What Deputy Aiken did when he was Minister for Finance was exactly what was done in the last couple of times that the same conflict was on. I think the files ought to be searched to see whether Deputy Aiken made anything like the bargain the Deputy thinks was done on this occasion.
Deputy Davern was worried also because some Fine Gael pamphlet said that the taxes in 1952 had been deliberately put on. Does he object to the word "deliberately"? Does he remember what his Minister said—where he said:—
"The Government have thought over this particular matter of subsidies on these articles for several months, and we have come to the conclusion that the last increase in wages and salaries is more than the increase in the cost of living and that there is no social or economic reason for keeping subsidies."
The subsidies went off. Does that not argue a deliberate policy, and was it not a deliberate policy founded upon this, that the people were too well off, that they had become too well off in our time? If the Deputy gets worried about the word "deliberate", let him ask his Minister for Finance. Why did he not say in 1952 all the things he has said now about the balance of payments and the terrible condition of the country?
The phrase used about subsidies was "the people are too well off," and the Government that the Deputy backed took the subsidies away. Amongst other things, they cut the food, they cut the aid to the foodstuffs of the poor people he is moaning about all this morning, the old age pensioners. Then they say they gave compensatory benefits. That compensatory benefit, as far as the old age pensioner was concerned, was 1/6 a week. In those days, we were told, that meant the full cost of what Fianna Fáil had put upon the people deliberately—and there is no other word for it but "deliberately". When we this year give an extra half-crown, we are told we are just barely restoring the purchasing power which was taken from the people in 1952.
I listened to the deariest bit of declamation it has been my ill-luck to listen to, last evening, from Deputy de Valera, the Leader of the Opposition. There is no inspiration in that for a defeated Party. It was a wail from beginning to end. In any event, he did tackle two or three things that some of his colleagues dealt with, in a different way. I suppose that the things most in conflict in this debate are, first, whether the money paid to the old age pensioners was deserved and whether it was as much as could be spared. The second thing is whether this device which the Minister has adopted, of charging more—or at least not giving subsidies on flour for certain purposes—is a good device. The only third thing really controverted in this debate is a thing that Deputy Davern touched upon in a completely inaccurate way, that is, the question of rural electrification and the way in which it was subsidised before.
Deputy de Valera came to the House yesterday and said that if the money was there in their time, half-acrown would have been given to the old age pensioners. He did not go on, however, to make any kind of thanks to the people who by their efforts in respect of economies had found the money for that half-crown. Deputy de Valera said in regard to flour that he hoped the change would work. He was doubtful if it would, but he had no objection to it if it did work. Deputy de Valera did not speak much about rural electrification, but in this debate it is a matter I want particularly to deal with. Before I leave the other matters and go on to it, one other point which Deputy de Valera touched on was the question of whether the wheat acreage this year was going to go down—down by as much, I might put it this way, as Fianna Fáil hoped it would. Yesterday he thought what I call his "hopes" would not be realised and that the wheat acreage would not suffer to any great degree, but he said that next year will be the year in which the full test will come and he warned us that the acreage of wheat then will go down in an enormous way.
I want to come now particularly to this question of rural electrification. I have some special joy in speaking of it this morning, as I saw the Deputy who is just leaving the House sitting in front of me. Deputy Davern congratulates the E.S.B., he thinks it is a credit to the country and a model for all other boards of the same type. That was not always the Fianna Fáil attitude towards either those people or that particular project. I suppose the most scurrilous piece of anti-national propaganda ever used was when Deputy MacEntee, speaking in the Seanad away back in 1932, said to the Senators of Deputy Cosgrave's Party, that its practical policy was expressed by the four schemes—the Shannon scheme, the Dairy Disposals Board, the Drum battery and the beet sugar factory—and then he added this—and it is a scurrility that has come down through the years—"as precious a collection of white elephants as ever drove their unfortunate owners to the verge of insolvency". That was the reception that we got at that time.
