The Minister for Lands becomes so gorged with figures that he does not seem to appreciate what the figures represent in terms of humanity. That is something that seems to be of little concern to him. Indeed, he concerns himself entirely with discussing post-war social and economic trends as if the State began only at the end of the post-war period. It is no part of my responsibility to defend the activities of successive Governments. The contribution of the Minister for Lands could, perhaps, be put most correctly in perspective by reflecting on the fact that the State was formed in 1922. Since that time, various Governments have held office—the Party of which the Minister for Lands is a member has held office on several occasions—and right up to the present day, irrespective of what Government was in power, there has been a continuous decline in population through emigration.
Starting in 1922, the first decennial period shows a figure of 16,000 per year, increasing to 18,000; in the next decennial period, the figure is 24,000, increasing to 40,000. The total is approximately 750,000 people emigrating. That amounts to a progressive decline in population for which the Minister for Lands must be prepared to take his share of responsibility. He must share responsibility for the failure of the social and economic policies in which he still so firmly believes. Every politician, I think, tends to have ideas in which he believes, likes to accept and test out. The strange thing about the present Government is that it has tested out a number of theories, social and economic, and in spite of clear proof put forward again and again that these theories have failed by the only real test, they cling to them. I am sure the Minister for Lands will agree that the only real test is that adumbrated by the Tánaiste, the figures of employment, that is the only test of the success of a Government's economic policies. Judged by that test I do not think there is any doubt that the economic policies of the different Governments have clearly failed to provide the employment we need if we are to survive and create a socially just and prosperous society.
The Minister for Lands accepts this Budget and approves of it. It is a "true-blue" conservative Budget. It is unimaginative. There was a certain amount of money to be given away and the Minister has given it away in a manner typical of a conservative Minister for Finance. His only regret appears to be that he could not outdo Mr. Heathcote Amory of the British Conservative Party in his most recent "big handout" Budget.
The Minister for Lands suggested that prosperity cannot be created overnight. Nobody believed it could but it is a long night since we began to control our own affairs. Government did not begin yesterday or when the Minister for Finance took over. After 40 years we are still pursuing precisely the same outmoded ideas, inefficient and disproven, doctrinaire and conservative economic theories which have failed again and again in the hands of dedicated disciples on both sides of the House after being given every opportunity to work and provide us with the prosperity and the wealth that I am sure every Deputy wants to give to the people as well as the social justice the people of so many other countries enjoy.
The Minister for Lands was irritated because the Opposition—presumably that includes me—has wasted tens of thousands of hours discussing tobacco, cigarettes, the cost of living and bread. He agreed when somebody interjected "bread". He suggested we should be discussing fundamental problems of economic policy. There is something to be said for his complaint but surely, bad and all as we are in talking about these things which in some ways are necessities and in other ways are near necessities—much as some of us may dislike it they have become near necessities—we were not talking about abstractions. At least these are hard realities connected with the three-meals-a-day needs of our people. Surely the complaint that political man hours have been wasted should be directed against the Taoiseach, Leader of the Party which has absorbed the time of the House up to now. This is the first real bread and butter debate this year. Fianna Fáil absorbed the time of the House on an academic discussion of the abstract question of proportional representation. If that is not waste of political man hours I do not know what is. The time of this House and of the Seanad has been wasted. It could be a good thing if we had been given an opportunity before now to discuss these real issues that affect the daily lives of our people and the methods of solving our difficulties. Whatever else we are to blame for the Taoiseach is to blame for that waste of time.
The Minister for Finance has introduced an extremely doctrinaire, conservative, unimaginative Budget which will continue the position more or less as it is, with relatively insignificant changes in insignificant directions. What is really quite remarkable is the apparent enthusiasm for this Budget and all it contains, as if it were some wonderful new idea or contained such an idea, or pointed a new path to prosperity or indicated that we were going to stimulate private business and industry in the country so that it would react in such a wave of prosperity that all the evils of unemployment and emigration would be eradicated and the social needs of our people would be met in a relatively short time.
