to develop our undeveloped resources in men and material, that it will do something that will show that we have confidence in Ireland and the Irish people, and that it is not our policy to fasten austerity upon them. The policy which I have outlined in the remarks which I have made to-day and in the speeches which my colleagues and I have made in the last 12 months will substitute, for a policy of austerity and restriction, a policy of expansion, a policy that will bring increased wealth and increased comfort to our people, who have been so bemused, fettered and cast down by the policy pursued by the present Government.
The speech made by the Minister introducing this Bill contrasted very much with the speech he made in 1950. Those of us who remember what the Minister said when he sat in opposition on this side of the House can recall the wild speech which he delivered then, which contrasts very much with the speech he made on this Bill. It appears as though he was talking the other day with his tongue in his cheek. The passage of time has shown that the attitude of the Minister and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party two years ago was completely dishonest.
The Deputy must not have been listening to Deputy Costello's exhortations for scrupulous fairness and meticulous accuracy or if he has, it has not influenced him very much.
I do not know what the Minister is muttering about. Perhaps it is as well I do not.
I referred to the Deputy's exhortation for scrupulous fairness and meticulous accuracy. His influence apparently does not extend very far in his own Party, judging by Deputy Rooney's remarks
What is wrong with Deputy Rooney's remarks?
Anybody who read the debate of 1950 and who heard Deputy Lemass then can see his approach at that time and his effort to nail on the inter-Party Government the difficulties that arose from the Korean War. At that time the attitude of Fianna Fáil was that any slight upward trend that had taken place in prices was being caused by the inter-Party Government and not by the Korean conflict. Here the other day we had Deputy Bartley pointing out that the difficulties at the present time were due to the fact that the war in Korea did not go well for the Americans. Fianna Fáil cannot have it both ways. It was either the effects of the conflict in the East that caused this upward trend or it was the inter-Party Government. It cannot have been both.
The Minister was content in his speech on this Bill to deal particularly with the bread and flour situation. He made only very limited reference to any other matters coming within the scope of the Bill. He was content with tossing the bakers' farthing. He tossed it several times and in the long run we found him splitting the farthing and saying that finance was manipulated by dealings in the half-farthing. People at the present time are not thinking of farthings. They are thinking of bread and butter. This time the Minister's speech was a tame approach to a very difficult problem. It was supported by a number of lame excuses. It was significant that his speech was very brief and was not so wide in its scope as usual.
In 1950 we were told all about high prices, unemployment and emigration. When the present Government came into office it proceeded not only to sanction an increase in prices but to decontrol prices. Even recently we have seen another set of prices decontrolled to the disadvantage of people with limited earnings. The futility of the Fianna Fáil Party is becoming more and more apparent. They seem to have nothing only excuses to offer instead of a solution for the problems which are confronting the country at the present time.
The cost of living, since this time two years, has risen by more than 20 per cent. There has been a particularly significant rise since the present Government took office. But that was natural, due to the fact that prices were increased by ministerial Order and decontrolled by ministerial Order. They were, consequently, allowed to rise. During the inter-Party régime, the cost of living only went up 5 per cent. in three and a half years.
That is a new one.
It can be got from the statistics.
I wish we could get it—5 per cent. in three and a half years.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce gave it to me to-day. Are you going to blame him for telling lies?
Five per cent. in three and a half years?
Deputy Rooney should be allowed to proceed without interruption.
Deputy Cunningham only came into the House in recent times and he does not know.
That is no reason why I should be stupid.
I want to tell him that the cost of living is calculated at the present time on a basis made out by Fianna Fáil in 1947. The basis of calculation, at the present time and over the years, has been taken on a 1947 set of figures. Take it at 100 in 1947, it was 102 in February, 1951, and it probably went up another 3 per cent. between that and June when the present Government took office, thus making a total of 5 per cent. in three and a half years. Anyone who wishes can get these statistics, and can also get the last figure of 122 in comparison with the 100 for 1947 for the August calculation. The November calculation will not be known for a couple of months. That is just as well maybe for the Fianna Fáil Party. It has probably been more than 20 per cent. since February, 1951.
Let us remember, too, that on the average wages went up between 10 and 20 per cent. during the inter-Party régime. The rise of 5 per cent. in the cost of living was more than met by the upward adjustment of wages during that time. Now, we have upward adjustments of wages, in many cases 5 per cent. and less than 10 per cent.
Eleven per cent.
Even supposing it is 11 per cent., that is supposed to offset a cost-of-living rise of nearly 25 per cent. Obviously, therefore, the balance is against those people who have to depend on weekly earnings and on an upward adjustment to their wages.
The standard of living is also down. The people are now unable to buy the quantity of food or the essential commodities which they were able to buy with their wages during the inter-Party régime. The figures easily prove that. It is true, even from the round figures I have given, that £5 now will only buy what £4 could buy in June, 1951, when the Fianna Fáil Party took office. It is apparently the deliberate policy of Fianna Fáil to cut down the standard of living. Apparently, in their view, the people were living too well. I remember that, in 1950, it was pointed out that our consumption of butter amounted to 13 oz. per head per week of the population, that is, taking men, women and children.
It was rationed then.
They were buying their ration at 2/8 per lb., and buying as much more as they wanted at the ordinary economic price.
Four shillings per lb.
Yes. Now, they are paying almost 4/- per lb. for all the butter they eat. When the inter-Party Government came in, our people were on 2 oz. of butter per week. It was not very difficult for them to pay for their ration at that time. That ration was increased to 8 oz. per week by the inter-Party Government, and the butter was made available to them at 2/8 per lb. Butter is now 3/10. That is a rise of 1/- per lb. since the inter-Party Government left office and the present Government took control.
