A number of backbenchers of the Fianna Fáil Party must be feeling in need of sympathy as a result of the Budget introduced by the Minister for Finance. I am perfectly certain that it is a great disappointment to them. Their speechlessness during the Minister's speech was very striking. Of course, there was the usual little applause at the end. If they had not applauded, they would be regarded as deserting their officer in the front line of trenches.
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.—(Minister for Finance).
It was hearty applause.
The Minister invited the House to examine the Budget in relation not only to this year but to the entire four years and to examine the activities of the Government. The Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, clearly demonstrated in no uncertain way to any thinking person how serious the situation has become since Fianna Fáil came into office in 1957. He referred to the increase in taxation, the removal of the food subsidies, the increase in emigration, the reduction—notwithstanding all the ballyhoo—of the number of people in employment in every activity. As he said, the Government's own published figures showed that there were 51,000 fewer people employed in February of 1961 than there were in February, 1957. If the people who emigrated had remained the unemployment figure, about which the Government and the back benchers boast, would be well above the 100,000 mark, where it was in 1957.
The Minister for Transport and Power went down to Longford and declared that it was an excellent Budget, that Fine Gael were insulting the intelligence of the people when they said it was not a good Budget. If I were present at that Fianna Fáil meeting in Longford I would have agreed with the Minister that it was a good Budget for some people, and I want Deputies to examine it from that point of view.
It is true that a reduction in income tax is very welcome to everybody who pays it but it must be remembered that there is almost £1 million additional taxation imposed on tobacco and cigarettes to pay for portion of that 1/6d. per week that the old age pensioner and other social assistance recipients are to get while benefits in the region of £120 per annum or more than £2 a week are secured by other people. Any Deputy can figure it out for himself. The Minister has given relief to the extent of 8d. in the pound on income tax and has pushed up the surtax limit. When you add those together, you get the figure which enables the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Transport and Power to declare that this a good Budget.
The Budget is like a loaf; it is the duty of the Government to distribute that loaf fairly amongst our citizens. It is not fair that one person should get a large slice and that a poorer person should get a crumb. While it is desirable to give relief in respect of income tax, this Budget gives those people much more than it gives the old age pensioner. As the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, said here, quoting the President of the United States, a Government who do not protect the poor cannot very long protect the rich. This Government have not taken the steps they should have taken to compensate for the increased cost of living imposed upon our people by the removal of the food subsidies on which, over the four years they have been removed, the Governmen have saved £28 million—£7 million a year. Nevertheless, they think everybody should be delighted with that little relief they have given.
I do not know exactly what the Government are playing at. I admit that it is reasonable for a Minister for Finance to accept the figure of 5 per cent for over-estimation in the Book of Estimates, and five per cent. upon £140 million, as in the Book of Estimates, is £7 million per annum. Of course Fianna Fáil have never accepted the responsibility for dealing with the finance of the country as they would spend their own money and as if it were their own business they were handling. There is an obligation upon a Government and the Minister for Finance to discharge their obligations to the nation as they would discharge obligations to their business associates or to their own family, to exercise care and eliminate waste. It is not necessary for me to say where that waste is but I have had experience of it while I was a Minister. Savings can be effected by prudence but I do not see very much evidence of that prudence in the present administration.
The Leader of the Opposition also pointed out clearly that this was not the only Budget, that there were several budgets each year. We have had budgets in respect of E.S.B. charges, increased bus fares and so on. It is clear that these are imposts the people are not able to carry. I do not intend to go over the proposed expenditure on Leinster House, Arus an Uachtaráin or any other building but I invite Deputies to examine the money that is being expended on new buildings for the Office of the Taoiseach. Such projects may give temporary employment but, if employment is the objective, I submit there are better means of providing it.
Again, the Minister for Transport and Power was shouting about the giving of 4/- a ton for the transport of lime. One would think this was the first time that was done. The truth is that this is only the restoration of what they took away some years ago. Perhaps they could be encouraged to go a step further and restore Section B of the Land Project and the Local Authorities (Works) Act. They need not say that is an appeal coming only from Fine Gael. It was hard pressed at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis and I do not believe there was a single Fine Gael supporter at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis.
It is true the tickets were issued, and that anyone who wished could attend, but I do not believe anyone accepted that invitation. I assert that the members of the cumann who moved that resolution were Fianna Fáil to the backbone. Why did they draft that resolution? Because they knew that Section B of the Land Project had been of great service to the country because it involved capital expenditure of a productive nature.
There are 51,000 fewer people employed here. I wonder how many Fianna Fáil Deputies consider what effect that has upon our economy? I should like to ask the Minister did he read the report of Messrs. Rank (Ireland) Ltd., the flour millers, in which the chairman announced that the fall in the consumption of flour was catastrophic because 51,000 fewer people were employed and because over 200,000 people left the country in four years. That affects not only the flour milling industry but the boot manufacturers and every other section of the community. It causes a reduction in our wealth, but no effort is being made to deal with that problem.
I should like to remind the Fianna Fáil Government that, in his inaugural address, the President of the United States said more than what Deputy Dillon quoted. He said also that it was now within the power of man to abolish poverty and he then went on to say that it was now within the power of man to abolish the universe. My interpretation of that phrase is that it is now within the power of a Government to abolish poverty and therefore a Government should so adjust themselves. A Government can spend thousands of millions of pounds on the provision of nuclear weapons which are gone for all time when exploded—they are pure waste— whereas if even half of that financial energy were put to the abolition of poverty, one can imagine the benefits which would accrue to the world in general. When a Government can spend large sums of money on that type of development and cannot make money available to provide employment, something is radically wrong.
We all know that it is the responsibility of this Government or of any Irish Government—and this has also been asserted by the Bishop of Cork, to whom I take off my hat—to deal with the problem of emigration. That problem can be dealt with by creating a situation in which people can get a decent livelihood at home. No one need tell me that emigration is quite common, even in England. The Minister for Transport and Power said in Longford that people migrate from the rural areas in England and in other parts of the world. I assert that 90 per cent. of the people who emigrate, or migrate from those rural areas to the cities, are compelled to do so by economic stress. I defy contradiction from any Fianna Fáil Deputy on that fact.
I contradict the Deputy straight away.
Apparently Deputy Booth has a thorough knowledge of rural Ireland when he says he will contradict me right away. That is in keeping with the assertion of the Minister for Transport and Power but, of course, no one accepts that a person like the Minister for Transport and Power knows anything about rural Ireland. I invite Deputy Booth and any Fianna Fáil Deputy from rural Ireland to have a survey carried out in any parish along the Shannon or west of it as to the numbers who have migrated or emigrated from those areas. When the figures of the recent census become available—of course it will be too late then for argument on this Budget—they will show whether or not my assertions about emigration are true.
The only matter then at issue is: for what reason do they emigrate? I assert boldly and without fear of contradiction, knowing rural Ireland as I do, that no one can expect a farmer's son to work for his parents on a farm to-day for less than £1 a week when he can buy a ticket for 50/- and get £12 a week across the water. He will not do that and that is his set of economic circumstances. Deputy Booth may go with the Minister for Transport and Power and tell these country people that they should remain at work when there is work for them, but they do not say that there should be compensation for their labour. If there were adequate compensation at home for the labour of the Irish boy and girl, they would never leave the country.
There are many other points which I should like to stress but I do not want to delay the House. I resent, and I categorically deny, the assertion of the Government and the Minister for Transport and Power that the two inter-Party Governments to which I had the honour to belong left a mess or left debts behind them. That hoary old canard was used time after time but the former Taoiseach admitted in Mallow that we left the remnants of £12,000,000. When I said to him across the floor that it was only tailors' clippings he became very indignant. The truth of the matter is that the national income was raised under that. Everybody should remember that the 10/- for the calf's skin was raised to £20 for the calf.
I want to remind the House that on the introduction of the September Budget of 1947, the then Tánaiste declared that we were facing the bleakest of bleak years. What he did was to impose an additional £10 million in taxation on the people in that Budget. We came into office in the following year and removed that penal taxation. Fianna Fáil never forgave us for that. Every one of them, from the present President down to the most insignificant backbencher, wants to demonstrate and prove beyond yea or nay that we should not have reduced that taxation, that we should not have reduced the price of butter and the other commodities. The Minister for Transport and Power puts it that the inter-Party Government got into office on that first occasion on the plea that everybody could have easy living and that they could squander the savings of the war years.
On several conflicting pleas.
If Deputy Loughman is satisfied that on this occasion the Minister for Finance has been helpful to him and his colleagues in any way, I should like him to get up and say how he has been helpful. We know that notwithstanding the fact that the Minister for Defence got a memorandum from the Federation of Old I.R.A. in plenty of time for the Budget there was not a word about it. There is no indication of Government policy relating to them in this Budget —good, bad or indifferent. Does that mean that the Government have other plans? Does it mean that we are to have another Budget? What exactly is the line that this Government are taking? I should like to know because it is not clear from this Budget what their intentions are.
Over the years the inter-Party Government held office and, I must say, in the time of Fianna Fáil from 1951 to 1954, the national income steadily increased. The records are there. It increased every year and even when we come to the serious year of 1956 there is only one thing that is wrong. The inter-Party Government then did not take into account any political considerations but they did what was necessary, and they did it well in the interests of the country. The situation that arose at that time was outside the control of any Government and Fianna Fáil benefited by our action.
Do you think they thanked us? Not they. They did the exact opposite. The results of the action taken then were for the benefit of the whole country but the inter-Party Government got no thanks for any of it. The then Minister for Finance, my colleague Deputy Sweetman, did get a kind of lefthanded compliment because it was he who introduced the exemption from taxation on exports. He also got a sort of lefthanded thanks for the introduction of the Prize Bonds but do you think he, or any of us, got any recognition from any of the Fianna Fáil speakers down the country? Not they. Anything to our discredit that they could say down the country they said it was vigour, well knowing that their statements were not in accordance with the facts.
When the backbenchers of Fianna Fáil and their followers down the country—I do know they are getting fewer—examine this Budget they will be very displeased with the Government and with a Minister for Finance who boasted in the Seanad that he was going to give a great Budget. If this is a great Budget, it means that the mountain of Fianna Fáil has gone into labour and produced a mouse. This Budget is a fake, from start to finish. It places an additional impost upon the smoker and is something that is unrealistic. It means that Fianna Fáil are determined to go ahead with their wildcat schemes and to spend the people's money without any regard to the outcome.
Listening to Deputy MacEoin I really thought we were back in 1957. In that year, when Deputy MacEoin was a member of a Government which handed over control to Fianna Fáil things were really bad here. Deputy MacEoin has said that we were uncharitable and we never gave the inter-Party Government credit for anything. I am sure that he, as an honourable Deputy, will give us credit for putting this country back on its feet. In 1957 things were so bad in my constituency that no loans could be procured for 350 houses which had been built. Tradesmen were leaving their employment, unemployment was rife and things were never so bad. When I hear Deputies opposite trying to misrepresent the wonderful work done by the present Minister for Finance in putting the country on its feet I think there is very little honesty in politics.
They are crying about the food subsidies. I can assure this House that the food subsidies would never have been removed by Fianna Fáil were it not that they found that the financial position was so bad that they had to do something to save the country. This country was completely on the rocks in 1957. The people gave Fianna Fáil an overwhelming majority to get rid of the inter-Party Government.
No, to give them 100,000 jobs.
I remember asking questions here during the last days of the inter-Party Government in relation to S.D.A loans, broken promises and all the rest. To-day the country is on its feet again. Even Fine Gael supporters say it would be a pity if the inter-Party Government got in again and destroyed all the good work the present Ministry are doing.
The Leader of the Opposition was crying about the poor. Any social advances we have made have been made by Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil always gave something to the widows and orphans, the old age pensioners and pensioners generally so long as the economy could afford it. We shall continue to do so. I heard the last speaker speak about what happened in 1947. The present Taoiseach told the inter-Party Government, when they took office in 1948: "We have given you over the country in a good financial condition. We hope you will give it back to us in the same condition." But we did not get it back in the same condition.
We had to introduce the tough Budget of 1952 to save the country from economic ruin. It was hard for Deputies to sit behind their Minister for Finance introducing such a Budget, because we do not want to see our constituents hurt in any way. However, we had to put the interests of our country before our personal interests. At great sacrifice to everybody, the country was put back on a sound financial basis. The last speaker said we did not give the inter-Party Government credit for the good things they did. We supported them in anything they introduced for the benefit of the country. But they cannot claim that their general management of the country's finances could be praised.
Under Fianna Fáil this country has advanced economically and is continuing to do so. We are going more and more into export markets. We are creating employment for our people in industry. Our adverse trade balance has been redressed. A balanced Budget has again been introduced, which will help the poorer sections of the community. The reduction of income tax is welcomed. Farmers have been given increased subsidies and there are further aids such as the relief of agricultural rates—all with the view of helping farmers to create employment. I heard a man from my own part of the country, which I left 40 years ago, talk about people leaving the land. I come from old farming stock, one of a family of nine. Only one remained on the farm; the other eight had to leave. Listening to Opposition speakers, one would imagine that it was only during the last few years people left the land in Ireland. In small farms there was always only room for one. The remainder had to go elsewhere and, perhaps, emigrate if they could not get employment at home. I should like to have some constructive criticism from the Opposition on how we can improve the position in rural Ireland. We are trying to create industries in the towns to employ the people who have to leave the land. If there are two or three children in a family, you cannot divide a small holding amongst them. We have faced up to these problems and are doing our best to solve them.
We should consider all that has been achieved during the past four years. People who have money are not afraid to invest it in the country because they know they have a Government that will support them. The amount of money invested in industry here in the past four years is heartening. We are now on the road to prosperity. The Financial Times and other well-known conservative papers, which had not anything good to say about us in the past, now say that the Republic is doing well. That trend will put the country back on its feet. I appeal to the Leaders of the Opposition to give us credit for having done a jolly good job since we took over from them. I know they have to defend their policies as best they can, but what we need is constructive, rather than destructive criticism. In conclusion, I would again compliment the Minister for Finance on the very good job he has done during the past four years. May he long continue the good work.
Last week I listened to two speeches on the Budget, one from the Government side and one from the Opposition. Deputy Booth quoted the Chairman of the Bank of Ireland as saying our economy was expanding. He said bank deposits had increased and that the National Loan was over subscribed. I suppose a man in Deputy Booth's position believes that the prosperity of the country can be measured on that basis and that the credit for such prosperity is rightly due to the Fianna Fáil Government. Deputy McLaughlin's maiden speech followed. He gave a different outlook on the whole position. Speaking about his constituency, he said that though bank deposits were increasing, the number of families were decreasing.
Deputy P. J. Burke said it was not extraordinary that a certain proportion of people were leaving the land. He said it had always happened and that it would continue to happen, particularly on small farms. He pointed out that of the nine members of his family, only one remained on the land. I can assure Deputy Burke that although that was the case up to some years ago, it is not so any more. The entire nine members of the family would now have to leave and close down the farm. I paid a visit to Sligo-Leitrim during the by-election and saw houses closed down and the daffodils growing wild with nobody to look after them.
I would again point out, for Deputy Booth's benefit, that though bank deposits are growing, the numbers of young men and women left in the country are decreasing. Bank deposits will never make up for the loss of population. The Taoiseach, in his speech on the Budget, outlined what he called the three main objectives behind the Budget this year. The first was the improvement in the position of the social welfare class which he said was five per cent. I challenge the Taoiseach to say whether the improvement in that class could have been any less than five per cent.
While the Government improved the social welfare class by five per cent. they improved the conditions for the £4,000 a year class by 15 per cent. Last year, a person with an income of over £4,000 paid £1,283 2s. This year, he will pay £1,121 16s. 4d., a reduction of £161 5s. 8d., or approximately 15 per cent. From those figures must it not be taken that the Government could do no less than improve the benefits to the social welfare class by five per cent? Consequently the first objective of the Budget was a very poor effort.
The second objective was to help the farmers. Under the Budget, there is an increase of £1 per ton on the subsidy for potash fertiliser in the coming year. The Government have restored the lime subsidy. While that is welcomed, I think that subsidy, provided by the inter-Party Government, should never have been touched. Yet Fianna Fáil took more than £200,000 of it away. The Government now know that the reduction in the consumption of ground limestone in the past few years made it imperative that the subsidy we provided when we were in Government should be fully restored. Instead of cutting that subsidy, the Government should have, in fact, increased it.
There has been a lot of talk about the extra grants for cow byres. Under the inter-Party Government, there was a double grant under this heading, but that was removed by the present Government. Deputy Booth made what I regard as a very important statement and, mind you, the Deputy is a responsible member of Fianna Fáil. This statement will have very far-reaching effects on the policy towards the farmers of this country. He said agriculture is no longer the mainstay of this country. I believe Deputy Booth was reflecting the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government—a policy under which the Government, during the past few years, allowed the import of raw cane sugar to the detriment of the country's beet-growers.
The Taoiseach told us that the sugar factories were working to full capacity and that they could not handle one more acre of beet. What do we find this year? After Fianna Fáil had lost the referendum and several by-elections, we now find that contracts are being given for the production of 12,000 extra acres of beet, although there has been no extension of the sugar factories since the Taoiseach said they were incapable of handling another acre of beet. However, this is not any great encouragement to any small farmer who, due to his natural rotation of crops, had to give up the growing of beet for even a single season. Any such farmer will never get back his contract.
During the term of office of the inter-Party Government, all out efforts were designed to produce from the land of this country all the coarse grain required for feeding, and imports of maize were prohibited until January and February each year. During the past year, maize is being freely imported, without any embargo, and at the same time, the price of feeding barley has been reduced. If they had the interests of the farmers at heart, the Government would have increased the price of feeding barley in order to give small farmers the necessary encouragement to produce from their own land sufficient coarse grain to feed all their livestock. There is a considerable amount of goods which we import for processing here which could be produced at home. Here is something we can produce from our land. Instead of encouraging that production the Government have reduced the price and it may be reduced again.
In 1956, at the Carlow-Kilkenny by-election, Fianna Fáil promised that if their candidate were elected and their Government returned to office in the following year they would restore the price of wheat to 82/6d. They have reduced the price each year. Even this year, there has been a reduction, not in the actual price per barrel but in reference to moisture and other factors. That indicates that Fianna Fáil do not regard agriculture as the mainstay of our economy.
The inter-Party Government regarded agriculture as the mainstay of our economy. They were out to help it to produce more and to find markets. I do not blame the present Minister for Agriculture for the present state of affairs because it is the result of the policy of a Dublin-minded Government who feel that, if they start an industry here and an industry there, we do not have to bother about agriculture. We welcome the fact that a number of new industries have been started over the past four years, but thousands of industries have been closed down in that time because the home of every small farmer is an industry. Every small farmer's home shut down means another industry gone out of the country.
Since this Government came into office, 50,000 fewer people are working on the land. Now, in their last months in office, the Taoiseach has promised at a meeting in Dublin that they will look into the economy of the small farmer and put him in a position to gain as much from his small farm as the industrial worker will gain in the city or town. Is it not a bit late in the day for the Taoiseach to come forward with that bright idea? It reminds me very much of his statement before the general election of 1957 that he would provide 100,000 jobs over a period of five years. The people can have as much confidence in his statement that he will bring up the economy of the small farmer as they had reason to have in his statement about the 100,000 jobs.
In his first year of office the Minister for Finance said in his Budget that he was providing £250,000 to study improved marketing arrangements for agricultural products. That was good. It seemed as if the Government intended to provide improved marketing arrangements for our agricultural sector. What do we find? In their last months of office, the Government have set up a Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board and a Milk Board both of which will hardly be functioning before they go out of office. Had they been set up four years ago, the people would by now know whether these Boards can, in fact, provide improved markets for pigs and bacon and for milk products. It is obvious that the Government are just making promises.
The Taoiseach said Fine Gael are exploiting emigration for Party political purposes. He got a very quiet hearing. When Deputy J. A. Costello was speaking here as Taoiseach I recall the barracking he had to endure from the then Opposition. There was a different atmosphere when the Taoiseach spoke here last week. The Fine Gael Party are not exploiting emigration. Is it not our duty to draw attention to the very large number of men and women leaving our shores? Some of them may go to see life or to find a new life but most of them go because they are forced out. Deputy McLaughlin mentioned that there are great reports in the newspapers about the landings of our jet planes and the tourists who come here but that there are no reports about the boats full of young emigrants, which are leaving our shores.
In the past three years there has been an increase of £3½ million in rates. Practically every official has received a substantial increase in salary, including the professional personnel. The ordinary people do not begrudge them the increases which are due to them just as to everybody else but what hope have the people of paying rates to meet those increases if the prices of what they are selling have been decreasing in the past four years? A prominent Fianna Fáil member of Kilkenny County Council said, in effect: "It is all right for Ministers to tell us an agreement has been reached between the Managers' Association and the Officials' Association that an increase will come into effect on a certain date but what have the people got to meet those increases?" All they have are reductions in the price of feeding barley and wheat over the years. Each year there is a further reduction.
How can the people have any heart when the rates are going up each year? Those counties which do not increase the rates receive a letter from the Minister pointing out, for example, that twenty-two counties have given the increases and asking them if they do not propose to do likewise. There is no objection to improving the standard of living if the farmers get an opportunity to meet these expenses.
There was no reference by the Minister to the cost of living, which has increased by about £8 million in the past four years. Our people have paid £32 million more for food in the past four years. Recently in the Seanad the Minister said this Budget would be a good Budget. People felt that the price of butter which increased from 3/10d. to 4/7d. would surely be reduced. Is there not an encouragement to our people to go to Britain where they can buy our butter for 2/8d. a lb. rather than stay here and have to pay 4/7d. a lb. for it? They expected that flour, now selling at 7/10d. to 8/- and which was selling at 4/8d. when the present Government came in, would be reduced. That would be something. Bread, which was selling at 9d. per loaf when the Government took office, is now 1/3d. These are three things and it would have had a significant effect if the Government had devoted any surplus available to reducing the price of any of them.
