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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 11 Apr 1962

Vol. 194 No. 11

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 7—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 may be good politics but it is certainly not good statesmanship for the head of the Government and the Minister for Finance to be patrolling the country in the months of November and December warning all and sundry that they are advised that there will be a substantial deficit on the current Budget and of the necessity for substantial additional taxation to meet existing liability, and subsequently turning up on Budget Day to say that the buoyancy of the revenue has changed that whole picture.

That may deceive some people in the country but those of us who know Treasury procedure in this country know only too well the competence and efficiency of the Revenue Commissioners and know well that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance have at their disposal information quite adequate to make such declarations at that time unnecessary and, indeed, untrue. It is an old dodge and a disreputable dodge to try to paint a gloomy picture and then produce what I can only describe as a "push-halfpenny" Budget and plead that it is not half as bad as we expected.

We have refused on this side of the House to join in any of the positive resolutions designed to implement this Budget because we believe that the Government have completely missed the opportunity which they should have seized to present a Budget calculated to expand production, to stimulate exports and to strengthen the economy at a time when we are faced with entering the European Economic Community and must embark on a new departure, if this country is to survive as a viable economic unit.

We believe that can be done and that the Budget is an instrument peculiarly suited to help in its being done. Over and above that, we believe that the time has come to place on record that we reject categorically the bland assumption by the Fianna Fail Government that in a Budget of £162 million, there is no scope anywhere for any concession without the imposition of additional taxation. A great many people have short memories but it may be no harm to remind the House that the revenue of the Exchequer stood at £117 million in 1957-58; that in 1960, it had risen to £139 million; and that in 1962 it is £162 million, that is, £45 million higher than it stood at when this Government took office and £23 million higher than it was in 1960-61.

Some Deputies will remember that the Minister for Finance gave very specific undertakings that he was going to put his hand to the task of reducing the number of civil servants substantially. He was going to search the Public Services for other economies. In fact, in the financial year 1961-62, at the end of that year, there was a surrender to the Exchequer by the Supply Service Departments of no less than £4.26 millions which had not been spent. After successive increases in the number of civil servants in the employment of the State, and I exclude the Post Office, within the last twelve months there has been a further increase in the total number of civil servants of 388. Anyone who is interested in the Appropriation Accounts will realise that during that period a sum of £370,000 was saved by not filling vacancies, which would appear to suggest that the Public Service could have been carried on very well with the number of civil servants we had without adding to their ranks.

We believe that on a Budget which has now reached the dimensions of £162.9 millions there must be room, and we believe there is room, for substantial economies. Over and above that, we believe there are specific steps that could be taken to reduce the charges that fall to be met by taxation, first, by a revision of the Health Act, secondly, by a reduction in the ever-growing army of civil servants whose salaries we have to pay, and, thirdly, if necessary, by a reduction in the number of Ministers. I do not believe that the Minister for Transport and Power is so heavily burdened with duties that he cannot share the responsibility, if he does not take it over altogether, of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I cannot see that the Minister for Social Welfare is staggering under the burden he is at present carrying, presiding over the electronic devices in Aras Brugha and inquiring once every week as to whether they are working according to plan. So far as I can discover, that is the only function he now has. I imagine on these lines some substantial economies might be effectively achieved, and some contribution made to meeting the extra charges that come in course of payment this year to make provision for pensioners, poor and miserable as that provision has proved to be.

One of the Taoiseach's "three threes" struck his bosom here recently and said that into the Lobby he would never go if the pensioners did not get 5/-, and that he would be long sorry to give his support for any trifle of a shilling or two. He overcame these scruples yesterday, and galloped in with the Government, and on his support, and that of the other pair, they have survived. But it seems to me half-a-crown for the old age pensioners, postponed until August, compares strangely with the provision we have made for the Judiciary backdated to last November. There is a certain decency and propriety which should govern our dealings with the various sections of the community. It is certainly true that the total sum requisite to provide an increase in judicial salaries is relatively trivial beside the sum required to adjust social services. But there is, to my mind, something indecent in providing 2/6d. to the old age pensioner, if he lives until next August to get it, and saying to judicial personages: "We propose to increase your salary by £565 a year and backdate it for six months in case you would feel that the absence of back money would deprive the gingerbread of its gilt."

We are told that in order to provide these increases, which the Minister for Finance admits are due to the cost of living—a consideration which, I think, he has materially underestimated as I shall seek to prove in a few moments—we must put a tax on beer, we must put a tax on spirits, and we must put a tax on tobacco. Now I wonder is it the super-taxpayers, or the recipients of wages and old age pensions, who drink beer? I imagine most beer in this country is consumed by working men, and by old age pensioners when they can afford it. I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that old people value the opportunity of having an occasional half-glass of whiskey, and I do not regard it as any wild extravagance on their part if they so far indulge themselves. I do not suppose old age pensioners smoke many cigarettes, but the practice of smoking is not confined to any category of our people, either through age, social status, or income. The fact is that the bulk of the money to meet these changes in pensions and relief of rates will be derived from taxes paid by the vast majority of our people and, in respect of some at least of these taxes, every old age pensioner, every unemployed person, every working man, and every small farmer, will make a substantial contribution.

We believe that these resources could have been found in another way. We certainly deplore that a part of what is to be raised is to be used for relieving dance halls of their tax liability. I cannot help recalling, when I ask myself "How come that, at a time like this, when so far as I know, the dance halls are far from depopulated, we should rush to their aid with public money?" a letter which was addressed to the dance hall proprietors as far back as 1960 by a Miss Kathleen Morris——

She must be a good deal older now.

The recipient of this letter may be an older tiger than he was then, but he does not change his stripes.

Dear Sir,

At a special meeting of the executive of the association held on 8th inst., it was decided to communicate with the Fianna Fáil Party, they being the Party responsible for the abolition of the Dance Tax in 1946——

She was not old enough to remember her history.

and having since vigorously opposed the reimposition of same by the Coalition Government, requesting them to inform the Association of their intention regarding the abolition of tax should they be returned to power.

I am to inform all members of the Association that I have received what the executive consider to be a favourable reply from Mr. Lemass on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, a copy of which you will find enclosed.

Following receipt of this reply from Mr. Lemass a further meeting of the executive was held to-day, 15th inst., when the meeting confirmed their pledge of support to Fianna Fáil.

It will be appreciated that the Association is entirely non-political and that having failed utterly to impress the previous Government or Minister for Finance though it pointed out the hardships caused to ballroom business, to clubs hiring the ballrooms, musicians, staffs, etc., the Association has now no alternative but to support the Party who has indicated that they are prepared to repeal this tax as soon as it is practicable.

Now comes the operative part:

The Association has decided that the support to Fianna Fáil should take the form of substantial financial help and also that all members both city and country should lend a hand in every possible direction to secure the return to power of the one Party who has given the Association an indication that they as a Party are opposed to this undesirable entertainment tax on dances.

It will be appreciated that in order to have the desired effect our financial aid must of necessity be generous. I may mention that one leading commercial ballroom in Dublin has headed the list of subscribers to this fund with the generous sum of £250 and other members of the executive have also indicated their willingness to subscribe very generously.

Whilst the Association does not specify any particular amount to be subscribed they request you in your own interests to give as much as possible. I shall deem it a great favour if you will reply promptly as time is getting short before the General Election and if we are to help it must be done immediately.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Yours faithfully,

Kathleen Morris.

That is what Deputy Sherwin says: you have to give to get.

He is a very experienced Deputy.

I shall be paying, too. Lots of people got a terrible relief when we voted over here last night. They were thumping their chests but their knees were rattling. Their knees have straightened out again.

Miss Kathleen Morris's knees were not knocking.

Their knees straightened out very quickly.

She knew what would turn the trick—£250. That was the headline—and others had promised to subscribe very generously. But bis dat qui cito dat: he who gives quickly gives twice. She exhorts them to be quick off the mark so that their resources may be thrown into the fray in good time and when she speaks of resources, she does not mean votes; she means “dough”. And what a far-sighted woman she has proved to be.

They have taken off the tax again. The boy who put up £250 ten years ago will get it back with knobs on, on foot of this Budget. The reference is from a letter quoted in this House on 3rd April, 1952, Volume 130, Column 1472.

I do not think I should deprive the House of the gracious reply of the present Taoiseach. He sharpened his pen on 10th May, 1951, and wrote to Miss Morris, the Secretary of the Irish Ballroom Proprietors' Association, c/o Olympic Ballroom Company, Pleasants Street, Dublin

A Chara,

I have received your letter of May 6th which has been considered by the Fianna Fáil Party Committee. The committee's view is that the entertainments duty on dances is an undesirable tax. As to its abolition in the present financial year, however, a decision must necessarily await the detailed examination of the Budget introduced in the Dáil immediately prior to its dissolution, but it would be the intention of the Fianna Fáil Party to repeal it as soon as practicable.

In view of this intimation of the committee's attitude, I assume it will not be desired to pursue the request for an interview with me. It will be appreciated that I could not add anything to what is conveyed by this letter.

Is mise,

Seán F. Lemass.

I like the Taoiseach for having done that. It would have been the very nadir of public disgrace if he had signed that letter "I am, with high esteem." He just signed it "I am". Need I dwell further on this striking blow for national economic recovery in the repeal of the dance hall tax? It was properly described by Deputy Lemass, as he then was, "Is mise, Seán F. Lemass."

I turn from that to the capital Budget. The Minister speaks of all they have done and hope to do. There is one topic near to my heart which belongs to the capital Budget, that is, the building of houses for our people. I remember in this House Fianna Fáil tearing passion to tatters on the ground that we were failing to provide money to build houses for our people. Even the Minister for Agriculture had the effrontery no later than yesterday to suggest that money was not available prior to the arrival of Fianna Fáil on the scene to build houses for the people. These facts to which I shall now refer are only too often forgotten and overlooked not only by the dupes of the Fianna Fáil propagandists, but by people who ought to know better.

I want to quote for this House the statistical Abstract of Ireland, 1961, Table 155. It sets out the total number of new houses built with State aid under the capital programme.

In 1954, 11,179 such houses were built; in 1955, 10,490; in 1956, 9,837; in 1957, 10,696. Then Fianna Fáil took office. Now listen to the figures: In 1958, 7,480, a fall of 4,000; in 1959, 4,894, a further fall of 2,600; in 1960, 5,992; and, in 1961, 5,798. We had built in any two years more houses than they built in four for our people.

We are upbraided that we were extravagant with the resources of our country in spending so much on housing. I want to say with great deliberation that there is no part of the record of our Government of which I am prouder than that, the economists notwithstanding, we built houses for our people and today find ourselves in possession of that infinitely precious industrial infra-structure where we can contemplate industrial expansion in this country without the prospect, such as confronts many communities in Great Britain at present, of thrusting our people into tenement rooms because we have nowhere else to put them. We built the houses in town and country and they are there. We can be proud that in the vast majority of cases, our people are living in conditions suitable for human beings and not living, as they would be living if the Fianna Fáil view of housing had ruled the roost, in tenement rooms because there would be nowhere else to put them.

I am told we should look with ecstatic eyes on the balance of payments. I look at Table 2 on page 17 of the Economic Statistics issued prior to the Budget of 1962 and I find that this year we have a favourable balance of payments of £1.2 million. I should like the House to study those figures for a moment. They will find the two constituents of them are: tourism, £30.5 million and emigrants' remittances, £13.5 million. It is common knowledge to every Deputy that 60 per cent. of those whom we call tourists are our own people coming home. When we come to realise that the favourable balance of payments of £1.2 million has been substantially purchased by the export during the past five years of 250,000 of our people, almost all of them between the ages of 18 and 30 years, we must ask ourselves whether the picture presented of financial affluence purchased with the bodies of 250,000 of our people sent abroad is something that we can triumph over and take pride in.

The Minister felt a little conscious of that when he was speaking and said he wanted to tell the House that the frightful emigration had stopped. He produced new figures to prove his new contention. I have heard the Taoiseach tell the House time and time again that as between one census and another, he can find no reliable figures to describe emigration, that he can make only very hazardous estimates. Sometimes his colleagues make and, indeed, he himself when it suits his arguments makes, estimates which paint a more cheerful picture than I think is justified.

I stood in the fair yesterday morning and bought the last cow of a young farmer of 32 who was going to England with his family. That was only yesterday, and before the day was out, I met a boy of 20 who was heading for America.

Come now; there are Deputies here who know the west of Ireland, Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal and Kerry just as well as I do. Would they tell the Minister for Finance that emigration has stopped? I do not want to give my personal experience as evidence of the general, overall picture, but I want to draw the attention of the House to figures which do not appear to correspond with what the Minister for Finance told us yesterday. I refer the House to the Overseas Emigration Board's 7th Report, Command Paper 1586, issued by the British Government, with special reference to pensions and national insurance data on page 119. Here is the story that tells:

Persons from the Irish Republic entering National Insurance in Britain were 58,316 in 1959; 72,962 in 1960 and 67,598 in 1961.

I do not know what part of those are migratory workers. I know that 20 years ago from the part of the country I represent, Monaghan, migratory labour was a familiar, everyday experience. Does any Deputy now feel that migratory labour is as common a feature of rural Ireland as it was 20 years ago? Then they went in the spring and came home for Christmas. Some went even later than spring. They went to sow. That was before beet became a big crop in England. Perhaps they would go over for the harvest in July and come back at Christmas. So far as my personal experience goes, that picture has virtually disappeared. They go now but they do not come back. They go as I have never seen them go before; they go with their wives and children.

From the social point of view, it is better for a man and his wife and children not to be parted. There was a painful period when they left wives and children at home and, because there was no housing in England, they went alone and tried to get a house or apartment to which to bring their families. Now I see them go with wives and families and, according to this record, 67,598 went last year. These are the people who give us the tourist and the emigrants' remittances income of which we boast. It is a balance of payments dearly bought.

These figures are only for those who went into employment.

That is so. I do not know what addition should be made for the dependants gone with them, but if we write off the dependants against the element in that figure of migratory workers, we probably get a figure that is approximately correct. That figure does not seem to correspond closely with the figures produced yesterday by the Minister. He cannot help being influenced by the fact that three months ago the Taoiseach, as head of the Government, and the Minister himself went to the hustings, crying, "Woe, woe" in order that they could have a day out yesterday. Are the men who did that three months ago not just as capable of crying "alleluia" today in order to conceal facts they do not care to face?

We are told by the Minister for Finance that, as of the 12 months ending last February, his heart rises because he thinks, on the figures he offers us as his estimate of what is happening, the population is beginning to rise again. I hope he is right, but that is not such an unprecedented occurrence as he seems to think. It is marvellous how much Fianna Fáil can forget and how conveniently there are things they remember. Some of the things they remember are a bit suspect because when you trace them to their source, you discover what they are remembering is merely a ghost of what actually happened.

I am not depending on such speculative estimates founded on material, the validity of which I myself call in question. That allegation rests on the checked record of the Central Statistics Office and I refer the House to Table VI of the Statistical Abstract of 1961, page 19, where Deputies will find that in the 1946 census, the population stood at 2,955,107 persons but in the 1951 census, for the first time since the Famine, the population had gone up to 2,960,593 and then Fianna Fáil came back to office and brought in their Budget of 1952. In 1956, the old trend, the Famine trend, had reasserted itself and the population had gone down the hill to 2,889,000 and by 1961 it had gone down to 2,814,000.

I share the hope of the Minister for Finance that the good trend of 1951 will reassert itself but the figures I have quoted do not provide us with very great hope and those figures, in so far as I know, are accurate figures, not pious hopes. I observe that in addition to the express provisions of this Budget, there appears to be in the Minister's speech a new concealed Budget because next year is to cost working men and their employers in this country £800,000 each. The Minister says on pages 44 and 45 of his statement that he is preparing to expand the contributory social service benefits and he says his contribution in respect of the last quarter of this year can only be realistically provided with the sum of £200,000. That implies that in a full year the Exchequer contribution will be £800,000 and if the ordinary pattern is maintained, that involves the provision of a corresponding sum from employers and employed, over and above the taxation to be levied on working people, on the publicans and shopkeepers as well as small employers. They are now going to get an opportunity of making a further contribution of £800,000 apiece to the costs they are already carrying to meet the supplementary provisions he proposes to make in respect of social services.

There are to be more taxes both expressed in the Budget and implied in the reference I have given. But remember, we are dealing with a Fianna Fáil Budget and that is quite a unique instrument because it is the practice of the Fianna Fáil Government to remove from the Budget a very large part of the tax burden the people are called upon to pay. No reference is made to it at all because do not forget that, as Deputy Sherwin fully knows, when we have disposed of the Budget in this House, that is only the beginning of the story. It is the end of the 2/6d. the pensioners were given. That is as far as they will get.

Why mention me all the time. I saved you fellows. There they are, thumping their chests——

Deputy Sherwin is the cardinal of the Fianna Fáil curia. He is the hinge on which they swing.

The tail of the dog.

When the Budget is done with and finished and when the taxes have been abstracted and the cost of living gone up——

If Deputy Dillon mentions me, I shall always answer.

——by three points since last November, it is the bread and the butter, the things the people have to buy in order to live, that have caused it, but over and above that there are other charges which certain eminent Deputies in this House overlook. There are the bus fares both in town and country, and a great part of the working population of this city and of Cork have to pay them morning and evening. But there is no mention of those in the Budget. There is the electricity charge. You get the electricity in and you believe the lovely advertisements that tell you it is a wonderful source of power, heat and light, and when you have installed the lovely electrical appliances, you find the costs creeping up on you, even though you have to pay only once in every two months. You do not notice the trifling contributions but they are constant — like a bleeding tooth, if it goes on long enough a time will come when financial anaemia has to be fought.

Postal charges have gone up. Perhaps not all of us write as many letters as we should but anyone who does will have to pay thirty-three and one-third per cent. more for a stamp than he has paid, but mind you, it is not the trans-continental air letter that will cost more and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs was kind enough to reassure us on that score. It is only the common threepenny stamp that goes up.

Note the trend. They have discovered that a purchase tax on motor cars does not yield revenue. A purchase tax on luxuries yields very little revenue. It is only when you get down to ordinary people and their everyday needs that the really worth while revenue begins to roll in. What is more universally used than the threepenny stamp?

There are, of course, the train fares for those who have to travel. Mind you, I would suggest to Deputies an interesting exercise. I had not travelled on a train for years because I usually travel in a car but circumstances presented themselves recently which constrained me to travel to Cork in the train. They asked me for the price of a ticket and I nearly dropped dead. I gave them a £5 note, apologising for the inconvenience I was going to cause the clerk in presenting such a large denomination note and giving him the trouble of getting the change, and he asked me for a half-crown more. I was travelling with my wife. I do not suppose that when you reckon it up it is unreasonable but it creeps up on the man who is paying it regularly and it is only the person who travels after five or six years who gets the shock, who realises the costs are creeping up on him.

Then there are the telephone charges. We have almost reached the stage now when we are paying for telephones we have not got. Those of us who have got them have to pay more. There is car insurance. The Minister for Industry and Commerce rises, wipes his hands and says: "This is none of my affair", but anyone who uses a car has to insure it or he will not be let travel on the road. These are the taxes this Budget do not mention at all but they are taxes the ordinary people of this country have to bear. It seems to me it is as dishonest for Fianna Fáil to load our people up with these charges and then wash their hands of them as it was for the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance to go out and mislead the people about the Budget three months ago.

Now to come to the Budget itself, and it was bad enough in itself, but here was a chance to give the country a lead, to demonstrate that the Government realise that this is an important stage in our economic life and that they want to encourage the people to make a fresh endeavour to expand exports. The best contribution everybody in the State can make if they want to give a lead, is to expand exports, to try to bring in industry to this country that will process raw material, give employment and help us to export.

We have in this country 12,000,000 acres of arable land. In the first nine months of last year, our total exports went up by about £23,000,000. Of that increase, the land contributed £19,000,000 plus. That gives an indication of what could be done. The land gave us that increase very largely in livestock and livestock products, almost the only two varieties of exports we have today which do not require subsidies to send them out. And half the land is not producing half of what it is capable of producing and 80 per cent. of the land is producing considerably less than it is capable of producing. Signs on it, the farmers have been driven out into the streets campaigning for a reduction of the rates. The Minister, in this push-halfpenny button Budget has demonstrated that the organised power of the farmers was so strong that he must bow before the wind and give them a concession just as in the same way it demonstrated that he must make some concession to our friend, one of the threes of the three threes. That is not an impressive form of policy, that buying off of your potential enemies in case there should be a general election.

There was a chance in this Budget to encourage people to expand production with a special emphasis on exports. I would have found it hard to vote against this Budget if it had provided 5/- for the old age pensioners and the social service classes, if it had provided a calf subsidy to help to rebuild the livestock population which declined by 112,000 last year, if the Budget had sought to relieve the rate situation by a revision of the health scheme and by giving the county authorities a wider discretion in the user of the Road Fund. I would have found it hard to vote against the Budget——

You would have managed.

I hope I would. I am sometimes criticised for trying to be rather too reasonable in this House. I refrain from harassing the Government about the negotiations in Brussels and I try to bring the attention of the House only to matters which I conceive to be of urgent public importance. The things we try to do and the things we say do make an impact. We were criticised for bringing up the question of the pensions in this House but it produced results. The form in which we brought the matter up was criticised in that it was too moderate and restrained. We were told that there was no punch in it and we had amendments from the left of us, amendments from the right of us, amendments from the Government benches, all designed to strengthen the motion that was put down.

Our fault is that we are too much obsessed on this side of the House with a sense of public duty, a matter that I do not expect Fianna Fáil to understand because it is a disease from which they never suffer.

I hope your disease is not infectious.

I wish I could quote some of the speeches the Taoiseach made in his day from these Opposition benches. I would love to read the remarks he made on the Budget of 1949 when he suggested that there should be a reduction of 2/- in the income tax without any corresponding reduction in the public services. That appreciation of public duty and public service is a disease from which Fianna Fáil do not suffer, have never suffered and cannot be expected to understand.

