There is nothing new in Section 2?
Committee on Finance - Appropriation Bill, 1953—Committee Stage.
Section 1 agreed to.
SECTION 2.
Question proposed: "That Section 2 stand part of the Bill."
It is standard—the whole thing.
It is the standard form applicable to this year's Estimates?
There is nothing new of any kind. It is the standard form.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 3 and 4 agreed to.
Schedules and Titles agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment and received for final consideration.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
Deputy McGilligan last night said that when he was Minister for Finance, he was in the happy position that there was no shortage of money. "I had money to spare," he said, "and there was no plan for the development of this country that depended on money for which we failed to get proper assistance." That statement of Deputy McGilligan's is extremely interesting, coming two years after he left office and five years after he made his first Budget statement in 1948. He had money to spare and he was on easy street, as he said in another portion of his speech last night. Yet, though he was on easy street and had money to spare, when he was Minister for Finance he said in his Budget statement at column 1040 of Volume 110 of the Dáil Debates of 4th May, 1948:—
"There will be no draw on the Vote for Athletics."
Although he was on easy street and had money to spare, and although there was no plan for development that depended on money which failed to get proper assistance, he went on to say:—
"A saving of £10,000 will result from dropping the special arrangement for transfer of harvest workers. The scheme for exploration of mineral deposits, for which £85,000 is provided in the Estimate for Industry and Commerce, will not be proceeded with and savings on turfschemes, airports and other services will bring the reduction in expenditure by the Department of Industry and Commerce to £300,000 exclusive of the adjustments in food subsidies."
He was on easy street; he had money to burn and although "there was no plan for the development of this country which depended on money which failed to get proper assistance," he could not get £85,000 for mineral development and he closed it down. There were many other schemes of national development for which Deputy McGilligan did not get money in those days. He is a brave spender and a brave raiser of money a few years after he had responsibility for raising it but Deputy Dillon was told off in 1948 to produce economies of £1,200,000 which Deputy McGilligan said he was going to make but the details of which he did not outline to the Dáil on that famous 4th of May.
Let us see how Deputy Dillon brought forward these savings for this Minister who now says that he had plenty of money and was on easy street. Fianna Fáil, the miserable, miserly Fianna Fáil Government and the Minister for Finance representing them, in the preparation of the Estimates had agreed to put in a sum of £250,000 and another item of £250—a total of £250,250——
For Tulyar.
——for fertilisers— nothing as grandiose as Tulyar but for mere pure down-to-earth fertilisers for the development of the country. The Minister who now says he had money to burn and was on easy street, told him off to save it and he did not spend it because he merely spent £1,350 out of the sum of £250,000 that Fianna Fáil had made available. This gentleman who was on easy street, who had money to burn and who never refused a penny for development, told Deputy Dillon to cut out the farm buildings scheme for which there was a sum of £250,000 provided——
You know very well that is not true.
It was cut out; it was in the Estimate.
When Deputy Smith left the Department there were sacks of unopened applications.
That was the excuse afterwards but in the Book of Estimates there was this sum of £250,000 provided and Deputy Dillon cut it out.
Deputy Dillon gave the figures for that.
We shall come to that. We then pass on to the item for poultry and eggs. This was when he was going to drown John Bull in eggs.
And when you were going to beat him with the head of the shillelagh.
The Fianna Fáil Government had a sum of £400,000 in the Estimate to help to produce eggs. There was a total of £905,000 odd saved on these schemes alone.
And there were the lime subsidies.
Keep off the subsidies.
I shall come to the lime later. Deputy Dillon came along with Deputy McGilligan's tip-off and he spent a mere £106,000 out of the £400,000. He had money to burn for many things but nothing for the production of eggs, although he says now that there was no plan for the development of the country that depended on money which failed to get proper assistance.