Butter is not the only commodity in respect of which consumption has been restricted by the price. It is well known that people are not now consuming as much bread as they did formerly. In the case of big families which find it necessary to purchase large quantities of bread, they just cannot afford to do so, and have to cut down their consumption. The price of tea was also increased. The sky is the limit now for tea. In our time, it was available to them at a fair price on the ration, with the economic price over and above that. All must now pay more than the economic price.
That is so much for the cost of living and the rise in prices. We also find that unemployment has risen rapidly since the change of Government. This was caused particularly by irresponsible ministerial speeches. These speeches involved hunger and hardship for the people. They were made in order to gain political advantage as the Ministers thought they would. These panic and scare-making speeches eventually caused a recession in trade and a slump in business. The result is that we are now going up towards the Fianna Fáil figure of unemployment in 1939 which was 119,000. The unemployment figure has gone up by nearly 20,000 since Fianna Fáil took office. That does not take into account the fall in the income of wage earners.
When the inter-Party Government was in office wage earners were working overtime. They had their overtime pay in addition to their weekly wages. Now many of them are on short time and whether they like it or not they have to be glad of it. Similarly, the round-the-clock shift work, which was in operation in many factories during the time of the inter-Party Government, has been abandoned. The result is that industrial production is down. The figures show a decline of 15 per cent. That is mainly due to the fact that there are less people on overtime and more people on short time, with the result that less is being produced by our industrial undertakings. The gross earnings of those engaged in industries have, consequently, been reduced. The jobs of many of those people are now in danger. People who had been in employment for nearly a generation, now find themselves in the position that any day, as a result of the policy pursued by the present Government, they may be without a job.
In 1950, the unemployment figure was the lowest ever since the establishment of this State 30 years ago. We are beginning to move back now towards the high figure of unemployment which we had before the world war. The inter-Party Government found it necessary to call workers home to take a hand in the building of this country, particularly in relation to housing. The call was particularly directed to skilled tradesmen who could take part in the building of these houses. Many of these workers are now making their way back to Britain from which we called them in 1949.
The unemployment figure would be still higher were it not for the fact that many men were brought into the Army which has been increased by 5,000. If these 5,000 had not joined the Army, the question is whether employment would be available for them here. The inter-Party Government were criticised because they kept the Army at what appeared to be an adequate figure but which, according to Fianna Fáil, was too low. We kept it at that figure because we did not want the people to leave the fields and the factories where there was work for them. It would not be fair to call them into the Army at a time when they were able to get employment in civil life. Our idea has always been to allow the people to work on the land and in the factories. We knew that if it were necessary to call them into the Army and to give service to the nation they would always be available and would be well fitted for the Army if the necessity arose.
In 1950, there were more people in insurable employment than at any time during the previous 30 years. There were approximately 230,000 people engaged at that time in various kinds of insurable employment as compared with approximately 190,000 when the inter-Party Government took office in 1948. The inter-Party Government put an extra 38,000 people into employment in the space of 38 months. The number of people going into employment was increasing up to the change of Government. The number of unemployed began to increase about two months after the change of Government.
As an example of that I may say that this week there are nearly 1,000 men unemployed in County Dublin. It has been necessary for the Dublin County Council to make a sum of £4,000 available for relief work so that at least some of these who are married will have some money to purchase the food and other necessaries which go with the Christmas festivities. The Dublin County Council have only been able to make relief work available for 350 out of these 1,000 men. The point I want to make is that in 1949 and 1950 it was not necessary to have any relief schemes because there was nobody looking for work in County Dublin. We have not enough money this year to give even a couple of weeks' employment to all of these 1,000 men.
Emigration, of course, has also increased. The emigration figure since the change of Government has gone up by 50 per cent. These people have no alternative but to emigrate. Many of them are men that were called back in 1949 to work on the housing programme of the inter-Party Government. We do not see any photographs being published now of people queueing up for passports. If photographs were published now we would see much longer queues than there were when these photographs were being published. That is the type of Fianna Fáil propaganda which the inter-Party Government had to put up with. Now that the inter-Party Government has been removed the people can see for themselves that the tactics of the Fianna Fáil Party have been responsible to a great extent for bringing about a vast change in their household budget. Industrial development is at a standstill. When the inter-Party Government were in office, it was difficult for people desiring to establish factories to secure a site anywhere near Dublin because there was such a push on at that time for the establishment of factories.
How many were established?
Over 200 were established during that time. If Deputy Cunningham wants to confirm that he can look up the answer to a parliamentary question which was put down about seven months ago. There were something like 246 factories established during the régime of the inter-Party Government, and 46 of these were on the way before the inter-Party Government took office. I hope that is clear to the Deputy. That explains the reason why it was difficult for people desiring to establish factories near Dublin to get sites. There was a very keen demand for sites at that time. I understand that there are factory sites available now in or around the city, but that there are no people desiring to take them in order to establish factories.
Balbriggan has changed from a busy town to a ghost town. There are more unemployed in Balbriggan, I think, than in any other town of its size in Ireland. One factory is, I think, completely closed down and the others are on half-time or short-time. The result is that there is a very large number of people unemployed in Balbriggan.
How many?
I suppose there are approximately 200.
Deputy Cunningham should cease interrupting.
I have been able to give him information in reply to a few of his interjections. In any event, Balbriggan is in a very bad way at present. Some of the unemployed there will be able to get a couple of weeks' work before Christmas under the relief scheme. Some years ago, when a relief scheme was brought in for the County Dublin, some of the unemployed found that they could not take county council work because they were not accustomed to it. They were accustomed to another type of work, and it was no great consolation to them to be told: "We will give you a fortnight on county council work just to tide you over Christmas." They wanted the type of work in which they had always been engaged.
Apparently no effort is being made by the Government to put things right in Balbriggan. The factories are lying there idle or are on short-time because of lack of demand for the textiles which they were producing when the inter-Party Government were in office.
