Getting back to this matter of the Vote on Account on the one hand, and the increased taxation on the other, I have endeavoured to show to some extent where the present Government are far from blameless for the present financial position. I am also trying to show in a brief, short manner that the present Government——
Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance—(Resumed).
I gave Deputy Blaney an opportunity to say a few words in the hope that he might have cooled down and that he might have made some reference to the incident which took place. Deputy Childers, as an ex-Minister, is a responsible member of the Front Bench and perhaps he would withdraw the statement.
There can be no further discussion on this matter because it has already been dealt with by the Chair. I will not allow any further discussion on there-mark because I have ruled on the matter.
On a point of order, Sir——
There can be no further point of order. If the Government feels that there should be an inquiry into the matter that is a matter for the Government if they wish to have one but I am ruling out any further discussion on the matter.
There could be no inquiry on an allegation of this kind. It is too vague.
Is Deputy Childers, an ex-Minister, and a responsible member of the Opposition withdrawing the remark? Does the Opposition want an inquiry? Deputy Childers can say so if they do and if he does, the answer is "certainly". Every facility will be given if the Opposition so wishes.
Every little straw that blows in the wind is being made use of in order to get the people in this House away from the situation that we are now discussing. That situation is our financial position to-day and the Vote on Account which shows up that position. I referred to the new taxes that are being put upon the country. Everything that can be availed of is being availed of to create distraction in order that there can be no discussion on the very items now before the House. It is hard to blame members on that side of the House for trying to run away from what is before the House at the moment.
The Deputy is the person who is running away.
It is a dismal situation in which they find themselves— having to eat their words of a few months ago. They have to come back now and give us the hair-shirt that they spoke so much about and that hair shirt has been re-bristled. It is bristles that are in the shirt now instead of hair and whether the people like it or not they have to put up with what the Government gives them. It is the hair-shirt now——
And not the blue shirt.
And there will not be too much blue running out of it.
I am proud to know that my family wore blue shirts. Were it not for them, things would be very different from what they are to-day.
The question of shirts is not before the House.
We have had Deputies, in the last few days, harking back to things that happened 30 years ago. I do not intend to weary the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and he must have been very weary by the discussions which have taken place here, by going back and making things so difficult that no one can understand what is going on. The Government are going to make so much smoke and noise in this House that no coherent statement will emerge after the whole thing is over. They want to blacken everything said and take it out of its context so that we can have no proper discussion. That is a very old trick. It did not start in this country but it could be creeping in just now—suppressing discussion on something that is unpleasant for the Government by creating so much diversion, noise and smoke that the real facts do not emerge. That game will not pay off here.
If it means staying here for the next six months, the Vote on Account and these unnecessary duties, imposed because of the present Government's lack of policy in the past 18 months, must and will be ventilated. We will have to recall to the Government some of the things that were said by their Leader, the present Taoiseach, some few years back. He could then say that we could draw cheques upon the money that we have abroad without endangering our external reserves. I want to know why we cannot draw those cheques to-day? Why do we have to take the money from the pockets of the people rather than, as was then advocated by the present Taoiseach, draw the cheques on our external reserves in order to fill the gap? If it was good policy then and was something that the present Taoiseach felt he should expound, why is he now, when he is in the position of Taoiseach, not putting that selfsame policy into operation? Why is he not writing the cheques and drawing on the external reserves rather than drawing on the people who are less able to pay now than they ever were before? Why should these duties be clamped down on them? Why should the position in regard to Partition be worsened by the imposition of duties on provincial papers emanating from the Six Counties? Why will the Minister not say that the Six Counties is not a foreign country and that papers taken in from the Six Counties are not imports? Why can he not regard this as a practical matter and say, just as he will say it when it suits him to say it from a political platform, that the Six-County area is not a foreign country? When it comes to newspapers and the imposition of tax, it is apparently going to be a foreign country under the present Government.
Does that apply to pigs?
Do not draw me about pigs.
On a point of order, I think the Minister would help the House greatly if he would give the information asked for by Deputy Blaney.
That is not a point of order.
If the Minister would give the House that information on the question——
He is being allowed to talk more than the Minister was allowed to talk about a point of order a few minutes ago.
The Tánaiste should not make a charge against the Chair.
He is apparently going on defiantly.
The Minister will give it in his reply, he told you.
If he is not giving it until he gives the reply, it means in fact that the duty will be charged. If the Minister feels like putting me in the wrong he will reverse that and say that it is not included, in his reply. If he does that, I will be quite happy to be regarded as a false prophet but for the moment we must take it that he intends to levy this duty on Six-County papers as if they were coming from a foreign country. That is not the only evil, as I tried to explain. These are provincial papers that circulate along the Border. We have had them over the centuries. There is no reason why their circulation should be curtailed by the action of an Irish Government. It is a terrible thing that we have to wait until 1956 to have this position brought about by an Irish Government that should be trying to reverse the position and to bring about better understanding and, in order to do that, bring in more of these papers so that we can truly understand the people of the Six Counties, their way of life and everything about them. That was preached to us as a good thing in regard to ending Partition but the present Government's attitude is that these are papers coming from a foreign land and that the duty must go on.
Read the Irish Press yourself.
Can you read it?
You increased the price of the Irish Press.
In regard to the cost-of-living index, the last Coalition Government left legacies of debt behind them. They left legacies of all sorts of misfortune behind them. Fianna Fáil, by its prompt action, although it was unpopular, in 1952 remedied these situations and left us in a sound financial and progressive position in 1954.
With 90,000 unemployed.
Our workers then had enough belief in the Fianna Fáil Government to remain in the country. To-day, they have so little faith that they have left the country. They are going out because they do not believe in the Coalition Government. They are going out in thousands. As well as that, for the information of the Minister for Social Welfare, whether by his direct action or otherwise, his Department is now helping them to go because to day there is a more stringent and a more niggardly approach to the investigation of unemployment assistance and benefit claims than was ever instituted in this country before.
That cannot be discussed on the Vote on Account.
It does not prevent him from acting the blackguard anyway.
I shall get back to the point I was at when I was interrupted —the cost of living. The 1952 Budget improved our financial position and the balance of payments position. Despite all the false propaganda then emanating from the Parties now forming the Government, the first fall to occur in the cost of living from 1950 occurred in 1954. At mid-February of that year the cost of living had dropped one point from November, 1953, and two points from mid-May, 1953.
That is when you bought Tulyar.
What is the position to-day under the Government that promised to reduce the cost of living, that promised to reduce taxation, that promised to reduce Government spending by up to £20,000,000? The cost of living has gone up seven points. It is seven points higher than it was in mid-May, 1954, when the present Government came into office. How can they explain that? Will they tell us that it is because Fianna Fáil had done something in 1952? Is that the line of argument we will get—blame Fianna Fáil? If there is anything wrong with the country, blame Fianna Fáil; if there is anything right in the country give the credit to the Coalition Government. Even the Blueshirts were worth while in order to do that. The Minister for Health thinks so anyway. I would advise the Minister for Health not to try to put on the little shirt he had in 1933. He might be strangled.
The question of shirts does not arise. The Deputy should keep to the Vote on Account.
