It is nice to know even at this stage that the Deputy's amusement at emigration has ceased.
In the year 1931, a greater number of people came into this country than left it. At that time, there was becoming manifest a trend. Stability had been reached within our shores, and that stability was becoming attractive to those who had left, and they were returning. A change came in the political scene and that trend was reversed and has continued—with some small intermissions during the two inter-Party Government régimes—all along during the reign of Fianna Fáil.
I well remember the beginning of that régime. I cannot fail to recall, with admiration, on the one hand, and sadness, on the other, the first evil effect. I recall with admiration the men, the heads of families, the small landowners, who sought employment on State-sponsored works in this country, who were refused it because they were not members of the Fianna Fáil Party and who nevertheless stayed resolutely at home. I remember with sadness the number whose spirits were broken by that Soviet-like and possibly Soviet-inspired campaign to break the spirits of men who left and never returned. Those were the days when our people's hopes were shattered in the first instance. Those were the days when the feeling that open competition and fair play for all no longer existed amongst us. That condition of affairs has continued ever since and is still in our midst, as every Deputy knows who receives correspondence about any position in relation to the filling of which he had a complaint to make.
Emigration can be cured to some extent, to an appreciable extent, very probably to the extent that is necessary to give us that turning point so vital to our survival; but it will not be done by this Budget and it will not be done by this Government. More people have been run out of this country as a result of the Budget of 1957 and they will continue to run as the result of the Budget of 1958. It is all very well to hear something so pitiably lamentable as Deputy Doherty here to-day attributing unemployment to the use of machinery. I suppose it is well not to blame too much somebody who is not the author of the words.
As an effort to meet the rise in the cost of living and as an effort to placate, certain concessions were made to corporation workers in Dublin, to the Army, the Garda and civil servants. Certainly the proper approach was made to all these people—that some help should be given to them in their plight in trying to relate their income to the demands made upon it. But what about the widows and orphans and the old age pensioners? There was nothing for them. Remember always that they are the people who, by any effort of their own, cannot supplement what they are getting. Any person in receipt of sickness benefit, an old age pension or a widow's and orphan's pension is unable to supplement what the State gives.
I would have thought that it was to those sections of the community the Government would have directed its attention when it started to distribute largesse. Let us consider, for a moment, the financial and economic position, vis-á-vis the value of the £ as between 1938 and 1958. In reply to a parliamentary question to the Taoiseach by Deputy Michael O'Higgins, some months ago, in relation to the purchasing power of the £ in mid-March, 1957 and mid-November, 1957, the reply was given that the £ which purchased a pound's worth of goods in 1938 purchased in mid-March, 1957, 7/8 worth and in mid-November, 1957, 7/4 worth. I have no reason to believe that the situation has improved in the meantime. On the other hand, I have every reason to believe that it has deteriorated but let us leave it at the 7/4.
In 1938 the old age pensioner in this country had a maximum pension of 10/- a week which purchased 10/- worth of goods. In 1958 the maximum pension of the old age pensioner is 25/-. That 25/-, in the main, is due to the efforts of two Governments under Deputy Costello who were not unmindful of the plight of these people and tried to bring their position into proper perspective, where their income would be related to the demands made upon it. That 25/- to-day, in relation to the purchasing power of the £, purchases exactly 9/2 worth of goods vis-á-vis the 1938 position. In spite of all our efforts down the years the purchasing power of the old age pensioner has dropped 10d. That holds good for every other person, not alone those in receipt of State benefits but people in every other sphere.
I had an amusing conversation with a student during the week. We were discussing the difficulties of students to-day as compared with their difficulties in my time and the two of us worked out this little formula as to what we could do with 10/-. I said that in 1938, when I was a student, if I were able to lay my hands on a 10/- note on a Saturday evening I could face the town with confidence. It gave me 20 cigarettes, a box of matches, 18 bottles of stout and my chances. In 1958 with a 10/- note a similar student can go out and have 20 cigarettes, no matches and eight bottles of stout. That in itself is an indication of how things have changed. It should do something to bring to the minds of the Minister and the Government the difficulties which face old age pensioners, widows and orphans, blind pensioners and others in receipt of sickness benefits.
I would have thought that, having regard to the changing values of money, the Minister would have seen fit to alter the allowances for people who are paying income-tax. Does anybody realise that the very junior girl who comes to Dublin to work in the E.S.B., Bord na Móna or the Civil Service or in a business house has to pay income-tax on her very low income? That income, even without tax deduction, has to be subsidised by her parents in order to keep her in reasonably good apartments.
The same goes for the junior man. You have that extra drain upon the family trying to place its boys and girls in position in Dublin and the provinces. Reckoning on the same basis, the £45 allowance to the married woman for tax purposes is entirely inadequate and the figure of £1,500, fixed for surtax purposes many years ago, no longer bears any relation to reality. In 1958, £1,500 has exactly the purchasing power of £550 and the man with the £550 purchasing power is paying surtax. These are matters with which the Minister and his Department should concern themselves so as to make the burden of tax paying more equitable.
Contrast the situation even in relation to death duties in this country and Great Britain. In Britain, there is but one duty. Admittedly, it appears to be somewhat high. In this country, there are the three duties following upon a death—estate, succession and, in certain instances, legacy duties, percentage levies varying with means and varying with the blood relationship and so on of the recipients of legacies. It will be found, on examination, I am sure, in relation to any person who leaves over a certain figure liable to estate duty, succession duty and legacy duty, that the aggregate of these percentages will exceed what is being paid by far richer and far more firmly established concerns in Britain.
In a struggling country such as this is still, with its growing pains, as it were, the imposition of a code—or should I say "the continued imposition of a code?"—suited to a country long established industrially like Great Britain is illogical and must, of necessity, bring hardship in its train. If the present commission examining our whole tax code do not advert to these aspects of our fiscal structure, I would ask the Minister and his officials to consider them very seriously.