If the Government had brought in proposals for a comprehensive national agricultural advisory service, a calf subsidy which would ensure expanding exports without calling for any new subsidies, if they had relieved the rates through a revision of the health services and if they had given wider discretion to the county authorities in the user of the Road Fund, I would have found it hard to vote against it because that form of relief of rates would provide equitably for all those who had to pay them.

Agriculture could not pay the rates on land so the Government have offered £2½ millions to try to bring the rates back to the level of 1956 where we left them. But people lose sight of the fact that the rates have gone up by £3,000,000 in the past five years and there is no guarantee that they will not go up again. However, there are other people than farmers in this country paying rates. There are people who provide employment for the sons and daughters of farmers. There are the small business people in every country town in Ireland and in every rural area whether it be Clonmel, Limerick, Carrickmacross, Ballybay, Clones, Monaghan, Castleblaney, and Ballaghadereen where business men and women provide work at trade union rates of wages for the sons and daughters of farmers.

They have to pay their rates and are good employers but now they have to face up to rising costs and a steadily diminishing population. The business men and women of rural Ireland have lost 250,000 customers in the past five years. They are the customers that ate and smoked and drank and bought clothes. Those business men and women have to meet rising costs and a diminishing volume of trade and still keep their doors open. They try to put a brave face on it, but I warn the House that the day is not far distant when many of the small business houses in rural Ireland must close their doors. If they have to do that, they have very little alternative but to take the emigrant ship and they were entitled to consideration when the matter was being reviewed.

I have asked myself why Fianna Fáil did not, when dealing with the question of rates, make some approach to this matter. Why did they not provide assistance to agriculture by way of a calf subsidy designed to expand the livestock population? Then suddenly it dawned on me. They were ashamed to name it, because if they had, their whole grim past, when they were slaughtering calves and throwing their bodies across the ditches and hedges, would have come to haunt them. Calves are a dirty word in the ears of Fianna Fáil. They reached the nadir of their value under Fianna Fáil, and I suppose they were ashamed today to protest that they wanted to see more of them in the country. There was a time when they succeeded in very nearly banishing them altogether. I suppose they would be ashamed to admit now they wanted to see them come back, not as ghosts but as bullocks, heifers and cows.

I am glad the Minister has opened his eyes to the dilemma of the farmers and the burden of rates they have been carrying. But I would ask him to consider for a moment how his provision of £2¼ million for the relief of rates is going to work out. There are 379,000 agricultural holdings in this country. There are 345,000 of those holdings under £50 P.L.V. There are 274,000 holdings under £20 valuation. We all know that in the counties where the holdings are small, under £20 valuation, the rates are peculiarly high. We will take an average of 45/- in the £. What does a small farmer with a valuation of less than £20 get under this arrangement? The farmer with £20 valuation will be relieved of an annual sum of £4 10s. The farmer with a valuation of £5 will be relieved of the princely sum of £1 2s. 6d. That is the extent of the benefit we are conferring upon the small farmers who are self-employed in rural Ireland.

If you take the man with £50 valuation, in his area I take an average rate of 35/-. These are the merest estimates of what I believe to be the average rate in the kind of county where valuations of £50 are relatively common. If he has a valuation of £50 he will derive a benefit from this, in an area where the annual rate is 35/-, of approximately £13 3s. He will get approximately what we think the old age pensioners should have got, 5/- a week. Does the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance see in that proposal any dynamic incentive to expanding production or does he see in it a politician's reaction to the N.F.A. march? I cannot close my ears to the fact that I was told months ago that Deputy Smith, the Minister for Agriculture, met a deputation of the N.F.A. and said to them: "Look, boys, do not walk in Dublin until you have seen the Budget." I wonder, if this matter had been better thought upon and if we had sought to relieve not only the farmers occupying their land but their neighbour in the towns and villages who is having hard times, too, by taking over from the rates the whole cost of health and redeploying our resources on the lines suggested by us throughout the general election, if we had said to the local authorities "Here is the road grant; use it for roads but use it as you think best in your own administrative area," could we have not got a very much more equitable and permanent relief of the rates burden for everybody in rural Ireland and still leave money in the Exchequer to provide a real incentive for expanded production in that sector of the agricultural industry which could contribute towards exports without burdening the Exchequer with an ever-growing burden of subsidy payments?

I would have thought that was a forward-looking way to approach this matter. But what is going to happen is that we are going to give some farmers 5/- a week reduction in their rates, some farmers 1/- a week reduction in their rates and we are going to give to 34,000 farmers with valuations up to £200 or £400 a very substantial concession. There are 34,000 such farmers to whom this concession means a substantial annual advantage, but these men have substantial costs to meet both by way of labour and otherwise. But the small man will get a 1/-, the medium man about 5/-; and in the same context we are advised that the Minister for Agriculture has decided to introduce a new grading system for pigs.

It is the small man and the medium man who produces 90 per cent. of our pigs. Monaghan, Cavan and West Cork are the areas from which comes the bulk of our pig supply. They are not produced by the men who have 700, 800 or 1,000 acres of land. I have tried fairly and equitably to weigh up the impact of the new grading on pigs. I give it as my considered opinion that it will operate to reduce the guaranteed price for pigs by anything between 10/- and 15/- a cwt. If that estimate is correct the medium farmer turning out 100 pigs a year will lose from £26 to £39 a year on the new grading. The man turning out a pair of pigs every two months, twelve pigs a year, will lose three times what he will get from the reduction in rates.

That may be economic policy as Fianna Fáil understand it but it does not seem to me to constitute the dynamic economic leadership the Taoiseach tells us is so urgently necessary. I think the failure here is in no small measure due to the profound conviction I believe abides in the Taoiseach's mind that the land does not matter and cannot be made to pay. He was reared in that belief. He has held that belief all his life and he is surrounded by men weak enough to subscribe to it in the persons of the Minister for Finance and the present Minister for Agriculture. They were both of them thoroughly bad Ministers for Agriculture. The best they could agitate for is "For God's sake, provide me with funds from the Treasury to persuade them not to march in Dublin."

It is true and I think the House should know it—I think the Minister for Finance admitted it — that the profits of the farmers in 1957 were estimated by the Central Statistics Office to be £107,700,000. That is profit without paying for labour. In 1958 they fell to £96 million; in 1959 they came back to £105 million; in 1960 they came back to £107 million; in 1961, with the £5 million provided for subsidies on fat cattle and beef, they had risen to £115 million. That bears no relation to the volume of their output which has increased more, I believe, in the past ten years than industrial output, but they have to make that increased production with a smaller labour force for the same reward as they were getting or less.

What has become of the £250,000 that the Fianna Fáil Government appropriated five years ago for research into agricultural marketing? That is the kind of dirty political trick which makes people say that all politicians are frauds. None of us on any side of the House can afford to listen to that view with equanimity and those of us who believe in parliamentary government as a citadel of individual liberty in this or any other society should be careful to repudiate fraud on behalf of us all. We should discuss our policies but we should be able to say: "That is what he said. That is what he meant. We say he was wrong. He believes he was right." Does the Taoiseach honestly maintain that the provision of £250,000 in 1958 was an honest appropriation when he has to report today that over the past five years the total expenditure from that appropriation is £23,000?

I should like to compare that with our performance. We believed an Agricultural Institute was necessary and we established it. Fianna Fáil believed that agricultural marketing was necessary. They provided the money but they never spent it. They are telling everybody now that, having set up this organisation and provided money they did not spend, they will give it to them now to spend, but it is five years too late. We shall be in the European Economic Community in 12 months' time, if all goes well. Those four years the locusts have eaten are the years we should have been building up marketing procedures to meet the exigencies of the new departure.

This is a "shove-halfpenny" Budget. It shows a complete failure on the part of the Government to realize the need for a dynamic approach to our economy, with special reference to the one section of our economy which constitutes the bulk of our national wealth, 12 million acres of arable land and the people who live on it and get their living from it, representing a total capital investment of £1,000 million with the lands and buildings on it. If that cannot be made to pay, we must face it, this nation cannot survive. We believe it can be made to pay and that it can be made to produce a growing revenue for this nation.

This Government do not believe that in their heart of hearts. The Taoiseach does not believe that. I believe we have got to take the risk — I have always held that — of bringing in foreign capital and establishing foreign factories here. I have never closed my eyes to the fact that it is a risk because these people can close and go away and leave us facing the problems they leave behind. However, it is a risk we must take. It is a wise risk to take in the situation in which we find ourselves and I am prepared to say so in the country as I do in this House. Nevertheless, if we make the mistake that Newfoundland did and exchange the real economic foundation of this community which no one can take from us, the 12 million acres of land and its productivity, for the relative uncertain source of income represented by foreign capital induced from investments from abroad, we are economically mad and we put this country in such peril as it never stood in before.

There is one other matter to which I wish to refer. I doubt if it really required reference and yet I find that lies often enough repeated sometimes get credence from people who have a right to deliverance from fraud and deception. It is an old conviction of certain unscrupulous elements in public life that a good lie told often enough and loudly enough will get someone to believe it.

I used to believe that Deputy Moher was an honest man, which shows you how the most sophisticated man can be misled. It was he who started the hare that I, as Minister for Agriculture, had sought to reduce the price of creamery milk to a shilling per gallon. He knew that was not true, but he read out carefully chosen extracts in this House and though he did not assert it himself, let us not forget he was reared under a very experienced teacher who must be nameless here. We all remember the famous speech made in Belmullet: "They tell you we will do all sorts of awful things, that we will increase the price of bread and flour but we never do the awful things they say we will do, do we?" Deputy Moher took a leaf out of that book. He has a very impressive exterior, as all of us who look at him can see, but if anyone wants to satisfy himself of the truth of the facts surrounding that transaction, he can find them all set out in detail at Column 1528, Volume 119, of the Official Report of 8th March, 1950. I scorn to waste the time of the House traversing Fianna Fáil falsehoods, but I fix them all with notice now that, though the rules of order will never permit me to say they deliberately lie, if they repeat that story in Dáil Éireann hereafter, it is only the rules of order will protect them from the description they deserve.

Deputy Dillon had the task today of diverting public attention from the fact that last evening he led his Party into the Division Lobby to vote against providing money to give additional aid to farmers and higher benefits to old age pensioners. This Budget of 1962 had in it an unusual feature, rarely, so far as I can remember, found in any previous Budget. The Government could have come to the Dáil yesterday with a "No change Budget". When we estimated the revenue for the year, we found that it was adequate to cover the anticipated cost of all the services of Government, even allowing for the increase in the cost and the expansion of the scope of these services as disclosed in the Book of Estimates.

Deputy Dillon and his Party were aware of that. The Government had supplied them with a White Paper which showed our estimate of the tax yield for the year. They knew, when they came into the Dáil yesterday, that the Government were in the position that they could have produced a "No change Budget", involving no votes in the Dáil, no increases in taxation, no increases in benefits or aids for anybody. Deputy Sweetman complained yesterday, and Deputy Dillon again today, that the remarks which I and the Minister for Finance had made earlier in the year had led them to expect a more difficult Budget. I suppose they are relieved to know that our earlier pessimism was not borne out by our later examination of the situation. Nevertheless, they knew quite well, before they came to the Dáil yesterday that, if the Budget contained any element of additional aid to Irish farmers, any proposals for improving the payments to social welfare classes, any adjustment of the pensions given to former State employees, about which they were concerned a month ago, some additional taxation to cover the cost of these changes would be necessary; and they came here yesterday, notwithstanding Deputy Dillon's protestations today, determined to vote against any proposal of that kind. And they did vote against it. I do not know if they wish to have any other significance given to the action they took yesterday in the Division Lobbies. Deputy Dillon said that he did not know, when he was going to vote, how the vote would go, how certain Independents would record their votes. Neither did anybody else.

What Deputy Dillon did know was that he was leading his Party into the Division Lobby to vote against the provision of money for these purposes. What I knew was that I was leading my Party in to vote for them. If Deputy Dillon had succeeded in the purpose he then had in mind, if, as it turned out, these Deputies who are free to vote as they like, had decided to vote with him, these benefits to the farmers, to the old age pensioners, and to State pensioners could not have been provided.

They could not have been provided, unless, after a general election, a Government were returned prepared to reinstate this Budget. Deputy Sweetman said we laid a political trap for his Party. We certainly did not frame the Budget with the idea of laying any political trap, but, if there was one, then the Deputies opposite not only walked right into it but sat in the middle of it.

Would the Taoiseach like to test that in the country?

We know quite well that no political skill was required to create the situation that now exists. We knew that these Deputies opposite, when they were protesting here in recent weeks their concern for the Irish farmers, their anxiety to do something for the old age pensioners, their interest in relation to the injustice suffered by State pensioners, that no matter what happened, no matter what proposal we brought to the Dáil, they would not have the political courage to vote for the taxation necessary. And they had not.

Deputy Dillon talks about the possibility of making some provisions along the lines indicated in the Budget Statement by means of economies. He knows, as well as I do, there are far more skilful people than either he or I constantly engaged in the public service searching down every possibility of economy in administration. Economy does not consist merely of cutting down expenditure. It means adjusting expenditure to the minimum necessary to secure efficient administration. It is a fact that the scope of Government services, the range of Government administration, is increasing and will continue to increase. The Government, having decided upon the measures they would propose to the House for relieving the burden on Irish farmers, for the improvement of the social welfare arrangements, and for the other improvements mentioned by the Minister for Finance yesterday, had then to consider what particular taxes they would propose. We knew quite well that, no matter what taxes we proposed, the Deputies opposite would vote against them. But we had to face our task in a responsible way, with the aim of producing to the House and to the country what we have since done, a Budget that would appear to be both intelligent and constructive.

No taxes are popular. No politician ever gets votes by voting for taxes. Even those who recognise the need for taxes, or are prepared to contemplate them in order to achieve some particular purpose, are not expected to like them. It must be our policy to keep all taxation at a minimum and, in particular, in devising the tax arrangements of the State, to ensure that we will avoid measures which could impede the country's economic progress. While the primary purpose of taxation is to raise money for the Exchequer, nevertheless it is sometimes possible to devise taxation measures which serve other desirable purposes as well.

Deputy Dillon devoted a large part of his speech to talking about the abolition of the dance hall tax. That was a bad tax from the beginning because it was unfair in its incidence and difficult to enforce. It was put back by the Government, of which Deputy Dillon was a member, out of spite. It is gone now; it has gone forever. Never again will it reappear in this State, not even if the Blue Nose League become the predominant influence in the Fine Gael Party.

We recognise, too, that any tax on commodities tends to reduce the consumption of those commodities. It was in a full understanding of that fact that we decided we would seek the additional revenue required this year for the purposes stated by the Minister for Finance by taxing tobacco, beer and spirits. The remarkable thing about these three commodities is that their consumption has been steadily and continuously increasing. The consumption of cigarettes in this community, as the figures given to the House only a couple of weeks ago indicate, shows a five per cent. increase per year. The consumption of beer has been increasing at the rate of five per cent. per year. The consumption of spirits has been increasing at a greater rate. Indeed, last year, there was an increase of over ten per cent. in the quantity of spirits consumed by our people.

These increases in public outlay on and public consumption of tobacco, beer, and spirits have been the cause of concern to everybody interested in the health and well-being of our people. If the higher taxes which are now in operation on these commodities, as well as yielding the revenue we need for the desirable purposes outlined in the Budget statement, slow down the rate of increase in the consumption of these commodities, then, in addition to the benefits visualised in the Budget Statement, there will be some social gain and no economic disadvantage.

Deputy Dillon spoke about the burden of taxation. He should take cognisance of what has happened. This country is becoming more wealthy by reason of the vigorous dynamic economic development policy which the Government is applying. The burden of taxation is not increasing. If, by the burden of taxation, we mean the proportion of the total national income which is appropriated through the State or local authorities for public purposes, there has been no addition to that burden. On the contrary, over a number of years past, the State and local authorities are taking no higher proportion of the national product at current prices than they ever did.

It is being transferred to butter.

This year, I think a strong theoretical case could have been made for budgeting for a substantial surplus, for the deliberate withdrawal of purchasing power from the economy in the interest of economic stability and to prevent the emergence of a serious deficit on our external payments. I think it is true to say that conditions in our main export markets should improve with benefit to our export trade prospects during this year. We can also, I think, confidently anticipate increases in invisible earnings, particularly under the head of tourism.

It is also true that we must expect during this year that the volume and cost of our imports will increase, mainly because of higher consumption expenditure and also because the prices of imported commodities appear to be moving upwards. The terms of trade, as the economists call it, are moving against us. Import prices are rising and export prices are falling. The likelihood is that the small surplus on our external payments realised in 1961 may turn into a sizeable deficit in the present year.

We decided, however, that circumstances did not justify utilising the method of taxation in order to reduce active purchasing power. What, in fact, the Budget does is to achieve a transfer of purchasing power within our community, a balancing operation in the interests of equity and social justice. That transfer of purchasing power may have some marginal effect upon the pattern of consumption but it will not lessen its volume.

We took that decision, notwithstanding the risks inherent in the present economic situation, first of all, because we expect that a continuing capital inflow will offset in some degree the external deficit on current account and avoid any serious pulling down of our external resources. In fact, as Deputies will have seen from the book of economic statistics circulated to them, these external resources of ours rose in the past year because of that inflow of capital, augmenting the surplus on current account.

We are guessing, to some extent, at this time of the year when we are preparing the Budget and trying to look ahead as to how the year will turn out. We must rely upon the estimates that we make based upon the knowledge that is available now. But, so far as we can see now, no situation calling for exceptional action to curtail imports is to be anticipated during the year.

In this country, because of our special circumstances, a rise in the total of personal incomes over and above the total of national output — expenditure running ahead of earnings — reflects itself mainly in our external trade, although some rise in the internal price level also follows where higher costs are not offset by higher productivity. We do not expect the general price level to rise in proportion to wages but some increases in prices have already taken place and the process of stabilisation is not yet completed. Our calculations suggest that prices generally may, because of the eighth round of wage and salary increases, rise by five or six per cent.

Between February, 1961, and February, 1962, the general consumer price index number rose by 3.3 per cent. Also, as I have said, import prices are rising and that may also affect our internal price level, although, as the causes of these higher import prices are world wide in their effect, it may not diminish our external competitiveness as changes taking place entirely within our own community may do.

In this country, comparisons on prices are usually made with Great Britain. I think it is no harm to understand that for most commodities, except butter, the general level of prices prevailing here is below the British level — and I am dealing now not merely with luxury articles that are subject to purchase tax in Great Britain but with articles of common consumption like flour, liquid milk, meat, sugar and other ordinary consumption foodstuffs as well as luxuries like drink and tobacco. The most recent figures available to us show that the rise in prices in this country during the past year was less than the rise in prices in Great Britain, about the same as in France and more than the rise in prices in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. These are the countries with which we are trading and the countries from which competition will come on our accession to membership of the EEC.

Last year, as Deputies are aware, the British Government took such a serious view of the deterioration of their competitive position in export markets that they applied widely deployed measures to improve it, including a wages pause. They applied those measures with some success. In some other countries, notably Germany, although the price rise to date appears to have been less than here or in Great Britain, some similar action appears to be contemplated, according to reports published in last week's newspapers.

I am aware that there is a widespread feeling in commercial circles in this country that the Government defaulted in their duty by avoiding any direct intervention in the situation before or during the eighth round of wage increases. I believe that feeling lies at the root of the discontent which is evident amongst sections of our farming community. Indeed, it is easy to understand the feelings of a farmer who is tied to export prices, which neither he nor the Government can influence, when he sees other sections of the community getting substantial increases in their incomes, wages and salaries, apparently often just for the asking, without any Government reaction. There is at least an arguable case that if the Government have responsibility for co-ordinating all the factors affecting the nation's economic progress and can influence or regulate all the other forces bearing on the country's economic health, they should also have power and responsibility in the field of wage and salary levels. Nevertheless, it has never been the policy of this Government to seek or to exercise powers of that kind, except in the abnormal circumstances of the war. I believe that the Government have a duty to promote widespread understanding of the national circumstances, understanding of the consequences of any particular course of action that may be proposed or in progress, and an obligation to speak clearly and honestly to the people of those matters and to encourage reasonable behaviour by every section.

By and large, that method has worked well enough up to now. I repeat what I said here during the debate on the Vote on Account and, indeed, what the Minister for Finance said in his Budget statement yesterday — that up until the eighth round of wage increases the overall rise in wages which took place since the end of the War did not exceed what would have been justified by rising productivity and, if we are to secure acceptance of the need for improving productivity and co-operation in measures required to bring it about, we must agree that a fair share of the benefits deriving from it will be available to the workers concerned. That principle is now generally accepted, I think. Indeed, I could say it is now for the first time officially accepted by those who speak for employer interests.

There is, as we are all glad to see, a growing recognition that the old haphazard method of dealing with these matters is inappropriate to our present circumstances and certainly inappropriate to the circumstances of our membership of EEC. There is acceptance of the fact that there is need to re-examine our situation in a comprehensive way and to estimate the probable consequences of any course of action, or any particular policy before embarking on it, and agreement that policies and actions which are considered suitable to the promotion of progress and the expansion of employment should not be capable of being disrupted by irresponsible behaviour of any group or section.

If this new approach to this old problem produces a new procedure that does not involve any Government participation, direct or indirect, it will be very good and, in our judgement, far better than any system of State regulation. It is certainly the policy of the Government to work in that direction and to await the outcome of the discussions which are now being organised before considering any possible alternative. The aim of economic policy is now, and must always be, to ensure that the living standards of our people will improve and that that improvement is fairly distributed between all sections that make up our community.

This country is better off in terms of living standards for its people than it ever was before and our rate of economic growth is now faster than ever before. I know we would all wish to see Ireland the richest State in the world. We would all like to speed up still further our present rate of progress; we would all like to be able to enjoy now the still higher living standards which we can expect in four or five years time, if our present rate of progress is maintained. There is no possible objection to any class striving to be better off within the limits fixed by the overall national progress and having regard to the equal rights of all other classes. The aim of our policy has always been to bring this about.

