In other words, this Government by its policy had brought the country to this position: that although it had offered a 5 per cent. loan last year—an unprecedented and unwarranted price which will have repercussions in this country for very many years—and although it offered that attractive price last year, and only slightly less this year, at the expense of the credit of the country, by offering terms to the banks to lend it money at a price they could not get in any other place in the world, at prices which even British provincial corporations do not have to pay—the Government has reduced the credit of this country to the point where there was one loan at 5 per cent. and the other at slightly less, 4¾, and I do not think they would get any more. The Taoiseach had already said that we were going to have a loan every year. Now because the last loan did not fill —there were no more savings in the country to finance Government expenditure largely on relief schemes—we must go to the banks and tell them: "Do not restrict credit to the Government; you are going to cease restricting credit to the Government." In other words, "cough up." It was not stated at what rate of interest nor are we told by the Taoiseach. We have to inquire; we have to prod.
We have the position then where the Government has balanced its international payments at an appalling price to the community in human suffering. We have the position where at a time when there is greatly increased unemployment and a balance held in international payments there has been a pretty substantial increase in our external assets in that set of circumstances.We have the position that the Government has scooped the pool from the point of view of the available capital for the purpose of financing business and private enterprise.
We have a position that is in direct contrast to that which obtained under the implementation of our policy, a policy through the medium of which we encouraged saving by our people and the lending of these savings voluntarily to the Government for the purpose of loans to supplement the enterprise of private industrialists and private firms in order to provide employment and expand business. Now, because of the restriction of credit, which the Taoiseach says does not exist, our business people and our industrialists have been unable not merely to expand but even to do the necessary day to day work to enable them to carry on; the necessary capital for that purpose has been denied them.
The Taoiseach says there is no such thing as credit restriction. That must have caused many a bitter laugh on the part of people throughout the country who were interviewed in the last year or 18 months by their bank managers and spoken to in a manner which those officials would not have dared to adopt two and a half years ago. They were spoken to by bank managers in a way that decent people with good security were never spoken to since this State was first established. That was probably done by direction of the directors and doubtless the directors thought genuinely and honestly that that was good policy. In that the directors were following the lead set by the Government.
In 1952 the Government announced their policy of restriction of consumption, the reduction of the purchasing power of the people, thereby preventing people from spending, and the preventing of people from saving: the directors of the banks said: "That is all right by us; that is the policy for us." The Government may say, and probably say truthfully, that they never gave any direction to the banks to restrict credit. That was not necessary: a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.
Whether is was that the Government were complacent about the restriction of credit that existed, whether or not the banks fell in with the wishes and policy of the Government, and whether or not the Government buried their heads so deep in the sand they did not know what was going on and would not believe the people who were suffering from it, there is no doubt that there was a restriction of credit. There is no doubt that that restriction of credit has been a great source of economic trouble in the country within the last few years. The Government may be complacent. They may be ignorant. They may not have directed the banks to restrict credit to business and industry, but is there the slightest doubt that if, in the last 18 months, the Government had said to the banks: "We hear that decent people are not able to get enough capital to expand their business and their industry, to keep people in employment, or to give more employment, and we think that is bad policy and you ought to stop it," the banks would have done what they were told? But there was never any direction given. There was never any hint.
Time and again it has been stated here categorically in this House and throughout the country by Opposition Deputies that there was a restriction of credit and that that restriction of credit was causing unemployment and a recession in trade and business. Surely it is futile for the Taoiseach and the Government to say now that in matters of banking and credit and the restriction of credit to industry they abrogate all control and all direction and even refrain from giving any advice in a matter so fundamental and vital to the people as a whole.
We have had the results and the effects outlined by the speaker at the meeting of the Institute of Bankers the other night. We have had the telegram that was sent to the Taoiseach asking him to use his influence to ensure that relief works will be supplied for the unemployed in his own constituency of County Clare. We have had another contrast between our policy and the policy adumbrated and implemented by the Fianna Fáil Government in thefact that while our policy was based upon low taxation coupled with a high investment rate for productive capital enterprises, the policy of the present Government is to borrow for public purposes and for relief schemes on the basis of higher taxation and a higher rate of interest. That contrast should be very carefully appreciated by those who are at present engaged in diagnosing the evils from which we are suffering as a result of Government policy.
Every year while we were in government we reduced taxation and we obtained money from the people at a low rate of interest. This Government has increased beyond all justice the rates of taxation imposed on the people and in addition to that they have borrowed money at unnecessarily high interest rates with disastrous repercussions on our economy. I have said that it was part of our policy in the inter-Party Government to leave something for private enterprise, private business and private industry. We did not scoop the pool. We let business and industry and enterprise get their money. We encouraged them to do that. The results of the policy of the present Government and of its borrowing in the last two years have been that they have grabbed so much of the savings of the people that there is very little, if anything, left in the way of capital for business or industry.
