Before Private Members' Time I was making the point that the Wealth Tax Bill in its present form is, first of all, pandering to the lowest instincts of man with its suggestion of a share of the cake without working for it—in other words, the neighbour who would rather look at the man next door working to improve the lot of himself and his family while he himself does nothing and at the same time expects a share of the profits from that man's labours. I do not think anyone would like to see that situation, except the Government that we are unfortunately saddled with at this time, a Government who are pandering to this type of base instinct for nothing but low, cheap, party politics.
The people are more intelligent than this regime suspect because the people can penetrate this pretence of sharing out the national cake in equal slices. They know that without incentive and without giving a man an opportunity to provide employment for others, there will be no wealth in this country. It is about time we nailed the lie that this measure will affect only a couple of hundred people. This Bill knocks jobs; it knocks jobs at present and it will knock jobs in the future. It knocks jobs that were already lined up. It will chase industries away from us and discourage those who are prepared to invest to provide extra employment.
The suggestions made by Deputy Barry Desmond last night that it is only a fiddly little Bill, that it only affects a few people are wrong. This Bill hits every man, woman and child and despite the public relations operations of this Government, they cannot hide this from the people. Some months back they said the Wealth Tax Bill would share out the wealth of the country equally among the people. We knew then that this was a false promise and a false proposal and despite the best efforts of the Government Information Service to hide the true meaning of the wealth tax proposals from the people, they realise that if any tax proposals are put forward which rather than being an incentive, are a disincentive, they will stop employers and industrialists from expanding their businesses and will stop other people who are prepared to open up industries. It will hit jobs and will hit every man, woman and child in this country. All we have to do is look at the figures. What is happening at the moment? There are more than 104,000 people on the live register. A large proportion of last year's school leavers still have not got jobs but the fact that they never got jobs means that they are not included on the register. I would estimate that at least 20,000 people still have not got jobs.
There are 50,000 unfortunate school leavers at present sitting for their examinations. They have been studying hard for five years and as if they had not enough worries heading into their Leaving Certificate examination they have the extra worry of where they are going after they finish in a fortnight or three weeks' time. Where are they going to get the jobs? That is another 50,000 on top of roughly 125,000 at the moment. Even the most conservative of economists at this stage are estimating that we will have more than 160,000 to 170,000 unemployed in autumn or early winter. That is 170,000 plus the school leavers. We are talking about the sort of figures which one finds it difficult to talk about because they are so desperate and so terrifying and the effects, social and psychological, are so appalling to even think about— figures of around 250,000. We are only a State of about 3,000,000 people. Then we have the party of the Left, the party of the people, the new republicans of 1969. They have forgotten about it at this stage because "republican" is a dirty word in the mouths of some of the Ministers on the other side of the House. They do not like to mention the word because they think 1916 should never have happened. The Chief Whip of the new republicans, Deputy Barry Desmond, said last night that this is only a fiddle diddle of a Bill, that it will only affect 200 or 300 people. We are talking about nearly 250,000 people. The Minister for Lands says it is an innocuous sort of a Bill which is not causing any harm one way or another. It is a Bill that goes part of the way towards causing an unemployment situation in which nearly 250,000 people will be out of work.
Deputy Desmond is a Labour member and in the tradition of Connolly and Larkin I would have expected him to be on his feet attacking the whole concept of any legislation which would cause further unemployment at this difficult time in our history. I would have expected him to be voting with us tonight on our footwear motion because of the death pangs and the death rattle of the footwear industry but he was not voting with us. He was telling us that he was going to support a Wealth Tax Bill which is based strictly on the policies of envy and has no relation whatsoever to basic economics. Wealth tax is only one part of a trio of Bills. No package could be more designed to exacerbate an already appalling situation in employment and in the economy generally. This Government have taken up the time of this House during the last number of months with no other Bills except the Racing Board and a few other minor Bills. Where is there one job being provided in those three taxation Bills? In relation to a letter read into the record by Deputy Colley, the Minister for Lands went to great pains to emphasise to foreign industrialists that they would not be liable for wealth tax because, assuming the parent company is based outside the country, they would be excluded. Assuming the subsidiary company is an Irish registered company you would be paying wealth tax on the shares of the company based in Ireland.