A disturbing feature is, however, the association at present of this desire to be better off with the idea of doing less work. That is something that cannot be done. From the beginning of time, men have had to earn their living by the sweat of their brow and better living is the result of better work. In this year, a very special effort will be required to expand output and to improve production methods and techniques to offset the effect of recent cost increases.

Government policy is based upon the belief that the national progress requires three main ingredients, a sound plan, enterprise and work. If any one ingredient is absent, there can be no progress. We have tried to promote understanding of that by precept and example. We have not spared the precept and I do not think we have failed to give the example. No other nation cares one hoot whether Ireland goes ahead or goes back. In the struggle for our economic improvement, we are strictly on our own. Again and again, it must be repeated so that understanding of the basic elements in our national circumstances will spread, that progress here means exports. This country lives by its exports to a greater extent than any other country in Western Europe. Nobody outside Ireland is under any obligation to buy the things we export and, indeed, under EEC when the transitional period has ended, nobody in Ireland will be under any compulsion to buy our products either. We can give ourselves higher wages and higher salaries and incomes generally, but if they mean higher prices, the people outside Ireland are under no obligation to pay them. Any reduction in our competitive power means a reduction in exports and a reduction in exports means less employment and lower living standards. These are the elementary facts we must never forget.

The increase in industrial output in recent years is due almost entirely to the expansion of our exports of industrial products. In 1961, we had a higher rate of increase in industrial production than any country of EEC and yet we know that we still have a need to speed up our progress and that will not be easy. The law of diminishing returns is already beginning to operate. We cannot do it at all, if we are to be burdened by avoidable handicaps. The only real basis of national wellbeing is the production of goods and services that other people want and are prepared to pay for. Higher wages and salaries, higher farm subsidies and pensions and all the rest do not add one iota to the national wealth, unless, and to the extent that, they contribute to the expansion of output destined for export.

Higher home consumption such as we must anticipate this year because of the higher incomes available means we will have less to export and more to import, unless they are balanced by higher output. A standard of living based on paper money could not survive for long and it is only on a basis of real production that we can build our economy securely and avoid the danger of economic recession.

In the circumstances prevailing in this country, economic difficulties, whether they are current or anticipated, are immediately reflected in the rate of emigration. Our people can move to employment elsewhere when they wish to do so more easily than almost any other people on the earth. There are countries which are prepared to accept them, countries in which there are no barriers of language or social custom to impede them and our people do move out, expanding the volume of emigration, if and when there is any lack of confidence in the nation's continuing progress. The damage that was done to this country in the last disastrous year of the Coalition Government, 1956, was not the pulling down of industrial employment or farmers' incomes. It was the destruction of the confidence of our people in the future of our country. That was what started this wave of abnormal emigration.

Which is what the Taoiseach has to answer for — the lies and the falsehoods.

The fall in the emigration record during the past year measures the regrowth of confidence in the future of the country.

You did a good job, no doubt about it.

Deputies talk as if emigration started in 1957. The highest number of people ever to leave this country in a single year left in the last year of that Coalition Government. In that year, the net emigration was 55,000 people. You know how many left last year? It was 22,000.

It was 67,000.

The net emigration in the 12 months which ended in February, 1962, was 22,000 people.

Where does he get it?

These are our own figures and I think Deputies should put as much reliance on figures given by an Irish Government as on figures published by the British Government.

The British Government figures have nothing to do with net emigration.

It is all rubbish.

They have nothing whatever to do with net emigration. I am talking about the number of people who left Ireland last year, less the number of people who came back. It was 22,000, still too high, but it is less by 60 per cent. than what it was in 1956. In respect of the first quarter of this year, indications are that the fall is still continuing.

It cannot go on for ever. The Taoiseach sent out 250,000 in the last five years. Nobody would be left if it continued.

It started in 1948.

A general election.

The Deputy is completely wrong. There will not be a general election.

The Taoiseach will hold on to office for as long as he can. He will cling to it.

They will not listen to the truth.

While our statistics show a rise in employment in the last year which exceed by about 6,000 the fall in the number of persons occupied at agriculture, and while that is likely to be repeated in 1962, it must be said that there is no indication in our employment statistics that employment rose or is rising at a rate sufficient to explain the whole of the remarkable drop in emigration. Indications are that the drop in emigration was partially due to a rise in employment but also to rising expectations of employment in the future.

There is, of course, a very close relationship between our rates of emigration and the number of people registered at our employment exchanges and the fall in the registered unemployed in recent years was attributed in part to emigration. Deputies opposite have been wont to attribute the whole of the fall to emigration, but with emigration falling at a faster rate than employment appears to be increasing, some reflection of that situation in our unemployment figures is to be expected. Last week, indeed, for the first time in five years, the number registered as unemployed was slightly higher than in the corresponding week of the previous year, though still 10,000 below the corresponding week of 1960.

I do not know whether that was due to weather conditions or other factors which may have been operating, but we must expect, because of this rapid decline in the number of people emigrating, some reflection of the development will emerge in our unemployment statistics. That will not indicate any fall in employment. On the contrary, it is increasing and we expect it to continue to increase, while it is clear that our social and economic problems are far from solved, it is a far preferable situation to that which existed here previously.

A most noteworthy change in these statistics relates to agricultural employment. For many years, as Deputies are aware, there has been a continuing decline in the numbers occupied in agriculture, whether persons employed for wages as farm workers or those occupied as relatives assisting farmers. In 1961, the decline in hired labour — persons employed for wages — continued but the number of persons returned as occupied in agriculture as relatives assisting farmers increased by 5,000. The overall decline in persons occupied in agriculture at 2,600 was the lowest for a decade.

The position prevailing in agriculture has occupied a very large part of the time and concern of the Government during the past year. I discussed it on a number of occasions with leaders of the National Farmers Association and other farmers' organisations. Recently we had an exercise proceeding which I arranged, comprising meetings between the statistics officers of the Government and experts of the N.F.A. in an effort to get a clear picture from the available statistics as to how agriculture has fared since the end of the war.

I cannot say we have agreed on the interpretation of the statistics or indeed as to whether agricultural incomes should be calculated on a sector basis, a family basis, an individual or some other basis. The work done at these meetings and the discussions which were associated with them, were nevertheless valuable. It is clear, however, that the improvement which has taken place in agricultural incomes, whether calculated per head of persons or families occupied in agriculture, was due mainly, though not entirely, to the fall in the numbers of persons engaged in agriculture. In 1961 as compared with 1953, the gross output of Irish agriculture increased by 15 per cent. and as between these two years, the price level was the same. During these years, however, industrial output increased by 41 per cent. In contrast with industry the position in agriculture is that rising incomes per head are associated with a reduction in employment whereas in manufacturing industry, rising incomes have been associated with rising employment.

Average figures relating to agricultural output, whether output per head or output per acre can be misleading when they are related to any particular part of the country. Productivity in agriculture varies considerably according to the size and location of the farms. The output per head in the larger farms of the eastern counties is more than double that of persons occupied on the smaller western type farms. We have been considering this problem of the smaller western farms, the economic and social problems which they present and their future development. I informed the House some time ago that we had set up a committee of officials of all the Departments whose work brings them in constant contact with the problems of these areas to consider what measure could be taken to bring about an improvement. I had intended that that committee would make its report solely for the guidance of the Government but, when I received its report a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it would be wiser to publish it. The report is now being prepared for publication and should be available within the course of two or three weeks.

I hope the publication of this report will help towards a wider understanding of the character of the problems presented in these areas. I trust that it will be widely read and discussed. Later on, the Departments of Government concerned will be meeting to discuss it in greater detail and will be considering the recommendations contained in it, and, I hope they will have the benefit of the views of other people outside the Government who have studied the report and recommendations and are in a position to make useful comment.

Agriculture is in a transitional period, anticipating the stabilised prices and more secure marketing arrangements of the European Economic Community but still experiencing the present temporary difficulties of expanding production for export on a profitable basis. We have decided, as a matter of policy, that because of the better long term prospects which present themselves in association with membership of the European Economic Community it would be unwise to seek to curtail or discourage any form of agricultural production at this stage, although there must clearly be some reservations about starting a drive to expand production in some of the problem products until markets for the increased output can be seen.

These difficulties can be clearly illustrated in the case of milk. In 1961, we had a record year for milk production. Deliveries of milk to creameries were the highest ever and there was also an increase in the number of suppliers and a notable improvement in yield. That was, to some extent, due to the favourable weather in 1961 for milk production, but nevertheless the trend is towards further expansion of supplies through an increase in the number of producers and better yields. The first two months of this year, and these are the only two months for which returns are yet available, show an increase of about 13 per cent. over last year.

Increased production of milk and milk products means finding export outlets in already over-supplied markets. Deputies are aware that we have already encountered difficulties in maintaining our exports because of our subsidisation arrangements. To seek to improve the incomes of milk producers by raising the price of milk would give rise to three difficulties. First, a higher price for milk delivered to the creameries would tend to bring about a still more rapid expansion of production, a still stronger tendency amongst other farmers to change over to milk and consequently increase the export surplus and the inevitable marketing difficulties. It would involve a further extension of our export subsidies and that could increase the risks of retaliatory action against us. If we attempted to reflect a higher price for milk in a higher price for butter in the home market the possibility is that we would reduce the consumption of butter, that the tendency to change over to margarine would become stronger and thus make more surplus butter available for export.

I met the representatives of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association and discussed the situation with them. Although they would like to see a higher price for milk, when these difficulties were presented to them they were in no better position than the Government to offer a solution for them. That is one reason why the Government decided that all the increased aid to agriculture which could be given in this financial year should take the form of a relief of the costs of the farmers rather than in further production stimulants. Our newspapers are consistently reporting our industrial progress, new plans for industrial expansion, the opening of new factories and so forth. That is the type of hard news that newspapers like to publish and its constant publication tends to obscure the extent to which the economic welfare of the country continues to depend on the prosperity of our agriculture.

Within the limits of practicability, it is the policy of the Government to provide maximum aid for agriculture and we are doing so. There may be amongst farmer Deputies and members of the farming community lack of appreciation of the extent to which the Government is helping agriculture to expand its production, increase efficiency and lower its costs. In the present year to which this Budget applies, there will be provided for farmers £7 million to subsidise the prices of certain products. Over and above that, we are providing another £3½ million to subsidise the fertilisers which farmers use to increase their output. Drainage, land reclamation and grants for general farm improvements will absorb another £4 million. Measures for the eradication of disease in livestock, particularly the bovine tuberculosis scheme, will, this year, require the provision by the Government of £10 million.

We are voting in the Estimates £1 million for grants for farm buildings, £2 million for agricultural education, research and the advisory services, and, as a consequence of the change announced yesterday by the Minister for Finance, £8½ million for the relief of rates on agricultural land. These are direct aids to agriculture brought into operation by the Government and designed by the Government to meet the requirements of Irish farming. All that money is being induced or taken from the pockets of the community for the purpose of transferring it over to the farmers to enable them to meet the circumstances of the present time. Over and above that, we have introduced improved arrangements for agricultural credit. I could refer also to the rural electricity scheme, the arterial drainage scheme, to a number of other measures of the same kind, all costly in character and all directly beneficial to rural dwellers.

As an indication of the extent to which this community of ours has, through the Government, responded to the needs of Irish farmers, may I mention that State aid to agriculture absorbs 25 per cent. of our tax revenue and that figure is to be compared with one of six per cent. which represents the aid to agriculture given in Britain as a percentage of the tax revenue of the British Government? We recognise that within the European Economic Community, the form of the aid that we give to agriculture may have to be changed — not the extent of it but the character. As we read them, the rules of the EEC do not prevent the giving of aids to improve efficiency, to reduce costs and generally to improve the position of farmers, provided that the aids do not operate to distort conditions of competition.

We consider, however, that because of our expectation of membership of the EEC, because of our knowledge of what will be permissible under the rules of that organisation, it would be unwise at this stage to extend further the price subsidies we are now providing and which will have to be withdrawn in the new circumstances. Rates relief, the lightening of the burden on the cash incomes of farmers, seems the direction in which we must try to continue to move. It is probably too soon yet to decide upon changes in our agricultural production pattern which membership of EEC would involve but consideration is proceeding.

Deputies will have noted repeated press reports of the plans for the expansion of vegetable processing. Private firms are interested in this possibility, although the Irish Sugar Company is of course the main instrument of policy. Legislation to provide the Sugar Company with the first instalment of the capital required for its ambitious development programme will soon be submitted to the Dáil. There are a multitude of problems and possibilities affecting agriculture.

While the Government must retain the ultimate power of decision and while their responsibility is to the Dáil and, through the Dáil, to the people, we wish to consider these problems in consultation and, if possible, in agreement with representative farmers' organisations. I would regret it very much if circumstances should cause any difficulty in maintaining the policy of consultation, of full and frank discussion with the representatives of these organisations. To the extent that that may have already happened, it will be my special concern to remedy it.

The Minister for Finance said yesterday that plans for the finalisation of rural electrification will be announced in the course of three or four weeks by the Minister for Transport and Power. The White Paper on Fishery Development, which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands spoke about last week, will, I hope, be available to Deputies next week.

This morning I read in the papers that the President of the N.F.A. talked about the dynamic approach of the Government in preparing industry for the Common Market and contrasted that with what he described as the sterile approach to the development of farming to face EEC competition. I must confess that statement irritated me very much because it is completely unjustified, and indeed the leaders of the N.F.A. know very well how unjustified it is. First of all, I think it is fair to point out that the industrial policy of the EEC is already firmly established and well understood. There is no problem in explaining that policy to our industrialists and in getting them to understand the conditions in which they will have to operate when we are members. The agricultural policy of the Community is not as clearly known. In so far as indeed they have gone in determining their agricultural policy, they only finalised their decisions on Thursday of last week, 5th of April, and even in these decisions as then completed, some important points of details were left to be fixed in the future. For example, no decisions have been taken yet by institutions of the Community regarding commodities which are of vital interest to us: beef, milk, dairy products and sugar.

In the circumstances, it is clear why preparations to enable agriculture to meet the conditions of the Common Market are less well advanced than preparations for manufacturing industry. But the representatives of all these farmer organisations should know and understand that situation very well. The Minister for Agriculture met the leaders of the N.F.A., the Creamery Milk Suppliers Association and the county committees of agriculture last July before we made our application for membership. He informed them of our intention to make that application and discussed with them what it would involve; and later, after our application for membership had been lodged, there was a further meeting with all these bodies in October. Included on this occasion were two further organisations, the Sugar Beet Growers' Association and the I.A.O.S.

At that meeting it was decided to set up a number of survey groups to carry out in relation to the different sectors of agriculture the same type of investigation as was being done by working parties established under the Committee on Industrial Organisation. A survey group to deal with pigs and bacon products was set up in December; so also was a group to deal with cereals and cereal products. A survey team to deal with cattle, beef, sheep and mutton was set up in January, and in that month also groups were formed to survey two other sectors: poultry and eggs and milk and milk products. A group to deal with fruit and vegetables was established in April. Already the survey team dealing with pigs and pig products is advanced in its work, and I am informed is beginning to draft sections of its report. A similar situation exists in regard to the group dealing with cattle, sheep, beef and mutton.

They also are well advanced with their work and preliminary drafting of their report has begun. The milk and dairy team commenced work in March. The grain milling group encountered some difficulties with the flourmillers which I hope will be resolved. That has held up progress in that sector of the field it is covering but it is actively at work in relation to other mill products. The poultry and eggs team will start work in the near future. As I mentioned fruit and vegetables, I should say also that there is a working party under the Committee on Industrial Organisation dealing with fruit, vegetable and jam industries.

In view of these facts, this widely extended range of activities now in progress, of which the leaders of the N.F.A. and those other farm organisations are well aware, Deputies will, I hope, agree with me that it is exasperating to have to meet this reiterated allegation that nothing is being done in the Department of Agriculture in regard to the European Economic Community. I would ask the N.F.A., instead of voicing unjustifiable criticisms, to concentrate on preparing constructive proposals for these groups, not to be presenting us with a rehash of ideas already published by the British National Farmers Union, and to get their members to study the very considerable documentation which has already been supplied to them.

The Department of Agriculture is deeply concerned with the interests of farming. It is staffed by people who are highly competent in every branch of agriculture and who are motivated by no other desire than to co-operate with the Minister in ensuring that Irish agriculture will prosper in the present and be so organised that it will be able to take full advantage of whatever benefits membership of the European Economic Community can provide for them.

I want to say a word about the social welfare services. Deputy Dillon made a point that the new social welfare arrangements for the non-contributory classes will not begin to operate until 1st August and for the contributory classes until 1st January. Deputies know that legislation has to be passed by the House before these higher payments can be made, and not merely is legislation required but many administrative arrangements also have to be completed. For the contributory scheme it involves for example printing millions of new stamps at whatever higher value may be decided upon. The desire of the Government, constantly expressed by me and by other Ministers, is to continue to improve our social welfare arrangements, to continue to strengthen the bulwarks provided by our community against undeserved poverty arising from any cause. I have already boasted here that in every single year since 1957 some new improvement in our social welfare services came into operation and this year will be no exception.

Comparisons which are not infrequently made between the social welfare arrangements operating here and those provided in other states are quite unfair both to the achievements of the Government and to the social conscience of our people. Notwithstanding our present rate of economic progress, our national product per head of population is still not much more than half of that of Great Britain and indeed ranks higher than that of only four of the countries which are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development — Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal — although it is, of course, a great deal higher than that enjoyed by the great majority of mankind.

Our social welfare arrangements — and again I think this fact is a fair illustration of our attitude towards them — absorb about 20 per cent. of our tax revenue as compared with 9 per cent. in Britain. I have made known the policy and intention of the Government to continue to expand our social welfare arrangements in line with the improvements in our national wealth. We have up to the present done better than that and are doing better this year.

It is necessary, in view of some remarks that were made here yesterday and which disclosed misunderstanding of the facts, to point out that the annual cost of the increases which the Minister for Finance proposed in his Budget statement for the non-contributory classes will be very considerably more than their cost in this year because of the fact that they will commence to operate late in the financial year. To that extent we are now imposing a charge upon next year's Budget and that is particularly true in regard to the new rates to be brought into operation under the contributory scheme for the contributory pensions, for the widows and other beneficiaries under the contributory scheme. By the changes proposed in non-contributory benefit we have brought benefits under the non-contributory scheme very close to those prevailing under the contributory scheme and that is not right. It is clearly desirable that we should increase the contributory benefits and increase them by more than we are increasing the non-contributory benefits.

The Minister for Finance did not, announce what we had in mind in that regard because the Minister for Social Welfare may wish to have discussions with the Congress of Trade Unions and the Employers' Federation. It is agreed, of course, that any increase in benefits under the contributory scheme will involve an increase in the contributions of both workers and employers as well as of the State but in my view — and I think this view is shared by the Government — the increase in benefits should not be less than double those provided in the Budget for non-contributory beneficiaries. If we found that there was acceptance of the idea of a still greater increase involving a still higher contribution, we would not be prepared to rule it out. Deputy Dillon need not be unduly worried about that because in my experience of discussions on a previous occasion with the Congress of Trade Unions, I found them by no means reluctant to face higher contributions in order to secure substantially higher benefits.

I take it my estimate was about right — 8, 8 and 8?

The intention is to get back to the arrangement under which one-third of the cost falls on the Exchequer, one-third upon the employer and one-third upon the worker. As the Minister for Finance announced, the Government have accepted the recommendations contained in the interim report from the Committee on Industrial Organisation for changes in legislation and other changes to enable industry to adapt itself to meet Common Market conditions. Legislation to amend the Industrial Grants Act as proposed by the Committee is being prepared and it is perhaps desirable again to emphasise what the Minister for Industry and Commerce has already said, that all the additional aids to industry which will be available in consequence of the adoption by the Government of these recommendations will be retrospective in their application to a date in December last, prior to the beginning of the present year, so that no firm need delay proceeding with plans for modernisation of its plant or the improvement of its operations by reason of a desire to wait and see what the Government have in mind in that regard.

The nation is entering upon a tremendous task of reorganisation. That reorganisation will extend not merely into manufacturing industry and to agriculture, but also into the services that both agriculture and industry require. We shall encounter many difficulties. It would be foolish to hope that we shall have an easy passage during this period of preparation. But these difficulties can certainly be minimised and may be completely surmounted if we can get widespread goodwill and co-operation from those in whose interest it is to give them.

One further matter that should be emphasised is that, apart from the changes announced in the Budget and in the amount of money that the Government will spend this year upon the services mentioned by the Minister for Finance, the Book of Estimates already circulated to Deputies shows anticipated increases in expenditure of quite considerable sums in other directions. For example, expenditure upon our educational services this year will be up by about £3,000,000. A large part of that, it is true, will be absorbed in increased salaries to teachers, but there are other expansions of our educational services in mind which the Minister for Education will outline in his estimate speech. Housing grants are up by £25,000. Deputy Dillon was, I think, well aware of the fact that he was playing with figures——

I was not.

——when he quoted housing statistics from the Statistical Abstract. It is true that for some years — 1957, 1958 and 1959 — we had reached a situation in which housing needs had been almost completely, if not completely, met over the greater part of the country. In Dublin, and in the other cities, the problem of housing had been greatly reduced by emigration. There was a stage two or three years ago when Dublin Corporation had 1,500 empty dwellings available for people who needed them but, with the very rapid return of population from England to Dublin and the substantial reduction in emigration, that picture has now changed completely. Dublin Corporation is already finding itself in arrear with its housing programme, almost as much in arrear as ever they were. So far as the Government are concerned, we have been pressing local authorities to get on as quickly as possible with their established housing needs.