When I was opening this debate last week I stated that private enterprise and private business have been starved of capital as a result of three things: the restriction of credit by the banks; the high rates of interest given by the Government to people who lend money to them; and the high rate of borrowing by the Government for governmental purposes. It is no wonder we have the results that have accrued as a consequence of Government policy. We are in the happy position of being able to say that we have excellent people engaged in trade and industry in this country, people willing and anxious to expand, but they have not been able to expand over the last 12 or 18 months for the reasons I have stated.
I referred to the position as outlined by the Minister for Lands to thebankers a few nights ago. I said that the Minister for Finance, when announcing his budgetary, his financial and his economic policy emphasised that the first concern of the Government was to rectify the balance of payments position. I made the comment upon that, that that was not our first concern, though we were concerned with it. There were matters of higher priority for us. There was the matter of employment, of housing, hospitalisation, of providing schools and developing the resources of the country. In addition to embarking upon schemes of capital development in relation to land and other productive enterprises we financed these schemes not merely by loans and by the savings of our people but by the prudent use of part of the proceeds of Marshall Aid and by a policy of repatriation of external assets prudently undertaken and cautiously watched.
In 1951 and again in 1952 we were told by the Minister for Finance and his colleagues that the result of our policy was that our external assets were being dissipated and the country was facing disaster because the bulwark of our international trade was being eaten into and undermined. That was the case at that time. The acting-Minister for Finance, in the last few weeks, has engaged himself and embattled himself here in this House to demonstrate and prove that what we were doing was not expending our external assets but saving too much and not spending them. I do not know which way we are to take it. We were told at first that we were spending too much of the external assets and the acting-Minister for Finance and some of his colleagues have been repeating the charge recently that, so far from spending them, we were accumulating them. Heads I win; tails you lose. Have it either way.
The fact is that we had a policy about the repatriation of our external assets. He who runs may read. Every word that I uttered was published. It is there and available to the Government. Our policy in reference to the repatriation of external assets has been published, publicised and repeatedly made known to everybody.There is not a single economist or financier, with the exception of politicians of the Fianna Fáil calibre, who up to this has criticised in any way our scheme or method or approach to that problem.
I have already referred to this infamous White Paper of 1951. We have exposed again and again the fallacies and the inaccuracies that were in that White Paper on which the present policy of the Government was founded. The Minister for Finance, in his Budget speech to which I have referred, spoke of the fact that he wanted to make his first concern not the position of the unemployed, not the position of the poor, but that he would be able in some years' time to send a representative of the Government to a banquet of the bankers and tell them that the payments barometer is set fair although there has been unemployment, austerity and human suffering avoidably imposed in the last two and a half years. That was his first concern and was based upon the economic fallacies and disregard of facts to which I have referred.
In addition to that, he said that at that time they estimated that the deficit on the external payments account for the year 1952 would be £50,000,000 but that as a result of the budgetary policy which he was initiating and putting into effect that deficit would be reduced.
We were derided, scoffed at, sneered at by the Minister and his colleagues when we said, to use the words of the Taoiseach, that that was sheer nonsense. It was only £9,000,000 or £10,000,000, we said. We were laughed at. The Minister said £50,000,000. It was said originally that it was going to be £60,000,000; then that it would be £50,000,000 and finally £35,000,000. We said it would be only £9,000,000 or £10,000,000. In fact it was only £9,000,000, on paper. It was actually nothing. There was a great increase in the external assets that accumulated in the last year during which this balance of payments had been achieved. I use the word "achieved" in inverted commas. As I havealready stated, we told them their facts were wrong, that there were certain forces of a corrective nature operating which would bring about that situation automatically. Import prices were coming down, we told them. We told them that the high rate of import in the year 1952 was due to the Korean war and the stockpiling that took place as a result of that war by industrialists, private traders, individuals and Government Departments and that when that would ease off there would be a natural and automatic return to normality. But, more than that, we told them that the fruits of our agricultural policy would be garnered by them in the year 1952. The Minister for Finance said no, no, that there was nothing to show that import prices were coming down, according to the White Paper, and that he saw no signs and the Government could find no evidence that agricultural production for export would go up to any marked degree. What was the result? Last year our agricultural exports reached a point which they had never reached in the history of this country and which the present Government never thought they would see in their political lifetime.
Even Fianna Fáil cannot grow a three-year-old animal in a year. These exports were three years old. They were the fruits of the Government policy presided over by Deputy Dillon. They are now coming in to the advantage of the present Government. The Government is gathering the harvest that we sowed and that harvest is the unexampled increase in the value and volume of our agricultural exports last year, which are still going up this year and which were founded on the policy of the inter-Party Government. The cattle that were born and were prevented from being slaughtered in the three years that we were in office have been exported over the last two and a half years.