Deputy MacEntee is literary enough —he has enough literary sense, if not economic or financial sense—to know the full meaning of that phrase. The term "white elephants" comes from what was said to be a device of the monarch of Siam years ago, who in order to do down a courtier whom he did not like, presented him with a white elephant, a beast that was useless, which required enormous expense to keep going and in good condition. That was the view that was taken of the Dairy Disposals Board, the sugar beet project and the Shannon business. They were to bring us to the verge of insolvency, they were gifts to an unwilling nation, the nation had spent a great deal of money in keeping these useless things going and we were to be driven to the verge of insolvency by these schemes.
I was looking through the accounts of the E.S.B. since it was established. They are about 25 years going. If you leave out the war years, they never showed a deficit except in one year. If you take in the war years, they showed small deficits in two or three years and a substantial one in another. Taking in the way years, they showed deficits in five years and they showed what they call surpluses—and substantial surpluses—over all the rest. If I take the accumulation of those surpluses and substract even the deficiencies that occurred during the war years, they have something in the neighbourhood of £2,000,000 in the way of surpluses. In the period in which they are alive, they have set up a plant renewal account and the money that has been paid into that account amounts to £13? million up to the date of the last report, which was for the 31st March, 1954. They have repaid advances to the State of over £2,000,000. According to a question answered by the Minister for Finance last week, their interest payments to date are £19,000,000.
We have £13,000,000 in plant renewal, £19,000,000 in interest and £2,000,000 in repayment of advances. The scheme when originally projected was a scheme that in the early stages cost £5,250,000 and that might run to £8,000,000 at its fullest development. We added on things to that, which made the capital commitment somewhere around a figure short of £10,000,000. A great deal of increased capital has been put in since then, but it is not a bad thing for an organisation started with a preliminary capital development figure of under £10,000,000 that in 25 years, leaving out the war years, shows a deficit account once only, that has repaid to the State £2,000,000 that has paid interest to the extent of £19,000,000 and that has a plant renewals account financed to the extent of £13,000,000. In addition to all that, they have established what was never thought of in their early history, a contingencies fund. The last time I saw the fund referred to in this report of 31st March, 1954, it showed a total of £700,000.
Just let Deputies think of these figures—£19,000,000 interest, £2,000,000 repayments, £13,750,000 renewal of plant and £700,000 in a contingencies fund. Add to that—and I think I can make this boast clearly for the board— that I do not think there is a single thing sold in this country that shows as little advance on 1939 prices as the price of electricity, and then the board is supposed to be going bankrupt because we have decided to let the board do what it was set up to do, amongst other things, to finance rural electrification.
In the last account which this board showed, there was after making allocations for interest, for repayment of advances and provision for plant renewal, a surplus over the whole year of £233,000, or nearly £250,000. From the point of view of the board, that was not a good year. The best year the board can have is a very wet year. The more water there is to be found in the lakes running down through the Shannon turbines, and now the Erne turbines as well, the cheaper electricity should be, or, if electricity prices are kept at the same rate, the more profit will the board show. The year just ended on 31st March, 1955, was, over a period of 12 months, probably the wettest in 60 years, and I will be surprised if the board's surplus is not in the region of £1,000,000 when their accounts come to be disclosed for their year which has just ended.
I know from what the Minister for Finance said in reply to a question that they paid in the way of interest, as I understand, nearly £2,000,000. Their highest payment to date is that which they made in the year ended 31st March, 1954, when it was less than £1,500,000, so they have been able to pay an extra £500,000, in the way of interest charges out of their surplus income during the year just ended. I believe that the board's surplus income —it can be divided out in these allocations—if the same interest amounts are taken, was in the region of £1,000,000, and then we are asked to believe that making the board take on the job of financing rural electrification fully and keeping up the rate of advance in the rural areas—not having the price interfered with by what is being done in this connection—is going to bankrupt the board.