If they had maintained the Local Authorities (Works) Act it would have helped to keep some people on the land. It is very hard for men to remain on county council work if they can work only six or seven months each year. If the Local Authorities (Works) Act had been operated it would mean a certain amount of work, even if only for a month or two in the winter, and would break their spell of unemployment. That Act was brought in by the inter-Party Government and, although the present Government had not the courage to repeal it, they withdrew funds from it.
Through higher taxes on lorries and commercial vehicles an extra £16,000 came to Kilkenny as an extra road grant. That money would normally be spent in summer time but had that £16,000 been given, and had the county surveyor and other officials been asked to put up some cases for winter work, it would have done something to relieve unemployment. But rather than give the money for winter employment the Government said it must be spent on roads and it will be spent in the summer time when there is a certain amount of work on the land available as well as on the roads. Had it been spent in the winter, it would have given encouragement to the people to stay on the land and it could have done a lot of good if used to relieve flooding in certain places.
The third point the Taoiseach made was in regard to the reduction of taxation on individuals. Any reduction in taxation, whether in income tax, surtax or any other tax, is appreciated by the people paying it. It will give them some relief but the main feature of this Budget is that there is no real incentive to production. I think the Government should go to the country and get the verdict from the people that they got in the case of the Referendum and then let the people decide what Government should be in power.
If a Budget is a good one, the proof of it must necessarily be a universally good reaction from the people. If such a reaction were available it would not be necessary for Government spokesmen, in trying to boost the Budget and explain their curious activities, to repeat the monumental untruth of 1957 that they were left with debts to pay. If this Budget and those that went before it sponsored by the present administration were the good Budgets that we are being asked to believe they were, it should not be necessary for Government spokesmen to call upon extraneous and untruthful arguments to boost up the situation which they alone say exists.
The position in regard to taxation generally is that over the last four years of Fianna Fáil administration we have had food taxes increased by £9,000,000, tobacco taxes by £3,000,000, beer taxes by £750,000 and rates by a further £3,000,000. All that adds up to an increased taxation which the people had to bear. It appears that the cost of administering for fewer and fewer is becoming greater and greater. We have a much reduced population and there is no appreciable reduction in any sphere of administrative activity. In fact, instead of the promises of the Minister in 1957 being realised, not alone the cost but the number of administrators has increased in the meantime. So much for the implementation of that early piece of wishful political thinking.
While there are reliefs in this Budget on the income tax, surtax and social welfare side, amounting to roughly £2,000,000, there is by way of extra taxation the sum of £3,000,000— £1,000,000 from tobacco and almost £2,000,000 from the imposition of additional duties by the conversion of existing levies, which were temporary, into permanent duties—not only converting them but increasing the percentage into something over twice as much in very many cases.
The levies were introduced to deal with a particular situation at that time, an economic situation with which the Government of the day had to deal. They dealt with it in a manner which was described by the present Taoiseach, then in Opposition, as "too little and too late". Over the years, the Minister for Finance in the present Government from time to time and to some extent has been keeping the word of his predecessor in acknowledging these levies as temporary measures, measures which would in time be abolished but when we come to what remained in this year we find that, principally those in relation to motor car parts, are converted rather than abolished. Prior to 1956 the House will recall that there was no duty on imported unassembled motor parts.
I beg your pardon.
Prior to 1956 certain motor parts unassembled came into the country duty free.
Very few.
Nevertheless, they came in duty free. A 15 per cent levy was imposed on them to meet that temporary upset in the economic situation. Now in respect of certain specific articles in relation to the motor trade that 15 per cent has been converted into a duty and increased to 37½ per cent. Some of them prior to 1956 did carry a duty of 33? per cent——
Practically all.
——plus the 15 per cent. Now they have benefited to the extent of 8½ per cent—the parts that were subject to that amount of duty—but by and large there is now an additional tax on those things that frequently must be replaced, again making no distinction between whether these particular parts are imported assembled or unassembled. That distinction is important because if those things go to prices that are beyond the capacity of the average importing wholesaler, it must inevitably result in unemployment, however small. Unemployment, however small, is something that should not result from the implementation of a Budget.
We are told by the other side of the House that this is a good Budget. In the quasi ex cathedra statement of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice, this Budget is the best of a series of good Budgets. I do not believe the people will accept that statement, even from that ex cathedra source. We have had the pronouncements of the Tánaiste and the Minister for Transport and Power outside this House. We have had Deputy Burke of County Dublin expatiating on the excellence of this most recent Budget today; in the annals of hypocrisy, his pronouncements must surely rank with the best since men came to record the utterances of public men.
Consider the situation with regard to the relief given in taxation and the increases given to those in receipt of social welfare. Translated into £.s.d., the relief given to the old age pensioner, and it is the maximum relief, is £3 18s. per year. The relief given to a person in receipt of £2,000 per annum is £16 13s. 4d. per year.
(Interruptions.)
I wish the interjecting Deputy from Cork would, on the infrequent occasions on which he makes contributions in this House, make himself clear.
The Deputy's Party reduced the old age pension by 1/-.
I will give the history of old age pensions. I will not suffer interruptions from the Deputy from Cork. I will tell the Deputy all about old age pensions in the shortest possible time. I will tell Deputy Galvin —I have just remembered his name; he speaks so infrequently it is difficult to recognise him—all about old age pensions. The old age pension in 1948, after 16 years of Fianna Fáil administration, stood at 10/- basic, with an urban addition from poor rate relief of 5/- and a rural addition of 2/6d. That was in 1948 after 16 years of Fianna Fáil.
On the coming into power of Deputy Costello's administration in that same year, the urban and rural rates of poor relief were abolished and old age pensions were increased to 17/6d. That increase of 7/6d. was the first increase after 16 years of Fianna Fáil administration, 16 long years in which absolutely nothing was done about old age pensions. In 1951, there was again an increase under Deputy Costello's administration. Another 2/6d. was given, bringing the old age pension up to 20/- per week.
The proposal was made but no legislation was passed.
Whether or not legislation was passed, it was certainly introduced. The intention was to grant the increase.
(Interruptions.)
Not all the mock suavity of the Minister for Finance, supported by his interjectors, will put me off the course of my argument in outlining the history of Fianna Fáil in relation to old age pensions.
I was merely correcting the Deputy.
Fianna Fáil increased the old age pension in 1952 by 1/6d. That was the time they brought in their nefarious Budget, a Budget which put upon the pensioners of this country a burden it was beyond their capacity to bear but which Fianna Fáil evidently believed could be made bearable by an increase of 1/6d. per week. In 1955, again under Deputy Costello's administration, the old age pension was increased from the Fianna Fáil level of 21/6d. to 24/-. That increase was given simultaneously with a reduction of 5d. in the lb. of butter.
In 1957, Fianna Fáil once more increased the old age pension by 1/-per week bringing it to 25/-; in 1959, they brought it up to 27/6; and in 1960, they increased it to 28/6. This year, they have increased it to 30/-. All those increases in the past four years have coincided with the removal of subsidies, with the increase in the price of butter and milk and flour and bread. None of that matches up to their boast in relation to social services. Over the past few years, by reason of either Government or ministerial directive—I take it ministerial directive has the approval of Government—social welfare officers, in my constituency at any rate, have been engaging in most exhaustive searches into people's means and, rightly or wrongly, as a result of that they have, in many cases, reduced old age pensions—wrongly, in my opinion. The net effect of all this has been to nullify and negative the measly increases given in the four previous years.
The people are not duped. I am talking now of social welfare services generally and not just of pensions alone. The social welfare benefits with regard to disability allowances and home assistance laid down under Deputy Costello's administration have not been altered one iota by the present Government. There has been no move to improve the lot of these people, except in isolated cases through public representations.
If this Budget and its predecessors are the wonderful success we are asked now to believe they are, how is it the situation has deteriorated so seriously in relation to employment? In 1955, in employment other than agriculture, there were 726,000 people employed. In 1960, after the operation of these good Budgets, in employment in the same sphere, there were only 699,000, a decrease of 27,000. What is the explanation? It is a figure of such really alarming proportions that some explanation must be given to the House and to the people. I am sure the Minister will explain when he comes to reply. The overall picture as disclosed by statistics issued by the Taoiseach's Department shows that there are 51,000 fewer people in employment now than there were in 1957. By way of contrast, as between mid-February, 1957, and mid-February, 1961, the cost of living has risen by 12 points from 107.7 to 119.
After years of denial and after years of the first enunciation of his theory that the success of a Government was to be measured by unemployment and emigration, we now have the Taoiseach at last admitting that there is emigration. In his speech on this most recent Budget, he concedes that the average outflow is in the region of 40,000. Figures available from British sources, of people from this country applying for insurance cards for the first time, would certainly seem to be at variance with these figures now conceded by the Taoiseach.
On the basis of our general knowledge of the numbers who go to America and other countries, coupled with the actual figures we have from Great Britain, it is safe to say that, between 1957 and 1961, over 200,000 people left this country. Is that the result of good Budgets? Is that the result of the policy that seemed to have as one of its cornerstones: "Wives, get your husbands out to work"? Is that the result of another part of the same edifice on which was printed "100,000 jobs"? The most pathetic thing about that promise, made by the Taoiseach, of 100,000 jobs, is not the fact that it was promised but the fact that he has denied that he ever so promised. From the point of view of public morality, that is probably the most pathetic thing that has taken place in this country for a very long time.
Deputy Burke of County Dublin seemed satisfied to excuse emigration on the basis that every member of a family has to go except one. That is not necessarily true. It is not necessary for that particular idea to be fully inplemented that every member of the family should have to go and that houses should be closed and land lie fallow, that no habitation should exist at all; that marriage rates should decline and averages in rural schools be reduced by half and in some cases schools should have to be closed, all in a very short time.
Deputy Burke seems to think that what we on this side of the House say about emigration is not true. I was present at a meeting organised by the local clergy and people in a parish in my own constituency not later than Sunday last. It was convened in order to see what could be done to relieve a very depressed situation in that area. It was attended by the parish priest, both of his curates, Deputy Calleary and myself. The parish priest made this rather startling and frightening announcement, that in accordance with what is obviously Church practice, he had taken a census of the families in his parish in 1956 and they then numbered 744. He took a similar census in 1961 and the number of families was 100 fewer. In one parish in my constituency, there are 100 families fewer than there were when this Government took office in 1957.
Is that a reaction from good Budgets or from good administration? Let me say at once that there will always be a certain amount of emigration but not emigration of family units which has now become the pattern, and a very serious one. Side by side with that, there is what one would expect : the fact which was also announced by the parish priest—and if the people on the Government benches, the Minister or those supporting him, want to check this, all they have to do is to ask my colleague, Deputy Calleary, who was present—that in the year 1960 and up to date in that parish, which four years ago boasted 744 families and which has now 100 fewer, there was one marriage.
I wonder if all these things mean what Deputy Burke tries to imply? Are they, as Government spokesmen outside solemnly aver and as the Minister for Finance asks the House to believe, indications or proof—whatever you like—of this wonderful prosperity which we are now allegedly enjoying? As a result of this Government's fiscal policy, prices have gone up. Until quite recently, speaking for the rural community, the prices of things they had to sell were depressed. That may have been due to a variety of factors but I would say that one of the factors was that this Government wasted so much valuable time, at a vital period, in legislating for matters that were of no great ultimate concern to the economic prosperity, that they lost what might have been gained on outside markets while others were consolidating their position.
We hear a lot about housing. From 1954 to 1957, 29,000 houses were built and under this wonderful régime, from 1957 to 1961, only 19,000 have been built. Some approach will have to be made to deal with the rural situation. At the moment, a sort of survey is going on in relation to housing, whether they are sanitary or habitable and whether people require new houses. From what I gather, the people do not seem to have a great deal of faith in this because they feel that once again the activities of public officials are merely an indication that an election is about to take place.
Mark you, when we come to regard emigration in all its facets, while economics may be the reason for this great exodus, I would say that a great deal of it is due to the fact that people have become despondent and depressed, have become weary of the unfulfilled promises, have abandoned hope not only in the immediate future but in their future for all time and have locked up and cleared out.
I was reading recently The Western People of Saturday, 22nd April, 1961. For the further amusement of the Minister for Finance and of Deputy Galvin, who appears to be contributing to the amusement——
We were not listening to you at all.
——I shall quote from this paper.
We have a right to a little joke, anyway.
The Minister for Finance, Deputy Galvin and all the members of the Fianna Fáil Party are quite free to have their jokes and their laughs but they are not free in conscience or in whatever patriotic content might be attributed to them, to laugh and joke at the spectacle of emigration from rural Ireland. Lest they are running short of material for laughter at our people leaving our country, I will give them a little more now.
The National Farmers' Association held a meeting of the North Mayo Executive at Ballycastle in County Mayo to consider the whole situation there. The meeting was held in March last. They were holding the meeting in a parish that is next to the parish about which I have given the details that we received on Sunday afternoon last and it is the parish next again to the parish in which Deputy Calleary lives, so that if the Minister for Finance and Deputy Galvin want to rid themselves of doubts as to the authenticity of the description of the situation that exists there all they have to do is to ask their colleague Deputy Calleary. I quote from The Western People:—
Even the members of the Farmers' Association were shocked at the change. One two-teacher school had been closed, a school which forty years ago had an average of over sixty children, and the average of the other schools had dropped to half. From Glenurla to Kilbride forty doors had closed and forty happy, self-supporting families had disappeared never to return. It was not a case of a deserted village, but deserted villages and a deserted parish. Once upon a time no Mayo team paraded Croke Park without a Ballycastle man among its number; 20 years ago the parish annexed the Mayo senior championship; to-day the first time for two generations the parish is unable to field a team. Since Christmas forty youths had emigrated to England looking for work. The situation was considered by the meeting to be very grave and the unanimous decision was that if this decay were to be stopped the parish must unite, regardless of creed, politics or personal interests.
Will the Deputy tell us who made that speech?
That is not a speech. That is the review of the situation by the National Farmers' Association at their executive meeting in Ballycastle, County Mayo, as reported in The Western People of Saturday, 22nd April, 1961.
Sent in by some supporter of the Fine Gael Party.
Very good. If that is what Deputy Gilbride thinks of reviews carried out at a meeting of the National Farmers' Association, at which were present all shades of political opinion, including that held by himself, let him talk to the National Farmers' Association.
I question it very much.
I am sure the National Farmers' Association will pay as much attention to Deputy Gilbride's utterances on this as the people of Sligo-Leitrim did to his utterances in the recent by-election and to his utterances in regard to proportional representation.
They believed me.
The most significant part of that review is where they say that "if this decay were to be stopped the parish must unite regardless of creed, politics or personal interest." I can tell Deputy Gilbride, and I am sure Deputy Calleary will agree, that that was a parish in the constituency of North Mayo where the people all down the years had been predominantly supporters of Fianna Fáil. It is significant that when they try to arrest decay they are prepared to depart from the time-honoured formula of Fianna Fáil, that they are prepared to abandon Party, abandon personal interests, abandon political viewpoints to work together for the good that they thought would be done by the people whom they had supported down the years. I, for one, welcome that change. I do not mind which way they vote in future as long as they vote in a manner that is indicative of clear thinking, that is indicative of their desire to play a full part in the interests of their parish and of their country and indicative that they are prepared at least to break the Soviet-like grip which was being held on them by the Fianna Fáil Party.
These are the results that I can speak about from my constituency of this Budget and its predecessors. The same situation exists not alone in the two parishes which I have described but in every other parish in all that area. Perhaps it is the policy of Fianna Fáil—many people are coming to believe that it is—that it is best to wipe out all of the people along the coasts of our country, that it is best to banish them to England and America so that social services need no longer be given to them, so that employment need no longer be provided for them, now that the people who originally promised them the sun, moon and stars, no longer need them, either through declining years or departure from the political scene. They have done well as a result of the promises but the people to whom they made the promises have left for ever, having lost hope, not alone in the great promisers but in the country and in any future Government.
I have listened to the debate in the last few days and have read a good deal of it. I have not heard one attempt made by any Opposition speaker to say what the Opposition would have done if they were in power. Not one attempt has been made to tell us what changes they would have made in this Budget. All their speeches were given to attacking the Budget, attacking the Minister and attacking everything that was done. Most of their time was taken up in talking about the food subsidies. The abolition of the food subsidies seems to have been the worst thing that ever happened. They never told us that they themselves were responsible and were prepared to take away the food subsidies.
That is not true.
Of course it is not true.
In 1956 the Coalition Government set up a committee called the Flour and Bread Committee. I am quoting from page 1 of the Report of that Committee which says:
On the 27th February, 1956, you appointed us as a Committee to investigate and report on:
(1) the production, distribution and selling costs (including a fair allowance for profit) of flour and bread;
There are two other items and it then continues:
By letter dated 17th May, 1956, you directed that our terms of reference did not require us to examine the question of subsidisation of flour and bread prices.
Yes. So what?
It is a clear indication that the Government at that time in the month of May had made up their minds that the subsidies on bread and flour had to go.
They made up their minds they were not going to be disturbed.
They instructed the Committee that they were not to take into consideration subsidies at all.
That is true.
It is plain they had their minds made up that flour and bread subsidies had to go.
How can you make that deduction? It may be plain to you.
Why were the terms of reference changed between the 27th February and the 17th May, 1956? The terms of reference are given here: "On the 27th February, 1956, you appointed us as a Committee to investigate and report on......the production, distribution and selling costs...... of bread and flour." Then this document continues: "By letter dated the 17th May, 1956, you directed that our terms of reference did not require us to examine the question of subsidisation of flour and bread prices." Why change the terms of reference?
They were told to mind their own business as far as the food subsidies were concerned.
It is as plain as a pikestaff——
I quite agree. It is as plain as a pikestaff.
——that the Government had made up their minds that the subsidies had to go. Still they come in here and talk about subsidies. They knew the position they were in, that there was no money there. We heard a great deal about the wonderful things they would do and could do. Then they broke up and cleared out rather than do what they knew they would have to do, remove the flour and bread subsidies.
Why did you say you would not do it?
We never did. If anyone said it, he did not realise at the time the position the country was left in, that when the Coalition had gone they had not a shilling.
(Interruptions.)
Deputy Gilbride should be allowed to make his speech.
There is no use in any ex-Minister trying to tell the people or the House that they did not decide to abolish the food subsidies. If the Minister for Finance looked up the minutes of that time——
I remember them.
He will find that there, unless the leaf is gone.
Deputies
Ah!
I am advising the Minister for Finance that if he looks up the minutes he will probably find that there.
The Deputy has mended his hand. He said "probably." He did not say that the first time.
I said he probably would find it. Deputies should not try to put anything into my mouth that I am not saying. This is irritating them a great deal. They can have their say and I am entitled to have my say. I say it is quite clear the decision was made to do away with the subsidies. Yet Deputies make the statements that have been made about those subsidies.
Deputy Lindsay mentioned the by-election in Sligo-Leitrim. He and his colleagues went down to Sligo-Leitrim with a little pamphlet giving the different prices of flour and other commodities for 1961 and 1956 respectively. Did they tell the people in Sligo-Leitrim that if they got into power they would reduce those commodities to that price again? Will they say it now? Will they say it before the election and, if they do, will they tell the people where they are going to get the money?
Fianna Fáil said they would not do it in 1957.
Will you tell the people where you are going to get the money? I have the utmost sympathy for the members of the Opposition Front Bench going around the streets of Sligo, and around every town in Sligo-Leitrim, with this pamphlet dealing with the prices of bread and flour although they had no intention of reducing these prices.
Who had their sympathy when the election was over?
They did not see the real point of that pamphlet.
We will not know what the position is until we get back. There may not be a bob there.
The real point is that the people of Sligo-Leitrim did not believe them because they hawked that pamphlet from door to door during the by-election campaign a short time ago. Yet, Sligo-Leitrim gave Fianna Fáil 48 per cent. of the votes in comparison with 30 per cent. at the general election.
Nonsense. The Deputy is dealing with different totals.
Fianna Fáil got 48 per cent. of the votes in comparison with 30 per cent. of the vote at the general election.
That is the second speech that was written after the declaration of the poll.
I have the utmost sympathy for the ex-Ministers who hawked that pamphlet around because they had the people laughing at them.
Who won the election?
Had you prepared your speech for the victory celebration as well as ordering the dinner?
Deputy Gilbride is entitled to speak without interruption.
I knew what the voting would be and if the people of Ireland vote the same way as the people of Sligo-Leitrim voted——
——you will go out.
——there will be a very small bench helping the Opposition in the next Dáil. If this Budget had been introduced there would have been a different outcome but when the general election is over there will be a different dividing line for the Opposition. If they are able to fill those benches they will be lucky.
The Deputy is an expert at dividing lines.
Deputy Blowick made great play with the question of emigration. We all regret emigration but in 1947 when Fianna Fáil left office emigration was at its lowest. If emigration was high within the past few years, it was due to the depression left after the Coalition Government in 1957 when there was not a shilling to pay housing grants, when every county council in Ireland had to stop paying supplementary grants, when building was practically at a standstill and when drainage was practically at a standstill. That is what brought about emigration, the depression resulting from the six years the Coalition were in power.
The people do not believe that.
There was mention also of E.S.B. charges. Deputy Blowick boasted that he went round to protest meetings held in connection with the E.S.B. charges. Imagine an ex-Minister of the Coalition Government that withdrew the subsidy from the E.S.B. in 1955, when the price of electricity went up by a far greater amount than it did the last time, going around to protest meetings about the price of electricity! Could duplicity go any further?
In regard to drainage, since Fianna Fáil came into power great progress has been made in this direction. The Moy drainage is in full swing as Deputy Lindsay, who lives near it, knows. When his Party were in power they sought to get other places to take precedence over it.