I want to finish on this topic by saying that there were three factors which contributed to the balance of international payments, which was the first concern of the Government even at the expense of human misery, sufferingand unemployment. First of all, there was the increase in agricultural exports which, I have said, have gone up to an unprecedented scale in volume and value, due to the policy of the inter-Party Government and the agricultural policy of that Government. There were the reduced imports. I admit that in some respects the Government were all too successful in the so-called correctives that they applied. The overtaxation of the Budget of 1952, bringing with it, as it did, decreased imports, brought about also a decrease of the standard of living of our people. Some of those reduced imports are due to these correctives and some are due to Government policy, at a very heavy cost, but they also occurred because there had been overbuying by individuals and firms and Government Departments in the previous year as a result of stockpiling. The third factor was a reduction in international prices which had been going on steadily ever since this present Government got into office and before it.
These are the three factors. For only one part of these three factors can the Government take any credit, if credit there be, and that is their policy of depressing the standard of living of our people by means of the reduction of imports. In that policy they were very successful and too successful. They would not have gone within £50,000,000 of closing that gap if it had not been for the contribution of a startling, dramatic character that was made by the increase in agricultural exports which has taken place since this Government came into office and as a result of the policy of their predecessors.
As I have said, I think there would have been trouble even if the present Government did not come into office, trouble due to world economic dislocation, trouble due to the Korean war. Taking all that into account, the best that can be said for the position at the present time from a financial and economic point of view, notwithstanding what I shall deal with in a few moments—the outlook of the Government on the present conditions —is that, approaching Christmas, 1953,we are just a little bit better off than we were at Christmas last year.
There has been an improvement, some improvement, for some people, but not for all. Quite possibly although we may not have a white Christmas, it will be a little less black than it was last year. That is no thanks to the Government, because what has happened is this, that because business was so bad last year as a result of Government policy, particularly budgetary policy, it had to improve somewhat this year, and we have only got back to where we stood. That is the contribution of Fianna Fáil after two and a half years to the prosperity and the happiness of our people. Trouble was there, as I have said, from Korea and from international methods, but it was added to by the budgetary policy and by the policy of decreasing consumption and decreasing the purchasing power of the community which was initiated by and put into effect after the Budget of 1952.
What industrial progress has there been made? Deputy Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce, is engaged very heavily in making speeches. What industrial progress has there been made? I have already referred to it. So far as industrial production is concerned we have the privilege—and I use the word "privilege" in inverted commas—of being classed as one of the countries in which there was the lowest percentage decrease in industrial production in western Europe during the period up to 1951. That is a proud boast. If there is to be any industrial progress, that progress should be a continued progress growing from year to year and the figures for industrial production should in every year show the increase, but not merely was there not an increase for 1951-52, there was a serious decline and it is only now in recent months that we have got back, after two and a half years of the operation of the policy of the present Government, to the position that we left it so far as industrial production is concerned in June, 1951. Two and a half years under the operation of the policy of the present Government has only resulted in reducing industrial consumption, and whatever improvementhas been made in the last few months has only effected the improvement of bringing this country back to the point where we left it two and a half years ago. That is not anything to be proud of. It is no wonder that the Minister for Lands, when he was at a banquet of the bankers, was only able to speak of the payments barometer being at set fair. There was nothing else in that speech except financial stability and the payments barometer being at set fair—no indication there of a policy of utilising the moneys, the capital, which he was threatening the banks they would have to give him and to his Government. What is borrowed from the people or from the banks does not matter very much. What is borrowed from the Government or from the bankers is of no very great importance. What is of vital importance is to ascertain the purposes to which those borrowed moneys will be put. We have no indication of that at the present moment, and the only thing that we can do is to infer from all those various speeches that there is going to be an extension of relief schemes. We are going to have an industrial development fund. I do not know what name they are calling it—a development fund. So far all the indications as to what this fund is to be used for demonstrate that it is to be used for what are in the nature of relief schemes.
The Government are very fond of trappings. They are very fond of funds. We had a Transition Fund which we found when we got into office. Deputy McGilligan has retailed to the House the disastrous history of that fund, in which there was nothing. A fund is a grand thing to tell the people about, but it means nothing. There is no difference between getting it from the banks or from a Transition Fund or from the people by ways and means advances. What purpose or object is there in putting a label on it and trappings around it and calling is a development fund? They could develop this country without calling it anything else provided that you get the money and put it into proper objects which will result in producing employment and increasing the standard of living for all sections of the people.
Before I pass from the matter of industry, there is one matter I wish to mention by way of protest. I have always objected to the Fianna Fáil policy of identifying Irish industry with the politics of Fianna Fáil. Throughout the whole course of their political career here they have dragged Irish industry as part of their stock-in-trade, trying to get it into the people's heads that the people on these benches are against Irish industry. May I, in order to put an end, if possible, to that very foul abuse of public policy which is part of the stock-in-trade of Fianna Fáil, refer to a speech I made within a few months of being appointed head of the Government of this country, in protest against that class of thing? I raise it here in this debate because of the fact that in every by-election that has been held since this Government took office, members of the Government, and particularly the Minister for Industry and Commerce, have gone around the constituency in which the by-election is being held, not building castles in the air but building factories in the air. When I was speaking on the 7th April, 1948, in Cork, at a meeting of the Federation of Irish manufacturers, I made this statement, and I want to repeat it here to-day:
"It is to be regretted that in the past few years Irish industry has come to be regarded as dependent upon political views and likely to be affected by political changes. At the very outset of my remarks, I would like to emphasise the conviction which I have held for many years, that great disservice can be caused, as it has, in fact, been caused, to Irish manufacturing industry by the part with which it has been made to play in Irish politics, and to express the hope that an end will now be put to the use by politicians for political purposes of Irish industry."