After I became Taoiseach, I met the representatives of the Dublin Corporation and discussed this matter with them. I found they were reluctant at that time to conduct their housing programme on a boom-and-burst basis. I made it clear to them that so far as the Government were concerned, finance need not be a reason why they should not extend considerably their scale of operations; but they preferred to programme their activities as foreseen at that time over a five-year period rather than over a shorter period in order to avoid the possibility of a subsequent slump in housing employment. That situation has changed completely. Our building industry is booming. Our housing needs are rising. So far as the Government are concerned, we hope to see Dublin Corporation, and every other housing authority that has local needs to meet, getting on with their programme as rapidly as possible.

Provision for health services has been increased by £1,500,000. Expenditure on public works, and particularly the provision of new schools and the arterial drainage programme, will also cost £1,500,000 more. It is the economic progress which the Government have secured under their programme for expansion which has given to the Government and to the country the resources which make possible these more ambitious programmes. As our progress continues, as we are sure it will, and still further expands the resources available to the Government and the Country, then still higher levels of activity in all these fields will be attained.

I suppose it is inevitable during a Budget debate that attention should be concentrated upon the financial and economic aspects of national development. This is the occasion when the bills for all our plans, all our schemes, and all our services are presented to the taxpayer, when they are all totalled up and have to be related to the country's capacity to pay them. We do not believe that all progress is consequential upon a higher level of public activity. Nevertheless, we say that public capital outlay has a most important part to play in stimulating the economic activities in the country.

As the Minister for Finance explained, we contemplate a still higher level of capital expenditure during the course of the present year, but the aim of that capital outlay is not merely to provide the specific projects to which it is directed but also to stimulate a higher level of activity in the private sector. Indeed, our progress depends to a much greater extent upon the development of enterprise in the private sector rather than upon what the Government do. It is for that reason that the Government decided in meeting the revenue requirements of this Budget to avoid any tax that could possibly be regarded as a disincentive to enterprise and a burden upon development.

During the past five years quite a significant change has taken place in the problem that is presented to the Dáil on Budget day. We are now dealing with the problems of growth and expansion, not with those of recovery and retrenchment. Indeed, in the political field the problems are changing also because we are now encountering the impatience of the public to get ahead still faster than we are doing rather than the despondency of five years back and the disgust that then prevailed because of the national decline.

There never will be, I suppose, a time when there will be no problems left to solve, but the problems that result from growth and expansion, while they can be difficult, are the problems that we are glad to have and the problems that we feel that we can find the means to cope with. It is still true to say, and this is my final word on this Budget, that everything that has been achieved so far is only a prologue, and that the best is yet to come.

If one did not know the Taoiseach to be a very skilful politician, one would be inclined to take at its face value what he said here this evening, being almost bewitched by some of the statements he made. I have been listening to these speeches from the Taoiseach for over 30 years now and, when they are all over, there are still emigrants leaving the country, still workhouses, still people living in slums, still unfortunate old age pensioners trying to make ends meet on miserable pittances in rat-ridden warrens in this city and many cities and towns up and down the country. So far as the masses of the under-privileged are concerned, speeches of this kind simply pass over their heads and do very little to touch the main economic problems which beset ordinary men and women of no wealth and no power in this country.

Tomorrow, after reading the Taoiseach's speech here today, every old age pensioner will be as poor as he is today, and he will remain so until August next, when he will get 2/6d. a week increase, while his acquaintances, the members of the judiciary, will have £30 a week credited to them since November of last year. The old age pensioner will be expected to take the view that he should not notice these little incongruities in the Government's method of mathematics. Some of these speeches are read by people on the boats going out. They will say: "Yes, but all this does not prevent me from having to go to England, whither economic necessity is driving me." It will not prevent homes in the west and south-west being closed up in the next 12 months when the owners move out because they cannot subsist in this year of 1962 on the impoverished standard of living available to them in these areas which yield nothing but heavy dividends in poverty, misery and squalor. Thus, I think we have to come back to realities and to realise that if this country's problems could be solved by speeches by Government Ministers and by eloquence on the part of some of them, we would have no problems at all, either today or in the past. But what are the hard facts of life? I ask myself one question and I hope some Government Deputies following me in the debate will answer it.

A Budget ought to be subjected to some tests. May I apply this test? What does this Budget do in a substantial way? What does this Budget start or create in a substantial way or where does this Budget leave us? I suggest these are not unfair questions. Somebody ought to tell us what this Budget does in any striking or spectacular way over and above the Budgets we have seen in other years.

I can see nothing in this Budget appropriate to the circumstances in which we live or appropriate to or providing for the much more dangerous circumstances into which we are likely to move. The Taoiseach says this Budget provides for the transfer of purchasing power from some classes to others. If we take up that phrase — the transfer of purchasing power from some classes to others — and apply it to the social welfare classes, what do we find? We find that out of a Budget of over £160,000,000, the social welfare classes — the old age pensioners, the widows, the orphans and blind persons — will get £1,000,000. A sum of £1,000,000 more of the £160,000,000 will go to these classes, commencing in August next. To refer to this Budget as redistributing purchasing power while these insignificant allocations are made to the neediest and most distressed sections of the community is surely a travesty of the meaning of words.

This Budget, in fact, leaves the main problems of the social welfare classes untouched and they will not be solved by this Budget or by the many portions of flowery speech delivered by the Minister. I suppose that, being a country in Western Europe and life for us being cast on this island, away from the main stream of European traffic and out of touch completely in very large measure with the developments in Europe, we should tend to look inside rather than outside. The plain fact of the matter is that it is only two years since the Taoiseach was in Paris and in Brussels pleading there that we were one of the five underdeveloped countries in Europe; that when you come to think of Ireland, you have to think of Ireland as something like Greece, like Turkey, like Finland, like Portugal; that we could not accept the rules of the E.E.C.; that our economic fabric was such that it was incapable of bearing these new burdens; and that we wanted to be regarded as the poor relation of the E.E.C. in Europe since we could bear no heavy burdens which would be appropriate to full membership of the E.E.C.

That was the position two years ago. I never believed that was a proper assessment of our position or in which to present us to Europe. I do not believe we were as helpless as all that — but that is what the gentleman opposite said. I can understand that, at the time, they were probably jockeying for position and hoping to get into what was then described as the Free Trade Area within which they could manoeuvre much more easily than within a much tighter E.E.C. It was never a fair way to present it but it was the way we were presented and paraded all over Europe, that is, that we had to be bracketed with the underdeveloped countries in Europe, some of which had been devastated by the War, and that our economic strength and fabric were only about the same as of countries which were always undeveloped or especially weakened by the ravages of war.

Now, we are asked to believe what the Taoiseach says. Now, all of these figures are set aside. We are now, economically, one of the rather muscularly-developing countries in Europe and development is taking place so rapidly that within a short time we shall not be able to realise the precise economic strength at our disposal. I do not believe that story at all. However, I shall come to that in a few minutes.

Personally, I am glad, and we are glad as a Party, that this country can continue to produce more in industry and agriculture. I am glad we can export more in industry and in agriculture. I applaud and support every measure calculated to strengthen the economic fabric of the country. However, it would be more than foolishness for us to exaggerate the situation and particularly to exaggerate it merely for political reasons in this House and before the electorate when the consequences of doing so may be far more serious so far as national development is concerned.

One would think from what the Taoiseach said that most of our problems had been solved; that, if they were not, then in any case they were inconsequential and could be attended to at some later stage but that we had reached almost the top of the hill; the zenith was there before our eyes. It was now a matter of consolidating our position and at the same time of developing all that had been achieved. Let us look at some very significant features of our economic development.

Take the question of employment. I have before me here a publication described as Economic Statistics, issued by the Central Statistics Office. In this booklet, by making a calculation. I find that in 1956 there were employed in industry and in agriculture 1,163,000 and that, by 1961, that figure had fallen to 1,119,000; in other words, a drop of 44,000 between 1956 and 1961. Or, if you take 1955, you will find that there were employed in 1955, 1,181,000 persons. In 1961, the figure was 1,109,000 — a drop of 62,000 between 1955 and 1961.

Can anybody pretend to be happy with a situation in which we lose, between 1956 and 1961, 44,000 people in employment and, between 1955 and 1961, we lose 62,000 people in employment? That is obviously a very unhealthy symptom and that symptom is not reproduced by any of the free countries of Europe. What the Taoiseach did not tell us is that we can find no parallel for that situation in any of the six countries with which we are going to join in EEC. That is a situation which has obtained in this country for many a year. That is a problem which we have not solved. That is a problem to the solution of which this Budget makes no contribution and that is a problem which, if we are ever to develop our resources to the fullest, must be tackled. Otherwise, we shall have all the outflow from that problem which is large scale unemployment at home, large scale emigration abroad and all the frustration that goes with a large pool of unemployed men and women in any country.

One remembers that, in 1957, the Government Party, with all the éclat and aplomb of the Taoiseach here this afternoon, issued a policy statement in Cork in which they warned the electorate to put out the inter-Party Government, to put Fianna Fáil back in office because Fianna Fáil had a plan to end emigration for all time and to provide 100,000 new jobs within five years. One hundred thousand new jobs in five years and emigration was to end — that was the promise made in 1957 by the Fianna Fáil Party in Cork. I quoted from that promise before. I have had it written into the Dáil records lest it should be lost to posterity. That promise was made in 1957; yet, in 1961 we find that there are 62,000 fewer people employed in industry and agriculture than in 1955. Just as that promise made in Cork in 1957 was never fulfilled, I believe that many of the promises made to-day by the Taoiseach will also find themselves in the limbo of forgotten things, once the hurly-burly of this debate passes by.

The Taoiseach now says emigration is easing. Something that affords considerable consolation, it is said in the Budget speech, is that emigration has fallen off considerably. We have had replies to Parliamentary Questions all indicating that it was impossible to devise any means of effectively checking the level of emigration. You might make a guess at it by nothing movement of passengers over sea and land but no reliable check could be found. We were told there was only one reliable indication and that was the figures provided by the census. Let us take these. The census figures were issued last year. They showed that compared with 1956, 215,000 persons had emigrated in the previous five years. When you recall that the number emigrating in those five years represents the entire population — not merely the electorate — of Kildare, Wicklow, Westmeath and Longford, you get some picture of the way in which this country has been denuded by emigration in the five years during which Fianna Fáil were supposed to be providing jobs for another 100,000 persons.

What we have done between 1956 and 1961 was to empty four counties completely of their population in an emigration sense. We have reached a stage after 40 years of self-government in which the population is now lower than at any time since population figures were first compiled and we are the only white country in the world, much less in Europe, which is losing its white population. These are disturbing developments which do not indicate progress but a deep-seated malaise which must be tackled vigorously if the nation is to survive and if we are to devise, especially in the new circumstances, a viable economy.

I want to refer to the social welfare benefits which the Taoiseach mentioned. My complaint is that these benefits are too low and the device of showing percentage increases and comparing these percentage increases with the increases in the cost of living is simply making a political ally out of recent scientific discovery. The application of plain fact to the matter shows that old age pensioners are expected to live on 30/- per week.

Can anybody imagine an old age pensioner in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford or in any town or rural cottage in Ireland trying to exist for seven days on 30/- when one remembers that person must provide himself with food, clothing, light, pay rent and have the other small things which are the attributes of civilised living? The conditions of life for that person are appalling. Yet that is the maximum we can afford. Even after the speech of the Taoiseach, which paints such a brilliant sunlit economy, we are still going to give them no more than 32/6 a week and we expect them to live on it. Ought we not in 1962 realise that these rates of benefit are far too low, that even if they got 5/-a week it would not be too much but that in fact we should endeavour to lift these pensions to £2 a week as a minimum and we should endeavour as quickly as we can to lift the rate even above that figure?

To-day our old age pension rate is the lowest in Western Europe. Our social welfare services generally are below standards in Western Europe and even of countries that have been devastated by war. When we get all these fine phrases from the Taoiseach and look over our shoulder, we find that the most depressed classes in the community have a standard of living which is capable of very substantial improvement. The real test of the Government's heart in the matter is to find that out of a Budget of over £160 million, the additional sum they can give the old age pensioner, the blind pensioner, the widow and the orphan, is only £1 million. That sum is totally inadequate and it is difficult to imagine that in a Budget of such dimensions more money could not be found to relieve the plight of these classes who have the sympathy not only of the public but also of the Oireachtas and who will not get more than they are getting under this Budget.

The Taoiseach seems to think that this country had a magnificent record in the percentage which it spent on social benefits. I answer that by saying that our social welfare benefits are substantially below those of the Six Counties; they are below those in Britain; they are below those in every free democracy in Western Europe. So long as they are, there is no justification whatever for anybody in this country to presume to take pride in what we have achieved when so much remains to be done for that unfortunate section of the community.

What are the figures in relation to our expenditure on social welfare services? In 1957-58, we spent 24.8 per cent; in 1959-60, we spent 23.8 per cent; in 1961-62, it was down to 22.3 per cent; and, if my guess is worth anything, it is probably not more than 21 per cent. for this year. Not only are we failing to give these people an adequate competency to sustain them in old age and adversity, but we are spending less money on social services.

The Taoiseach referred to the housing programme and said Fianna Fáil had now restarted the drive and that we could expect titanic exertions. Earlier, when the inter-Party Government were in office, some Deputies, including, I am sorry to say, one of our own, were misled into believing that money was not then made available to Dublin Corporation for the purpose of proceeding with their housing plans. I have here answers to two Parliamentary Questions, Nos. 38 and 39 on March 27th last. They provide some interesting material in that respect and I should like to quote them for the purpose of the record.

The Dublin Corporation was provided with money by the Government in 1954 to the extent of £3,182,000. In 1955, the figure provided was £2,778,000; in 1956 it was £2,500,000; in 1957, £2,687,000; and in 1959, £1,136,000. In 1960, the sum provided was £881,000 and in 1961, £841,000. So the Corporation, which received from the inter-Party Government £3,182,000 for housing in 1954 got, in 1961, from the Fianna Fáil Government only £841,000. That does not show any niggardly attitude towards meeting the Dublin Corporation in respect of housing requirements by the inter-Party Government.

Let us now look at the number of houses and flats built by the Corporation in the past few years. In 1954, the Corporation built 1,922 houses and flats. In 1956-57, they built 1,564; in 1959-60, they built 505; and in 1960-61 the figure was 277. For the first 11 months of 1961-62, they built 320, so that though there are well over 5,000 houses in the city of Dublin to-day and it is impossible for a man with a wife and two or three children to get housing accommodation from the Corporation, the facts are that only 320 houses and flats were built last year, according to the Minister for Local Government, whereas in 1954-55, when complaints were being made about the inter-Party Government, 1,922 houses and flats were built.

That does not seem to me to prove the inter-Party Government was in any way lax in providing money for housing. All it proves is that certain people were able to participate in a ramp at that time and get away with it for the time being. These are the clear figures and in the interest of truth, they ought to be disclosed, so that they can be quoted on future occasions whenever the same lie is unstabled for a canter by the same people who raced that lie on the last occasion.

The Taoiseach mentioned the report of the Committee on Industrial Organisation and the preparations which were being made to see this country through the tempests and vicissitudes of the Common Market. I have read the report of the Committee on Industrial Organisation and I must say I agree with its terms very broadly and very generally. I think it has approached the problem in a realistic way and that, without much verbiage, has given the Government and the country a report on what must be done if we are to face up to all the problems of adaptation of our industry to the needs of the future.

In fact, if we never had a Common Market, we ought to have a report of this kind and whether we are admitted to the Common Market or not, whether or not we ever heard of the Common Market, we should, I think, have done many of the things suggested in this report which has been subscribed to by a variety of people — employers, trade unionists, economists and well-known civil servants. It seems to get at some of the basic problems confronting the country industrially and it seems to me also that unless we adjust our agricultural problems speedily on the line recommended by the Committee, we shall have a very painful association with the Common Market.

I should like now to quote one or two comments from the Report. It opens strikingly enough and, I think, gives the red light, by saying:

Irish firms and industries will survive under free trade only if their products are competitive in design, style, quality, delivery dates, marketing techniques and price with those available from other countries within the EEC. It would be unwise to assume that local patriotism, consumer ignorance, market friction, permissible restrictive practices or any other consideration will modify this conclusion significantly.

It follows by saying that in their present state, many Irish firms and industries could not survive freer competition from imports. At a later stage, it urges the necessity for applying the re-equipment programme which it indicates earlier and it says:

It will take a certain period before this equipment can be got and consequently it will be a certain time before we can meet the competitive impact of association with the Common Market.

It says this means that if a firm decided now to re-equip on a substantial scale, the new equipment would not in most cases be operating efficiently before mid-1964. It continues by saying that relatively few firms or industries are at present making decisions designed to prepare them for freer trade. That is the report of the Committee which has spent some time in interviewing industrialists, in examining the problems they have found and distilling the views they got in the hope of being able to find a practical policy on which the country could rely for its approach to the difficulties created by the Common Market.

I have said on many occasions, in this House and outside it, that our decision to enter the Common Market would be, for this country, a most excruciating exercise and that nobody, in this country or elsewhere, could give this small country any assurance that we would not meet a competitiveness and a toughness in trade such as we have never experienced before, that many of our industries will not be able to face for long the fierce competitiveness which will be produced by the Common Market. Although we have discussed the whole question of the Common Market in the Dáil and there have been arguments here and elsewhere, as well as Press articles and letters written to the newspapers, I still find that the misunderstanding and the confusion which our entry into the Common Market will involve have not been cleared up for the ordinary citizen.

To many of our people, the basis of the European Economic Community is not known or understood. Even industrialists do not seem to know what it means for their own industries, nor have they any plans for dealing with the situation which will obtain in the future when they will have to sell their own products against giants in the same field of production, when they will have to sell their products in the Irish market which, up to now, has been solely reserved in a great many cases for Irish products alone.

From time to time, I read in the Press articles from people who have taken a strong interest in the Common Market. I saw recently a statement made by one of our economists who, I think, is strongly pro-E.E.C., Mr. Garret Fitzgerald, in which he said that it was almost impossible to exaggerate the changes which membership of the Common Market could bring about in our way of life. He said that no aspect of this country's life would be left untouched and that clearly the main opportunities for export under these new conditions will lie in the agricultural field where we, as a low-cost producer of such farm produce as cattle and beef, mutton and potatoes, barley and milk, are in a fairly competitive position. The viewpoint of this economist is that our membership of E.E.C. is going to mean a very substantial change in our industrial life and that it would be impossible to exaggerate this change.

I pass from that to an article which appeared in the Farmers' Bulletin last year, by the Minister for Agriculture, from which I take it that the views expressed were not only his own views but the views of his Department. He said there was a kind of illusion that so far as agriculture is concerned, the Common Market is going to be a very desirable place for Irish agriculture. He added that it was very important that we should be clear and realistic about the present position of import markets, not only in Britain but on the Continent of Europe. He said that some people who do not appear to have studied the matter thoroughly are under the impression that there are vast undeveloped markets on the Continent and added: "But I can assure them there are not." He said that Continental countries were practically self-supporting agriculturally and that we must remember that the six countries of the Common Market were about 80 per cent. self-sufficient in the kinds of food that are produced in Western Europe.

If you follow from that to an article written by the Secretary of the German Department of Agriculture you find that he refers to the fact that, globally, the six countries of the Common Market are self-sufficient in regard to their requirements. Five of them were completely self-sufficient but there was a margin in Western Germany for certain kinds of agricultural produce into which the other five wanted to get. These five are being followed by ourselves, Britain, Denmark and other countries. France has a substantial frontier with Germany and France has the strongest agriculture in Europe so that we have no doubt that if there is a market in West Germany for agricultural produce, the French will not be long about filling it.

My complaint is that speeches which are made in the artificial atmosphere of dinners and banquets about meeting the challenge of the Common Market, thereby stimulating enthusiasm, are made by people who have no idea of the competition facing them. One would imagine from all the talk there has been about meeting the challenge of the Common Market that this is a kind of a situation in which bravery and Irish muscle will suffice to sustain the Irish, no matter where they are. It is no such athletic occasion at all. We are going to meet in this Common Market, fairly and squarely in competition, people who have an industrial tradition hundreds of years older than ours is and who have got a home market to sustain them many times greater than the home market we have got.

All this idle talk about meeting the challenge of the Common Market leaves me cold. I wonder what these people think when they go to their offices the following day and try to assess the situation. Many of the people who make these speeches have never been inside a European factory and, if they have been inside one, they have not been inside two. They do not know how their competitors are organised and they have no knowledge of the set-up of the large-scale industries with which they will have to compete in the future.

You must remember there are in Germany today a number of factories in which there are 300 or 400 engineers working in offices on their own at the drawing board, doing no work whatever except at the drawing board. The whole object of these people is to find out whether the article made by the firm can be produced as a cheaper commodity than at present; whether if instead of having it as it is, you could make use of an alloy; whether there is any cheaper method of producing it by other types of machine gadgets; whether you could not possibly take out a section that gets worn and fit in another section which could be replaced when worn instead of replacing the whole part. They work day in and day out on planning for that. In many of our industries, we have not got an engineer at all, but here is a squad of 400 planning from morning to night for 52 weeks of the year.

It is because our people have not realised those dangers that I think it is somebody's job to bestir them. I appreciate that perhaps a politician is not the best person to do it, particularly if he is in Government, because people will say: "You are bringing disaster on us again." But it should be done and it will have to be done; otherwise, there will be a long and widespread area of real suffering, once we get into the middle of the Common Market. We ought to start by saying that the Common Market must be known and understood, not just in the Department of Industry and Commerce and in the Department of Finance and in the boardroom of Government Buildings. The Common Market must be known and understood in the factory, in the field, at the meetings of the directors; but, above all, the dangers of it must be known and recognised at tripartite conferences representative of employers, workers and the Government in which everybody should have a full appraisal of what dangers have to be met and the plans to meet them. Failure to recognise the simple fact that we must start well down the line will exact a heavy toll from us in confusion and dislocation and subsequently in unemployment and under-employment.