I notice he did not wear a green one during the emergency.
It was not a blue one I had. I did not see the Deputy in one either. There is a set plan to prevent discussion of unpleasant things that are now before the House which are not to the credit of this Government.
Discussion is one thing. Mud squirting is another.
If the Minister would have a little manners, if he has nothing else, he might keep quiet.
I am just joining the Deputy.
Surely the Government are not so bereft of common sense that they believe that this sort of interruption will assist the passage of these proposals through the Dáil. Surely they are not of opinion that Fianna Fáil will be stampeded into the position that they will say: "All right. Let them go through." Do not for a moment cod yourselves in the Government Benches that that sort of plan will work. That stampeding business has been tried before and did not come off and it is not coming off now. Let us try to see clearly what the Government have been doing and what it is they intend to do. We have already discussed what you have done and sorry reading it makes. What your future is going to be and the results of it is something that the Lord alone knows.
The Deputy might use the third person.
Certainly. With all these impositions of new duties and with all the hardships they will bring we now find that the total extent of all the good they will do amounts to no more than £7,000,000 or £8,000,000. That is all the good all this taxation now being placed on the people will achieve. What I want to know, and what the people of this country want to know, is what is going to be done to remedy the remainder of the financial mess in which we now find ourselves as a result of bad management by this Government in the past 18 months? Are we going to be allowed to drift along, and is this £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 to be used as a sop to the people so that they will allow the Government to carry on for another 12 months?
Another three years.
I know there are people on that side of the House who will not despite all the indications that they have had——
The Deputy may not discuss election results.
I am not even attempting to discuss the election results; what I am trying to do——
Just remember the Kerry results.
——is to wake up these people on the Government Benches to the danger of their situation, to the short stay they may have on the seats they now occupy so as not to have them blinding themselves into the belief that they are there for all time. They are there for a very short time and they should realise that and try to mend their ways and give us better government in the coming months. They should restore the price of wheat, give encouragement to the farmers to grow more wheat and cereal crops so that this gap can be filled to a much greater extent than it will be filled by these proposals.
That can be done by substituting home-grown cereals and foodstuffs for the £12,000,000 worth of cereals we imported last year. Let the Government do that and they will be doing something in the right direction. They will be giving to the people who are the backbone of the country an indication that the Government is learning, and will continue to learn, and do the right thing, an indication that the Government will consider it a duty to encourage the farmers to grow the crops we require in the country and that, having grown them, the producers will get decent prices for them. That is something that can be done immediately and on which the Government will reap £12,000,000 in the coming year.
This long list of 68 items can, at the most, yield £8,000,000, but by the growing of more wheat and cereals the Government can get £12,000,000 because, if the price is given, the farmers will grow these crops. That has been proved by Fianna Fáil and if further proof is necessary, the drop in wheat and cereals last year will provide it. It does not pay in this country to try to crush down the farmers by reducing prices for their products and it does not tend to make a happy agricultural community. That is what we have not got to-day because the farmers have no faith in this Government. They have begun to see—as most of us see —that the Government does not know where it is going any more than it knows where it came from.
The country should be given clearly to understand that the statements made here a year or two or three years ago by leading members of the Government Party were false at the time or that they were made by people who did not know any better at the time and that they have found their mistake since. We did have a number of Deputies talking at that time. We had the Tánaiste, Deputy Norton, for instance, on the 10th February, 1953, saying as reported in Volume 136, column 553:—
"There is the home policy—more unemployment, higher prices, more emigration and then a dive into fantasy by investing £500,000 of the nation's money in the privilege of painting green shamrocks on airliners."
This has come back to rest very squarely to-day on the Government. The chicken is roosting now behind the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Norton. How much he would like to be able to say: "I never said any such thing."
It was all true, and it is still true.
Does the Minister to-day believe that the wings of the planes on which we painted green shamrocks would not be very good buying at £500,000 if he or the Government could get them? Are we not looking for planes at the moment? We cannot get any that are nearly as good or as big for that money. Did the Minister not sabotage the plans for our air services, and is he not now—and good luck to him—trying to expand them?
Secondhand planes you were buying.
The Minister now knows that what he described as the home policy then could be appropriately applied to the present. The home policy now is that we have higher prices and more emigration, more taxes and higher taxes and we have a Coalition Government in office and there is no Fianna Fáil Government to blame.
Do you not notice you have higher wages?
Surely Deputy O'Leary is not going to try to justify the position that because labourers are getting more pay they are getting more than they should be getting?
They are getting more than if you were in power.
There is no wages standstill Order to-day, and no wage freeze by Deputy Lemass. We will rub your nose in that before this debate ends.
No, but there is something else and the Minister for Industry and Commerce knows it. We have no wages standstill Order to-day but we have a standstill Order in the country as a whole.
You said 45/- a week was enough.
What about the £3 10s. for the unemployed that Deputy Kyne promised?
The lord mayor is all right; the ratepayers will see to that.
Order!
There are 71,000 unemployed now.
There were 90,000 two years ago.
What about your 24/- relief schemes, four days a week?
Deputy Blaney.
The Deputy knows he is on a loser at the moment and no matter what he may say or do he cannot get away from that fact. He has backed a losing horse and unfortunately the horse that is being flogged is the people of this country.
It ran very well in Kerry.
1,000 per foot is what the change was in Kerry—4,000 of a change.
It ran very well and you cannot deny that.
The Minister cannot deny the change.
Election results may not be discussed on the Vote on Account.
We must come round to recalling to the public mind some of the statements that were made three or four years ago by certain gentlemen in the present Government, and statements they have made in the recent past. There were statements made at different times by different members who now occupy very prominent positions in the Government. One of these catch cries was made by the Minister for Finance himself. He talked about the question of living beyond our means. He talked about it in terms that would indicate that such a phrase or description was entirely out of keeping with this country.
According to him it was entirely wrong to be going around giving the idea that we were using more than we could afford. He then talked about our balance of payments and described that problem as something that was made a fetish on the altar on which many of our people lost their employment. What is the position to-day? Are our people not emigrating as the result of the policy or lack of policy of the Government? Are they not leaving this country in their thousands. Not only are the people leaving, but as I well know, they are closing their doors for good and taking their families with them. That is a new development in this country.
In the past, there was a bit of emigration but it is a very new development to have the houses in rural Ireland, along the seaboard and in the congested areas, being closed up, with padlocks on the outside and chains on the doors. Those houses are being closed and will never be reopened. This Government know that they are responsible for those padlocks and for those chains and for the lack of young people around the seaboards and in the congested areas. There is nobody now in those districts but tottering old men and small children. I know it is happening because of where I come from. There is no tale being pulled that that is not true and that that is not the reason why we have fewer on the register of unemployment. The cause is emigration.
That is a fact that we cannot get away from and the sooner the Government wake up to a realisation of it, instead of clapping themselves on the back and saying we have only so many on the unemployment register, the better for all concerned. Let them get out and go around the country and see for themselves how many thousands of our young married couples and their young families have left the country because of the scourge of a Coalition Government.
They got a 20 years' scourge of you.
