The day of the political Budget is played out. The people are getting wise to Budgets now. It is not one Budget we get in the year, but three or four. The people now take the Budget as a matter of form. There was a time when Budget Day was a big day in this House, and you could not get a ticket because the place was lined with people trying to get into the Gallery. It is not so today. The people are beginning to realise that it is all cod. The Budget means nothing more than putting up a jumble of figures. If there is not sufficient to carry on for the year, then three or four supplementary Budgets are introduced before the year is out. The Budget should be on a business basis and the people should know where they stand from year to year.
This is the largest Budget ever. I do not know whether the Minister is proud of that or whether he bows his head in shame. I feel he should bow his head in shame. We have the largest Budget ever. Twelve years ago. Fianna Fáil were saying that £50,000,000 was an intolerable burden for the people of the country to bear but we have long ago exceeded that sum. I would not mind that if there were some tangible results, but the fact of the matter is that we have the greatest emigration, the largest number of civil servants ever and the lowest number of agricultural workers on the land. Is the Minister proud of that? If he is, then he can be proud of his Budget. He has done nothing to alleviate the position of these people.
The Budget is not a very good election Budget because the Fianna Fáil back benchers were rooted to their seats when they heard it. There is very little justice in it. It is a Budget which Fianna Fáil will have to explain to the people and the people will not take it with a grain of salt. They will think and act for themselves before long. It is a comfortable man's Budget.
When I see any reliefs in a Budget I welcome them. We always welcome reliefs. While I welcome the 1/6d. for the old age pensioners, I deplore the fact that, immediately after announcing that, the Minister slapped on one penny on the ounce of tobacco and the packet of 20 cigarettes. He took back the 1/6d. almost there and then. That is a mean thing to do. If they give a man 1/6d. or 2/6d., let him have it. It should not be taken back from him in another way.
I welcome the relief of 8d. in respect of income tax, but at the same time I should prefer to see more reliefs going to those who need them. In this country we have many people in very needy circumstances, including the small farmers and the unemployed. Many of the people in the back streets of Dublin and the other big cities are in a dire plight because the cost of living has soared time and time again. In addition to that, any of them who are strong enough have to go to England to earn a living and keep two houses. As they pay heavy income tax, it is very hard to keep a house in England and Ireland and at the same time, rear a family. The Minister should have endeavoured to grant relief to those most in need of it.
I welcome any change in regard to death duties. I always held that death duties should be completely abolished. It is an unjust and unnatural tax to impose on people. When the head of a household dies, the family needs help, sympathy and relief. Instead of that, we slap a tax on to that man's little property before the family can get on their feet. This type of death duty should be wiped out because it is unnatural in a Christian country to penalise people who have already been sufficiently penalised.
I have been here a long number of years and I can state that this so-called orthodox financing will not do. For the past 25 years, I have seen the same old drift, with no attempt made in an ambitious way to control our money and use it in the interests of our own people. Can we not make an effort to stop emigration? Can we not make an effort to give work to those who are idle at home? I say we can. Can we not make an effort to control the movement of capital out of this country? It is unpatriotic to send finance out of the country. It is the duty of the Minister and the Government to provide some type of control—I do not suggest complete control—to ensure that any money there is to spare is spent in this country and in the interests of this country.
I should like to see small thrifty farmers and workers standing on their own feet as they did in the past. Even in the bad old British days, they were able to fend for themselves, although they may not have had as comfortable a way of living as we have now. We are too much inclined to allow foreign combines to take control of this country. As an example of that you have the flour mill combine which has bought up all the mills. It can exert pressure on the people any time it likes and can put prices up or down as it suits it. I want to see open competition with the smaller firms working and fending for themselves.
As far as my county is concerned, I have seen over the past three or four years a complete sell-out. Many of the people who are selling out their large holdings are up to their eyes in debt. There are too many taxes at the top. They get tremendous offers from people who buy their land by telephone at figures which stagger them. Where they might get £10,000 for their land, they can get £25,000 or £30,000 from across the water. Is it right that the Government should allow these things to happen?
People need not say that this is politics because it is not. I believe in the thrifty small farmer, the man holding 50 acres to 100 acres, paying his own way and rearing his family. If my county were properly worked, it could give double the production overnight. That is not the case. We allow foreign combines and limited companies to buy up thousands of acres of land and use them in their own interests. The result is that only one or two people get employment herding with a dog, while the small man has to take to the emigrant ship. Where land is offered for public or, indeed, private sale, it is the duty of the Government and the Land Commission to step in and give the market value and divide the land among the type of people who will best work that land. I do not want to see every Tom, Dick and Harry given the best type of land. I want to see farmers' sons and workers get that land and get the finances to stock it. If we did that, the Budget would change overnight. We are not doing that. We are playing to the big people all the time because there is money behind them. The Minister and the Government should be ashamed of themselves to permit what is happening in the country.
If that is allowed to continue for the next five years, what will become of the country? There will be a foreign monopolistic combine with an international set-up of financiers who will want to bleed the country white while the going is good. If times get bad, they will walk out and smile. Under the present Budget, the Government should have made a real effort. These foreign combines are able to get round the Acts. Not alone can they get round the Acts but there are Irishmen who tell them how to get round them. The Minister for Finance and the Government should do something about that.
My county is the richest county in Ireland from the point of view of land, and it would be of enormous value to the export trade if it were properly worked. There is too much of our land lying idle. There is too much of it waterlogged and undrained and all because the Government are not energetic enough to ensure that provision is made for people who will work the land.
We are not doing that. I see men in my own county with holdings of up to 600 acres of land. They are living comfortably on 200 acres and leaving the rest in a semi-derelict condition. There is no effort made to give that land to the right type of people. The flight from the land is a desperate thing. I know it happens all over the world but a small island like ours cannot stand it. We would not mind it so much if it were the old and the blind who were going but it is our healthy young men who are leaving and, once they get the taste of the bright lights in the big cities across the water, they would starve sooner than come back here.