Part of this Budget will have to meet a subsidy for nationalised transport—C.I.E. That nationalised transport is divided into two parts, freight and passenger. In freight traffic, there is competition; in passenger traffic, there is a monopoly. The monopoly pays, as it must. In freight services, there are losses and we have the extraordinary situation that, in an all-round increase in passenger rail and bus fares, children's concessions will be taken away to pay the losses on freight and, incidentally, to ease the amount of the subsidy which this Budget has to meet. That is a situation in respect of which we can no longer be complacent and can no longer be content with what some paper recently described as the third chance being given to the Minister for Industry and Commerce to clean up the country's transport system. To describe it as a cleaning up must be the greatest euphemism of modern times.
Nowhere in this Budget do I see any relief for the smaller people, the smaller landowners, the people who live in constituencies like mine, like Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Clare, portions of Cork and many other places. I see no relief. There is not any. The same situation will apply this year as applied last year and which nobody has denied.
Deputy Doherty having failed to make any comment or excuse for the increased emigration from our constituency, I now cordially invite Deputy Calleary to tell the House and the whole of North Mayo that that emigration, first of all, is not increasing and to assert that it is not attributable to the burden of the 1957 Budget and this perpetuating charter which we are now discussing.
Speaking last year on that Budget, I said that the effect of the increase in the prices of flour, bread and butter would be an immediate one, certainly, in one respect, that more people would emigrate from constituencies such as mine and emigrate at a younger age than was ever anticipated. It is funny but the mention of young people emigrating from a constituency such as mine and emigrating at a younger age than was ever anticipated brings a smile, this time not to Deputy Calleary's face, but to Deputy Doherty's. Is it amusement or is it a cynical hope that the earnings will continue so that they may flow in a particular direction?
Nobody can deny that the result of those increased prices is that things have been made more difficult for the person whose income has not and cannot increase. Remittances from America and England to areas such as those have become part and parcel of our financial structure in those areas, and they are not as great as they used to be. Jobs are not as easily got in America and England now and earnings have dropped somewhat. Picture then the difficulty of people into whose homes comes less and from those homes more must go out to buy. That is a gap that cannot be bridged in any way, unless another member of the family is sent abroad to supplement the income. That is the contribution of this Budget to the solution of emigration, at least in the area I represent. That cannot and will not be denied.
Emigration has taken on a completely different character from that which it used to have. At one time when children grew up, they went away as part of the system. They became, as it were, in rotation the wage earners for the family. Fathers and mothers were content to let them go. They suffered less hardship because it was the accepted thing, knowing that in that situation they were going only for a while. They were emigrating to get some capital in order to come back and build a home, so that they could set up in their own country and raise a family. Things are different now. Fathers and mothers have long given up the hard stony-hearted practice of parting with children as wage earners. They are now faced with a greater emotional pull. They know that when their children go now they have gone for good.
In my constituency, the same as in many other constituencies, we have a practice called seasonal migration. Having relation to the type of holdings people had, to the type of work they did and to the type of lives they led, it was a good thing. It was part of their lives. They were specialised workers. I know people whose family for four generations have been working with the same British farmer and his family descendants. It was specialised work, work for which there was respect and work which was well paid. The advent of machinery into the farms of England will cause a drop in that employment and will lessen the chances of employment of that type. That is something for which no provision is made in this Budget. It is not even thought about.
Housing, particularly in Gaeltacht areas, will get a wallop. There will be a reduction in that. The policy of the Government in incorporating what were the former levies into the financial structure of the State is a step which I do not think wise. It removes a weapon which one would otherwise have at one's disposal for emergencies, actual or threatening. I shall leave the full examination of that intricate part of our economy to Deputy Sweetman, the ex-Minister for Finance. As I have already said, this is a Budget which gives no hope. It gives the momentary relief that nothing fresh has been imposed. Ultimately, however, the people will realise that nothing fresh has been imposed because the country cannot stand any more.
If it is a Budget, such as the Minister for Health described it last night, preparing the way for reliefs, I should like, in all sincerity, to warn him that when the time for relief comes, there will be very few to relieve. The effect of the Budget, after the feeling of relief stage passes, will be a realisation that what was there before blistering the backs of the community is still there, with ever-increasing force. It is to be hoped that when the time comes, the people will punish as they punished for the 1952 Budget. They will not be punishing so much in revenge for their material sufferings and their material hardships, but they will be, through the medium of the ballot box, wreaking vengeance on the fraudulent, wreaking vengeance on the conscienceless, wreaking vengeance on those who treated them as a means to an end, treated them as the means by which they got back into power, and as the avenue through which they could move to position, prestige and abuse of power.
I hope when that time comes the people, particularly the younger people, will realise there is wheat and there is chaff, and that God will give them an opportunity to select the wheat from the chaff, so that the integrity of public men will be worthily preserved, and that public institutions will be removed from the position of disrepute which they now occupy. I hope that we will go forward, believing in the fundamentals of truth, honesty and integrity in Irish public life. Our people are the best people in the world to withstand suffering, to make sacrifices when the necessity is there. Let nobody come into this House, like Deputy Doherty did to-day, to tell me, across the floor of the House, about housewives having to pay through the nose for tea. The higher the price they pay for tea, the better he likes it, and the more profit he makes. Let nobody tell me that is patriotism lest in my indignation at this shameless effrontery, I might be led to say something which my finer feelings might regret—not that it would not be true but that I might hurt unduly. I shall close by wishing no more upon the Fianna Fáil Party in return for the damage they have done than an awakening of conscience and the resultant restitution to our people.
