The past two and a half hours have been noticeable for the fact, in the first place, that Deputies in the Opposition said very little in reference to this year's Finance Bill and in the second place, succeeded— the three Deputies who spoke—in contradicting each other as fast as they could. We had at one stage from Deputy de Valera one point of view; Deputy Derrig gave us a different viewpoint; and now Deputy Childers has given us a viewpoint which could be paraphrased by saying that he believes that taxation is not high enough. That would be a fair enough paraphrase of the speech we have just heard from him.
However, let me first deal with some of the points raised by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition suggested that everything stemmed from the £15,000,000, and I twitted him the other night by telling him I thought he was taking it rather like a gramophone machine. His speech to-night was intended to be a somewhat similar repetition, though in longer words. The Budget of 1952 about which he was speaking followed the end of the financial year 1951-52. The Attorney-General has dealt with some of the items which had been included for the sole purpose of giving the impression to the country that the Budget introduced by the Attorney-General in May, 1951, was an unbalanced one. The manner in which the out-turn of that financial year was bolstered deliberately by the inclusion of the fuel losses over earlier years has been stressed often and often in this House. Deputy McGilligan gave some figures in reference to it.
There were other things that were included in 1951-52 and there were other, things that were not included, though an honest Government would have included them. In the latter category, I particularly want to refer to one method—quite dishonestly politically, in my view—by which they omitted to return in that year £400,000 of revenue that should have been returned. When one is speaking from the point of view of balancing a Budget, and particularly when it is the Budget of one's predecessor, one should certainly compare like with like. When Deputy McGilligan was Minister for Finance, in 1951, on 31st March of that year, the balance carried by the revenue was £1,953,000. Deputy McGilligan has, in fact, in an earlier debate put on record that he proposed to use some of that carry-over, that he thought at the time it was too large and that a smaller carry-over would be sufficient. He proposed to use some of it for budgetary purposes, if necessary, at the end of the year.
Be that as it may, there can undoubtedly be a case made for the previous Government that they were not desirous of carrying out that intention. There can undoubtedly be a case made that they would wish to adopt a different policy, but there can be no case whatever made for a Government that was trying to suggest that its predecessor had failed to balance the Budget refusing to carry into the finance accounts of that year moneys to the amount of £400,000 which had been collected by the Revenue Commissioners.
As I have said, at the end of 31st March, 1951, the balance was £1,593,000; at the end of the 31st March, 1952, it was £2,355,000 in addition to the £402,000, which I want to say quite categorically, was omitted deliberately by the previous Government for the purpose of unbalancing, by the addition of that amount, the Budget made by their predecessor. It was a politically dishonest trick. So far as the figures of the actual turn out for 1951-52 are concerned they have been discussed. The allegation made by my predecessor of a deficit was covered by the fact that there was included in it the amount for the fuel subsidies, the amount for C.I.E. stockpiling and certain other items that had been deliberately included by the Fianna Fáil Government. I propose to be very generous to them, and so I will take all these at the figure of £4,000,000. I could very well make a case for a very much larger sum, but as I want to be generous to them, I will take it at £4,000,000.
If we turn to the actual expenditure for 1951-52, the supply services and the non-capital expenditure, we will find that it was £80,581,000. By taking off the £4,000,000, to which I have referred, we will see, therefore, that the expenditure was in the region of some £76,500,000. If we turn to the payments table explanatory of the Budget which showed the £15,000,000 deficit to which Deputy de Valera referred, and if we deduct from that the amount that is included for capital services, we will find that supply services were estimated to total, including the £3,000,000 for social welfare, £88,866,000. It seems perfectly clear that the £15,000,000 to which Deputy de Valera referred consisted— taking the Central Fund into account— of a sum of £14.2 million which the Fianna Fáil Party themselves deliberately created in their estimate. It was their estimate and it was because of the manner in which they allowed expenditure to rise from 1951-52 to 1952-53 by this sum of £14,000,000 that was responsible entirely for that gap and for that figure.
If Deputy de Valera thinks it is good policy for him to continue to advertise the fact that a Government which failed to make any effort to keep the Estimates of expenditure within bounds, then so far as I am concerned I am quite happy to allow him to continue to do that. But he, unfortunately, having built these things into the permanent financial structure of the nation it is a very difficult task for anyone to be able to remove them thereafter. They were built in by him, and I am afraid that on that account many of them will have to remain.
I do not propose to go over many of the other things which were mentioned by the three Deputies opposite who spoke to-night. I do not want to say this: they told us at one stage to-night that they had adopted a policy that was going to deal—they claimed it did deal successfully—with the disequilibrium in the balance of payments. What was the effect of this policy of theirs? The effect of this policy, comparing like to like, was that after three years of their Government, from June, 1951, to June, 1954, there were 19,000 more people registered as unemployed. If they think that is a record of which they should boast, then equally they are welcome to that boast.