Our first task must be to get clarity as to what the real position is. Looking at it from a purely Irish point of view, in my view, it would have been better if the issue of the Common Market had never arisen. Nobody here asked for its establishment. Nobody here pioneered its advent. Nobody saw that a European Common Market provided a solution for our economic difficulties. In fact, though we never called it so and clearly did not recognise it as such, we have had the best common market for the past 40 years, a common market into which we can send practically all our industrial goods free of charge and at the same time, impose a duty on the goods produced by the country which is letting in our goods free of charge.

Good God!

I am saying the facts are there. You will find a question to the Minister asking what percentage of our industrial goods go to Britain free of duty. In the new Common Market situation, if we arrive at equality with the other countries in repeal of tariffs, they will be able to trade here free of duty and we will be able to trade with them free of duty. But that is a long step from the British situation in which we can send to Britain manufactured goods free of duty and, at the same time, tariff goods made in Britain coming into this country for sale. Nobody can deny that. These are facts and figures. I see nothing that is going to produce any mesmeric solution for our economic difficulties by association with the Common Market.

What must not be overlooked in all this business is that, as a result of it, it is the big countries in Europe that may get bigger and stronger and the weak ones will be kept in their weak position and their development thwarted. After all, the Common Market is not an alms house. The Common Market is not an institution for handing out grants and gifts of one kind or another. The Common Market is a cold, economic union in which, I think, only the fittest will survive. There will be very little time to provide economic nurses and doctors for those whose chief contribution is the complaint that the rules are hard.

My advice is that once the British, who take 75 per cent. of our exports, join the Common Market, there is no alternative for us. We have got to follow that customer. If Britain stays out, it would be lunacy for us to go in. But we have decided that, once Britain has decided to join, we should join, too. As far as that decision has been taken, I support it fully. It is the only realistic thing you can do. The viewpoint of people who say we should stay out of the Common Market and try to develop trade with Eastern Europe leaves me cold. In regard to the idea of trying to trade with some of these emerging countries in Africa, who have no money to buy anything and whose standard of development is such that they can in fact buy none of the things which are common-day purchases in well-developed and progressive countries, anybody interested in that kind of exercise ought to try it on himself in some way first. However, the economic well-being of this country is bound up with our going into the Common Market, not because we love the British, not because of any affection for them, but as the most compelling thing to do from an economic point of view and because it suits our economic development best.

In any case, it is unthinkable that we could remain out if Britain went in. If we did, our economic death would be hastened very rapidly. Nor could we think of going in if the British stayed out, because we would be compelled to impose tariffs against the British and they would quickly retaliate by the cancellation of our advantageous trading agreements with them, which would not make the date of our economic death much later than if we took the first course.

One thing we have to consider is what is going to happen if we are admitted to the Common Market. Already the Common Market, that is, "The Six", have scaled down the tariffs between themselves at the rate of 10 per cent. per year and now they have scaled down half the tariffs. Whatever the tariffs were five years ago between these six countries, they are now only half of what they were then. We have applied to join, and I noticed the Tánaiste used a phrase. He wanted the rhythm of tariff reductions worked out. It may be we shall have to abolish them entirely in six years.

May be the other countries of the Common Market will claim: "Look here, you. See here — we are making you knock off 50 per cent. of the tariffs at once, not ten per cent. each year until 1969". If we had tomorrow to cut our tariffs by over 50 per cent., can anybody imagine the howl there would be in this country? How many industries could survive the immediate cutting of a tariff by 50 per cent.? Where a tariff at present is 20 per cent., a 50 per cent. cut would make it 10 per cent. and the firm might already be using that tariff to keep in existence. Therefore the cut would mean the firm's going out of existence in a short time, particularly if their competitors on the other side were to extend long-term credit to potential purchasers on this side.

I should like to know what is being done because I see nothing being done. The report on industrial organisation does not do it. I have asked industrialists about this. I have tried to find out what we are going to do if we are admitted next year and have to cut our tariffs by 50 per cent. Nobody knows. No member of this House knows, but it is vital from the point of view of industrialists and still more vital for those who have devoted their lives to working in these factories which have been set up and can be maintained only by high tariffs. It may well be that the first step towards our being permitted to join the Common Market will be: "well, all right; give evidence of your strength and good faith by repealing your tariffs by 50 per cent.". It would be a crippling blow immediately to our industry.

It may very well be that we shall be allowed, as the Taoiseach hopes, to have our last tariffs removed in 1969. That would give us some time, but, as the report pointed out, not a lot of time, having regard to what has to be done. If all tariffs are to go, as apparently the Taoiseach contemplates they will, by 1969, then I think a 50 per cent. cut in tariffs in 1962 or early 1963 would leave an economic and industrial situation here which could very well prove critical. It is possible, of course, that with memories of the fact that we pleaded we were one of the under-developed countries of Europe two years ago when we sought to be bracketed with Greece, Turkey and Portugal EEC might say: "You are a small country with very limited production, very limited exports, and you cannot do any harm to anybody. In these circumstances, we might allow you a longer time to dismantle your tariffs but ultimately, of course, they must be dismantled." If they do that, it may well be at the price of pushing us back to the position of associate member of the Common Market, not a full member, which, notwithstanding the heavier burdens, I would prefer because I think a say at the conference table where decisions are taken would be much more valuable to us in the long run.

Above all, what we must remember is that on going into the Common Market, our tariffs go. What way they go is another matter. Some may go next year and the remainder at the rate of ten per cent. per year for eight or seven years until they are all gone. Then our position will be that we must sell our own products in Ireland, with no tariffs on goods coming from outside, and sell our goods in Britain or elsewhere in a free market. Today we can sell industrially produced goods in Britain free of duty, a privilege which no other industrial country in Europe enjoys, whereas in future we shall be compelled to share the British market with everybody else in the Common Market and that is going to be a substantial change for us. Whether we can survive and the methods by which we can survive, only the future can unfold. At all events, it is time we were told what preparations are being made. While I agree that our not yet knowing whether we shall be admitted or not causes some difficulties, even if we are never admitted, if we are to survive as an independent economic unit, some steps must be taken to reorganise our industry so that our survival economically or politically will be an economic possibility.

I asked myself a question when discussing this matter with a friend of mine who is keenly interested because of his business associations: if we go into the Common Market, there will be no tariffs after a while on anything coming in and the millions raised by tariffs which find their way into the national accounts will all have evaporated. The income from tariffs will be nil. The millions found from them will have to be found somewhere else and it is an interesting exercise to look around our production and our sources of taxation to find out where we are to find in a relatively short time all the money which we now make from tariffs. In the future, you will get nothing from tariffs and will have to get it elsewhere. Some of it will come probably from purchase tax as in many European countries. Remember, when European countries go non-tariff as far as the rest of the Common Market countries are concerned, they, too, will have the same problem but of course their resources are far greater than ours and the problem is not the same for them.

Take an industry like the motor car assembling industry. I do not know what it is going to do or what the remedy is. At present cars come in boxed in a knocked down condition. They are re-assembled here and because of that, 5,000 to 7,000 people get employment. They have to come in that way because there is a heavy tariff on completely assembled cars but when we reach the stage when there is no tariff on such cars, what will happen? Are they to come in boxes when a completely assembled car can come across on a ferry and drive off on to the land? Will the parent company in England who finance these activities here be prepared to allow the assembly of cars in a knocked-down condition when they can export them more cheaply if they are produced and properly assembled at the parent factory in England?

Take other articles. Take the organisation in my own constituency for cutlery. It survives very largely because of a heavy tariff against imported products. There is another firm of the same kind in County Cork at Temple-michael. These will be open to the full blast of Sheffield products. Two or three factories supply the market but you have 40 big manufacturers in Britain. What chance have we of surviving against these big manufacturers? That will be a problem on which somebody should ask a question on behalf of industry and for which somebody must provide an answer. My feeling is that in the cold economic climate of commerce, you will find goods produced here coming against goods produced cheaply and that the profits of the cheaper produce will be utilised by industry in order to push sales.

One thing is clear, that the old philosophy of economic self-sufficiency which has been operated here for a long time is on its death bed, once we are admitted to the Common Market. I am afraid it will be supplanted by a newer policy, the ring of which I dislike, namely, the survival of the fittest, that if you cannot compete in that market under the stringest conditions prevailing there, then the problem is yours and you will have very few sympathisers with your difficulties. It must be remembered also that the Control of Manufactures Act to which so much importance was attached will have to be repealed. British and Continental firms can freely establish themselves and set up factories here and will not have to comply with the provisions of that Act. They will be able to operate as if they were Irish nationals with generations of patriotic service to Ireland behind them.

I referred earlier to the position in respect of agriculture. I think I mentioned that so far as the six countries are concerned, they are 90 per cent. self-sufficient with the potential to become 100 per cent. self-sufficient in a very short time. When one considers the immense power of development in the agricultural field, one can visualise that France will be the agricultural giant in the new Common Market. I think the French have clearly indicated that they will permit other countries to export their industrial produce to France free of duty only if she gets a fair crack at the agricultural possibilities by selling the multiple produce of an agricultural character for which France is so rightly renowned.

I have read some speeches by members of the National Farmers Association indicating that they have a belief — I am afraid it is a pathetic belief — that the Common Market holds good prospects for us. It holds good prospects for us if everybody else will stop producing and allows us to get in, if all the arrangements are tied up by ourselves and nobody has a right to alter them. However, if we are to be one in a team and a minority in that team and everybody else like the Dutch, the Danes, the French and the Belgians, wants to get into the German market or any other market where there is scope for agricultural exports, then we must take our share if there is any share left for us. The agricultural potential of some of these countries is such as to be quite clearly a menace to the possibilities of our being able to get a substantial and rewarding agricultural export to those countries.

This whole matter of the agricultural aspect of the Common Market may also take on an entirely different complexion from that of the industrial side. Many people believe that the arrangements will not be the same as on the industrial side, that there will be a kind of managed market, that each country will manage its own agricultural market and if there is any scope for imports over and above that, they will say: "All right; you may come in here but your price must not be lower than the price of the home product," so as to make sure that the home product in that market will come first. What that means to us is difficult to say, but when you remember that you cannot find a shop in England selling Irish bacon or Irish eggs or exhibiting a notice saying they are doing it, the grimness of the Common Market in our respect will be much more realistic as time goes on.

As the Committee on Industrial Organisation said, in order to meet this problem every new technique and the latest and best of machinery will be necessary, new and wider opportunities for technical training in industrial processes will be vital if our people are to be qualified to go into this battle. More science and engineering graduates must be diverted to industry and above all, management at all levels must be raised to the highest possible degree of both leadership and efficiency. We cannot face the threats that lie ahead if the problems and dangers are viewed separately by employers, separately by trade unions, separately by the Government. It is only by a common recognition on the part of all three that the menace of the Common Market can be encountered satisfactorily.

Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. It will hit one Party the same as another because it sets us all the same task of trying to salvage something from the wreckage. Any failure on our part collectively to plan and comprehensively to administer can bring in its train only disillusionment and disaster. We have a choice between making an all-out united effort to meet the problems and dangers and doing what we have done so often in the past, chanting economic wails and bemoaning our fate.

Blaming the other fellow will avail us nothing in this business. Nobody owes us a living. Nobody cares how we live and those are the same sentiments we manifest towards other countries in the world. We shall be expected to work out our own salvation and if we fail, we can put out our tongue and lick our own wounds because the world will not do it for us.

In this matter, the responsibility for leadership rests with the Government. This is the biggest battle this country has had to fight for 40 years. It was said elsewhere that the Treaty of Rome may have a much more profound effect on economic development than the Treaty of Limerick or the Treaty of 1921. Whether we rise to our responsibilities now will determine the economic viability of the nation and the standard of living of our people for generations to come.

The Treaty of Rome was, however, conceived in a spirit of co-operation, co-ordination and cohesion. It must not be allowed to live in a climate in which it hands out certificates of economic death to many of the smaller countries in Europe which may find it necessary for survival purposes to associate themselves with the Common Market. We are to surmount this problem — I think we can do so — by hard work and vigorous thinking. Both will be necessary to pilot the country through the economic tempests inevitably associated with our membership of EEC. There must be an awareness of the dangers, because that is vital for our planning. Above all, planning is urgent. This valuable report of the Committee on Industrial Organisation emphasises that fact. But it must not be just planning at a Cabinet meeting or in a Government Department; it must be planning on the factory floor, in the field, and in the director's office. All must be convinced they have a part to play, and that one part is as important as another. All pulling together, we may enter this Market on terms which, if they do not spell an immediately more prosperous life for us, will at least enable us to ward off the severe dangers which threaten if we enter economically ill-equipped, as we are to-day.

This is not a Party issue and a great disservice could be rendered to the country by trying to make it one. Goodwill is vital, goodwill among all Parties and among all sections of our people. The absence of such goodwill, or an attitude of saying: "This is your problem, not mine", could only in the long run lead to economic disaster. Our political independence was won 40 years ago. Whether we retain it and, with it, economic viability, will depend on our efforts in the next eight years. The immediate responsibility for showing leadership rests with the Government. The Government should take all Parties and the whole nation into their confidence by revealing as soon as possible what their plans are. All those who have a part to play in industry must be made to play that part, because these industries belong not merely to those who own the capital but to the whole nation.

I believe that if we approach the problem with courage and enthusiasm, we can ward off the dangers, but time is not on our side. It is against us, and the showing we make will be the showing of ourselves. It is on ourselves we must rely, and it is because of that that we ought to know early what the tactics are, what are the plans, and when the Government hope to initiate an active programme in order to make aware of the dangers all those who will be expected to play a prominent part in their efforts to see us safely through the EEC organisation.

The Budget provides us with a stocktaking opportunity. It is the instrument by which we measure the leader capacity of a Government. I shall deal, first of all, with the extraordinary mediocrity and the astonishing atrophy of the Department of Finance, a mediocrity and an atrophy heavily in the background of this Budget. It is an inept Budget. It is unreal in the present situation. It shows a complete lack of appreciation of, or grasp by the Government of, the immense economic difficulties looming on the horizon with our advent, or otherwise, into the European Economic Community.

There is in this Budget no evidence of initiative, of imagination, or of courage. Like Deputy Norton, I know the Taoiseach very well. The truculence of his assertions to-day is clear proof that what he speaks is merely froth and foam, and very nearly nonsense. This Budget will not go down in history as one of any real consequence. It is a miserable effort to deal with current problems. It is evidence that appreciation of present difficulties is, as far as the Government are concerned, nil. When the Taoiseach truculently asserts here what the Government are doing for agriculture, I tell him plainly, bluntly and honestly that he is talking utter rubbish. The agricultural industry is not being geared up for what its purpose ought to be in a competitive market, whether that market be a free market or one in which we have to fight for survival by means of our own economic sufficiency.

This country is suffering from the twin disease of Dublinitis and Civil Service-itis. Too many farmers' sons and daughters find their way into the Irish Civil Service, forget whence they have come, except for their annual summer holidays, and forget the concept and purpose of the life they have left behind them.

This Budget remains a miserable Budget as far as any section of the community is concerned. I have tremendous sympathy with those Deputies who made extravagant promises. I know some Fianna Fáil Deputies who made them — extravagant promises as to the reliefs and benefits for the old age pensioner, the widow and the orphan.

Deputy Corry is blushing.

He is not capable of blushing, but there is no doubt he was one of the sinners in the whispering campaign that the relief would be 10/- and not just 5/-. I sympathise with these people who made these promises, but I am more concerned with the tragic improvidence of a Government offering such a pittance to people in such dire economic difficulty. When Deputy Norton spoke of the lot of some old age pensioners, he did not paint an exaggerated picture. I can never understand why Governments, constituted of reasonable men coming from every walk of life, getting together around the Cabinet table, cannot appreciate the appalling difficulties of these people. I cannot understand why some method cannot be found to differentiate between the unfortunate old age pensioner, living alone and fending for himself completely, and some extra allowance made for him, vis-à-vis those who are fortunate enough to continue into the twilight of their lives in the circumstances in which they started. I cannot understand the mentality of a Government who give retrospection to all other classes and put the miserable pittance for the old age pensioner on the long finger.

Fianna Fáil Deputies will go around the country next week-end booming out in loud voices the relief they have given to the farmer. I am warning Deputy Corry, and certainly my colleague in West Cork, not to go down telling the most hard-working farmer in the country in West Cork that he is getting any relief. The Government have put their two feet in it. The Taoiseach talked about walking into a trap. He has tied the big farmers to his tail for the rest of his life because of the relief he has given them. He has not made the slightest contribution to gearing up the economy of Irish agriculture for the problem it has to face in a European Economic Community. What is the farmer in West Cork, the pig producer, the calf producer getting from the Government by way of relief on his rates? They are offering this miserable pittance to the old age pensioner. The farmer is faced with the problem of increased costs for his feeding stuffs, with the problem of new methods of grading for his bacon. What the munificent and benevolent Government are suggesting they are giving, on the one hand, they will drag back on the double or the treble in the loss the farmer is faced with in his future pig production or indeed in any of his production.

For some reason or another, whether it is in the Department of Finance, whether it is in the Department of Agriculture, we seem to have a tremendous capacity in government in this country to get away from basic realities. It is our animal husbandry and the ultimate export of that animal on foot or in processed form that is the basis of our earning capacity in agriculture. Surely it is to that end that any effort or any subsidy or any impetus should be directed, particularly in these few years that may be left to us to rearrange our economy to make the change to a free market or to trading in a community consisting of hundreds of millions instead of the limited community we now trade with.

No matter how the Fianna Fáil Party may prate about what they have done for the farmers, they will never get away from one cold, blunt reality. They heard the march of tramping feet. No matter what way they try to explain it away, the farming community—of all shades of opinion, politically—within the various farmers' organisations forced the issue. No matter what credit Fianna Fáil may try to claim for themselves for the relief they are now offering the farming community, a belated relief. I do not grudge it to them.

The Government should have approached agriculture in a different way and given a stimulus instead of a direct relief in the manner they did. There is no doubt that, but for the unfortunate association of the Minister for Finance with calves in this country, intelligence should have been brought to bear and some kind of calf subsidy should have been introduced so that we would have a stimulant immediately to increase our strength in the cattle line and to make up for the deficiency and the falling-off in our cattle stock that shows in the current figures.

There is no doubt, either, that if we are ever to reach the situation where our bacon will have to compete in a British or a free market, the time has come when the pig producer should be given the type of sow that is necessary for increased and improved bacon production as a result of the progeny testing. The time has come to face the difficulties that may make a tremendous impact on the farmer in the change-over from one type of pig to another or in the change-over in his breeding. The time has come when some direct stimulant by way of replacement of his sow, or by way of subsidy to help him in that replacement, should be made available to the farmer.

Let those who want to talk about industry talk about it until they are blue in the face. I firmly believe and am convinced—whether it is in a free EEC or whether it is in fighting for our own survival within the efficiency of our agricultural production—that industry of a mushroom, tariffed or protected nature will go to the wall. I am convinced that ultimately we shall have to face the situation, as aptly portrayed by Deputy Norton, that only efficiency, technical capacity, the quality of goods and their price can keep industrialists in business and can keep workers working in industry in this country.

There is no doubt that we must get back basically to the first principle of ensuring that the real wealth and the real strength in our economy, our arable land, must not only be kept in heart but improved. We must ensure that our blade of grass today will be able to replace itself by six blades of grass and that our animal husbandry will expand not only to 100 per cent. more than it is but, if the challenge and the need for it arises, that we shall be able to expand still further our animal husbandary to enable us to compete on a competitive basis with a greater output, even if we have to take a lower profit.

Our farmer will have to be taught, and our whole system will have to be directed towards the fact, that if we are to survive in the agricultural fight before us, we shall have to produce more and more of better quality much more economically and be prepared to sell in a competitive market at a reasonable profit. We shall have to build our whole farming husbandry on the basis of a profit rather than on limited production to capture a short supply market at a high price.

What has made me impatient and intolerant of Government in recent years is that we are not keeping our people on the holdings of Ireland up to that type of business and that we are not getting home the message that we have got to face either entering or not entering the EEC, a highly competitive, a highly difficult market in which our survival can be ensured and I believe can really be assured only by the output of Irish agriculture. I firmly I believe that the goodwill, the capacity to do the job, the energy to do the job and the national pride in doing the job is in people who get their living on the land. They must get the leadership, the incentive and the drive to make them technically aware of difficulties and of solutions. If we give them the necessary stimulus by way of help for their difficulties through advisory services, grants-in-aid or livestock subsidies then the years that remain to us, before we are in a free situation in a European market, can be used to give us the basic stock, the basic strength in animal husbandry, whether it be cattle, sheep or pigs. It is essential to be able to expand to meet a growing demand or to be able to switch our animal husbandry to meet the immediate situation as it presents itself in the free market situation.

There is nothing in this Budget to show any directive, any initiative or any stimulus to the farming community in relation to that most serious aspect—I would submit to the House the most serious aspect of all—namely, our future. You can talk yourself blue in the face, and the Taoiseach can get as truculent and as assertive as he likes, but if you do not get Irish agriculture on a sound economic basis and if the expansion of our industry is not done with the co-operation and understanding of the farmers themselves, the farmers' organisations and the people making their living from and in and upon the agricultural industry, we shall make no progress.

There is no good in trying to suggest, even though expediency forced the Government to give some relief in rates to farmers, that we are doing anything but scratching at the problem that must be faced. What is killing me is that I am convinced that some of these airy-fairy statisticians, some of these plush-seat sitters of the Departments of Finance and Industry and Commerce and Agriculture have anaesthetised themselves into the belief that all is well in Irish agriculture. I wish that some of them would take themselves from their plushlined seats and come with me into the fastnesses of Berehaven and the peninsulas of West Cork and talk to the unfortunate man trying to make his living on a holding of £7, £8, £9 or £10 valuation with a small bit of arable land and a fair bit of bog. They should come into his piggeries or his cattle-house where he rears a calf or two and see what the present situation would make of the increased cost of living and the increased cost of feeding stuffs and of transport, and see what his difficulty in husbandry is.