In the light of the facts of continued loss of population produced by the statisticians, the Government Statistics Office, I cannot accept that there is a real decline in emigration. I think this alleged fall should be taken together with the fact that we have exported so many that we have now reached the stage where we are not increasing our population any more, so that we have a relatively slight surplus to export. If there is any reduction in emigration it is artificial rather than real. The Minister has announced certain improvements in social benefits, cuts in taxation and other, if you like, bonuses. I think it should be made clear that this has little or nothing to do with any positive step or decision on the part of the Minister. The Minister has been very fortunate in the fact that the terms of trade have improved quite considerably and that import prices have been so favourable to us that he has been left with an effective surplus, which has enabled him to act in the way he has acted. Export prices remained relatively stable.
I come now to the test of efficiency set by the Tánaiste in the employment figures. Deputy McQuillan to-day made a protest against what he considered to be an unsatisfactory situation—and what I consider to be an unsatisfactory situation unless the Minister has the explanation which the Taoiseach said he would have for us—that the total number in employment dropped once again last year. There has been a continued drop in the number of persons employed since 1951. The number has dropped to something just under 89,000 and in the two years during which the Government have been in office, there has been a fall of 32,000 persons in employment.
I do not think that anybody expected that 100,000 people would be put into employment overnight as a result of the plan put forward by the Minister for Industry and Commerce prior to taking office, but I do not think the people who listened to him that night believed that the consequences of the economic policy of the Government, in their first two years in office, would be to put a further 32,000 people out of employment. That surely fell far short of the proposal to increase the number of people in employment and to stop the continued deterioration in the employment position which has gone on, with the exception of one year, 1954, continuously since 1951. It has, of course, gone on continuously since 1922.
The net total of new people put into jobs, I understand, by our industrial drive is about 100,000—a relatively tiny figure compared with the great needs of our people who are being driven from rural Ireland for one reason or another, and of course compared with the needs of the new young people coming on the employment market every year from vocational schools, and that sort of thing. It is completely inadequate and shows, in the net result, a falling policy with a falling outlet for the produce of our industries, bad and all as they are. The fact is that the best types of young people seem to be the ones who decide to emigrate.
The answer to Deputy McQuillan's question included a most ominous remark: "The numbers of workers in agriculture, forestry and fishing have been decreasing for many years." It is understandable, because of mechanisation in agriculture, that there should be a certain fall in employment, in rural Ireland at any rate. We have been given to understand that the Minister for Lands has been responsible for a tremendous drive and a tremendous expansion in the Department of Lands, an expansion in forestry planting, acreage under trees and an expansion in our grossly under-developed fishing industry. Yet this progressive deterioration in the figures in these three very important sectors of our economy has continued to go on, so far as we can see, unabated.
The astonishing thing is that this drop in the number of persons in employment seems to be a matter for jubilation on the Government benches. The Minister read his Budget speech with quite considerable pride, self-satisfaction and approval. It was clear from his last year's Budget, largely because of the formation of the capital expenditure for last year, that there would not be, and could not be, an appreciable increase in agriculture, dependent as we were, and have been for 20 or 30 years, on private enterprise and private business to create opportunities in industry which the State cannot create because it is restricted as a result of a policy of non-productive capital investment in a large percentage of cases at any rate. A non-productive capital investment type of industry cannot do much for our society. Of course, private enterprise and private industry failed to provide the work and failed even to maintain the level of the work of previous years.
We have had in the past two years 32,000 people out of work of one kind or another, or not absorbed into new manufacturing industries of any kind. The really distressing thing is, of course, that in this Budget, in spite of the few recommendations—with which I shall deal in a few moments—for the alleviation of conditions generally for the old people, the new economic policy for next year is the same as last year, the year before and the year before.
We must assume, therefore, that the Government have accepted as an inevitable and continuing feature, a continued and extraordinarily high rate of unemployment—of seven per cent., eight per cent. and sometimes ten per cent.; an unemployment figure here which is one of the highest in western Europe plus the export of surplus population to Great Britain and elsewhere; and a continuing decline in the number of persons in employment.
In the light of those figures about the fall in the number in employment, it was grossly misleading and dishonest of the Minister to say at page 8 in his Budget speech:—
"Indeed, in many countries the situation worsened during the past year in contrast to the improvement achieved here simultaneously with a fall in emigration."
