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Dáil Éireann - Volume 7 - 06 May, 1924

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - FINANCIAL RESOLUTION 19—AMENDMENT OF LAW.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE: The discussion on Motion 19 was adjourned, Progress being reported. The question is:—

“That it is expedient to amend the law relating to Customs and Inland Revenue (including Excise), and to make further provision in connection with Finance.”

I would like to remind Deputies that in the discussion in Committee there is a rule that Deputies can speak for only ten minutes. I think it would be impossible to enforce that rule on this particular occasion. On the other hand, the right to speak three times might not be exercised, inasmuch as there will be many other occasions for debating this question.

MINISTER for FINANCE (Mr. Blythe): I simply move this motion formally. I do not want to speak now at any great length on it, but I would like to draw attention to one or two matters which, I think, it is well we should bear in mind in dealing with all financial questions. People have expressed disappointment that it was not possible to give remission of taxation, such as was given in a neighbouring country. They feel that it is a great hardship that we have higher rates of taxation here than exist in Great Britain, or in Northern Ireland. I would like to point out that this is a very poor country, and because it is a poor country it cannot afford high taxation. On the other hand, the very poorness of the country leads to the necessity in certain cases and in circumstances such as we have at present, for higher rates. The British rates of taxation are, I might say, all lower than our rates, because in cases where we propose to effect a [220] reduction in regard to the high ranges of Super-Tax and Death Duties there will be no loss of revenue by the reductions, and they practically may be left out of account. The British have a lower beer duty, a lower income tax, and they will have a lower tea and sugar duty, and a lower duty on cocoa and coffee, and so forth. In spite of that, the yield of taxation is very much higher in Great Britain than here. To the yield of British taxation I am adding the stamp and death duties raised in Northern Ireland, and adding the population of Northern Ireland to the population of Great Britain for the purposes of division. The yield of taxation in Great Britain is £15 11s. per head of the population, and the yield of our higher taxes is £6 15s. per head of the population. Our customs duties give about the same yield per head as in Great Britain. In the Saorstát the yield is £2 6s. 6d. per head, and in Great Britain it is £2 6s. The excise duty in England is lower than here.

There are, I think, one or two small Excise duties that we have not, but the amount of the beer duty is £1 per barrel lower than it is in Ireland, and our estimate is that if we were able to reduce our beer duty to the English level it would cost about £750,000 per annum in revenue. Yet, in spite of the fact that the British duty is lower than the Saorstát duty, the British yield from Excise duties, of which the beer duty is the main one, is £3 1s. per head, and the yield here is £2 6s. The great difference is when we come to direct taxation. I would not like to say, at the moment, that the difference in direct taxation indicates precisely the difference in taxable capacity of the two countries, but it certainly is a rough guide to it. In all these duties that I might call direct duties, the yield in Great Britain is very much higher than here. Estate duties in Great Britain yield £1 6s. per head of the population per annum, and estate duties in the Saorstát yield 5s. 6d. Stamps yield 9s. per head in Great Britain, and they yield 3s. 6d. per head in the Saorstát. Income tax yields £6 1s. per head of the population in Great Britain, and it yields £1 7s. 6d. in [221] the Saorstát, although the Saorstát tax is 6d. higher. As a matter of fact, if we got a yield from our taxation at the British rate, and kept the 5s. tax, we should raise from income tax alone instead of £5,000,000 about £27,000,000. Super-tax in Great Britain is £1 8s. per head of the population per annum. Super-tax yield in Ireland—and, as I say, for all effective purposes the rates are the same; the slight reduction that we propose will affect very few incomes—is 2s. 6d. per head. A good deal of the Corporation profits tax that will come in in the coming year in Great Britain, will be at the higher rate. Some of it will be at the shilling rate, and some of it at the sixpenny rate. The yield from the Corporation profits tax in Great Britain, a tax which is being abolished, will be 9s. per head of the population. The yield from Corporation profits tax in Ireland will be 1s. 6d. That must indicate that there is a very different problem here to be dealt with when we are considering our fiscal system, and when we are considering our outlay. The British have, as I say, a tax yield of £15 11s. per head of the population with which to carry on the affairs of the State. We have a tax of £6 15s. It is impossible for us to do the things perhaps wholly desirable, social things that the British can do, and the fact that our yield is lower is essentially due to the fact that there is not the accumulation of wealth, and there is not the productivity in regard to wealth, in this country that there is in Great Britain. It is not to be argued that because we have a lower yield that we ought to raise further the rates of taxation, and spend in proportion to the revenue which we would get, because nearly all of these varied taxes give less yield than in Great Britain. It is clear that we are really taxed up to the limit, that we must pursue a policy of economy in our administration, and that we must not simply spend on the British scale, and try to wring from a poorer country income on the British scale. We must try to live within our real means, and on the other hand we must try to do what we can to develop the country, so that with our present [222] rates, or with lower rates, we will get a better yield of taxation.

I said in my opening remarks in regard to the Budget that while it may be rightly said that backwardness in Ireland industrially is due to inefficiency and due to other causes, to some extent at any rate, there is no profit in simply saying that. We have got to stimulate enterprise in this country by giving it openings. If we can do that by any adjustment in our taxation— and we have got to encourage capital to employ itself in Ireland—it is very clear, at any rate to me, that this country will not be well served by our merely continuing to go along the lines of taxation and the fiscal arrangements that are suitable to Great Britain. On the other hand, it is very easy to do damage in matters of commerce and industry, just as in a civil war campaign it is much easier to pull down than to build up. I think it is not desirable that we should, as I have already said, make sudden or sweeping changes. It is very essential that we should look carefully at our own problems from an Irish point of view, having regard to our own interests and our own resources, and endeavour to adjust our system in such a way that we will stimulate the production of wealth in this country so that we may be able to undertake the many necessary and desirable expenditures that are out of our reach and that are really impossible for us at the present time.

The British Government have probably liabilities that we have not. But even in such matters as defence the disparity is not so great as I think is commonly imagined. The navy, army and air forces of Great Britain cost something like £2 14s. per head of the population; ours cost £1 6s. So that the disparity there is not so great at all. The difference in revenue between the two countries is about £8 16s. per annum, per inhabitant. The definite obligations that the British have in excess of ours are not really so greatly in excess as is generally believed. They have to an extent money to play with that we have not. Necessary services, like the Post Office, here are actually costing us more, because of the fact that this is a poorer country, with a smaller and more scattered population. [223] With higher postal rates we have to pay something like 5/- per head of the population for maintaining the Post Office. The British Post Office, with its lower rates, does not cost the Exchequer anything. These are facts that are to be borne in mind when we are considering the desirability of testing what we can do by changing our fiscal system to suit, so far as we can judge, the needs of the country.

Major COOPER: I hope the Minister will not be offended if I say that his speech the other day in moving the Budget was an essay in the Gladstonian manner. It reminded me very much of all that I had read of Mr. Gladstone's Budget speeches. There was the same lucidity; there was the same tendency to stun the listener with big masses of figures; there was the same reluctance to reveal any remission of taxation till he got to the end. There was then the same joke that in Mr. Gladstone's case was “no laughing matter.” But while the manner was Gladstonian it can hardly be said that the matter was Gladstonian. It did not reach the Gladstonian level. It did not even rise to the heights of Snowden, because it contained practically no remission of taxation at all. If we wish to realise that we are fiscally independent, there is no better proof of it than the Budget, which the Minister for Finance has laid before us, because it differs from the British Budget in almost every particular. It differs unfortunately in the remission of taxation and it also differs because the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken an extraordinarily optimistic forecast while the Minister for Finance has been most extraordinarily conservative. I can conceive other Ministers for Finance even other Ministers on the Government Benches, if they occupied that office, coming down to this Dáil and saying: “This is the case; my revenue is £5,000,000 above what I estimated last year. My Exchequer issues are £10,000,000 less than I estimated last year. Therefore I am £15,000,000 better off than I was last year. Let us have a splash with it.” He has not done so. I think he was right not to do so. But I think it is well that the Dáil should [224] realise and that the country should realise, that the Minister is most extraordinarily cautious, that his predecessor's Budgeting last year was very much below the amount received, that he instead of framing his Budget on the amount received, again adopted a very moderate and cautious estimate— except in one instance—and that, therefore we are tackling our financial problems in a careful, business-like spirit, with no reckless or slap-dash experiments, in taxation. In one respect, and one only, has the Minister, I think, over-estimated his revenue. He got this year £5,388,000 from income tax. He said that that included a very large quantity of arrears. In spite of the fact that he got that, he has estimated this year for £5,000,000. Are there a lot more arrears?

Mr. BLYTHE: Quite a lot. Two or three millions.

Major COOPER: I hope he will get them. But, generally speaking, he is putting his estimates, not merely below what he actually realised, but very much below it. The inference I draw from that is that he expects to be Minister for Finance this time next year, and he is piling up a surplus in order that he may make some large remissions in taxation next year. I hope it will be so, but I cannot help regretting, in some respects at any rate, that he was not able, not merely to reduce taxation this year, but that he has actually increased it. I think the proper corollary to putting on a protective tariff on articles that we do produce, or do, to some extent, produce, is a remission of those protective duties which were put on articles which we do not produce—the McKenna duties and duties under Part II. of the Safeguarding of Industries Act. I think in that way a fair equilibrium could be struck. I hope not to exceed my ten minutes by much, but I wish to say a word or two about expenditure.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE: The Deputy is not bound to ten minutes.

Major COOPER: One must say something about expenditure when one is considering the Budget, because, after all, it is to a great extent on expenditure [225] that the Minister has to shape his Budget. The coat must be cut according to the cloth. I must express regret that, though reductions have been made in expenditure—very large reductions in one or two departments— there has not been that general cutting down of expenditure we had hoped for.

