On the Motion for the Adjournment, the matter which Deputy McQuillan gave me notice he wished to raise is the alleged communication of the speech of the Minister for Finance and the provisions of the Budget. I have given him leave to raise that but that is the only matter that may be raised.
Adjournment Debate. - Budget Statement: Issue to Unauthorised Persons.
It is a matter of grave public importance that we should get a clear answer from the Minister for Finance on the point I put to you today, Sir, in connection with the possibility of a Budget leak, due to the fact that copies of the Budget Statement were made available to unauthorised persons outside this House and those unauthorised persons —in my opinion, unauthorised—in turn, allowed other unauthorised persons to read the Budget Statement at seven minutes to four, at a time when the members of this House were not aware of what was contained in it.
I want to make it quite clear that the taxes which the Minister announced were to be imposed were not known to me as a Deputy or to the majority of members of this House until approximately 4.30 when the Minister disclosed the proposed penal taxes in the course of his Dáil contribution. But those proposed penal taxes were known to people outside this House at seven minutes to four. I should like to know whether in view of that fact, it was right and proper that such important information should have been made available to people, who, in my opinion, were not entitled to that information.
It is in order to have that position clarified that I asked the Ceann Comhairle for permission to raise the matter and he kindly decided that it was a matter of sufficient importance to warrant its being raised on the Adjournment. It is agreed in this House that the Budget Statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons is a top secret until it is disclosed by the Chancellor. It is agreed here also that in this Parliament, which is based whether we like it or not, on the British House of Commons, that the same democratic machinery operates here; the same democratic processes are followed here as in the British House of Commons and that here also the Budget Statement is a top secret until such time as the Minister has disclosed it to the House.
If there is any Deputy on the Fianna Fáil benches who does not accept my statement on that, I would refer him to the speech made in this House on 4th April, 1952, by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, who is now Tánaiste, when he spoke here on a motion for the Adjournment at a time when he had been accused of allowing himself to be photographed by the Irish Times with his statement and in the photograph it was alleged certain proposed taxes appeared. In the House in answer to a charge made against him at that time, the Minister stated that “The full text of the speech,” that is, the Budget speech,
contains matter which is highly confidential and must be treated as highly confidential until the Minister has actually detailed it to the House.
That was the statement made by the former Minister for Finance in this House. Now, we have been told in today's Irish Press that it is customary, and I quote the Irish Press,“to distribute copies of the Budget Statement to former Ministers and senior civil servants”. That paper went on to name certain individuals who got, according to the Irish Press, copies of the Budget Statement. According to the Irish Press, these were the individuals to whom I referred yesterday. I did not name them yesterday but the Irish Press named them today, and in view of the fact that they have been named by the Irish Press I feel I must refer to them by name.
The Irish Press referred to the fact that Deputy McQuillan had in mind Mr. Moynihan, the Governor of the Central Bank and Mr. McElligott, a director of the Central Bank. The Irish Press went on to describe these men as being entitled to know what was in the Budget Statement as senior civil servants of the Department of Finance. Now the Irish Press is absolutely wrong to suggest that these are Department of Finance officials, senior or otherwise. They are not officials of the Department of Finance or any other Department of State. They are officials of the Central Bank and outside of their responsibility to the Central Bank, I have no information as to whether they are entitled to hold directorships of any private company or to have any other business. As far as I know, they are so entitled so they cannot be described as civil servants in the same sense as the Secretary of the Department of Finance, or the Secretary of the Department of Health, or as any other Departmental Secretary could be and should be described.
If it is correct that senior civil servants are entitled to copies of the Budget Statement, for the sake of argument, I shall accept that. I maintain that the people outside this House but who were in the Visitors' Gallery were not civil servants, not members of this House, but were, if you like to describe them as such, distinguished members of the public, distinguished to the extent that they held responsible positions in a private capacity outside the House, but distinguished or not as their positions may have been, that fact does not entitle them, in my opinion, to be in possession of very vital information on the taxes to be imposed by the Minister for Finance.
Let me recall for the members of the House what I saw yesterday and what other Deputies saw. The Minister proceeded at approximately seven minutes to four to read his Budget Statement. At the same time, in the Distinguished Visitors' Gallery, a number of people began to read copies of the Minister's Budget Statement. Mr. McElligott had a copy as far as I could see and I am quite certain from my first investigation that what I saw in his hand was a copy of the Minister's Statement.