In opening that statement he says:—
"We are not, of course, the only country suffering from a serious unemployment problem."
He was clearly discussing unemployment there and it was very wrong of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance not to take the opportunity today of correcting the impression he gave in that Budget statement. In my view, he deliberately misled the public as to the very frightening state of decay which exists in our economy. It has come now to the position where we are beginning to have less and less faith in Government announcements, Government statistics and Government information generally. I had my own difficulties with the Minister for Education. I was interested to hear Deputy Sweetman today trying to get information he required on some questions; and Deputy McQuillan, making a perfectly reasonable request for an explanation of an apparent discrepancy, was refused any information and had to leave the House because he sought that information.
It would be a very sad thing indeed if the very honourable record of high integrity and reliability which our civil servants have earned in the last 20 or 30 years were misused by the political heads of Government to further their political ends, at the expense of the probity and reliability of Government statements and statistics of one kind or another, as has taken place in relation to this statement by the Minister for Finance in suppressing the fall in employment last year.
In relation to the import levies, the Minister made some changes in which he abolished some levies and amended others. I am surprised he has done this in view of the recent trends. Page 8 says:—
... imports were exceptionally high and exports were well below average.
At the same time he confesses this in regard to the levies:
I am obliged by the circumstances in which they were introduced to consider the levies primarily as a check on imports of less essential goods.
Clearly he must allow in the raw materials of agriculture where we do not produce them at home, but it does seem to be wrong of the Minister to allow capital to be expended on anything but essential goods. In the light of our present, still difficult, position I am surprised the Minister should have relaxed the levies at this stage, abolishing some and reducing others.
In relation to the reliefs of one kind or another on rural entertainment, cine-variety, cinemas, dances and greyhound racing, I consider most of these entertainments to be perfectly harmless. They have become an integral part of the everyday life of the people in our society. The cinemas are about the only other world to which thousands upon thousands of people find some escape from the hardships, rigours and boredom of their ordinary way of life. Dances, mostly for young people, help to alleviate the drabness of life in many parts of rural Ireland, but I wonder whether in respect of the cinemas the Minister will help to stem the decline by this change in prices. My own view is that television will make an impact for a time and that there will settle down a fairly steady audience both for the cinema and television, which I think has happened elsewhere. Probably the main reason for the falling off of the audience at the cinema—and this is not the fault of the exhibitors; they have little or no choice in this respect —is the quality of the films exhibited. There is, of course, the falling off in the total population, one of the side effects of which is the fall in cinema audiences. The young people and the old people are not there to go to the cinemas.
I am not clear from reading the Minister's speech whether he intends that the live theatre or musical concerts of one kind and another will benefit under this remission of taxation. The live theatre is possibly the finest entertainment of all available to us and it is probably the one most likely to suffer, in the early days at any rate, as a result of competition from the television service when it comes into operation. I wonder if the Minister would see if there is any way of helping the live theatre such as by enabling promoters to reduce their prices and increase the popularity of the theatre in the country generally.
I do not disapprove of any of these forms of entertainment or amusement. I think they are necessary and desirable. If the people were given a choice between allowing the money to go to the cinema proprietors, the greyhound racing and boxing promoters and paying slightly more for their cinemas and their entertainment so that the money saved would be available to give increased children's allowances or provide, say, radio for schools or give free poliomyelitis vaccination to children who require it or possibly some benefit to old people such as a bigger fuel allowance in winter, or some other social need, I wonder whether the people would not prefer the latter alternative.
I may be wrong and the Minister may be correct. The people may want cheaper cinemas, cheaper greyhound racing, cheaper boxing, cheaper dancing at the expense of the old people or at the expense of children's allowances or sick children or health services or educational services, or whatever it may be. Personally, I do not believe so. I believe our people are as generous, as thoughtful and as kind-hearted a people as any other race and that if they were asked to make this sacrifice they would do it readily and willingly. In offering these benefits, welcome benefits if we could afford them, I think the picture the Minister portrays of our people looking for these benefits at the expense of other more worthy causes is an untrue, unfair and unjust picture of the real instincts and sentiments of our people.