Nearly six months ago, speaking on the Governor-General's Address, I urged the Minister to appoint a small Committee, similar to the Geddes Committee, to go through all the public departments, review expenditure and say where economies could wisely be made. He refused to do that. He said:

“The suggestion has been made that an independent committee should be appointed to look over the departments. At the moment I do not believe that an independent committee would be of any value. The appointment of a committee would simply delay the work and not expedite it. We are not a bit afraid of doing anything that is necessary to be done. We have done many things that were unpleasant and difficult during our period of office”—with which I entirely agree—“and we are not afraid of doing anything necessary for the welfare of the country. We are able to face any unpopularity that may be necessary for the purpose of balancing the Budget, so that we do not need the protection of a committee.”

Now, I will never quarrel with any man who says he assumes responsibility. I accepted that statement of the Minister. I pushed my case no further. He has not balanced the Budget. He has not made that cutting down in expenditure that the country demanded. He has made considerable reductions in some of the spending departments. He has, for instance, saved £20,000 on the Courts of Justice, but the Civic Guard have swooped down, on the other hand, and have taken the £20,000 that was saved on the Courts of Justice, and a little bit more.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE took the Chair.

Major COOPER: Until it is impressed not only on individual departments but on all departments that their expenditure must be limited and [226] checked, you will not get that saving which is absolutely necessary in a country like this—a poor country, where the yield of taxation is small and from which most of the direct taxpayers have been driven. I would again urge the appointment of a Committee of this kind. I realise that the Minister had a great deal to do, and not a great deal of time to do it. He had only six months in which to take control of all his departments and prepare his Budget. I am not blaming him. But I am asking him not to make this a fixed idea—that a Committee of this kind can be of no use. It will be of use if the right men be appointed. If the right men were appointed, I believe the Minister would find the Committee an invaluable help in this work of cutting down expenditure.

I turn from that question to our position as to debt. I think the Minister was unduly modest and did not sufficiently emphasise our extraordinarily satisfactory position in regard to debt. I have been making one or two comparisons as regards our debt and the debt of some of the other self-governing Dominions. I have not made any comparison with South Africa, because we have neither gold mines nor diamond fields and we could hardly hope to have the same credit as South Africa. I take the other Dominions— Canada, for example. I have made two comparisons—one for 1914, to avoid the question of war debt, and one for the year 1922. To take 1914 as a complete comparison would not be right, because in that year there was much less taxation and the revenue was much lower. I will compare debt with revenue.

In 1914 the revenue of Canada was 163 million dollars and the debt was 336 million dollars. That is the public debt only. Canada has an enormous private debt; for making railways and so on. I am not taking that into consideration at all. The Canadian debt was then double the Canadian revenue. In 1922—the last year I was able to get figures for—the revenue was 382 million dollars and the debt was 2,422 million dollars. In other words, Canada's debt is six times her revenue at the present time. In Australia the Commonwealth and State debts together—I [227] am putting them together because the State had a very considerable debt—in 1914 were approximately £337,000,000. The revenue was £28,000,000. In other words, the debt was more than twelve times the revenue. Australia has improved her position. In 1922 her revenue was £150,000,000 and her debt £922,000,000 —that is about six times the revenue. New Zealand, in some respects, is the best comparison with our country, because it is a small country, not an overpopulated country, and it is an agricultural country. The revenue of New Zealand in 1914 was approximately £12,000,000, and the debt £96,000,000. In other words, the debt was eight times the revenue. In 1922 the revenue was £28,000,000, and the debt £208,000,000, or seven times the revenue. The debt in New Zealand is £166 per head of the population.

What is our position? Our debt—I am not counting Ways and Means advances to public departments, because these are more or less internal things— is approximately £11,000,000, and our revenue last year was over £30,000,000. Our debt, so far from being four times or six times or seven times our revenue, as in the case of the other Dominions, is one-third of our revenue, so that we are really in an extraordinarily satisfactory position from the financial point of view. Taking that into account, I would urge the Minister not to be too much afraid of borrowing. I agree with him that borrowing to make both ends meet is a fearful mistake. If it is merely a question of borrowing to balance the Budget, we are entering on a course like the course of Mr. Micawber. But borrowing for reconstructive purposes or for reproductive purposes may be justifiable. In present circumstances, having regard to the unemployment problem, I think it is a justifiable course and the Minister need not be afraid to undertake it. I think a more drastic step is necessary for dealing with unemployment, and it may come in this way by borrowing.

I turn to the new duties. I am not going to say very much about them, because they have been discussed in the Dáil already and they will come up again for discussion on Report. I [228] cannot imagine anything more undesirable than that Deputies should repeat the speeches they made on the last occasion or anticipate the speeches they are going to make on Report. On the general grounds, I think the Minister is probably right in deciding to try an experiment in Protection. I think there was a considerable demand for it in the country, and I think the country is justified in seeing to what extent the powers we most unquestionably possess for protecting industry can be used and what effect they will have. I wish the Minister would have a little more regard for what I may call the social effect of the duties he is imposing, Some of them are abundantly justified. Take the duty on bottles. That is in the nature of anti-dumping legislation, which has been brought into force in practically every country in the world. But he is taxing many things that can hardly be considered luxuries to the ordinary man. I do not know if the Minister ever reads Mathew Arnold. If he does, he will remember that he emphasises the importance of the two qualities of “sweetness and light.” The Minister is taxing sweetness—he is taxing confectionery. He is taxing light—he is taxing candles. He has gone one further and he is taxing one other “quality” that Mathew Arnold thought admirable. He is taxing cleanliness, for he is taxing soap. I hope and believe that the effect of these duties will not be to destroy completely sweetness, light and cleanliness in Ireland. I do hope that in experimenting in these items the Minister may be able to spare those qualities to a certain extent.

I come to what is, perhaps, a more general and a more important question. The Minister desires to reduce the trade in small parcels across the sea and land frontiers. I would lay somewhat more stress on the land frontier than on the sea frontier. The Minister says these small parcels give a great deal of trouble to his department. Of course, they do. That is inevitable. But whatever trouble they give, this trade in small parcels to individual customers is a bond that unites the two parts of Ireland, and I do not want to see any single thread that unites us with Northern Ireland severed. Every Belfast [229] merchant who is doing a trade with the Saorstát has an interest in the Saorstát and wishes to be brought more closely in touch with his customers in the Saorstát. I do not want that to come to an end. I am afraid that it will come to an end owing to the Minister's proposal to impose a minimum tax of 2/6 on small parcels, with 6d. stamp duty. This small-parcel trade is tiresome as it is troublesome, but it is a traffic which has arisen in the natural course of trade, and you cannot divert that natural course of trade without a great deal of trouble and inconvenience to individuals.

It may be justifiable. Sometimes it is. In this case I am not sure that it is. I think that the true way of avoiding this inconvenience and trouble to the Department and the whole community —the little entries of small things and small amounts of duty to be collected— is rather by some form of reciprocity, some kind of Customs Union or Zollverin, call it what you will. I believe that is the natural course of trade. I do not believe you can permanently maintain a Customs barrier between one part of Ireland and another, any more than I believe you can permanently maintain a political barrier between one part of Ireland and another. It is contrary to the course of nature. When the Minister quarrels with nature I am afraid that it is he who will go to the wall. The Minister spoke of these protective duties as an experiment. If we are to gauge the value of the experiment, it is very important that we should have full information. I hope he has arranged with the Minister for Industry and Commerce to supply statistics giving, in all these protective industries, the number of people employed, say, on the 1st April this year, and get these statistics every three months; not only the number of people employed but also the wages paid. I think the Labour Party will want that. That seems to me very important. The Minister also should ascertain from time to time the precise amount which each of these duties bring in in Revenue. At present the figures furnished do not show details of what one duty or another brings in. They are lumped under Customs. We cannot really judge whether the experiment [230] is a success or not unless we are given a little more detail.

Like the Minister, I come last to his one solitary remission of taxation—the tea duty—which he seemed to think was going to be a very great success. In the debate ten days ago Deputy Lyons gave some figures about his family's consumption of tea and sugar which, I must say, rather startled me. So I took some pains to go into my own family's consumption of tea and sugar. I find that my household consumes a great deal more sugar than tea. I took the trouble to see what the Minister's remission of taxation was going to mean to my household of six people, and I find that it is going to be 5d. per week—less than a 1d. per week per head—always assuming that I get the full benefit of the reduction. I find that we consume about 2 lbs. of tea per week, and if the retailer takes off the full 2½d.—which some retailers are threatening not to do—I shall get 1d. per head per week. That is really very little when you think of all the new duties that are being imposed. I feel, while it would have been less satisfactory to the Revenue and to the Minister for Finance, from the point of view of his Budget, that it would have been better to take the duty off sugar and not tea, particularly as he is taxing confectionery. However, I shall have something to say on that matter on Report, and I will not stress it now.

My last criticism—a criticism that is implicit in the while Budget—is that the Minister has looked too much to the Departmental point of view, a little at the point of view of the various industries that we are now protecting, but hardly at all to the social results of his rearrangement of taxation. He has done nothing for the father of a large family, who is, surely, if anybody, deserving of help. He has done nothing for the open-air man, who walks the fields all day and wears out his boots, while he has given a fairly substantial remission to the old maid who sits at home and drinks innumerable cups of tea. My last word is, that I am afraid this is an old maid's Budget—that they are the only people who will get any real satisfaction—and I wish more could have been done for the ordinary people of the country.