They might come back to Dublin prepared to face the problem that while there might be quite a number of farmers of £50 valuation or over, or of valuations very much in excess of that, the backbone and strength and supply of our ultimate agricultural output comes from the small farmers, whether from the west of Ireland, the south-west or back in west Cork. It is there that pig and calf production are concentrated, and it is from there that the small cattle are taken for finishing off for the ultimate food stock market.

That is what the Government have shown complete ineptitude about. That is the problem that must be put right before agriculture can come into its own. I am absolutely convinced that we can improve every acre of land, no matter how good it is, and that the quicker we start improving both good and middling land, the better for ourselves. I am quite sure that we can increase and expand our animal husbandry far quicker than even the Minister for Agriculture can conceive, if there is some direct stimulus given towards calf-rearing. I have no doubt at all that much of the milk surplus could have been absorbed and much of the difficulty of the milk problem solved, if a proper subsidy had been given to calves, because there would be two calves under many a cow and no milk going to the creamery.

That is the problem that is agitating the minds of the farmers. Even though the Government may think that they are going to get kudos or credit for the expedient act of relieving rates in relation to farmers, they must remember that that concession will find its way mainly into the pockets of the men with £50 valuation and over. As far as the vast majority of the people on the holdings the Deputies from Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim, Kerry and Cork know and are talking about, the uneconomic holders who have to get the added few acres, they will not benefit in any real way from this rebate. It will go to where the means of living and the method of living are easier and stronger on the land. They have got no relief in relation to the problems directly affecting them and agitating their minds in relation to calf-rearing or to a change over of type of pig or type of stock animal for breeding purposes for pig production.

In that situation, we have a Government who have only sufficient imagination to find beer, tobacco and whiskey on which to impose more taxes. We have had the Taoiseach today for a moment trying to adopt the dual position of being the doctor warning us against lung cancer and the theologian or moralist telling us that an increase in the consumption of porter and spirits might not be a good thing for the nation. That is a coy, naïve way to try to cover up the complete and utter mediocrity of the performance. Here we are in a situation that I suppose is as important to this nation as the tension-charged situation when the Treaty was debated in 1921. Here we are on the threshold of the complete reorientation of our economic outlook, and this is the leadership we get from the Government.

The Minister for Finance prattles a lot about the European Economic Community, but he has not told us yet what the real implications are. Deputy Norton has raised questions of vital importance to the nation in relation to industry, which cannot be denied an answer, because if we are to give a large part of Irish industry any hope of survival, we must know what are the terms and implications in relation to tariff reduction for these industries. Deputy Norton was kind when he said that if some of these industries had to face an immediate 50 per cent. reduction in their tariff protection, they would find themselves in economic difficulties. I think half of them would collapse, because it has been a feature that many of those industries that have been reared and nurtured into manhood behind tariff walls have not built up the type of reserves and contingency funds that would enable them to survive such a shock.

There is no doubt that as far as our economy is concerned, those industries do account for substantial employment. Therefore, it is the Government's duty and responsibility to ensure, in so far as it is possible to ensure, in their negotiations for entry into the European Economic Community, that there will at least be as long a period as possible made available to those people to reorganise their own industry or regroup and integrate with other industries to make possible their survival as a unit or as part of a unit.

We do not realise here what the strength of industry is in some European countries. We cannot conceive what industries employing 30,000 to 45,000 people are like, how highly developed and how expert their production units are. We do not conceive the kind of competition we must meet. It does not matter how efficient or effective a unit may be in Ireland, when it must meet the free competition of semi-automatic mass-production of the technically perfect article, it will be in difficulty. No doubt from that point of view, we shall have to grasp every opportunity, not only to improve our methods and increase our efficiency, but to improve quality, colour, texture and everything else that goes with our output of manufactured goods.

We must wake up here to the fact that there is no sentiment in free competition, that even the Irish people run out of sentiment very quickly if they can get a more effective, more efficient and more reasonably-priced article somewhere other than at home. There are even very few of the members of this House whose sentimentality for Irish goods is not overcome by the economic price of imported goods. Otherwise, we would not have, as we have seen over the years, a remarkable growth in imports of consumer goods bought by Irish people in competition with what I consider to be products just as good which had not a British or foreign label on them and consequently would not be bought. Our entry as a member or associate member of the Common Market will bring us up against the cold reality of free, untariffed and unfettered entry of goods into our market.

I do not agree with Deputy Norton that Irish agriculture cannot meet the challenge. I have complete and absolute faith in the Irish farmer and in the man who helps him on the land. I do not think there was ever an occasion in this country on which the farmer was called upon to help the nation and did not do so. They must be the greatest community in the world to have survived the catastrophic tragedy of the Economic War. That spirit and strength of purpose is there but where is the leadership? I suppose I am mad to expect it from Fianna Fáil. Their history in agriculture has been rather sorry but they are the Government and they are charged with the responsibility of injecting some life, purpose and leadership into a nation that is grappling with the problem, in a rather ephemeral way, of its future in E.E.C.

Nobody will tell us. There is an air of mystery about the implications of entry into the Common Market. Let any member of the House go to the Continent for a week or ten days and he will be able to come back and tell the Government, the Department of Finance, the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Agriculture more about E.E.C. than they are prepared to tell us because he will see the nature of trade between these countries and the volume of output and, without any effort, he can get the view of some of the factory units that are in production there. He will be staggered by the magnitude of some of these businesses, by the extraordinarily high rate of production and the tremendous technical efficiency of the operators.

We have an opportunity, at least for a few years, before we face the impact of a diminishing tariff wall and before we are hit by the full impact of free agricultural markets of preparing and in those few years, the Government would be well advised to direct what money they can find to the improvement of the land of Ireland, the stock on it and to research into marketing and presentation of goods for marketing and to advanced technical training for all types of industrial operatives and all types of instructors, directors and managers in any aspect of our agricultural economy, whether in the canning industry, the fresh-processed meat business or in animal husbandry itself.

We must improve, not only by 100 per cent. but by 300 or 400 per cent. if possible, our production ratio in agriculture in the next four or five years. There is only one thing to prevent us from doing it—that the Government will not recognise that there is one thing into which money can be put which will always give an immediate sound returns, that is, the land of Ireland, its grass and the stock that grows and fattens on it and is ultimately marketed from it. That is the real and fundamental asset we have and it must be recognised.

While I shall support every effort made either by injection of money for technical assistance or the improvement of buildings or for the completion of practical and tactical units for industrial development, first, I want to see the sad and sorry past forgotten and agriculture made what it should be, the foremost and most dynamically-led sector of our economy as distinct from any pampering or talk of any great industrial expansion.

Our industrial expansion became impracticable, and some of our problems may arise, because we drifted down too much to an artificial type of industry that needed imports of raw materials and processing here and had to compete afterwards against a producer of raw materials in world markets. If we had concentrated many years ago, as we could have done, on developing industry for which we had raw materials and which were naturally associated with our major industry of agriculture, we would not have to face the same technical and supply difficulties we may have to meet in the Common Market. I do not know what economists may say, but it never did appear to me to be practical common sense to import raw materials from the country, process them and then send them back to compete against the same goods in the country which originally exported them to us. I think Deputy Corry, when he gets up, will agree there has been too much lip service to agriculture and not enough real help given.

Is the Deputy trying to bribe him over to his side?

Deputy Corry is well able to look after himself. No bribe will help Deputy Moher. Administrative costs take away most of the value of any grants given to farmers, whether they be farm improvement grants or farm building grants. What we want is a direct stimulant to agriculture. The pig producer, if he is to produce more, will have to get the type of stock he needs. He should get it by way of an exchange if, for instance, he wishes to change his breed of sow and in areas where they are trying to rear calves for the improvement of their animal husbandry, there should be some subsidy available to give a direct stimulant.

When we talk about lack of imagination in the Budget, it has often occurred to me that there are many very apparent ways of encouraging the type of person we want to come into the country, to live here, to invest his money here. It could be done if the Minister for Finance would look into the practicability or the impracticability of some of the taxes levied by way of estate duties and death duties. He will find that the administrative costs of collecting some of these duties render them uneconomical and that an abandonment of them would act as a stimulant to bring in here people of consequence, of wealth, who would give employment and who would be prepared to help the country by investing in the land. Instead of these scratchy, colourless, lack-lustre Budgets we should have Budgets which would help to keep our own people at home and attract people with money in.

Apparently the attitude of the Opposition to this Budget has changed completely. It is not the Budget they are discussing at all and if it were not for the advent of the Common Market, I do not know what the poor devils would do. They have now quite forgotten that while they forced a division here a fortnight or three weeks ago on the position of the unfortunate old age pensioners, they marched into the Lobbies last night to vote against the means of providing the money for the old age pensioners, the social service recipients and the farmers about whom they have been moaning for the past four years. This is a good Budget. It is the best Budget brought in here yet for several reasons and if any Deputy has any doubt about it, the evidence I would bring in is Deputy Dillon's own paper—the Irish Times.

He has nothing to do with that paper.

It is the only one he gets space in nowadays. The leading article in that paper to-day gives what it calls a fair comparison between Deputy Dr. Ryan's Budget and the activities of Deputy Sweetman when he was Minister for Finance. Here is what it says:

Dr. Ryan's Budget is a sound and solid contribution to the planned progress of the country from haphazard crisis in 1956 to sensible achievement in 1961.

That is the Irish Times, not the Irish Press. It is a fair comparison. It goes on:

The result is a Budget against which there will be few complaints —although it runs the distinct risk of being classed with Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's on Monday as being dull in the extreme. There is a difference, however, between the dullness of the man who knows that he is going in the right direction at a reasonable pace and the dullness of a man like the British Chancellor, who is feeling his way between the pressures of inflation at home and severe competition on the export market.

I think that is sufficient from the loyal supporter of Deputy Dillon and Deputy Dillon's politics. That is the comparison between now and the time of Deputy Sweetman when he was winding up before clearing out leaving us that financial debt in 1956-57. We had the Irish Independent in a leading article today commenting on the Budget. They are particular friends of Deputy Dillon. They said:

Dr. Ryan's task was made a good deal easier by the continuing economic improvement. The mass of statistics poured out in the past few weeks have showed a stronger economic position than had originally been forecast... In these favourable circumstances there was every reason for the concession handed out yesterday to pensioners, social welfare recipients and farmers. The pensioners deserved at the least the small addition to income accorded them. The farmers, too, quite clearly deserved a helping hand, even if they cannot be completely cushioned by their fellow-citizens from the adverse price trends affecting the farm community in every country. The provision of the necessary funds from the "old reliables"—beer, spirits and cigarettes—was again the predictable choice.

There are two quotations from two Opposition papers.

I was rather amused when I heard Deputy Norton to-night. I can quite understand now the frame of mind he was in when he went over to Britain in 1956, and came back with the slaughter of the sugar and beet industry. It was made very evident when the poor man was telling us that we are imposing tariffs on Britain, and Britain is letting everything in free, according to Deputy Norton. He is the gentleman who went across to Britain. He talks of preparations being made for our entry into the Common Market, but thank God, they are not the preparations he made when he went over to Britain and came back with an arrangement which has killed the beet industry.

Would the Deputy give the quotation?

It has been quoted before the Deputy's face was seen here.

Quote it.

I have quoted it before and if I quote it any more, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will call me to order. It has been quoted at least 17 times by me already.

The Deputy can be asked for the quotation for the record.

£16 a ton! The statement made by Deputy Dillon, on that, was that it was done unknown to him, that he did not know anything about it.

On a point of order, Sir, would Deputy Corry give the quotation?

So far as the Chair is aware, Deputy Corry is not quoting. He is paraphrasing.

I would have no trouble in getting the quotation.

We are entitled to it.

Deputy Dillon's statement in this House was that he never heard it discussed at any inter-Party Cabinet meeting, or that it may have happened and that he had forgotten it. I have a very good memory of the official records of the House in that respect. He said he never discussed it with Deputy Norton. That was Deputy Dillon's statement in this House on this very important matter. How important it is, and the bearing it has on us, was clearly illustrated last week when we got the first 5,000 tons of refined sugar admitted into America. It was made very clear when Lieut.-General Costello stated that the duty and levy on sugar and sugar products going into Britain was £34 a ton. The price we get for sugar going into Britain therefore is £33 a ton, against £69 a ton which we got for the 5,000 tons we sent to America.

That is a fair comparison and it shows how anxious Mother England was about us in connection with the duty about which Deputy Norton was shedding tears half an hour ago. Let us look these things in the face and see what they are, and know what happens. Deputy Dillon admitted, when challenged here, that there was a breach of Article 5 of the Trade Agreement. They are Deputy Dillon's words. Deputy Norton was afraid to say anything, the unfortunate man. Those are the facts and facts are rather stubborn things.

Deputy Norton wanted to know what preparations are being made and Deputy Seán Collins went on the same line. We can look after our own business. We do not want any Government body or anyone else to look after it for us. The General Manager of our Irish Sugar Company was given the honour a few months ago of being made President of the European Sugar Corporation. The Irish Sugar Beet Growers' Association applied for membership of the European Beet Growers' Association seven or eight months ago and we have been accepted. Our people are going over to study their conditions, and we will not depend on any civil servant or any Government body to look after our business. We are well able to look after it ourselves and we intend doing so. We pegged away until we got a quota in the United States. We do not want anyone to look after our business for us.

When Deputy Collins started shedding crocodile tears about industries based on the raw materials of agriculture, I looked over at him and I began to think of the ex-Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Norton, and the ex-Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, and the unfortunate farmers who have been hit since their activities bore fruit, who come to me asking if there was any hope that I could get them a couple of extra acres of beet. We are asked to produce more, but each channel has been blocked by the idiotic actions of the inter-Party Government. Each channel and each step we take is blocked by them. What is the use of talking about factories based on the raw materials of agriculture when you think of a condition of affairs where the market for £6 million or £7 million a year for chocolate crumb was jeopardised by the actions of Deputy Norton and Deputy Dillon, since the sugar in chocolate crumb exported to Britain bears a levy and duty of £34 a ton.

Deputy Collins talked about the small farmer with the £7, £8 or £10 valuation and the calf. What in the name of heaven did Deputy Collins do for such people in West Cork? I should like to hear that from him. I have heard here year after year: "Oh, the flight from the land", and still Deputy Collins expects the farmer and his family to remain on the £9 or £10 valuation holding with the price he can get at the creamery for milk and the bonhams he rears, and that he will improve the lot of the small farmer and make him completely happy by giving him a £5 subsidy on every calf. If he has three cows that is £15. That is not the way it will be done. Anybody who approaches the problem of keeping our young people on the land of this country in that manner is only an idiot. You have to find crops for those farmers which with intensive cultivation will yield anything from £90 to £200 an acre. That will keep the man with the valuation of from £10 to £15 on his holding.

Last Monday, I picked out the site for a £250,000 factory in order to look after the small farmers in my constituency and to see them all right. Each of those farmers will have next year, please God, his contract because he has a guarantee that the factory will be ready to take his produce next year. He will have his income of £100 or £150 an acre out of his blackcurrants——

His raspberries.

And his lemons.

He will not be dependent on trying to grow wheat for my friend across the way. I can assure the Deputy on that point. That is what the ordinary small farmer in Ireland requires. He had a pretty good income from beet and he was expanding that source of income. He had that income because away back in 1948 we were intelligent enough to see what the condition of affairs was. Today the farmer is getting the cost of production, plus a fair profit. That is why you have all this anxiety about the growing of beet. It is the only crop for which the farmer gets the cost of production and a fair profit. That is the one crop picked out by Deputy Norton and Deputy Dillon for destruction.

The goal aimed at by General Costello in connection with the vegetable industry is the export of £50,000,000 worth a year after ten years. He has shortened that period immensely because he finds that the farmers are prepared to do their job. He will start our East Cork factory with 50 hands in 1963, the first year, and he will go from that to full employment for 250 before 1967. That will demonstrate what the volume of employment will be not alone in the factory but amongst the small farmers with their carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, green peas and so on. That is the change. That is what is required for the small uneconomic holders in this country. In County Galway last year, contracts were taken for 350 acres of potatoes and £9 odd per ton was the contract price. This year, contracts have been signed for 1,100 acres of potatoes. They will bring in at the minimum somewhere between £90 and £150 an acre to the farmers. They would be a long time getting that as a result of the £5 subsidy on their three calves.

I am glad the Minister for Finance gave relief to the farmers. The sum of £2,500,000 is being allocated to the relief of rates on agricultural land. I am glad the Minister and the Government realised the absolute necessity of placing our farmers on an equal basis with those with whom they have to compete. The farmers in Northern Ireland and in Britain pay no rates on agricultural land. They are free of rates. I am glad therefore of the line taken by the Minister for Finance in his Budget.

Deputy Norton and, indeed, Deputy Collins, too, were moaning about the storm of competition we would meet in the Common Market. The figures are there for everybody to see. Deputies should read and study them. They show roughly an increase in the average prices of agricultural produce in the Common Market as compared with here. The increase is approximately 33? per cent. Those are the figures in the White Paper. The price of wheat here is 22/11d. per cwt.; the average price in the Common Market is 33/8d. The price of feeding barley here is £18 a ton and the average price in the Common Market is £25 a ton. The price of beef cattle here is 128/- per cwt. and the price in the Common Market is 155/- per cwt. The price of milk here is 1/9d. per gallon and 2/7d. per gallon in the Common Market.

Those are the average prices. When I consider the actual situation today, the reason for the flight from the land is in plain, unadulterated language that the man who has nothing but his four bones to sell can earn anything from £9 to £15 a week in industry, whereas the maximum he can get in agriculture is somewhere between £6 and £6 10s. and very seldom £7 a week. That is the difference. I suggest our job will be to drive our agricultural produce up into line with the prices obtaining in the Common Market and hold it there. That will enable us to pay £9 and £10 a week to agricultural labourers. It is time they were helped.

Deputy Norton seemed to be afraid that when we enter the Common Market, we will have to accept a reduction of 50 per cent. in tariffs. Would it not be a fine thing for the British, when they go into the Common Market, to find that the levy put on Irish sugar is to be cut by 50 per cent.? That would have saved close on £1 million on our exports of sugar to Britain in the past 12 months. So this is not an unadulterated woe which Deputy Norton was talking about.

That is the manner in which I look at the Budget. There are other things which I would like to see in it and which are not in it, but of course nobody is ever fully satisfied. However, it shows that we are moving ahead and that we are able to help the poor and needy—I grant you not as much as they are entitled to, but we are able to give them some assistance. When I hear talk about the percentage of progress or increased production by the farmers as compared with industry, it annoys me, especially when we consider the nature of what we can increase. First of all, take grain. I am sure my friend over there will admit that as far as grain is concerned, the ranchers have completely driven us out.

Bad handling by the Government.

Due to your assistance and the assistance of the Flour Millers Association.

Not at all.

That is the situation as far as I see it. As far as milk is concerned, we are in the same position. The Taoiseach said to-day that the reason why we did not get the increase in price was that we would increase production more. If we produce beet, we immediately have Deputy Dillon and Deputy Norton going, so where are we to expand production except in the particular line that I have stated— processed vegetables, processed fruit and processed meat. From what I can gather there is an almost unlimited market for those. General Costello assured me that if he had ten times the acreage of peas he could sell them all at a good price and they are getting somewhere around £90 to £100 per acre for the farmer lucky enough to have a contract.

That is the change and we have to change with the times and with the situation that we find there. I am not afraid about the Common Market. I have consulted some of the principal industrialists in my constituency and none of them is afraid of the competition he will have to face on the Continent. If you were to ask the manager at Rushbrooke whether or not he was afraid of the competition, he would tell you he is not. Or if you go down to Irish Steel and ask the general manager if he is afraid of the competition, he will tell you "Not a bit; I am expanding. Where I had 400 or 500 men employed in 1957, when the present Taoiseach took over again as Minister for Industry and Commerce, I now have 1,100 or 1,200." Those are the changes which are occurring. That is the confidence the people have today. They are not in the position they were in when the inter-Party Government were in office, when you had a civil servant shivering and shaking wondering whether his pay order would be honoured and the poor old age pensioner heading for the post office wondering whether he was going to get his few shillings or whether the firm had burst before he would get it. That is the changed aspect of affairs today. We can go ahead and we are going ahead satisfactorily. As I said at the beginning, even the Irish Times has deserted you.

It has been wrapping its flag around you for the last six years.

If ever a Party wrapped its flag around the Irish Times, it was the Fine Gael ex-Cumann na nGaedheal Party. Look at the description they give of the ex-Minister for Finance, Deputy Sweetman.

I shall be quoting the leading article also.

I would love to hear the Deputy. Do not forget that part when you come to it.

Do not forget my part, either.

I do not wish to hold up the House, Sir. I give the facts as I see them.

When I have sung my songs, I will sing them no more.

I can promise you there will be swan songs here and I shall come in here and look around and ask: "Where are they gone, the poor devils?"

I would say to the Minister for Finance that if he has any regard for the Fianna Fáil Party, he should not let Deputy Corry amongst the people of rural Ireland because he has them almost as mad as he is himself. I suppose we should term this as the end-of-an-era Budget because it must be connected, whether we like it or not, with the possibility of the coming of the Common Market. Because of that, this may be termed the Budget ending a certain era in public life.

What surprises me is the Minister's approach to the whole problem by the introduction of this Budget at this particular time. Deputy Corry has been speaking eloquently about the golden opportunities for the agricultural community in connection with the Common Market. He told us of his personal knowledge of the industrialists in East Cork who now have their sleeves tucked up ready to have a go at all and sundry in any other country who may term themselves industrialists.

What I am wondering is whether or not what the Minister has done, either in connection with agriculture or industry, will help us at the present juncture because of the problems that lie ahead of us. This is too serious a matter to take advantage of being in opposition and of knocking down any target that may be put up by the Minister for Finance. I know it has been the common practice, whether Fianna Fáil are in Government or Opposition, for members of all Opposition Parties to decry any proposals offered by the Minister for Finance. It may be unfair to try to hold discussion to that level because we all, whether we like or not, are going to be involved in a situation in which we may live to rue the attitude that we adopt here if we proceed on the old basis of Government versus Opposition.