The board has made more money than it was ever thought likely it would make. The board has a contingencies account—I do not know how it came to have that account under its statutory powers, but the board has it —and it has shown a record of profits over the years, except when it was completely upset by the lack of proper plant provision during the war years and, in the last of these years, by having to buy not merely a lot of coal but bad coal at a dear price. The board show one year in which there was a deficit, a year in which they had to go in for very heavy coal purchases, buying dear, the quality again being not so good.
The interest of Fianna Fáil in rural electrification amuses me. They took possession of what they called the "white elephant" in 1932. They had not begun to think about making any further provision for the generating side of the Shannon until just about the time the war started and then they opened with the Liffey scheme. The Liffey scheme was not, of course, in the main, a hydro-electric scheme at all; it was a scheme to provide Dublin with a better reservoir and a better water supply; but it was possible to drain off a certain amount of what was impounded and to use it for the purpose of electricity. That was their first advance.
The second was the one which stood out from the experts' report as one which should have been engaged upon much earlier—the development of the Erne. That was allowed to go until everything had risen in price, through the impact of the war. The price of the material that had to go to make the embankments, the price of cement in particular and of the concrete that went into the poles and the wires which went into the distribution network—all these had advanced in price. The cost of labour had advanced considerably. The only other good hydro-electric scheme there was for the country, in addition to the Shannon, was the Erne, and we have lost a good deal of the value of that scheme because of the delay—and I think it was deliberate delay—on the part of the Fianna Fáil Government in adding to hydro-electric development.
After all, we must remember their background in this matter. The phrase I have quoted from Deputy MacEntee shows that the Shannon business was regarded as part of the Cosgrave Government projects. It was part of their practical politics, and, when it had been condemned in the way in which it was condemned by Deputy MacEntee, I suppose it was too hard to ask that he should see to it that his colleagues would, nevertheless, advance along the lines we had laid down in our time. Hence, there was as I think a deliberate policy of turning the back upon the development of electrification in this country, and then, when the demand became so great that something had to be done, they went in for what was naturally a good scheme—the scheme of the Erne; but they left it over until the price of everything had risen, with the result that the price of the unit generated was nothing like so low as it could have been, if that development had been tackled earlier.
They dillied and dallied with turf, and, somewhere in the year 1941, they first thought of rural electrification. The board was then asked to prepare a report, and then there was more delay. The report was issued as a White Paper and about the year 1944, I think, the board's report carries the statement that the Government had given them leave to go ahead with rural electrification and that they had prepared a scheme.
Rural electrification was mentioned in the original Siemens-Schuckert Report. In that report, which came into the hands of people in this country somewhere in the late part of 1923, there was the statement that this country lagged behind many other countries. I think the phrase used was that we were about 25 years behind in comparison with continental countries in respect of electrification for the rural areas. The Siemens-Schuckert Report said that it was not necessary to have rural electrification developed for the purposes of the scheme they projected, but they did say—it was an easy prophecy—that, once the use of electricity became common, it could not be kept from the rural areas. The four experts who reported on that scheme— and their report was in hands before the year 1924 had finished; it was about Easter of 1924—also said that this country was very far behind the rest of the world, and it was accepted again that, once the plant had been got to work and electricity could be sold at a cheap rate, the old deterrent of high prices would be gone and rural electrification would proceed apace.
The scheme included rural electrification; the experts favoured rural electrification; but the Government to which Deputy MacEntee belongs, having criticised the whole thing as a white elephant, dallied with regard to it until 1941, and eventually got going in a very half-hearted way in 1944. Now they try to raise this scare before the minds of the people and, because we ask the board, out of their full finances, to take on the matter of rural electrification—the attempt was made through Deputy Davern and other people throughout the country and even by writings in their newspaper, whatever circulation it has—we have this attempt to create the impression that the progress of rural electrification would be impeded and development slowed up or that the prices would be raised because of what had been done here.
There is not the slightest foundation for either of these two statements— that because of what is being done here, because of this method that has been adopted this year, prices are going to rise for those who have to use electricity in the rural areas, or that the development plans are going to be impeded. I was looking through some documents and it was interesting to see what Fianna Fáil said particularly with regard to rural electrification. Here are some of the things they said.
