I beg to move:—
That in addition to the Customs duty imposed by Section 21 of the Finance Act, 1924 (No. 27 of 1924), a customs duty of an amount equal to ten per cent. of the value of the article shall be charged, levied, and paid on all toilet (including shaving) soaps, soap powders, and soap substitutes imported into Saorstát Éireann on or after the 24th day of April, 1925.
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, 1913.
I referred to this briefly in my general statement. We are, as I said, satisfied that this particular alteration of the tax will enable the industry to get on its feet here. There is not very much, from the point of view of profit, in the manufacture of common soap. The end of the business that pays and the end of the business that will cause the manufacture of the remaining classes of the article to be carried on, is the part concerned with toilet soap and shaving soaps. If we have these we will have the manufacture of the common soap. On the other hand, if we have only a duty at the rate of ten per cent. we will probably go on simply having a manufacture of the common soap here. The position will be that the tax to maintain the manufacture of the common soap and to prevent its being again threatened by imports would have to be made practically permanent.
There is another advantage in including these toilet articles. That is, we will have employment given to young chemists from our Universities. We will have some of the men we are training employed in their own country on the scientific side of industry, and we believe that that employment of some of our young University men on the scientific side of industry will have a very tonic effect generally, and may lead to improvement of standards in quite other lines of manufacture than the particular lines we are dealing with now.