Beside him Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Leyden shared a copy of the Minister's Budget speech. I do not know which of them had it, to which of them it was issued, but I do know that the two of them shared it like loving brothers. We all know that Mr. Leyden is chairman of the Insurance Corporation of Ireland, chairman or director of Messrs. W. and P. Thompson, Limited, chairman of the Irish part of the National Bank, a director of Cement Limited, chairman of Asbestos Limited, associated with Aerlínte and other concerns up and down the country. He was in possession, at seven minutes to four, of a copy of the Budget speech, 40 minutes before members of the House heard what the penal taxation was to be on cigarettes, beer and whiskey.
Perhaps the Minister will say that it was correct for these two gentlemen to have this. If he thinks that does he also think it correct that it should have been available to other visitors sitting beside these distinguished visitors? Their names are not available to me—I presume they are in the Visitors' Book—but they were seen to read the Minister's statement which was in the hands of Mr. McElligott, Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Leyden. Sitting behind those three gentlemen were a number of other visitors who bent forward and had a good look at the Budget statement. I do not say who they were but they were free to leave the precincts of this House at any time. They left between 4.10 and 4.20 o'clock with a knowledge of what was in the Budget speech at a time when we, as members of the House, were not in possession of knowledge of what the penal taxes were to be.
These comprise a number of people who, in my opinion, were in unauthorised possession of the Budget Statement, but, at a quarter past four, another gentleman strolled into the gallery, namely, the Attorney General, and he produced, like a magician with the white rabbit, a copy of the Budget Statement. He did not get it in this Chamber. He came in with the copy of it in his possession. Where did he get it? At what time did he get it? Why was he entitled to get it outside the precincts of this House?
I do not think any civil servant or distinguished visitor was, in any circumstances, entitled to a copy of that statement, unless he was inside this House and did not leave it. A number of people in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery and outside the House had knowledge of the Minister's statement before members of the House had it. I am not accusing them of putting it to any particular personal use, but if unauthorised members of the public had knowledge of the Minister's statement before the House had it, what was to prevent them putting into effect knowledge at their disposal to suit themselves or their friends? There is not much point in suggesting that the Budget is top secret, if the Budget Statement is to be in the possession of people who are not members of this House.
At least one ex-Minister made an unauthorised disclosure of the statement before.
In 1952, when Deputy MacEntee was Minister for Finance he was accused of letting himself be photographed by the Irish Times. Coming into the House on 4th April, 1952, he declared that it was so essential to have the Budget Statement secret that he deplored the fact that Deputy Blowick had turned around to his colleagues and informed them of the proposed penal taxation which the Minister for Finance was about to impose. Deputy MacEntee thought it was wrong for Deputy Blowick, who had a copy of the speech as a former Minister, to turn round to Deputy Donnellan or Deputy X and say: “MacEntee is going to put a penny on this or that.” Deputy MacEntee thought it was wrong for Deputy Blowick to do that but the young Deputy on the Fianna Fáil benches thinks it is right for the present Minister for Finance to allow copies to be made available to non-members of the House who were outside this House and who left it in possession of the statement.
I shall let the Minister deal with that.
I should like the Minister to tell us who is entitled to a copy of the Budget Statement. On what basis are the copies allocated? How is it that the Evening Press was in a position to publish, before the other evening newspapers, full details of what the Minister had in his Budget Statement? I know the reporters in this House had no copies of the Minister's statement available to them. It is extraordinary that the Evening Press were in a position, not through their representatives in this House but through some other channel of their own, to have an advance scoop for the reason that they could publish the Budget Statement before the other evening papers.
I do not know who gave it to them but I do know they published it. Is there a leak there? How did it come about? If unauthorised persons in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery were in a position to read the Minister's statement 40 minutes before the members of the House were in a position to know what was in it, is it unfair to suggest that the Evening Press were also in a position to have unauthorised possession of it?
This is a serious matter. Not many years ago, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Hugh Dalton, who is dead now, while on his way to make his Budget statement, passed a jocose remark to a friend who was a journalist and that journalist was able, that evening, to make a fairly accurate forecast of the Budget. The result of that was that while there was no question of dishonesty or anything like that on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had to resign his post. I think that in the circumstances the Minister should ensure that public confidence will not be shattered and that unauthorised persons will not have access to the Budget Statement.
