I did my best to ensure that, when I was presenting the facts to the House, I was presenting the House with the truth, and the whole truth in the national interest. I am sorry the present Minister for Finance has not taken the same line. We had some discussion this morning on the part of the Minister for the Gaeltacht in relation to the economic trends. I have already complimented the Minister on the publication of Economic Statistics. I think it was a very good thing indeed that these statistics were issued particularly in our present circumstances.
The Minister for Finance was present yesterday when I asked the Taoiseach a question in relation to Table 1 of the Appendix relating to other capital transactions. The figure there shows a difference of £16.6 million this year; approximately £16,000,000 as compared with 1957 and, note particularly, a difference of £16,000,00 as compared with 1956. In 1956 the residual figure there under the heading of "Other capital transactions" was £1.5 million. This year it has jumped to £17.7 million.
I quite appreciate and accept at once, and did accept yesterday, that there are ingredients in that figure which relate to private and confidential business which could not and should not be exposed. It would destroy the efficacy of statistics of confidential figures were given out in public in a way in which they could be identified. What I want to know is quite simple. I want no confidence broken. I want to know how much of that £17.7 millions is known capital transactions and how much of it is the residual figure of unknown transactions which inevitably arise and which can be brought in to fill up the picture. It is quite clear that there must be some portion of it absolutely known with certainty.
In the current items we have, for example: "Other known current items"; then we have "Balance unaccounted for". Just as we have that in relation to our external balance of international payments in the current position so also we must have it in relation to the capital position. It would be quite beyond the powers of any Statistics Office, if it had three times the staff, to trace every minute detail of capital transaction but there must be some figures; when they have made all the possible examinations they can make, when they have taken all the confidential information into consideration, there must be some item that they make as a general estimate of what they think are capital transactions but that they cannot actually pinpoint. All I want to know is how much of the £17.7 millions is known capital transactions and how much of it is "Balance unaccounted for". It would have been comparatively simple for the Taoiseach to have given me that information yesterday. As he did not, perhaps I can hope that the Minister for Finance as the person who probably tabled this book, will give the information to me in his closing speech.
The picture of our economic position shown in Economic Statistics is a picture of an economy that, as I said last week, undoubtedly needs a shot in the arm. It is a picture of an economy that is not progressing as it ought to progress and has not progressed as it should have progressed in the past two years. If we were to believe the Minister for Finance and his colleagues and particularly the Tánaiste, they had a panacea for all our ills, a panacea which they advertised from every hoarding in Dublin and throughout the country during the last general election. It would seem as if the picture which one draws from these statistics is undoubtedly one which up to the end of 1958 certainly is satisfactory as regards our balance of international payments.
We were, in my time, in balance on our international payments on the Minister's own statement in the year ending 31st March, 1957. We had a surplus on our balance in 1957, and we were virtually in balance in 1958. Obviously, nobody minds about the £1,000,000 that was off balance in that year. In the first three months of this calendar year, our excess has gone up fairly steeply. It went up particularly steeply in January and I think it is quite fair for the Minister to say, from the January details which have been circulated, that part of the increased excess arises from the importation of wheat, following the bad harvest of last year. At the same time, I am a little disturbed by the suggestion in the estimates of revenue given to me in relation to the Minister's anticipation on our external account this year. The main buoyancy in revenue suggested on page 3 of the Estimates of Receipts and Expenditure, is in customs duties, that showing an increase of approximately £1¼ million. If one looks at the customs duties, the main item of revenue is, of course, tobacco which provides, I think, somewhere about £25,000,000.
According to the trend of revenue figures given to me in answer to a question this week, there does not appear to be much hope of a rise in tobacco receipts, unless, of course, there is some special circumstance known to the Minister confidentially that would not be known to us. To be quite fair to the Minister, if it was known to him, he could not disclose it, but it would not appear from the trend that there is great hope of much increase in tobacco revenue. In those circumstances, it seems that the buoyancy in customs revenue of £1¼ million to which I have referred—and indeed this is proven also by the answers I got to another question— and anticipated by the Minister, will arise in other imports where the value of the imports is practically equal to the duty content. The value of the tobacco we import is trivial, from the balance of payments point of view, compared with the revenue duty and it seems that, in taking the trend therefore, the Minister in that customs figure must be anticipating a rise in other importations and that, inevitably, will show on our import figures and will affect our balance of payments position unless there is a similar rise in exports.