Further on I said:
"A new chapter in our industrial and commercial history began with the establishment of this State. Since then it has been the policy of every Irish Government to encouragethe development of our manufacturing industry and to assist them against unfair competition from abroad. Whatever differences may have existed as to the methods to be employed no fundamental difference can be found as to the objective to be attained. The policy of selective protection may, in the views of some, have been too conservative. The policy of wholesale tariffs or quotas may, in the views of others, have led to dislocation in other parts of and so damaged the general economic structure of the State. However divergent the views may have been on machinery or method, there is unanimity on the necessity for fostering, developing and strengthening Irish manufacturing industry."
I want to repeat that again here and to protest against the use that has been made by this Government, and particularly by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, of Irish manufacturing industry as a tool for political purposes against the Opposition.
There would be far greater hope for the development of Irish manufacture and Irish industries if there was a sound financial and economic policy based on a sound agricultural industry. Such a sound financial and economic policy based upon a sound agricultural industry, would do far more for Irish manufacturing industry than any hawking round, for political purposes, of these factories in the air that have been so often mentioned by members of the present Government for political purposes. It is at least comforting to know that the Minister for Industry and Commerce has now seen—and he has emphasised it in several speeches he has made—that a sound agricultural industry is the basis of a sound manufacturing industry. Again, we are all at one on fundamentals—all in favour of Irish manufacturing industries, however we may differ as to some of the methods to be employed to that end, or whatever our convictions may be against free trade or for free trade. We are all in favour of developing an Irish manufacturing industry, but I want to stigmatise the efforts made by the Minister for Industry and Commercein hawking round these mythical factories on the occasion of by-elections for the purposes of securing votes, as something that should be ended and ended for ever.
Speaking of agriculture leads me naturally to draw attention to the danger that is facing agriculture at the present moment as a result of Government policy. It is very satisfying to know, from announcements made in the House within the last few weeks, that it is intended to discuss with the British Government the effect on our agricultural exports of the partial decontrol of cattle and other agricultural exports in England. I want to impress upon the Government the dangers that face the agricultural industry at the present time by reason of the fact that the industry has imposed upon it, by overtaxation and other aspects of general Government policy, a too costly system of production. Our average exports for the years 1948, 1949 and 1950 were value for £166,000,000. Our imports in 1952 were £172,000,000. Whatever figures are available for this year indicate that there has been an increase in imports. If these imports continue to rise, there must be a corresponding increase in our exports, both in volume and in value, to finance imports. As I say, if the costs of our agricultural production be increased, as they are in fact steadily rising, there will be a very grave tendency for our agricultural exports dangerously to diminish as they cease to be profitable. I put that warning, which has already been given by my colleague, Deputy Dillon, who knows the circumstances far better than I do, to the Government. Government policy has increased the cost of agricultural production. Markets for produce such as butter, eggs and poultry have almost disappeared. If we go on increasing the cost of production for our farmers, the remaining exports of cattle, sheep, wool, etc., may possibly decline to a point where our agricultural exports, on which the prosperity of this country and the balance of our international payments eventually depend, will decline. That is the picture, and my comments on the picture, as it exists, and on the Governmentpolicy in operation up to this, so far as we can ascertain it.
What of the future? In 1952, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, went to a banquet of the Insurance Institute, the same body at whose banquet he spoke on Monday night last. There he announced in December, 1952, that alarm was giving way to confidence. Then he kept quiet for a bit and on the 27th April, 1953, he spoke in Jury's Hotel, no less, at a Fianna Fáil cumann. There, as reported in the Irish Pressof the 28th April, 1953, nine months ago, he made this remarkable statement:—
"We are filled with some confidence that the country is again facing a period of expansion and development and that under Fianna Fáil leadership these opportunities will be fully utilised."
How did the country expand? How did it develop? After that speech there was inaugurated the policy of the present Government, a new policy perhaps, or perhaps the same old policy under a different guise, but it was a policy anyway, a policy that may be described as a policy of reconstructing Ireland by means of pulling weeds out of the Dodder, pulling up the tram tracks in the streets of Dublin and starting relief schemes all over the country. It was after that speech that we had the policy of pulling up the tram tracks and of pulling the weeds out of the Dodder in answer to the march of the unemployed. Is that the policy of expansion and development that we were facing in 1953?
In the very same speech he had the effrontery—and his effrontery knows no bounds—to state this:—
"The inability to expand agricultural output in three very favourable post-war years was the Coalition's greatest failure."