[231] Mr. MILROY: I was rather surprised, first of all, to hear the Minister for Finance making comparisons between the position of this country and another country, and to find that Deputy Cooper followed that example at such considerable length, because in a previous discussion, on a matter germane to this, allusion to or comparison with other countries was deprecated as entirely irrelevant and uninforming. I am glad to see that there has been a considerable degree of illumination of mind both in the Ministry and amongst Deputies since that discussion to which I am alluding took place. A number of people, since this Budget statement was made, have told me that they expected I would be very much elated at what it contained. I find no grounds for elation, at least very little. I approached this, to quote a line or two from Shakespeare, as “Something which, like a toad, ugly and venomous, had still a precious jewel in its head.” There is the glimmering of an understanding of Ireland's economic needs disclosed, but it is only a glimmer. I appreciate fully the difficulties that confront a Minister in this State in formulating a Budget, especially when he is obsessed with the hallucination that the great end to be aimed at is, the balancing of the Budget. I understand his difficulties and I would like to compliment him, if I could conscientiously do so. But reading through his statement it does not appeal to me as that of a statesman marshalling the factors that count for progress in the nation. In so far as he deals with finance he appears to be acting as an accountant arranging the affairs of a bankrupt. So far as he deals with general matters of policy, there is, I think, a very large touch of the Juvenile Debating Society about his statement.

The Minister stated in a portion of his remarks that the Government have not approached these matters of fiscal policy as doctrinaires. That may be their own judgment of their attitude, but they have appeared to me to have been acting consistently, ever since the Saorstát came into being, as doctrinaires with a very suspicious mind in regard to the development of Irish manufacture. I find that on the 11th March, 1921, the following motion was [232] passed in the session of the First Dáil:

“That as the revival and maintenance of the manufactures and industries of Ireland are essential to the employment of Irish men and Irish women and vital to the economic life of Ireland, Dáil Eireann directs the Ministry to carry on an intensive campaign for the development of Irish manufactures and industries.”

The present Minister for Finance, who was then Director for Industry and Commerce, introduced a Bill for the purpose of securing a Decree of the Dáil for the protection of Irish industries, and so vehement was his idea of protection that Deputy MacBride regarded his proposals as an abomination, The debate is worth reading, and anyone who wishes to peruse it will find it on page 229 of the Report. It is well worth perusing as a contrast to certain utterances that have fallen from the mouths of Ministers since they became the wielders and custodians of authority in the Free State. I want to know what is the meaning of this change of attitude. No one who is not a partisan can deny that there has been a most marked reluctance on the part of the Executive to move in the direction of anything definite in the form of a stimulation of Irish industries. I do not know whether in this Ministers are acting on their own volition or whether there is some hidden hand controlling and directing policy.

I notice on the Orders of the Day a suggestion that there should be a Committee to advise on matters of foreign affairs. Sometimes I feel inclined to think that it would be well if a Committee were appointed by the Dáil to examine into the nature and the staffing of some of our Ministries, especially the Ministry of Finance, so that we might ascertain in whom, and where exactly the government of the Free State lies? Is it the Ministry itself or the permanent officials who have come over to us as a relic and a heritage of the regime that we hoped had passed away? The Minister for Finance has laid great stress upon his financial deficit. His only remedy for that is economy. Economy might possibly, if what is implied is not carefully weighed, be a lure to further [233] financial instability. There is such a thing as economy at the expense of stability and efficiency. There has been no real effort and no indication so far as I can see in the Budget statement to ensure an increase in the productivity of our industrial life with a view to securing an enlarged area of sources of revenue for the State. There has not even been that outlook that would indicate that that kind of thing is visualised at all.

I do not take the explanation of the Minister as satisfactory and conclusive that there can be no reduction of the tax on sugar. I cannot understand why there cannot be a similar reduction to that made by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer of 1½d. in the pound. I cannot understand why the sugar tax should remain at the same figure while other articles, not so strikingly necessities of life, are imported into this country to the extent of millions, a tax upon which would provide employment, and be a source of revenue to the Exchequer of the State. I suggest for the consideration of the Ministry that the sugar tax might be reduced by 1½d., and that a tax of 15 per cent. might be imposed on furniture, cotton manufactures, linens, woollens and other textiles. In the month of January there was imported into the Free State furniture to the value of £50,000. Multiply that by twelve and it will give you approximately what twelve months imports represents, just £600,000. In the same period there was imported cotton, linen, and woollen manufactures and other textiles, in materials and apparel, of value for £633,000. Multiply that by twelve and it represents approximately seven and a half millions of money. If you put the two figures together you get over eight million pounds. I believe that what the Exchequer of the Saorstát would lose by reduction of the tax on sugar could be fairly and fully recouped by a tax on these other materials. Certainly, it could not be said that the change involved any increase in the cost of living.

I take great exception to this suggestion of an experiment in tariffs. One would imagine that this was an entirely [234] novel innovation discovered for the first time by this newly-born State; that there were no examples and no precedents in other countries from which to secure guidance. Why is the experience of other countries derided and discounted? Is it not because that experience and those examples are such as would prove beyond doubt the efficacy of tariffs? I believe if the argument was all the other way and that the weight of evidence from these other sources was in favour of Free Trade those who advise that we should not take any cognisance of them now would be quoting them until they were black in the face. The idea of an experiment in tariffs to me is peculiar. I can imagine Deputy Lyons, who is not in the Dáil at present, but whose name occurs to me as the only Deputy that I heard giving statistics as to the number of his family, after being away from home for a considerable time coming back to find his children starving for want of food. He would not say, “Well, now, I will experiment on one, perhaps the weakest and sickliest of the lot, and try a little food on him. If it is beneficial to him, and if he recovers, I will try it on the rest. If he dies it will be proof that feeding the child is not going to save it from the results of starvation.” He may point to his neighbour, Deputy Gorey's children on the other side, who are well fed and healthy, and say, “It is not because they are fed they are so healthy, but in spite of the fact that they are well fed; you must try and become efficient in getting used to starvation and show that this theory about being fed is something preposterous.” That is the idea, in a rough sort of way, embodied in this theory of experiments. Our industries are languishing and dying for want of support, and the Minister for Finance comes along and says, “We know that is the case. We will treat one or two of them. We know that the others are just in the same condition, but unless these survive we will extend no help to the other industries.”

What is the reason why this tariff is restricted to certain items? If you put it that the article if protected [235] can meet the demands in the Irish market without increasing the price or reducing the quality—if you require that as a test—then I say there are numbers of industries in this country that could stand that test and that are in need of some protective tariff. But did the Minister regard it as something outside the scope of his intentions? I give you examples of commodities, the industries of which, within the Saorstát, are languishing and dying, and to which no indication of help has been held out. There is the galvanised hollow ware, 60 per cent. of the price of which goes in wages. There is the manufacture of brushes, the price of which represents from 25 per cent. to 40 per cent. in wages. Then there is the article of margarine. The manufacturers of these articles can supply the full demand within the Saorstát without an increase of price or a reduction in quality. I remember reading through the report of the Fiscal Commission. I think it was Deputy Johnson who said that the Minister, in framing his Budget, had paid no attention whatever to the Fiscal Report. I think he did pay some attention to it. It was this. The conclusion of paragraph 89 of the report of these eminent professors says: “Assuming that a good case may be made out in certain instances for a protective policy, it will be extremely difficult, after protection has been granted in these industries, to refuse it to others whose claims may seem to be of approximately equal weight.” I should think there would be considerable difficulty. What would be the reason of refusing under such circumstances? This is the plea I make to the Minister for Finance, that if there is justification for experimenting, as he calls it, in protective tariffs, with industries not in a position to meet the full demand of the Irish market for these commodities, if he feels that he is justified in experimenting with these, what justification can he put forward for refraining from extending some assistance to these other industries which are competent to meet the demands [236] without an increase of price or a reduction of quality? Now, I come to the question of the deferred dates. The Minister has given as the reason for them, I think, the inadequacy of his staff and the amount of work that will be already thrown on them by the new duties. I consider that that is not a satisfactory answer. I consider that that indicates that these tariffs have not secured sufficient attention and that they are being framed with a slip-shodness of mind that may lead to most regrettable results. Whether the Minister was conscious or unconscious of it, the effect of the deferring of the operation of the tariffs to so remote a date as the 1st July, will be to differentiate between the foreign and native manufacturer to the disadvantage of the latter. The Irish manufacturers got no notice that they were to be affected by tariffs, whereas the foreign manufacturer has got more than a month's notice that on a certain date a tariff will be imposed, and he will be lacking in the ordinary instincts and weaknesses of human nature if he does not take advantage to bring in a supply of these commodities to keep the market stocked for a considerable time. I want to know, can the explanation given by the Minister be regarded as satisfactory, that he has not a staff to deal with it? If that is so, it seems to me that that tariff was decided on at the very last moment and at a time when he did not leave himself an opportunity to cope satisfactorily with it. Or is it that the hidden hand, that I sometimes surmise directs in matters of policy, wishes to defeat the policy of tariffs and wishes to defer the dates, so that the foreign manufacturer can dump his goods into this country to keep it stocked for twelve months during which period the native manufacturer will find himself faced with the same, and perhaps even more intensified, competition, and at the end of that time when the Minister reviews what has taken place, he will say: “We gave you protection, but it has proved of no value to you, and, therefore, we will withdraw it?” That seems to me how this will work out, unless steps are taken during the period in which the tariff does not [237] operate to restrict the importation of commodities affected to the normal quantities imported. The Minister said in proposing that particular tariff that he expected a square deal from those who were to benefit from it. Is that giving them an opportunity of making a square deal? I say it is not, and, whether it is through inadvertence or other cause, the fact is there and steps should be taken to remedy it so that the imposition of these tariffs will not turn out to be a grim, ghastly, practical joke upon that particular industry.