That is wrong. That cock will not fight.
I have the evidence in my bag.
Produce it. We are not interested in the Deputy's bag.
I can produce it. I produced it in Sligo-Leitrim and I can produce it again. Another area took precedence over it. That should not happen.
What one was that?
The Parliamentary Secretary has voted £100,000 for the drainage of the Duff in Sligo-Leitrim.
The Corrib cannot have got ahead of the lot.
Let us hear Deputy Gilbride.
The Government have the confidence of the people.
Unemployment and emigration.
The Coalition Government left office because they would not get a shilling of the people's money for their national loans. Every loan floated by the Fianna Fáil Government has been over-subscribed.
That is not true.
We have the money to carry on capital development and that is what is making the Opposition so sore.
It does not happen to be true.
The Prize Bonds.
Is it untrue?
Yes.
Not one of their loans was fully subscribed and every one of ours was over-subscribed. That is the test of the confidence of the people.
The test might be the interest rates you offer.
This is a good Budget and no moaning, groaning or banshee wailing by Deputy Lindsay or anyone else will change that. It is a good Budget and I have been told that by Deputy Lindsay's own supporters.
You are all meeting Fine Gael supporters. Deputy Burke met some too.
They are joining Fianna Fáil cumainn.
(Interruptions.)
Will we hear Deputy Galvin's maiden speech next?
Order!
Deputy Galvin should make his maiden speech now.
I do not mind what the Opposition say because they know what I am saying is true. The funny thing is that they know it is a good Budget. They know the people have confidence in the Government, and they know that when the election comes the people will place the same confidence in them as they did in 1957. Does anyone on the Opposition benches think that the Government who cleared out in 1957, refused to face their responsibilities, handed over the country in debt, with an unbalanced Budget, will get back into office again? I sat in this House in 1948 when the Coalition Government were taking over, and I remember perfectly the words of the present Taoiseach when he said: "We are handing over a country which is sound financially and sound in every way; see to it that it is handed back in the same way."
Why did you get out then?
You went out yourself. You ran away.
I am asking why you got out in 1948?
You ran away yourself. The Coalition left an unbalanced Budget and debts unpaid. Today the country is sound financially. Do members of the Opposition think that the people are daft enough to put the Coalition in office again to undo the work done by the Fianna Fáil Government during the past four and a half years? If they do, they must have less sense than I thought. This is a good Budget. The people think it is a good Budget. They have confidence in this Government and after the election, I am afraid the Opposition will be very small.
I am afraid Deputy Gilbride's prophetic words will come true because I do not think some Deputies on the opposite side of the House realise how few of them will be returned after the next general election. Perhaps they will find out very shortly. They will find that some of their apparent confidence has been about as accurate as the statistical computations of the previous speaker.
I have been particularly amused by the Fianna Fáil attitude to this Budget. Quite apart from the foolish speech made by the Minister in the Seanad about a month ago, the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party towards this Budget in the House and in the country has altered radically since the Budget itself was introduced. Speaking in the Seanad, the Minister inferred that this would be a good Budget. Clearly he meant that it would be a popular Budget, a Budget which would give benefices to people. Frankly, I do not accept as proper the definition of good and bad which that connotes. In my view, there are tough Budgets, soft Budgets, in-between Budgets, appropriate Budgets and inappropriate Budgets.
And honest Budgets.
An appropriate Budget is, of course, an honest Budget. That goes without saying. I would have thought the Parliamentary Secretary would have accepted that. To call a Budget good or bad is a misnomer. When the Minister spoke in the Seanad about a month ago of a Budget to "grig" Fine Gael, obviously he was trying to conjure up to the minds of the people that he would introduce a Budget that would give away so many benefices that it would be popular with all classes of the people. Indeed, I shall give the Minister credit for this: when he sat down after making his speech he believed that such was the situation. Of course, it became perfectly clear immediately afterwards, when he saw the reaction, not only of the back benchers of his own Party but the reaction of the people down the country, that it was not in any sense a popular Budget at all. For reasons which I shall go into at a later stage, I do not think it was an appropriate Budget either. I do not think it was appropriate to our economic needs and on that ground as well, the Minister has failed in the task which faces every Minister for Finance at this time of the year.
Before I go on to discuss the individual items of the Budget, however, and the economic policy which governed its introduction this year, I want to refer to two things which are, I think, to put it mildly, unfortunate in a Budget speech. A Budget speech should be an analysis of the position as seen at the particular moment. It should be an objective analysis. I do not think this can be described as an objective analysis because in this Budget statement the Minister has rung the changes, by taking the record of a four-year period when it suited him and another record of a three-year period when it suited him. If it were an honest statement, the Minister would have decided to take either a four-year record or a three-year record and have stuck to it for his comparisons.
Instead of doing that, however, when it suited him he took a four-year period and where that did not suit him he took a three-year period. I think it would be more appropriate to have taken a four-year period all through. Even if the Minister would prefer to take the period from April 1958, and completely ignore his first year in office, I would accept that he could make comparisons on those lines, but to make them on a four-year basis when it suits him in one case and on a three-year basis when it suits him in another, is not the type of impartial analysis that we have properly come to expect from a Budget statement.
The second thing I do not understand, knowing from past experience how a Budget speech is made up, is the figure mentioned in Column 660 of the report of his speech by the Minister for Finance. In that he says:
Though some indirect taxes have been increased, the reductions have been more significant and the net effect has been a relief of some £1½ million a year in indirect taxation.
That is not true. That is the plain answer to it; it just is not true.
I have here before me the Tables issued explanatory of the Budgets in each of the last four years. I do not know whether, even in that, the Minister is using the three or four year period. In the years which we are considering now, I do not know whether he intended to include the year for which we are now budgeting or not. Let us be very clear where it goes. The position in respect of indirect taxation is set out consistently in each of the Tables explanatory of the Budgets in each year. In the one we got the other day, the net increase in indirect taxation is £855,000. For the year 1960 the Table explanatory of the Budget of that year shows an increase of £980,000 in tobacco duties and deductions of £1,590,000, or a net deduction of £610,000. In 1959 the position was that there was a deduction of £450,000, even counting as deductions certain special import levy changes to which I shall refer in a moment. In 1958 there was a deduction of £50,000. The total of all those figures is a change of £230,000. That is taking them over the four years.
The Minister for Finance refers to £1½ million. Even if we do not take this year into account, the figures are still wrong. If we take into account the figures for 1957-58, the position would not be a change of £230,000 but a change in the other way—of increased taxation of £2,600,000. Let us consider the matter whatever way the Minister likes to take it. I shall meet him and discuss it with him on a three year basis, a four year basis or including this year's Budget but let us be consistent and discuss all our economic problems and our revenue and taxation outturns in the same way. Let us not take one set of figures when it suits us and then jump and take another set of figures in another way. That is not the manner in which one should make an objective assessment of our position; that is not the method which should be used in making the Budget speech.
These changes in indirect taxation take no account of the special import levies being switched from capital to current account. I do not want to dwell overmuch on the manner in which the Minister, during the last general election, led the people to believe that those levies would be abolished when he got into office. It is an undeniable fact that the proceeds of the levies were switched from capital to current account and that doing so was a clear breach, not merely of the statements made by me at the time they were imposed, but also of the implications made by all the members of Fianna Fáil when they were speaking in that election campaign. The manner in which they have now been transferred into our permanent indirect taxation code merely means that it is going to make it more difficult for the country as a whole to face the situation which is about to break upon Europe with the merging of the Six and the Seven. I propose at a later stage to make some reference in regard to that and to the failure of the Government in that respect.
Before I go on to discuss those things, I think it is unfortunate that the Minister should jump from one comparison to another without using the same basis for each.
"It may not be appreciated by all the members of the Dáil, or the public who are discussing the Budget, that when this Government came to prepare it they had before them an estimate, presumably prepared by the Revenue Commissioners, that the revenue from taxation this year would exceed the revenue from taxation last year by £3,800,000. That was a very happy position for a Government to be in. They could face their problems, knowing that they would get £3,800,000 more tax revenue this year than in the previous year. That is the most significant and important fact in relation to this Budget."
I wonder does that strike any chord of memory in the Minister's mind? That statement is not mine except that I have changed the figure of £3,000,000 to £3,800,000. It is the speech of Deputy Lemass on the 5th May, 1955, when he was discussing the 1955 Budget, Col. 820, Vol. 150. Is it not significant that the figures, with the exception of £800,000 are somewhat the same? Then it was £3,000,000. Now it is £3,800,000 yet Deputy Lemass was then fulminating about it. It shows that the present Taoiseach, when he was Deputy Lemass, was not quite as responsible in his criticism as he would like people to believe.
The manner in which the Fianna Fáil Party have changed since the Budget was disclosed and since the Minister made his speech in the Seanad has been somewhat striking. Some people said here—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice was, I think, one and Deputy Booth certainly was one—on the first day of the Budget debate, immediately after the Minister's speech, that Fine Gael were surprised by the Budget and that I particularly was surprised. It is rather peculiar but I have in front of me the note I brought into the House in relation to the Budget and which I gave to my colleagues in this Front Bench the night before the Minister introduced his Budget.
I told my colleagues that, knowing the Minister's mentality, I thought he would increase the old age pension by 1/6d. a week and that it would cost £675,000. My colleagues told me that no Minister for Finance could possibly be so niggardly as to give such a small increase in the circumstances disclosed by the Estimate of Receipts and Expenditure published on the Saturday before the Budget. When they voiced that criticism it was on the basis even that the Minister would be more generous by some £75,000.
I notice, too, that in relation to the increase of 1/6d. for social welfare benefits, the Minister has been very careful not to relax the means test in the place where it should be relaxed, and that is in respect of the old age pension itself. Everyone knows that, throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, new stringent reviews of the means test in relation to non-contributory old age pensions have been in operation during the past year and have pressed most unfairly and heavily on people who themselves, by their own industry, were able to build up modest means over the years when they were able to work. To say the least of it, it is unfortunate that the Minister did not take account of that when he was giving this increase, which has been described in the circumstances as being so impossibly niggardly that no Minister for Finance would ever dare to introduce it.
The Minister made available a sum in relation to income tax relief more or less on the figures I had expected, but he did it in one way which, I think, shows an almost complete lack of grasp of the economic problems and difficulties with which we are faced. I agree that the Minister for Finance is correct in saying if there is to be such a concession towards income tax, it is right to help individual effort. I concede that was a wise thing to do. But where the Minister has completely fallen down in his treatment of the income tax position is the manner in which it affects Irish companies.
We all know in relation to Irish companies that, to a great extent, it is only out of profits that those companies can make, any advances can be planned in further production, that it is out of profits they must re-tool, to use an American expression and so increase not merely their production but their productivity. The Minister has, however, in this Budget taken the step of ensuring that corporation profits tax will no longer be a valid deduction for company assessment for income tax purposes. Whom does that hit? It hits, first, Irish companies. It hits, second, foreign companies that have branches here. Whom does it not hit? It means that any person in this country who has invested his money outside the country, who is drawing, for example, British, Canadian or American dividends, is going to get the relief the Irish company will not get. That is a very bad principle of taxation.
It is an extremely bad principle of taxation that in relation to unearned income coming in from outside— money that is not being used to build up Irish production and to ensure that we develop here at home—is given this concession while, on the Minister's own statement, an Irish company, or even a foreign company with a branch here, will not get the benefit. That seems to me to be a complete failure to realise the appropriate approach in present circumstances. No case can be made by any rational person that an Irish taxpayer who has money invested in an Irish company should not be in a better position than the person who has all his money invested outside the country. Yet that is not the way in which the Minister has framed his income tax reliefs. To say it is unfortunate that he has done so is putting it very mildly indeed.
I must confess also that I believed with the advent of television this year the Minister might have deemed it necessary to include some relief for cinemas if he is to keep the goose that lays the golden egg. The advent of television in other parts of the world has, without question, seriously affected the cinema industry and, therefore, the entertainment duty from cinemas. I would have thought, therefore, that in order to protect his own revenue, if nothing else, the Minister would have been obliged to make some concession along that line.
I must confess also that I told my colleagues I expected the Minister should make some concessions towards the difficulties those who are living on pensions find in present circumstances. He did not deem it desirable or necessary to do so. I think that is unfortunate.
Inappropriate as the Budget is from the point of view of putting a premium on moneys invested outside rather than moneys invested internally in our own country, there are two other aspects in which, I think, it has also been singularly inappropriate. I cannot understand at all the suggestion made by the Minister in his Budget speech in relation to a comparison of our increase in the production of transportable goods with Belgium and with France.
The Minister suggests that our rate of increase was higher than that of Belgium and of France. I have tried, as far as I can, to make the comparison from an analysis of O.E.E.C. reports in the Oireachtas Library. I think the Minister, in the other House, sneered at people who would not take the trouble to go down to examine those reports in the Library. The latest figures available, as far as I can trace them, are a comparison between the third quarter of 1959 and the third quarter of 1960. In all the European countries in respect of which a record is taken in those publications, the increase was from 133 to 146 points, whereas ours was from 115 to 121 points,—that is, their increase was more than double ours. The increase in France in that period was 15 points and the increase in Belgium seven points. The average increase for the European Economic Community itself was about one and a half times the increase there was here.
In the fourth quarter of 1960, the combined European Community increase was approximately ten points; the Common Market increase was 12 points; and in Belgium there was, of course, the nation-wide strike and therefore it was not feasible to compare it. In France, for the same period, there was an increase of ten points. In our case, it was either five or six points. Therefore, I cannot see on what calculations the Minister has been able to make his average and to say that in fact the increase was higher here than it was in France and Belgium.
In any event, I do not think checking with individual countries is of much use to us. We want to take our comparison figures against the average of those other countries and, as well, put them against those for Britain because it is to Britain our people have been emigrating in recent years. I want to remind the Minister in that respect of a comment, with which I entirely agree, which occurs in Economic Development:
We now lag so far behind most other European countries in progress that even a spectacular increase in efficiency and output will leave us at a relative disadvantage.
Of course that is right. It seems to me from the comparisons in the recent publications of O.E.E.C. that far from catching up on their relative rate of progress we are, in fact, falling further and further behind, no matter what progress we may make.
In that situation, would it not have been material and appropriate for the Minister for Finance, in the introduction of this Budget, to endeavour to ensure there would be something in it to increase industrial production at home, whereas all he has done is to provide by this new method of taxation a detriment to Irish companies in production? We must face it—and it seems to be getting nearer and nearer —there will be very severe and radical tests when the Common Market and the European Free Trade Area join together and arrive at a modus vivendi.
I was looking at a television programme recently as to what it would mean to the British economic structure and it was accepted that there it would mean an entire revolution in their whole line of economic thought and development. If it is to mean that for them, how much more will it mean for us with the high tariff protection that has been built up and when, notwithstanding that we can all see the new situation arising, there has been consolidation still further in this Budget by the switch of the special import levies into the permanent taxation code?
If any of us consider the position of our industries and make an objective assessment of them—indeed every economist in the country has said this —we will find that any increase there has been was petering out at the end of last year. If that is so, should there not be something in this Budget to get the momentum going again? Whatever increase there has been in industrial production was due to two things. The first is that there was already some slack in the industrial economy. That slack has been taken up since and utilised and there is now no more to utilise. That is why any increase there was was petering out at the end of last year. The second is that it has arisen because the minds of our industrialists were directed — and properly so—towards export markets by the tax reliefs started in 1956 and increased by the present Minister for Finance in the following year.
The tax relief, the Minister says, would mean now something like £3 million a year in loss to revenue. There was a most interesting comment, by way of an aside, in Dr. Meenan's minority report to the Fourth Report by the Commission on Income Tax and I think it is a fair comment. The essential thing in relation to tax incentives, is a psychological one—there must be a real benefit to the persons concerned. There was a real incentive by the remission of 50 per cent. on income earned in any export trade. The Minister, merely for the purpose of trying to change anything I did, increased that incentive and the wisdom of that action by the Minister has been questioned by Dr. Meenan on the ground that it means the general taxpayer is getting nothing whatsoever out of any bouyancy that may arise through such additional exports.
I do not altogether agree that the general taxpayer is getting nothing. However, the essential thing was the psychological approach at that time and it was struck quite adequately and quite satisfactorily by the 50 per cent. remission. It would have been possible to devise a scheme by which the other 50 per cent. was utilised, not on a direct remission basis as was done by the Minister but by way of investment allowances or ploughing back into industry in such a way that we would get increased productivity and therefore increased exports for the future. I do not think the way in which that was done by the Minister was entirely the best way of utilising the funds at his disposal. Of course, I would agree with the Minister in this, when he refers to the loss of revenue, though not everyone realise it, that, when you lose revenue by means of giving a tax relief before it comes into operation, it is just as costly from an Exchequer point of view as if you give it after it has been imposed and after it has been collected. There is nothing in this Budget to provide any new incentive towards increased production or, more so, towards increased productivity. The important thing is, while having something there that is realistic, to add as being even more important the psychological reaction and the psychological development from it.
The Minister has produced nothing except to change that export tax incentive in a way that does not of itself increase development. For far too long we have been a high-cost economy. I admit at once that to change jigs in a small market like ours is more expensive than to change them, say, in an immense market like the United States; the fractional costs that can be placed over immense sales in a very large sales market mean it is a much cheaper thing to re-tool. But, if we are going to re-tool in industry as frequently as it is necessary, as frequently as modern inventions make it necessary, if we are to maintain export sales, then we have to devise a system of taxation which enables that to be done and enables our people to overcome the disadvantages of having a smaller market over which to spread the cost.
The smaller market means that the cost per unit is larger. But if it is not done, then I am afraid we shall not be able to maintain our position, much less increase it, and we shall certainly find ourselves in a very difficult position when primarily the British on the one hand and the whole of E.F.T.A. on the other hand seek and finally reach accommodation with the Six Common Market countries. There is nothing in this Budget to do that and in that respect also the Budget is entirely inappropriate to our needs.
In regard to agriculture, the Budget boasts of larger herds. I referred this House already to a seemingly obvious and self-evident fact. You cannot have larger herds of cattle unless they are produced in the ordinary natural way. The only way in which our breeding stocks can be increased is by more and more in-calf heifers being taken into the herds year by year. There is nothing in this Budget to meet the catastrophic fall of 11.9 per cent. in the number of our in-calf heifers in the January, 1961, enumeration compared with the January, 1960, enumeration The decrease of some 26,000 in the in-calf heifers is one of the results perhaps—rather than the resulting factor—of the stagnation that there has been and is likely to be— notwithstanding what is prognosticated in Economic Development—in our cattle population in the years ahead.
Altogether, even allowing for the increase in cows, there is a substantial reduction this year in our breeding stock. If that reduction had been the other way around, if there had been an increase in in-calf heifers and a decrease in cows, I should have said that the Minister was entitled to the view that the decrease in our cow population was because of the scheme for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis and that we should not be unduly worried because when that scheme had come to full maturity and achieved its object the position would cure itself. But that is not the position. It is the other way around.
The in-calf heifer is not the type one would expect to see reduced by the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. The cow population is very slightly up. The in-calf heifer population is very heavily down. Even if what the Minister could do to relieve that situation in the Budget had been small, some gesture towards it would have been invaluable from a psychological point of view and some gesture towards it which could assist those who would be involved in appreciating the dangers there might be if that decrease were not arrested would have made this Budget far more appropriate.
In relation to the capital Budget, too, I notice that in the programme of capital expenditure in the current year a sum of £3½ million is being made available for the Industrial Credit Company, Limited, of which £300,000 is being found by them out of their own internal resources and £3,200,000 is to be found for them out of public funds. I have heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce say on various occasions that the moneys made available through or by the Industrial Credit Company were not in fact public moneys at all. That is nonsense. The Industrial Credit Company is merely the conduit pipe through which the Government of the day makes available public funds for the development of industry.
I suggest to the Minister for Finance as the person responsible for the purse strings in that regard that he should seriously consider splitting the functions of the Industrial Credit Company as at present operated into two separate divisions. Let us consider as one thing the ordinary commercial facilities of a commercial lending house. Those are what we considered—all of us in this House and outside— were the primary aims, objects and functions of the company but in recent years it has been utilised by the Government in two instances for a different function, not to carry out the ordinary commercial lending of that sort but to carry out direct Government subvention.
I am not arguing in relation to this whether the Government are right or wrong in determining that certain work had to be done but I think it is farcical to think that when the Industrial Credit Company in doing something that may be entirely necessary in the national interest, as in this case, it is doing it on an ordinary commercial basis. Speaking here earlier, I made quite clear that I accept at once that in relation to the termination of the G.N.R. system something had to be done, something radical in regard to the Dundalk railway works and the disemployment that would follow the closing there, but it was entirely wrong that it should be done by means of a company that pretends to be commercial, pretends to be making commercial loans when in fact it was to be done as a matter—if you like—of national salvage. It was right that something should be done to salvage the employment position that arose there but to suggest that the operation was an ordinary commercial one as the Minister for Industry and Commerce has frequently done is just nonsense.
The losses in relation to that operation so far—if any Deputy wishes to go down to the Company's office to look it up—are £350,000 of public funds. I suggest to the Minister that it would have been more appropriate to come to the House and to have asked the House for a Vote for the necessary funds to meet the unusual situation that arose rather than attempt to cover up something under the guise of being a commercial transaction when in fact obviously it was not. We shall have other opportunities of discussing in detail the situation that has given rise to the loss of £350,000, but it arose primarily because of the obstinacy of the present Taoiseach in insisting on putting in charge of that particular operation a person who had already been found out long ago as being far too dictatorial and incompetent to run any business concern in an adequate manner.