We also had the suggestion from them this evening that they had succeeded in creating industrial production. Again, what are the figures and the facts? The facts are that in 1951 there were 226,000 people employed in industrial production, and that in 1952 that figure had fallen to 221,000, a reduction of 5,000 people. That figure did not get back above the 1951 figure until 1954. It was only in 1954 that we exceeded the 1951 figure of 226,000 people by the number of 228,000.
Deputy Childers suggested that the present Government could have done nothing over the period of last year to effect any change in the national economy or to bring about any improvement in the results so far as our economy is concerned. The Deputy overlooks one fundamental thing, and that is that the first essential for the success of any policy of production, or the policy of any Government, is that the people should have confidence in that Government. It is common knowledge throughout the country that during the three years in which Fianna Fáil were in power, from 1951 to 1954, the people had not got that confidence: that the people were anxious and jittering all the time because of the fact that they had no confidence in the then Government. But the position to-day and since this Government was elected has been exactly the reverse. Ever since the election of this Government, with its stable majority obtained last year, there has been an air of confidence and calm throughout the country which is the first prerequisite to any kind of economic or business activity. It is that confidence which commenced the revival of which I have spoken on other occasions.
Deputy Childers came back to the question of interest rates, to the loan of 1952 and the use of the Marshall Aid moneys was mentioned in that regard also. So far as the expenditure of the Marshall Aid Counterpart Fund. by the previous Government on certain items is concerned, I am not quarrelling with it. What I am quarrelling with is that the time that was chosen for that spending was wrong. The time was wrong because they missed the boat and failed completely to judge the market for the issue of a public loan. The position that existed under the previous Administration was clear. The Marshall Aid Funds were being utilised as a margin for manoeuvre, as a reserve to throw in and overcome temporary difficulties, and to fill up the deficit, if there might be such a deficit, in regard to capital programmes. But, instead of using it that way, the Fianna Fáil Government deliberately threw all that away and decided that they would utilise it entirely rather than go to the people for a loan in 1951. The effect of doing that was that they had to go to the market and to the public in the autumn of 1952, at the worst time that they could possibly have chosen from the date they came into office until they went out of office. It was their bad choice of timing that led to the most unfortunate results that flowed from that high interest policy of that time.
In the course of my work during the past year I have had to consult people on various matters such as loans, and so forth—people who are well qualified to speak. Every one of them with whom I spoke told me the same thing —that the time chosen in the autumn of 1952 was the worst possible time. It was chosen because, for political Party purposes, the previous Government wished to create a spirit and a propaganda about the Marshall Aid moneys. Deputy Childers referred to changes in rates throughout the world. Of course there were changes in rates throughout the world. I would concede at once that it would be wrong to consider rates of interest here and prices of Government stocks here at one time with independent rates at another time. What we can do easily enough, however, because of our currency position here, is to take our rates of interest on any one date and compare them with British rates of interest for comparable securities on the same date.
What is the record of the previous Government there? In June, 1951, 3 per cent. Exchequer Bonds yielded a return of £3 10s. 10d. British 3 per cent. Savings Bonds in June, 1951, yielded a return of £3 10s. 5d. There is no difference there, to all intents and purposes—a mere 5d. between the interest rates of the two. We come to the 1st June, 1954. Irish 3 per cent. Exchequer Bonds yielded a return of £4 6s. 6d. British 3 per cent. Savings Bonds yielded a return of £3 11s. 5d. What does that mean? It means that, compared with an equivalent British security, the record of three years of Fianna Fáil Government meant that ours had gone down to such an extent that there was a difference of 15/-, or 3/4 per cent., in interest rate comparison. If Deputy Childers or the Leader of the Opposition thinks it is wise to boast about that surrender then he is welcome to the advertisement.
I might add to that, in passing, that the position the last time I got the figures—last month—was that the comparison now is £4 8s. against £4 5s. 4d. In other words, the 15/- margin that Deputy de Valera left us with, because of the manner in which he sapped the confidence of the community, has now been narrowed to a mere 2/8. Those are the facts. It is far better that facts should be allowed to speak rather than that people should try and invent cases to suit themselves ex post facto.
We did have from Deputy de Valera this evening one ex post facto excuse for the Budget of 1952 and for the policy they brought in at that time in their period of office. We had a different explanation from Deputy Derrig and, again, a different explanation from Deputy Childers. None of these explanations was the explanation given by Deputy MacEntee when he was Minister for Finance at the time. In view of all the interpretations which are now attempted to be given ex post facto, is it not far better to look at the results—and the results, as I have given them this evening, are pretty sorry ones for the previous Government?