I notice in the discussion that certain representatives of the Farmers' Party had some very harsh things to say about Irish manufacturers and about their inefficiency. I do not regard the Farmers' Party as representing agriculture. They may be the representatives of rustic simplicity or of the grazing ranches, but whatever claim they have to speak for agriculture, they have no right to pronounce upon the efficiency, or inefficiency, of manufacturers, and certainly they should be the last people in the world to oppose some kind of assistance from the State to the industries of the country. There is no section of the community for whose interest the whole credit of the nation has been mortgaged more than for those same representatives of “agriculture”—agriculture in inverted commas. What is the result of the assistance they have got from the State? I read the advance proof of the recent Agricultural Commission, and I find that agriculture is still in an uneconomic state and that the farmers' representatives on that Commission were unable to indicate a way in which agriculture could be made economic. If we were to challenge them when their agitation was going on, and the country had said “It is owing to your inefficiency that you cannot pay the rent,” what would they have thought? Those who represented industry do not ask the State to mortgage credit. They simply ask that the State policy of the Government shall be such that industrial enterprise shall get a fair chance in this country. When farmers speak about uneconomic holdings let them recollect that there are more industrial [238] uneconomic holdings than there are agricultural uneconomic holdings, and all that is wanted is not the extension of land, but the extension of trade, and it is something which will not be a drag or will impose on the State, but something which will bring to the State health and revenue. I would therefore ask those Deputies who seem incapable of discussing this matter without making these kinds of comments upon the shortcomings of our industrialists, to think twice before they do so again, and to remove the mote out of their own eyes before they endeavour to extract the beam from their neighbours'. I believe it should be the other way round, but it is like the farmer Deputies' style of philosophy. They started to lecture their own people. I am afraid I have exceeded the time that even the indulgence of the elastic nature of the procedure of to-day will allow, but I do hope that we have not heard the last word from the Minister for Finance in regard to these matters. I do hope he will take up an attitude on this matter that is not so rigid as has been indicated. I do hope that his scheme of taxation is capable of some kind of revision.

Before I sit down, there is just one thing to which I would like to call attention. It is the question of the effect of the tax on certain classes of bottles. I refer to ink bottles, and the bottle used to contain cocoa essence. These bottles are not made in Ireland. The effect of the tariff as it exists at the moment would be that the manufacturers of those things, having to buy empty bottles abroad, will have to buy them now with 33⅓ per cent. added on to the price. The manufacturer of foreign inks will be able to send in his foreign inks in his own bottles to this country, free of duty, and the result is that the native ink manufacturer is at the disadvantage of 33⅓ per cent. as compared with his foreign competitor. I think that is a matter that the Minister for Finance should give his attention to, and he should endeavour to see that something will not be done which will have this effect, because the actual effect of that would be to wipe out an industry which, though struggling and in a weak state for some time, has now [239] almost reached success. A tax might be imposed on full bottles or on the ink, or some other expedient might be adopted that will avert the working out of this to the detriment of an industry which is capable of giving a good deal of employment here. There are a number of other specific matters regarding specific industries that I intended to touch upon, but owing to the great length at which I have spoken I will leave those over until the next stage.

Mr. WILSON: The tail end of the last Deputy's speech has given the whole show away.

Mr. MILROY: There was a sting in it.

Mr. WILSON: You bring in a tariff to protect the bottle industry. There is another manufacture affected, and we have to change the law again to suit the ink bottle man and so on. The whole effect of your tariffs will mean change, and it seems to me that the only industry in the country is being detrimentally affected. The people out of whom you are living will be fleeced to benefit the ink bottle manufacturers, and so on. I wish to point out what I consider to be a misstatement on the part of the Minister for Finance. I do not wish to say that he wished to mislead the Dáil, but the effect of his statement of the last day was this, that had we not to pay compensation for damage for personal injuries and property, the Budget would be within £500,000 of being balanced. That is a misstatement.

Mr. BLYTHE: I qualified that very considerably. At the time I said that other matters ought to be taken into account.

Mr. WILSON: This statement has also appeared in the paper. I have his statement, and I cannot read into it anything like what he now says. As a matter of fact, the provision made by this country for damage to property is only £5,600,000; the deficit is £8,600,000. The service for payment for damage to property in Vote 14 is put down at £7,333,000, and personal injuries, [240] £907,000. The total of that is £8,240,000. The Minister for Finance deducts £8,240,000 from the amount which is short and which has to be raised by loan or otherwise, and he says it is £500,000. Out of that £7,333,000 of service for payment of property Great Britain is paying us £1,600,000, and out of £907,000 for compensation for personal injuries Great Britain is paying £130,000, so that the income of the State is increased by £1,730,000 on the head of these two services and this State is only providing the difference, which comes to £6,510,000. I wish the Dáil would get these figures into their minds. It has been said in the Dublin Press that there is £2,000,000 of a loss at the moment. Where are we going to get the remission of taxation which Deputies require? Deputy Milroy wants 1½d. off sugar. That would cost £1,500,000. But I think we might very well have got £1 off the barrel of beer. That would be 1d. off the pint, and that is what I want. I want to point out what effect that would have. The publicans are charging 8d. for a bottle of stout. The Prices Commission say they should sell it for 6d. The price of a pint is 8d.; the Prices Commission say it should be sold for 7d. If the Government would reduce the tax by 1d. per pint——

A DEPUTY: They would be charging 9d. then.

Mr. WILSON: What would happen would be that the publican would be able to sell it for 6d., and a man going in for a drink, instead of getting 4d. change out of a shilling for a pint, would be able to have two pints, and the Government would get more revenue. It would have the effect of giving him more liquor for the 1s. and would enable us at the same time to counter the argument which labour is always putting forward that the cost of living is too high, because the real argument, as we know, is that the cost of drink is too high. That is the real grievance. I am not one of those Deputies who say that the Government should not have made an attempt to foster industry in this country. I am not what I might call orthodox in making [241] that statement, because farmers are out-and-out Free Traders. At the same time I realise that if we had an industrial element in this country to consume our products we would be in a much better way, and I mentioned, the last day, that whereas the Dane is killing our trade in England by reason of the exchanges, which are in his favour, nothing has been done by our Minister for Agriculture to help us to counter that. We are losing very heavily in regard to the pig industry, and we would have favoured any well-considered attempt on his part to counter these foreign exchanges, give us an opportunity of living and at the same time foster industry in the country.

Mr. SEARS: I have great pleasure in supporting this motion. I congratulate the Minister on his introducing protection into his Budget. I believe that that system, having proved so beneficial in every other country where it was tried, will be no exception here. I feel some sympathy for the five professors who urged the Minister to go down the long road, and I hope when the quota for American emigration is increased that we will not lose them as a result of the Minister's action. I think the Minister should have gone further in his scheme of Protection. I think it is an unfortunate thing that so much foreign flour should come into us. I believe that our mills are thoroughly well equipped and would be capable of giving great employment if a reasonable tariff were placed on foreign flour. I would go so far in regard to Protection as almost to shut out the foreigner altogether. A great Irishman once wrote an essay in which he contended that it would be good for Ireland if a brass wall were raised around the country. I would almost go as far as that. What is wrong with agriculture in Ireland at present? Has the land grown less fertile? Is there not plenty of brawn and muscle in the country? You see agriculture sick; you see factories doing nothing. What paralysis is over the whole country that the farmers are not raising the food for the industrial portion of the nation and the artisans are not making goods for the agricultural portion? The whole world is diseased at present [242] and it has affected Ireland. If we got away from the diseased body we could live a healthy life. There is nothing wrong with the country or the people. I would go to the extent of forbidding the import of foreign grain, or putting a tariff on it to keep it out. Some would say: “If you do you will be shutting out the hard grain of California that has ripened in a hotter sun than ours.” If our farmers should turn from growing wheat to growing another and more profitable crop that would give employment, then I would say it would be a wise thing to change from wheat to that other crop, but when you merely change from wheat to grass, and have no alternative, it would be folly for the nation to allow the land to go into grass, or to allow the young men to go into workhouses or to foreign lands. Our wheat was good enough for our fathers; they thrived on it, and it should be good enough for us.

At present we are importing corn, bringing butter from New Zealand, and eggs from China and Russia. If there is any industry that requires sensible protection it is the farming industry. I would like to see every industry in Ireland getting a fair chance. We have a fertile, rich country, and we should make the most of it. How do we know when we see prices fixed on our products by foreign firms that we are getting a fair exchange for the food we export to them? We should direct attention to that. The prices the farmer gets for his cattle and other products are not regulated on any basis of justice, but on the exigencies of the money market and by the big business men all over the world who are able to arrange matters so that the farmer gets very little for his produce. I remember reading twenty years ago a report of a farmers' deputation that waited on someone in Dublin Castle, and one farmer said: “Ten years ago I was able to pay my rent with 20 head of cattle. This year for the same rent I had to bring in 40 head of cattle to the fair.” That is an instance of how prices rise and fall. We are in this position, that we export more per head of our population and import more per head than most other countries. We ship our food across the [243] Irish Sea, and then ship it back again, and pay freight both ways.

I would urge the Minister to consider the suggestions of Deputy Milroy, as to other articles of Irish manufacture upon which a tariff might be placed. Ireland might be described as a poor country, but we send every year out of it millions of money for articles, and that money goes into the pockets of British artisans and circulates amongst the British farming community. If that money were given for articles made by Irish artisans, then the Irish farmer would get the benefit of it, and he would have a fine market. Imagine what the farmer living in the neighbourhood of the town of Wexford thinks of Protection. A few years ago there were 1,000 artisans employed in the Foundry Works at Wexford and they supplied a good market for the produce of the farmers in the locality for miles around, who benefited considerably. In the same way, take the town of Carlow, where there was a boot factory employing 300 hands, and they benefited the local farmer. I regret very much that any attempt should be made to pit the farmers' interests against the industrial interests in this question. It is not sound or fair to do so, because what would benefit the one would benefit the other. The interests of the people in the towns and the country are interwoven. They are very closely allied in family connections, and what is good for one is good for the other. If you build up by Protection, as we say you will, thriving industries, the farmer would get his own profit out of them, but at the same time he might look for a direct profit in Protection for his own goods. Personally, I would vote for Protection for the farmers as well as for the industrialists. I would also like to see the Minister putting a bigger tariff on sugar, so that we would look to the establishment of a beet and sugar refining industry. Then again, take the tyre industry. I am aware that big American and English firms have offered to set up industries in the Free State if they are guaranteed a small tariff against mass production from England. Considering the wages that would be spent in this country, and the [244] advantages in other ways, I think it would be a good investment to have a tariff put upon tyres.