It would be far better for the public conscience if the two types of job that the Industrial Credit Company are at present being asked to do were segregated into different categories so that those who wish to study what is being done would know the correct facts. The Industrial Credit Company accounts and their whole capital structure are completely overbalanced and thrown out of balance by the Dundalk operation and the Verolme Dockyard Board, financed by the Industrial Credit Company as if they were ordinary moneys made available for ordinary commercial industries.
We have had some discussions on other occasions about national income. It is a fact that the national income as such, when computed by our statisticians, does not take into account the amount of increased bank advances but we all know that increased capital works at any time have their reflection in increased spending and is therefore reflected by an increase in national income when there has been an increase, for example, in bank advances or hire purchase debt. The increase that there has been in hire purchase debt is alarming some people at present. Whether it is wise or unwise depends to a great extent on what type of hire purchase debt is being incurred. If it is on consumer or near-consumer goods it can be very hurtful and harmful to the whole economy; if, on the other hand, there is an increase in hire purchase debt for the purpose of providing greater and better production it is a good thing, but unfortunately our type of statistical analysis is not as complete or as up-to-date as we would wish if we were to realise exactly what is happening.
I dislike the phrase the Minister used in his Budget speech in regard to housebuilding. It is typical of the sneering attitude that some people wish to take towards housing. They point to Germany and how the German people did not bother about improving their housing conditions until after they had improved their economic production. The position here was entirely different. If we had not improved our housing then, we would not have had any personnel to carry out further production; they would have gone. The Germans had not got the facility of emigration; on the contrary they had a continuous inflow of emigrants, escapees and refugees from Eastern Germany. We would have been denuded of all our working personnel if we had not first of all improved housing conditions for them.
The manner in which the Minister boasts of the reduction in moneys provided for housing in this Budget is an entirely wrong approach to that problem. I am not quite clear even yet whether the statistical analysis of the national income takes into account any increased figure for the improvement in housing conditions. I know that up to a couple of years ago it did not and it was one of the indicators which showed that no movement forward had been achieved in that respect.
There are some technical matters in this Budget which it would be more desirable perhaps to discuss on the Finance Bill rather than on the Budget itself, but there is one matter to which I want to refer now. The Minister stated he would tighten up the stamp duty arrangements in relation to purchases by non-nationals. Frankly, I do not think taxation is the right way to deal with that problem at all. I think it should be dealt with in another way, and the first step in that way is the Bill we have tabled here and which will be discussed tomorrow or the next day. If the Minister approaches this problem from a tax basis I hope that, when he is framing his Finance Bill, he will make that taxation watertight.
In the past there have been far too many instances in which certain people were prepared to sign questionable certificates for the purpose of getting away with the three per cent. stamp duty. Others were not prepared to do that. Certificates were completed in cases which, in my opinion, were not appropriate at all. The purchase by a non-national of a pre-1947 company, a proceeding which the Minister has stated he will prevent, represents only a fraction of the cases that have occurred in the last two years. In the case of a purchase by a non-national through a pre-1947 company, the certificate incorporated in the deed, and certified by the parties and, therefore, inferentially by the solicitor for the purchasers, was a true certificate certifying it was a purchase of a pre-1947 company. It was a true certificate.
The other type of case to which I refer is the case in which certain Irish citizens took up shares in post-1947 companies and, having taken up those shares, they then entered into a type of option agreement with a non-national under which they would hold 51 per cent. of the share capital and would not sell it except with the consent of the non-national. That procedure to my mind made the Irish national a trustee for the non-national and was completely contrary to the terms of the certificate included in the deed. There were many cases in which solicitors who would not lend themselves to that type of evasion lost their clients to other solicitors who would. I am not criticising the other solicitors. They thought they were right. Those of us who thought it was not right said firmly and flatly that we would not do it. We all know cases where people who wanted that done went elsewhere.
In so far as the Minister is coping with this problem by a system of taxation, I hope he will cope with it by a system which will be completely rigid and which will make certain that there cannot be that type of evasion in the future. When the Finance Bill comes before the House I shall bend my mind to amending the Bill, should that be necessary, to making it clear that it will be the same for everybody and to ensuring that such cases as have arisen in the last two years will not arise in the future. When I say the last two years, I am not criticising the Minister. The problem arose only in the last two years. Some people have been prepared to lend their names to the kind of certificates I have described. Others very properly have not.
It would be wrong not to say something about P.A.Y.E. on this Budget. It is quite clear from the returns given to me by the Minister that a great deal of the buoyancy in income tax revenue arises from P.A.Y.E. An immense amount of trouble has been taken by employers throughout the country to master the intricacies of the new system. I think they deserve to be congratulated. The system has meant more trouble and expense than many realised it would when the Act was being passed. It has meant more trouble, more difficulty and more expense than the Minister suggested it would entail when he was introducing the system.
It would be helpful if the Minister would give an estimate of the amount the Revenue Commissioners think will be provided in the current year by P.A.Y.E. taxation. It would help us to make a comparison with the figure for the last half of the financial year just ended. We could judge whether the system is operating fairly and justly. While employers are perhaps somewhat aggrieved because of the amount of trouble, difficulty and expense to which they have been put by the introduction of this system, they have nothing but praise for the manner in which they have been helped over their difficulties and for the attitude adopted generally by the Revenue Commissioners.
In so far as one can understand the Minister's speech he has now apparently abandoned any prospect of being able to curb, much less reduce, the Civil Service machine. When he came in in 1957, with all the attributes of the new broom, he said he would ensure there would be a new system, a system of rationalisation, and that system of rationalisation would mean great savings and substantial benefit. He tells us now that he is sorry that there is no prospect of that, no prospect of his being able to fulfil his hopes. But that is only one of three things in this Budget in which the Minister is now going back. He is going back, as Deputy Crotty said, in relation to the lime subsidy, retrieving the error he made before; he is going back in relation to the farm building grants, retrieving the error he made in abolishing the double byre grant as an incentive in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis.
In both these cases it is at least satisfactory that the sinner is doing penance, but it would have been far more satisfactory if there were no necessity for him to do penance. If he had left the transport subsidy as it was, we would have had more lime on our land in the last couple of years and if he had not, with his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, abolished the double incentive of farm building grants tied in with the eradication of bovine tuberculosis, we might have progressed even more in that very necessary scheme.
Other speakers have mentioned the breach of faith by the Minister in consolidating permanently into our whole customs code and protective tariffs the special import levies. I remember the debates here in March, 1956, and July, 1956, in relation to the special import levies. It was stated categorically by the then Opposition that we intended to keep them as permanent levies and that, of course, Fianna Fáil on the other hand, if they were there, would not do so but would remit them as soon as they got the opportunity. I am not criticising them alone for having broken their promise in that respect. I think it is a great mistake that the declared intention of any Government in relation to a thing like that should be slithered over and reneged upon. It means that a weapon which might be necessary in the future —if the terms of trade, for example change unfavourably against us—is gone because of the manner in which the Minister has coped with the situation.
I asked a question in relation to the terms of trade recently. It is a thing which I want to stress again this evening. The Taoiseach's answer was that if in 1960 the terms of trade had remained as they were in February, 1957, we would not have had last year a balance on external account but a deficit of £28.8 million, or call it £29,000,000. That deficit of £29,000,000 arose notwithstanding the fact that the terms of trade had worsened by some two per cent. on the year before. If the terms of trade had remained as they were in 1957, in the years 1958, 1959 and 1960, instead of having a balance on our external account in those years—and I am quite prepared to accept that there was a balance in actual fact over those years—we would have had not a balance, but a deficit of some £85,000,000 in three years.
I do not know whether the Minister is right, I do not know whether the Taoiseach is right, when they are gambling, as they are now, on the terms of trade remaining favourable to this country. Both say there is no danger whatever in our international balance of payments situation. If the terms of trade were to shift, not merely back to where they were in 1957, but were to shift half way towards it, we would be running a deficit of the order of about £20,000,000 per annum. It is, of course, lucky not only for the country but for the Government that there has been that shift in international prices in a way which facilitates and benefits this country so much, but I wonder are we right to gamble as the Government are gambling on its remaining the same?
The other night I was talking to an industrialist who most certainly has never supported Fine Gael and his view was that the dangerous situation ahead was a shift against us in international prices, but there is nothing in this Budget to provide an incentive to our people to be prepared to meet such a shift. There is nothing in this Budget by way of incentive to our people to enable them to gear themselves in readiness for such a shift, just as there is nothing in this Budget to enable our people to gear themselves for the merger of the Six Common Market Countries and the Seven in the European Free Trade Association.
Those are some of the reasons I think this Budget has been a failure and has been completely inappropriate. It has been a failure too because it has not lived up to the promises made by the Taoiseach when he was bidding for office in the 1957 General Election. It has been a failure also because in its economic survey it does not provide, or show that there will be provided, anything like the 100,000 jobs he promised in 1956, the 100,000 jobs that were to be provided not in the distant future but year by year at the rate of 20,000 a year so that at the end of a five year period of Government by Fianna Fáil there would be 100,000 new jobs. None of those is to be seen; instead we see a reference by the Minister for Finance in his speech that the most he could conjure up would be an increase of 5,000 in relation to new industries without at the same time taking account of those who might be going out of work or those who have gone out of work since he took office.
The figures have been mentioned by other people and I do not propose to dwell on them overmuch, except to state that there are now some 50,000 fewer people at work than the day the Minister for Finance went over to sit on that bench. As far as I can gather from Deputies in Fianna Fáil, and particularly from the speech made by Deputy Gilbride, there has not been any emigration. They would be well advised to read the statement of their own Minister for Finance who, when talking on the Budget, agreed with our contention that over the last five years it would be seen that unfortunately emigration has been extremely heavy.
It is sometimes extraordinary the way the Deputies behind the Minister, who are supposed to be supporting him, fail to pay him the compliment of reading his speeches so that when they are speaking they would not be contradicting what he has been saying. It is a fact, of course, he has acknowledged in his Budget speech that there has been a substantial amount of emigration. At Column 657 he said:
When the results of the 1961 census are available, we are likely to find that emigration was heavy in the past five years.
I agree, unfortunately, with the Minister.
What has been the effect of that emigration? The effect of it has been that the smaller towns and villages in rural Ireland have been worst hit but, in addition, the deadweight debt per capita is increasing and we are facing the situation in which substantial parts of the country are being denuded, denuded in a frightening way. Yet, I do not see any signs of realisation by the Government that that is happening, much less direct measures designed to prevent it or to meet the situation in future.
I do not propose this evening to recapitulate the things I said when speaking immediately after the Budget or on the radio in my criticism of the Minister then. Suffice it to say that now, on greater reflection, I think, even more so, that I was right in those criticisms, right in my criticisms of the Budget in so far as its appropriateness to the economic needs of our country at the present time is concerned, right in relation to the manner in which it will be received and judged by the people as a whole.
We have in this Budget, as the Minister himself opined, the last Budget before the general election. We have in it no sign of any incentive towards future progress in the economy. We have no sign of any thought being given to the manner in which we can meet the threat and the competition of the merger of Europe as an economic unity. We have little chance in it of ensuring that there will be a development by Irish companies when the main concession given in this Budget is a concession given in such a way that people whose money is invested outside the country benefit more than the people who are producing and working to produce more for and in the country.
For about two years now, we have been hearing speeches from Ministers indicating their belief that there was a new spirit of optimism abroad, that the people had left depression behind them, that the economy was buoyant and that all the hopes were that the nation was now on the high road to success and prosperity. If all these statements were true then one would expect that the Government, having been four years in office and about to face the electorate, would come in here with a Budget which not only measured up to the situation of today but which would give some evidence that they intended to fulfil the promises they made to the people at the last election. My complaint about this Budget is that it fails completely to fulfil the Government's promises but, more seriously, that in the face of a situation in which time is against us, this Budget fails lamentably to measure up to the needs of the situation today.
Let us see what the Budget does. Let us give the Budget credit for all the things it does. Some social welfare benefits have been increased. The increase to old age pensioners is 1/6d. per week, approximately 2½d. per day. That is the buoyancy and the high road to prosperity as seen by Ministers when it comes to helping the unfortunate old age pensioner. Income tax has been reduced in certain instances, but anybody who takes the trouble to make the calculation knows that the income tax reductions are quite insignificant. In the case of, let us say, a carpenter or other type of tradesman whose take-home pay is approximately £11 per week, the income tax reduction means 4½ per week, but he is going to pay a penny extra on every packet of cigarettes he buys. The person with an income of £3,000 per annum does not get a reduction of 4½d. a week in income tax. For him, the reduction is £2 10s. 0d. per week.
I make that contrast in order to show the Government's shifting values when it comes to comparing the position of the ordinary skilled worker with that of the person having an income of £3,000 per annum. As I said, the community who permit themselves the privilege and solace of smoking will pay an extra penny on the packet of cigarettes and an increased price for tobacco for the next 12 months at least. These are the benefits of the Budget. I put them down deliberately so that one can make a calculation. I put these on the credit side. Now we can have a look at the debit side.
When this Government took office in 1957, the cost of living index figure was 135; it is now 149, an increase of 14 points in the four years from mid-February, 1957 to mid-February, 1961. That increase of 14 points has had a very substantial effect on and has been of very substantial disadvantage for persons on low rates of income or static incomes. Those who feel it worst of all are those in the social welfare classes or persons who have to depend on home assistance or other forms of charity to enable them to keep body and soul together. If one looks at the cost of living consumer price index, one finds that of 200 commodities which make up the index, about 150 have increased in price over the past four years. Everybody knows, of course, that the Government have completely abandoned any control so far as prices are concerned. It does not matter what you make now, you can fix your own price for it and if you can sell it at that price, the equity or justice of the price does not matter. Whether you are a miller charging higher prices for your produce or an insurance company charging higher rates of insurance, any of these things can now be done without the slightest demur, so far as the governmental organisation is concerned.
A question was asked the other day in the House to ascertain the price of three staple commodities in 1957 and in 1961. The official answer was that in February 1957, a lb. of butter cost 3/8¾d. and that in February 1961, it cost 4/6¾d.; a 2lb. loaf in February 1957, cost 9d. and now costs 1/3½d.; a stone of flour in February, 1957, cost 4/2½d.; it now costs 8/2½d. Take these three articles alone. Deputies will realise the extent to which they enter into the domestic budgets of the ordinary man and woman around the country, the wage earner, the small farmer, the old age pensioner, that large mass of people who have nothing to insulate them against rises of that kind in their domestic budgets. They have had to bear all these increases since 1957 under this Government.
To that must be added what the Government did in the 1957 Budget when they saved, by the abolition of the food subsidies, approximately £9,000,000 and increased taxation by additional taxes on beer, spirits, tobacco and other commodities. If you place this Budget against the things which have been done over the past four years, it will be seen that there is no evidence of restitution for the action which has been taken against the community. There is no evidence here, even some months before the general election, that the Government are going to undo what they did at the time the food subsidies were abolished or that they are going to take any steps to adjust or control prices in order to bring price levels back to what they were when the Government took office.
The Minister for Transport and Power, in one of these frequent mathematical calculations which he makes, gave the impression that everything in the garden is lovely, that the only real danger is that one of these days the country, without knowing it, certainly without any advance notice, may be flooded with milk and honey. If there is all that milk and honey flowing about, if there is all that buoyancy and all that prosperity, one is tempted to ask why are the Government so meagre and stingy in the distribution of benefits to those sections of the community whose economic plight is such that benefits would be very welcome to them indeed?
To look at even this year, because of the fact that we had a bad harvest last year, the consumer of bread and flour is compelled to pay for that bad harvest, compelled to pay a guaranteed price to the miller for taking in defective wheat. That was done by increasing the price of bread and flour to the consumer. That device was resorted to, although it must have been known to everybody that the heaviest burden was being put on backs least capable of bearing it. Against the claims which have been made that this is a heaven-sent Budget which could only be introduced by this Government, I want to offer these facts to the community so that they may have a sober appreciation of the sacrifices they have already made and how insignifiant and microscopic is the return for what they have suffered.
It has always been accepted that a Budget is an instrument of Government economic policy, that through the medium of a Budget, one can establish the economic course of the nation and at the same time, weave from that economic life a social pattern of whatever kind is conceived to be best for the nation. I want to look at this Budget from the standpoint of what it proposes to do as an instrument of national policy, with particular reference to what it proposes to do in respect of unemployment, in respect of employment and in respect of emigration, which of course is fed and fertilised by the fact that we failed to solve our unemployment problem and thus provided the motive power for the continued large-scale emigration.
Let us look at the unemployment situation. I do not have to rely on my own figures or my own calculations. Let me take this book called Economic Statistics compiled by the Central Statistics Office and issued under the authority of the Taoiseach's Office. According to the information on page 22, Table 7, there were in June, 1956, 409,000 males engaged in farm work. By June, 1960, the number had fallen to 383,000; in other words, between June, 1956, and June, 1960, there were 26,000 persons fewer employed on the land, land being agricultural work. If agricultural work is taken in a wider concept to include forestry and fishing, the same Table shows that, in 1956, there were 445,000 persons employed in agriculture, fishing and forestry and that that number has fallen to 413,000, a reduction of 32,000, between 1956 and 1960. This represents an alarming fall in the number of persons on the land.
It is noticeable that many things —the continued mechanisation on the land, the introduction of tractors, the continued growth of mechanical operations, the introduction of the reaper and binder and combine harvester— have helped to reduce employment on the land. In many respects, this is a development which is not confined to Ireland. It operates in other countries, but with this exception, that in many of the other countries where this operates, the displaced agricultural worker can get alternative employment making the machines which have displaced him on the land. The agricultural worker who is displaced here is employed by the agricultural manufacturing firms of Britain, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.
The result of that is that while we might be able to look on understandingly at a movement from the land into the factory which makes machines for the land in this country, there is no such movement from the land into the agricultural machinery factory. The movement is from the land to the emigrant ship, to Britain into an agricultural machinery factory to make there the mechanical apparatus which has deprived the Irish agricultural worker of his opportunity of earning his living on Irish land. This situation would be bad in any circumstances, if we failed to provide alternative employment or work ancillary to farm work, but we cannot even provide an opportunity for work in respect of any other kind of employment.
If we turn to Table 16 on page 27 of Economic Statistics, we find the estimated number of persons in the main branches of non-agricultural economic activity set out. The Table shows that, in 1955, 726,000 persons were engaged in non-agricultural economic activity. In 1960, that number had fallen to 699,000. In other words, there was a reduction of 27,000 persons. There we have the picture with all the stubbornness these figures contain. There was a fall of 32,000 between 1936 and 1960 in agriculture, forestry and fishing, and a fall of 27,000 between 1955 and 1960, in non-agricultural employment.
That is a serious situation. It is a situation which does not concern only the Labour Party. It concerns the Government Party, the Fine Gael Party, and every thinking citizen up and down the country. On our ability to solve that problem, which challenges the very economic existence of the nation, depends the standard of living of our people not merely to-day and in the years to come, but it may well determine the standard of living of the Irish people for many and many a year to come.
I raise that matter not to impute blame to the Government as such. I think all Governments have been to blame over the past forty years. This problem of emigration has been with us too long. Serious though it is, however, we can produce a change if all Parties will unite, and if we develop a healthy and vigorous public opinion that, no matter what the cost, steps must be taken to solve this problem of emigration if the whole nation is to survive. We had hoped, of course, that after the last general election, judging by the promises made by the Government, we would see an end to unemployment and an end to emigration.
I have quoted before—I do not want to quote it at length again, but for the purpose of the record and for the benefit of those who might not have heard it, I want to quote again—from the famous pamphlet issued by the Fianna Fáil Party in Cork before the last election under the world-shaking heading: "Fianna Fáil plans the end of emigration." There is a subtitle which says: "Quick action needed to avert national disaster." It goes on with the usual boastful lead-in, and then we come to this part:
"The full employment proposals recently announced by Fianna Fáil show how the Party intend to deal with the problem of emigration by providing work for our own people at home."
That is followed in heavy type by:
"The Fianna Fáil plan proposes an increase over five years in the number of new jobs by 100,000. This would result in full employment and the end of abnormal emigration."
There is a promise. Fianna Fáil had a plan. It had to be put in operation quickly. It was released so that the simpletons around the country could believe that Fianna Fáil would provide 100,000 jobs in five years. That was February, 1957. In February, 1961, one would imagine that, even if the 100,000 jobs had not been provided, say, 80,000 would have been provided, since we are four-fifths of the way through the period. Does anyone believe that any additional jobs have been provided?
I have quoted from a book of statistics and compared 1955 and 1960. In agricultural employment, there are 32,000 fewer persons and in non-agricultural employment there are 27,000 fewer persons, showing, of course, that this pamphlet did the job it was intended to do. It was intended to collar seats for Fianna Fáil. It succeeded in doing that, but not a single new job has been provided. Instead, the number of people in employment is less now than it was before this Government took office. There is no indication—certainly there is none in this Budget—that the Government have any proposals to produce a spectacular change from the drift which exists to-day.
I want now to pass to emigration because it is the cause of the Government's failure to keep the Cork promise of 100,000 new jobs in five years and because of their failure to arrest the fall in employment in agricultural and non-agricultural occupations that we have with us the serious problem of emigration. I understand Deputy Gilbride said this evening that he did not think there was any emigration at all. Let us see the figures. I asked a question in the Dáil recently about the population of the State in 1956 and in 1960. I was told that the total population of the State based on the returns of the census taken on 8th and 9th of April, 1956, was 2,898,000 and that the population in April, 1960 was 2,834,000. In other words, the population in April, 1960, was 64,000 less than it was in 1956.
That is not all. The population has fallen by 64,000 but we have lost as well the entire natural increase in our population for each of those years. Every excess of births over deaths has gone in emigration, and on top of that, we exported another 64,000 to keep them company. Does anyone now doubt that our emigration has been travelling in the vicinity of approximately 50,000 people per year in the past four years? It must be a source of infinite solace to Deputy Gilbride's conscience that he did not know a single one of those 200,000 emigrants.