Go back to your tricks now. Go back to the country and your thimbles and give us peace here. I want the Government to realise and to admit that their statements of policy in the years past have now come to light as a lot of humbug and propaganda, a lot of ambiguous and misleading statements such as the one made by many people now on the Government Benches that the cost of living would be brought down to the 1951 figure. Everyone in the country knows that the promises were made and were understood to convey that if the Government got back into office food prices would be reduced to the 1951 level, but we find an ambiguity there as in many other things for which the Coalition groups are responsible.
If they are accused of having made these promises, one of them stands out alone and says he never made them— that it was the other fellow who made them. Soon many of them will go out never to come back and that is why so many heads are being buried under the Coalition Benches to-day. Many of them will never again occupy the seats in which they now sit once the people get them out. All I would suggest is that in the little time left to them, they should make up for the evils they have done and try to balance the scales somewhat in their favour. They are only passing this way once and that applies to quite a few of them.
You will pass away too.
I will pass away certainly; it is the lot of all of us, but Deputy O'Leary, like John Brown, will go on forever. We have been given an exhibition to-day of how not to carry on a discussion in this House. That has been sponsored and led by Front Bench members of the Government. They, as members of the Cabinet, realise more than the others the sorry mess the Government have got themselves into, so that there is a chorus from the Front Benches to drown any criticism of their policy. That is why they have excelled themselves in uncalled for interruptions and all sorts of obstruction. That does not get us away from saying what we set out to say. In 1951 they left us with a Budget which had a deficit of £15,000,000. We had to find that £15,000,000. We also found that our balance of payments was £62,000,000 on the wrong side, that the excess of imports over exports was £123,000,000, that tillage was down by 450,000 acres, that wheat in itself was down by 230,000 acres. Then we came along and took the only course open to us. It was a course which we knew was unpopular and yet we went to the country and brought in the measures of the 1952 Budget. That was black-guarded from the tree tops and the house tops.
You bought four Independent Deputies to do that.
The Deputies were not for sale. If you had that experience, we had not. We did not at any time get them out of their beds in the middle of the night and offer them Cabinet posts if they would back us. That was done by you, not by us.
What about Cahirciveen?
Get out the Deputy's tricks and his three cards. This will be the third Budget. Two of the ladies have been turned up already without a solution having been found. Possibly the third one will be lucky.
The Deputy ought to have sufficient decency not to be so personal in his remarks.
Perhaps the answer to our problems lies under the third card and that the Minister will find himself, at the end of the next financial year, if he is still Minister, in the position in which we left him in 1952 as against the position we found in 1951 and in 1952. We reduced the balance of payments to the negligible figure of £5,500,000 and we reduced from £120,000,000 to £65,000,000 the excess of imports over exports. That surely was something that can be regarded as a good answer to the criticism levelled at us in 1952 for having taken what were termed unnecessary steps. The end which we then set out to achieve was coming and coming quickly. The past 18 months, on the other hand, have proved that this Government have been on the wrong track. They have actually put us back to the 1951 position when the last Coalition Government left office. To-day we have reached a £94,000,000 deficit on the one hand and a £35,000,000 on the other.
Our Budget expenditure and our expenditure on running the country have increased, as has been shown by the present Vote on Account figures which have been given to us. Our Book of Estimates shows an increase over the year of something in the region of £3,500,000. All I want to say on this Vote on Account, which shows an increase over last year, is that, like the rates that the ratepayers are now paying down the country, so also will it be in regard to the taxpayer. Although the taxpayer will pay more this year, the services he will get in return will not improve correspondingly because wages, salaries, higher living costs and higher costs of materials are running away with the extra taxation reaped from our people and we, therefore, find ourselves to-day committed to paying more and getting, in fact, fewer services for it. That is the position now in regard to the present Government: give less and take more!
So we find that, more and more, are we getting back to the stage reached in 1951; more and more are we being driven into the position wherein we may find ourselves this year, that the amount of money outlined in this Vote on Account and in the Book of Estimates will not meet the bills at the end of the year, bills which must come up and which we are committed to pay. We will find ourselves in 1957, as we found ourselves in 1951, with a Budget deficit which may be passed on in time to the Government which will succeed this present Government.
The gambit at the moment may be that things are being written down for the specific purpose of keeping the wolf from the door for another few months; and, if and when the wolf pack overwhelms the present Government behind that door, they will then be able to get out and leave all the financial mess to those who come after them to clean up just as Fianna Fáil had to clean up the mess in 1951 to 1954. I want to inform the House now —because so many interruptions were made earlier much of what I said was lost as, indeed, it was intended it should be lost by those who were interrupting—that, in addition to our balance of payments, our Budget deficits and our excess of imports over exports, we also have a disimproving position in regard to our cost of living.
In November last—and, mark you, it has risen a few points since—we had an increase of seven points in the cost of living over mid-May, 1954, and a reduction in 1954 of two points as against 1953. The only significant fact or the only significant variation in these two sets of dates is that Fianna Fáil were in office when we dropped two points and the Coalition is in office when there is a rise of seven points, and the figure is continuing to rise. We also have a reduction in the farmer's income, a reduction in his wheat price, in the number of acres under the plough for wheat and beet and, because of that reduction, we have a reduction in the number of people employed handling these two crops.
Side by side with that, we have an increase in our imports, such as cereals, wheat and raw sugar, and we must pay for that increase, an increase for which we obviously have not got the money to pay at the moment. That, briefly, is the position as we find it to-day. All I can say is that, remembering all the hardships that this long-winded 68-point document will impose on the people, the reward which the Minister hopes to reap from it is much too small a reward for the trouble our people will have to bear. This will also mean a bigger and better cross-Border smuggling trade such as we have not had for years. The Minister, of course, does not give any attention to that because, just as in the case of the northern and Six-County provincial papers, he does not seem to grasp the fact that there is a Border up there at all. But we, who live near it, know that it exists.
It suits the Deputy well.
Without question, there will be an increasing cross-Border smuggling traffic as a result of this. The Minister may well find that this method of collecting taxes will not even pay off the £7,000,000 or the £8,000,000 he is hoping to collect. What I want to know is: has the Minister given any clear indication as to what he will do with the £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 extra taxation he hopes to get? I know he has talked vaguely about it being put into some capital development but I would like to have from the Minister and the Government some specific proposals now before ever he gets his claws on this money. I would like to be assured that this money will be used in a useful manner and will not be used to fill the gaps in the Budget proposals, because the Budget proposals may not be adequate for the running of the country in the coming financial year. I would like to have an assurance on that.
I would like the House to be given the facts as to how this money will be spent, this £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 which will be collected as a result of these impositions. I want to know if that money will be used for the purpose for which the Minister so glibly explained it would be used, but gave us no details. Let us have from the Minister in his closing speech a definite indication of where this £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 extra will go. Let him say that it will, in fact, be used for something which will give lasting benefit. Let us be able to tell the people, whose savings will be eaten into by virtue of their having to pay higher prices for these taxed commodities, that their savings, so reaped from them in these taxes, will go into productive employment in the future by way of capital development throughout the country.