The Minister is giving the farmers £2½ million in connection with relief of rates. I am not trying to minimise the amount involved, but, breaking down that £2½ million, it comes to a matter of between £5 and £7 per agricultural holding. What benefit would that sum of money be in the preparation of agriculture to meet the severe opposition that we must be prepared to meet from countries that Deputy Corry apparently knows little or nothing about? The Minister has also given a reduction in the taxation on agricultural tractors. That means that every farmer who has a tractor will get a certain concession but even adding that to the amount he will receive from that allocation of £2½ million, what benefit will it be? What benefit is £6, £7, £8 or £10 to any agriculturist?

I give the Minister for Agriculture credit for what he has done to help agriculture through the provision of various sums of money, but, up to the introduction of the Budget, none of the improvements he made had satisfied the farmer. No Government can yet say that they have put agriculture in a position in which the farmers are satisfied. It may be true to say that the farmers can never be satisfied, although Deputy Corry is always satisfied when he is in Government. If we were in normal times and normal circumstances, even though these benefits are at the expense of the general taxpayer, the farmer would gain by this Budget but he is not likely to gain in the circumstances he will face in the Common Market.

Coming to the Common Market itself, the Minister for Agriculture must know how it is going to affect agricultural production, regardless of what Deputy Corry and others may say. He knows that, but for certain lines, particularly beef, agriculture will not find the Common Market the E1 Dorado that some people are telling us it will be. Up to a couple of years ago, if some people left Dublin and went to visit France or Germany, they came home and gave lectures on their travels. Now these foreign experts on E.E.C. are the principal speakers at symposia on that subject.

This is too serious a situation for that kind of thing and the Minister should be prepared to explain to the agricultural community the dreadful difficulties that face them. What held up for so long the negotiations on agriculture between West Germany, France and the other countries in the Common Market? Do we not all know that France is in a position to export a lot more agricultural produce? Do we not all know that Germany held back as long as possible this question of agriculture, due to the elections in that country. Yet Deputy Corry tells us of the prices the farmer of this country will get in the countries of the Common Market for his wheat and beet and everything else he can produce.

It is not so and the Minister knows it is not so. The Minister also knows that to the difficult situation that will confront us in these countries, there is to be added the cost of transport of our products. It all comes back to the fact that the Minister would be well satisfied if we could hold what we have in Britain. We must forget about the Continent, unless the Minister for Finance strikes out on a different course. Shipping is not under our control. The marketing system as we know it is anything but in our favour and yet we have done nothing about it. If an inter-Party Government were in power and following the same line, I could see it ending in nothing but failure.

There is no use telling us that agriculture is going to prosper. The Minister was correct in his speech when he drew attention to the difference in wage rates between industry and agriculture. That was an answer to Deputy Corry. I have been a member of this House for only half the time Deputy Corry has been here —and we all know how long he has been here—but since I came here, I have heard him shouting how mad he was to pay farm-workers £10 per week, but I have never heard the farmers say that or never saw any of them anxious when it came to putting their hands in their pockets to pay.

Let us consider the advantages given to industrialists. Under normal trading conditions, it might be true for the Minister to say he has done the best he could, that he could not be expected to achieve everything in one year. That might be a wise line, politically or otherwise, for him to take. But in view of the difficulties facing us, has the Minister's approach been a sound one? I shall not deride any benefits he has given to industry. We know that a large number of industries here are family industries. The owners of many of these concerns are worried about conflicting statements made by the Taoiseach and by that wizard of industry, the Minister for Transport and Power.

The Taoiseach and, I think, the Minister for Finance stated—and I would be inclined to agree with them— that they would hope family concerns would be able to hold on and withstand future competition. It would be bad if we found that all such industries, some of them established 100 years, were wiped out when we joined the Common Market. But the Minister for Transport and Power, in his various lectures to different groups, made it quite clear that what is needed in the future is amalgamation. His line is that it is nonsense for these small industries to hope to continue. He says: "Amalgamate or fade away." We know enough of what happened in America, Britain and on the Continent itself as a result of the activities of combines. Do we wish to have that situation here? If we do not, can we stand against the competition that will be offered to us? I do not know the answer, but I had hoped the Minister would have helped us and the people of the country to solve the problems of how industry will fare.

Already, in Dublin and Cork more than the provincial towns, automation has crept into industry. That is already affecting the labour market. Will that get worse in the years ahead? Has the Minister in the preparation of this Budget given any thought to that situation? There is no use in saying we must go into the Common Market, if we are not making an attempt to prepare ourselves for it. The Taoiseach tells us to be quiet, that he is doing everything to face the situation. A couple of weeks ago, the unfortunate people in Cork were faced with floods. They kept quiet and put up sandbags. But it was of no use because the floods came and that was the end of the story. We are told by the Taoiseach and the Minister to keep quiet, that it would be harmful to have any ripple in our political waters because of the Common Market. But the Minister in his Budget could have given some indication of how industrialists may fare in the danger confronting us.

I give the Minister credit for the benefits he has given, but they may be like the sandbags in Cork: they may be washed away if we are not prepared to meet the frontal attack coming to us. The Minister is not helping us. He is not helping Deputy Corry, who probably will be instrumental in doing untold harm to the Government Party by telling the industrialists: "No matter, boys, we will take them all on," the same as he tells the farmers in East Cork: "Do not worry. Dr. Ryan, the Minister for Finance, told me everything will be grand and you will get great prices for your wheat and beet in the Common Market."

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

I was speaking of how industry might be affected in the new situation, but there is another point on which I had hoped for some information from the Minister. I know he could not be very detailed on it but it is alarming when we realise that at present roughly £30 million comes in by way of duties and the Minister has again apparently left to the dim and distant future any hope of even a suggestion about tackling that problem, now that we are facing entry into the Market which Deputy Corry tells us will be the saviour of this country, the crock of gold presented by the leprechaun who is none other, I think, than a certain Deputy himself. Thirty million pounds is an awful lot of money and, as we all know, entry into the Common Market must mean the dropping of duties and the loss of that money to the Exchequer, no matter who is Minister for Finance at the time.

It is not satisfactory either to us who sit in the Chamber or to the people outside, whether they are satisfied with the Budget or not, to have no answer to this problem which must arise in the not distant future. What direction will the Minister for Finance and the Government take in order to provide social services and other necessary items when the wherewithal is gone as a result of the non-collection of duties? I should have expected the Minister to give us some idea of his approach. After all, the general line, the general direction, the general approach of the Government may be one which in many respects we could agree with and support or if it goes in a different way completely, we could prepare to say to the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Government: "In no circumstances, even with the problem of the Common Market before us, can you expect our support." This is the time when we must put our cards on the table, the time to test whether we are, first of all, Irishmen or Party men, but if the Minister wants our help in the future, he can only get it by going much further than he has gone in this Budget offering a little to some, nothing to others, leaving us in the dark about the most monumental point of all: our approach to membership of the Common Market.

I know that members of the Government Party—and they are entitled to do it—will point to the fact that their Minister for Finance will give a 2/6d. increase to old age pensioners. The Minister stated last night—of course, he knows he was wrong and the Taoiseach also knows it—that the Labour Party should have supported the Budget because of that 2/6d. But we know as well as the Minister himself that the increase to this section of the community is but a quarter of the total amount being collected in extra taxes. I would never crib about any man who had the price of his pint or cigarettes increased to give the old age pensioners more. That is a thing we should believe in and do believe in, but we cannot go to the man who may take his pint or smoke a packet of cigarettes and say: "Look, the increase on your pint and cigarettes is going to the old age pensioners", because we know it is not. We know that a quarter is going to them and that is where we differ from the Minister. If he wished to impose these taxes, he would have our support, provided the money was being used for genuine purposes, but neither the Minister for Finance nor the Government, Fianna Fáil or any other, should or could expect us to say: "We support you while of every penny increase a man pays on his pint you will give a farthing to the old age pensioners."

A 2/6d. increase is being given to recipients of disablement allowances. They do need it and again normally I would say to the Minister that it is a good thing to do. It is good—even 2/6d. to them is some help. I would wish it could be more and if we were playing politics, I would say it should be more, but I am facing a hard situation of reality when I see that it is not more. The irony of it, however, is that of that 2/6d. the Minister is giving half and the other half must be paid by the local authorities. Is that not right?

That is right.

When the Irish Press carries the big news this morning and people down the country find that disabled persons are getting a 2/6d. increase, the neighbours say: “Thank God; they are entitled to it.” But then the neighbours find out that the Minister himself is not giving the 2/6d., that he is giving 1/3d and the local authority must also give 1/3d.

It is a very small part of the bill.

It is one fact. As I go along, I may show a clearer picture. I have supported that idea in the past in my local authority. When it came to an imposition on the rates, I believed it was only right that we should help these people. That is only one point and I am concentrating on it. Half the 2/6d. comes from the rates.

The Minister mentioned in his speech the possibility of an increase for non-contributory pensioners which may come in next January. I am not decrying that at all. I remember when the inter-Party Government were giving an increase somewhere around this time of the year, they announced it would not come into operation until January. On that basis, I am not complaining. The Minister stated that he was providing roughly £200,000 in anticipation of the State's contribution to an increase in contributory pensions. If that is so— again, I am basing my argument on the facts as they have always confronted us—if the State pays £200,000, it will be approximately one-third of the total cost and there will be an imposition on employers and workers to make up the remaining two-thirds.

Therefore if contributory pensions are to be increased next January, taking the Minister's figure of £600,000, the State will be paying only £200,000 or one-third. The Minister is saying to the worker: "You pay one-third, the employer will pay another third and I shall pay the final third." I do not suppose the procedure of the past will be varied so we must take it that one half of the expenditure in respect of disablement benefit will fall on the local authorities, and if there is to be an increase in contributory pensions, one-third will be paid by the State and one third each will be imposed on the employer and the worker.

I shall not go into details on the question of social benefits but I have been trying to draw attention to the lack of information and to the extraordinary approach of the Minister to the general situation confronting us in connection with the Common Market. Last July I put down a question to a Minister of State asking for the comparable figures for benefits, such as sickness benefits, hospital treatment, and so on, provided in Common Market countries and in this country. The answer I got was that it was not worth compiling because it was so complicated. Not so long ago I repeated the Question and, strange to say, I got the same reply. That must mean that neither the Minister for Finance nor the Minister for Social Welfare is making any attempt to face the Common Market problems. I have the figures here for other countries which I do not intend to give now—there will be another occasion for that—but it is alarming that we are such a long way behind in the benefits we are giving under certain headings compared with some other countries. Yet no provision has been made. We know of nothing being planned which will enable us to face the responsibilities which the Common Market will impose on us.

Members of various Parties here have often criticised the approach of Independent Members of this House. I repeat what I said a few years ago. None of us has the right to be abusive to any Independent in respect of any action he or she may take whether in support of or opposing a Government. Like the rest of us they are elected by the people. For too long in this Chamber insinuations have been made by Parties, Fianna Fáil and the rest, as to why any particular person supported a Minister for Finance or voted against a Minister for Finance. The Minister himself was not immune from some of these attacks but I am not concerned with him. I merely want to make my position clear. These Independents are entitled to vote as they wish but the only comment I would make is this. As regards suggesting here that he or she may have been offered bribes to vote either for the Government or against the Government, I think we are gone beyond that time. There were certain people who were members of this House since 1948. They are all gone now except two. I cannot say whether they are here or elsewhere. Since 1948 there are only two such men in public life and both of them belong to the one Party. I hope the rest will not follow the pattern of the past. In any event it would be well for us to get away from the situation of either attacking Independents or supporting them according to the line they may take.

The Minister in presenting this Budget was fortified by the fact that this was not the first Budget of the year and will probably not be the last Budget of the year. Time was when the people were all agog to know what changes were being made in the annual Budget. Nowadays people are not surprised when they find a miniature budget being introduced. I suppose it is a cute way politically of getting the increase over instead of waiting for the Minister for Finance to impose it. It is good policy for him if he can get a few other Ministers to come in at odd times to look for a little extra and get it and hope that by the time the main Budget comes up for discussion those other items will have been forgotten.

It is not so long ago since we had the Department of Posts and Telegraphs budget increasing the price of stamps and telephones. The Minister considers that the demand for telephones is a good indication of increased prosperity. I do not think it is. I know many farmers who in having a telephone installed are merely trying to follow modern ways in the hope that it will help them in the future but it does not mean they can afford it.

Again it is not so long since the same Department had a budget in connection with licence fees for television and radio. The Minister for Finance has escaped all that. Then we had the other Department under the control of the one and only, the Minister for Transport and Power. Of course, he made it quite clear to C.I.E. that if the workers got an increase C.I.E. were to ensure that bus fares and rail fares would go up. He has gone even further because the Minister for Transport and Power has admitted in this House that, at his behest, Aer Lingus had to increase the fare from Cork to Dublin. That is a nice little help to this Budget also.

We have then the Department of Health. I suppose the Tánaiste and Minister for Health could not be left out of the picture, and so he came in here with a little Budget of his own. He brought one in quite recently. We were confronted with it in Cork; so was every other local authority. After we had concluded our discussions and deliberations on the health estimate for the year, along comes an ultimatum from the Department of Health, under the control of the Tánaiste, saying that, while he agreed with increased rates to hospitals for maintenance, only 50 per cent. of that would be paid to the local authorities out of the Hospitals' Trust Fund and the local authorities would have to pay the other half. That is yet another imposition on every health authority in the country.

The Minister for Finance interrupted, good humouredly perhaps, to say that, after all, 50 per cent. to be paid of the 2/6d. to recipients of disablement benefits, was not an awful lot. Add to that 50 per cent. the other imposts on local authorities in relation to the other items I have mentioned and we find that the transfer of charges from the Exchequer to local authorities becomes a heavier imposition year by year. One section of the community, the farmers, may say they will escape to some extent. The £2,500,000 the farmers will get will help them to some extent to avoid the extra impositions due to the transfer of charges from the Exchequer to the local authorities.

The people in the towns and villages, as well as those in the cities, will not benefit by this £2,500,000 and they will, as usual, find themselves at the wrong end of the stick. They will have to contribute to general taxation, out of which pensioners, as I have already said, and the widow and the orphan will get roughly one farthing. The people in the cities and towns and villages will get no concessions but they will have to meet the additional impositions, plus, and this is already a heavy burden, increased rates because of the transfer of charge from the Exchequer to the local authorities.

This transfer is not fair. It is dangerous to go on transferring so much of the burden each year from the State to the local authorities. If that trend continues, local government will break up altogether. The Minister said that the Government are considering how they may change the rating system and the collection and imposition of rates, particularly in relation to health charges. We do not know what will happen, but, unless some drastic change is made, no matter what Government are in power, no matter what the position of local authorities may be, whether dominated by one Party or by a group of Parties, they will be in the unhappy position of trying to collect rates from people who will find it wellnigh impossible to pay them.

The Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, and many of his colleagues, have drawn attention to the seriousness of the situation because of the eighth round increase in wages. They are worried. The Minister for Finance said in his Budget speech that 1962 may be a good year if people face up to their responsibilities. He advised and exhorted people to save. He asked them to contribute out of their bigger wage packets to saving certificates or the Savings Bank. The Minister and his colleagues fail to realise that they have fallen down on their first duty in relation to the situation we may have confronting us on the home market in 1962. Apparently they intend to make no effort to stabilise or hold prices. Back in 1957 and 1958, we exhorted the Minister for Industry and Commerce—he is now Taoiseach— to continue the Prices Advisory Body. We all know the good work that body did between 1954 and 1957, and prior to that time. They had the power to examine figures, costs of manufacture, wholesale and retail prices. They had the backing of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in ensuring the prices were held at a fairly even level. Unfortunately, the present Taoiseach, as Minister for Industry and Commerce. in 1957 and 1958, ignored that body.

Where do we stand now? Never mind the cost-of-living index figure. We are living up in the moon when we base arguments and criticisms on some of the statistics presented to us. Ask the housewife by how much has a pair of shoe laces gone up in price. It may be said that is a small item. Add all the small items together and we get an alarming total. In the beginning of 1958, a free hand was given. There was no check on prices. There was no attempt at control. The workers were struggling to try to hold their own in face of a rapidly increasing cost of living.

Is it too late to ask the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance to ensure, before we enter the Common Market, that there is a fair system of price control within the country? All the workers want is that their £ will be worth a £, taking present standards. If we are to base our views on the next 12 months—if, please God, we survive the next 12 months—on what has happened in the past 12 months, then any increases the workers have got within the past six or eight months will be swallowed up again completely in increased prices, increased prices upon which there is no check by anyone, increased prices about which the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance, and the Taoiseach will not bother. That is what is causing all the trouble on the internal market. When the Government complain because workers say they are entitled to wage increases, they should not forget that the Labour Court, a Government-sponsored body, has accepted that workers are entitled to increases because of the increased cost of living —that, because of considering they are entitled to it, it is not too late. However, I wonder if it will ever happen.

Will the Minister for Finance, will the Taoiseach, even now make an attempt? It is hard lines to have to admit it but we must face the fact that in this country it is essential to have price control over manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. Unless we have it, we shall have this continuing discontent. Unless we have some form of control, it may ultimately mean a change of Government. Whether, with a change of Government, we shall have a controlled price, we cannot say as we cannot speak of the future. The Government have the advantage. They know the desire and they know the cure. Are they prepared to put it in operation or are they afraid to offend certain sections of our community?

I shall say very little on the question of Government grants to industrialists. The problem is still continuing and it is not peculiar to this Government alone. It happened under the Government prior to 1957 and the Government then were mad on industrialisation. I have often said that I would rather see our young Irish girls and men working at home for a foreign industrialist than emigrating for work.

However, I am afraid we are falling head over heels over some of these people, some of whom might come into the category of a fly-by-night. I know some of them personally who have got very good grants. Then there are people who have the audacity to come out and say that unless they get certain concessions from local authorities, and so on, they will pack up and close the door. We are not a nation of slaves for these people. My remarks in this connection are not to be taken as a condemnation of the Fianna Fáil Government any more than of any other Government. All I should like to say is that we should be careful about these people.

We want to make sure that the grants we are giving with our people's money will be given to people on whom we can depend, first of all, to continue to give employment here — as long as the market stands, I agree — and, secondly, to people who will treat the Irish workers as they are entitled to be treated. It may happen, of course, in Dublin and in Cork, where there is strong trade unionism that workers can be defended to a great extent but there are places far removed from Cork and Dublin where conditions are such that these foreigners are getting away with a lot.

The Minister gave grants to another section of the community: he gave good grants for the erection and the improvement of hotels. I believe in tourism, coming, as I do, from a county which has gained by it. Again, I wonder if we are outstripping ourselves a little too much in the grants we are giving. We all know of one firm and nobody could say that any of the directors will ever be in a position to send their cards to the labour exchange. We know that some of these people are getting colossal grants which we are told, is for the benefit of tourism. The grants must come from the pockets of the people and the hotels are built in Dublin, Cork or elsewhere.

Americans can come over and stay in these hotels or the British tourist can do so. However, the Irish person must be considered, too. Indeed, it is true for me to say that the ordinary Irish person coming here to Dublin or perhaps going from Dublin down the country very often in the summer time is not welcome in these hotels.

If we are so interested in tourism, we must not forget the old saying: "Let us start by giving a fair break to all concerned." If we are giving, as I believe we are giving, more than a fair break to some of these people by way of grants, let us realise that their charges are very often grossly prohibitive to the Irish people. It is about time we made some attempt also to check on that situation. With the money we are pouring into the industry, it was never intended by any Government or the supporters of any Government—whether we all support this policy or whether there is a division in the House—that we would give money to these people, without making sure that it would be spent in a manner suitable and favourable to the Irish people also.

I shall conclude by saying, as I said at the start, that the Minister has done as much as he could from his point of view. We differ: that is why we are in different Parties. The members of any Party are under no obligation to the members of any other Party. We hold our own line. The tragedy of it all is that, after a speech of roughly one and threequarter hours yesterday afternoon, with all the work and preparation and advice the Minister must have got—he must have got advice from very important people to judge by some of those who had the Minister's speech yesterday before the ordinary Deputy got it—we have to admit in relation to our common enemy, if we may so term it from the economic viewpoint, the approach of the Common Market, that the Minister has told us nothing of our preparations. He has made no attempt to lift agriculture sufficiently to meet the attacks that will come from France and some of the other agricultural countries which will have free access to the Irish agricultural market.

The Minister for Finance is not even attempting, apparently, to advise the Irish industrialists as to what the situation may be. He is not advising the families of industrialists who have been holding their own family business together all over the years. No Minister has told them whether he hopes they will be safe in the future or whether they must—judging by the comments of the Minister for Transport and Power, Deputy Childers— amalgamate. He has not told them whether they will all have to come into one big circle, the combine, in which the Minister for Transport and Power believes. Undoubtedly that would be detrimental to the Irish industrialist but it would be certain tragedy for the people in Ireland who as workers are dependent on industrial activities at present. They need to be protected against the cartel and the monopoly system of which the Minister for Transport and Power is so much in favour. We do not know whether or not the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach are completely opposed to it.

I observed in this month's Dublin Opinion the after-dinner speaker who said: “I have forgotten what I was going to speak about so I had better speak about the Common Market.” Deputies will realise I mean no disrespect when I mention that fact. I think we have all had it in mind. I, too, intend to refer to it and to do the same thing as others have done. by moving from a debate on the Budget proper to one on the Common Market.

This Budget had such irrelevance to our imminent entry into the Common Market that, in fact, the Budget debate should be about the cause of the irrelevance of the Minister's statement and his approach to the Budget of 1962. The position is that we are speaking on something to which the Minister did not address himself. In fact you might almost describe us as being at cross purposes, and our angles as we approach are obtuse, moving apart from one another, rather than coming in together. We are not speaking about what the Minister spoke about, but that is the way it is.