He said no such thing, of course.
That is the substance of what he said. In case he might slip up again, I should like to refer him to a reliable source of information.
Any old statement at all would do the Deputy.
In Britain, there is an official organisation known as the British Oversea Migration Board. Some short time ago, they published a report on the question of emigration. That report assumed considerable importance because at the time the possibility was being canvassed that there might be restrictions on immigrants into Britain from some overseas countries, including Ireland. The report says:
National insurance data showed that of the total of 177,000 immigrants from all sources, 64,000 were from the Republic in 1959, against 58,000 in 1958.
In order to get a picture of the extent of this haemorrhage of human beings, we can contrast our exports of human beings to Britain with those of other countries. This report goes on to say that emigration to Britain in that same period from independent Commonwealth countries was 35,000, from British colonies 30,000, and from foreign countries 45,000. We sent more emigrants to Britain than all the countries of the British Commonwealth and all the British colonies. More folk went from this country as emigrants than from all the countries outside the British Commonwealth. These figures do not include non-working persons so that young children are not taken into account.
The report goes on to say that there is a two-way flow of people, some going over for a certain period and then coming back again. I take it that that referred to the agricultural workers who go across to the beet fields of the east coast. Later, the report goes on to say:
We are advised that the figures for the first six months of 1960 show a total of 105,000, which is an increase of 45,000 over the corresponding period of 1959.
At that stage, the emigration figures were continuing to rise. We have, in those figures, a story of the disintegration by emigration, a saga of extinction as far as our loss of population is concerned. There is no indication in the Budget that the special steps which were promised in 1957 to end emigration have been taken.
Here we have not only emigration from the rural areas into the towns, but emigration from the towns to Britain, and from the cities to Britain. The wholesale emigration from the rural areas to Britain is a matter that has compelled members of the Hierarchy and those concerned with sociological problems to make comments as to the necessity of grappling with a serious situation of this kind. No matter what attempts might be made to put a gloss on the causes of emigration, to excuse it by saying that the Celt has a rambling foot or that he is venturesome, you should talk to the ordinary fellow on the emigrant ship or on the trains to London or other parts of England and he will tell you that it is not wanderlust. He will say that he is going through economic necessity, that he is going either because he cannot live on the lower rate of pay, or on no employment, or on intermittent employment or because he hopes to make a better living elsewhere.
Unless we can provide work for these classes of persons and raise their living standards, emigration is going to continue. I see no reason why a person should live for the short span of human life a poverty-stricken existence, if he can provide for himself and his wife and family a decent life elsewhere. If the nation declines to discharge its responsibility to the citizen, the citizen has very little responsibility to the nation. As long as the nation makes no serious effort to provide employment and decent standards of living for the citizen, that citizen has very little responsibility to the nation that has treated him with such systematic and sustained indifference.
If we are to solve problems such as the emigration problem, it can be done only by providing employment, by raising the living standards of our people, especially the standards of living of the agricultural community and particularly of the agricultural worker. Nobody can expect agricultural workers to live on present day wages and maintain their wives and families at a time when the post-war pound is worth less than 7/6d. If evidence be needed of the large scale on which this country is providing a marshalling yard in human life, it is to be found in the advertisements in our papers. Even the Government papers contain advertisements advising our people to emigrate. No doubt a substantial revenue is raised from these advertisements, all for the purpose of saying to our people that there is employment for them in Britain when they cannot find employment to sustain themselves here.
We can do one of two things. The first it to let things drift as they have been drifting, to let emigration continue, in the hope that, in ten years time, there will be a job for everybody who is left, a job of a kind. Every country which has had experience of that kind of thing knows that the remedy is not in a small population, is not in having one man tied to a job. All the small countries in the world and all the developing countries have found that a small population is not a remedy for economic difficulties. They have resorted to inviting people to come in as a way of building up their economy, of producing more wealth and becoming an adult member of the comity of nations instead of being an international Peter Pan, subject to the pity and interested comments of the rest of the world.
The second course is to take steps to stop emigration. So that the choice before us today is either to stop emigration and build up the nation as it was envisaged in the Proclamation of 1916, as it was envisaged by those who fought between those years and 1921 or give up the struggle and allow our people to find a living anywhere they can. I am afraid that we are drifting along that despairing line. We find emigration such an easy salve for unemployment that there is no use in our trying to put an end to it. We are beginning to give up the struggle. These figures from the British Report, the figures about the number of British insurance cards issued to Irish emigrants, the scenes you can see every night at the North Wall, Dún Laoghaire and every passenger port in the country, are terrifying testimony to what we are losing in the way of human population.
It seems to me we can end that only by a two-fold thrust in the field of industry by endeavouring to expand still more rapidly our production and exports. I welcome and regard as joyous news the fact that our industrial exports are expanding. I take pride in the fact that I was associated in a very special way with the pioneering efforts —and they were pioneering efforts at one stage, no matter what people may say now—to try to get acceptance of the idea of a reduction in income tax for firms which would go into the export market with their products over and above a datum year. I saw in that the only hope of inducing people to go into the export market.
I think these inducements have worked in making people realise the benefits of exports. In consequence, we have got the benefits of increased production and, to some extent, of increased employment at home, although it is cancelled by losses of employment in other directions. We cannot emphasise too vehemently the necessity for continued industrial expansion in every possible sector. That field alone offers the best prospect of an increase in our opportunities for employment and in the building up of our exports in other markets.
In the field of agriculture, I see nothing on the horizon at all, except one item, which offers prospects for agriculture. The most heartening news the small farmer and the agricultural industry generally have received is the announcement to-day by the Irish Sugar Company that they intend to go into this method of quick freezing and dehydration of foodstuffs on a scale which, because they are pioneers, may well get them markets in all parts of the world. There is no use offering high prices, even for cattle, to the small farmer. His land will not rear them. He is incapable of taking advantage of them.
There is no use telling him of the advantages being made available for the large farmer. He can never capitalise on those advantages. What you have got to do is to make him, as the Sugar Company propose doing, a grower of a whole variety of small products of that kind. Give him the seed, the fertilisers and a guaranteed price and get the stuff into the big markets—process it and get rid of it in the markets of the world. In that way, and in that way only, can the small farmer be provided with any prospect. But to tell him he can buy fertiliser at £1 a ton to put on a dozen acres of land and to expect him to produce animals off it that will earn him a decent livelihood is to make a mockery of his suffering.
The plain fact shows that, over a period of about 30 years, the volume of output in the agricultural industry has increased by about 12 per cent. If you deliberately tried to slow it down, you could hardly have slowed it down more successfully than that. Unless we try to get in the future other methods than those we have used in the past, we shall continue to have a stagnant agricultural industry. I see no hope for the small farmer and no hope for a fresh appraisal of our agricultural potential other than the steps which the Sugar Company are taking to process and market fruit, vegetables and certain meat stuffs, which they can sell in the markets of the world and for which we have a climate, a labour force and a fertility of land that ought to ensure the success of an enterprise of that kind.
Recently, I have seen references of a kind to the fact that a number of people are coming into this country from outside and establishing industries and that they are getting certain advantages here. That is inevitable in a small country such as this. So far as I am concerned, I am strongly in favour of it, so long as the object is not to allow the foreigner in to compete in a cut-throat way with an Irish industry and so long as the main purpose behind his coming here is to produce something we do not produce ourselves or produce for the export market. Subject to these two guarantees, I think it is a good line. I advocated it in other years, when it was the subject of much criticism by the present Government Party. I was told by no less a person than the Minister for External Affairs that if you allow these foreigners to invest in this country, you are really selling out the country to them.
Since then the Government's policy has undergone a metamorphosis. They now give you the impression that they are the authors of this scheme, that it first fertilised in their minds and that nobody else thought of it until they did. But if you read the speeches of the members of the Opposition Party when I was Minister for Industry and Commerce, you will find that many criticisms were levelled against the invitation I issued to these European and American industrialists to come here to make commodities, the manufacture of which was unknown to us, and to bring here with them capital and, above all, technical know-how so that we could build up industry here for our people.
I felt then, as I feel now, that it is better to have an Irishman working in Ireland, even with a foreign firm, than have him working with some firm in a foreign land completely separated from his own family. I hope this momentum will increase and that more and more people will realise the benefits we have to offer here, that in Ireland we have stable Government, intelligent labour, available man-power and a geographical position which offers excellent facilities for exports, certainly to the European markets and, without serious handicap, to the markets of the world.
I should like to pass from that to one other matter, and that is the existence in Europe of two rival trade blocs. During the past few days there has been a rumour in London to the effect that the British Government have made up their minds that they will accept in principle joining the European Economic Community, subject to certain safeguards in respect of Commonwealth countries and agricultural produce. If that is so, it is an important development as far as this country is concerned. There may be no justification for the rumour at this moment, but I think Britain has realised, particularly in the last twelve months, that if she is going to have any association with Europe in the creation of a political and economic policy, she will have that association through E.E.C.
Judging by speeches made by British Ministers, it looks as if we are not far away from a decision by the British to join the European Economic Community. It is a necessity for Britain as a political development and as an economic development as well. If Britain does that, there is virtually nothing we can do, short of complete economic isolation, except do the same. Britain, by being a member of E.E.C., is going to be compelled to impose tariffs against us as other members of the group must impose tariffs against their former friends.
That is a new situation confronting Irish industry. Beyond an occasional speech at a banquet, I see no serious effort being made here to indicate to industrialists the danger of this situation for Irish industry. I hear gallant words about our being able to meet the challenge and about our adjusting ourselves to meet the challenge. Let this be a sobering thought: when this was first mooted, the Department of Industry and Commerce, after a close survey of the situation, came to the conclusion that 60,000 people would lose their jobs in industries which could not stand up at that time to the competition from a Free Trade Area.
If we had to compete with any of the countries on the Continent of Europe in a number of the industries in which they participate, our chances of survival would be extremely poor indeed. These are highly-developed industries, where they have 50 firms making the one commodity and our people could not afford to withstand the competition of a group of that kind while we are producing here for a small home market with the high overhead costs that go hand in hand with producing for small markets.
Somebody told me the other day that there was a seminar in Killarney on avoiding the spread of Parkinson's Disease in embroidery or some subject of that kind far removed from reality. I would urge the Government that a lot of these industrialists ought to be brought to a conference and held at it for a month to discuss this whole business. Let somebody tell them of the dangers confronting them and what steps they must take to meet this challenge. Someone with a realistic mind should tell them that in future they have got to sell their goods on the British market and elsewhere purely on the basis of quality and in face of severe competition. They must be told that their goods will have no value whatsoever to the people who will be buying them, unless the goods we hope to export are of high quality.
Nothing sufficient is being done to inform the industrialists of this country of the danger in which they stand. There is no evidence of anybody being detailed to appraise the situation for the industrialists. The speeches I hear on the subject leave me cold and the authors of some of the speeches leave me colder still. The Government might well realise that not for 40 years has there been such a challenge to the economic viability of this. State as is represented in the development of the two trade groups in Europe and that that situation will become all the more difficult and all the more dangerous for us, if Britain goes into the European Economic Community and we are compelled, through sheer necessity, to follow her in order to keep whatever trade contracts we have with her and the other countries of the European Economic Community, tenuous and slender though they may be. Valuable time is being lost, and time becomes more valuable every day, in our not taking the necessary steps to warn these people of what is coming and to try to get them to brace themselves by actual deeds and not by a display of heroics for meeting such a dangerous situation.
I said at the outset that I thought this Budget failed to measure up to what was demanded of it today, that it is in no sense adequate to the situation confronting the country in the fields of emigration, unemployment and employment and that it does nothing whatsoever to meet the challenge of the ogre of the trading conditions in Europe. However, it represents apparently the accumulation of the constructive effort of the Fianna Fáil Party for four years—a trifle to the old age pensioners and a trifle to the payers of income tax. These are to be compensations for the abolition of the food subsidies and the imposition of new taxation in 1957 and subsequent years. As a Budget, it spreads the butter very thinly on the bread for the taxpayer. He sees a bit of butter and he is induced to believe there is more there than he can see or believes is there.
It is a poor Budget, against all the speeches which have been made over the past two years. It is a poor Budget, if it is to be accepted as a measure of the buoyancy and the prosperity towards which we were told we were riding by Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government. The Budget fails to appreciate the necessities of the times and represents a monument to the failure of the Fianna Fáil Party to redeem the glittering promises they made in 1957 in order to get back to office to do what now turns out to be only a disappointing frustration.
I think the last speaker has been as long in this House as any Deputy and for as long as I can remember having an active interest in public affairs, I have been intrigued by his speeches from the Labour benches. On every occasion, they have set out to contain a plan and many people had come to believe that the Labour Party and its leader, as he then was, had the cure for all our illnesses, the panacea for all our evils, and that one day they would be unfolded to the people of Ireland.
His big opportunity was when a Coalition Government came into power and placed him in the key position of giving to this country the use of the great brain which he had threatened for so many years. He had the active support of two other members of his Party to back him up in an indispensable link with that Government. The people were sadly disillusioned. I do not have to go over the ground again. However, it was only three years and we were told that, had the time been longer, something would have fructified.
After another pause, the people of Ireland said perhaps he did not get a proper chance and they put him back in office again and, again, the master mind failed to produce one suggestion. A Deputy who can condemn everybody and who has a cure for every evil, from the question of the Common Market down to agriculture, did not produce one iota of a plan, any more than any of his colleagues.
Then the people are frustrated when, in 1961, they are again told that there is only one way of solving our problems. It is a secret method but it is there: it is available to the people of Ireland. There is a secret method of solving all our ills—put the Coalition Government back into power again. Let us not have too much of these things because the public must be frustrated at this stage. Emigration started in 1957—according to the speech we have just heard.
I said it has been with us for many years. I am sorry the Parliamentary Secretary cannot hear.
I remember being contradicted when I was on the Opposition benches when I told the then Minister for Industry and Commerce that houses were closing up and people were going abroad. What are we to gain by reminding ourselves of this time and again? The implication and insinuation always is: "You are responsible for it; if we were there, we would stop it."
Why were you mentioning it then when you were over here?
Because you went into power on the strength of doing something about it and you finished up by having more harm done than good.
One hundred thousand jobs.
You finished up by having nothing done.
Order!
There has been emigration since 1847. That does not mean to say that the position cannot be rectified, but there is no person in Ireland, outside this House, anyhow, who would for a moment think that it can be done overnight. One way would be to close the ports and refuse permission to people to go. That is a way nobody wants to adopt. Even after we can provide work for everybody, we must face the fact that there will still be a certain amount of emigration.
What we want to know is whether we are moving in the right direction. The present Budget is a good, honest indication that the foundations of an expanding economy are well and truly laid. Contrast the position with 1957. If we cast our minds back, we shall readily realise the improvement in the past four years. I have as much contact with the people of the country as anybody in this House and probably more than most. I met good, solid supporters of Fine Gael who candidly admitted: "No matter what happens, we do not want to see another period like that."
There is one absolutely essential thing to progress in any country, that is, stability of Government. Whether or not the people on the Opposition benches believe it, there was no confidence in the Government in power in this country prior to 1957. We have heard many accusations as to why we came back to office in 1957. I have been told that promises of thousands of jobs and of the solution of emigration were the cause of it. I fought that election. I fought several elections before it, like other Deputies. Nobody needed to make any promise to get a Fianna Fáil seat in 1957, unless he was a fool. The people said, in effect: "What we want is to get rid of what we have." We pointed out from our platforms time and time again that we were not making any promise, without knowing what the situation was likely to be. How right we were.
It must be very difficult to make a speech.
Nobody has ever yet tried to explain how the Coalition Government would have balanced the Budget on that occasion, had they come back to power. It is a very simple thing to say: "You got into power in 1957 but we still have emigration." People probably have a better knowledge of the intelligence of their supporters but I wonder if that is sufficient to help their confidence. I do not think it is.
Deputy Norton accused us of not telling the people more about what should be done with regard to the Common Market, if we decide to join. Listening to him, I had the feeling that the people responsible for industrialisation must be a crowd of dupes who are not capable of appraising any position for themselves. I think you can take it that in industry in this country at the moment there is a very intelligent core of hard-headed businessmen who could teach Deputy Norton and the rest of us a few things about industry, rather than that we should go out and tell them what should happen.
Deputy Norton was interested in agriculture. He did not give us his opinion about the income tax question Deputy Byrne spoke of—to tax the farmers further—in which the Labour Party have secretly been interested for a long time. Nor did he explain when he agreed with the alleviation of income tax on industry, why his colleague, now the Leader of the Labour Party, saw fit to condemn it in his speech over Radio Eireann recently when he conjured up a picture of 4½d. a week to one class and much greater relief for what he described as the wealthy class. I could only infer one thing from that statement—that he was not in agreement with the relief given to industry on super-tax. That exposes the kernel of what I have been trying to put as mildly as possible without hurting anybody's feelings—that no two members on that side of the House agree on whether the Budget is good or bad, right or wrong.
There is one thing that can be said of this Budget: it is an election Budget, not in the sense that the Opposition think it is an election Budget. It is an election Budget where the Minister has in mind the knowledge that he also will be balancing the next Budget and that he will be in a position to give even a better Budget. A Coalition election Budget is a dishonest effort to create an impression that there is something to give away that is not there and God help the man who has to meet the situation in the following Budget. That is what we have had to do on quite a few occasions. Whoever balances the Budget I hope we shall never resort to those tactics again. Let us face the situation as we find it, give what any expansion of our economy justifies and do no more and no less. If we are not able to give, let us not give.
It would be a very spectacular thing to give the old age pensioners an extra 10/- a week. In my view, there is not a single allowance paid in this country that could not justifiably be doubled. It is a great thing when you can get up in Opposition and make veiled references, or suggest by innuendo, that something should be done but when you are on this side of the House you do not do it. There is a limit to the resources available and I think the Minister has allocated them justly and honestly. One heartening thing in the Budget is that our finances are in a healthy condition. They have been handled judiciously. The outlook for the future is one of continuing improvement and I believe that by every test this must be regarded as a good Budget.
The tone of this debate has changed somewhat. When the Minister finished his Budget speech there were happy and contented smiles on the faces of his colleagues. They were under the impression that the Budget would be received with acclamation throughout the country and that all in the garden was lovely. The speech we have just heard from the very able Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance was an apologia for Fianna Fáil, a defence of the policy which the Deputies now know—having been down the country—is not being received with any enthusiasm by any section of the community. In the debates I have read, the charge has been made against this Party that we have not referred to the Budget but discussed overall policy. We are entitled to discuss overall policy because one can only judge the policy of a Government by the statement of one of its leading Ministers, the Minister for Finance.
We have been told by Ministers in the last six or seven months that economically our situation is so good that it is unparalleled in the history of the State. It is only natural to assume, in the words of the Minister himself when he spoke in the Seanad recently, that this would be a good Budget, that the country was economically sound and that they were in a position therefore to offer reliefs to the general public that they had not got before; that this was a result of four or five years of good Government. I do not propose to go into Deputy Sweetman's argument, but when the Minister sat down after his Budget speech and when happy and contented members of his Party were smiling gleefully over the Minister's statement and over the Budget, Deputy Sweetman got up and literally cut the heart out of Fianna Fáil policy. He showed that they had been loading taxation on the people unremittingly. I challenge the Minister for Finance to deny that he has imposed taxation on every section of the community and I shall get up and withdraw if he can show that there is a single section of the community on which he has not imposed taxation, whether farmers, industrialists or income-tax payers.
The Minister laughs because he can do what he likes; he has seventy per cent. of the Deputies behind him. They are there on a policy they cannot carry out—a majority the electorate gave them. After imposing taxes on every section the Minister now comes along and takes off a few pence. He gives the income tax payers 6d. or 8d., a wonderful thing for the Minister to do. The trouble is that they expected a lot more. The Minister laughs again. Of course he does, because every Minister was foolish enough to go about saying that this country was more solvent than any other in Europe, that it was better than it had ever been before, and then the Minister offers the taxpayers, who have had the life and soul blistered out of them by Fianna Fáil, 8d. in the pound as a great concession.
When the Minister came into office he produced, in his first Budget speech, £250,000 for marketing. We were to have a new look in agriculture. What the Coalition, as they described it, could not do, they would do. We could not keep the cattle trade right but they had £250,000 specially provided for them. After four years the Minister spent £36,000—would he like to deny that? He is Minister for Finance and he comes from the premier tillage county in Ireland which he and I have the honour to represent. That £36,000 was spent on commissions, not on appointing anybody who might be likely to get us markets in any countries abroad, in any of the emergent countries. It has been spent on commissions and a continuation of the same policy.
What other relief has the Minister given? Has he given the industrialists, who are particular friends of the Fianna Fáil Party, any particular relief on machinery? Has he given them any particular relief in relation to plant depreciation to ensure for them conditions parallel with those which their counterparts enjoy in other countries, countries with which we have to compete in the world markets? I could not find anything in the Budget on those lines. There are reliefs in taxation; there is relief in relation to super-tax; there is a certain relief in relation to death duties, a relief long overdue. We have been told by the Taoiseach, by the Minister for Finance, by the Minister for Transport and Power and the Minister for Industry and Commerce that we are a healthy, solvent State. In the light of that, we naturally expect a little more.
It was alleged that Deputies on this side of the House were afraid to talk about this Budget. We have in this Budget the Fianna Fáil hardy annual. We have an increase in taxation on tobacco. We are told this increase is necessary to provide more benefits. The policy of this Government has consistently been a policy of increasing taxation. The Minister may deny that. It is a perfectly accurate statement. There is greater taxation today and greater expenditure in administration than there was before the Minister took office. That is the sorry story to be told.