There was another scheme, the farm improvements scheme. We estimated that we would spend a sum of £350,000 on that. If you remember, the first indication that we got that Deputy Dillon was stalling on that was when he failed to put in the ordinary advertisement asking people to put in their applications for grants under the farm improvements scheme. It had been on for years but Deputy Dillon did not put in the advertisement. Deputy Lehane got after him, I am glad to say, and I shall give you what Deputy Lehane had to say and what Deputy Dillon had to say later. Between Deputy Lehane and a few otherpeople of the ginger group—some of the Fine Gael ginger group and the Labour Party—they got Deputy Dillon to step out towards the end of the year towards paying for what Fianna Fáil had asked the farmers to do or agreed they should do, and between the jigs and the reels, out of the £350,000 he spent £236,000 odd. Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture under a Minister for Finance who was on easy street, who had plenty of money, and who now thinks he slashed money to anybody with a proper plan of national development, saved £114,000 on farm improvements.
Do not forget the turkeys.
You remember the time when there was a great demand for an increase in the price of milk and something for butter. The subsidy on butter enabled farmers to get a better price for their milk. Some farmers down in Limerick thought they could appoach Deputy Dillon for an increased subsidy. They were met by him and instead of giving them some of this money which Deputy McGilligan, then Minister for Finance, had to burn, he told them to go home. He said they were "lazy, ignorant crompauns""a lousy lot of bowsies", to be looking for money from him. These were his exact words.
What is the Minister quoting from?
I am quoting from the daily papers of the date.
On a point of order. I want the reference. The Minister is purporting to quote.
I will get the exact date for the Deputy. Everybody in this Dáil recognises the language of Deputy Dillon. They remember the incident as well as myself.
Is the Minister going to give the date?
I will.
Let us have it.
You will get it in time.
On a point of order. Is it not an order of the House that when a quotation is given that is the time at which the reference and the date of the quotation must also be given?
That is so.
Will you direct the Minister then to comply with the order of the House?
I have not got the date.
Then withdraw it until you can produce it.
Will Deputy Davin put down a parliamentary question about it?
On a point of order. You, Sir, have ruled that the reference must be given at the time when the quotation is made. Will you ask the Minister to give the date of the quotation——
It was not a quotation.
——or withdraw the phrase until he can do so?
He did not say he was quoting from anything.
He did.
If the Minister states he is quoting, then it is usual to give the reference. If the Minister has not the reference now, it will be in order if he gives it later.
I raised this as a point of order because I do not believe that some of the words that he has quoted were ever used in this House and, if they were, the Chair should have called on the person concerned to withdraw them.
I did not say they were used in this House. I said they were used to the Limerick farmers, and I will quote the words slowly and deliberately so that the reporter can take them down.
Are you, Sir, goingto allow the Minister to flout the ruling of the Chair?
The Minister will not be allowed to give the quotation without the reference.
I will give it on the token Estimate. I am glad to see Fine Gael and the Labour Party running away from Deputy Dillon's language and the fact that he tried, at a time when the ex-Minister for Finance said they were on easy street and had plenty of money, to get the farmers to produce milk at 1/- per gallon.
Owing to Deputy Dillon's policy, you lost 12 seats in the West of Ireland.
Deputy Allen reminds me of the question of liming the land. Every farmer realises that the Fianna Fáil policy of putting lime on the land and having a good lime scheme was the ideal thing for getting immediate production.
I know one who does not.
We will put him in a glass case.
One member of Fianna Fáil.
We will put him in a glass case.
The Deputy concerned will recognise his description.
Deputy Dillon, when Minister for Agriculture, had as his advisers some of those who advised the Fianna Fáil Government that it would require 12,000,000 tons of ground limestone to restore the calcium balance of the soil. The Fianna Fáil Party, although they were always short of money and were not too flaithiúlach with it, did give a subsidy for burned lime from 1932 onwards and also later on ground limestone. But what did Deputy Dillon do, who had a Minister for Finance who said he was on easy street and had money to burn for any good purpose? He stopped the subsidy on ground limestone on the 21st December, 1948, soon after he made the secret promise to Deputy McGilliganthat he would save £1,000,000. Later on he withdrew the subsidy on burned lime. Then an American, who was an expert in agricultural matters, was sent over here by the Government which had given the loans and the gifts and, on the 29th October, 1950, in a broadcast interview he said: "The basic need of Irish farms is lime." Then he wrote to Deputy Dillon, the then Minister for Agriculture, suggesting that they would spend $5,000,000 on subsidising the transport of ground limestone. What did Deputy Dillon say? He said: "This makes me mad," and he wrote that. Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Dillon, nearly five years after, come along and think the people of the country have such short memories that they believe now that all during the Coalition's term of office they were shovelling money out to anyone who had a proposition which would do a reasonable job of work.