I was very interested in a remark made by Deputy Loughman. He talked about the way the Government would fight the coming two elections. He said they would go out and win and that they had done it many times before. In effect, he said: "When we imposed severe taxation we explained to the people and they accepted it and returned us to power." I think that is a statement of fact. In the great days of the Fianna Fáil Party, between 1932 and 1939, they found the money, with great difficulty, in the face of great misrepresentation, to provide what they then believed the people badly needed, namely, children's allowances, pensions, money to build houses, hospitals, and for one thing or another.
In that very short, enlightened, progressive and radical period they imposed taxes and increased taxation. Surely they were not surprised at the result when they went to the people and said: "You have not very much money but we want a little of what you have in order to provide these benefits so as to give a better living to the under-privileged section. We want to give, if you like, primary education, children's allowances, widows' and orphans' pensions, blind pensions of one kind or another. We want to get rid of the slums and the tenements. We want to give people generally a better life but it will cost you money in taxation and in self-sacrifice." Time and time again, the Irish people said willingly: "We will give you the money for that cause." They did so gladly.
I do not know why we should suddenly lose our faith in our people and think that they have now changed from all that. I do not know why we should suddenly think that all our people want are cheaper greyhound racing, cheaper cinemas, cheaper boxing, cheaper dancing and cheaper amusements generally. I am afraid the only interpretation I can put on it is that of a very sad falling-away by a once great, radical, progressive Party from its early ideals, from the ideal enshrined in the Proclamation of the Republic that "the Government of the Republic will cherish equally all children of the nation." I am afraid there has been a falling-away from all these great ideals and a turning towards the hard reality of politics of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we have a Referendum Budget. It is a sad and regrettable conclusion to have to come to but I can see no other reason for it.
The old age pensioners have been the shuttlecock of political activity for many years. I think this is probably one occasion on which a most cynical use has been made of their sad needs to cover up the real interest the Minister now has in our country. It was very illuminating to listen to the Minister's announcement and to hear the applause from the Government benches, the jubilant applause of the Minister's Party whose members were so excited at this wonderful announcement. Instead of 25/- the old age pension allowance will now go to 27/6d. One old man or one old woman is expected to house himself or herself on that sum. Old age pensioners are expected to provide food and light, to warm themselves in the winter, and to clothe themselves and protect themselves against the many inevitable illnesses inseparable from growing old on a sum of 27/6d. a week.
All of us need greater comforts when the body begins to disintegrate and our expenses tend to increase. I believe that most of these people living on 27/6 a week alone, or even with the assistance money, will be living in conditions of semi-starvation, certainly serious malnutrition. I defy any individual to take his 27/6 a week for a year, sometimes five years, sometimes ten years, and to try to live on that allowance. I defy the Minister to do it or to ask anybody whom he loves or respects to do it. Why should he ask anybody, any fellow Irishman or Irishwoman, to do that which he knows himself he could not do and would not ask any of his near ones or loved ones to do?
One of the remarkable achievements of mind conditioning in the Republic of Ireland, the censorship exercised by our newspapers, the indoctrination in our schools and universities, is that we have begun to accept the standard of living which we offer to an aged person—27/6 a week—I do not care who he is or whether it is the Minister for Finance or myself having grown old— as something akin to what we so sacrilegiously call a Christian way of life.
Surely these people who have so few years left should be the first charge on any moneys available to a Minister for Finance and, until that charge was fully honoured, greyhounds, boxing booths, cinemas, dancehalls, must take a low priority. The needs of those who pay supertax, corporation profits tax, exporters, even though they may be real needs, must come second to our bounden duty as human beings— forget Christianity, because it has now become a dirty word in this House— as human beings to fellow human beings growing old, depending on us for mercy, pity, understanding, comfort, food, drink and clothing in their hour of need.
As I say, the astonishing thing, the wonderful achievement of our indoctrination, brain washing, mind conditioning appliances, built up over the past 35 years is the Taoiseach's phrase, "The best Budget for years." I presume it is the Taoiseach's phrase as controlling director of the Irish Press newspapers, responsible for its political decisions and everything it contains. Remember the old person reading that he will get 27/6 on a Monday to last out seven days, 24 hours a day, until the following Monday, and the Taoiseach tells him that this is the best Budget for years—half a crown increase in the old age pension, effective in August next.