I would like to mention that these factories were working night and day. At that time they were working three shifts of eight hours, and now they are closed down altogether. I observed too in connection with this Bill that the building Order has been revoked because there is a sufficiency now of building materials. That is a happy development, but unfortunately the building slump has come now. The recent increase in interest on the national loan has caused a slump in the building trade because money is too dear. People desiring to avail of loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act would be obliged to pay 5¾ per cent., which would really mean that on £1,000 borrowed they would have £1,000 interest to pay in 16 or 17 years, and they would still owe the £1,000 they had borrowed. The rate of interest has become so heavy that these people cannot avail of that type of loan in future. The result is that there is a building slump.
Mention was made of the fact that 5,000 tons of timber were sent from Dublin to Belfast for the purpose of building houses in Belfast, or perhaps in Great Britain. I think it was very foolish of the Minister to give permission for that timber to be sent out to build houses in Belfast and elsewhere when there are 20,000 houses needed in Dublin. We were offered the consolation that timber in future can be bought cheaper. I heard that there is bloodstained Russian timber at the docks, and that it was produced by slave labour and that it has been brought in here to replace the 5,000 tons of timber which were exported some weeks ago from Dublin to Belfast.
Where did that come from?
I am informed it came from Russia. I am not going to say it was on good authority, but on reliable authority.
Where did the timber that went to Belfast come from?
You know well it came from Canada, the best in the world.
I did not ask you.
The timber in this case came from Canada. I have not the cutting here but I think you can take that as being correct. I saw either in the Irish Times or the Irish Independent a photograph of a train loaded with this timber ready to leave Dublin for Belfast, and I think, underneath that photograph, I saw that it was Canadian timber. Anyway, I suppose, when the building programme was stopped, the Government decided to abandon the idea of proceeding with the housing programme, particularly the 20,000 houses still needed for Dublin City, and that was why they gave permission for this timber to be sent from Dublin to Belfast. Apparently their guess was fairly right as far as Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act loans are concerned and as far as people desiring to build their own houses are concerned, because that type of enterprise and speculative building has come to a standstill.
Another aspect of the matter is that builders have been restricted in the matter of credit. A large portion of the housing programme credit made available to the building contractors enabled them to build homes for the people. That credit was destroyed, of course, by the ministerial speeches, panic and scare created this time last year deliberately by the Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government, desiring, I expect, to place the blame on the inter-Party Government for their own inability to manage the affairs of the nation as you now know it to be.
I have heard some reference made to the adverse trade balance. Let us remember that the Fianna Fáil Party took office on 13th June, 1951. Consequently, during more than six months of the year 1951 they were in control of the affairs of this country. Let us look at the figures concerning the adverse trade balance. I am not going to take the June figure because they can tell me their predecessors were responsible for that figure, if they wish, but I am going to take figures for each month from July to December, 1951. I have added them together and I find that the total of the trade deficit for the last half year of 1951 amounted to £49,500,000. The Fianna Fáil Party had control over our trade and over our activities for those six months. With that control and applying it in whatever way they did, the adverse trade balance for the latter half of 1951 amounted to £49,500,000. Do not forget that when the change of Government came, the inter-Party Government handed over £26,000,000 of Marshall Aid money to the Fianna Fáil Party. Therefore, it is possible that that £26,000,000 of Marshall Aid money was used in this £49,500,000 adverse trade balance. The Fianna Fáil Party spent more of the Marshall Aid money in seven months than the inter-Party Government spent in three years. They spent £26,000,000 and the inter-Party Government spent the remaining £18,000,000 before the change of Government.
We know too that the Fianna Fáil Party have changed their attitude in regard to capital development, and particularly in regard to borrowing for capital development. But last year they did not do any borrowing for capital development. They went on with the inter-Party programme of capital development and made no effort to finance it. Only this year they came along and raised a national loan of £20,000,000 for which they gave the very generous interest of 5 per cent. Over the period of 20 years in which that loan will be repaid the people who had money and made it available for this loan will have received £20,000,000 for their generosity in making the £20,000,000 available.
Of course, in addition to the £20,000,000 that will be paid to those lenders, the £20,000,000 they gave us a couple of months ago will be given back to them. In other words, we are going to give them £20,000,000 for the privilege of giving £20,000,000 and the payment will be made at the end of 20 years.
This increase in the interest was unjustified. The argument was put forward by the Minister for Finance that his loan might not have succeeded if he offered any less than 5 per cent. It was a very lame excuse considering that £39,000,000 was borrowed by Deputy McGilligan, the then Minister for Finance in the inter-Party Government at rates of interest of 3¼ and 3½ per cent. The inter-Party Government raised £39,000,000. We now have on top of that a loan of £20,000,000 at 5 per cent., a loan for which the taxpayers must be the guarantors since it is they who will have to pay this fantastic rate of interest. Such a rate of interest in respect of a national loan has never been heard of before.
It has been said that business premises and shops are forsaken. Certainly grocers' establishments are forsaken and so are the drapers'. Never has there been such a slackness in trade. Licensed premises are experiencing the same slackness. The decontrolling of prices and the sanctioning of increased prices has left the ordinary people with very little money to spend. They are so busy trying to pay the extra 1/- per lb. for butter, the extra 3d. per loaf for bread, the higher price for tea and the extra 2/1 per stone for flour that they have no money left for other essentials.
I hoped the Minister would make some reference to the cost of living. I hoped he would tell us what he proposed to do in relation to it or whether this Bill was intended to maintain the present position. I hoped he might tell us if there was any intention of a change in relation to prices. Unfortunately, the Minister has been content to hide behind the Prices Advisory Body. He mentioned that body in a defensive way. He was very opposed to its establishment and he said that it was being set up by the inter-Party Government so that they could shelve their responsibilities. The general public has found. however, that the Prices Advisory Body has operated very fairly, and to-day we find the Minister using it as a kind of defence weapon for himself. It is a fantastic change of attitude.