Then we had Deputy Lehane and the farm improvement scheme. Deputy Lehane, like many others, was interested in the scheme that had been started by Fianna Fáil for land improvement. We gave the farmers up to about £16 an acre for improving their land, but for a great number of years we had been giving a couple of hundred thousand pounds. We had given up to £300,000 a year, and good work was done under it. Indeed, Deputy Dillon himself paid tribute to that. Deputy Lehane got after Deputy Dillon on the 15th June, 1948, about his abandonment of the farm buildings improvement scheme. He asked a question and Deputy Dillon said he had seen the newspaper report referred to by the Deputy, and added: "It is, as he might expect, quite untrue." That is what he said on the 15th June. I cannot read it all, but it is there for Deputies to read.
Let us go on a little bit later. Although he denied that he had stopped the scheme, on July 15th, a month later, he had this to say as reported in column 597 of the Official Report:—
"They have been out to tell the people that the farm improvements scheme is abandoned. It is not.Every single penny appropriated for that scheme will be spent on it —as much more next year and the year after until every penny that is necessary to reclaim every acre of the land of this country that requires reclamation has been spent.
I am not going to promise and I cannot promise that it will be done like that if we have not the money. We must do it in stages year by year with our resources."
Although Deputy McGilligan thought he had money to burn for every proposition put forward, Deputy Dillon, as Minister for Agriculture. did not get the money. Deputy Dillon then went on:—
"I do say, however, that I am quite satisfied that if Marshall Aid came to us by way of grant and we were allowed to use that grant money inside our economy a great part of it could be added to our annual resources to expedite the work."
Then, as reported at the end of the column, he goes on:—
"If into that picture there should be injected the Marshall Aid money then we will be able to undertake a very much larger scheme so that the work to be done will be done more rapidly and that the whole area of the country will be restored to productivity much sooner than it can be if we only have our own resources to depend upon."
Deputy Aiken intervening said: "The rate depends upon the money the Minister gets" and Deputy Dillon answered "Yes".
The gentlemen who now think that he was doling out the money to restore a proper balanced outlook should read some of the miserable penurious practices that he was guilty of back in those years in cutting down and stopping the development that Fianna Fáil was quite prepared to take political unpopularity of taxing in order to promote it.
I want, first of all, to quote Deputy Costello regarding the balance of payments. Deputy McGilligan found very virtuous excuses towards the end of hisperiod as Minister for Finance for pursuing a financial policy which avoided the political unpopularity of imposing taxes to meet his bills but which had the result of handing on to his successors a large debt within the country, a debt to America and a large decrease in our net balance of external assets. It was only when they saw this large decrease in the balance of payments staring them in the face because of their inflationary policy, and before it became profitable for them to make a virtue of it, that they recognised it for what it was—a dispersal of the national assets that should have been properly husbanded and used for the national advantage.
Deputy Costello came into the Dáil on the 5th August, 1948, and had this to say at column 2146:—
"In the intervening period—that was from 1938—the adverse trade balance has gone to an extent which must cause anybody who thinks about it for one moment or who looks at the figures the utmost alarm for our economic and financial stability."