Mr. JOHNSON: Deputy Sears is undoubtedly a whole-hogger. Even the late Joseph Chamberlain would have been appalled, I think, by his absolutism in the matter of Protection. I am not going to suggest to the Minister that he should protect the brass wall-making industry, so that there can be established around the coasts of this island a brass wall to keep out all kinds of foreign goods and ideas. I think it would be folly. I cannot follow Deputy Sears in his advocacy of the brass wall. Nevertheless, I am prepared to repeat what I have said, that for the sake of protecting industries which exist, but which are not able to meet the present day competition, and to make it possible for these industries to survive pending future legislation of a reconstructive kind, these industries ought, even at the cost of the consumer, to be assisted to maintain their existence. To that extent I am with the Minister in some of his suggestions. I am inclined, though, to agree with Deputy Milroy, that there has been no faith in the value of these duties for protective purposes, that the Minister has been reluctant, and is entering into the experiment, as he calls it, with little faith in its result. I am afraid the conditions under which he is making this experiment are such that he is rather hoping the experiment will fail. I imagine that Deputy Thrift would say that it is not hopeful, that it is not the method of the scientists to enter into an experiment without hope, that to be successful as an experimenter one must believe that some good is coming out of the experiment. I am afraid that the attitude of the Minister in adopting this tariff policy has been half-hearted and faithless. Otherwise, one cannot explain the method of postponement of dates, and, as Deputy Milroy has said, inviting importers, or British exporters, to fill the market here with their own goods to the detriment of the industries which he professes to desire to protect. Again, one is curious to know what is the intention of the Minister in regard to one or two of the articles which are the subject of tariffs, and whether there has been [245] any real consideration beforehand of the effect. For instance, one would like to know, even at this stage of the discussion, whether it was intended that the duty on sugar confectionery should be prohibitive in respect of fruits in syrup.

There was no suggestion, at least, of protecting the tinned fruit industry in Ireland, because, so far as I know, there is no tinned fruit industry. Certainly there is no tinned fruit industry in regard to some of the fruits that are imported, and I would like to know from the Minister at this stage whether it was the intention, and whether it is intended, to persist in the interpretation of the resolution of last week respecting tinned fruits. I have had handed to me a document which relates to 19 cases of pears, pines, peaches and apricots, the value of the consignment, including freight and cartage, being £24 12s. 4d. The amount of duty on that consignment was £12 6s. 11d. The amount of duty on the consignment at the old rate would be £1 0s. 3d. It is obvious, if that is the way this duty is to be applied, that it is prohibitive and will only mean that this kind of import will be consumed by those who have no regard for money, and are prepared to have fancy fruits at any price. I would like the Minister to tell us in his reply whether that was deliberate, or whether it was an accident and is to be corrected.

I would like to have heard the Minister give a little more information to the Dáil as to his reason for choosing for this experiment, boots, in contrast with, say, clothing. From the point of view of protecting Irish industries, if it was to be considered as an experiment I think it would bring more revenue, would help to re-establish industries that are decaying, and mean the employment of very many more people, if it applied to ready-made clothing and stitcheries generally. I produced to the Dáil, when this matter was being discussed on Deputy Milroy's motion some months ago, some figures to show that one could afford to remit the whole of the duty on tea and sugar for a twenty-five per cent. duty upon clothing and boots. Assuming there was no protective value [246] in the duty, taking the whole of the 1921 imports of clothing, the two would have balanced. In view of the very large quantity of clothing, women's clothing particularly, which comes into this country and which is of a luxury kind, and in regard to which most male members of the Dáil will agree, ten, fifteen or twenty per cent. does not seem to make any difference—it is rather the period of production than the cost of production that influences the price—the value of the duty upon that kind of luxury clothing would have been very great for the revenue. It is not the kind of industry which would be assisted in Ireland by a protective tariff. On the other hand, there is a great deal of ready-made clothing, ordinary attire, underclothing and outerclothing, which can be manufactured in this country and is, to some extent, manufactured in this country, but unfortunately is being very heavily hit by importation. In the present state of things the trade is gradually leaving Ireland, and such factories as have been established and have hitherto been able to carry on are gradually declining in their trade and activities.

A point about the ready-made clothing, shirt factories and the like, is that the machinery in such factories is much more readily adaptable to new methods and new designs than is the machinery in boot factories. We have been told that the boot trade is highly specialised and that the Irish factories have not gone in for specialisation. I think that is true, and, as a consequence, I say it has been rather an unfortunate choice, if there had to be a choice between clothing and boots, that the Minister has hit upon boots as contrasted with clothing, especially in view of the fact that there are practically no children's boots made in Ireland, very few slippers, and a comparatively small proportion of the boots that are made are ladies' boots. Therefore, I regret that in his decision as to the subjects upon which the experiments would be made, the choice was made upon boots rather than upon clothing. I would have been quite satisfied to have heard the Minister say he was prepared to experiment upon these two lines of industry. I think we could then [247] have persuaded the Minister—or he would have persuaded himself—to reduce the duty upon sugar as well as upon tea. Even there, I am inclined to think, subject to his correction, that there may be factors in connection with the sugar trade—a much greater variation of prices—which led to the selection of tea for the reduction. But from the point of view of the average family, the reduction of a halfpenny per lb. in sugar, though it might cost a hundred thousand pounds, would have been very much more valuable to the poor.

I am going to ask the Minister again if he has satisfied himself that it is impossible to make a rebate upon sugar which is used in the manufacture of other articles, such as jams, preserves of one kind or another, and confectionery. I think that is not impossible. It is done in other places and it can be done here. The effect—shall I say the nullifying effect—of the reduction in the British duty on sugar is going to make this experiment in Protection of no value at all.

Mr. BLYTHE: On a point of explanation, I might say that the British change in regard to the sugar tax makes no difference whatever. The British exporter of confectionery got a drawback equal to the amount of the duty on the sugar used in his confectionery, so that the confectionery was actually exported heretofore duty free. It will now be exported duty free, and the change in the sugar duty in England makes no difference whatever.

Mr. JOHNSON: I am not quite convinced that it will not make his position as contrasted with the position of the Irish manufacturer considerably different. The position of the British exporter of confectionery, because he is a buyer of sugar which he manufactures into sweetmeats and on which he will pay a much smaller duty in future than heretofore, will in comparison with the position of the Irish manufacturer be so improved that the protective effect of this new duty to the Irish manufacturer will be lost. If I misunderstood the Minister, I would be glad to be corrected. I hope I am wrong.

[248] Mr. BLYTHE: I do not know whether the Deputy and I are at crosspurposes or not. Guinness's stout exported from here for consumption in England actually pays only English duty. In the same way, confectionery exported from England for consumption here, under the old sugar duties, paid only Irish Custom duties, and under the existing sugar duties will pay only the Irish Customs duties.

Mr. JOHNSON: I understand. The British manufacturer of sugar pays no duty?

Mr. BLYTHE: That is the effect of the drawback which he receives on export.

Mr. JOHNSON: That removes the doubt in my mind, but I will not go so far as to say it removes it absolutely. It certainly gives me a little more confidence in the effect of this tax. There is one aspect of the proposal of the Minister to which I want, to draw his attention, especially in view of the fact that this is an experiment. I want to ask the Minister if he will bear in mind, in his consideration of these duties and of succeeding tariffs, the necessity for an assurance that the consumers will not be over-charged, and, consequently, that the people engaged in the industries will have some benefit from the protection. There has been a fairly, persistent rumour—and this is a matter on which the Minister for Industry and Commerce might have something to say—that some of the designs of the Government include the abolition of Trade Boards and the reversing of policy regarding Trade Boards, Industrial Councils, and the like. I hope that is not true. I hope, as a matter of fact, if this Protection policy is to be pursued, that the Government will encourage the formation of Trade Boards and give them greater powers, so that there will be some check upon the value to the community, whether as consumers or as producers, of these protective duties. We must make sure that Protection does, as it can, protect an industry, while not allowing manufacturers to develop into rings and trusts, robbing both producer and consumer. I would urge upon the Minister the necessity for bearing this side of his policy in mind.

[249] Coming to the statement of the Minister to-day, I was interested in Deputy Bryan Cooper's comparison of the burden of debt borne by several countries. He enumerated Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He might have gone a little further and referred to that other country which is so often quoted in relation to Ireland and whose conditions are so similar in many respects—Denmark. The rate of taxation, per head of the population, in the Saorstát, as quoted by the Minister, is £6 15s. In Denmark, in 1921—which is the last return I have had—it was £6 5s. 8d., and the debt was three and a half times the revenue. That illustration also goes to confirm the view of Deputy Bryan Cooper that in comparison with these other countries, the presently-acknowledged debt of the Free State is much lower than in these other rival countries. The Minister devoted some time to pointing out that Ireland—and the Saorstát, more particularly—was a poor country, and he compared the yield of taxation in Ireland with that in England. He showed that the yield in Great Britain was £15 11s. per head, while in the Free State it was £6 15s. Considered in terms of money, no doubt Ireland is a poor country. Considered in terms of mineral wealth and imports, Ireland is a poor country. But one has found, on inquiry from the Department of Agriculture, that in what makes for real life, Ireland need not be, and is not, a poor country. In food, for instance, we find that the agriculturists—those “inefficient agriculturists,” referred to by Deputy Milroy—did, as a matter of fact, in the year 1912, produce food so abundantly as to provide every family in Ireland with very much more than they had been in the habit of enjoying, and allowed a surplus so great as would, if last year's prices were taken into account, have been value for £36,000,000, after providing every family in the country with very much more than they usually enjoy. Notwithstanding that, Ireland can produce of food very much more than she did in 1912, and the Minister speaks of his policy as being one having for its object the stimulation of production. Here is the question I want to ask the [250] Minister. What is he doing to stimulate production of the wealth of this country——

Mr. GOREY: By putting a tax on sugar-sticks.