For the first three months of this year, there has been a slight drop in exports, a drop which I do not think should seriously worry us because I believe the exports are still there and that really the situation is that they have not been sent out. I should like the Minister, when replying, to give us some more information on that customs figure, something more of an indication of his expectation of the balance on external account in the current financial year and to say whether he thinks it is possible to maintain the existing balance and if so, whether he thinks it will be maintained at a higher level than in 1958 or whether we must hope to maintain it on a lower import level or whether the position will come back more or less to where it was in the past year.
I presume that later on in the year, making full allowance for the fact that these figures were issued earlier than usual, we should get a more detailed break-down of the savings table on page 18. It is an unsatisfactory trend that we see there, that the total of personal savings, company savings and local authority savings—or otherwise, dissaving as it might more often be— is down in 1958 by no less than 25 per cent. on the previous year. A great deal of the basis upon which the grey book, Economic Development, is built—in fact, I might almost go so far as to say its whole basis—is the assumption that there would be an adequate volume of savings available and that Government policy would be able to ensure that that saving is there to sustain the programme.
On both sides of the House, we have been saying from time to time that the volume was too small. That has been common ground for both Governments but in relation to that, I want to refer the Minister to the top of page 37 of Economic Development, and paragraph 11 of that chapter. The whole basis of economic development as set out there and the whole basis of our being able to carry through the productive effort envisaged was stated as being dependent on a progressive rise in five years in monetary savings from £45,000,000 per annum to £55,000,000. The £45,000,000 mentioned there is, of course, purely fortuitously, the same figure as for 1958. It is taken as the average of the preceding five years up to 1957. The whole ratiocination of Economic Development, to be able to do the things it is suggested we should do to resolve our difficulties, is dependent upon savings rising progressively to a figure of £55,000,000. It is disappointing to see that in the first year after that survey has been completed, there has been a drop of 25 per cent. rather than an increase.
I might say, in passing, that for reasons of which some members are aware, I was not here for the Vote on Account. I was not therefore in a position to make any comments on the first occasion on which Economic Development came to be discussed. I should like now to take the opportunity of adding my voice to the commendatory remarks on the grey book made by Deputy Dillon on that occasion on behalf of Fine Gael, and particularly to his very apt reference to the swan. It is, however, disappointing to see the whole basis which was taken, if that trend were to continue on the productive effort side in the future, has failed. That was one of the reasons why I said to the Minister last Wednesday that the economy needed a shot in the arm now after two years of Government by Fianna Fáil. I do not suppose the Minister liked my saying that but I felt that was true because of his mishandling of the situation in the past two years.
We have already referred on other occasions, and I want to refer briefly again, to the fact that we have a great opportunity now, having regard to the way in which the terms of trade are moving with us. I referred the other day to the manner in which the index had risen from 83.7 in February, 1957, to 97.5, which was the last figure published for November, 1958. As far as one can see, that trend is continuing to improve, so far as our purchases and exports are concerned. It is undoubtedly a fact that they appear to have arrived at some stability in prices in Britain and that such stability, having regard to our import of manufactured goods—goods which we cannot produce here at home—must inure to our benefit. Similarly, export prices, particularly in regard to agricultural products, appear to be likely to hold and we have seen the benefit of that in the figures for the year which has just passed.
I do not know what hopes or prognostications the Minister, or his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, are prepared to hold out in respect of our increasing agricultural exports. We have next door a market which consumes somewhere in the region of six million cwts. of butter every year. Our share of that, in 1957, was about five per cent. We have next door a market which consumes almost the same amount of bacon every year and our proportion of that was only somewhere around four per cent. Our proportion of the lamb and mutton market, of some £7 million, is somewhere about £70,000. It would seem, therefore, that there is under those three headings ample opportunity for us to get a more adequate share of that market, if we can so organise ourselves to get it.