The Minister is, I think, in duty bound, in taking the savings from the people out of their pockets or out of their banks, to give them a clear indication and tell them exactly what he will do with those savings. He has not done that so far. I appeal to the Minister to do it when he comes to reply.
In conclusion, I can only say that the so-called policy of the Coalition has really proved to be a lack of policy. Indeed, it is rather difficult to talk about policy in this connection at all because what we are faced with is a lack of policy. That lack of policy on the part of the last Coalition ran the country practically on to the rocks. Fianna Fáil came back into office and took the remedial measures necessary, measures which proved to be sound despite all sorts of propaganda against them and despite all manner of obstruction by the Deputies sitting on that side of the House now. That was the position in 1951. In 1954 the country was handed over again to the present Coalition Government and, again, we find this Government a Government without a policy. In a short 18 months all the good that was done and all the measures that were effected by Fianna Fáil to put the country back on a sound financial basis have been wiped out. Everything has gone by the board. Lack of policy has again made itself self-evident in our ever-increasing adverse balance of payments position, in our excess of imports over exports and in the great numbers of our people who are emigrating because they know now, that with this Government in office, there is no point and no hope in staying at home on unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit.
We want the people to realise, and realise fully, that this Government have been going along with their heads in the sand. They have been travelling with their heads down for the past 12 months when all the indications were that some remedial steps should be taken in time. But, instead of doing that, they pooh-poohed the whole idea and said we were creating a scare on this side of the House in order to bring about a crisis. We have tried on this side to be as constructive as we possibly could all the time for the benefit of the country, irrespective of whatever Government was in office. Our warnings to the present Government over the past 12 months were constructive warnings offered in an effort to help our country, but those warnings went unheeded. The Government to-day, despite those warnings, finds itself—and unfortunately has brought the country with it—in a state infinitely worse now than the state in which we found the country in 1951 after three years of Coalition rule.
I intend to be very brief as I notice that there are Fine Gael Deputies who are anxious to get in on this debate. I do not intend to follow the line which was apparently adopted by the Deputy who spoke before me who believed if you spoke long and loudly enough what you said did not matter. For that reason I will try to make my remarks brief so that as many Deputies as possible can contribute and say something sensible. I was listening to most of the people who spoke here for the last two days and I think that Deputy Jack McQuillan, who spoke last night, was very sensible in his approach to this problem. I did not agree with everything he said—that could not be expected, I suppose—but he did put the finger where it should have been put by what he said in relation to our small farmers. Every Deputy in this House, even city Deputies, will admit that the small farmers are still the backbone of the country and that, while they are doing their share, it is the big man who has too much land, who has left us in the position we are in. I honestly believe that the biggest portion of the land of this country is in the hands of the wrong people who because of the fact that some crop is not paying as well as last year, will switch to something else. They switch from cattle to wheat and from wheat to something else and their one object is to make as much money as they can; they employ the smallest amount of labour possible and put as much of the money as they can in their pockets.
If this Government gets round to the problem and does what should have been done long ago, that is, create far more tenant farmers, put more people on the land who will work it, thus stopping the drift from the land, we will be going a long way towards clearing up the muddle the country is in. I believe it is the best way to solve the unemployment problem. If we put somebody who is able and willing to work a farm on that farm, it means that somebody else is coming off the labour market. I have myself experience of a Dutchman who came to this country and who got one acre of land. On that one acre of land he was able, through growing the right type of fruit and vegetables to live very comfortably with a wife and six children. If we had more of that type of industry, more of the type who know what to grow and who will spend time and energy in growing it, we would not be as we are now importing all sorts of fruit and vegetables, which could be grown here, and paying for them, thus providing an adverse effect on our balance of payments.
There is another problem which could be approached also by the Government and that is the problem of using Irish timber for purposes at home for which foreign timber is in many cases prescribed in contracts. If we tackled the problem of treating native Irish timber in the proper way, we could very soon reach a stage where Irish timber could be used entirely on the building of houses and other types of work. At the present time a tremendous amount of money is going to Sweden, Finland and other places for timber while we have native Irish timber apparently being used only for firewood.
It is very easy for people who want to criticise the present situation to do so. At any time people can be critical provided they are not expected to give a solution to the problem. We have had a typical example of it here to-day. There was, I think, a very specific charge made by the Deputy who spoke before me. I would like, for his information and for the information of others, to say that anybody who for the last few weeks could not see that something like this was going to take place must not be very bright or very intelligent. Deputy Giles could bear me out when I say that we had people a few days ago forecasting—and they were Fianna Fáil supporters—as to what was going to happen. They were pretty close to the mark, but I am sure they will admit nobody gave them information. They got no Budget secrets; they just used their heads in regard to the situation and I think Deputy Blaney should have been honest enough to admit that that is what probably happened in the particular case to which he was referring.
We, in the Labour Party, do not want to see restrictions if they can possibly be avoided. There is a very big difference, however, in the restrictions and the action now and the action taken by the Government which introduced the 1952 Budget. Most of the items that have been listed here can be counted as luxury goods. Most of them can possibly be manufactured in Ireland and they are at least nonessential goods.
In the 1952 Budget we had the real essentials of life taxed and nobody can deny that fact. I may be wrong but I believe that the number of people who will be disemployed—and there may be a few temporarily disemployed as a result of this—will be very small and it will be more than counterbalanced by those who will be put into employment because of the fact that goods which will be bought in the future will be Irish goods. Unfortunately, we still have people who will not buy goods here if they can get anything at a comparative price from abroad. These measures will induce people in a big way to buy Irish goods which are in very many cases much better than the imported article.
There is one other way in which we can help to solve this problem. Deputy McQuillan referred to the burning of native fuel. I think that not alone if native fuel in the form of turf is used but if the Government would take the necessary steps to check on our coal deposits they would be going a good way towards substantially reducing imports. There is also the question of mineral deposits. A big effort must be made to have Irish mineral deposits developed. For years it was the habit of the dismal Jeremiahs across the way to go round the country saying: "We cannot expect to have mineral deposits in this country. Were we not told that there was nothing worth developing?" This has been said without any effort at obtaining prior knowledge and without going to the trouble of checking whether they may be mineral deposits.
Is there any reason why there should not be mineral deposits here the same as there are in England or on the Continent? There is no reason at all except that the people who were in power for many years considered that for one reason or another it was a good idea to say that they were not here. Even a few years ago they were going around telling the people it was all "cod" to suggest that there was copper to be found in County Meath. It was proved since that they were wrong and now that it is known they say: "We knew it all the time." I hope the example that has been given there will be followed in other parts of the country and that the mineral deposits will be developed in Ireland and that the export of these deposits will result in a saving as regards the balance of payments and will help to improve the present situation.
I am very glad that I did not speak after Deputy Blaney had spoken because if I did, I might have had to withdraw some remarks. The like of Deputy Blaney's speech I never heard. It was mean, low, despicable and un-Irish, and the Fianna Fáil Party ought to be ashamed of him. As a group of men I respect the Fianna Fáil Party, and I have the greatest respect for many of the men in it, but I think they should not stand for that type of conduct. Al Capone was the king of the gangsters in America for a long time and what we heard to-day was not far short of what he would say.