Before I read on further I want to show what caused Deputy Costello the utmost alarm. From 1939 to 1946 we had increased our net external assets by £140,000,000 through no fault, or through no virtue, of ours. We had produced the goods and we sold them to England and, as we could not get goods in exchange, we had to take their promise to pay in the future— which is a sterling asset. In 1949, we had a plus of £33.5 million, and in 1946, a surplus of £20,000,000. It was only in 1947, the year before Deputy Costello, then Taoiseach, made this speech of utmost alarm that we had a deficit in the balance of payments of £20,000,000. He felt the utmost alarm because we had decreased our external assets by a mere £20,000,000, although we had accumulated £160,000,000 extra in the previous years. Because the figure of £160,000,000 dropped by £20,000,000 he was filled with the utmost alarm.
What percentage of the total exports did £20,000,000 represent?
That is another excuse.
No.
It was one-eighth of the assets we had built up during that period. Let me continue with the quotation from Deputy Costello's speech. He said:—
"The balance of payments between this country and Great Britain has, in recent years, become completely disordered. When we took office some months ago and became aware of the actual position in regard to the adverse trade balance and the nature and the alarming extent of that adverse trade balance, it was one of the problems that gave us the greatest possible cause for dismay. We felt that it was essential, if this country was to retain its economic stability, that steps must urgently be taken to redress that adverse balance of trade and to try and restore order into our disordered balance of payments. That was one of the big factors that we had to keep before us during our negotiations with Great Britain. I am glad to say that we have been able to achieve agreement, embodied in the agreement that is before the House, as to the methods by which we will be enabled to deal with that very alarming and very urgent problem."
The problem, as I have pointed out, that was facing him was that we had lost a mere £20,000,000 after having for years been starved of imports and, at the same time, having a large export balance of £160,000,000. In 1949, the adverse trade balance dropped to a deficit of £10,000,000 but in 1950 it went up to £30,000,000 and in 1951, when the full impact of the inflationary policy of the previous Government of avoiding taxation and creating debt began to take effect, our adverse trade balance went up in a slap by £60,000,000. The net result of the then Government's expenditure over three years was to put up our State debt by £90,000,000. It is a dead weight debt to the extent that we are paying in or about £4,500,000 every year to service that £90,000,000 of extra expenditure, while our external assets weredecreased in those three years by £100,000,000.
That was pretty good going, and it was no wonder that the gentlemen opposite had to have some excuse for it. Now, we in Fianna Fáil have nothing to apologise for in the line of effort that we made to develop our home resources here over the years.
Mr. O'Higgins
And nothing to boast about either.
We have a lot to boast of. One of the things that we can boast most about is that we taught Fine Gael a few things, and one of them was that they should not have the attitude that Deputy McGilligan expressed in the Seanad after he became a Minister.
Mr. O'Higgins
What about the sugar factories and the white elephants?
I will get the quotation from his speech.
The Minister is getting mixed up.
I am not nearly as mixed up as you would wish me to be.
On a point of order while the Minister is looking through his documents—I understand there is an understanding that the Vote is to be taken at or before 11 o'clock?
The Vote is going to be taken at 11 o'clock. It is going to be a token Vote.
Does the Minister propose to take until 11 o'clock, or does he propose to allow members of the House to speak?
If he does not, of course he does not get the Bill to-night.
There has been a promise. It is usual for the Minister to conclude on an Estimate, and in the ordinary way I would be concluding now.
But the Estimate has not been concluded.
Fine Gael always want to hold the dogs tight and let the storms loose. Surely I have the right to reply.
Mr. O'Higgins
Let us be serious.
This is serious. It is most serious that I should have an opportunity of replying on behalf of the Government to the accusations that were made all day long and after that you can have from now until Christmas or the New Year to talk if you want to do it.
I understood that the Appropriation Bill had to be passed by 11 o'clock to-night by arrangement?
Yes. By 11 o'clock.
I thought the Minister would allow some time to other members of the House to say a few words on the Appropriation Bill.
The other members of the House have been saying their say all day long.
Not on the Appropriation Bill. Since 9.30 nobody but the Ministers have spoken on the Estimate.
On a point of order— would you mind clarifying the position for us? On what stage of the Appropriation Bill is the Minister now speaking?
We are now on the Fifth Stage.
He is not concluding on the Fifth Stage?
No. He is introducing it.
So that this discussion is open until 11 o'clock?