As the Minister said, with his tongue in his cheek, at page 15 of his speech, most old age pensioners are unable to fend for themselves. He has them at his mercy. They have no trade union movement. There is no powerful agitational group that can force him to do justice to them. So, he will throw them his 27/6 and then go on to have the arrogant gall to tell us about taxation in Great Britain and what a wonderful fellow he is because virtually throughout the whole range of income up to £5,000 a year, the weight of direct taxation on individuals will now be lighter here than it is in Great Britain. What a wonderful achievement ! The Minister has outdone Mr. Heathcote Amory, the greatest true blue Tory in British politics since Stanley Baldwin. What a clever fellow the Minister is!
The Minister forgot to mention that, for their taxation in Britain, they are carrying on a defence policy, admittedly a very stupid and a very foolish defence policy, but it is a very expensive defence policy and we have no such policy; we have no such expense. The Minister forgot to mention that, for that taxation, the old age pensioner in Britain gets nearly twice what he is giving his old age pensioner. He forgot to mention that, for that taxation, when the British citizen falls ill, he will not go grovelling to one of his Poor Law hospitals or dispensaries looking for pity; he will get the finest medical care, surgical care, hospital attention that there is in the world.
The Minister did not mention that for that discrepancy, when the British child comes to 14 years of age and wants to move on, to develop the talents or brains that he has, the choice is open to him of secondary schools, comprehensive schools, universities, any of the redbrick or older universities. They are all there open to every child equally.
You may have forgotten the Proclamation of the Republic—"Cherish equally all the children of the nation." Apparently the British have not forgotten. They are not interested in fine words. So every child gets the same chance while here a child receives education up to 14 years. Then it is the street corners with newspapers, the messenger boy's bicycle and, after a little while, an emigrant to do coolie labour in Britain which, fortunately, the British will not allow their people to do. Only our people are able to do that—ours, with the unfortunate West Indians and others.
I have often wondered if anything deeply interested our political leaders in the past 35 years. Did they feel with any real passion about anything? I gathered from some of the speeches by the Taoiseach and others that Partition was something about which they really felt and about which they would like to see something positive achieved. If we leave aside humanitarian considerations—giving every child the same chance, treating the sick alike and not as the rich sick or the poor sick— because clearly our political leaders have put them aside in the past 35 years in their considerations, surely it must be obvious that the one thing in which there appeared to be interest was the question of Partition. While there continues to be this great discrepancy between standards of living, standards of welfare, education, health, care of old people and even the unemployed, there can be no solution—no peaceful solution certainly—for the problem of Partition.
If for that reason only, why is it that our political leaders, if they are sincere about Partition, if they want to see the end of Partition, could not accept that a reorganisation of our society—a reorganisation in a radical way—was necessary to create the social conditions which were preconditions to the ending of Partition? Why could they not agree to accept a radical change in their doctrinaire conservative political ideas in order to achieve that end? It is clear to me that now, at the end of their years, they feel deeply about little or nothing except their own personal prosperity.
In regard to the general question of taxation, everybody wants to see some reduction of taxation but the Minister made little or no reference to the fact that the heaviest burden of taxation falls, not on the super-tax or sur-tax groups, but on the ordinary wage earner, the white collar worker. To a certain extent, that is because of widespread taxation of one kind or another. Secondly, of course, it is because indirect taxation is probably the heaviest factor as far as the ordinary consumer is concerned, the lower wage groups, and those with lower incomes. They are the people who are hardest hit.
Taxation is at its present high level, it seems to me, largely because of our failure over the years to provide an economic solution which would lead to an increase in our national income to such an extent that taxation could be reduced. We have the loss of productive effort of the chronic nine or ten per cent. unemployed over 30 or 40 years, in addition to the loss of the pittance which we pay them. Through no fault of theirs, they are unemployed.
