Firstly, I wish to deal with some of Senator O'Higgins's remarks in this respect. He suggested that he had made it clear that there would be a motion of this kind put down. I want to make it absolutely clear that that is simply not so. At one stage yesterday, Senator Sanfey spoke to Senator Lenihan and myself and asked if we could agree to finishing by 5 p.m. tomorrow. We told him we could not possibly agree to that as we did not know how the debate would go; that we had no intention of holding it up, but we would see how the debate would proceed. As far as I am concerned, that is the last anyone said about this matter. I heard rumours yesterday that the Government would bring in a guillotine motion but I said that it was nonsense as there was no reason for it. Then last night at 8.30 p.m., just before the House adjourned, Senator O'Higgins, the Leader of the House, came over to find out how many Senators wished to speak. Three Senators wished to speak so he said that we would adjourn until today. He did not propose sitting late last night. There was no mention of the impending guillotine motion, although I understand he had spent several hours arranging for its drafting at that stage. However he did not condescend to mention it to us when we were discussing the future conduct of the Bill. It is a mystery why the Leader of the House has brought in this motion.
We have now put down an amendment that the motion should be changed to read "5 p.m. tomorrow". On that basis, although it is quite unprecedented to have such a motion on a Finance Bill, we are willing to agree to the motion going through. The Leader of the House has accepted that it is constitutionally and legally practicable to debate this matter all day today and all day tomorrow up to 5 p.m. We could debate it even later, but we are willing to compromise in this matter and to finish by 5 p.m. tomorrow. The Leader of the House has conceded that this is possible. As Senator Lenihan has pointed out, since the President has no power in this matter to refer the Finance Bill to the Supreme Court, he is not entitled under the Constitution to do anything but sign the Bill. While, as a matter of courtesy, one would wish him to have adequate time to read the Bill before signing it—everyone likes to know what they are signing before they do so—7 p.m. on Friday would appear to be adequate in view of the fact that its constitutionality does not arise.
However, for whatever reason, and I cannot conceive what this reason is, the Leader of the House and indeed Senators on that side of the House have decided to do this. I notice for example, Senator Alexis FitzGerald sitting there festooned, as is his wont, with learned volumes of all kinds, ready no doubt to indulge in intelligent and, as always, articulate and extremely useful discussion on the Committee Stage of this Finance Bill. By the action of his own leader and by the action of his own feet, in voting as he voted he is making sure that this cannot happen in any kind of adequate way.
I would put it to Senator FitzGerald that there is no reason in the wide world why the Leader of the House could not accept our amendment to defer the end of this debate until 5 p.m. tomorrow. There is absolutely no legal reason, no constitutional reason, no problem of any kind. I put it to Senator FitzGerald that he could make his usual valuable use of his expertise and the volumes of various kinds that he has surrounding him if he would persuade his leader to accept this amendment.
As I already mentioned, this is the first time in 54 years of financial legislation in this country that a motion of this kind has been brought in. For 54 years the Dáil and Seanad had been debating the annual Finance Bill, the most important single piece of legislation that comes before either house in the course of the year. On no single occasion in these 54 years was a guillotine motion of this kind moved in either House. This is a precedent, is unique, and is moved, so far as one can see, without any adequate reason at all. Without any reason it has not been explained. The Leader of the House has not denied that in effect it is not necessary, to the extent that certainly 5 p.m. tomorrow rather than 5 p.m. today would be entirely adequate from the point of view of getting the Bill to the President, with all due regard both to courtesy and to the legalities and the provisions of the Constitution. It could be done; it should be done.
There is no conceivable possibility of recommendations being passed in this House. The Leader of the House knows perfectly well he has enough votes to prevent any such thing. I said yesterday in the course of this debate that we did not propose on this side of the House to put down any recommendations. We can give him an assurance again that we do not propose to put down any recommendation, and even if we put down 100 recommendations the Leader of the House knows perfectly well that he has enough votes to prevent them being accepted.
Indeed we do not have the Minister for Finance in this House which, of course is a habit from the last budget which came before us last summer. For the so-called mini budget, the Finance (No. 2) Bill, the Minister for Finance again was absent for a greater part of the debate. We appreciate that the Minister has many claims on his time but I should have thought that the claims of the Parliament of this country were perhaps paramount. While much as we are happy to see the Minister for the Gaeltacht in the House, I do not think that even he would suggest he would be in a position to accept recommendations on behalf of his Minister for Finance were they put down.