I am not in the least bit worried about the situation here to-day. We have been told that there is a great danger hanging over the country. There never was danger. There was no danger in 1952 and there is no danger to-day. The balance of payments position may be bad, but these things right themselves. A few short years ago we saw Germany, Belgium and several other European nations levelled to the ground but to-day we see these people up and doing, by their own efforts. We, who escaped all these disasters, must do all we can to put our country on a sound basis.
We have been blessed by the gifts of the Almighty. He gave us everything. He gave us a grand and glorious country but here we are whining, cringing and crying that the country is down and out. This country is not down and out. It is on its feet. It is on the march. It has been on its feet and advancing all the time since we got our own national freedom. Look at the grand and glorious houses that have been built where there were mud cabins 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Look at the happiness and peace in these houses with electricity and all the comforts that we can give to the people who are in them. That has all been brought about by Irish capital and Irish labour.
We have done as much as any other country in a short space of years notwithstanding the fact that we fought a civil war and an economic war and have been squabbling and fighting amongst ourselves. Nevertheless this country is up and doing and on the march.
Balances of payments are always problems. I know about ten or 15 different problems that this country has gone through but always in a year or two we were on our feet again. Listening to Fianna Fáil one would think that we were completely down and out and that the inter-Party Government was the cause of it all. We are not down and out. Instead we are in the happy and glorious position that we were never in before in this country of having farmers, businessmen and labouring men joined together in one big effort to make the country prosperous and well. That is what we have been doing for the past two or three years and, thanks be to God, we have a Government with the courage, confidence and experience necessary to lead this country in the right way.
In 1924 we started to electrify the country and to-day every hamlet and home on the farms and hills of Ireland is electrified. Every man has light and heat and fire. Did any of us believe that that could happen in 30 years? Thanks be to God, I am alive to-day to see it and I am proud of it.
We have had land resettlement taking place over the last 30 years. I have seen tens of thousands of acres divided and happy families settled on them. It makes no difference to me whether they are Meath men or anybody else. They are all Irishmen and they are settled there in happy homes where there was nothing but a bog for hundreds of years. I see bog development where we had nothing but a waste of prairie, water and dirt of all kinds. I see our bogs being utilised to-day and thousands of men working on them where only one man got work 100 years ago. Those things have been going on under various Governments. National reorganisation is going on by leaps and bounds and we see the Irish people being employed in their own country. Are we not proud of these things? We ought to be.
Then we see land reclamation in progress. For hundreds of years the land of Ireland was allowed to go to waste in furze and bushes but now we see money being given to reclaim it and the Government are giving to the farmers lime and fertilisers and all the things that go to make land good. Are we not proud of that? We see progress being made with the drainage of our rivers for which the people have been asking for almost 100 years. Full steam ahead is the order of the day and when we come to the next 30 years we will hardly know this country for the development that has taken place.
We have had serious problems to surmount but we will never surmount these problems by squabbling and fighting. If the Fianna Fáil Party wishes to get back to power, and if the people wish to put them back in power, we will gladly walk across the floor of the House if the people want us to do so, but while we are here we will get on with the job.
There has been great talk in this debate about the balance of payments. To hell with the balance of payments. We have the Irish nation and the Irish people here and what more do we want? We have here good Irish farmers with their families settled deep on the land. I saw these same farmers smashed in 1921 and in 1934. I saw them smashed to the ground and I saw them starting again with their families in a little bit of land. To-day they are fully on their feet, working in peace and doing a good job, forgetting the past and getting on with the things that matter for the future.
The only drawback I see in the whole matter is that Fianna Fáil is not big enough to join in the endeavour of the national Government to make the country prosperous and put all the people on their feet. Look at what we could have done over the last 20 years if a fully national Government had been in power. If they had joined us we could have dealt with our banking system with which no Government has been able to deal up to the present. Why do you people not come in and join us to do that? Why do you not give the Irish farmer a chance to get the credit and the money he needs? This country is starved of credit in the right place. Those who do not need credit can get thousands overnight or on the telephone but the small farmer and the middle-class farmer are starved of credit. The land is not half stocked or worked as it should be.
I say to the Government and to Fianna Fáil that we have a duty to the middle-class farmer and the middle-class people. They are bearing too heavy a burden. The 20 to 70 acre farmer is crushed. If these men were put on their feet and given the credit facilities they need, this country would produce more than its needs and the balance of payments problem would be very small. The weakness lies in the fact that the small and middle-class farmers have not the requisite credit facilities. With Deputy McQuillan I say that these are the people who carry the load, the people who right the wrongs every time our nation is in danger and they are the people who are always neglected.
I want to see banking facilities made available to these people and money harnessed to the task of giving these people their rightful place in the nation. These are the people who always stood four square for everything decent and honourable and Irish. They always responded to the call whether it was for work or war or peace. This Government and succeeding Governments should do their duty towards these people. If that is done, there will be very little trouble in the balance of payments. They will pull their weight, work their land and there will not be a perch of waste land.
I certainly agree also with Deputy McQuillan that something must be done about the vast prairies that are held by men who are not pulling their weight. Thousands of acres are lying idle, not half stocked. They are set on the tillage system or ranching system where a man can take over 300 acres, and till as long as he likes and get all the wheat and the big money he likes. These estates should be broken up and divided amongst the Irish people. They should be tilled by farmers who live on their own holdings, not by ranchers who try to get rich at the nation's expense. Deputy McQuillan is quite right. This country is crying out for more land resettlement. Resettlement should be the order of the day and more money should be spent on it.
I come from the Pale and know what I am talking about. Thousands of acres are not being worked as they should be worked. I do not want injustice done to anyone. I am proud of the farms of 200 to 400 acres in the Midlands that are worked to full capacity and that give employment but there is too much waste, too much idleness and too much misery surrounding the big estates. The Government should give the price that is needed in order to obtain the land and should build houses and make happy homes for the people. The land should be restocked. Half our problem is created by depopulation of the villages and towns.
If a decent man is given 50 or 60 acres and a home, he and his family will remain there. That system obtained in the Midlands and no one sold out. The people there can trace their families back for generations. They had a sturdy foundation on which to build. These are the people who are being neglected.
Stop squabbling, get on with the work, unite if it is at all possible and give us an Irish national Government of regeneration and tackle the problem that has been unsolved over the last 30 years, namely, the banking system. Money has us by the throat. The financial system of the British Empire is held in the grip of the Masonic Order. Money can be loosened or tightened at will. We are just pawns in the game. It is time we smashed that system and took control of our destiny. We may not be able to do it but we should try. We tried to overcome big obstacles in the past and we succeeded in most cases. Are we afraid to tackle this obstacle to progress and prosperity? If we are, we are cowards.
I say to the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party: "Forget the past; forget the squabbles." Pearse, Collins, de Valera and the other leaders gave us something that should be handed on. The one thing that is keeping us down is the Masonic grip on the banking system. If we unite for ten years and face that problem, we will solve it or, at least, if we do not solve it, it will be a glorious failure.