Mr. JOHNSON: There is very little promise in the Budget statement, and the Estimates of any attempt at the financing of productive activities except in these two or three small minor industries that are named—sugar, confectionery, jams, boots, soap and bottles. It is a beginning, and it is helpful. But there are still, in the words of the President, 80,000 unemployed. There are very many more unemployed, bear in mind, than there are recorded in the official returns. The official returns are the returns of those who register, and who are not yet tired of registering because there is some unemployment benefit to come to them. But I do not see in this statement of the Minister's any reference to the necessity for meeting this matter of 80,000 unemployed men except the possibility that in three, six or eight months' time there may be a few thousand, three or four thousand perhaps at the outset, additional employees in these several trades. Now, I want to impress on the Minister, if it is possible, that, this problem of unemployment has got to that position where it will have to be met in a very different spirit from that in which it has been faced by the Government so far. There is no suggestion in the Budget statement or in the Estimates that are being presented that the Government is preparing any big schemes of reconstructive work either directly productive or indirectly productive.

I say to the Minister that unless he is prepared to face this problem in a very different spirit from that in which he has faced it hitherto, he is going to find the credit of the country, the real credit of the country, very seriously impaired within the coming few months. I would like, apropos of this Estimate that has been placed in our hands regarding the Unemployment Fund, to be informed either now or at a later stage as to what the financial output is to meet the present unemployment grants, and what the present income [251] is from unemployment stamps, and how is it moving. We see, week by week, references to the numbers declining. I suggest to the Minister it would be a very good index of the real state of that market for men—the unemployment market—to know how the revenue from stamps is progressing. Because I think when we are supplied with information, week by week, of the gradual declining numbers of men on the unemployed list, that Ministers are apt to think that this difficulty is being overcome. I wish it were true. I am afraid it is very much the contrary, and when we hear of men who have been for months and months waiting in hope of something to do, and being utterly deprived of hope, it is time for the Ministry to take this matter up very much more seriously than they have yet done; and they should not be afraid to take heroic steps. The idea that the Minister has is this very conservative idea about finance, and regarding meeting the ordinary obligations of a country which is in normal circumstances in the ordinary normal way. This idea of conservative operations of finance is very good, no doubt, but let him bear in mind his own statement that you cannot compare this country with England because of the difference in economic circumstances. One might well ask, for instance, why it is absolutely essential if Ireland is so much poorer, if her taxable capacity is so much less than that of England, that we should necessarily have to pay for the use of money the same rate for interest that the richer country has to pay?

Mr. WILSON: For a smaller sum.

Mr. JOHNSON: Oh, yes, a smaller sum no doubt. But the Minister has been trying to prove to us that Ireland is a poorer country and that we are not wise in expecting to live nationally at the same rate as England has been living hitherto, and as Ireland herself has been living hitherto. A very well-known—shall I say notorious—Irish-man used to say that it was folly for Ireland to cut itself off from the ground rents of Park Lane. We are learning that there is some truth in that financially, [252] but that is what we have chosen to do, and I think we are wise in choosing it. It is wiser to choose the path of poverty if we are going to have freedom than the path of riches with the shackles of another civilisation placed upon us. But are we prepared to go further than that and to say that the first charge upon the national production is to be a decent livelihood for all the people, first of all for those people who participate in the production of the wealth that is being produced? That would be the obvious deduction from the statement of the Minister and the comparisons of the taxable capacity; that many of these luxuries, not only national luxuries but personal luxuries, that we are providing for those who are to engage in the various occupations from Governor-General to flunkeys, and the general state of the livelihood should be moderated so that those who actually engage themselves in the production of the national wealth should be the first to enjoy that national wealth. It seems to me that the deduction of the Minister from the figures he gave regarding the taxable capacity of the two countries leads one to a different conclusion from that to which he himself was led. I ask the Minister not to be satisfied in this experiment that he is doing all that is necessary, or even a little bit of what is necessary to meet the real financial problem of the country, that is, the financial problem of those who are out of work and cannot get work, and to use, as Deputy Hewat said the other day, in supporting a resolution in a certain house in this city, the financial power of the community for the purpose of promoting the industries of the country and so saving the country.

Mr. HEWAT: I do not think you are quite right in that. I do not remember saying it.

Mr. JOHNSON: I did not think that Deputy Hewat would remember it. I think he found himself “nobbled” by a more astute propagandist. But Deputy Hewat was induced to support a resolution which had for its purpose the promotion of a scheme of credit reform and he did not know it.

[253] Mr. HEWAT: I bow to the Deputy's more profound wisdom, but I would like to know where it was.

Mr. JOHNSON: I will remind the Deputy on another occasion. I would ask the Minister, and through the Minister the Executive Council, to take up very earnestly the urgent need for utilising the national resources and, if necessary, in this emergency, as they would do in a war emergency, conscript such national wealth as is necessary for the purpose of saving the life of the country through saving the unemployed men of the country.

Mr. BAXTER: This Budget, as it seems to me, is a Budget that entirely considers the position of a few business men, or two or three insignificant industries in the country, and does not consider the position of the great majority of the people of the country or the main industry of the country. Through this Budget a few are going to profit at the expense of the many. I have no doubt the Minister contemplates that his efforts in trying to protect these industries will be successful and will be beneficial to these industries. In my opinion, it will bring benefits to the few engaged in those industries. But, as I see it, the many are going to pay for the prosperity that will be enjoyed by the few. The many are amongst those whom we on these benches represent, and I think we cannot accept the Budget as it has been presented to us when we realise that a few people in the towns and the cities are going to get protection at our expense. We realise that our taxes for this year are going to be higher than they were for the last year, and that is what this Budget means to the farmers of the country. I do not mind where the Deputies sit who claim to represent agricultural constituencies when I say that this Budget is unfavourable to agriculture in this country.

I would like to ask the Minister when, in framing his Budget, he realised that Protection was going to assist certain industries was he satisfied that the country's main industry was in a healthy state and did not need any protection? I would like to know if that was taken into account, and what was the position of the Ministry on that [254] point. If the country's main industry was in such a healthy state that it did not need Protection, and if it was in such a flourishing condition as that we should bear a higher rate of taxation than we paid last year, I would say that the farmers of Ireland, and agriculturists generally, would be as unselfish as any other section of the community. But I want to know did the Ministry think agriculture was in a healthy state? If they did— I do not think they did, and I am sure the Minister for Agriculture knows that agriculture is not in a healthy state—they made a great mistake; and if they knew to the contrary, and yet gave us this Budget, knowing full well the state of agriculture and knowing that the Budget would mean an impost on agriculture that it cannot bear, then I say the Ministry has differentiated in favour of the industrialists and against farmers and agriculture.

That is not good for Ireland. It is not good for the country in more ways than one. The inhabitants of the State know and realise that the Irish nation has lived through all the centuries because we were an agricultural people, and know that, irrespective of how the Irish race might go down in our towns and cities, it was replenished from the fields and soil of Ireland. This Budget is taking us on to a new path. It is going to encourage industries at the expense of agriculture. To-day a man can be better paid in any walk of life than he can be paid by working on the land. The Budget is a further incentive to take our people off the land.

They can get a better living by working on the roads, by sweeping the streets, or by working in the meanest and smallest industries of the country than they can in agriculture. What is the future of agriculture going to be when we find the minds of our people drawn away from the land and inevitably attracted to our towns and cities where work will be had, perhaps easier, for which they will be better paid than for the services they can give in the field? That must inevitably be the effect of this Budget and the principle it introduces.

[255] Deputy Sears a short while ago asked why we cannot grow wheat and why we cannot cut out foreign wheat and give the preference to home grown wheat. Do Deputies know why we cannot grow wheat and other crops? The reason is because the cost of production is too high. We will not be tilling as much this year as last year, because many of our farmers were broken with the tillage they were engaged in for the last few years. They have been broken because the cost of production was too high. The Ministry know that was the real reason. If the Ministry think that by encouraging small industries in the towns and cities—industries, that are hardly living—they are going to benefit the country's main industry, I am afraid they are making a mistake, a mistake that will be realised when perhaps such serious damage will be done to our industry that we cannot get back to the position we did occupy.

Now, we have been told by Deputies on the other side what is being done for the farmers. I think Deputy O'Mara, the other day, told us about education, that we had been given free. I presume he meant by that the Department of Agriculture. I think Deputy O'Mara knows as well as I do how much that Department of Agriculture was in sympathy with the farmers of this country in other days, but I hope it is going to be different in the future. So far we have not much evidence to satisfy us that it is going to be different. In making that statement I desire to say that I believe the Minister for Agriculture is doing his very best, but it will take the Minister a very long time to undo much of the work that was badly done in the past. We have not much evidence yet of the improvements that are to be made. I want to say to Deputy O'Mara that agriculturists in Ireland did not benefit to the extent that he thinks they did benefit, and that the money spent, presumably in their interests, did not bring to them the benefits it ought to have brought.

Mr. O'MARA: If I might say a word by way of personal explanation, I did say that the farmers were pampered, but I also want to say that I have been misunderstood to some extent, because [256] I thought the claim of the farmers was —I was not listening to the whole of Deputy Baxter's speech and he had spoken before I rose to address the Dáil—that they were not getting a corresponding protection to the protection that was being given by the Ministry to other industries. In that sense I felt that that amounted to what I might call the petting or the pampering of agriculture, and if it satisfies the farmers I may say that I entirely agree with the attitude taken up on the benches opposite. I do not want this to be misunderstood for one moment by the Dáil. I entirely agree that at the expense of the general taxpayer there is too much public money spent for the protection of special industries both by the Minister and by the Department of Agriculture. My general position is that the general taxpayer should be relieved by the reduction of taxation from all these special imposts put upon him.