I have now discovered the quotation from Deputy McGilligan. I am very grateful to Deputy MacBride. The quotation is well worth listening to. After hearing many complaints that we did not spend enough, that we should have been boosting up our Government borrowings, when he went into the Seanad on 29th October, 1949, he said at column 142 of Volume 37, after referring to the various gross expenditureof capital of which we had been guilty:—
"As a matter of fact I have myself been sometimes terrified at the amount of money that has to be provided for these investments."
He was terrified then at the amount of capital development that Fianna Fáil had undertaken but now he thinks we should have spent ten times as much and that we should have done very much more in capital development.
Now that the Minister has finished his quotation and now that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach is in the House I want to put this——
There is just one more point I want to finish. I will give way before 10.30 p.m. Deputy McGilligan has the keenest "hindsight" of anybody I know. It is simply wonderful how keen his "hindsight" is.
Mr. O'Higgins
He can see you running away, then.
We will take this little bit about the castle and Aras Brugha and the civil servants. His story to-day was that he got this crazy scheme about altering or tearing down some of the old buildings in Dublin Castle and building there modern offices for the civil servants. The idea was to build these over a number of years. But whether they were going to be done quickly or slowly, Deputy McGilligan says that when he came in and saw this extravagant idea of Fianna Fáil he decided the right thing to do was to build the bus station and take it over for the civil servants, and that they would transfer the civil servants in Aras Brugha down to Aras Mhic Dhiarmada and that they were then going to build university buildings which would relieve further premises around Government Buildings for the civil servants. That was the nice story of what he wanted to do. He did not tell us, however, that if they were going to build the university it would cost £12,000,000, and that at the castle we could increase the capacity by well over 1,000 for the sum of £600,000.But his later idea was to do a shift-around and spend £12,000,000 in order to get extra space for 800 civil servants.
That was not the best of the yarn. He said that one of the ideas they had was that they were going to get in experts to see how the work could be done more cheaply and more quickly, having regard to the safeguard that must surround public expenditure. He had this nice little fairy-story that his idea was to stop extravagant expenditure in Dublin Castle, and reduce the number of civil servants, and it was only by deduction you could know that the whole thing finally was going to cost £12,000,000.
Did he decrease the number of civil servants during his three years of office? Did he carry out any portion of this neat plan that he sees now so brightly? In fact in 1948, when we left office, or about 1st January, there were 32,171 civil servants. How many were there when this bright young man left office, this man who was going to save the public expenditure on Government buildings and reduce the number of civil servants? Were there less than the 32,171? There were not. Instead there were 3,118 extra. The number of civil servants had gone up to 35,289.
Then, you do not approve of the National Health Insurance Society being taken over by the Department of Social Welfare?
I am just telling you what Deputy McGilligan said.
You are just telling one untruth after another.
I have no respect for Deputy McGilligan's "hindsight," let me put it that way. I said I would finish before 10.30 and I will finish well before that time in order to give some Deputies an opportunity—if they avail of it even at this stage—of replying to the question that I put very deliberately last night at the beginning of the debate on the Estimate, and which I have put in this House on at least a dozen occasions when all the pseudo-finance experts of the Opposition were present. The question is:Why, if, as Deputy McGilligan said, he regarded external assets as wastepaper, why, if it was treachery to this country to allow the Central Bank to invest money at 1 per cent. in British Government securities while we were charging our local authorities here very much more for money, why, in those circumstances, did Deputy McGilligan during his term of office allow the Central Bank to increase those external assets, its holdings of British Government securities, by £36,000,000?
I thought you told us we reduced them by 50?
There are other external assets that were reduced but the argument was that it was treachery to this counry to allow the Central Bank to invest money in England. The fact was that during the term of office of the previous Government the external assets of the Central Bank increased by £36,000,000.
Now, it will take some brass to cover the faces that will go down the country after this debate, as they have gone down after similar debates, and repeat that accusation.
I will repeat it on Tuesday next on the token Vote.
I am sure the Deputy will.
And I will show up all the nonsense you are talking, too.