When a small farmer looks for credit to the banks, he cannot get it because the powers that be who control money want to keep this small Irish nation down, to use it as a pawn. There are some movements in this country and outside it working to smash the independence of the Irish people. Nobody can do anything about that but the Irish people.
Stop the type of speech we had from Deputy Blaney and Deputy Corry and all that rubbish. I could give as dirty and bitter a speech as any man in this House but why should I? I have been too long through the mill. I have been inside prisons and barracks, in wars and civil wars, but I always held my head up and was respected by friend and foe. I did my duty as others did. We did not do it for the sake of getting something for ourselves. We did it to get a better Ireland.
It is a shame to fight and wrangle over small things. It is said that the inter-Party Government will break up, that it is ruining the country. What is wrong with the country? There is a small problem in relation to the balance of payments. Germany, Belgium, Poland could be ground to the dust, but by their own strength could rise again.
The main structure of the State should not be changed every time there is a change of Government. Agriculture should be put on a permanent foundation and not subjected to change by every successive Government. The good schemes adopted by the present Minister for land reclamation, drainage, liming, should continue. Then we will know where we stand. On fundamentals we must be united even if we disagree in small matters. Fifty per cent. of the trouble between us would disappear if first things were put first. We should see where we can agree. We should not squabble about fundamentals that are sacred to the nation.
I certainly agree that the Book of Estimates is far too large. I have said it for 15 years. Everybody else has said the same thing. Something must be done about it. I would appeal to the Government to endeavour to reduce the load which the people have to carry and see if it cannot be pulled down in some way. The burden is too much; administration is costing too much. There are far too many heavy men being carried at the top and the people who are carrying them are the small struggling people down the country.
I would ask this House to face the problem before it, unpleasant though it may be. When I started in Meath County Council, 20 years ago, there were about a score of people there while now there are hundreds and hundreds, all paid and pensionable, and one of them cannot be removed. When I came in here this was a reasonable Parliament, but now it is a streamlined Parliament trying to follow the pattern of the British Empire.
You have a streamlined Government.
A streamlined Opposition.
Do not go off the rails now.
No, but one of your comrades ran off the rails. I would say that the inter-Party Government has laid the foundations on which the nation can be built up and has brought the farmers, the labourers and the business people together into a common pattern. We were told in the past that you could not have a farmer and a labouring man sitting at the one table, but how could the farmer do without the labouring man or the labouring man do without the farmer? How could the businessman stand behind his counter if he had not the labourer and the farmer coming in? Is it not the essence of national development to have the three elements combined, and would it not be the essence of development if Fianna Fáil were to throw in their weight with us and let us get down to fundamentals?
If we are not to go back to misery and slavery, there is one obstacle that must be faced by this generation and that is the Masonic grip of money which has this country by the throat, between London and Belfast. The grip can be loosened or tightened as it suits them, and we must face that problem and solve it, or we will spend our time for the next 30 years in wrangling and fighting but making very little progress.
I do say, however, that we have made considerable progress, and anyone who died 40 years ago, if he could come back to-day, would not know this country. We have come through some good times while every other country abroad was ravaged. We have had, from 1939 to the present time, a peaceful period. Good prices ruled for the farmers with an odd slide up or down. We should thank God for the good things He gave us instead of whining and complaining about being down and out. Will anyone here stand up and say this country is down and out to-day? If he will, I will say he is a liar. People are earning more to-day; I see three or four in one family earning £20 or £30 a week which they were never able to do before. I see the farmers getting good prices. I know there is a bit of a problem in regard to cattle at present, but I am quite satisfied the cattle situation will ease itself. The farmers down the country are not fools; they know the position and they know things will right themselves. They know they have in their Minister for Agriculture a leader who knows how to lead and whom they will follow.
All that is wrong with the Fianna Fáil Party is that they are afraid his schemes will prove successful because if they work out Fianna Fáil will be ruined. The Minister for Agriculture is a manly and a brilliant man, who knows his job; he is harnessed to it and he will enable the farmers to succeed in spite of Fianna Fáil. He will certainly see that the Irish farmer who is the beginning and end of the Irish nation will get a fair crack of the whip.
While Fianna Fáil was in power they went mad on industrial development. While we do need industrial development, I do not agree that you should kill agriculture to set up industries. Why clutter up the City of Dublin with Jews and Gentiles from every land, coming in to get an easy living at the farmers' expense? Agriculture should have been put ahead of industry because it is only agriculture that will carry industry on its back.
We set up industrialists 20 or 30 years ago and gave them a royal living. We can see them with big dividends, big cars and streamlined factories and we know they do not think of the struggle that the farmers had to make to give them those things. If they do not want to expand and give more employment as they should, it is time we took away the protection we gave them for the last 20 years. We do not want anybody sitting behind the tariff wall which was given to him to put him on his feet. When he is on his feet we want to see him walk and then to run —not to skulk and hide behind those walls. There are too many like that, having a royal life at the countryman's expense.
I believe we should face our responsibilities because the country is ours for the making. Let us make it. It is a grand little country with a glorious heritage of which we may be proud. We have a grand Christian faith and it is up to us now to do our part.
We have listened to an exposition of sentimental clap-trap the like of which I have never heard in this House, but I suppose it is better to forget it and assume above all that the Minister for Finance does not agree with Deputy Giles on the difficulties of the present situation or with his views in relation to the banking system, or as to the position of a particular religion in this country. We take it that is as much sentimental clap-trap as the rest. I call on the Minister for Finance, if he thinks it worth while, in view of all the allegations that have been made in the country on these matters and in the interests of there being some chance of settling Partition, to contradict Deputy Giles, in the interests of the movement for unification.
We will solve Partition; do not worry.
Order! Deputy Childers.
Having said that, we might as well get down to realities. The admissions of the Minister for Finance that we are facing serious balance of payments difficulties now completes the complete prostration of the Minister for Finance to Deputy de Valera and are the last in a final series of admissions that we told the truth of our economic position and that, at last, the Government have had to believe that what we said was right. We were accused of being grossly extravagant in our Government courses; that has been disproved. We were accused of levying excessive taxation, taxation that was unnecessary even to raise the excessive cost of Government, and that has been disproved. The people were told that the cost of living could be reduced and that has been disproved.
The people were told that all our warnings about the balance of payments position were nothing but the worship of the golden calf, an attitude of humility towards the British people while we were secretly carrying out the propaganda of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer in this country. That is what we have been told in the past few years. Now we have the solemn, funeral statement of the Minister for Finance that the balance of payments has reached a serious point, that we have been importing too much and exporting too little and that, at last, he has to take drastic remedies in order to overcome the difficult situation. As I have said it is all in the nature of a tribute to Eamon de Valera and when the economic history of the country is written I feel quite sure those in charge of that work will see this.
All the sentimental slush talk about the development of the Irish nation began in 1947 with the appalling and disreputable efforts of the Clan na Poblachta Party. The Fine Gael Party, who always appeared to keep up a conservative and zealous front about savings and the desire to restrict development, seem to have swallowed this propaganda and to have adopted it as their own. This has brought this country into its present mess and into its present misfortune.