I could not allow that to pass without some comment. Deputies will recall that in September, 1947, at a time when the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not think that he was going to be thrown out on his ear in a few months, he warned the peoplethat they were facing "three or four years of unexampled difficulty, trial and danger". That was what he said they were facing when he was in the Government but when we became the Government for these three or four years of "unexampled difficulty, trial and danger", that period was turned into a period described by him, post factum,as “the very favourable postwar years”. I have already shown what we did for agriculture. As Deputy Dillon has pointed out, after the inter-Party Government was formed, as a result of the policy of fertilising the land, the eradication of disease in cattle and the other schemes put into operation by the inter-Party Government, more was got for an old hen than had been received for a calf in the preceding years. We now see the results in the fact that our agricultural exports have reached heights which it was never thought previously could be attained. It is in that situation that the Minister could say on the 28th April last that we were facing a period of expansion and development.
Then the Taoiseach proceeded to give his contribution some months afterwards. In the intervening period between April and the 30th October, 1953, when the Taoiseach made his speech at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, we had the policy of relief schemes going full blast. The tram tracks were being pulled up in the streets of the city and the weeds were being pulled out of the Dodder at great speed. Promises of relief works were being broadcast and, of course, it was a mere coincidence that during that period there were two by-elections going on in the country.
The Taoiseach came along in October and went further. What did he say? He said: "Our financial problems have been successfully solved and we are back again on the high road to recovery." Then he made the statement I have already quoted that industrial wages and agricultural wages have increased proportionately more than has the cost of living. I do not know if he will get a single agricultural worker, not to speak of an industrial worker, and certainly not tospeak of any of the so-called middle classes, who will agree with that proposition.
Then he winds up in a blaze of glory and high flights of eloquence:—
"The facts and figures which I have given all bear out the impression of a buoyant economy, a prosperous agriculture and expanding industry."
Previous to that he said:—
"It might be expected that the favourable indications which I have mentioned will be reflected in the Exchequer returns and such indeed is the case. In the first half of the present year the Exchequer returns showed an increase in revenue of over £5,000,000 as compared with last year, despite the fact that no additional taxes were imposed in the Budget."
There is the cat out of the bag. I will identify the cat later.
Then the Minister for Industry and Commerce, on Monday last, stated:—
"It could be asserted with some confidence that the outlook for 1954 was bright and that all economic trends were in the right direction."
About the same time, the President of the Builders' Federation—I cannot at the moment put my finger on the quotation—spoke of the restriction of credit and the unemployment in the building industry that existed, and said there were 400 carpenters seeking employment in Dublin alone. I heard one of my own colleagues last week asking another colleague in the Party could he by any chance get a job for a decent carpenter, and he said he could not. During our term of office I had to go on the air as Taoiseach and ask the carpenters and the plasterers and the skilled labourers to come back from England and work here, and there is the record of the present Government's policy—400 carpenters in the City of Dublin alone are unemployed at the present moment.
Is that the buoyant economy or expanding industry as described by the Taoiseach? Could conditions whichhave brought that about and which still exist at the present moment, be described as they were described about a month ago by the Taoiseach, as an impression of a buoyant economy, a prosperous agriculture and expanding industry? Can that be said, having regard to the fact that on Monday evening I saw in the Evening Heraldthat a telegram had been sent from the County Clare to the Minister for Local Government and also to the Taoiseach asking them to provide relief works for the unemployed in the County Clare? There is your buoyant economy and the result of your policy for the last two and a half years.
But there are indications in the speech of the Taoiseach and in all these optimistic utterances, however unfounded they may be, of a new policy. He is going to get money from the banks. The Government have asked the banks to cease restricting credit to the Government, not to private individuals. They want more money. They want to have their hands on all the money they can get in the next few months. The Taoiseach said that there was £5,000,000 more than last year coming in. There is the vindication of what I said about the Budget of 1952 when I spoke from these benches. I said that it was a cruel and unjust Budget, because the taxes were unnecessary and that there were contained in that Budget proposals which would bring in to the Government greater increases and far more from taxes than they required for the running of the country and for Government purposes: that there would be a surplus of £8,000,000 or £9,000,000. I was right at that time and I have been proved right.
The surplus which they anticipated by the end of the financial year can no longer be concealed. It can no longer be concealed that there will be a surplus this year emerging from a period when there was such unemployment as I have referred to, when there was restriction of credit, when industry had declined in the way I have stated, when there was no indication of a boom in trade or industry to justify the fact that the increased yield of taxes came from an increase in the national income such as we aimed at; when allthe indications were of economic distress and suffering. That is not the time when you get a surplus of revenue from taxation. You get a surplus of revenue from the taxes imposed under the 1952 Budget when unnecessary taxation was imposed for the express purpose, as we said, and as we repeat now, of getting a surplus in order that, at the proper moment, this Government would have in its hands funds to be used for the purpose of distributing benefits to the people, and to try and convince the people that this was a beneficent Government giving relief in taxation, having done a good job in clearing up the financial mess.
