I move:

(1) That each of the rates of excise duty specified in paragraph 1 of Part I of the Schedule to the Finance (Excise Duties) (Vehicles) Act, 1952 (No. 24 of 1952) (including the additional duty, in the case of a bicycle if used for drawing a trailer or side-car, of £2) shall, as on and from the 1st day of April, 1966, be increased by twenty-five per cent.

(2) That each of the rates of excise duty specified in sub-paragraph (d) of paragraph 6 of Part I of the Schedule to the Finance (Excise Duties) (Vehicles) Act, 1952 (including the additional duty, in the case of vehicles exceeding 12 horse-power, of £2 for each unit or part of a unit of horse-power in excess of 12 horse-power) shall, as on and from the 1st day of April, 1966, be increased by twenty-five per cent.

(3) That paragraph (2) of this Resolution shall have effect subject to the proviso that—

(a) in the case of any vehicle—

(i) which is used as a small public service vehicle within the meaning of the Road Traffic Act, 1961 (No. 24 of 1961), and for no other purpose,

(ii) which is fitted with a taximeter and is lawfully used as a street service vehicle within the meaning of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, or for purposes incidental to such user and for no other purpose, or

(iii) which is used as a hearse and for no other purpose,

there shall be no increase of any of the rates referred to in the paragraph and

(b) in the case of any vehicle—

(i) which is not a vehicle such as is referred to in the foregoing subparagraph,

(ii) which exceeds 16 horse-power, and

(iii) which is not a vehicle such as is referred to in subparagraph (4) of paragraph 5 of Part II of the Schedule to the Finance (Excise Duties) (Vehicles) Act, 1952,

there shall, as respects the increase of the additional duty of £2 for each unit or part of a unit in excess of 12 horse-power, be no increase thereof in the case of any unit or part of a unit of horse-power in excess of 16.

(4) That "five pounds or less" shall, as on and from the 1st day of April, 1966, be substituted for "three pounds or less" in paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of section 1 of the Finance (Excise Duties) (Vehicles) Act, 1952, as amended by subsection (1) of section 19 of the Finance Act, 1965 (No. 22 of 1965).

(5) It is hereby declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution shall have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, 1927 (No. 7 of 1927).

We made a point earlier on and I want to repeat it that we believe this will be a very savage impost on working people. Are the Government taking into account the fact that this increase will operate on two kinds of people? There are those who are in a position to tax their carefully for a year and those who cannot do that. Those who can tax their cars annually will be covered for 12 months but those who cannot do so will be caught almost immediately. Many people using cars now are not members of the affluent society we have heard so much about. They are ordinary working people who need their cars to go to work.

There was a great song and dance about the £30 allowance to certain people under the income tax code. That represents about £8 in real money and most of that £8 will be used up in this extra taxation. What the Taoiseach is doing here is making a much stronger case for substantial wage increases. Let the Taoiseach have no doubt about this. If he does something which leaves the workers' take home wage packets smaller than before, then the money must be found somewhere. The Taoiseach says that there is an affluent society which can afford to pay extra taxation but there are some people who are paying more than they can afford and a lot of them will be caught on this tax.

This is a fundamentally unjust tax. It affects two classes of people, those who pay their tax annually and those who can only afford to tax for a quarter.

You can now tax your car for a year from any date or for any shorter time.

That has no bearing on the case. The man who can only afford to tax his car for a quarter has to use that car to go to work in the factory. Now we will put him in a different classification and say that he must pay that tax immediately. That creates two different classes in our society and that is unjust. In the case of a man who has 40,000 miles a year on his car, even if the increase was 100 per cent, it might be of very little consequence to him. If he is a commercial traveller and is getting his income from travelling in his car the impost will not be a heavy one to him and it will certainly not be as heavy as the new taxation will be to the man who can only tax his car for a short period and who needs it to go to the local factory to his work. When he pays his income tax by PAYE he will not get any credit for the fact that he has to use his car to go to work but the company director and the commercial traveller can claim the costs of their cars. This is an unjust tax and one to which sufficient thought was not given by the Minister and his officials.

At the present time a car is essential to most families and it is no longer a badge of affluence. Workers require cars to take them to work, farmers require them to go to fairs and markets and to church. Business people require them.

Excellent.

This is not as a result of your policy. This is 1966 and world trends are changing.

CIE will not give them the buses.

With the additional number of cars on the road a case could be made for the improvement of these roads but we are told that this money is not going to the Road Fund. If it was, there might be some justification for this taxation. This £1.3 million would be available for the Road Fund and would create employment in many places where road workers are unemployed. Where is this money going? It is going to the Exchequer and in the absence of more specific details we can only assume that it is going towards the payment of the status increases.

That does not arise.

That is a reasonable assumption.