I blame Deputy MacBride and Clan na Poblachta for the whole of this. They started the easy talk, the idea that, by some miraculous change in our system of credit, we could get happiness overnight, that it did not matter whether we worked or not, that as long as we had the money abroad we could earn ourselves a living without any exertion. It started largely with the by-elections in 1947 and it is a sorry thing to think that Fine Gael, in order to revive their falling fortunes, had to adopt what I might describe as confused mixed versions of this new system of economic policy.
If you study the economic policy of other countries in northern Europe you will actually hear less of this slush talk about a country's ability to vote for an increase in its own living standards without expanding its production. That policy has been freely advocated in this country since 1947. It began in that year when the propaganda of the present Government Parties was more or less on the lines that the country should never have experienced the difficulties suffered during the war, that the economic difficulties were largely the responsibility of the Fianna Fáil Party, that the sharp rise in the cost of living between August 1946 and 1947 was proof that the Fianna Fáil Party was not looking after the interests of the people.
The propaganda went on to tell us that taxation was too high, that the taxation was unnecessary, that it was time the Irish people enjoyed a good living without any exertions, that they were making excessive exertions and that they were not getting a true reward for their hard earned cash. The propaganda sought to point out that everything would come right with the least possible effort by the people. A suggestion was freely made that we were in the grip of a foreign economic system, that the capital bound up in Britain during the war was there for the asking, that that money did not require to be spent on greater production.
It did not matter, according to the propaganda, whether the money was spent on hospitals, playing fields or housing; there was no limit to what we could spend; no matter how much we spent, we would get out in the end. The suggestion was that we and Fianna Fáil had a grasping, mean attitude towards all this expenditure, that we were not willing to go out on a tremendous capital spending spree in 1948 in order to make the people happy without any effort on their part to earn their happiness.
That policy has been going on ever since. So when I heard the statement of the Minister for Finance when he announced those levies I could not believe my ears that, for the first time since the war, someone in Fine Gael, apparently supported by other Coalition Parties, had at last begun to talk realities, and not trying to add up two and two as five instead of four. The solemn talk of the Minister for Finance is a great vindication of everything we have tried to say since the war.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,
I would like to direct the attention of the House to the fact that the Deputy who asked for a count has since left the House himself.
The Parliamentary Secretary is here for a change.
I was here before the Deputy and I will be here long after the Deputy.
As I was saying, when we temporarily adjourned to get a House, this propaganda started in 1947. This attitude of mind was created in the minds of the Irish people largely, as I have said, by the initial efforts of Clann na Poblachta and was adopted by Fine Gael in their efforts to revive their fortunes. It was repeated more or less continuously throughout all these years up to the present time, and it was based on the conception that if people knew very little about the balance of payments or how they worked, about external reserves or the system of trading with our neighbours abroad, and the more sentimentally you talked about it and the more dramatic your statements were, the more likely you were to gain the support of the public.
I suppose that, taking it by and large, the average person in this country fell for this talk that we could go on spending, that nothing could ever happen, that there would always be the money abroad to act as credit for our foreign purchases and that we need never concern ourselves. People were led to believe that there was something between £400,000,000 or £500,000,000 invested in securities abroad, which formed so huge a reserve that we need never deprive ourselves of the privilege of spending money. For years and years, I have heard the Minister for Defence, General MacEoin, down in the County Longford refer to the £400,000,000 of private and public foreign invested reserves that were there for the spending. I have heard him talk about them to people who came from small farms and who had neither the time nor the wish to study complicated economics. He simply dangled that figure of £400,000,000 before them until it almost made everything I said about taking care of our national economic position sound like mere lunacy and gave the people the impression that I was a foreigner in County Longford with great banking interests in Great Britain and that was why I was talking to the people about preserving some kind of reserves in Great Britain.
That kind of approach could hardly be exaggerated. It has been going on ever since 1948. Deputy MacEoin, now Minister for Defence, never once in my hearing, speaking in my constituency, referred to our liabilities abroad. He never balanced the account. He just spoke of this wonderful and glorious sum, varying from £400,000,000 to £500,000,000, according to his whim, and he never mentioned the fact that we had any liabilities to put against that and that our liabilities amounted to anything up to £250,000,000, virtually wiping out a great part of this enormous reserve that was supposed to exist in order that the Coalition could promise everybody an indefinitely good time. That liability was never mentioned.
It has been infrequently mentioned in this House. I have always heard our assets abroad mentioned but nobody liked to turn the page and give the account on the other side of the balance sheet in order to show that the sum was not unlimited and one could not go on spending indefinitely; there were liabilities abroad, debts we would have to honour and, of course, another common habit of the Coalition Parties was to omit the statement completely that a great part of the £400,000,000 cannot be touched at all, that it is in private hands and that we can either confiscate it or else try to persuade the owners of that money to reinvest it in productive projects here. But, unless we communise the country, it cannot be touched. It does not genuinely affect our trading position.
If anybody in this House imagines that dyed-in-the-wool supporters of the Coalition Government and Deputy MacBride really at this moment believe that there is just a very, very modest sum of some £400,000,000 of liquid cash available in Great Britain for our trading manipulations and our importing and exporting operations, one would find very few of them who had even been given the idea that the sum to-day is as small as that. They all live on these glib £400,000,000 mark figures and that is what has been wrong all the time in this country. Unfortunately, nearly one half of the people has been given this idea of easy money.
When I look back and remember all the vilification of the Central Bank in 1952 by the members of the present Government, their attitude of contempt and contumely and their definite suggestions that every statement made by the Central Bank was that of woefully pessimistic men, men with no regard for the country and men who were so crippled by conservative conceptions that they had no idea of the great new coalition in Ireland that was springing up, I think it is about time some people in the Coalition paid a belated tribute to the Central Bank, because every single word they said about the financial trend in this country since 1952 has been amply fulfilled and proved by the present Minister for Finance in his speech. I hope now that someone on the Coalition side will have the chivalry to say something about the directors of the Central Bank before the termination of this debate.
The Deputy must get Deputy Lemass to withdraw also. He criticised them, too.
We said on this side of the House that they were naturally conservative and that we did not intend to adopt all their proposals. We did not adopt all their proposals, but I notice that the Minister for Finance is now beginning to put into operation some of the proposals which were regarded as utterly fantastic in 1951-1952, when the same sort of situation was taking place as the situation with which we now find ourselves confronted. Not only has the Minister for Finance bowed to Deputy de Valera; he has bowed low to the Central Bank because he is now asking the people to spend less. He apologises for the fact that his own Government is unable to spend less and he has made it quite clear that, if he could, he would spend less. He is doing something to discourage the purchasing power of the people through this levy and through the arrangements made in connection with hire-purchase. On all fronts he is adopting the one-time hated policy of the Central Bank, several years after that policy was adumbrated.
It is true that the Central Bank statements, even the most recent, may tend to be over-conservative. They may honestly be warning the Minister for Finance and the Opposition of what will happen if remedial measures are not taken but, as I have said, it would be desperately unfair if someone in the Government did not now pay tribute to that report in 1951-52, which showed that, even if what was said then was exaggerated, the directors prophesied most accurately and most carefully a trend that has been tending to develop ever since that time. There was a halt in that development in 1953. Things were more or less put right in relation to our balance of payments. The position in 1954 showed a slight disimprovement, but it was not serious. Here, in 1955 and 1956, we have a repetition of the same situation as that which existed in 1951.