There is apparently no intention of making any change in policy. The Minister has put aside £1,000,000 for Supplementary Estimates. Before he sat down, and while all the Deputies of his Party were smiling over this wonderful Budget, he hastened to tell us that he does not think there will be a Supplementary Estimate. Last year, we had £14,000,000 for Supplementary Estimates. We have had Supplementary Estimates every year since this Government took office. Does not every Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party, even the most unenlightened, know perfectly well that a supplementary Budget will have to be produced after the general election?
With regard to general policy, is this House satisfied that our present economic development is sound? Let us review the position. There is an increase of 4 per cent in production. The average increase in the O.E.E.C. countries is six per cent. and some have gone as high as eight per cent. Most of these have full employment and, where there is full employment, it is difficult to increase the percentage of production. A developing country, such as we are, is more happily situated. Does the Minister think an increase of four per cent. something upon which to congratulate himself?
Judging by the reports of chamber of commerce meetings addressed by Fianna Fáil Ministers—meetings of ten to 15 people, or perhaps 50, if it should happen to be a banquet—the Government think that a four per cent. increase in production is indicative of an enormous expansion. The O.E.E.C. countries have a greater increase and they have full employment. We are told employment is improving here. The figures speak for themselves. About 7,000 have left the land and 5,900 have gone into industrial production. Is that something on which the Government can congratulate themselves?
The Minister represents the same constituency as I represent. Emigration from Wexford in the past three years has been positively appalling. He will have experience of the situation when he goes out to campaign; where he had 20 or 30 people at his meetings, he will find himself now with ten or 15. The rest have gone to England. Emigration is one of the greatest tragedies that has ever happened in this country. The people are getting fed up with all this talk about industrial expansion, about an improving economy and about our never having it so good before. We are told the balance of payments position is satisfactory and the economists proclaim the condition of the country is improving.
What does all this mean to the ordinary person? Where will he get a job? We had opportunities in Wexford of starting industries but it was impossible to hold the people because greater benefits offered elsewhere. Legislation was passed here—the Minister was not personally responsible for it—and the results of that legislation are clear for all to see. People have been unable to get employment and they have had to leave the country and seek a living elsewhere. On the other hand, money has been poured into the undeveloped areas for the purpose of starting industries. With what result? Emigration from Sligo is appalling. Emigration from Mayo is bad, as is emigration from Galway, Kerry, and all along the western seaboard. This Government have no policy apparently to check emigration.
It would not be fair to criticise the Government without giving them some indication of what they might do along certain lines. Of course, they will not have time to do anything now because they will not be in power long enough. Fundamentally, what is necessary to keep the people on the land is a good standard of living. There has been instability in agricultural marketing in the past three years. Six weeks ago, there was a rise in prices but that rise has disappeared again absolutely and completely. When the British Minister of Food comes here, I hope the Minister for Finance and his Government will be able to do something about that problem.
The economic situation has been changing over the past four years. We have seen the emergence of new nations in greater numbers than at any period in the history of the world. All the other countries of O.E.E.C. have been endeavouring to get markets in these countries. I have no evidence from travelling abroad, or from reading newspapers or economic journals, that there has been any attempt on the part of this administration to seek any new market. They seem to have based their policy on one thing and on one thing alone—and I am referring now to agriculture: the expenditure of huge sums of money on the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. If they did that and got the people to use more fertilisers, they believed they would save the Irish agricultural economy.
Does any Deputy believe that that has been a successful policy? If Wexford were an attested county— which it is not, for some reason I do not know—have we any guarantee that we would have a complete and continuous market at stabilised prices for agricultural produce? The answer is "no" because when you have sales where you have attested and unattested produce, you cannot rely on the prices and so long as you have that state of affairs, you will have emigration.
Have this Government any plans to deal with the emerging situation in Europe? There are two economic blocs. There are the “Seven”—who are now eight—known as the E.F.T.A. group and the “Six”, known as the E.E.C. Have the Government made any attempt to look for a market in those areas or have they made any attempt to move with the times? I am not suggesting they should join the “Six” or the “Seven.” I have a certain amount of knowledge in the matter but I have not got the inside information which is available to the Minister for Finance and his advisers, but I do know that in Europe to-day the E.E.C. have a purchasing power equal to that of the United States of America. I do know that in the setting up of the 20-nation group which includes Europe, North America and Canada, the “Six,” apart from representation from their own individual countries in this group, have a special representative appointed to that organisation so that overall problems of trade may be dealt with by the “Six.”
What have the Government done to meet that situation? They have appointed a representative—I think it is our Ambassador in Belgium—to deal with the E.E.C. market and there is one other official in that office. Anybody who knows anything about foreign affairs or trade knows perfectly well that one man and an assistant are not sufficient to deal with such matters. If the Government are really serious in looking for markets, they should do something about the matter.
The Minister referred to the changing situation in Europe, to the E.F.T.A. and the E.E.C., and I gather he told us he was alive to the situation. Is that the way to be alive? The Greeks, who found themselves in very much the same position as we were, were a poorer country. They did not mind admitting that they were poor. They had not got a lot of Ministers going around telling everybody how wealthy they were. They realised, with the formation of the "Six," that here was a potential market, something worth fighting for. Why did our Government not do the same? The Greeks sought an external association. They had some difficulties in procuring what they wanted and it took them a considerable period but at least they did so.
When the Minister is replying, can he tell us, on behalf of the Government, if they have done anything to try to get into this rich market, anything at diplomatic or trade level, so that we might be consolidating exports, agricultural exports in particular, which we are not sending to Britain, anything left over, and trying to send them into this rich market which is so much closer to us than the United States of America and which, as I said, has the purchasing power of the United States.
I am telling the House this because I want to show Dáil Éireann that I believe this Government have no policy. They have been over four years in office and this is the Minister's fifth Budget. He probably was not responsible for the first and he can throw the blame back on us, if he wishes. In the long economic statement which the Minister read to Dáil Éireann, there was no policy. They have no policy except to encourage foreign investors to come here, a policy largely initiated by the Government which held office before them.
They have that policy of trying to bring people in here from outside to start industries and the only other policy they have is the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. When they have eradicated bovine tuberculosis, they imagine the British will buy everything we have. That is their policy in a nutshell. The other item of policy is to balance the Budget and have what is considered by economists and bankers to be a sound economy, even though the manpower of Ireland is being exported. The best manpower and womanpower is going out of this country and if they send back money from the pay packets they earn in Birmingham or Coventry and other places, the economists are happy because the money is coming back and balancing the Budget. That is the policy of Fianna Fáil; that is the policy the Minister adumbrated to this House. I am prepared to take my chance with the rest in the general election and I can tell the Minister that no matter what the economists or bankers say about the economy being sound, as long as we are losing our manpower and have a Government such as we have, a Government without a policy, he will get his answer from the people and the sooner he gets it the better.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance referred to the importance of the members of the different Parties breaking away from the old policy of blaming the other Party. I agree with him to a certain degree, but I was surprised when I found him attacking all who did not agree with the Minister's Budget or with Fianna Fáil policy. He saw fit to criticise Deputy Norton and other members of the Labour Party. I am not speaking simply because I am a member of the Labour Party or because I am opposed to the Minister's policy or his Budget. I am speaking because I believe it is one period of the year when, if necessary, we must make an open confession and also draw attention to what we believe is either a good Budget or a bad Budget as it affects the people with whom we are directly concerned, the people in our constituencies and also the people we meet in our everyday lives.
Like Deputy Esmonde, I do not agree that we have a sound national economy. We have been told that we have a sound economy in recently published reports of banks and we have been told it by various economists. I have yet to hear of a banker or an economist signing at a labour exchange for unemployment benefit. The knowledge that these people have of how a Budget affects the people is very often confined by a narrow view.
On various occasions in this House, whether speaking as a member supporting an inter-Party Government or opposing Fianna Fáil, I have admitted that unemployment is a grave problem. The sore topic of unemployment has been discussed from all sides of the House on all occasions, whether the Government at the time were Fianna Fáil, Cumann na nGaedheal or inter-Party. We cannot get away from the fact that unemployment and emigration are anything but helpful to the people. The high rate of emigration, not merely this year but all the years back, coupled with the high rate of unemployment, is a clear answer to the banker, economist or Minister who may tell us that everything in the garden is lovely in 1961.
A great deal has been said by Deputy Norton with which I thoroughly agree and there is, therefore, no need for me to repeat what he said, but, having stressed the importance of the twin problems of unemployment and emigration, I think it well to draw attention to the booklet Economic Statistics issued in connection with the Budget. In reference to the suggestion that we have a sound balanced economy, the position shown on page 5 of the booklet is very interesting. There it is shown that, in 1960, import unit values rose by 1 per cent. and export unit values fell by 1 per cent. It must be admitted that we are running against the tide, taking the comparison between exports and imports as a basis for analysis of the sound economy about which the Minister has told us.
Wheat imports showed a drop from £8.5 million in 1959 to £3.4 million in 1960, due, not to any activity of the Government, but to an act of God, the poor harvest in 1958. There was also a decline in the import of ships, boats and parts, from £2.4 million to £0.7 million. If you take only one item, importation of wheat, it would not suggest an expanding economy that imports should run at such a level as against exports.
I want to be fair to the Minister and to all concerned in the compilation of the booklet. It is mentioned in the booklet that imports of materials for further production went up by £11.1 million. That may sound all right because such imports automatically mean a certain amount of employment and re-export; but does the Minister remember when he and prominent members of his Party attacked the inter-Party Government during the period of the Korean war, when stock-piling was essential? Does he remember the accusations of bad house-keeping cast at the Government during the period 1954-55 because of the increase in imports which were very important to us and which were based on materials and machinery for production and re-export? The only redeeming feature is that the Minister can say that imports during 1960 to the extent of £11.1 million were imports of materials for production. Perhaps it is not sufficient to let it go at that. It may be important to make another comparison.
In the same year, imports of petroleum products declined. That is not due to the wisdom of the Minister or to the help of the economists and pseudo-economists who have been telling us what we should do. I am not speaking of the Minister's advisers. The decline in the importation of petroleum products is due to the fact that the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the 1954-57 period insisted on the establishment of the refinery in Cork harbour, which is giving so much employment and which in future will be a help towards a truly balanced economy. Of course, one Deputy from East Cork claimed that it was he who was entitled to credit for that. In my opinion, the person entitled to the credit is Deputy Norton and the Government entitled to the credit are the inter-Party Government.
It is important at this stage, not alone to compare imports with exports, but to compare agricultural exports with industrial exports. I do not have to point out the effect of an increase in industrial exports. It is well that that is happening. It is a great help to the country. The Minister must admit, however, that the basic rock upon which we must depend and the foundation upon which we can hope to achieve success is agriculture and the raw materials for other industries provided by agriculture.
We hear a great deal about "sixes" and "sevens" nowadays. One time, if a person was a bit muddled, the expression was that he was at sixes and sevens. We are all at sixes and sevens when it comes to knowing what is the European situation. We hear talk of inner and outer circles and in that connection the Minister could have had a little word with one of the prominent members of his Party regarding some of the serious statements he made outside this country about the Six and the Seven. However, that will be relevant on one of the Estimates.
One Table in this booklet is worth mentioning, that is, Table 7, Agricultural Workers. As I have said, the criterion of success for any Budget must be whether it takes due cognisance of the position in regard to employment in rural areas as well as industrial areas. Table 7 sets out the number of males engaged in farm work in 1951 as compared with 1960. In 1951, there were 68.9 thousand permanent workers in agriculture. That was 1951 when the Fianna Fáil Party were taking over again from an inter-Party Government, after a three-year period about which Deputy Brennan, the Parliamentary Secretary spoke, saying that after three years of inter-Party Government, the country was almost destroyed. In 1960, the figure dropped to 50.6 thousand. In other words, in 1951, there were 18.3 thousand more in permanent agricultural employment than in 1960. That situation affects not only me but Deputy MacCarthy and Deputy Manley because the three of us represent South Cork which is mainly rural. It is quite true to say that there were in South Cork in 1951 men engaged in agriculture known to Deputy MacCarthy, Deputy Manley and myself who are now in England.
The pattern for those employed on a temporary basis is completely different. In 1951, the number was 38.6 thousand which, in 1960, dropped to 38.4, a difference of only .2. However, the tragedy of it, known to the Minister, to economists and bankers alike, is that the man who is employed in a temporary capacity, whether in agriculture or in industry, cannot hope to maintain himself, a wife and a family in such circumstances. Directly related to the emigration figures which have been given here, not alone for this year or for the past three or four years that Fianna Fáil have been in Government but for all the years back, is the elimination to such a large degree of the farm workers in rural Ireland.
I wish to draw attention to a question put down by me on 25th April, 1961, because I was not satisfied with Table 10 on page 24 of the statistical returns. I thought they should be broken down and that a little more information should be available about the state of the farm worker and the forestry worker in rural Ireland. What are the figures? In 1956 wages and salaries in agriculture amounted to £17.8 million. It went from that to £18.2 million in 1957. In 1958, it came back to £17.8 million and in 1959, it moved slightly to £18 million. Where is the indication that the farm worker is prospering? These are the figures given by the Minister himself. Do not let us fool ourselves because we are not fooling the farm workers. In face of these figures, how can we be surprised that these workers are leaving the Twenty-Six Counties?
Take forestry, which we have been told is in a prosperous state. Table 10 shows that, in 1956, wages and salaries in forestry amounted to £1.3 million and in 1959, to £1,000,000. That is another indication of the expanding economy and the reward to be gained by those staying to work in rural Ireland. In relation to fisheries, Table 10 shows that wages and salaries in 1956 amounted to £.8 million and, in 1959, jumped to the colossal sum of £1 million, an increase of £.2 million.
I believe, interested as I am in the position of the people of rural Ireland as much as that of those in the towns and cities, that we are deceiving ourselves when we say we do not know what is causing emigration. The answer is there for us if we want to see it. I have condemned others who preceded this Minister and this Government, but I have yet to see a Fianna Fáil Deputy do anything but praise his own Ministers, even when he has had a poorer record than a Minister in the inter-Party Government who had been attacked by all.
If we study this booklet, we find there was a decline in the livestock numbers in 1960 as against 1959. I know we cannot hope that these figures will remain static, and perhaps it would be too much to hope that they might improve, but surely our policy should be towards an increase in those numbers, rather than having them remain static, or, far worse, showing a decrease? It all boils down to the fact that while we talk of the wonderful activities with regard to exports in the industrial field, we are closing our eyes and fooling ourselves with regard to the export situation in the agricultural sphere.
We must remember that the backbone of any economic success, whether we like it or not, must be directly related to prosperity in agriculture. Perhaps it is too much to hope now for the return of some of those men who have emigrated from the rural areas. When they were here, they were not appreciated. Their return in wages and salaries as shown in this booklet was anything but Christian, fair and just. It is no use, therefore, for us to sit back and study any of these papers. Some of our industrial concerns break even and there is an increase in the output to the shareholders, notwithstanding the fact that the hidden profit is there because of the extra scrip and the free tickets, as it were. We have followed the pattern of Britain and America in that regard.
Perhaps we have an expanding economy, but if we have, it is expanding in some spheres and sectors only. It is, perhaps, showing itself in certain parts of Dublin and Cork, but it is only in limited areas and confined to certain individuals. That will not help the country. It will not help the Minister or the Government or the Opposition, because I am afraid that if the Opposition got into office in the morning, they would not do very much more. I believe it is time for us to try, at any rate, to break through some policies of the past. What is wrong is that we are afraid we might step on the toes of some people and either hurt them or get hurt ourselves in the process.
The Minister gave an increase in social welfare benefits. I would prefer if that increase were much bigger. The Minister has not done much worse in that respect than other Ministers. I did not stand up here to lambaste him and say that everything was grand when someone else was Minister. He may say that he could not give any more to those unfortunate people. May I make a few suggestions?
When the Minister was examining the returns submitted to him from every Department, could he not have found it possible to cut down a bit on the squandermania in the Department of Defence? Could he not have found it possible to tell another Minister that he would have to wait another year or two for the luxuries some people will enjoy and which increase the Estimate covering broadcasting and television? Should the widow and the orphan not come before these? Could the Minister not say—and indeed if he did, he would be telling the truth—that more money was squandered by the setting up of the famous or infamous Ministry of Transport and Power than was ever known in the country before—not by the officials concerned, but by his own colleague who is going around the country telling people how to run their business? Could the Minister not have pared down on those items? If he did, I would agree with him and say he was making a valiant attempt to give us what we all wish for, a balanced economy based on fair play and justice to all, and with no special concessions to some.
The Minister must know that one of the serious problems confronting the people and imposed upon them by the action of the Fianna Fáil Government was the complete silencing—the sending to Siberia, as it were—of the Prices Advisory Body. Time was when that little booklet, Gléas, issued by Fianna Fáil, was sent out regularly reminding the people of the terrible inter-Party Government, of the terrible increases in the price of different commodities, reminding the people of every halfpenny added to every item. That little paper is missing now, of course. It would not do to tell the people of the increases now, and above all, it would not do to tell the people that the Prices Advisory Body had been silenced, in case, being determined to do their work, they drew the attention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to the overcharging which is taking place in different parts of the country, as well as in Dublin.
The Minister may praise himself or take credit for the Government for the amount of money—£2,000,000 or so— that has been handed out for industrial employment indirectly through industrial grants. No one would oppose the spending of money on the creation of employment. I have expressed myself as being in full agreement with the views expressed by Deputy Norton. We would far prefer to see young Irish boys or girls earning money in their own country from foreigners, if such employment would keep them from going to England.
We must not forget—and this has happened under different Governments —that we have gone out of our way to get industrialists to come in here. I give credit to both Governments for being determined to try to create additional employment. We gave many liberal grants; we gave many concessions; we gave benefits under the tax code with regard to exports; but still, no later than last Friday, I met a young woman who told me that her wage packet, at the end of a week's employment with industrialists who get a fine handsome amount of money by way of grant, is £2. We have flogged Irish industrialists for paying only £2 a week but apparently we dare not say anything to those other industrialists.
We must close our eyes because apparently we are privileged that they came in here. We hand them grants and they make their profits, but there is nothing to stop them from leaving this country in five or six years' time, if there is an international recession in trade. They could leave us our factories and our unemployment, and in the minds of many young Irish people would be the bitter knowledge that the Irish Government could not insist on those industrialists paying a decent wage to Irish men and women employed in their own country.
Those industrialists do not come here for love of the Minister or for love of Deputy Norton or any one of us, but to make their profits. Surely all Parties must admit that if we want to keep emigration down at as low a level as possible, we cannot succeed unless we are determined that anyone coming to this country and getting grants and other benefits will, in return, pay a decent wage to Irish men and women in their own country.
The Minister has found it suitable to give other benefits. He has found it suitable to give an amount of money by way of a grant to people in the hotel business. I agree with that. An awful lot of money is being spent on the improvement of hotels at the moment and I notice that a few Ministers seem to be on pretty friendly terms with the hoteliers because they find occasion to be present at the official openings. However, with all the benefits they are getting they are still robbing the people—not all of them but a lot of them. When visitors come to this country they are appalled by the charges of Irish hotels. There was a time when a booklet was published every year giving details of the charges but now it appears that there is no control on their overcharging.
There might be some reason in it if the State were not coming to their aid by way of grants although the Minister may say that we are receiving so much from tourism that an advantage will accrue to us. In the first page of the booklet Economic Statistics, it is stated that the amount of money spent by tourists in this country rose from £37.8 million in 1959 to £42.4 million in 1960. On the other hand, the amount spent by Irish people going abroad increased by £2.2 million so that our net profit on that whole transaction amounts to £2.2 million. That, at a time when these people are charging fantastic prices, not only to tourists who come here but to the unfortunate Irish people whose tax payments are helping to provide grants for these very hotels. I would ask the Minister to realise what a drastic step it was when the Minister for Industry and Commerce, probably in conjunction with the Minister for Finance, found it suitable to drop the Prices Advisory Body. Such a body is badly needed. We are providing grants for people who are not satisfied with what they are getting but who want more.
My last remark today relates to a matter for which I cannot blame the Minister but for which I do blame both this Government and the inter-Party Government. We are told that there is a relief of eightpence for the income taxpayer. That is good for those who will benefit by it. There is 1/6d. being given to the recipients of social benefits. It may be said by the Minister that he is giving something to everybody. I wonder what is he giving to that section of the community which comes in under Table 5 of Economic Statistics, the banking returns about which a lot has been written? Table 5 is a very interesting one. I wonder do the profits accruing under this Table amount only to eightpence as in the case of the income taxpayer or to 1/6d. which is the amount the social welfare recipients are getting?
Both Governments are at fault in this. When they tell the people what they are getting under social welfare, they make a lot of it. What are we paying out under our present economic system for such important matters as housing, sewerage and water supplies? If the Minister wants a loan, or if I want a loan, it is a private transaction but it is a different matter where loans are required by the nation for capital works. I am not saying that the Government should threaten these people with dire results if they do not provide money at a certain rate of interest, but there is no justification for any section of the community holding the whole State to ransom by the high rate of interest which they are charging the Minister and which the Minister will have to pay for the floating of a national loan.
I am blaming both Governments for it and the plain truth of the matter is that we are paying too much in interest to those who are holding the country to ransom. Both the Minister and myself are anxious to see more houses built for rural workers and for the town workers in the constituencies we represent. It is grand to see the great work done by Dublin Corporation in this regard, but at what a terrible price? We are paying too much to these people who, in actual fact, are drawing the life blood of the true economy of this country. We are giving them more that we are giving to any other section of the community.
I know that the Minister may not be able to deal with the matter. I wonder if any Party in this House would be able to deal with it? I wonder would they even be prepared to try to deal with it? So long as we are paying these high rates of interest we are not doing our best for the people, for the aged and infirm, for the farm worker or for the agriculturist himself. We know that emigration is continuing and that, to a large extent, is due to the fact that in 1956 these people played a stronger part in the affairs of this country than they should have been allowed to. They are still doing that.