We said that that was the scheme, and we have been proved right. Now there is to be a surplus. It was concealed last year by a variety of methods, by Government book-keeping and other methods to which I referred in public. I referred in a speech at Youghal to the fact that Government method of book-keeping and public accountancy should be changed because by these methods Governments are enabled—I hesitate to use the phrase —to cook the accounts. They allowed money that should be given at the end of last year to flow into the next year's Budget. They did not want to show a surplus last year because we would be justified.
This time 12 months they were able to forecast that there would be a deficit. I challenge the Taoiseach now, in his reply, to say, inasmuch as he was able to forecast this time last year that there would be a deficit at the end of the financial year, what is his estimate of the anticipated Budget surplus that will accrue, or be allowed to accrue, this year. The Taoiseach was rejoicing at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis that there would be this Budget surplus of £5,000,000 more than last year. Then the Minister for Finance, or his officials more likely, as they always did if any unfortunate member of the Government ever showed the slightest indication that he believed there was anything prosperous about the country or anything likely to give an increased yield in taxation, cried "halt" at once and there was aspeech by the Minister for Finance, saying: "You will have to remember that Government expenditure is going up" and the inevitable happened. The Taoiseach having stated that there was a buoyant economy, a prosperous agriculture and expanding industry and £5,000,000 more than last year in revenue, the Minister for Lands, Deputy Derrig, acting on behalf of the Minister for Finance, told the bankers that there was plenty of money coming in, but they should remember that expenditure was going up. But remember that the expenditure is going to be so that they will have little safeguards in case there might be an election next year. They will have it both ways.
I stated here categorically that what is happening now is that, just as the Government in the country are making elaborate arrangements for a general election, so they are arranging their policy and are trying so to bring it about that by means of this surplus— which we said was there last year and which we say is there still—they will be able to pour benefit on the people and say: "We were able to reduce taxation; the inter-Party Government"—that put thousands of people additionally into employment and which was able to reduce taxation, increase pensions and take the taxes off the beer and tobacco—"were able to give you only a false prosperity; we will give you the real thing; now that we have cleared up the financial mess and have created deliberately as a result of our policy unemployment, emigration and austerity, we are in a position to put you back into a period of prosperity; and, in order to do so, we are tearing the weeds out of the Dodder and digging up the tram rails in Dublin."
I want to end on this aspect of the matter of the Budget surplus. I do not know whether the method of accountancy in the Department of Finance will be so utilised this time as it was last year to conceal what was, in fact, a Budget surplus, but I anticipate that there will be a surplus, and, apparently, the Taoiseach anticipates it also. Whatever surplus there is will be the measure of the overtaxation that was imposed by the unjust andunecessary proposals for taxation in the Budget of 1952.
There are some matters of a general character I want to refer to, I hope very briefly. There is one matter that very shortly indeed I want to draw attention to, as it is a matter of general concern—although it might be said to be more appropriate to a particular Department. It is a matter of general concern as it affects the rights of private individuals as against big corporations and possibly the Government as a whole. I want to know why the Government or some of its members allowed a law action to go on in the courts costing the ratepayers of Dublin at least £16,000, for the purpose of showing that the Dublin Corporation had not delayed in having a planning scheme. That is not a matter that affects merely the citizens of Dublin; it is a matter of very vital concern to everyone. There was litigation on the question whether the Dublin Corporation had a planning scheme in operation in Dublin or not. That was brought by a company that fortunately was able to finance the matter or take the risk. If it had been private individuals—and there have been many private individuals in this city and in the country who have been adversely affected by the threatened exercise of rights of that kind by bureaucrats without any legal authority—the Dublin Corporation would have gone on merrily exercising those rights. When they were beaten at the public hearing, there was no justification for spending money in going on any further. That is a matter of public concern and it should not happen again. There is general reluctance on the part of big public corporations throughout the country to settle cases with private people, just as the Civil Service prefers, because they are afraid of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, to allow Departments to be sued in courts to the bitter end at great cost, because then they can produce the judgment and that ends the matter with the Comptroller and Auditor-General. So corporations throughout the country put the ratepayers to unnecessary expense in putting down a court order rather than have to justify to someauditor or other the fact that they settled the case.
There are proceedings of that kind in every direction. There are cases where officials of a corporation, particularly in the City of Dublin, go round and get property owners to negotiate on the basis that they are going to buy the property from them for public purposes. They leave them then for 12 or 18 months and then come back and say: "Good-bye, we are not taking the property." As a matter of general policy, I would like that that be stopped. It is a matter that affects individual rights as against bigger public bodies who do not mind putting either the taxpayers or ratepayers to expense.