It would be extremely churlish of me if I did not say that one of the finest speeches, if one were seeking a text dealing with our problems in the Common Market, that I have heard was from a Deputy who is not a member of my Party. I refer to Deputy Norton; if anybody on any side of the House wants to get a matter of fact view of our problems, he will find them concisely set out in a speech, that particular part of which lasted about threequarters of an hour. All he has to do is to get the debate and read what Deputy Norton said, because I have never heard the problems posed so lucidly and clearly. It would profit us all well if we were to study Deputy Norton's contribution here tonight.

I find myself slightly parting from him on some of his gloomy prognostications in relation to agriculture. I fully agree with what he said in respect of the fact that when we have entered the Common Market, nobody will be compelled to buy from us and we must successfully sell to everybody. While it is true that the ordinary things the people there eat are largely veal and pork, there is a colossal market for our lamb and beef there. When we realise that we reach £600,000 worth of lamb in France and that in the butcher shops of Paris, our lamb is making 11/- a lb. it must be true that this luxury trade as it is at the moment is capable of colossal expansion which in fact would bring in a large circle of customers pushing up the price at which we could sell and make profits. That is one particular small thing.

Of course, beef, just like many other products, is dearer at Common Market prices than it is here. Deputy Corry took a gloomy line on the production of grain. He then gave us the prices of certain coarse grains, particularly in the Common Market. If one were to relate his gloomy line with his figures, one would have to disagree with his statement, because I take the view that there is a future here in the production of barley for malting for export to the Common Market countries and even for the production of barley as a coarse grain for animal feeding. If one were to take what is obviously a lower-priced product and just examine the situation today, at this moment we are importing from outside the Common Market area, millet which is quite unpalatable and mixing bone meal to make it sweet. Our barley would cost £26 a ton, which is 52/- a barrel. Deputies will know what costs there are in kiln drying loss, storage, movement and all the rest, and this is far more than 38/-. I feel that by and large the real price—and I use that phrase deliberately—will allow us to feed our barley here to our own pigs and export our pork at profitable prices, or export that barley in the form of feed for somebody else's pigs, or in the form of malt or barley for malting on the Continent. It will of course require managed marketing, and that is where the Government have fallen down. There is no suggestion of anything that could possibly give a form of managed market.

Deputy Corry referred to what he called the tax on sugar going into Britain. He spoke about this tariff, as if it were imposed by Deputy Norton and Deputy Dillon. First of all, the Deputies who are now Ministers have been there quite a while now and why did they not do something about it? As well as that, there is the point that a similar tariff was imposed on our butter just a few months ago. It could have been quite easy for people on our side to have said that instead of a tariff being imposed by Britain on our butter, and a quantitative restriction, which is worse, Deputy Smith or the Taoiseach imposed a tax on butter. We have met that problem in a responsible way, and it is quite unfair for Deputy Corry to come in and suggest that because Britain imposed a tariff on any Irish goods, it was a tax imposed by two persons who were then Ministers of State.

I agree with Deputy Norton, however, that it will not be easy to sell our agricultural products and we have to make a market for them. We shall have to convince the Frenchman that he would like to eat our lamb. We shall have to convince the man on the Continent and his family that they would like to eat our beef, instead of their pork and veal. We shall have to convince the Italian that he would like ice cream made from our milk products rather than gelado—we all know what gelatine is. We must make those markets and at the same time, not lose our own market at home. There is an opportunity there, but, as I have pointed out, there is also an opportunity for the other nations of the Common Market to come in here and sell their agricultural products against us, so we must gird up our loins. Where, apart from the Minister's Budget Statement and the Financial Resolutions, there is any indication that that is being done, I do not know. There is no sign of getting ready for this eventuality. He has not provided anything at all that would give our farmers a reason to expand their production, and in fact I venture to say that he does not want expanded production because he regards it as a nuisance and something which politically is not up the right street.

The Taoiseach entered into the agricultural field as well and talked about agricultural subsidies and the fact that there are such things here as very considerable agricultural subsidies. I want to suggest that there is no such thing in this country as an agricultural subsidy in the proper meaning of the term. There are payments made to bring the price at which the farmer would have to sell exported agricultural products, in face of the dumped world price, up to something at which they could exist. It is not a subsidy bringing their prices high above the cost of production. It is not a subsidy that leaves them anything better off than giving them something at least on which they can carry on. If things continue, they could not carry on successfully very much longer. The main line taken by Deputy Lemass on this Budget——

I am sorry — the Taoiseach—was that the Opposition were voting against social welfare benefits, money for farmers' rates, and various other things. For a moment I was going to include relief for dance hall proprietors but perhaps that might not be too popular. That envisages a situation which, I find, bears an interesting analogy to a statement in the Minister's speech on Page 47 of the typed copy circulated yesterday. This appears at the bottom of the page:

A claim by any sector for a bigger share of the national income can be met only if some other sector or sectors bear, voluntarily or compulsorily, a cut in what they have already received.

Here the Opposition part company with the Government entirely and absolutely in not agreeing with that sentence. What it means is that there is just one cake and if somebody gets a larger portion of it, somebody else must get a smaller slice. We do not agree with that. What should be done is to increase the size of the cake. If anybody can give me an indication of anything in this Budget that endeavours to increase the size of the cake for distribution between farmers, industrial workers, civil servants, retired persons and everybody making up the community, I should like to hear of it. I have found nothing at all in it, and nobody else has found anything in it that tends to increase the size of the cake.

When the Taoiseach says that we voted against social welfare benefits when we went into the Lobby last night, he forgets that in 1948 a Government came in and changed the whole situation, restored the food subsidies and placed the tax situation in an entirely different position in six short weeks. Does the Taoiseach expect that we as a Party, or the Opposition as a whole, or even the Independents, are to accept exactly his concept as to how money should be collected and spent? We did not vote against increased social benefits; we have made it absolutely clear that we would give more if we were in power——

Without any tax.

We did not vote for the Budget proposals because we do not accept the Minister's way of dividing the cake that exists. We do not accept that the Minister made any effort to increase the size of the cake. We suggest if we were in office, while it might not be possible to undo all the harm that has been done since the Minister's Party regained office, there would be a larger cake and we would divide it in a different way. There is no question of our having voted against social benefits. We have our own way of dividing the cake.

You must have divided your cake in 1956-57.

The Deputy may not like to hear these things but they are there. I should like to congratulate most sincerely the National Farmers' Association on the very successful operation by which they screwed £2,500,000 from the Government and I am proud that I was one of the boys who marched with the——

You voted against them.

——100,000 other fellows who prevailed upon the Government to give something to the farmers. It was not a bad operation and it showed the Minister that a situation had developed in which next October the farmers would not pay any increase in rates and most of them are members of Fianna Fáil and the Minister would have had to send out, for the second time in a few decades, the grippers——

As we did against the Blueshirts.

This resulted in a situation in which the Minister loosened the purse strings to give £2,500,000.

There is an interesting leading article in the Irish Times today. It has already been quoted by Deputy Corry. In the first part of the quotation I am about to give, I think they are very mistaken but I am not accusing the Irish Times of being in any camp. I think it is a very upstanding, fair and independent paper. Here is the quotation:

The farmers, because of their recent vehemence on the subject of rates, have only themselves to blame if their sole gain from the Budget is an increase in the Agricultural Grant. They probably would have been better advised to campaign for less tangible though ultimately more profitable objectives, such as the proper use and operation of the new marketing boards and of the research and breeding facilities and progeny and performance testing stations, which exist but are not yet fully utilised. Feather-bedding is at best a temporary palliative, whether for industry or agriculture; and it is significant that, whereas the Minister proposes to exact specific performance promises from industry before adaptation assistance will be given, he has laid down no such requirements for agriculture.

That is from the Irish Times of Wednesday, 11th April, 1962. It means that while the writer believes that the farmers campaigned for nothing else, he also believes that there is nothing productive in what has been given. I campaigned for it myself and I am glad we got it.

You voted against it.

I did not vote against it and I have made that quite clear. That is what the Deputy would like to put across but he will not succeed. I shall make my contribution no matter how much he interrupts. The Irish Times believes that there is nothing productive or expansive in this Budget and that it is a palliative, a way of stopping a political gap, a way out of a situation in which the grippers would be out next October. In that respect I agree with the Irish Times but, at the same time, I am very glad we got it. I do not thank the Minister for Finance for it; I thank the N.F.A. and the 100,000 fellows who marched with them.

But you always refused to meet them.

I could not refuse to meet my own. I have been a member since it started——

As a Government.

Let us examine this appraisal of what the farmers got, according to the Irish Times, in yesterday's Budget. It is quite incorrect to say that the N.F.A. did not campaign for better marketing research and all the obviously productive things mentioned in the leading article. The N.F.A. did not campaign—I want to make this quite clear—for an increase in the agricultural grant. So far as I know, the N.F.A. campaigned for the removal of the health charge and the main road charge from the rates. There is a distinction between what was given and what was sought, while I accept that the Minister's figure reduces rates to the level at which they were when we left office in 1957.

The year before you left.

What is a year between us? It was approximately at the time when we left office. The position is that while the Minister's handout is, presumably, something that can remain static, there is no guarantee that main roads or health services charges will remain static. So far as I know, the position is that main roads and health services show every sign of further increases and so this is not what was sought. It is a great help. It was wrung from the Minister just as you wring water from a dishcloth but it is not what was sought.

We did not wring the money from you.

Now, I listened to the Minister. This does not fix the level of rates in the future nor the charge for health in the future. I am wondering whether this is a way of getting out of the absolute demand there is for the removal of 50 per cent. of the health charge from local rates. Imagine the situation in my county where we are so poor in relation to this 50 per cent. charge that in fact we have not even provided for expectant mother dental services; where we are statutorily obliged this year to give £1,000 or some token figure and because of a law case in Galway we cannot set aside that £1,000, doubled by grant to £2,000, for these people. It is a case of first come, first served.

The Health Act must blow up but possibly the Government know that will not be a very popular thing, something that will produce a very big bill, and is postponing that situation and stopping that gap for the time being. It is an extremely welcome concession, however, and it was most efficiently wrung from the Minister.

In our approach to the agricultural situation in yesterday's Budget, we should look at the really relevant figures. I should like to give the agricultural price index for 1953, base 100. The figure last week, at the dearest, or very nearly dearest, time of the year for agricultural produce was 103. The average for the year is little over 100 so that we may take it that the farmers are getting exactly the same prices for produce now as they were getting in 1953.

Industrial wages, base 1953=100, in June, 1961, largely before the eighth round increases became operative, was 144, so that the industrial wage earner has increased his remuneration by 44 per cent. in a period when the farmers, taking no account of their increased charges, have the same gross prices for their produce. They are flying from the land in face of advancing agricultural wages which have risen from the 100 base of 1953 to 134.7. All that is in this Budget for the farmer as far as I can see—and I have read the Minister's speech and have listened to him quietly, without interruption—is this help he is getting towards the payment of his rates. It was suggested there should be a calf subsidy of £5 per head.

And a red herring.

That would cost £5,000,000, which is double the aid the Minister is now giving.

And the Deputy would vote against it, of course.

I did not vote against anything. If one genuinely examines what would be of benefit to the farmers, one is easily able to see the assistance which could be given to them to make them considerably better off than they will be with what the Minister now offers. Leaving out the recent 10 per cent. increase in rates and taking an average farm with a £200 bill for rates, the position is that a man with a £120 valuation would benefit by £50—£25 multiplied by £2. I am not suggesting that that man, who is the basis of our whole economy, should not have been given this benefit. The neglect of the farmers brought this into a battleground and this has been given now in the hope of making political capital. Let us hope that in the future our whole approach to the basic industry will not be on the basis of stopping gaps. Let us never allow the farmer to reach a stage where he will say: "I will allow the gripper to come in and take my stock out because I can no longer pay."

On page 16 of his statement the Minister refers to the situation in relation to the Common Market and says:

These factors, the significance of which varies from commodity to commodity, serve to remind us that adjustments in the pattern of our agricultural production will be necessary to enable us to exploit those openings which will show promise of most profitable expansion.

We then turn to page 4 where he says:

Despite heavier imports of live animals than usual, the substantial exports of cattle and meat resulted in a reduction in the cattle stocks which had been built up in the earlier years, particularly in 1959.

In other words, the cattle stocks are now run down. Replying to the debate yesterday, the Minister pointed out that nobody had adverted to the fact that the pig and sheep populations are up. They are, for one very reason—one can stock land very much more cheaply with pigs and sheep than with cattle. That is why you will find sheep in nearly every field in the countryside today. It is not because we are approaching a very good sheep market. The subsidy on lamb and mutton will be removed in Britain later this year. There has been a colossal export of lamb to Britain in the past few years and the farmer who could not stock his land with cattle bought sheep because they were cheaper than cattle as a source of stock. The consequence is that there is quite a large increase in sheep.

The Minister draws the conclusion that next year the farming community will export less and presumably they will export it for less money, not more. Accordingly, the Minister has given no help to the farmer and has given no indication how he would advise farmers to make these changes which he himself has predicted as being so necessary. Next year will bring the withdrawal of the cattle subsidy. There will be a tougher grading of pigs and Deputy Dillon assessed the effect of that in his speech today. He said that from 10/- to 15/- per cwt. would be the average drop in pig prices as a result. There is a complete slowing down in land reclamation.

There is not.

I am not quoting from statistics but from what I can see.

I know the Deputy is not looking at the figures.

Some of the statistics drawn up are like a cup of tea—you would want to give them a stir with a spoon. I maintain there is a slowing down of land reclamation.

Will the Deputy look at the figures?

You have the same overhead expenses as when you had a permanent staff on the job. There is the same executive staff but there is less money being devoted to the work and accordingly there is less money for the real work of land reclamation. Statistics cannot be, in this instance, the clear-cut answer the Minister would like them to be and if he approaches the question from the viewpoint of a few years' operations he will find that what I am saying is true—that there is a serious slowing down in land reclamation. The Minister also suggested there would be a tougher grading in respect of wheat next year and this has made the farmer feel that the Minister wants him to get out of production of his main cash crop. Those are the things that face the farmer in the coming year.

Let us advert now to something that was mentioned here already today, the fact that £225,000 was voted for agricultural marketing five years ago. Deputy T. Lynch did a great service to this House when he instituted a series of Parliamentary Questions on the amount of money expended from this appropriation. Not very long ago, he elicited the information from the Minister for Finance, replying for the Minister for Agriculture, that £23,000 had been spent. When speaking on 7th March, I said that some Government Deputies could drink that if they got down to it and the Minister replied that they could and so could some Fine Gael Deputies. I do not want to go into the drinking capabilities of any Party. It is not a fair comparison. In 1962, £23,000 may appear to be a lot of money to earn or to spend, but it does not go very far. It shows complete stagnation that that appropriation of money for agricultural marketing is left to rot—if money can be said to rot—on the shelf.

I asked the Minister another relevant question and again the Minister for Finance replied for the Minister for Agriculture. I asked him what investigations had taken place or what had been done about the marketing of branded agricultural produce. I got no reply in the first answer and in reply to a supplementary question, the Minister said he did not know what I was talking about. If he went over to London or Liverpool, he would see Danish bacon and ham and Continental cheeses advertised on every hoarding. Deputy Dillon said as long as seven years ago that there is nothing wrong with taking a pilot area such as Liverpool, which has Irish associations, or Manchester and exporting quality agricultural produce to those places.

That has not been done and we find that after five years a sum of only £23,000 has been spent, but I think that was entirely in relation to the expenses of the marketing committees which did so much good work of an investigatory character but had no general application to the sale of our products.

All this brings me to the question of whether or not Fianna Fáil want an increase in agricultural production, or whether or not they would prefer to see agricultural production remaining static or possibly reduced. I have a horrible feeling that Fianna Fáil do not want an increase in agricultural production and that they believe that would not bring them back to power if there were an election in the next few years.

Let us take what I regard as the most commendable and excellent increase in the pig population. Did the Government decide that one way to reduce the pig population was to decrease the profits of the pig producer? We can only surmise about that but that is my worry and that is why I am talking about it now.

As I said, land reclamation has slowed down. Section B, under which £350 an acre—

Statistics can prove anything.

Rubbish, and the Minister knows it.

It is not rubbish; it is true.

It is honest rubbish.

It is not rubbish.

The incompetence of the Minister's colleague got him into that mess.

If the Deputy asks a question, I shall tell him.

Statistics can be made to prove anything. So far as I know, there was no wastage and it was wonderful to see money spent on an operation which would increase production and induce productivity in land which was not productive before that money was spent.

Let me again advert to the fact that the fat cattle subsidy is gone. That has a direct relation to the £5½ million taken from the farmers this year. With the progress in the bovine tuberculosis eradication campaign, a calf subsidy would be a production subsidy which is what we all want and which would bring everyone—including Deputy Colley who lives in Dublin—a better standard of living and a greater certainty about the future than ever before.

I find on page 5 of the Minister's statement certain information in relation to the gross fixed capital formation. The Minister said:

Gross fixed capital formation went up by £15 million in 1961 to £102 million, thanks mainly to heavier investment in factory building and larger imports of machinery and equipment.

That is all very well and I am delighted to see it, but I want again to advert to the fact that there is no mention of fixed capital formation in regard to the agricultural industry. Is there any increase for the farm building scheme instituted by Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture? Is there any mention of the scheme suggested by us to give small farmers—or indeed any farmer—interest-free loans of up to £1,000?

I know we cannot compare with Scotland and England because they have an industrial population which could carry agriculture on its back if it wanted to, but let us see what money has been spent on increased production and on the creation of productive labour. Go out into the fields and see the standard of agriculture which obtains and then see how much capital should be introduced into agriculture. The Minister comes to us with a stop-gap Budget in this most important year when we should be building up for entry to the Common Market. Every other nation is moving forward but we are remaining just as we are. That is what is wrong with this Budget and that is what I object to.

The whole Budget is an acceptance by the Government that the cake cannot be increased. The cake has to have so many slices. The Minister for Finance must use the knife. We on this side of the House maintain that given the opportunity—and we will get that opportunity—we can make the cake larger. We can increase the size by successful investment and leadership. If we provided for the farmers decent advisory services, we would so increase the cake that slices could be given to old age pensioners which would be far in excess of the niggardly and paltry sum that is so much applauded here today.

Finally, let me advert to the question of stop-gaps. Somebody said many years ago, almost before I was born, that you had to beware of somebody else because he would always talk down to the people. This is a Budget in which the Fianna Fáil Party have tried to talk down to the people. What they should have done was to try to lift them up.

I was going to leave the House when Deputy Donegan began to speak. He started off by saying he was not going to refer to the Budget at all, that he was going to speak about the Common Market.

That is not so.

I was expecting an intelligent lecture from Deputy Donegan on the Common Market. Of course, he took up most of his speech trying to excuse himself for voting against the £2,500,000 for the farmers.

Not at all.

He was trying to excuse himself for doing that. He was trying to excuse himself for voting against giving an increase to the old age pensioners, the widows and orphans and others of the kind. That really was the theme of his speech. He said we did nothing for the farmers on this side of the House. The Taoiseach stated today that the farmers, through grants, subsidy, land reclamation, drainage and other means, had got about 25 per cent. of the proceeds of the Exchequer. That is not bad.

Deputy Donegan said he marched with the farmers in County Louth in protest against the increase in the health services and the main road charges. I do not know how he is to tell the people with whom he marched in County Louth that he objected to their getting £2,500,000 for the relief of rates. I should not like to have it on my conscience and have to go out to County Dublin to do a thing like that. It will take some explaining. I know that the Deputy is a very fine character and perhaps he may be able to put it over but I should not like to have to do it. He told us he marched with those people in order to get some relief in rates from the Government. Then he switched round to the health services and the road charges.

There is only one way in which you can make the health services and the roads a national charge. No Government have money and there is no use trying to put it over on the people outside that Governments have money. They have no money except what they can get from the people and they cannot get any money except by way of taxation. If we made the health services and the roads a national charge, we would have to increase taxation. We try to be fair. The Minister for Finance tried to be very fair and increased taxation only very slightly in order to give what I look upon as considerable reliefs to various sections of our people. If the Minister for Finance brought in a Bill tomorrow to make the health services and the roads a national charge, he could do it only by taxation and the very people who are now talking about the health services and the road charges are those who would vote against this Party, if we introduced anything of the kind.

Of course, they would.

They would vote against it. It is easy to be destructive from the point of view of criticism. We have got to be as fair as we can to every section of the people. As usual, we are concerned with the wellbeing of all sections of the community, irrespective of class or creed. For that reason, the Minister for Finance has introduced a Budget which gives a very fair deal to every decent man in the country.

Deputy Donegan pointed out what they would do with the cake if they were here. We know what they did when they had the opportunity to divide the cake. They left us in 1957 without the price of a bag of cement. If they had been six months longer in power, the old age pensioners, the widows and orphans and others would never get anything. The inter-Party Government had not a "bob" at the time. There would be no cake at all. It would be burned up long ago.

There is no sign of the Deputy burning up. He is as solid as a rock.

You may talk about the cake but you did not produce the dough.

That was the position in which we found ourselves in 1957.

God bless the Deputy, it did him no harm.

If the inter-Party Government had been six months longer in office, there would not have been a "bob" for the unfortunate old age pensioners.

This is Ireland that the Deputy is attacking.

Deputy Donegan tells us that if he were here, he would bake a bigger cake. He would give more to the old age pensioners. He will go down to County Louth and ask the old age pensioners and the farmers to vote for him. Yet he came into this House and voted against the increase, as did a number of the other Deputies opposite. I do not know how they are going to explain that.

Let the Deputy not have a breakdown over it, whatever he does.

As a matter of fact, I do not know whether Deputy Norton voted yesterday or not.

I would not expect the Deputy to know what happened yesterday or today.

Believe it or not, Deputy Norton does not want any increase for the farmers or the old age pensioners in County Kildare.

It is in Barnum's circus the Deputy should be and it will not be complete until he is there.

He does not want any increase for these people at all.

He is the official whitewasher.

Keep on annoying them.

That is right; keep going.

Will Deputy Burke report progress?

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
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