He did say that the whole structure of price control in relation to flour milling was bad. I heard Deputy Keane give remarkable figures showing that it is not necessary for the Minister to be quite so anxious about the farthings and the halfpennies so far as the millers and bakers are concerned. Dublin bakers to-day are selling bread down the country, 100 miles away from the capital, cheaper than they are selling the same bread in Dublin and its environs. It is difficult to understand how they can transport bread that distance and sell it cheaper to the people in the rural areas than they can to the citizens of Dublin living beside the bakery. I presume that is why these millers were able to give such substantial subscriptions, as they are reputed to have given, to the Fianna Fáil Party in connection with the by-elections during the summer. Judging by what Deputy Keane has said, the prices are in need of investigation.
Bread is a very important commodity in every household. It is remarkable that the Minister instead of sanctioning the increase of a farthing—which, of course, became a halfpenny and ultimately a penny to the consumer—decided not to put the matter to the Prices Advisory Body. Surely if the increase were justified, it could have been justified before that body. The argument was advanced that there would be protracted dislocation in the bakery industry. There was dislocation in the industry early in 1948 but the difficulties were resolved at that time. If difficulties arose now they could equally well be resolved.
In 1950 when the Minister was in opposition, he complained that the inter-Party Government had not seen fit to introduce a permanent measure. Last year he himself introduced a temporary measure. We did not cavil at that because we felt that he might not have had sufficient time to introduce a permanent Bill. This year he comes along again and introduces a temporary measure and says he does not propose to bring in permanent legislation and probably will not bring it in this time next year either. Surely we are entitled to some consistency.
It is becoming more obvious every day that the Government is incapable. It does not seem to care what effect its activities have on the general community. Food has been heartlessly increased in price. So have many other commodities. The recent by-election reflects the attitude of the people in general and particularly the attitude of the people in the cities and towns. It was the cities and towns that added strength to Fianna Fáil in the last general election enabling them to become the Government with the aid of a few Independents. It was the people in the cities and towns annoyed at the rise of 2d. in the lb. of butter that brought about the change in 1951. Butter has increased by 1/- a lb. since then. Tea has increased. So has bacon, meat and all the other items that are normally used in the ordinary household and I think it is only right that we should demand an immediate general election. If we claim to be democratic and if we say the people are entitled to a Government elected from the people we should now give the people an opportunity of speaking. We should not have a Government that represents only 30 per cent. of the people. In the recent by-election 70 per cent. of the people voted against the Government. We should give the people a chance to speak and it is only right that we on the Opposition Benches should demand an immediate dissolution.
It is only right that Deputies on this side of the House should demand a dissolution and should demand the immediate resignation of the Government so that the people will be allowed to speak and so that they will be allowed to elect a Government that will appreciate the difficulties under which our people are labouring at the present time.
I thought that Deputy Cowan gave a fairly good reason for the result of the North-West Dublin by-election. Will Deputy Rooney now instance any case where the relative of a deceased Deputy who stood for election in a by-election was defeated while this Government was in office? As Deputy Cowan pointed out, the Irish people are a very charitable and sympathetic people when they voted for Deputy Byrne.
The Fianna Fáil Party were not very sympathetic — or their speakers either.
He started off and said that he objects to our selling timber to the Six Counties. I do not see what is wrong in that. Most of the time we are buying from Britain. Is it not about time that the boot was on the other foot? Is it not time that we made a bit of profit on selling to them now? I see nothing wrong with merchants or anybody else selling their commodities outside this country or with importing goods and then exporting them at a profit. That is what was done in the case of timber. That is especially so when we are in a position to buy and to secure cheaper timber to replace the timber which we export.
Are we to take it, therefore, that the timber was sold at a profit?
Order! Deputy McGrath is now in possession.
If the seller did not make a profit, he was a fool.
The very same people insist on our buying tea from Britain. They are the same people who bought tea at the high prices and stockpiled it. The result to-day is that the Irish people are paying more for their tea than they would normally be paying for it. That will be so while we have large stocks of the stockpiled tea on hands. There were suggestions that we should again throw ourselves on the mercy of the British and buy our tea from them. When another war would break out they would keep 2 oz. for themselves and give us ½ oz. Everybody knows the hardship that the people of this country suffered when they got only ½ oz. of tea per head from the British Government during the emergency, while the British gave 2 oz. per head to their own people. I am in entire agreement with the Minister when he said that he would leave the Government if that should happen. I think that any man with any spark of Irish nationality in him would do the same.
Hear, hear!
I think it would be folly to put ourselves at the mercy of the British for our supplies, so that when war or something else would break out they would look after themselves and leave us without it. It is the same as when they imposed an extra levy of 25/- a ton on the coal that we were buying — an extra levy which their own people or the people in the Six Counties had not to pay. When the people here make a little bit of profit by exporting timber to the Six Counties there is a terrible outcry. No Deputy on this side of the House need be ashamed of Fianna Fáil's housing programme. The Fianna Fáil Government brought in the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1932. They built more houses in a couple of years than the Coalition Government would build if they were there for 20 years.
How do you know?
They built more in Cork, according to Deputy McGrath.
They built a large number of houses in North-West Dublin.