We are discussing a Resolution which deals with mechanically propelled vehicles used on public roads and the Deputy might relate his remarks to the Resolution.

We are dealing with Resolution No. 9 which imposes a tax of 25 per cent on privately owned cars. It is to be used for a purpose other than that for which road taxation has been used down through the years. Instead of being distributed from the Road Fund to local authorities for the improvement of roads it is going to the benefit of the Exchequer.

The Deputy may not discuss the conditions of the roads or unemployment on this Resolution and general discussion of the Road Fund cannot be entered into.

That is what its object is.

Will the Leas-Cheann Comhairle agree that this is an innovation? This is the first time in the history of the State, since it was established, that money derived through motor taxation has been used to help the Exchequer.

Not the first time. Ask them about that.

You are raiding the Road Fund and you are not honest enough to say so.

Side by side with that, in a later Resolution, we have another imposition. The Government are not even satisfied with imposing this 25 per cent tax in isolation. They are now going to clap an additional 4d. a gallon on petrol.

That does not arise.

It arises in this way. This tax will help in no small way to make the owning of a motor car impossible so far as many families are concerned.

Hear, hear.

They are doubly hit by the Budget. They are hit badly in the imposition of this 25 per cent tax but the Government are not satisfied. They are going to give them another——

These Resolutions are to be adopted before 10.30 p.m. and Members should be brief.

Why?

There is no reason.

It has always been the practice.

We will break a lot of practice now.

It is a very unusual Budget.

I cannot see how anybody in his reasonable senses could have anticipated, even earlier today, that there would be such severe impositions as are in this Budget.

If the Deputy does not keep to the Resolution I shall have to ask him to resume his seat.

It is down here in page 7 of the Minister's Budget Statement how he proposes to use this tax. Seeing that there is a complete departure from normal practice, I think the Minister for Finance or his Deputy —whether it is the Taoiseach or the Minister for Local Government; I do not know which—should explain this change in policy so far as motor taxation is concerned. We are asked to vote an imposition of £1.3 million extra on those owning private cars in this country. We are told that the money is not to be channelled into the usual source, the road fund, but is to be channelled towards the relief of the Exchequer. I will repeat again—the Taoiseach need not look at me—that possibly it is to help to pay the £1,000 status increases. That is the only conclusion——

Deputy Murphy must resume his seat. He is paying no attention to the Chair.

As I like to be as——

Chair!

I shall resume my seat if it will satisfy the Chair.

This is the National Parliament and the Deputy should remember that.

I am well aware of it. I am speaking completely within the limits of the discussion.

He is speaking the truth. It is a Fianna Fáil plan to raid the Road Fund and they are ashamed to admit it.

I want to ask the Taoiseach if he will explain what paragraph 3 (b) of this Resolution means. Does it mean, in respect of private vehicles which have a 16-horse power, or over, that there is no additional increase?

It maintains the differential in respect of Irish-assembled cars.

It concerns the non-Irish assembled car. I want to protest against this tax, in addition to what has been said by Deputy Donegan and Deputy Murphy. It seems to me that the approach here is unbalanced and unfair to the weaker section of the motoring community. The position which is put before us by the Government in their proposal is that anyone who was financially in a position to pay his tax altogether and who has already paid it is relieved so far as this House is concerned, of the 25 per cent increase. But the person who found it difficult to tax his car, who found it difficult to get the money together to pay down the tax altogether, and who, accordingly, is taxing it by the quarter—and who has to pay more, in the event, already, by taxing it by the quarter but who cannot afford to tax his car all in one go—is going to get a double blow from the Government in this. He is already paying more because he is taxing his car quarterly and now he is caught this year for the increase of 25 per cent whereas the person who has taxed his car for the full year does not have to pay anything extra this year. I think that that approach is unbalanced. I think it is the poorer and weaker sections of the motoring community who will be hit heaviest by this tax.

The main revenue this calendar year will come from new registrations.

Following on what Deputy O'Higgins has said, it has been customary for people, particularly people who need not use a car in connection with their business, to refrain from taxing it for the first quarter of the year and then to tax it in or around Easter. As a result of a regulation introduced on the 1st of this month by the Minister for Local Government, it is now possible to tax a car for 12 months. People who purchased cars since 1st March and people who had cars but who had not taxed them and who now are taking advantage of the Minister's regulation and have taxed their cars since 1st March, do so not to the end of the present year but until the end of February of next year. If we have a Budget, say, in the beginning of March next year, and supposing this penal tax which is now put on will then be taken off, these people who have taxed their cars to the end of February next year will not be caught by it at all and they will have escaped paying this additional 25 per cent. If the Minister was aware of what his colleague, the Minister for Finance, was going to do, surely it would have been proper to refrain from making the order permitting a person to tax his car for the entire 12 months until 1st April next?

It does not come into operation until 1st April.