First, I want to say that, although I do not wish to reiterate it here now, I agree with what the Tánaiste said when he was Minister for Finance in regard to the Budget being a secret document. Strictly speaking, nobody has a right to see it. In fact, nobody has a right to see it even when the speech is made; but it is given out, as a matter of courtesy, to every Deputy when the speech is over. We could have only one copy for the Minister for Finance and let it go into the Official Report in the ordinary way. Certain practices, however, have grown up. It has been the convention for many years that former Ministers of the previous Government at least get a copy of the Budget in the House shortly after the Minister for Finance starts to read it. I think that is probably exceeded sometimes and that practically everybody in the Front Bench gets a copy—I do not know— I am not sure if it is confined to ex-Ministers.
It has also been the custom — this is something Deputies may not have been aware of—that the Governor of the Central Bank is the only person to know what is in the Budget, apart from the Government and those who attend the Government meetings. The Governor of the Central Bank is asked to call on the Minister for Finance the day before the Budget is brought in and he is told what the principal provisions of the Budget will be. That, of course, was done this year the same as every other year.
It has always been the practice also that when the Governor of the Central Bank attends, he gets a copy of the Budget at the same time as it is given out to the ex-Ministers and so on in the House. On more than one occasion, I am told, the Governor has asked for two copies instead of one and has got the two copies, and he got two copies this year. It is possible he may have asked for the second copy, and may have given it to his colleague, Mr. McElligott. Mr. McElligott is an ex-Governor of the Central Bank and an ex-Secretary of the Department of Finance and, for that reason, I would say he is a very trustworthy person. I do not know if they allowed other people to see the copies of the Budget in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery. I am not in a position, therefore, to deal with that particular allegation.
The Attorney General, of course, attends the Government meetings. He knows what is in the Budget. He must know what is in the Budget because he must draft the Financial Resolutions and he must start drafting them at least a couple of days before the Budget is introduced. I am told he arrived here on this occasion about 20 minutes past four, when the Budget Statement was about half-way through. He asked for a copy of it, which of course he was given, seeing he had a knowledge already of what was there.
Who else gets a copy of the Budget? The Clerk of the Dáil, the Assistant Clerk, the Official Reporter at the table, and I need hardly say that the Secretary of the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners also get a copy. These are all the people to whom it is customary to give a copy.
This year anyway—and I think most years, as a matter of fact—any knowledge of what might be in the Budget would not be very much more useful to a person at 4 o'clock, say, than it would be to him at a quarter to five. I suppose he might perhaps go out, if he were dishonest, and might make a bet with a person. He might say: "I bet you any amount of money, there will be 2d. on the cigarettes." That is about the only use he could make of his knowledge because these particular taxes were not brought into operation until one minute after 12 o'clock last night. If anybody wanted to go and buy whiskey or cigarettes at the old prices, he had the whole afternoon to do it. Every Deputy could do it when he went out. Therefore, there could be no forestalling so far as these articles are concerned.
However, that does not excuse any slip up there may have been in this instance. All I can say is it was quite proper that the Governor of the Central Bank should have a copy or two. I could not see any objection whatever to his giving the second copy —and I suppose that was the reason he got it—to his colleague, who was Governor of the Central Bank up to 12 months ago and who had been before that Secretary of the Department of Finance. But beyond that, certainly I had no knowledge that anybody had seen a copy of the Budget.
With regard to the allegation concerning the Evening Press, I am afraid that is purely a political shot in the dark. How does the Deputy know it was out first? Had he men in the three offices taking the times at which the three papers were issued? Was it not just chance for a bit of mud slinging?
It was too much of a coincidence.
How does the Deputy know it was out first? He just took a chance on that. He tried to throw a bit of dirt at Deputy de Valera or somebody else that he had prior knowledge and that the Evening Press was able to come out before the others.
I am a shareholder.
The Deputy had no idea. He thinks he will get away with that sort of dirt here.
(Interruptions.)
Order!
The Deputy has no idea when it was out. He likes throwing dirt like that.
No.
He just likes to wallow in that sort of thing. If he sees a chance of attacking the Irish Press or anything else, he just makes allegations without having any knowledge of whether they are right or wrong.
Does the Minister think it right that unauthorised people should have the Budget Statement?
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 12th April, 1962.