They did. I pass by them every evening on my way home from the Dáil. We have built more houses in Cork since this Government was returned to office than were built in the previous six years—and I have a question down to prove that. The people on the Opposition Benches talk about housing and industry. Do we not all remember when, in 1932, the people on the Opposition side of the House were satisfied to import every bit of the flour coming into this country from Liverpool and Birken-head? We have a picture of that situation below in Cork. The little red-brick building that was there in 1932 is still there just the same as it was. Alongside it, we can see the huge mills and silos which were built as a result of the efforts of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce. We know that the Coalition Government would hardly have been able to build a house if our present Minister for Industry and Commerce had not built cement factories for the production of cement here at a rate cheaper than it could be obtained from Britain, notwithstanding the fact that they were paying 25/- a ton more for the coal they were using in these cement factories.
We know very well that there has been a slump. One reason is that the slump has been world-wide. A big factor, however, which caused the slump in the textile factories and other factories in this country was the stockpiling which was carried out by the Coalition Government.
So we did stockpile?
That is a well-known fact. We have plenty of evidence now that the tide has turned. The mills down in Cork are in full production. Dunlops are working three shifts a day for a full 24 hours. They make tyres. Sunbeam Wolsey have taken on more hands. O'Brien's, Spinners, are working a couple of shifts a day. Deputy O'Gorman spoke about Youghal last week. As far as I recollect, there was no industry in Youghal—except a small pottery which was there when I was very young— until Fianna Fáil encouraged the establishment of Seafield Fabrics and Blackwater Cottons. Nobody knows that better than Deputy O'Gorman. He was at the opening of Blackwater Cottons. Although this industry has been started only a couple of months, they are already working on an extension to Blackwater Cottons.
We know very well that there had to be taxation to pay the debts left by the Coalition Government. We know that they made no provision for the subsidy to Córas Iompair Éireann and that £1,800,000 was due when Fianna Fáil came into office. We know that no provision was made for the arbitration award to civil servants and that Fianna Fáil had to provide £3,500,000 for that purpose. We know that one of the first acts of the Coalition Government was to close down the chassis factory at Inchicore—the one great chance we had to start the heavy engineering industry in this country. They closed it down because it was a Fianna Fáil scheme and they sold the most up-to-date machinery and tools there as scrap. We know that they had to send their orders over to Park Royal and that they had to send their men over there from Inchicore to carry out their orders and to do their work there. They closed down Aer Linte because it was a Fianna Fáil scheme and they sold the Constellations for a couple of million pounds. Every transatlantic airway in the world made huge profits last year. The Coalition Government sold everything that was of any value to this country. As Deputy Corry said, they are like a woman who sold every stick of furniture in the house.
Was it not Fianna Fáil who built the three extra sugar factories, and did we not hear Deputy Dillon say here in 1947 that it would be a good job for this country if the four sugar factories were bombed, that we would then be able to pay every child in the country an allowance of 5/-, and that after the war sugar could be landed on the quays of Dublin at 2d. per lb.? That statement will be found in the records of the House. If we listened to the advice of people of that kind, we can get an idea of what the position of the country would be at the present time.
We know that we are producing sugar much more cheaply than we could import it at present and that, for the quantity of sugar we had to import, we were obliged to pay £1,000,000 more than the price at which we could have produced it in this country. We know also that the present Minister started Irish Shipping and that he is increasing his activities in that regard. We also know the attitude of the inter-Party Government to the Store Street building. Because it was a Fianna Fáil scheme, they wanted to hold it up and leave the people standing in snow and sleet on Aston's Quay, very often for an hour, waiting for country buses. That did not worry them; this was a Fianna Fáil scheme and it had to go. Thank God they went in time to have it restored. Everybody in the country knows that that building was badly needed.
We also know the position in regard to Irish Steel, that part of the plant for the rolling mills was there for three years, but money would not be advanced for it. They now talk about increased interest rates, but did the inter-Party Government not increase the interest rates for housing? Did they not increase the rate from 3 per cent. to 3¾ per cent. One would think now that there never had been an increase before.
I think that, in the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, we have the best man for that position that we possibly could. I think that is admitted by every Party in the House when they are in the mood to talk honestly. When Deputies stand up here and talk about depression they know in their hearts that the cause of the depression, the cause of the necessity for the loan and the cause of the Budget was their reckless spending. Deputy Dillon told us that his trouble on one occasion was that he did not know how he would spend £5,000,000 in one evening. Everybody knows that we could make everyone happy for the time being if we kept on spending money and paid nobody.
He left it to you to squander it.
The inter-Party Government made no provision for a subsidy for Córas Iompair Éireann and we hear a lot of moaning from Labour Deputies from time to time about dismissals from Córas Iompair Éireann. Were it not for this Government, there would be no one at all employed in Córas Iompair Éireann because there would be no subsidies for it. People should face the position fairly and honestly, and admit, as everybody knows, that the position of the country has improved. We can see that daily, at least around Cork. There is no doubt that the position was bad, due to the policy of the people who were in power before Fianna Fáil regained office. With the help of God, the position will come right and there is no reason in the world for all the moaning and lamentation that come from the other side of the House. I think this is the most protracted discussion that we have ever had on this Bill. Deputies opposite talk about everything in the world on this Bill, the cost of living, etc. The people over there promised us a reduction of 30 per cent in the cost of living. Deputy Rooney mentioned something which he said was stated by Deputy Davin on one occasion, that while the inter-Party Government were in power the increase in wages counteracted the increase in the cost of living.
And I repeat that.
Notwithstanding that, it is a remarkable fact that both the congresses had given notice that they were going to break the wage agreement reached in 1948 owing to the increase in the cost of living during the inter-Party régime. It is rather interesting now to hear it suggested by some Labour Deputies that they were breaking that agreement dishonestly.