It has been announced that you can apply for it and people have applied for it.

Within the financial year: there will be a uniform increase for everybody. If they do not pay it now, they will pay it next January.

We are hoping that it will be taken off by next year, or does the Taoiseach suggest that there will be a permanent tax of 25 per cent on road taxation?

It will go up next year.

Remove the tax and remove Fianna Fáil.

Last year it was the turnover tax. Now it is a 25 per cent increase in motor tax. The people who could afford to take out the tax for a full year will benefit but the poor unfortunate who could afford to tax his car for only two or three months will be caught.

Of course this is a Fianna Fáil device for raiding the Road Fund. I know all about raiding the Road Fund. I remember in 1956 the Government led by Deputy John A. Costello raided the Road Fund for one year for half a million pounds. We came into Dáil Éireann and said to Dáil Éireann: "The financial situation demands that in this financial year we should take half a million pounds out of the Road Fund". We asked expressly for the sanction of Dáil Éireann for that one draft on the Road Fund.

This has no relevance.

The Taoiseach said today that he is levying £1.3 million on motor vehicles. Deputy P. O'Donnell points out that one person might escape on the assumption that this was but a year's operation and the Taoiseach laughed. Deputy Murphy is right. For as long as I remember it, the revenue from motor taxation has been appropriated on one side of the Exchequer and has come out on the other side into the Road Fund. Sometimes the Government have been forced by circumstances to ask Dáil Éireann not to change the entire procedure in relation to the Road Fund but for one year only. The Taoiseach now announces calmly that this is not a raid for one year for £1.3 million. This is a permanent change. Did he not tell Deputy P. O'Donnell a minute ago it was all cod?

I said it would last for a year anyway.

I do not give a fiddlede-dee. All I know is that they are bust wide open, down and out. When I denounce the policy of the Government and the Ministers, I am not referring to individuals but to the policy for which they all stand. I say Fianna Fáil are down and out, bust.

Speak for yourself.

The Government who come to Dáil Éireann and say before Dáil Éireann and the country: "We want to raid the Road Fund for a year" and explain their difficulties and justify their act can have our sympathy but the Government who say no such thing, who put on a 25 per cent increase on motor taxation without a mention of the Road Fund, cannot. Why did they not say: "We shall propose to increase the resources of the Road Fund and for one year, and to ask Dáil Éireann to give it to us for the general revenue". That would have been honest. This is not honest.

That is what the Taoiseach did say.

Deputy Booth speaks on behalf of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance and says the Taoiseach has committed the Government to restore this money to the Road Fund after this year.

I never said anything of the sort and the Deputy knows it.

I do not care a fiddlede-dee. The Taoiseach is on the front bench and it is what he says matters. He speaks here for the Government. I offered him the opportunity of adopting Deputy Booth's undertaking.

We have not yet considered the 1967 Budget.

In the classical words of Eliza Doolittle: "Not bloody likely".

Mr. Harte rose.

The House wishes to adopt the Resolutions before 10.30 p.m.

Why is it so important?

Because there will be a general debate, starting tomorrow, if you allow the Resolutions to be moved tonight. Then the whole Budget can be discussed. If you do not follow the normal procedure, it is your own time you are frittering away. You have all the time in the world, tomorrow and next week and the week after. It is bad tactics on your part.

It is our own time. There are no limitations.

We cannot debate the Budget on this Resolution.

If the Resolutions are not completed tonight, it does not mean the debate on the Budget will be curtailed.

The general debate can start tomorrow if you let me move the Resolutions. You are making a mess of your own business.

You have made a mess of the country. "Mess" is the last word you should use.

The normal practice—it is a courtesy to the Leader of the Opposition—is to move the General Resolution without speaking. This enables the debate on the Budget to be opened by the Leader of the Opposition tomorrow. I urge Deputies to do this. They will have plenty of time tomorrow and I should like to extend to the Leader of the Opposition the courtesy of permitting him to open the debate on the Budget tomorrow.

What I have got to say will be brief and to the point. When the tax impositions were announced this evening, I heard a murmur from the public gallery that this would put the country on its feet. That is literally what it will do because very few people can afford motor cars. I speak particularly of the tax on motor cars as a Deputy living beside the Border. Motor taxation here is £20 for a 10 hp car, £22 for a 12 hp car, £28 for a 14 hp car and £30 for a 16 hp car. This is to be increased and it means that while a worker with a car in Northern Ireland pays only £17, his counterpart in this part of the country has to pay double that amount or more. In free trade conditions, how can workers in Donegal compete with workers in Northern Ireland.

Will they have the same petrol tax, the same tobacco tax? Taxation is generally lower here.

Do not kid yourself.

They are in cuckoo-land.