In 1951 the then Minister for Finance also proved himself to be a good prophet. He took his own line and did not follow slavishly the Report of the Central Bank. Reading his speeches now, one can see that he formulated his opinions independently, as he has always done, and he gave warning that the country was spending too much of its saving, that the position was not satisfactory and would have to be corrected. Torrents of abuse were hurled at him. Not only did the Deputies opposite, who were then in opposition, indicated that his statements were incorrect, but they repeated all the slush talk that started in 1948 and set a headline to the people as to their attitude of mind towards the expenditure of money, the use of our foreign reserves and everything else.
Probably some of the most interesting statements in that connection were made by Deputy Norton at the time. In a debate on the Supplies and Services Bill in November, 1951, Volume 127 of the Official Report, columns 603-604, he said:—
We were told that we were consuming too much, that we were eating too much, that we were wearing too much clothes, and that we were enjoying a standard of living such as we ought not to aspire to: that, generally speaking, we were living beyond our means... What is wrong with having a disequilibrium in the balance of our payments if we have utilised our foreign assets for the purpose of buying goods to put into our own granary for the use of our own people instead of allowing our money to remain under British control and British domination depreciating there in accordance with Britain's current economic and military fortunes?... The people who talk about wanting to repatriate capital and still hold their hands up in horror at the prospect of a gap in the balance of payments do not understand the economic forces which go into action once you try to get your foreign investments out of another country. I am not worried about the gap in the balance of payments, so long as we can see it, and so long as we have resources to keep that gap under control. We have an abundance of resources."
At column 609 he went on to say:—
"If anybody believes in these theories on economics, he is welcome to them, but I think they are the economics of the mentally deficient. So long as we want consumer goods or capital goods, we should use our sleeping money, which is being lent to Britain, at practically no rate of interest so far, to buy goods, consumer and capital for the use and benefit of our own people."
He got a little bit worked up later on and as the balance of payments was slowly sinking in 1951, sinking at twice the rate it was sinking even last year, Deputy Norton waxed even more sentimental and he said, as reported in column 715:—
"The economic philosophy of the report and of the White Paper"
—that was issued by Deputy MacEntee warning people of the troubles to come—
"and all the gloomy ministerial speeches are the economics of a demented recluse who just wants to live in squalor, misery and penury while his money is wrapped in the miserable rags that hang from his body."
That is the atmosphere we have lived in since 1948 so far as the Coalition is concerned. That is how we have lived. That is what a great many people in this country have been taught to believe, that any kind of holding on to financial reserves, any suggestions that increases of wages should be related to production, was simply the work of people who were self-appointed puritans deliberately determined to reduce the living standards of the people for some incredible purpose. We never understood why Deputy Norton or the others thought we wanted to be self-appointed puritans, why we thought it was either good for the country or for our political fortunes to see that the people consumed less. This was the time when anything that was said in the way of suggesting a more controlled attitude towards finance was labelled immediately as part of the hair-shirt economy of the day.
I am glad the Coalition members are now wearing the hair-shirt themselves. I hope they itch because they deserve it. Every one of them deserve it if they itch to the last minute of their office. I hope they have spikes on them for what they put this country through, for the appalling deceptions they have practised and for the state in which this country has been forced to live since 1948. I hope everything is given back to them in full measure.
As I said, in 1951 we had a further dose of this inflationary talk and we were given the impression that you did not have to worry about the balance of payments, that you did not have to worry whether production rose or not, that you did not have to worry as to the amount you could dissipate of the reserves we required for particular purposes. People were never told anything about how easily we could import too much and above all nothing was ever said by the Coalition to indicate to the people that it was utterly impossible for them to attempt to equalise, either nearly or faintly, with the English standard of living unless they produced even more than the British were producing in the way of exportable goods.
In other words, every time the British progressed in their production and exports, we would have to progress three or four times as quickly as they, if we are going to attempt to enjoy the English standard of living, to compare ourselves with the English in regard to their consumption of goods whether in the line of tobacco, drink, refrigerators or anything else. There was never a suggestion made by the Coalition that we could not imitate their standards without overcoming years and years of stagnancy in our production, without making enormous technical advances in agriculture without reorganising our whole system of agriculture. They were never told that we could not do it, that once a boom occurs in England and we started to try and vote ourselves a better standard of living by increased wages, and so on, once we started to compare ourselves with Great Britain, we inevitably end up in national bankruptcy unless we take the sternest possible measures to prevent our people importing goods for which they are not paying.
I am glad to say that a great number of people in this country have followed the present situation without knowing much about what I might describe as the professional economics of the balance of payments. There are plenty of small farmers and workers down the country who supported Fianna Fáil and, without having to hear complicated lectures, they understood all this quite clearly. Without having to have any complicated analysis made for them, they understood the necessity for preserving savings and for realising that you could not vote yourself a better standard of living simply by getting more wages without doing more for it. I am glad to say we have had people like that, because if the Government had not always had the very strong Opposition they had, I do not know where we would be. The Opposition luckily was there and we did all we could, during our three years of office, in correcting the position and we left office with the position reasonably satisfactory.
It is a strange fact that in 1953 after all the talk of depression and unemployment and all the talk about the hair-shirt economy, the personal savings of the people of this country in 1953 were four times as great as they were in either of the two previous years. They were saving money, maybe not enough, maybe not nearly enough, but they were saving far more than they were in the years when they were being told everything was fine so long as there was enough capital spent and enough ideal economic theories practised. They saved a great deal more in what was supposed to be called the years of depression, the years in which the country was bound with a hair-shirt. The position was then relatively stable and so far as the balance of payments was concerned it was, so far as I remember, of the order of £5,000,000 to £7,000,000 and we were more or less paying our way.
One of the things that distresses me about the whole business is that we have not got the £100,000,000 we lost in 1951 and in 1955. I wish we had it to spend on fertilisers, on production, on reorganising the pig industry—to spend it even on more land drainage in the country. I wish we had some of that £100,000,000 to spend on making grants on even a more lavish scale for export industries in the undeveloped areas. If we had even half of those lost savings we could spend them well.
One of the difficulties we have had to face since the war is the fact that we have been engaged in this controversy over the cost of living and over the balance of payments, so that it has been almost impossible for anyone in any Party, either this or the other Parties, to suggest to people that if you spend £1,000,000 on fertilisers you would be able to do without half the housing grants that are given to build houses. That kind of thing is very difficult to say because we have got into this atmosphere that have been created.
I am quite prepared to say that if we had spent half the money on fertilisers we have lost on buying consumer goods, we might well at this moment be able to complete our housing programme with very much reduced housing grants because the productive capacity of farmers would have been greater, their earning capacity would have been greater and the wealth of the country would have been greater, so that the amount of grant required for any specific house built might have been less and that money might have been spent again on other more essential projects. It was difficult enough to retrieve the position in 1951.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 20th March, 1956.