There have been a good many statements made by Deputy Norton, Deputy MacBride, Deputy Dillon and Deputy McGilligan, not to speak of the young man who came in from East Cork quite recently; he was so filled with horror——
Mr. O'Higgins
Not so much filled as you were.
——at these malpractices on the part of Fianna Fáil that he said the reason why the Central Bank was putting the money into British Government securities was to enable the British Government to murder the Mau-Maus.
Mr. O'Higgins
There are a few of them still left.
That was what he said. The Deputies cannot laugh it off. They may snigger a little bit occasionally when they are confronted with their brass but, in the end, they will be found out. I repeat my challenge.
With reference to the speech made by Deputy Declan Costello, I was sorry that he indulged in some of the political catch-cries of the Fine Gael Party. It was obvious from the first part of his speech that he is trying to understand something about the basic facts of finance. I hope that he will continue his studies until such time as he fully comprehends the subject so that he will be at least one man in the Fine Gael Party who will have a reasonable knowledge of that rather intricate subject.
He has already forgotten more than you ever learned.
Would the Minister not try to emulate his example?
It strikes me as somewhat ironical that the acting-Minister for Finance should conclude his remarks by complaining that Deputy Declan Costello indulged in politics, for he has treated the House for the last 50 minutes to nothing else but politics, digging up quotations from the last ten years against members of the Opposition.
Frankly, I think the country is sick and tired of political recrimination, and I do not think the speech made by the acting-Minister for Finance to-night will carry the slightest weight with anybody inside or outside this House. The most remarkable feature of the speech made by the Minister on this Appropriation Bill has been the fact that he has spoken of everything other than the things which truly indicate the state of the country. One would expect a responsible Minister on an occasion such as this to give the House some indication of the economic position of the country.
At the moment we are in the position that we have 20 per cent. moreunemployed than we had two years ago. The Fianna Fáil Government has now been back in office for two and a half years, almost three years, and it is about time they faced up to their responsibilities and ceased trying to justify their present policy on the basis of what was done by another Government three, four or five years ago.
There are a few recognised indices whereby one can judge the condition of the economy of a country at any time. The first is the position of employment and unemployment in the country. As the Minister has not seen fit to refer to that position I think I should refer to it at least briefly. We have had an unparalleled increase in the number of unemployed throughout the year. We were given fantastic reasons and different reasons by different members of the Government as to the cause of this unemployment.
The Taoiseach gave a number of reasons. The Minister for Industry and Commerce gave a number of other reasons, and the Minister for Finance gave different reasons from those advanced by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It was, first of all, denied that unemployment existed. When a few hundred unemployed sat on O'Connell Bridge the Government began to appreciate that there was unemployment despite the fact that the published figures showed that at that time we had around 80,000 people unemployed. Simultaneously the Government indulged in a propaganda campaign suggesting that while there was possibly more unemployment it was due to a change in the method of registration and that there was, in fact, much greater actual employment.
We now have the figures. We find that in June, 1950, there were 470,006 people employed on the land. In 1953 that figure had fallen to 419,300, a fall of 50,706 people in a period of three years. That number had left employment on the land in that period. We were then told that industrial employment had increased. What did we find? We found—these figures were obtained only last week—that in June, 1951, there were 141,000 people employed inindustry. By June, 1953, that figure had fallen to 136,000. We have, therefore, a reduction of employment on the land and in industry.
There has been a good deal of talk about housing and capital development and the amount of work which Fianna Fáil is providing through housing and capital development. Again, the figures give the lie to the claims made by the Government in that respect. In June, 1950, there were 13,077 people employed on local authority housing. In June, 1953, that number had fallen to 7,255, a fall of some 6,000 people in the course of three years. In every category of employment there has been a fall in the number of people employed, and there has been a corresponding increase in both unemployment and in emigration.