We have had a fairly long debate. I mean to deal with as many points as possible, but if I have not a note of any point raised, it is not to be taken as an insult to the Deputy concerned.
Deputy Russell objected to the amalgamation of the special import levies with ordinary import duties for two reasons: one, that they should properly be regarded as capital items; and, two, that we should get rid of them as soon as possible. We have to remember that when we took over office in 1957, these import duties were calculated to yield £4,000,000. They are now down to £1,000,000. In the meantime, some of them were converted into permanent duties, but the greater part of them was abolished. Those remaining could be regarded as duties on semi-luxuries. It is probably the best form of taxation, where taxation is needed, that it should be imposed on semi-luxuries of that kind.
Deputy Russell also talked of foreign capital coming in. He said it was not sound finance that it should come in. In the same speech, he congratulated the country—and incidentally, I suppose, the Government—for the balance in our external payments. Deputy Russell is illogical in making these two points. If foreign capital is coming in and if, at the same time, we are balancing our payments, then no harm is being done. We have absorbed that capital and paid for it by exports of some kind. In fact, since we are balancing our payments and going a bit further, it means we are actually exporting capital. We are sending out money which is to our credit outside and is, therefore, potential capital, if at any time we should want to call upon it.
Deputy Russell, although he made a fair speech on many points, attacked the Government for appointing Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries who, he said, were not necessary. We have now the same number of Ministers as the Coalition Government had when they were leaving office, and we have a Parliamentary Secretary less. I just mention that so that Deputy Russell will see he is a biased Deputy as far as these two Governments are concerned. He is always ready to attack this Government and compare our performance with the performance of the Coalition Government—to our disadvantage, of course.
Deputy Byrne said it would have been better if, instead of reducing the standard rate of income tax, we had given better personal allowances. It must be remembered that the personal allowances are very good already. Under P.A.Y.E., up to £6 per week is exempted from income tax in the case of a single man; up to £10 per week in the case of a married man; and up to £19 per week in the case of a married man with three children. These figures show that the personal allowances are very good indeed. I had some figures produced for me on this matter and I found we compared favourably with other European countries on this very issue. I might mention again that the standard rate of income tax is now down to a figure it has not reached for 20 years previous to this.
Deputy Byrne also said that repair allowances should be granted in respect of Schedule A assessments on house property and that the poor law valuation should take into account any necessary repairs. As a matter of fact, that is so. The inspector who goes out to fix the poor law valuations must take into account the ordinary outgoings, which will include repairs, and what might be expected by way of rent. On the net income from that rent after the outgoings are deducted, the poor law valuation is fixed. Therefore, that matter is being looked after.
We heard a good many speeches from Fine Gael, but very little policy. There was a lot of criticism—criticism that could be directed against their own Government as well as this—and a lot of criticism based on misrepresentation. But very few, if any, speakers from the Fine Gael benches stated what the Fine Gael policy was on any particular issue. I asked Deputy O'Sullivan, when he was attacking the sur-tax provisions, whether he was speaking on behalf of Fine Gael—in other words, if he was stating Fine Gael policy—and he said: "yes." But I found it very difficult to get any Deputy from the Fine Gael side to give us the Fine Gael policy on any other matters raised. We have at least that one point made clear—that the Fine Gael Party are against this change in the sur-tax system.
Deputy O'Sullivan was attacking this sur-tax change. He mentioned the things that could have been done instead, but he completely ignored the amount this sur-tax change is costing. Some of the suggestions he made would cost £1,000,000 a year. He ignored the fact that the change made in the sur-tax is costing only £100,000 per year, and in these times you can do very little for anybody with that. Anybody who read this Budget in an intelgent way will see that you cannot do anything for any section of the population, unless you have at least £500,000, if not £1,000,000. That £100,000, as I explained in the Budget, was provided not so much to give a relief to people who needed it badly as to streamline the income tax and sur-tax system.
I explained in the Budget speech it was intended to accept the recommendations of the Income Tax Commission to amalgamate income tax and sur-tax, to have the one assessment issued for both, and to have the same collector and the same cheque payable for both. In order to provide for that amalgamation, it was necessary to change the sur-tax system to some extent. As everybody knows, when you change a system like that, if you do not want anybody to suffer by the change, you must provide a little money to deal with marginal cases and, as I say, it came to £100,000. I am not apologising for it; I am just explaining how this £100,000 arose.
Deputy Crotty spoke of the price of wheat, and I think Deputy Flanagan also spoke on this subject. I wonder why the members of Fine Gael do not try to take an intelligent view of such a matter? They are not going to get anywhere by making an attack like that simply because they want to attack something. What was done by the Fianna Fáil Government on the price of wheat? A change was made in the price of wheat which was, to all intents and purposes, unmillable. The price was reduced and the reason was that if wheat like that comes to the mill, and it has to be sent out as feed, somebody must pay for it. I do not think that a farmer who produces bad wheat like that should get a subsidy. As far as I am concerned, we do not want that type of inefficient farming and we do not want to reward the farmer for bringing bad wheat to the mill.
A farmer is not accountable for the weather.
Neither are we. Last year was a very bad year, but I met a number of farmers last year who produced very good wheat. They were the people who asked me why we should pay the full price for bad wheat. It is the good farmers who are in favour of what we are doing in this respect. What do the Fine Gael Party know about farming? Out of their 40 members, there are only eight farmers. How could they know anything about farming? I can make out the case that this reduction in price will benefit the good grower because whenever there is too much wheat in this country a levy is struck off every grower to pay for taking their wheat from the mills to sell for feed. If a farmer's wheat bushels somewhere as low as 56, it is taken from the millers and sent out for feed and he gets compensation up to 60/- per barrel, which it is not worth, and the good grower, whose wheat bushels from 60 to 64, is paying that levy.
It is only justice that the grower of good wheat should not have to compensate the grower of bad wheat. That is why the change in the price of wheat had my full support and advocacy on behalf of the good farmers in Wexford who were growing good wheat. Not a single one of them objected to that policy. It is all right for Deputy O.J. Flanagan and Deputy Crotty, who know nothing about farming, to say things like that.
We represent farmers.
Fine Gael speakers get up here and think it is their duty to look after the small farmers and to say that Fianna Fáil are not concerned with the farmers. Is it not extraordinary that I can look around here and see 15 or 20 farmers behind me and Fine Gael, out of their whole Party, can show only seven or eight farmers? Still they talk about Fianna Fáil being against the Irish farmers.
What test do they apply? The test they talk about is that the small farmers are flying from the land. Apply that test to Fine Gael themselves and we find that, in the last period in which they were in office, 27,000 emigrated and that during the past four years that figure has been cut to at least 20,000. So it is not as bad as Fine Gael would have us believe. As I said in my Budget speech—and I admitted that emigration was far too high—even if emigration is high now it was higher still when the Coalition Government were there. That being the position, why should we find fault with each other about emigration? Why do we not admit that none of us has succeeded in fully solving the problem?
The Taoiseach promised 100,000 new jobs.
Reverting to the small farmer, the Taoiseach was criticised because he said we intended to pay special attention to their problem. Do Fine Gael resent that? Are Fine Gael afraid we are taking that one last argument from them? Why should they resent the fact that we are going to pay special attention to the small farmer? We all know it is hard for the small farmer to make a living on the ordinary income from farming in this country which is about £20 per acre. The gross income of a small farmer with 20 acres is very small. He has not much to live on. It would appear, therefore, that we should tackle the position of the small farmer from the point of view that he is able to provide manual labour on his own land when the big farmer is not. We should help him to compete more successfully on that footing and there is one item which we hope will come into this picture in a big way—the growing of fruit and vegetables for processing and export. That is one of the best things coming along to help the small farmers. There are other things which we can examine and, if possible, adopt.
There were many Fine Gael speakers here during the debate and they all made the same point—that Fianna Fáil were neglecting the small farmers. Yet not one of them made any suggestion as to what we could do. I should very much like to know if any of them really had a suggestion or if they could tell me what they themselves did.
Give them contracts for beet. Give them contracts for malting barley.
They are getting them. They are getting more contracts now than during the Coalition period. As a matter of fact we are growing more malting barley in the country. There is more prosperity now and more beer is being consumed. The big attack of the Fine Gael Party is that we are doing nothing for agriculture but are giving all our time to industry. That is a silly attitude and it is hardly worth my while wasting time over it. I wonder if, when they sit down to consider policy, Fine Gael decide industry should not be developed in this country? I think Fine Gael's talk in this connection is only more of their demagoguery.
Deputy Sweetman told me he found it difficult to verify the figures I gave with regard to Ireland's place in rehabilitation. I gave him the figures for 1959 and said that in that year we had a higher place in the European list than either France or Belgium. I got these figures from the O.E.E.C. General Statistics of January, 1961.
Will the Minister accept that I got my figures from the same issue?
Ireland in 1959 had an increase of 2.7 per cent. France in 1959 had an increase of 2.1 per cent. Belgium in 1959 had an increase of 2.4 per cent. Therefore, actually, we did get a higher place than these two very well-developed countries.
In fact, half the increase is what we had.
Not the percentage.
With the combined O.E.E.C. countries.
I said in my Budget statement we had not yet reached the average but that we were within reach of it and would soon be there.
And half the latest figures for France and Belgium.
No.
Yes—the latest figures.
Should you not be glad, even though we are here, to see that?
I am, but the Minister should be truthful.
You should believe it.
If I believed it, yes, but I do not. I have read the figures.
Next, Deputy Sweetman said I made the point that we had made a reduction over that period of £1½ million in indirect taxation. I started off the paragraph by saying "in the last three years". Therefore, it is quite clear that that is all right, as far as a period goes. The Deputy said that taking the last four years or three years or taking a given year, whatever way he took it, he could not make out the figures to be correct. It is quite clear that I was talking about the last three years, because the paragraph starts: "In the last three years." It may be that this point is somewhat confusing. The figures were taken as a full year's yield in each case, both for and against. New taxation was taken at a full year's yield and remission of taxation was also taken at a full year's yield. On that basis, the figure totted up to about £1½ million.
Could the Minister give me the details for each year?
I could not give them now.
I shall ask the Minister a Parliamentary Question next week and we can argue the matter. I still think he is wrong.
Deputy Sweetman did not altogether agree with Fianna Fáil government. He gave me the second 50 per cent. remission on profits for export. He thought it should have been better. The reason given at the time was that that had been given to the firms for further expansion of their business. I remember that instead of taking this money from them we decided we would leave the money with them to put it back into the business and build it up. The only difference between us is that Deputy Sweetman would perhaps have made sure they were doing it and, if you like, we did not. We said: "We will leave it with you for that purpose." I think it is being done in that way. I could not say it is being done in every case but I think it is.
I do not think the Deputy is right in making the point that, in our income tax arrangement by taking 8d. off the standard rate and by no longer allowing deduction of the corporation profits tax before taking income tax on companies, it has the effect of penalising investors at home as opposed to investors in outside firms.
I said that investors in foreign concerns would get more benefit than investors in home concerns.
I accept that. As far as I am concerned, that is all right. First of all, 98 per cent. of the companies will get practically full benefit from this income tax reduction to 6/4d. because the corporation profits tax they were paying was either nil or negligible. Therefore, they will get the full effect of the reduction. If you take the remainder, the bigger companies, they are practically all in the export business and therefore they are getting a very big benefit from income tax. In fact, most of them are getting a complete remission. Therefore, no matter what we give them further in income tax relief they could not take it because they are not paying anything. It means there are only some intermediate companies, as it were, who are not getting full remission on their profits because they are not exporting everything and at the same time they have not the full benefit of the 6/4d. rate that would be in question. However, it is not right to say either that an investor in a foreign company could do any better because the investor in the foreign company cannot get any better terms than the reduced standard rate.
The small Irish companies get that full benefit. The bigger companies get full remission of income tax and, as the Deputy is quite aware, I am sure, there is a range of rates from where a person is doing 100 per cent. export down to, say, ten per cent. export, all getting a different relief in income tax. Take it as half and half.
That change does not affect export tax at all.
Take it as half and half. It would mean the company would pay half the rate, 3/2d. on its full profits. Therefore the investor in that company would be getting his dividend less that amount so he would be better off. There is no relief for a person who invested in a foreign company. Therefore he cannot do better as a result of what we are doing now than the person who has invested in an Irish company.
Of course he can.
He cannot. He must bear the full rate of tax and therefore he cannot get any relief whatever. Another thing is that a person who is investing—in most Irish companies, at any rate—in an Irish company gets a 20 per cent. reduction in income tax under Section 20 of the 1932 Act.
The other point was in regard to the Civil Service. Many Deputies have attacked me on the Civil Service question and said I made great promises in my first Budget. I promised I would examine the whole machinery of the Civil Service to see what reductions could be made. In my first Budget I said I would have a saving of £250,000 in the Civil Service compared with the previous year and that saving was actually made. Since then, however, I have found that, with some of the bigger expansions going on, civil servants had to be provided. The scheme for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis has taken an enormous number of people.
Transport and Power.
Transport and Power is a very small Department. It does not take many people. The expansion of the telephone system requires a very large number of people. For these reasons, the cost of the Civil Service is going up. I said, however, I thought a rationalisation and reorganisation of the Civil Service should be possible. That has been done, to some extent. During the last year we reached the stage where four or five of the lower grades—writing assistant, typist, shorthand-typist, clerical officer and staff officer—have been amalgamated into one grade for the future. All these have been amalgamated into one grade for the time to come. If you have people in the Civil Service for 40 years and you have to wait for people to come in, it will be eight or 10 years before there will be much impression made under this new system, but somebody I hope will enjoy the benefit of this rationalisation.
Transport and power have been mentioned. That is another point evidently in the Fine Gael policy—attack transport and power. They think it is a good mark. We are devoting a lot of money to transport and power.
Cutting down the railways.
Let me say it. The shipping company, the air companies, C.I.E. and all the rest of them are being voted a lot of money but we are getting back our interest on it, something that no Government before us were able to do. We are getting our interest all the time from the air companies; the shipping company was earning interest but we always agreed to put it back into the company because they always needed more capital. It is going back as capital and, in fact, if you like, they are paying their way when they are able to pay interest on capital. We hope C.I.E. will pay interest in the coming year for the first time in their history, so that I think Transport and Power have done very well and I wish every other Department could pay for its loans as well as they are doing. I know that will not prevent Fine Gael propagandists from continuing their line of talk.
Deputy Norton spoke of many things and among them, the loaf. I admit the loaf has gone up in price but I did not think Deputy Norton would have the courage to talk about it. At any rate, we did not reduce the size of it. When we had to deal with it, we increased the price and we let the people have the same size loaf, but Deputy Norton, with the connivance and support of the Government of that time, thought he could hoodwink the people by not increasing the price but by reducing the size and passing off a smaller loaf on the people. I hope that no Fianna Fáil Government would resort to the contemptible type of subterfuge that Deputy Norton tried to bring off at that time.
Following in the footsteps of other Fine Gael speakers, Deputy Esmonde misrepresented me in several other things. He said that I said I did not think there would be any Supplementary Estimates this year. What I said was:
While I do not expect that Supplementary Estimates on current account will arise this year to the same extent as last year, I consider it would be imprudent not to make sizeable provision against the probability that some supplementaries will be unavoidable. I am, therefore, including £1,000,000 for this purpose.
That is a fair sample of what I may call Fine Gael misrepresentation in all the points they made in this debate. They do not seem to have any regard for truth. If it is a good point, they make it and the truth does not matter; it is not important, if you can get away with it.
Deputy Esmonde also said that income tax payers have had the tax increased in the past four years. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. We reduced the standard rate of income tax twice in that period; we also increased personal allowances. We also increased the earned income allowances on more than one occasion. That was the type of thing that was said by Fine Gael and by Deputy Esmonde without any foundation in truth.
Deputy Esmonde also asked me had I done anything for industry by way of depreciation allowances. I am not going to weary the House with that point because we have done everything a person could do by way of depreciation allowances in the past few years. It is very difficult to educate a man like Deputy Esmonde if he has not taken sufficient interest in the matter himself.
I have no great fault to find with Deputy Cosgrave's speech, except with regard to what he said about Army pay. It is a pity that a Deputy like Deputy Cosgrave, who is usually very fair in his comments here, should try to give the impression that the Army are being badly treated in the recent round of increases because it can only have the effect of making Army personnel discontented with what they got. Actually, they were well treated because every time there was an increase over the years—I am not referring to my time as Minister for Finance but for all time under all Governments— given to civil servants and others paid by the central authority, the Army got a similar increase based on the cost of living. In addition the Civil Service got what is known as a status increase over and above the cost of living increase in 1960 and that has been more than matched by our recent increases for the Army. Also, officers in the Army got children's allowances for the first time, so that really they have no complaint, or at least no complaint when they compare their lot with civil servants, local authority employees, teachers or any other class. They have been well treated and it does not serve any useful purpose to say otherwise here.
A number of Deputies spoke of the great increase in rates on agriculture in the past few years. A number of Deputies said that expenditure this year is the highest we have ever had in this country. Of course it is, and if we are all alive in five years' time, I am sure the same thing will be said because expenditure will be much higher then than it is now. It goes up all the time. You are sure to hit the nail on the head if you say it is the highest ever. The same sort of remark was made in regard to the rates on farmers.
Going back to the rate struck in 1953-54 when the Coalition came into office, it amounted in that year to £15,987,000. The rate that was struck in 1956-57 when they were leaving office was £19,700,000, so that the rates went up £3.7 million in their period of office. This year, the rate is £23.183 million. It has gone up £3.5 million in our five years of office, so that, while the Coalition were in for three years, the rate went up £3.7 million, but while we were in office for five years, it went up £3.5 million. As in the case of emigration and such matters the figure is very high and it is difficult for farmers to pay but if Fine Gael hold a solution to the problem, it would be better if, instead of passing the buck to us and saying: "You are responsible", they said: "We are responsible also; let us sit down now and see what we can do about it".
That would be a much more sensible approach. It would be better for the farmer. It would not be popular with Fine Gael as a Party but it would be much more popular with the farmers if we approached it in that way. That applies to many other spheres as well as the farming. I do not care what it is—emigration, rates, employment, unemployment, or anything else. We can say the position was worse under the Coalition Government, but that does not do very much good. It will not solve the problem. If we really want to solve the problem it would be much better to say that it is bad under us, that it was no better under the Coalition Government, and then ask ourselves what shall we do about it?
Some speaker made the point that cattle exports had decreased. They have never been as low as they were in 1956. We will leave it at that. Every Fine Gael speaker talked about the tobacco tax. We increased the tax three times out of a possible five times. That gave Deputies opposite some justification for their complaint but, in the whole three years, we put on 2d. one year, 1d. another year, and 1d. another year. That makes a total of 4d. Deputy Sweetman put on 5d. in one fell swoop.
And the Minister kept the 5d. on.
Of course I did. Do not accuse me of being hard. I am not half as hard as the Deputy was when he was on these benches. Both of us increased the tax on petrol.
But the Minister put his tax on top of mine.
That is true and, if the Deputy comes in again, he will probably put some on top of mine.
There is no doubt but that we shall be there to do it.
Deputy Corish said he was appalled at the miserable pittance we gave the old age pensioners. Deputy Corish has, to say the least of it, a bit of a cheek. While Deputy Corish was Minister for Social Welfare, in the three years he was in office the cost of living went up by 11 points. In the last four years of Fianna Fáil administration it has gone up by 14 points. As against the 11 points rise in the cost of living, Deputy Corish gave the old age pensioners 2/6. As against the rise of 14 points we have given them 6/-. Yet, Deputy Corish gets up here and seeks the support of his friends on that side of the House when he talks of the miserable pittance we are giving the old age pensioners. Deputy Corish would have been much better advised not to say anything at all. I suppose what he would really like to have said, but he did not like to say it with the Fine Gael Party over there, was that he wished he could have done as well as we have done, but he was not allowed to.
Talking is no good. The Labour Party talk about the old age pensioners but, when they had the opportunity, they did not do much for them. The Minister for Social Welfare does not talk. He gets on with the job. He has given the old age pensioners 6/-. Deputy Corish talks, and gives them half-a-crown. That is the difference between us. Is action not better than words? I shall convey the Deputy's congratulations to the Minister for Social Welfare.
Is he not the man who took the food subsidies off?
Now do not try to take the credit from him. He did something for the old age pensioners and the Deputy did very little. Leave it at that.
But he was also Minister for Finance on one occasion.
Including the removal of the food subsidies, the cost of living went up by 14 points as against 11 points under the Deputy. The Deputy gave the old age pensioners 2/6d. We have given them 6/-. The Minister for Social Welfare has done very well. When Deputy Kyne was on this side of the House supporting the Coalition Government, he said publicly that, if the Government wanted to tax tobacco in order to give more social welfare benefits, he would support that tax. But he is not prepared to support it when it is we who want to increase the benefits. Why I do not know. Is it that he thinks the people do not want increased benefits or that he does not want us to give increased benefits to social welfare recipients? I do not know which it is, but he appears to think it should not be done while we are here but it may be done when the Coalition are here.
Deputy Corish talked about the undeveloped areas. He had some criticism to offer about the geographical limits in which the Department is working. He seemed to deprecate the idea of giving better grants to the undeveloped areas than are available in other areas. He made some points that were all right but he was certainly not as severe on us as he is when he is talking down in Wexford.
The Minister should explain.
The Deputy was very severe when he talked down in Wexford and lost an industry to the undeveloped areas.
On what occasion did I speak on that?
I shall have to go back on the files.
The Minister will have to go back pretty far. The Minister may be mistaken. He may be thinking of some other meeting. I am not ashamed of anything I say. The Minister should explain. He should not leave things unsaid which should be said.
I shall have to get the Wexford papers.
I should like the Minister to do so.