That is why I had hoped for a Budget this year that would make some change in the old orthodox way, pleasing nobody but serving the national interest. I am not one of those who will refuse to compliment a Minister of the Fianna Fáil Party if he does something good in the national interest. I have been in this House a long time and I remember when the then Taoiseach replied to Churchill. I thought that was a noble reply in the national interest and I had the courage, because of that, to stand up on my own and pay him a compliment.
Deputy Manley asked the Government to cut out this narrowness between us. After all, are we not all countrymen, even although some of us come from the towns or the cities? Look at what is going on. It makes no difference to me whether the Minister for Finance is a member of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil as long as he does the right thing by the country. The present Minister is long enough in the House now to realise that what we wanted 40 years ago is not being realised and that there is very little likelihood it will be realised in our lifetime or in the coming generation. We are not getting any younger and I for one would like to leave public life seeing the country making steady progress, and see our people living comfortably and thriftily in our towns and villages. However, that prospect is not there.
After 40 years unemployment is higher, taxation is higher, the population is smaller and the Civil Service is getting bigger and bigger every year. I know that all the experts will get up to refute the arguments I make with figures. I do not give two hoots about those figures. I believe what I see with my own eyes. I see the flight from the land is deplorable and the cost of living on the small communities throughout the country is becoming unbearable. Eventually only the strong men will survive. All that will be left will be large combines, big mills, large ranches and very little employment. That is what this Budget is providing for.
I would ask the Minister if he is happy about the Budget. It ran into dozens of pages when it could have been cut down to a half page for all that was in it. Of course we had to be very spectacular; we had to have our little glass of water every half hour to keep up our energy. The people are sick and tired of that. What the people want to see is that their money is used for the greatest good of the greatest numbers. What are we making of this country? It is becoming a nation of scroungers waiting to see how much they can get from the Government. What we want is a Government who will do the most unpopular things possible and be proud of it, if it does the nation some good. We did it in 1957 by putting on taxes on commodities coming in and it got us out. Fianna Fáil will not do it. All they will do is skulk over there and try and stay in power as long as possible.
This may be the last speech I shall make here and I would not like to retire without telling some home truths in the House. I have been telling them a long number of years. I am quite satisfied there are still a few of us who believe in an Irish Ireland, in which we control our own finances and where we would have, instead of an outflow of people, an inflow. I am not against foreigners coming in and investing their money so long as they do not run out again when things get bad. Neither do I want foreigners excluded from the land of this country provided there is some control over them and that a man cannot just ring up and buy an 800 acre farm in Meath without anybody knowing why or who he is.
We are told the Land Commission is nearly winding up its business. I would ask them to come down to my part of the country and see what is happening. There is plenty of land there to be divided but what is happening is that the ranches are getting bigger and bigger and the small people are getting poorer and are being squeezed out. We must have a new deal for our people. We are talking about improving our export markets but we have made no effort to extend them to the new countries of Africa. There is one exception of course, Arthur Guinness, a good businessman, whose beer is being sold in Nigeria. There is not a shop beyond there in which he is not selling his beer. I have a son beyond who is drinking it there after his day's work. It is the finest export trade in the world and it is expanding every day. He can do it because he has the business technique.
There is no business technique in the Fianna Fáil Government. Go down to Arthur Guinness and put 70 or 80 boys down there for five years as apprentices and find out how to find markets. Now he is going to start a big lager industry in Nigeria. More power to him. That is the technique we should have in this country.
Jacobs can export their biscuits all over the world. They want no sops from the Irish Government. They are business people. They can open their markets in any country. What are we doing? We cannot even control the little Irish market in Birmingham, Manchester and London. We cannot sell our produce there because we do not know how to do it. We do not know how to package it and we do not know how to sell at the right price at the right time.
We keep fleecing the public here to pay all those heavy charges to sell our little surplus. It is a shame that the Fianna Fáil Government after being so long in office have not developed business techniques to open markets all over the world. There are dozens of openings but no effort is made. All we hear is that a committee is sitting. It makes no difference if it is a greyhound track that is being put up; Fianna Fáil control it. If it is a racing stud, Fianna Fáil control it. That is a narrow and a mean attitude. It will be like that until the Irish people fling out that type of Government where they should have been flung 20 years ago. You are mean. low, despicable. You are a Government that play-acted with the fortunes and lives of our people. You have made fools of the poor and rich men richer. Today, you are a rich man's Government. You are a conservative Government. You are trying to play a part. You try to say we were conservative.
We forced you to keep your toes to the Constitution, whether you liked it or not. You spent 20 years trying to break your own Constitution. You people will have to toe the line at every cross-roads and chapel gate for the next few months. We look forward to a welcome and a happier change in the life of our people. If we get rid of this blister of Fianna Fáil Government and Fianna Fáil taxation, our people will become wealthier and happier. They will then be able to say: "There is no fear in our hearts now. We are not afraid our land will be taken over. We are not afraid we shall not get a job. There are men in charge of affairs now who will see there is fair play for all."
What has been the position over the past 20 years? If you want to work on the road, to be a ganger, to be a rate collector, to be anything, what have you to do? You must bow your head and pay quietly into the Fianna Fáil club. If you do not, you are squeezed out. If you want to be independent in the Fianna Fáil ranks and to state your mind, what happens? You are squeezed out. That is what happened in my county. They squeezed out the only public man that Fianna Fáil had who was honest and straight enough to speak up against Fianna Fáil. They said, in effect, "You may try for Leinster House but we will never let you in there." The Fianna Fáil Party are a set of political humbugs and nothing more. That is what they have been over the years.
