I wish to refer to Vote No. 8, which deals with the appropriation for the Local Loans Fund. That particular fund, to the extent of £600,000, used to furnish the money to be paid each year to the British, but according to the Budget statement of the Minister for Finance, that is not going to be done this year. I want to know from the Minister why he proposes to raise that money from the taxpayer when he is not going to pay it to the British. The question with regard to the Local Loans Fund is, as Senators are aware, one that is in dispute between the British Government and our Government. I want to deal with this from the point of view of the farmer. First of all he is called upon, as a taxpayer, to contribute towards this Local Loans Fund. As a beneficiary under the Fund he is also called upon to repay his loan, whether as a land annuitant under the various Land Acts up to 1923, or as a man who got a loan from the Board of Works to build a shed. Having discharged these two liabilities he is called upon a third time by the British to pay the duty that they are levying at the English ports. In addition to his land annuities, the farmer has to pay this sum of £600,000 and, I understand, £1,000,000 for pensions. The remarks I have just made in connection with the Local Loans Fund apply also to the Vote for the R.I.C. pensions.
The point that I want to make is this: that in these times of stress and depression, when things are so bad, I cannot understand why the Minister for Finance should appropriate money to the extent of £2,000,000 which he does not want and which he says he will not pay. The people will find it very difficult to foot that huge bill when the tax-gatherer comes along to collect. The British are looking for five and a quarter million pounds. The amount of the land annuities which the farmers owed under the various Land Acts previous to the 1923 Acts was less than three million pounds. We have this peculiar position now, that the farmer, having paid the less than three million pounds to the Irish Land Commission, will have to pay the British on the export of his produce at the port five and a quarter million pounds. We have, therefore, this position: that not alone is the farmer liable for his land annuities but has to pay them twice. In addition, he is paying an excess of something like two and a quarter million pounds, or will have to pay that. I do not think that is a fair or a reasonable proposition to bring before the House in these days.
There is very great inconsistency in the policy of the Ministry in connection with the land annuities. It was recognised, when they came into office, that there was great depression in agriculture. A Bill was passed through the Oireachtas under which a moratorium was granted to those who were in arrears with their annuities up to December, 1931. Owing to the tariff war between Britain and the Free State the land annuities which will accrue due at the end of this year and the annuities which will fall due at the end of June of next year will, if the annuitant can make a case to the Land Commission, be funded, plus a four and a half per cent. interest charge. But in between these periods there comes the annuity due in June. The Ministry, as I have said, recognised the depression in agriculture that prevailed before June, and yet in connection with the land annuities due in June shoals and sheaves of writs have been issued all over the country.
I cannot see how that can be considered to be a consistent policy on the part of the Ministry so far as the land annuities are concerned. It will be argued that the farmers have not been, or are not, willing to pay the land annuities: that they want to get out of them and all that kind of thing. I want to direct the attention of the House to this: that statistics were given in the Dáil which reflect the highest credit on our farmers for their honesty. When the Free State Government took over from the British on the 1st April, 1923, the amount of the land annuities in arrear at that period was £640,000. On the 30th June, 1930, the arrears were only £505,000, while on the 31st January, 1931, they were only £665,000. That is to say, they were only £25,000 in arrears over a period of depressed prices that lasted for ten years. There was an additional collection since 1923 of one million pounds a year. Following the passage of the 1923 Land Act, there was the collection of three years' arrears—they were called compounded arrears of rent—so that on a collection of close on thirtysix million pounds there was only a deficit of £25,000.
That is a record that I think could not be beaten in any part of the world, and it certainly reflects the highest credit on our farmers. It is a record that the farmers of Ireland have reason to be proud of, and a record, too, that the Ministry should recognise. For that reason I think the Ministry should stop the proceedings that are being taken for the collection of the June annuities. Everybody knows that it is impossible to sell cattle or agricultural produce of any kind at a reasonable price at the present time. Farmers who used to be offered for a 9-cwt. bullock £15 or £16 are now offered £11 10s. 0d., so that their losses may be roughly estimated at £5 a head. Under such circumstances, how can any farmer carry on? How can he pay his land annuities or pay his shop debts? The Minister should realise that to proceed against farmers in the position I have described is both foolish and futile.
Not alone are proceedings being taken for the payment of the land annuities, but people are being processed and decrees obtained against them for their rates. Only last week I was in a District Court near Dublin where proceedings for the payment of the current rate up to the 31st March were being taken against farmers. The farmers who are being most severely hit by tariffs are not so much the tillage farmers as the energetic men who are doing some tillage and, having saved some money out of their tillage, have put capital into cattle. A man in that position may have one hundred cattle out on grass. He may not have had enough money to buy them and, in consequence, had to go to the bank to borrow. He is now faced with a loss of probably half his capital. In these circumstances it is the limit of unreasonableness to ask him to pay his land annuities, his rates and other debts.
I hope the Minister will have something to say with regard to the three items I have mentioned: the £600,000 for the Local Loans Fund, the R.I.C. pensions and the excess stock. The Minister is asking for money under these three heads which he does not require because he is not going to pay it. Therefore, I ask the House to recommend that the amounts under these three heads be excluded from the Appropriation Bill. I do not expect, of course, that the recommendation will be accepted. I think, however, that these three items should be excluded from the Bill in view of the fact that the money is not going to be paid out. It is too bad, I think, to expect farmers to pay it in these bad times and under the circumstances I have described. The money will not be wanted if we are going to win the fight. Therefore, I think it is only right that our rates and taxes should be reduced accordingly.