I must candidly confess that it is not easy for me as an ordinary Deputy to speak following the lengthy and very eloquent speech of Deputy J. A. Costello. It is not easy because in the first instance there was so much in that speech of vital importance with which I am in complete agreement. I would not attempt in any circumstances to follow the line he traversed while being in agreement with him in regard to the fundamental issue, namely the question of whether the Parliament elected by the people should have more control over the financial and economic policy of the Government of the day. I think it is quite clear now, even to Deputies like Deputy McGrath, that the effect of the last revolutionary Budget has now found its way into the heads as well as into the pockets of the people. The result of the North-West Dublin election is only one indication of the viewpoint of the people in regard to the injustice of that Budget.
I have no hesitation in saying that if the three by-elections previously held in Waterford, Limerick and Mayo had been postponed until the full effects of the increased prices brought about as a result of the Budget were generally felt, if they had been postponed until the women, particularly, felt their impact, the results of these three elections would be the same as the result of the recent by-election in North-West Dublin. One vital matter that concerns the average citizen of the day is the high cost of living. It is a terrible state of affairs, but I daresay it would not make any impression on the funny mind of the Minister for Finance — the Minister must be aware of it and, if he is not aware of it, his backbenchers must tell him—that there are tens of thousands of people, ordinary wage earners, people living on fixed low incomes, civil servants, members of the Army and Garda, tens of thousands of our best citizens giving good service to the country, who have not got one penny by way of compensation to meet the rapid increase in the cost of living which was brought about by the brutal Budget brought in by the Minister for Finance. I can well understand, although I did not take any part in the contest, the reasons why the electors of North-West Dublin gave such a very decisive answer to the claims made by the Fianna Fáil candidate. I am informed, and I believe it because I was informed by one of the leading Fianna Fáil spokesmen, that Senator Clarkin was the most popular man they could find to fight that by-election.
We seem to be discussing the by-election rather than the Bill.
In that election the Fianna Fáil people sent out many leaflets and appeals to the electors which are definitely related to matters that are pertinent to a discussion of this Bill. "How has the Budget affected the cost of living?" I have already said that the cost of living is the one matter which concerns the plain people at the moment, and concerns them to the extent of how, and in what way, it can be even stabilised if not brought down from the ridiculously high level it has reached since this Government came into office. Here is a claim which this document makes:—
"When allowance is made for the revision of the payments made under the children's allowances scheme, the maximum increased cost to a family as a result of the reduction of subsidies is 3/6 per week. In the case of any family that was in the habit of buying off the ration supplies, the weekly increase is less."
Is there any married woman in this city or in any part of the country who can be found to confirm the claim made in that statement? It is no wonder that the people gave such a decisive answer in that election. The document goes on to speak of "what the Government is doing about prices". This portion of the document says:—
"The Government is continuing the strictest possible control of prices wherever it seems necessary."
The words "wherever it seems necessary" seem to me to be the point in that. From my observation of the Government's activities in regard to that particular aspect of their claim, they have never found it necessary, up to the present, to intervene so far as the prices of essential commodities are concerned. It goes on to say:—
"In order to deal with cases where prices may be kept artificially high through the operation of trade rings, the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill is being introduced into the Dáil. This is the most important single step taken for many years to reduce excessive prices."
I have grave doubts myself as to whether that Bill will come into operation during the lifetime of this Dáil. If it ever does come into operation, then I hope that the people who believed that claim and voted for it will, in view of the present high prices which they have to pay for essential commodities, see to it that these prices are stabilised.
Claims have been made that there has been an attempt to control prices. I could quote figures showing the prices of essential commodities before the Fianna Fáil Government came back into power. I want to deal with the rise that has taken place in prices months after they came into office compared with the prices which came into operation as a result of this year's Budget. Take bread, which has been under discussion. The price of the two-lb. loaf went up from 6½d. to 9½d. The figures that I am quoting are for the 22/9/51 and the 20/9/52 which are closely related dates. The price of the sliced pan went up from 7¾d. to 10¾d.; butter from 2/8 to 3/10. I think it was Deputy Rooney who said, as I have said myself, not only in this House but to my own friends and at public meetings that, if there was one thing which helped to turn the women of Dublin and those living in the provincial towns and cities against the inter-Party Government at the last general election it was the 2d. per lb. which was put on butter. That was done in order to give a penny per gallon more to the farmers in the dairying counties. It can hardly satisfy the enthusiasm of the women who normally support Fianna Fáil to know that, since Fianna Fáil came into office, notwithstanding their severe criticism and misrepresentation of the attitude of the previous Minister for Agriculture, they have increased the price of butter by 1/- per lb.
Tea, which has been discussed at length, has gone up in price from 2/8 to 5/- and, in regard to certain qualities of tea to 5/10 per lb. Deputy McGrath, a short time ago, was talking about the value of the activities of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce. He boasted that he is the outstanding man in this country for his present job. Apart from that, he boasted about the value of the sugar factories and of the work of the Minister in that regard. Notwithstanding his boast, and the claims that he has made about the sugar factories and their production, the price of sugar has been jumped from 4d. to 6½d. per lb. The price of flour has gone up from 3/- to 4/9; wheaten meal from 2/10 to 4/7; paraffin oil, an absolutely essential commodity for the people living in the homes of rural Ireland, from 1/7 to 1/11; cocoa, a commodity which is normally consumed by the poorer sections of our people, from 6d. to 10d. The prices I am quoting have been checked with the official returns. I am not pretending to quote from unreliable statistics. Condensed milk has gone up from 1/3 to 1/5¼; sardines from 1/- to 1/6 and at one period to 2/-; rice, which is another commodity normally consumed by the poorer sections of our people, has gone up from 10d. to 1/4; cheese from 2/3 to 2/6; lard 1/2 to 1/6; dripping, 1/- to 1/6; back rashers from 3/4 to 3/10 for those who can afford to buy them; sausages from 2/4 to 2/6 and 2/10, and puddings, from 1/2 to 1/6.