I have not got them here now. Deputy Dr. Browne complained that we had given an increase of only one per cent. to social welfare recipients. He evidently garnered his information from the answer given to a question here on 26th April. The answer was to the effect that the proportion of the national product devoted to social welfare generally was four per cent. in 1947-48, and five per cent. in 1959-60. To say that represents a one per cent. increase is certainly not putting the matter intelligently. The gross national product has gone up enormously since then and we are taking five per cent. now for social services as against four per cent. then. In cash the sum was at that time £13.075 millions. It is now £30.960 millions. That is a very big difference. It certainly conveys a different picture from the one Deputy Dr. Browne tried to paint with his reference to a one per cent. increase.
Deputy Dr. Browne talked about Socialist states. I think we all have our own understanding and appreciation of these so-called Socialist states. They do not do very much at all for the social welfare classes as far as one can learn. They tell people they must either work or starve. They can always make excuses for their attitude: the money is badly needed for building up the country's defences or its heavy industries; the turn of the social welfare recipients will come sometime.
Does that apply to Sweden?
Does the Deputy call Sweden a Socialist State?
What else is it?
I do not know. But my argument applies to a great many so-called Socialist states.
The Minister picks the ones he likes.
I could pick half a dozen.
I could pick them too.
The Local Authorities (Works) Act was mentioned. Nearly every Opposition Deputy spoke about it. It is always the same speech. I think it must have been a hand-out. The complaint is made that the Coalition Government spent money under this Act and we are doing nothing about it. We did away with it, as has been explained before, because we believed it was wasteful expenditure. I am sure any Deputy could quote a particular work which was beneficial, or perhaps half a dozen, but the great majority, and I know many of them, were wasteful and the areas concerned have gone back into the state they were in before ever any money was spent. The only defence that can be offered in support of that Act is the labour content. From that point of view it must be remembered that expenditure on forestry and fisheries— rural expenditure—has increased by £700,000 since 1956-57. We cut out £500,000 expenditure on the Local Authorities (Works) Act and are spending £700,000 more now than we did before on forestry and fisheries and it is all productive employment. We are getting some return——
£600,000.
£700,000.
I challenge the Minister on that.
All right; we will have a challenge. £700,000—I am not confined to that——
Split the difference.
That is productive employment. You have the forest when you are finished. You give employment and then you have the forest and it is an asset to the country. The same applies to the development of fisheries. In addition to that, take the Road Fund where a lot of money is spent. The amount brought in in 1956-57, after my colleague had taken a bit out of it, was £3.8 millions. In the coming year, it is down as £6.6 million, so that it has gone up by £2.6 million. If you take the Road Fund along with forestry and fisheries, we are spending six or seven times more than we spent on the Local Authorities (Works) Act.
We also had criticism of the Land Reclamation Scheme. Only to-day I heard it and I think it was from Deputy Crotty—any foolish statement that I cannot attribute to anybody else, I can attribute to Deputy Crotty. We were criticised because we dropped the B Scheme. We say it was a bad scheme. We did not believe that it was right or proper that any farmer should get £160 an acre for reclaiming his land. It was a bad scheme and had to be cut out. We said we would go back to the A Scheme and stick to it. What has been the result? In 1956-57, £1.37 million was spent on the A Scheme and £.68 million on the B Scheme. That is a total of £2 million. This year, we are spending £1.75 million —it is down £300,000 but——
That is not very good addition.
Order!
I do not think the Fine Gael Party ever claimed that it was an improvement scheme. They always, and we all, looked on that scheme as a scheme for the benefit of agriculture, to improve agriculture. We came to the conclusion that when the land was reclaimed, it had to be fertilised and reseeded and we brought in the fertiliser scheme, phosphates and so on, to help rehabilitate that land after it had been drained and reclaimed and on phosphates and potash we are spending £2.4 millions.
I need hardly repeat, as I think everybody is aware of the fact, when we come to unemployment and employment, that unemployment is down by 30,000. We were not reminded of that by Fine Gael speakers but that is a fact.
They have all gone to England.
In regard to employment nearly every speaker over there said employment had gone down by 50,000 in our time which is an absolutely crazy figure. There is no foundation at all for it, except that one Fine Gael speaker took it from another when he mentioned 50,000. Look at Table 7 and Table 16 in Economic Statistics. I should mention that these figures are taken in April and June each year, and, if I take April and June of 1954, that is how things stood when the Coalition came in and again, in 1957, that is when they went out.
Again, we can take the 1960 figure because we have not got the figure for 1961 yet. On that basis, on the agricultural side, where everybody is leaving the land, under the Coalition they went down 27,000 and they went down 20,000 in our three years. That was bad but not altogether as bad as the Coalition figure. On the other side, on the non-agricultural side, they went down 22,000 under the Coalition and 2,000 in our time so that the total is 49,000 in the three years they were there and 22,000 for the three years we were there.
We want to improve that. We have improved it but we want to improve it more. On the 1960 figure, the thing is eliminated, the figure is balanced in April and June, 1960. We had no reduction in employment from early 1959 to early 1960 and I am quite sure that on the figures for early 1961, there will be a further improvement. We are on the up-grade now, so, for goodness sake, if you have any idea of trying to solve this problem of getting more employment—I am speaking to the Fine Gael people—first of all, equip yourselves with the proper figure: it was very high from 1955 to 1957 and it was lower from that on and now it is balanced. We want to improve on that because now that it is balanced and the emigration figure is at a certain level, with which I will deal in a minute, we must bring that down and then our population will begin to go up again. That is what we are aiming at.
The Taoiseach gave figures in regard to emigration and I do not want to give them again. He took the three years of Coalition Government. Every Fine Gael speaker took the figure of 200,000. Where they got that figure, I do not know. Certainly it did not come from any statistics. It came by word of mouth, the way in which all tradition is handed down. There is no foundation whatever for that figure of 200,000 in the past three years.
It was mentioned in the British House of Commons in regard to work permits.
I should say this, that sometimes we say we cannot give statistics because they are not available. The Statistics Department say they cannot give reliable figures for emigration but say that they will give figures for movements on land and in the air, out and in, and these are the figures we quote. We do not know how many cross the Border, but you can take it as a trend from one year to another. That is all you can say.
It was 120,000 for the past three years; it was 60,000 in 1957. As I said here before, we did not come in until near the end of March, 1957, and we had to settle down and start to work before we could stop emigration in a matter of a month or two. Even if you say: "We will give you until the end of June. Let us start at the end of June and take the figures from that on," we are quite satisfied because much more than half of them went out before the end of June and it will be all right; we will leave it at that. Every year, more than half go out in the first half of the year. We will leave it at that, that emigration is a bit better than it was at that time, but it is far too high and let us try to see if we can get a remedy for that very bad feature in our economy.
I thought the Taoiseach had the remedy all to his hand —100,000 jobs in five years.
We are making good progress in that now.
An election one.
I said here that Fine Gael talked about this 200,000. Deputy Michael O'Higgins went one better. He said it was 120,000 in the past two years. Of course, there is no foundation for that, none whatever. As I said, we must try to get unemployment down, and we are being very successful in that. We must try to get our employment balanced, as we have succeeded now, in the beginning of 1960. The only other time it was done was in the beginning of 1954; it was balanced that time and we were nicely going ahead in 1954 but a general election took place; the Coalition took over and the whole thing went wrong again and if the people by any chance should put them back the next time, the whole thing is gone again, too.
You know they will put them back.
If I were a betting man like Deputy Crotty, I would like to have him on on that.
I think Deputy Sweetman did not make the point today but on another occasion he made the point with regard to the special import levies. I should like to say a word about those levies. He accused us of breaking faith by taking the special import levies into current account. I do not see how he really could claim that. The first year we came in, we cut them very drastically—I think by more than one-half— and left that as capital, and next year we took them into current account but they were getting smaller and smaller and, as I explained at the beginning of this speech, if we want money by taxation, these taxes that remain now are on what you might call semi-luxury goods and it is the best form of taxation you could have.
Deputy Sweetman made the point that, of course, when I talk about balancing the Budget in the past three years, I had special import levies brought into current account. I tried to analyse that to see how this works out. It must be remembered, of course, that when a Minister introduces a Budget here, he makes a forecast for the year of how much will be expended and how much will be taken in by way of revenue and if it works out right, of course, then whatever he has provided in that Budget for sinking fund for national debt goes to sinking fund, no more, no less, but if by any chance he has a surplus, which we had last year—a very good surplus— that also goes to sinking fund because there is nothing for it to meet except sinking fund and if there is a deficit then, of course, the sinking fund is reduced by the amount of the deficit.
Taking that sort of arrangement, we find that for the three years Deputy Sweetman was looking after the finances, leaving out the special import levies for the moment, he paid £9.5 million off the national debt by way of sinking fund and in my three years, leaving out 1957-58, which I should like to deal with separately, I paid off £27 million but if we take the import levies and add them on to that, it would make this difference, that Deputy Sweetman's figure would then become £12.8 million for the three years against my £27 million.
The reason I leave 1957/58 out is that I was presented with Estimates for the coming year when the Government took over and I also asked the Revenue Commissioners for their estimate of revenue as taxes stood at that time, which is the usual thing you get for a start off, to see what the Budget will be like. Having got these Estimates which were prepared by Deputy Sweetman before he left and having got the estimates from the Revenue Commissioners, I found there was a gap of £11 million, which was a desperate amount of money to try to find, and although we cut the food subsidies out, which gave us a net income of about £5½ million, and put on extra taxation of another £3½ million and thought we might take a couple of millions for errors in estimation—the usual thing— we thought we might cover the £11 million, but actually there was a £5½ million deficit, which showed the desperate situation we were in at that time. In other words, it was not a gap of £11 million but of £16 million that I was facing when we came in at that time. That was as much the responsibility of the Coalition Government as it was ours. We will leave it at that.
Many Fine Gael speakers say there is no great advance in the economy of the country, that things are not too good, and so on. Then they forget about that and go on to say that all this big drive in exports is due to Deputy Sweetman when Minister for Finance. In other words, first of all, like the lawyer, they say there is no offence, but, if there is, then who is responsible. That is the way with Fine Gael speakers always: there is no advance in the economy but, if there is, Deputy Sweetman is responsible because he brought in the relief of income tax on exports which, as I have said over and over again, although Fine Gael people always say I do not say it, but I say again, was a very good policy on the part of the Coalition Government. I remember, before the first Coalition Government came in, for many years here when talking about industrial development, the Fine Gael people always said the two best industries in the country were due to them—the E.S.B. and the Sugar Company.
White elephants, you said.
That is what we were supposed to say of them.
Do not speak so disrespectfully of the Tánaiste.
For many years, they talked about the way they were responsible for the E.S.B. and the Sugar Company. They never claimed any for the period 1948 to 1951 because they could not. Now, since they came back, they are claiming two more for the period 1954-1957—Whitegate and St. Patrick's Mines.
And the two briquette factories.
It is four industries now to their credit. That is all right. In fact, a Fine Gael speaker said here the other day that if they had not established the E.S.B., we would have no electricity now. In other words, we would still be working in the dark.
That is a very poor argument.
Take the copper mines. I do not want to take from the credit of the Coalition Government.
It is in the Abbey the Minister should be, not in the House. He is very good.
When the first Coalition Government came in in 1948, they cut out of the Estimate mineral development. We had put £87,000 into it that year, thinking we were coming back. They came in and cut it out—no mineral development; they did not approve of it. When we came in again in 1951, we put it back—£87,000 for mineral development. It went on and copper was discovered and they came in, the men who did not believe in mineral development, and they handed this place over to the Canadians who came along and the place is being well worked now under, I must say, serious difficulties.
The copper mines were shut down when you left office. There were only enought staff there to keep them in order.
How were they shut down when we left office since they started only about a year ago and the export was worth £1 million last year, I believe—£1 million, I think, for all minerals?
One million is right.
That was very good, due, if you like, to the foresight of Fianna Fáil in carrying out investigations and now we will let the Coalition Government have the benefit of it.
With regard to the oil refinery, Deputy Desmond gave all the credit to Deputy Norton for that. I remember back in 1943—many of the young men here would not remember 1943—the election was practically fought against Fianna Fáil because they wanted to have an internal oil refinery. The Labour Party had a paper that time—I forget what it was called—but every page of it talked about this oil refinery. The whole issue was given to it, condemning it and getting votes against Fianna Fáil because one of their mad ideas was to have an oil refinery. Of course, it did not go on because no oil refinery would come in against such opposition and then it came on under Deputy Norton and is doing very well indeed. It is a welcome addition to our exports. Between the two of them, they were responsible for about £4.5 million last year.
£5 million or £4.8 million, which is nearer to £5 million than £4.5 million.
We will say £5 million, but to claim that they are responsible for our significant increase in exports is just chauvinistic. It is industries that were built up by Fianna Fáil on the home market and now largely using Irish raw materials that are responsible for the big drive in industry. They are the most stable and diversified and are likely to succeed and to be able to compete because they have the home market to support them in their export drive. Take, for instance, confectionery, cement, leather goods, textiles. These four which are using nearly all native materials have contributed very largely to the big increase in exports.
A number of speakers, including my colleague Deputy Esmonde and, I think, Deputy Sweetman, accused us of not making any preparation for the position that may arise in relation to the Common Market or if there is any change in that situation. We are not asleep on the matter. We are watching developments very closely. We do not think any advisable step could be taken at the moment. We are watching to see if there is any possibility of a merger of the two bodies, a break-up of one body or some other development. We have our preparations made to take the appropriate steps, if the necessity should arise, and that is as much as any Government and their advisers could do in such a position. I do not see what other preparations could be made. We cannot very well publish our ideas on the matter. All these negotiations are going on secretly between the various countries in Europe. If they think it necessary to keep these things secret, I suppose it is as well for us also to keep our minds to ourselves.
What have we done? First of all, we have tried to build up these industries and put them in a position where they can succeed against any competitor. We have given them tax reliefs on export profits. We have given them education and technical assistance. We have given them various grants, first of all, from Córas Tráchtála when they were being set up and, secondly, wear and tear allowances, and so on. I do not think we can help them more on the taxation side or on the educational side. We have done everything possible at the moment. We have even taken 1/2d. off the rate of income tax which should help them.
In this export drive, we must remember these firms are competing on the British market with British manufacturers on their own ground and are getting their goods sold there. They are also going to countries other than Britain and competing with foreign manufacturers there. Therefore, they are making an attempt, and a successful attempt at that, to compete and if it should happen that the barriers are removed by other countries in Europe so that foreign industrialists can come in here with goods practically free of tax and our industrialists can export goods free of tax, we cannot do more in the meantime than build up our industries so that they will be in a position to compete.
As regards agriculture, we have done everything possible to help the farmer to produce more at a lower unit cost by giving him more grants for the building of houses, for drainage of land, for fertilising and for all the other various items which affect his costs, not to mention also relief in rates, and so on. Marketing committees have also been set up in recent times which should be very helpful to farmers. What more can we do? There is no doubt it is a problem and if any other Party can make a suggestion as to what more we can do. I am sure it will get very careful consideration.
If a Government give certain concessions which cost money, they must get the money somewhere else. The Opposition—I suppose we were the same when we were in opposition—are always inclined to agree that the concession should be given, but they object when it comes to the point of deciding who is to pay for it.
The other day, I heard a Deputy on this side of the House asking: "Do Deputies on the other side agree with the Government in increasing the price of milk to milk producers last year?" I am sure any Deputy would answer: "Yes; I agree that the producer should get more for his milk." It must be remembered that the butter sold on the home market is sold at the economic price of butter made from that milk at that price. There is no subsidy or relief. If we had no butter for export and were producing just enough milk to produce our own butter, then the economic price of butter would be the price at which it is being sold at present. I suppose nearly every Deputy will say: "I object to an increase in the price of butter." In fact, therefore, Deputies are saying: "We agree with increasing the price of milk but you can carry your own burden as regards increasing the price of butter." When we ask those questions, we get "yes" to one and "no" to the other, which is not very much help to us so that we must make provision ourselves.
The same remarks apply to the contributory pensions scheme which we brought in. Everybody said it was a grand scheme but now those who approved of it are objecting to the increase in the price of the stamp to which the employer, the employee and the Exchequer contribute. The complaint is made that the employee has to pay more for the stamp, but it is a contributory scheme. Every Deputy agrees that the contributory scheme is better than the non-contributory scheme because the recipient gets the pension without a means test. Although everybody will approve of the contributory scheme — and will call it the contributory scheme—Deputies do not want the person to contribute for the stamp. Even Opposition Deputies should have some sense of responsibility in matters of that kind.
There is one thing certain: we cannot have a better standard of living unless we have increased production. I remember speakers from the Coalition Government in 1954/55 talking about all the money they were giving out. Of course, it is no good unless there is production behind it. As a matter of fact, money was given out in the past but there was not enough production behind it. We must have more production, and the more production we have from both industry and agriculture, the better is it for the country as a whole.
As I have already said, it is all right for people on the Fine Gael benches to say that we should do more for agriculture. We should do more, and certainly if we knew where to do more for agriculture, we would do more, but that does not say we should do less for industry, because if we do more for industry also and get more wages, more profits and more revenue from these companies, we will have more to help agriculture and more to help the social welfare classes. We will also have well-paid employees to buy the agricultural produce and those engaged in agriculture will get better prices for their goods. Therefore, we should try to encourage industry as well as agriculture.
I remember in 1906 when I first took an interest in politics—I was fairly young at the time—I used to read Sinn Féin by Arthur Griffith, who always advocated what he called the two arms of agriculture and industry. He said that a nation depending solely on agriculture was like a man with one arm, and that a nation cannot get on without the two arms of agriculture and industry. Fianna Fáil have believed that ever since. As I said, by developing industry, we get greater exports to pay for imports and more employment, and in that way you improve the economy of the country, and help not only the people in industry but also agriculture in an indirect way.
We sometimes hear talk about the two great agricultural countries, Denmark and Holland. I looked up the figures in relation to those countries and I found that, in Holland, 18½ per cent. of its produce is agricultural— ours is 40 per cent., as Deputies know —and in Denmark, it is 20 per cent. That shows that those two well developed agricultural countries are developed because they have an industrial arm and because they have the market—although they export as well—and the people in industry take the greater part of the agricultural output. That should be the aim in this country. We should develop our industrial arm as well as our agricultural arm.
Finally, my colleague from Wexford, Deputy Browne, quoted our appeal to the electorate. In Wexford, we addressed five meetings in the whole election campaign and we purposely said we were making no promises.
What election is the Minister talking about? Is it the next election or the last election?
The last election. We made no promises; yet we got three out of five seats for the first time. We made no promises whatever. As some of my colleagues pointed out, we could not help winning because the people voted to get rid of the others——
Would the Minister tell us the date of the next general election?
It will be too soon for you.
(Interruptions.)
Will the Minister give us that information?
As soon as possible.
As soon as possible? It cannot be too soon for us.
If Fine Gael do not hold us up with an Election Bill or something like that.
(Interruptions.)
Before I conclude, I want to say that the people were anxious to get rid of the Coalition. Fine Gael knew that and Labour knew it also. Since then, I have not heard Fine Gael or the Labour Party talk about a coalition. Fine Gael are out for one-Party Government. They say to the people: "We want one-Party Government; do not suspect us of forming a coalition again." They want one-Party Government because they know that if the people had any suspicion of a coalition being formed, they would not have a chance, and the Labour Party are in the same position. Coalition Government is finished. Opposition Deputies know that as well as we do.
You formed a coalition before.
The only thing we can do is to warn the electorate: "Do not trust them. If they get a majority, they will form a coalition, no matter what promises they make."
(Interruptions.)
Any alternative to Fianna Fáil.
We will go before the electorate on our record. The Opposition are saying there will not be a Coalition Government again. We are not saying there will not be a Fianna Fáil Government again. We are saying: "There will be a Fianna Fáil Government again. We are going on our record; put us back," and they will put us back.
Before the Minister concludes, may I offer him "General Statistics—Main Economic Indicators," issued by O.E.E.C. for January, 1961, and tell him that the figures I quoted are on page 4? Would he be good enough to tell the House on what page are the figures he has quoted?
That is a red herring.
I have not got it. I promise the Deputy——
Will the Minister promise to read page 4?
Yes.
Resolution put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 68; Níl, 47.
Tá
- Aiken Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Kevin.
- Booth, Lionel.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Dan.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Carty, Michael.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Collins, James J.
- Cotter, Edward.
- Crowley, Honor M.
- Cummins, Patrick J.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Mick.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Lynch, Jack.
- MacCarthy, Seán.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maher, Peadar.
- Medlar, Martin.
- Millar, Anthony G.
- Moher, John W.
- Moloney, Daniel J.
- Mooney, Patrick.
- Moran, Michael.
- Doherty, Seán.
- Donegan, Batt.
- Dooley, Patrick.
- Egan, Kieran P.
- Egan, Nicholas.
- Fanning, John.
- Faulkner, Padraig.
- Galvin, John.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gibbons, James.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Healy, Augustine A.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Johnston, Henry M.
- Kenneally, William.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Loughman, Frank.
- Lynch, Celia.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán.
- O'Malley, Donogh.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Toole, James.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheldon, William A. W.
- Teehan, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
Níl
- Barrett, Stephen D.
- Barry, Richard.
- Beirne, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Burke, James.
- Byrne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Tom.
- Casey, Seán.
- Coburn, George.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Costello, Declan D.
- Costello, John A.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hogan, Bridget.
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, Denis.
- Lindsay, Patrick.
- Lynch, Thaddeus.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McLoughlin, Joseph.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- McQuillan, John.
- Manley, Timothy.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis J.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tierney, Patrick.
Tellers: Tá: Deputies O Briain a nd Loughman; Níl: Deputies O'Sullivan an d Crotty.
Resolution declared carried.
Resolution 11 and Resolution 1 to 10 come to by the Committee on the 19th April, 1961 to be reported.