The other night in the streets of Letterkenny I heard a reputable citizen say that taxation of motor cars would be increased by 25 per cent. If a reputable person, not a Deputy, could say that, am I right in thinking that other citizens could have said what the new taxes on whiskey and cigarettes would be?

This has nothing to do with the Resolution.

If there had been a breach of the Budget——

We do not want any of those tactics here.

We had an illustration of the Minister's tactics in the by-election in Roscommon.

Many things I shall leave until tomorrow. If the Taoiseach is honest with the country, this will be his last Budget. He should have the decency to resign. He has gambled and lost.

The Deputy may make that argument on another occasion.

Many battles have been fought in this House to ensure that the unfortunate person who was not able to tax a car for the full year should not be over-penalised. Now, if I take out a tax for the first quarter and this new provision comes into operation on 1st April next, can I go in before the 1st of April and pay for the additional nine months?

You can, yes.

What is all this bluff about getting these Resolutions tonight? You have got the petrol Resolution, the beer Resolution and the others that required to come into immediate effect.

I agree that it is not essential from the point of view of revenue that these Resolutions be passed tonight but it is normal practice to complete them and open the general discussion with the speech of the Leader of the Opposition on the following day.

What is normal about this Budget?

There is nothing very normal about the Deputy's approach to it.

I have been here a long time and I never saw anything like this before. I do not like been bluffed.

We are still on Financial Resolution No. 9.

I want to talk about that Resolution and about the attempt that is being made to bluff us into the belief that we have an obligation, a public duty, to allow them through tonight. I agree that the Government are entitled to ask us to give them the Financial Resolutions that had to come into operation tonight to prevent forestalling in the morning but the remaining ones relating to taxes on cars and the General Resolution are not of that type.

That is not the reason we want them passed tonight. The reason is that we want to get to Financial Resolution No. 12.

There is no reason why you should not move that in the morning and then have the speech of the Leader of the Opposition.

We shall have to take Resolutions Nos. 9, 10 and 11 before No, 12.

What do they relate to?

That is what the Deputy is talking about now, motor taxation and dances.

We can have a dance on dancing tomorrow. I want to say a word on the dancing tax. Let us take the dancing tax tomorrow and in the meantime I would ask the Taoiseach to look up a letter he wrote to the dancehall proprietors——

It does not arise on Financial Resolution No. 9.

I want to talk about motor car taxation now——

The Deputy is talking about dancing.

——and about dancing tomorrow and I forewarn the Taoiseach that I shall invite him to read for us then the letter he wrote to the dancehall proprietors.

That does not arise now.

If you do what I suggest, you can talk about everything tomorrow.

But I do not want to talk about everything. I want to talk about the dancing tax tomorrow. In the meantime, I think it is reasonable to discuss the impact of this tax on ordinary people. I should like to ask the Taoiseach and the Fianna Fáil Party a question. Some of them are so sensitive now and have become so mealy-mouthed that if you address questions to them, they get upset. I do not want to affront any individual Deputy or Embarrass Deputies in the slightest degree but is there any one of them, is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy without naming any names—there are 19 of them there now, nearly a quorum—who told his constituents they intended to increase the tax on motor cars by 25 per cent and pay not a single penny of the proceeds into the Road Fund?

It is the Government's duty to Govern and the Deputy knows it.

I see one Deputy on his feet. I had hoped he was going to speak. There are 18 of them left and what fascinates me is that some of those are going to go back home in State cars to their constituencies over the weekend. What are you going to say? Will you say you could do nothing about it, that you were flogged into the lobby and had to go? Or will you say you changed your minds or that you pulled a "fast one" on them and were you not very cute to put your finger in their eye when you got the chance?

The Deputy is well aware that this has nothing whatever to do with the Resolution.

This is a House for debate.

For orderly debate.

Am I not right in asking Deputies on the opposite side how can they face their neighbours after voting for this?

That has nothing to do with legitimate discussion of Financial Resolution No. 9. The Deputy may discuss only what is in that Resolution.

Then do what you damn well like, if he says that it has nothing to do with the Resolution.

(Cavan): A point that can be made is that the Taoiseach seems to be rather confused about the implications of this Resolution and the equity of it. He seems to think that because you can tax your car for one year any day of the year now, that makes that Resolution equitable. It does not. I have my car taxed for 12 months and in fact this Resolution will not hit me financially until 1st January next year. I can enjoy the old rate of tax. But somebody else—and there are many of them in the country particularly those who drive to work—may tax his car quarterly and that person comes in on the 1st April to tax his car for the remaining threequarters of the year and he will have to pay £32 where I have to pay £26. That is neither fair nor just.

There are a couple of things I cannot understand about this Resolution. I shall finish on this note. One is that Deputy Booth, who, I understand, has something to do with the motor business, has sat there laughing himself sick since this debate began. It is difficult to understand why this should be the case.