It is hardly necessary for me to remind Deputies about the increase that has taken place in the price of eggs since this Government came back to office. I took a personal and Party interest in the rapid rise in the price of eggs. I was associated with other people in the correspondence which took place with the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Industry and Commerce over ten months of this year. It was only under pressure of this House some time ago that an inquiry was ordered to be held into these prices. We are still waiting for the result of that inquiry. I hope we will not have to wait much longer for it on this very important matter. This was an inquiry into the alleged excessive prices charged to consumers of eggs sold in this city and in provincial cities and towns. I went into the matter personally. I do not think any Deputy can contradict me and say that I am exaggerating. I found that the price charged for eggs here over a period of weeks was as high as 7/-per dozen. That was the price charged in this city and in its suburban areas. All that the producers in the rural areas got for those eggs was 3/6 per dozen and certainly not more than 3/9.
There is certainly something to be explained there—between the price paid to the producer and the price charged to the consumer. I am hopeful that the Minister, who, I suppose, gave his O.K. to the setting up of the inquiry into the price of eggs, will use his influence to see that whatever recommendations are made by that committee of inquiry—I hope that these recommendations will be published in the near future—will be put into operation. There is no justification for the retailers charging consumers in this city and suburbs exactly double the price paid to the wives of farmers. I am told that eggs were 7/6 per dozen yesterday.
The Minister will be glad to hear that I quoted, in order that it might go on the records of this House, the increase in the price of essential commodities that has been brought about since the Fianna Fáil Government came into office. I quoted it because of the brazen claims made by the Fianna Fáil Party, with the approval of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, particularly their claim that they were taking, through the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill, what they regard as effective steps to stabilise the cost of essential commodities. The fact that they made this claim to such an intelligent body of people as the electors of North-West Dublin is an explanation of the answer which these electors gave them in a decisive way. The claims in the document were so outrageous that it is no wonder they outraged the intelligent electors of North-West Dublin. That is the reason for it and not the reason given by Deputy McGrath. The figures I have quoted from official statistics I think are sufficient evidence to prove that the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Government as a whole have done nothing to bring down the essential cost of commodities to a reasonable figure or even to stabilise the prices of these essential commodities.
What do they say in regard to unemployment? This section of the document is headed: "Fianna Fáil and the Workers." It winds up with this claim: "In recent months there has been a considerable improvement in the employment position." I challenge the Minister to give us figures to substantiate that claim.
I will do so.
The official figures published weekly by the Department of Social Welfare prove that there has been a considerable increase in the number of unemployed even compared with the corresponding period last year.
There has also been a considerable increase in the number of people in employment.
Apart from the number of people who are only working part-time, three or four days a week, the number of additional persons unemployed, compared with the corresponding period of last year, is 8,451. How can the Minister relate that to the claim which he and others made to the electors of North-West Dublin that, in recent months, there has been a considerable improvement in the employment position? The figures I am quoting were issued to Deputies on the 27th November and are the latest figures, I presume, available to the Minister as well as to Deputies.
I welcome the statement on financial policy made by Deputy Costello. I congratulate him as Leader of the Fine Gael Party on moving in the right direction. If that speech were delivered inside or outside this House ten or 15 years ago by Deputy Cowan or myself, we would be described as Communists. I agree that the change in the conditions of the country and the change generally in international conditions fully justify the movement in the right direction indicated by Deputy Costello in his lengthy, eloquent and complicated speech this evening. There is so much that I agree with that he has left me with very little to say on this matter. With others, I was a party to drafting and publishing a document about 12 years ago. I can produce the document if anybody has any doubt about the accuracy of my statement.
What is the document?
It was a policy document issued by the Labour Party—I think Deputy Cowan was a member of the Party at the time—in which we advocated the establishment of such a board as Deputy Costello now favours. Apart from that interesting aspect of Deputy Costello's speech, I sincerely hope that before I leave this House one of the things upon which all Parties in this House will agree is a progressive, nationally sound financial policy whereby the Parliament elected by the people and the Government elected by the Parliament will be the only people to control the financial and economic policy of the State. I opposed some of the Governments we have had here, and I supported others. I even supported the election of a Fianna Fáil Government in 1932, and cast my vote with other sinners, as we were called, to put the present Minister for Industry and Commerce into that position. I personally have no regret for that from a purely personal point of view. Everybody agrees that he works very hard. I think he is a man who has a mind of his own. The only thing I regret is that he should be in any way associated with the revolutionary policy enshrined in the last brutal Budget introduced by his colleague, the Minister for Finance. I have listened to both the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his colleague, the Minister for Finance, on more than one occasion advocating two quite distinct policies in regard to financial matters.
I sincerely hope that the Minister and his colleague will give sympathetic consideration to the suggestions this evening of Deputy Costello in the hope that there will be general agreement between all groups in this House on a more progressive and nationally-minded financial policy. Some people suggested some time ago—and I agree with them—that this was so vital and so serious that it would justify a secret session of the House. There are many Deputies who fought to make it possible for us to sit in this House and who do not speak very often in debates who, if there were a secret session, and they were free to talk as we all should be free to do but, unfortunately, Party ties do not allow some of them to do that on all occasions—some of them sit behind the Minister—might be able to make a very valuable contribution to a discussion on financial policy in secret session. Normally, I would not advocate the holding of a secret session, but you can do harm by talking in public on such vital and delicate matters. That is why some people regarded this as sufficiently serious to justify their putting up such a proposal to the Acting-Taoiseach. I suppose there is no hope of having such a thing, but I hope sincerely that what Deputy Costello put to the Government and other Parties will be carefully considered and dealt with on its merits. It probably does not go as far as the members of this group would wish, but it is definitely going in the right direction. If such fundamental proposals were adopted by the Government, I believe they would enable the Government to carry out the economic policy in which they say they believe.