Mr. BAXTER: I think Deputy O'Mara has put the position as regards the farmer much more clearly to-day than he did on the last occasion when he spoke. Evidently he has slept on it.

Mr. O'MARA: So has the “Independent.”

Mr. BAXTER: It is easy to talk about the encouragement that has been given to the farmers. It is easy for people to do that, but a good many of these people have not been working on the land. I say to those people, a good many of whom told us about the encouragement that is given to the farmers, that they do not appreciate the farmers' difficulties or the rings that the farmer is up against, or the difficulties that he has to contend with. There are clever men in our towns and our cities, and I fear the position is that we are not clever enough to compete against them.

Mr. HEWAT: Poor Simple Simons.

Mr. BAXTER: In addition to all the difficulties that the farmer has to contend with, a further impost is to be expected on the country's main industry to support a select few in two or three places in the country. It was the Minister for Education, I think, who [257] told us the other day that we are all going to wear boots. Well, I hope we are.

MINISTER for EDUCATION (Professor MacNeill): I cannot remember having said anything so wise as that.

Mr. BAXTER: Well, perhaps it was Deputy Professor O'Sullivan who said that. I hope that all classes are going to pay for them as well as the farmers. We have all to recognise, I think, that all the money that passes around in this country has to be raised out of the soil some way first. It is the men on the land who have to find it first; they have to work to find it, and no matter to whom it inevitably passes, if the farmers do not work to get it first it is not got at all. What is the reason why other classes of people complain that they have not money to-day? The workers and the industrialists complain that they have not money. I suggest that the explanation is that the farmers cannot find it, and that that is the real reason to-day that we are going to be taxed more. Last year, and indeed for two years past, the agricultural industry has been run at a loss. The costs of production have been so high that we have not been able to make ends meet or to pay our expenses. The costs of production are going to be made higher, and that must inevitably have an effect on our industry and make our farmers till less, and thus give less employment. That must really be the effect, because no man will work to carry on an industry if it will not pay him to do so. I urge the claim that agriculture is entitled to first consideration. I think it is entitled to consideration first when the prosperity of the country and the prosperity of industry generally has been taken into account by the Minister.

Ministers will have to keep before their minds that this country is mainly agricultural, and if agriculture is put one side and every other industry is taken up, they are gambling. That is a very dangerous work, but that is what is really being done to-day. Agriculture must be given first consideration, because the nation cannot live without it. If anything is done by Ministers that is detrimental to agriculture, such action on their part must [258] inevitably react against the whole State, and it will. I say that this impost, this tax—it may not amount to much in money or in cash but it will be something—introduces a principle that is a very dangerous one. It introduces the principle that in our towns and cities we are going to have a certain pampered few, and that agriculture out in the fields and in the countrysides—the people engaged in that industry—are to be let go on as they are. If they remain silent it will be all right, but let them pay.

Apparently it does not matter to what condition of slavery the farmer or the small landholder may be reduced so long as he is content to accept the standard of living that he is presently enjoying. It is a very low standard at present, but the people in the towns are to have a better standard of living. That, apparently, is to be the order of things in the future. I fear very much that the Ministry are on the wrong road, and I think they will soon recognise that the step they have taken is not the wisest step in the country's interests, because it is not the best step in the interests of agriculture, and if agriculture is to be put in a more difficult position than it occupies at present, then the whole stability of the State will be endangered. What we have been told is not very encouraging for the farmers, and I fear that the farmer must look on this action of the Government as being unfavourable to him. I have not heard any argument from any protectionist that would convince me that this taxation is going to mean that we will have a better or more convenient market for our produce. There is no use in suggesting that things are going to be better for us and that we can afford to pay the increased taxes. There is no need to tell us that because we know what the effect is going to be. I suggest that the Ministry have not taken the right step in this matter, and I feel that we must oppose this motion.

Mr. D'ALTON: I rise to support the Minister for Finance in the protective clauses he has introduced in his Budget. We have listened to Deputy Baxter with interest. From some of his statements one would glean that Ireland [259] has all the time been sustained by agriculture, and that whatever it had as a nation came from agriculture and from agriculture alone. I wish that Deputy Baxter would take up the life of Grattan, by Madden, of the Inner Temple, and if he reads the passages dealing with Ireland and the position of the Irish farmers during Grattan's Parliament he will find that all the food that the Irish farmers produced at the time was consumed in this country by the workers engaged in Irish industry, and at that time the population of Ireland was almost double what it is at the present moment.

Mr. WILSON: The population of Ireland at the time of which the Deputy speaks was not double what it is at the present moment.

Mr. D'ALTON: I said almost double and I refer you to Lecky. If you read him you will get the information there.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE: The Deputy is not in order in addressing another Deputy. He must address the Chair.

Mr. D'ALTON: I am sorry, but I was lead astray by a meaningless interruption. We are told that the farmers are not properly protected, but we all know how much the people of Ireland spent in securing that the farmers should enjoy the possession of their land and in the abolition of dual ownership. I do not refer to that from the economic point of view. But from the economic point of view it was very valuable that there should not be two owners of the land but that there should be only one owner, and what was neglected by former Land Acts the Land Act of this Government completed.

In all these movements for making the farmer owner of his land the people in the towns, the labourers, the workers, the artisans, the merchants, stood by the farmers' cause. They knew that agriculture should be looked after, and they knew that at the moment it was the greatest industry in the country, and one of the biggest industries in the South of Ireland and, indeed, practically all Ireland, if you leave out Belfast.

[260] This question of boots has been discussed very much at length. Deputy Johnson said he would prefer that Protection should be extended to ready-made clothing instead of boots. But in the boot industry you have the possibility of the farmer having a market for his hides in his own country. The number of tanneries in Clonmel, which is partly and, to a certain extent represented by Deputy Heffernan, is from 25 to 30, and there are a number in Limerick and in Tipperary. If these tanneries were working the Irish farmer would not be compelled to send hides across the Channel and have them returned later in the form of leather. In the South of Ireland, in the town of Waterford, and also in the town of Tipperary, there are boot manufacturers who have got prizes for their hand-made boots both in London and in Paris. It may be a surprise to the farmers to know that there are such workers as these in the towns in Ireland.

Mr. SEAN LYONS: When Deputy D'Alton speaks of 25 tanneries does he mean 25 tannery establishments, or 25 people employed in a tannery?

Mr. D'ALTON: I mean 25 tanneries. At the moment I cannot tell you how many more there are in the towns in Ireland, but if the Deputy will turn to Mrs. Stopford Green's well-known book he will find the exact number. All I can tell him is that there are 25 tanneries in Clonmel, 12 in Tipperary, and there are some in Limerick. If the boot industry is developed there would be work for the tanneries, and hides now sent out of the country would be tanned in our own land and very great possibilities would arise for the further development of the boot trade. If Irish industrialists do not feel like developing their industry then it will be for Irish-Americans and people of other countries to come here and develop these industries, because you have the material at your hand for the industry, and surely the people of the nation ought to be able to develop the industry if they claim the smallest right to free independent manhood, unless they are a race of slaves.

In addition to the boot industry, [261] there is the possibility of developing the dead meat industry, which was carried on in Drogheda until lately, and which has been suggested in Waterford. If you had that industry working, Irish farmers would not be held up at every outbreak of foot and mouth disease at the other side, as they have been in the past. The Ministry have acted wisely also in taxing soap and candles and such articles, which are produced as a by-product of the cattle industry and of the farming industry. Speaking for myself, I believe that the development of the farming industry is most important for this country. It is the main industry, and anything that the Minister for Agriculture would bring forward to protect that industry would have my support. Above all, he can protect the Irish farmers from themselves. You have Irish farmers turning out 420, 450, 470 gallons of milk from the same amount of land that their neighbours are able to obtain supplies of 620 to 670 gallons a week. The Irish farmer gets 450 per cow per year, whereas his neighbour gets 670 gallons, and in some cases 690 gallons, and I say that is very unremunerative, and people require protection against that from the Minister for Agriculture. The general policy of developing Irish agricultural industry is a policy that the Irish people have always believed in.

I have referred to Grattan. If we take up the Land League movement, a time and period practically unknown to many Deputies in this House, we shall see that one of the main points that Parnell and Davitt aimed at was to make the Irish farmers owners of their land. Parnell never took off his coat for agriculture alone. He fought for industrial Ireland as well, because he wanted an Ireland capable of looking after all her sons. Who are those in the towns at the present day but the sons of Irish farmers? Who are those in the professions but the sons of Irish farmers? Who are those in trade and industry in the country at present but the sons of Irish farmers? You cannot disassociate your towns and cities from your country districts. Some of the Deputies here think because you do not put on a certain protective tax which may mean a few [262] extra pounds to the Irish farmers, development is not being made along the right lines. It is a false economic principle that a man like our friend in the Gospel should bury his talents in the ground. What we want in this country is money to develop it. Farmers will develop agriculture and we also want to develop industry. We want to get industry in this country going again. I am with our farmer representatives who say that we should not go in for a policy of Protection versus Free Trade. I am not in agreement with Deputy Milroy on that point. I believe it is our duty, in the interests of the nation, to use every form of Protection and subsidy that we can to assist and promote some of our existing industries, to keep them at work and, possibly, to promote other industries in the country.