In passing, I may say that I was interested to notice that in the relief for the unemployed, only the married man and his children, if any, are affected. I do not know why this should be. I do not know why the single man should not be affected. In the majority of cases, he is unemployed through no fault of his own. He has to buy food and the cost of living has risen for him just as it has for anybody else. If he has no money, he throws himself on a probably already burdened family. He is at the earning stage and cannot earn. Why should he be used to drag down the standard of living of his family, if he happens to be living with them? They are not responsible for the fact that he is not employed. The Government are responsible and the Government should pay for their responsibility.
It is possible for the Government to see that he is in employment, if the Government were prepared to break away from their doctrinaire conservatism, for which they have been prepared to sacrifice everything over the past 30 or 40 years. It is possible to provide for the unemployed; other nations have shown that is so and other nations have succeeded in providing for them. Indeed, if Great Britain had not had the good fortune to have a Socialist Government for a number of years, with Sir Stafford Cripps, to create the whole planned economy, with full employment, our unemployment figures now would be quite fabulous compared even with what they are.
It is possible for the Minister to take steps in order to absorb the unemployed and to absorb the emigrants. The Minister used to think so but his Budget statement now seems to prove that he no longer thinks so. But the Minister is, as always, selective in his penalisation of individuals. There is the unemployed single man. He, I presume the Minister believes, is a lazy scallywag who will not work even if he got a job. Consequently, we are penalising him. Take the young man who is drawing profits from dividends which he holds through no effort whatever of his own. He may draw £2,000, £3,000, £4,000, £5,000, £10,000, a year or more. This man is not penalised in any way, even though he gets all the benefits of taxation. The unemployed man is tiny and relatively unimportant. It seems to be a window on the Minister's mind, the class attitude of the Minister's mind in relation to these things, the ultra true-blue conservatism of the Minister's whole Budget. The most important factor is that these small concessions are relatively unimportant. I certainly think they will help in the coming election and I have no doubt they were intended to do so.
That still leaves us with the basic problems of unemployment and emigration; and because those problems continue largely unabated it leaves us with the problems of the different Ministers' replies to suggestions that they should improve our health services, or our educational services, or provide better conditions for our old people, and so on. They say we have not got the money. In my view, the Minister gives us no indication whatsoever that he is in any way moved by the fact that there are thousands and thousands of unemployed persons, day after day, month after month, falling into moral decay as the result of being unwanted people in their own society. They are left standing at street corners and their demoralisation eventually ends up as indifference and lack of care as to whether they get work or whether they do not. They become what Deputy Briscoe calls the unemployable. Each unemployable is a tribute to our incompetence over the years. Each emigrant is a tribute to the failure of our economic policies over the years.
One of the difficult things to understand, in the plethora of announcements and pronouncements over the years, about the valiant patriotism of our leaders 20 or 30 years ago, is that they should see our country falling into decay as it is to-day—thousands, hundreds of thousands of our people emigrating, before their eyes and that they have not sufficient patriotism amongst them to say that this requires a radical and revolutionary change in our economic and social policies. Because it means the saving of our country, because it means the creation of prosperity, because it means giving social justice to those of our fellow men, they should say they are prepared to get rid of the ideas which they have tried diligently, tried and tried again, but which have failed to provide the prosperity we all want.
This belief in private enterprise could have been understandable in the 1930's, when the Minister and his colleagues had their first enthusiasm; but it is quite clear that private enterprise will not provide the number of jobs we want to see provided. Surely it would have been more desirable for the Government to find the capital? There is no shortage of home capital, we have been told by the Tánaiste. Surely it would have been better for the Government to find that capital to establish the companies themselves, as they established the other large semi-State bodies, in order to do the work which private enterprise has failed to do? Surely private enterprise has been fiddling too long, at too great cost to our people? A halt should be called to that method, or let them fiddle away if they wish, but at the same time set up State corporations and bodies on the lines of Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna, the E.S.B., Irish Steel Holdings, and C.I.E. and set up these new companies to provide an outlet for the produce of agriculture in rural Ireland. It seems to me that only the Government can provide this capital on the scale needed, only the Government can look for the markets and take the risks in new markets, away from the British market, while keeping the British market by all means.