We are debating the Bill without the remotest conceivable possibility of it emerging from this House other than in the form in which it now is. Therefore this so-called excuse of preparing vellum copies and so on and so forth for the President to sign simply will not wash. Indeed, in my own memory and in the memory of the Leader of the House we have had really urgent Bills going through this House, when the House was called together by telegram and so on, where the Bill had been signed by the President within minutes of its leaving this House. The Bill had been given to him through a member of the motor-cycle corps who had instantly brought it up to Aras an Uachtaráin to be signed on the spot. Therefore it is perfectly possible to do these things. In any event the suggestion we have made of continuing this debate until 5 p.m. does not require any of those heroic steps. The whole process could be gone through with all due courtesy and deliberation. Now, the result of this display of what could be described as arrogance on the part of the Leader of the House and the Government and Senators opposite is that it is not possible to debate in any adequate way this most important legislation.
Out of the kindness of his beneficient heart the Leader of the House says, "Well, after all I gave every opportunity to the Opposition. They could either have a Second Stage debate or they could have a Committee Stage debate. It is up to them to decide, and what could be fairer?" Could there ever have been a more outrageous pronouncement from the Leader of this or any other House? He would put it up to the Opposition. We could either debate the Second Stage or we could debate the Committee Stage. It is up to us. It is not up to us. We are entitled —not merely we, but Senator FitzGerald and every Senator in this House is entitled to debate this financial legislation in one of the Houses of the Oireachtas. It is not for any Leader of the House to stand up here in his arrogance and say to the Opposition: "You decide whether you will debate one Stage or another." We are entitled to debate every Stage of this Bill in a way in which every single Finance Bill before either House of the Oireachtas has been debated in each of the last 54 years. We are entitled to do that, not because of whatever dignity we as Senators may possess, but because of the people of this country who are entitled to have this vital legislation debated by their representatives in Parliament in the best possible way.
After all, we are discussing this Bill in the context of a very grave national crisis. It is not just an ordinary Finance Bill, if any Finance Bill can be described as ordinary. It is not just a routine Finance Bill that comes in in normal times and perhaps puts a penny on one thing and takes a penny off another, brings in a few proposals for tax, dealing with tax evasion and so on. This is not that kind of situation. We are debating this Bill in a period of grave national crisis, a period when what Senator FitzGerald yesterday described as "a psychology of defeat" is gaining more and more ground, when people are really despairing of seeing any improvement in conditions; a period when we have well over 100,000 unemployed with no real prospect in the next 12 or 18 months of any reduction to even below 100,000 in that number; a period when we have, perhaps today, a complete breakdown in the entire wage negotiations position with the appalling prospect that that suggests, a breakdown brought about apparently in the last two days by the deliberate action of the Government; in the longer run a breakdown brought about by the deliberate action of the Government in the type of budget that they have put before us and which is before us today in the Finance Bill.
We have the situation where our national transport concern has made it clear they may simply have to cease operations in the autumn, simply because they are running out of money. Owing to the inflationary situation, the general economic depression that exists, the psychology of defeat that exists, to quote Senator FitzGerald—because of this situation our national transport concern is likely to break down.
This is the kind of context in which this Finance Bill in this year of 1976 is being discussed. It is in this context that the Government, the Leader of the House and Senators opposite have decided that there is to be no discussion in this House. We have had one halfday's discussion. Part of the Second Reading took place. We still have to finish the Second Reading. We have to go through the numerous sections of this Bill. There are 83 sections in this Bill. There are many matters of great importance in this Bill. There are the kind of detailed technical matters that one had hoped to hear Senator FitzGerald dealing with. I always listen to him with pleasure and enlightenment. Apart from these there are a wide variety of matters which affect many people in this country. We have the vast range of taxes that have been imposed in this Bill, the huge increases in the rate of VAT, the 13p on petrol, huge increases in car tax and on drink and tobacco, the consequent increases in CIE fares, increases in ESB rates. All these are governed by the budget. There is the imposition of some £15 million on industry in the Finance Bill through social welfare contributions.
I had hoped that Senator FitzGerald would rise. I would be fascinated to hear Senator FitzGerald defending this outrageously arrogant proposition. I would be delighted, in view of his long and honourable career as a financial expert in this House, as a defender of the rights of this House to consider legislation adequately, particularly financial legislation; in view of that long and honourable record, I would be interested to hear him defending this motion.