I know it has been a godsend to the present Government that the travel permits to England have ceased to be necessary in order to secure employment in England, and I know that the Taoiseach and members of the Government have sheltered behind that in order to deny an increase in emigration. The figures of the movement of passengers in and out of the State, by sea, are by no means an accurate indication, but they are an indication of the trends. The figures given recently by the Taoiseach showed that the outward balance of passengers movement by sea in 1950 was 36,323. In 1952 it had climbed to 44,987. Is there any single economic index by which the economic position of the country can be gauged that shows an improvement? Every single index available, every single figure issued by Government Departments, shows a disimprovement in the economic position.
We have heard a lot of talk about increased production. What do the figures in regard to industrial production show? They show that the index number of the volume of production of transportable goods which in June, 1951, stood at 181.1 fell to 163.1 in June, 1952—a fall of 18 points. Where is the increased industrial production there?
That is nearlya year and a half ago. What is the present figure?
I am going to give you the figures. It went up again this year to 182.1. That index has shown a steady climb year after year over the last 15 years. The first fall in that index occurred in 1951 and from 1951 to 1952 it merely regained the figure which prevailed before. Where is the industrial expansion? Where is the increased production? I need not tire the House by referring to the cost-of-living figure, which is another index by which one can judge the condition of a country. In August, 1950, the food index stood at 96; in August, 1951, at 107; in August, 1952, at 122; in August, 1953, at 126—an increase of 30 points in three years.
These are the things that matter, not quotations taken out of their context and hurled across this House. The 50,000 or 60,000 people who are unemployed to-day are not interested in the Minister's figures. The 50,000 or 60,000 who have to emigrate are not interested in the Minister's quotations. They are faced with the realities of life.
One thing more than any other has been responsible for the constant and spectacular deterioration in the economic position of the country during the course of the last two and a half years. It is the restriction of credits and the increased rates of interest that are being imposed upon the country by the banks with the help and assistance of the Government. I have raised this matter on a great many occasions in this House. First of all it was denied that there had been any restriction of credits. Then, again, as in the case of unemployment, when the statistical returns showed that there had been a restriction of credits, it had to be met and then we are told: "Ah well, we cannot help it. It does not matter very much in any case."
On a number of occasions the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste in this House said that they had no desire to see a restriction of credit policy imposed by the banks but whenever they were asked to issue a categoricalstatement that in their view the restriction of credits which was imposed by the banks was damaging to the economy of the country they refused to do so. It is common knowledge that the Department of Finance through their—shall I call it—under-hand contact with the banks, through the Central Bank and through the various contacts which they have with the Standing Committee of the Banks, encouraged the banks in restricting credits. Not only that, but the Government set a headline in increasing the rates of interest on loans, which in itself was an effective method of restricting credits.
I notice that the Minister for Lands, who, apparently, assumed the functions of the Minister for External Affairs, who is acting as deputy for the Minister for Finance, the other night, in addressing a bankers' dinner, did criticise the banks mildly for not lending money more freely to the Government but that he was extremely careful not to say one word which might be construed by the banks as an indication that the Government desire to see the credit restriction policy imposed by the banks on the people relaxed. The only reference he made was in regard to the lending of money to the Government by the banks but he made no reference to the restriction of credit which the banks impose stringently on the public and which is, probably, the one single factor which has caused more unemployment, more emigration and more misery in the country than any other.
Frankly, I think the public, in so far as they bother to think about the Government's economic policy, are bewildered. It is only a short time ago that we were told that the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, announced that it was putting him to the pin of his collar to maintain the value of the Irish currency. Of course, we all knew here in this House that that was nonsense. We all knew it was balderdash, but it was a good line to put across the country to suggest that the country was doomed. We were told by the Taoiseach on a number of occasionsthat the level of sterling assets had fallen below the danger point—and that was only a few months ago, only in the course of the Galway by-election. The Taoiseach made many speeches talking about——
A sorry experience for the Deputy.
——about the level of the sterling assets, that they had reached well below the danger point. Now we are told only a few months afterwards that it is quite all right to repatriate sterling assets. Is it a genuine conversion on the part of the Government? For years, for the last five or six years, certainly since I entered public life and entered the Dáil, I have devoted much time speaking publicly in an effort to draw attention to the lunatic policy which had been pursued of lending the earnings and savings of this country to another country instead of utilising them at home.