We have got to take this thing seriously. We have got to think as a nation and not as members of a Party. I come here as a Deputy to represent every member of the community. Deputy Baxter stated that the farmers do not support this. I can speak for the small farmers in Tipperary. I do not refer to the man with 300 acres and a dog who gets up at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, but to the man who works, to the farmer who gives employment. I refer to the farmer who works, whether he is big or small. I do not refer to the idler or the worthless man, who is of no use to the community. I hope legislation will be brought in later on to deal with the men who have land and do not use it for the benefit of the country. I have discussed this matter with some of the small farmers in Tipperary who, though they may have little land, have big minds. They know that the development of the country means prosperity for them. They know that they are helping to create a future market for themselves in their own land. I am not in agreement with Deputy Sears with regard to building a wall around Ireland and keeping out foreign produce, such as wheat. I wish Ireland could be self-supporting and have her own market for produce. But we cannot produce wheat. We have not sufficient sun to ripen it. It is absolutely impossible to do without foreign wheat, and, therefore, we must import [263] it. But there is one thing the farmers can do. At the present time, from Boland's in Dublin down to Webb's in Mallow, right through Tipperary and Limerick, Irish millers are turning out as good flour as comes either from America or England. If the Irish farmer can get as good flour manufactured at home at the same price as he will have to pay for imported flour, he should give the preference to the flour manufactured in Irish mills which give employment to his own countrymen. Deputy Sears has told us also that we cannot get Irish butter in Dublin hotels. While Irish butter of as good or better quality as that imported can be had at as cheap a price, those who have any regard for Ireland and for sustaining Irish industries should buy Irish butter in preference to foreign butter. They can get a better article at the same price. I support the policy of the Minister, not in any antagonism to Irish farmers. I believe that this particular policy is going to help agriculture in the future. I believe it is going to build up the country and that the farmers as a result of it are going to find a certain market at their own doors. This policy will in no way interfere with them and the possibility of placing their produce elsewhere.

There is one other point I wish to refer to before I close. The question of growing beet for sugar has been referred to by Deputy Johnson, more as a suggestion for careful thought by the Minister than as a criticism. The Government gets about two millions in revenue from sugar imported into this country. The sugar-beet industry should be developed in Ireland. Those who have read the figures in connection with that industry will find that the second best sugar-beet in Europe is grown in Ireland. Austria grows the best, Ireland the next best, Germany the third, France the fourth, while English sugar-beet is near the end of the list. The by-product of the beet is infinitely better for cattle feeding than grains or mangolds. I, for one, would support the Minister for Agriculture in any steps he will take to subsidise farmers who would grow sugar-beet. The two million pounds [264] per year paid in duty on sugar would be saved to this country, and that would be a big asset for one industry alone, apart from the by-product which authorities on the subject say is the best feeding for dairy cows. If the Minister would take steps to make an experiment of that kind I would support him in subsidising the farmers, so that an effort could be made to have sugar-beet grown in this country with the possibility of starting a sugar refinery. I suggest that the matter should be carefully gone into by the Minister himself, if you like, as Deputy Baxter thinks that the Department of Agriculture is not all sufficient.

I wish to support the Minister for Finance in what I may call those tentative duties that he has brought in, and I hope that the majority of the Dáil will support him, with a certain amount of mild criticism. He certainly has not brought forward those duties with the idea of injuring any section of the community, but for the benefit of the country as a whole. I believe that if the farmers of Ireland are not going to gain by them at the moment, but may suffer a small loss——

Mr. BAXTER: That is the point.

Mr. D'ALTON: That they will find these duties are a step in the right direction in order to develop Irish industries in which the sons and daughters of the farmers can find employment. The farmers' representatives will find that practically every Deputy is quite ready to support the farming industry in any way that he is prepared to support any other industry.

Mr. EGAN: I do not yield to Deputy Baxter in realisation of the importance of the agricultural industry in this country. I am perfectly well aware that it is infinitely the most important industry in the country and that practically all other industries are directly or indirectly depending upon it. But I, for one, do not share the very lugubrious views which he has expressed as to the effect of the Minister for Finance's proposals on that great industry. Over and over again he stated that these Budget proposals were going to affect the great farming industry, but he scarcely gave us a single reason, [265] as to why the farmer was going to be so terribly injured. As one who has for a great number of years had considerable leanings towards Free Trade, and as one who has given expression to them in this Dáil, when the Minister for Finance first made his proposals I listened to them with a considerable amount of misgiving, and I was asking myself: How can I, as more or less a confirmed Free Trader for a number of years, support proposals of the kind? I found as the Minister went on to develop his proposals in connection with the Budget that practically all my opposition was disappearing, because, although he is making certain experiments in fiscal policy for the purpose of trying to find occupation for the unemployed and developing the country, and although these taxes on, say, boots will, I admit, put up the cost of boots, and to that extent increase the cost of living somewhat, still he has told us definitely that the amount of duty which is coming off tea and other things will compensate for that. To my mind that statement absolutely knocks the bottom out of any serious opposition to these fiscal proposals. I, for one, do not consider that my Free Trade ideas or convictions have been at all outraged by the suggestions contained in the Minister's Budget.

Mr. JOHNSON: You are not an orthodox Free Trader, then?

Mr. EGAN: As I explained on a previous occasion, I was a Free Trader but I kept an open mind. I think that is perfectly right for anyone who wants to go through life and benefit by experience as he goes along. I do not believe in nailing my colours or my convictions to the mast and sticking to them to the end of my life. Deputy Milroy and, I think, Deputy Johnson, referred to the desirability of removing the sugar tax. I have no doubt that possibly Deputy Sir James Craig, on hygienic grounds, would consider it very desirable to remove the sugar tax so that people would have cheap carbo hydrates. I will allow him to urge the hygienic aspect of the proposal: It must be remembered that when one talks lightly about removing the sugar [266] tax the Minister for Finance has got to get some two millions, and, as he pointed out, he can scarcely do that. Deputy Milroy suggested that the sugar tax should be reduced by 1½d. That would cost a good deal of money. A penny off the sugar tax would cost approximately £800,000. Three halfpence would come to £1,200,000. If the Minister wanted to take off a halfpenny the difficulty he would have is that it would be impossible to give expression to that in the retail price when sugar was being bought in small quantities. For that reason he could not very well nor conveniently take the duty off sugar, and he had recourse to tea.

Deputy Milroy made a very vigorous plea some time ago for protection for Irish industries. Unquestionably he is one of these whole-hoggers in the matter of protection. His whole complaint was that the protective proposals of the Minister for Finance did not go far enough. I think the Deputy ought to consider that half a loaf is better than no bread. One of the reasons why I particularly commend the fiscal proposals of the Minister for Finance to the Dáil is that they are mainly of an experimental nature. I consider that if in the process of time the experiment proves to be a success and that our industries are promoted and our unemployed—who are the greatest problem we have to-day—are found work, if at the end of a certain period these fiscal proposals have benefited the country, although I have had free trade convictions for a number of years, I am quite prepared to support a further extension of them.

Mr. LYONS: I am sure Deputies who are in favour of Protection were pleased to hear Deputy Egan's views that the taxes will be instrumental in increasing the cost of living. As the Minister for Finance explained last week, these taxes are an experiment. I wonder why the tax was not enforced against the import of manufactured goods? If a tax is to be imposed on boots, jam and bottles, why not reduce the duty on the contents of the bottles? If the tax on boots means that they will cost 15 per cent. more, that means that the cost of living will be increased. [267] Every worker in the Saorstát will have to bear portion of the tax. I agree with Deputy Baxter that small farmers will be the hardest hit. I refer to men with 10 acres of land who are not in as good a position as the average worker who has constant employment. Deputy D'Alton referred a few moments ago to the tanning industry, and told us that some years ago there were twelve tanneries in Tipperary and twenty-five in Clonmel.

Mr. D'ALTON: I think the Deputy misunderstood. I did not say there were 12 in Tipperary. I referred to tanneries in Waterford, Clonmel and Limerick.

Mr. LYONS: I am sorry that I misunderstood what the Deputy said. There was a tanning industry in Carrick-on-Suir 25 years ago at which the large number of 12 or 13 people were employed. If you are going to make the people pay extra taxes it is necessary to put a tariff on all manufactured goods that are brought into the country. Take the furniture trade. We have hundreds of joiners, cabinetmakers, chair-makers and furniture makers in Ireland who are walking the street idle while furniture to the value of thousands of pounds is being imported. We have a woollen industry in which thousands of the hands are unemployed. In Athlone a firm that at one time employed 900 hands has now only 300 working alternate weeks. If boots are to cost 3/- in the £ extra a baker, if he is to pay that price, will have to increase the cost of the loaf. A tailor who will have to pay the extra price for a pair of boots will have to charge more for making a suit of clothes. While we are putting a tax on certain industries we forgot the industry to which Deputy Baxter referred. The President stated that there were 18,000 unemployed. That number is only a very small proportion of the total number unemployed in the country.

Mr. JOHNSON: Eighty thousand.

Mr. LYONS: If there are eighty thousand unemployed, registered through the Labour Exchange, how [268] many more thousands are unemployed who were not registered?

Mr. HEWAT: There are not eighty thousand on the Labour Exchange.

Mr. LYONS: Personally I know hundreds of men and women in my constituency who are idle, who are willing and able to work, and who cannot get work. We are told that the farmers' sons become professional men, and I am sure that Deputy D'Alton will say that a great number of them are doctors and clergymen. I agree with Deputy D'Alton that several farmers' sons are fortunate to secure good positions, but there are certainly farmers' sons, especially small farmers' sons, who never get an opportunity of becoming educated and qualifying for such positions. The only thing left open to them is the emigrant ship. If they can by any means save sufficient money to take them out of the country they go to foreign countries where they can develop their brains. About twenty years ago, when I was working in a part of Offaly. I heard a man expressing the opinion that the way to stop emigration was by not giving the labourers sufficient wages to buy their passage. I am inclined to think that the Minister is endeavouring to stop emigration by putting on extra taxes. Moreover, the Government circularises the various bodies throughout the country to keep down wages, and they. further tell us that the cost of