While the control of currency and credit is left in the hands of a small group of people unknown to the ordinary citizens of this country— some of them up to 90 years of age, although most of us would be kicked out of business life at the age of 65— very little progress will be made. It is a terrible state of affairs that a small group of unknown people are the people who in the long run decide the financial policy of the Government of the day in this country.
The average member of a trade union foolishly thinks, of course, that his trade union can protect him in every possible way. The trade union undoubtedly protects the worker who is a member of a trade union regarding his right to continued employment and his right not to be dismissed from his employment without some very sound reason. It helps him to deal with questions affecting his wages and working conditions, but there is one thing with which the trade union, like everybody else, has got to put up, and that is, the Parliament and Government elected by the people who decide the purchasing power of the £ he carries in his pocket, whenever he has a £ to spare, and normally and naturally decides the way in which that £ should be spent.
This Budget has had effects on the country, in my humble opinion, which the Minister for Finance possibly never foresaw when he was a party to its introduction. I spoke quite recently to a personal friend of mine who carries on an ordinary business in the country. He has about 300 farmer customers and everybody knows that the farmer customer does not pay on the nail, as they say, for what he gets in the way of commodities across the counter.
This man asked me did I realise what additional capital he has to get from his bankers in order to enable him to carry on the same amount of business as he was trying to carry on previous to the coming into operation of this Budget with its evil effects. I said I did not know. He told me the number of his book customers, and he has a fairly good number of cash customers. He said it cost him £120 a week extra to finance his business since this Budget came into operation. He had to pay so much for flour, for cigarettes, for beer and whiskey and every other commodity that is sold in that establishment in this fairly prosperous, small provincial town. On top of that he had to provide for the interest charged upon the additional money that he got from the bankers for the purpose of trying to carry on his business in the same way as he carried it on prior to the introduction of the Budget.
I would like the Minister and the House to realise that this is not an exceptional case. This man also told me it was far harder for him to carry on the ordinary business activities since this Budget came into operation because nearly every wholesaler who supplied him with commodities on credit terms previously is now demanding cash on the nail. I assure the Minister that that is not an exceptional case because I am fairly well acquainted with the conditions prevailing in my own constituency. For many years — I suppose other Deputies do the very same thing — although I may be attending a political meeting of my own supporters, or might be in some portion of my constituency upon private or family matters, I always take advantage of the opportunity to meet a group of people, and they are not all confined to my own political supporters. I would assume—and probably the same would apply to people sitting on the other side of this House—if I had gathered around me all my own political supporters for a conversazione after I had finished a political meeting I might not be getting the whole of the story, but when you have a Fianna Fáil supporter, a Fine Gael supporter and perhaps a Captain Cowan supporter, if there is any such thing in my area, one balances the other, and there is less fear of exaggeration or half-truths coming across to the Deputy.
That is the general impression which, I assure the Minister for Industry and Commerce, has got through the country. There is a sort of creeping paralysis through the country in regard to the conduct of ordinary business as the result, as Deputy Costello rightly says, of the activities of the bankers in restricting credit. It is a most serious thing to restrict credit. It is still going on, and no matter what the Minister says when he is replying, it is a fact. All I can say to the Minister, if he says it is not, is that he is not well informed in regard to what is actually going on in the country at the present time.
I would not like to say I would not accept the Minister's word, but the Minister, being a Minister, is not easy to contact. It is not as easy to get at the Minister for Industry and Commerce as it is to get to Deputy Davin in his own constituency. You would have to pass through a squad to see the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he was in some of the towns where I know most of the people. He would be surrounded by a guard of honour. It is not as easy to contact the Minister as it is to contact the Deputy.
I would ask the Minister and his colleagues in the Government to have a friendly and frank interview, as a temporary measure, at any rate, with the people down in College Green who are responsible for this situation. He will not have far to go to send for them. In fact, it is their duty to come to the Minister, and I suppose they would come around in a taxi. They should be told that they are not treating this country fairly or properly or helping the Government to carry out the financial and economic policy because they are restricting credit which is having an adverse effect on business at the present time. I can certify that as being correct, and if the Minister challenges me I will give the names of some of the people. It is not the trader but the customer who is suffering in most of these cases.
I would like to know from the Minister what grounds he can give for the restriction of credit by wholesalers in their dealings with their old customers.
They pay cash themselves.
The wholesalers are on the pig's back. They are fairly well off. Many of the wholesalers are directors of the banks and they are the very people responsible for operating the Minister's policy. The Minister knows that better than Deputy McMenamin.
Would it not be a waste of time talking to the banks?
I must admit you have something there. I would ask Deputy Cowan, as boss of the Government, as he claims himself to be, to use his influence with the Minister for Industry and Commerce and acting Taoiseach to see that something would be done. I am placing the responsibility on the self appointed boss of the Government——
The Deputy is pulling the long bow.
Deputy Cowan said here the other night that this Government was a good Government and he would keep them in office as long as they wanted to stay in office. I suspect he said it because he saw in the paper the Taoiseach was coming home and some people would assume that he was going to dissolve the Dáil. Deputy Cowan knows what that would mean for himself.
I know what it would mean to Deputy Davin.
Deputy Davin will please continue on the Second Reading.
Deputy Cowan referred to this particular aspect of my career the other night and the Minister, I suppose, rightly intervened to say that there was a last time. I will be there as long as I am allowed to remain there by the will of God and the people. If the people will it sometime —the next time, if you like—I will smile myself out as I smiled myself in. I bow to the will of the people.
In conclusion, I do not want to embarrass you, a Cheann Comhairle, by cutting across your ruling, but I would like to say this: It is very hard for me, at my age, and because of other aspects of my outlook, to impress myself upon the rising generation. It may be that Deputy Cowan has a slight advantage.
This House would be the poorer if Deputy Davin were not here.