There were 13 Financial Resolutions. As I understand the position, this measure is purely for the purpose of regularising the position between the date of the dissolution and today. The general Budget discussion and the Financial Resolutions will come up for discussion under the ordinary Financial Resolution No. 13. We accept that there must be some orderliness in the public finance and that this resolution, on which the Bill will be founded, is necessary. Frankly, it appears to me now, as it appeared to me 15 years ago, that there is a serious difficulty here. Since the dissolution of the Dáil the Minister for Finance has been collecting taxes for which he had no statutory authority at all. When I was faced with that position I was not the Minister for Finance who had been doing it. I came in and took over from another Minister who had been collecting taxes without statutory authority.
Deputy Haughey, who was Minister for Finance at the dissolution of the Dáil, and who is Minister for Finance today, is in the position of having collected taxes under the Financial Resolutions at the increased rates which were imposed by the Budget, without statutory authority to do so. The fact that that is so is proved by the necessity to come to this House with the financial resolution in the form of Resolution No. 12 and with the Bill that is set out at No. 6 on the Order Paper. To put it mildly, that seems to be a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. The Minister for Finance should have foreseen this possibility before the dissolution of the House and have taken regard of it. He could have put it to the House then. He failed to reply to the Budget debate. The Taoiseach dissolved the Dáil that night without taking proper cognisance of the lacuna that was there.