I want to make one remark about the Government's foreign and external policy. They have achieved this remarkable result in the matter of our external policy: they have no foreign policy, and they have succeeded in doing nothing very badly. The mention of foreign policy leads me inevitably to the question of Partition. The Taoiseach knows I have taken the line, in the last two and a half years since the present Government was formed, of not speaking in public about the problem of Partition. I took a certain risk of being misrepresented and misunderstood by adopting that attitude, but I did so, as the Taoiseach knows, because I believed in the first place that in all the circumstances it was the best contribution that could be made while the present Government was in office. The attitude of the Taoiseach and his colleagues in the Government is that the question of policy in reference to Partition is a matter for Government policy for which they are responsible and that they should be allowed to operate whatever policy they may have and be responsible for it. Accordingly, I said: "They are in office now: they took upon themselves the responsibility for policy towards Partition; I will not embarrass them in any way but will give them a free hand and no criticism, and let us see what results can be achieved." I make these introductory remarks to explain my reason for breaking that rule—I hope for the last time before the present Governmentgoes out. I do so reluctantly. I do so because I feel that I am bound in duty to invite the Government to explain their policy in regard to recent happenings in the North, particularly in regard to the imprisonment of Mr. Liam Kelly. That is clearly a matter of general Government policy affecting the question of Partition.
I have been criticised particularly by one newspaper for certain statements that I made in reference to Partition and the policy we had on it. However, I did make this one point at all events, so far as I was concerned and my colleagues in Fine Gael were concerned—the sub-title of the Fine Gael Party is "United Ireland"—that we wanted in ending Partition to do it on the basis that fellow Irishmen— Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians or others—would come into a United Ireland with goodwill, with no fighting and no bitterness, in solid acquiescence in the creation of a United Ireland. As I said at meetings on many occasions and as I said at the meeting of the inter-Parliamentary Union held in the month of October this year, a United Ireland could give a wonderful contribution to international affairs. That being our attitude, I hesitated to speak here to-day on this subject. I am sure that the Taoiseach and his colleagues feel as strongly as I do about the matter and I have also felt, probably more strongly than I do, the difficulty of keeping silence during the last few years, in view of the happenings up in the Six County area. Our flag has been repeatedly insulted, our National Anthem derided and prevented from being played, and so on, as far as they possibly could; our people have been prevented from having processions to celebrate in the way they wish the national feast of St. Patrick. They have suffered injustice, economically, socially and in other ways. I and my colleagues—and I am sure the Taoiseach and his colleagues—have kept silence on that with great difficulty, because of our hope and our desire that ultimately, as we believe and as I still believe, events would inevitably press the Government of the North and the people of the Six Counties of the North towards a United Ireland.
We believed that, inevitably, they would come into that United Ireland with a spirit of goodwill and a desire to work in the interests of the people of all Ireland, of all classes and all creeds, and to give the contribution that we could to international peace and international affairs. What makes me speak now and break silence is that I am afraid that the events of the past few weeks—particularly the arrest and conviction of Mr. Kelly for making a speech during election time—will open the door to a kind of conflict which we all desire to avoid. I was reluctant to speak here on this topic—and I am sure the Taoiseach will accept from me that I was reluctant—but I do so now out of a sense of duty and because it was conveyed to me from various quarters that we could not remain silent and that I could not remain silent on this matter. Therefore, I invite the Government to explain their policy and attitude not merely in respect of the arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Kelly but in view of what these things may betoken.
I pass now to An Comhairle Ealaíon —the Arts Council. I have occupied so much time of the House already that I do not intend to spend very much time on this matter. In view of the part that I played in the establishment of this council, and as this is the first occasion on which their report comes before us, I could not pass over it in silence. It would be ungenerous of me not to express some appreciation of the work that has been done by the council. It does not come up to my expectations or my hopes by a long way but at least there has been a beginning. Only a small amount of money—only £10,000— was spent. I think that the Taoiseach, with his control over the whole situation, should now see to it that very much more money than £10,000 is expended in the course of the next 12 months.
When I conceived the idea of an Arts Council, and set it up with the consent and closest co-operation of my colleagues, I had a number of objects in view. Some of these objects are referred to in the report which has been presented to the House; some of them are not. One of these objects was thatthe Arts Council would endeavour to carry on the fight for the return of the Lane pictures and that they would help to educate and keep the people of this country and Great Britain alive to the facts of the case in connection with that controversy and in connection with the claim of the City of Dublin for the return of the 39 pictures which Sir Hugh Lane intended for it. A commission which was set up by the British Government in the middle or at the end of 1924, and which reported early in 1925, found that the codicil embodied Sir Hugh Lane's last wishes so far as the 39 pictures were concerned. I had intended to raise this matter, in any event, on this Estimate this year. When I was the head of the inter-Party Government, I took every occasion I could to press the claims of the City of Dublin for the return of these 39 pictures. The Taoiseach will find all the correspondence and references to that matter which I left behind me in the Department. I asked the Prime Minister of the Labour Government in Britain to give us back these pictures if not as a matter of justice at least as a gesture of decency and goodwill. I did not get them. We are not going to get them from the British House of Lords. However, that does not mean that we are not to keep up our claim. I believe that, in the end, the ordinary decent English people—not the ruling classes; not those who spoke with such complete ignorance of the facts of the case in the House of Lords the other day— will recognise our claims. We will not get the co-operation of the types of persons who spoke with such manifest ignorance of the facts of the case in the House of Lords the other day.