I am somewhat inclined to think, if I may digress for a moment, that the grey book—and it is a natural finance outlook—is somewhat derogatory of our butter and bacon possibilities. I think they are possibilities which must be faced and which should be tackled. I am sorry that we have been allowed to hear nothing whatever from the Agricultural Marketing Committee that was set up. The report of that body was one of the things I should particularly have liked to have seen published before entering on this Budget debate because the marketing of our production is a matter absolutely vital to our future and we must ensure that Budgetary policy makes that marketing easier. If we are to sell successfully, we must have—and all those concerned in any industry must have— a thoroughly sound knowledge of the markets to be tackled. We must also have an assessment of the place in that market which the product to be sold will occupy and, in addition to that, we must have a competent marketing plan backed by an adequate selling effort and by effective promotional efforts.
I should have liked to have had the report of that Agricultural Marketing Committee available to this House so that we could have seen whether their investigations could give us any indication of any manner in which, by Budgetary policy, we could have assisted the capturing of, say for example, the three markets to which I have already referred.
I do not propose to weary the Minister any more with repetition of the fact, as it is a fact, that since he went over to that seat the cost of living has risen from an index figure of 107.7 to 116.9 for November and rose again in last February. It is difficult for any Government, for any person in private commerce, or for any farmer to be able adequately to plan greater production unless he can see reasonable stability in the cost of living. The index figure is not always the best evidence of that. It certainly is evidence of the trend and we know ourselves exactly in what respect the items have gone up.
I want to refer again to the manner in which the number of those who are employed has gone down. I want to suggest that the position is, perhaps, even worse as a trend than is suggested in Table XII. I always understood that one of the first indices one ever got of employment was that of the sales of insurance stamps, which is contained in Table 60 of Economic Series. I have here before me the last published number of Economic Series, dated 16th April, 1959. I find that there were fewer insurance stamps sold in the second quarter of 1958 than were sold in the second quarter of 1957, that there were fewer again sold in the third quarter of 1958 than there were in 1957.
The figures for the last quarter are not yet available to me, but it seems, from the fact that there is this trend —and it is a trend because the third quarter was worse than the second— that the trend is in the wrong direction, and that perhaps some of the average figures of the total of people at work as set out in Table XII may have been even lower at the end of the year because of being arrived at as an average, because the first quarter of 1958 was better but the last three quarters were worse. I do not know when we will get the fourth quarter figure for 1958. Even when we get the first quarter figure for 1959, I think I am right in saying that it will not be strictly comparable, because of the increase from £600 to £800 in the upper limit of those who have to be insured under the social welfare code. Certainly, when you take Table 60 in Economic Series and see the decline in the second and third quarters of 1958, and when you take Table XII in Economic Statistics and see the decline of 10,000 there from 1957 and of 32,000 from the year in which the people's wives were told to vote Fianna Fáil to get their husbands back to work, there is not very much in that which can be taken as very comparable with that advertisement.
The question of building construction has been referred to. I listened with amazement to the speech made here the other night by Deputy Briscoe. He spent a great part of his time, when we were over there and he was over here, here and in the Dublin Corporation agitating about the amount that was available to Dublin Corporation for capital works. He said here the other night that he has no difficulty in obtaining now all the money that was required by Dublin Corporation. In 1955-56, the amount which was made available by me and other sources with our consent to Dublin Corporation was £4,900,269. In the following year, it was £4,379,806. Fianna Fáil came in—the Party which Deputy Briscoe says has made it easier for him—and in their first year they gave Dublin Corporation only £2,635,865 and in their second year, the year just passed, £2,132,111. Then he has the brazen effrontery, having got last year less than half what was made available by us to Dublin Corporation, to come in here and say that with the present Government, he can get all the money he wants. The fact is that he was conducting a ramp for political purposes in the period of the previous inter-Party Government.
I might add, just to put the figures on record, that at that time in 1955-56 we made available to Cork Corporation £884,670 and in 1956-57, £866,021, while last year all that was made available to Cork Corporation was £569,036. For the record, might I say that the figures for 1955-56 and 1956-57 are taken from Volume 167, column 901; and that the figures for last year are taken from the reply to a Question asked by me on 21st instant. It is simple enough to judge the genuineness of the views expressed by the Deputy when one contrasts those two records.
Following this Budget, we shall have the Finance Bill. In the detailed consideration of that Bill, we may have another opportunity to consider exactly the impetus which will be given by the decrease in income tax. I do not know whether the schedules of figures which were made available in certain newspapers were issued with the Minister's approval. If the Minister tells me that the figures which were given in those papers are the correct figures, I shall not bother him with a question. I may say that I think he was perfectly right in issuing them, if he did so.