I was attacked outright by every member of the Government in turn. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs went so far as to say it was treachery —treachery, if you do not mind—to suggest that sterling assets should be repatriated. He said they were "a standing army of occupation" in England and it was treachery to advocate that they should be repatriated. Now we hear the Tánaiste saying, "Ah yes, quite the right thing to do. By all means let us repatriate sterling assets if we need more money. There is no harm in that at all." Is it a genuine conversion? Does the acting-Minister for Finance believe in the Tánaiste's policy in that regard or does he believe in the policy of the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, or in Deputy Childers' policy? Whatever be the policy of the Government, the fact remains that this year we have a further increase in our holdings of sterling assets, and apparently the Government is now finding itself in some financial difficulty and is quite prepared to exercise a little bit of pressure on the banks in order to induce them to lend the Government money. I have the fullest sympathy with the Government in that. I thinkthe Government is quite justified in saying to the banks, "You should be ashamed of yourselves to invest the vast bulk of the money you hold outside this country. You should hold a portfolio of Irish Government securities." I think the Government are quite entitled to do that and quite right in doing it, but I wish the Government or members of the Government either as members of the Government or as Deputies in opposition had not spent the last four or five years attacking members of this House and political Parties who advocated the pursuit of that policy.
When the Government of which I had the honour to be a member did say that to the banks and did in no uncertain terms tell the directors of the banks that they had certain responsibilities to provide money for public authorities—for the Dublin Corporation and other public authorities that required money for housing —we were attacked in this House by Deputy MacEntee, by the present Minister for Finance. Let me remind the acting Minister what Deputy MacEntee said on that occasion. On 3rd May, as reported in the Irish Press, he said:—
"The screw is to be put on the banks to do what Mr. McGilligan has admitted the public are not prepared to do. That is the explanation of the cold war which Coalition spokesmen have been waging on the Irish banks; but the banks had a personal responsibility to their depositors and it would appear from Mr. McGilligan's own statement that they had been impressing this point of view on the Government. The banks naturally, and because they had certain traditional standards of conduct in these matters were apparently refusing to become the instrument whereby the cautious thrift of their customers was to be fully explored and exploited. Unless the banks stood firm and the people supported them the State was heading for financial chaos."
That was a lovely statement from a member of this House, was it not?
And it is entirely in accord with the statement made by Deputy Derrig.
Is he doing it with the approval of the Minister for Finance, or did the Minister for Finance merely let loose the Minister from the wilds of the lands to try to frighten the banks? I do not criticise the Government at all for taking the attitude they have taken towards the banks, but I would like to know where the Government stand. I would like to know whether the Government have now changed their policy completelyand decided to adopt Clann na Poblachta's policy with regard to the banks in relation to sterling assets. It looks remarkably like it.
If they did they would be wiped out like your Party.
It would be well if the members of the Government would learn a little bit more about economics and refrain from the type of political outburst we have had from the acting-Minister for Finance here to-night.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá: 67; Níl: 63.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Dan.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Carter, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Cowan, Peadar.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Michael J.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- de Valera, Eamon.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Fanning, John.
- ffrench-O'Carroll, Michael.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Gallagher, Colm.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lahiffe, R.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).
- McCann, John.
- MacCarthy, Seán.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- Maher, Peadar.
- Moran, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Thomas.
Níl
- Barry, Richard.
- Belton, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Thomas, N.J.
- Cafferky, Dominick.
- Carew, John.
- Collins, Seán.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Costello, John A.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finan, John.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hession, James M.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, James.
- Lehane, Patrick D.
- Lynch, John (North Kerry).
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- MacBride, Seán.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- Madden, David J.
- Mannion, John.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Crowe, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Deering, Mark.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Anthony O
- Everett, James.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.).
- O'Leary, Johnny.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Rooney, Eamon.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tully, John.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Killilea; Níl: Deputies P.S. Doyle and Mac Fheórais.
Question declared carried.