It is one of the objects and functions of the Arts Council to see that the people are educated. I think the people have forgotten the facts connected with the controversy over the Lane pictures. Certainly the people of England have. It is all very fine for Lord Rugby to cast it aside and to say that Sir Hugh Lane never signed the codicil and that, therefore, Dublin should not get the pictures. That was a piece of futile folly and ignorance on the part of an octogenarian peer. Ishould like to repeat what a friend of mine said about the affair in the House of Lords in the past few days. I am quoting what my friend said, and acknowledging it, without mentioning his name. He said: "It may be Rugby, but it is not cricket." When Lord Rugby was here, we were under the impression that he was sympathetic towards our claim for the Lane pictures. We have not any great delusions about Lord Jowett or some of the others. We will not get back the pictures from the House of Lords but we will get them back from the English people if we tell them our case. I suggest to the Taoiseach that it is part of the function of the Arts Council to put before our people and the British people all the facts in connection with this matter.
It was part of my scheme, which was formulated with the full approval of my colleagues, that the chairman of that council would be Dr. Bodkin, who was mentioned in that codicil to Sir Hugh Lane's will in which he left the pictures to the City of Dublin. I regret that circumstances prevented this country from having the benefit of the unequalled and unexcelled knowledge and experience which Dr. Bodkin has in relation to painting and the visual arts and also the enthusiasm which he has, and which he infused into me over a long period of years of friendship, for applying the arts to Irish industry and for the revival of our crafts and the encouragement of our craftsmen. I regret that our country has been deprived of his services. From the comments which he made during the proceedings in the House of Lords, he is still available to help us in our claim for the Lane pictures. I regret very much that our country has been deprived of his services in connection with the advancement of the arts and the application of the arts to industry. He is still available and knows the facts about the Lane pictures more intimately than any other person alive to-day. The publicising of our claim and the reeducation of our own people, as well as the British people, on the facts connected with the Lane pictures, is of very great importance.
As I am speaking on the question of the Arts Council, I should like to refer to this wretched affair on O'Connell Bridge. After that erection hit my artistic eye with a bang, I put down a question to the Government. I asked the Taoiseach whether the Arts Council had been consulted about it. The reply I received was a laconic "No"—one word, "No"—and the matter was left there. Why did the Taoiseach not personally check up that matter with the Arts Council? That was one of their functions. The matter of that contraption has been raised at home and abroad and it has been the subject of gibes. It has been referred to as the tomb of the unknown tourist to the Tóstal. It has been universally decried. To my utter horror, I discovered that some sort of a scheme was to be put into operation by a Deputy of this House whereby this contraption would be covered over with marble or else that in it, or around it or somewhere else a fountain would be erected by the same people as were responsible for erecting that atrocity which is now on O'Connell Bridge. However, when the Deputy of this House discovered in the Dublin Corporation that the new scheme would cost £3,000 he ran like a hare. Apparently he felt that £3,000 was an appalling price to pay for something in the City of Dublin. It is about time we learnt the value of spending money on artistic objects to beautify our city. I understand that the present proposal is to be put aside, not because a fountain might not be suitable, even a fountain by the same persons as were responsible for the erection of the present contraption on O'Connell Bridge, but because it would cost too much. It was the cost that frightened them and not its artistic value or anything else.
I suggest to the Taoiseach that it ought to be part of the activities of the Arts Council to oversee and give advice in these matters and, if necessary to go to the Taoiseach and to say: "Let the Government stop this sort of thing which is going to destroy our city." I could not express an opinion from an artistic point of view on whether or not a fountain, the mostartistic and most valuable we could get, would be a good addition to O'Connell Bridge. I would require expert advice on that. I would have my own inexpert views, but I would like the Arts Council to exercise that function, which I believe is one of their great functions, to ensure that there will be in the capital city and in other cities throughout the country some control over the asininity of people who erect things of that description in moments of uninstructed enthusiam.
There is one final matter to which I want to refer in a few short words. I do so because of the importance it has in general to the country. I think the time has come when the Government as a whole should review the educational system from the point of view of the country and from the point of view of general Government policy to see whether—leaving aside the question of Irish, the teaching of Irish and the methods of teaching Irish—our educational methods are in conformity with the needs of the country and whether they are so properly designed as to fit our people for carrying on their business here, for living their lives here, for earning their livelihoods and, above all, for fitting them for being Deputies and knowing the arts of government.
I want to appeal to the Taoiseach particularly, in the matter of higher education, with which I think he has some concern and in which he is interested. There ought not to be any niggardly outlook on the matter of supplying money for buildings for University College, Dublin. There is in this city University College, Dublin, as well as colleges in Cork and Galway, and I believe that, in these three colleges, there is a ferment of political excitement. Our young people are getting a chance. We have material which can be very valuable for building up the country—intellectual and scientific material—and I ask that there should not be this niggardly attitude, this provincial attitude, about having the university on Stillorgan Road. What we want is decent buildings with a decent campus and decent opportunities for our students, opportunitieswhich will prevent a body of people coming from abroad and making the report they made about our medical schools.
