It seems to me a pity that a question of the importance of the question which I am going to raise now should come up at a stage of the proceedings when both Ministers and Deputies are tired and anxious to get away—
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - ADJOURNMENT OF THE DAIL.—THE FISCAL COMMISSION.
A DEPUTY
That is your own fault.
I am quite certain there are some Deputies here who feel so little interest in this matter that they think the discussion of it should be adjourned until Tibbs Eve. The matter I am raising is not one of a trifling nature. It is one that goes to the root of every thing that affects the future economic life of Ireland. I do wish Deputies to realise that I am not raising this matter for the mere sake of raising it, or because the discussion would coincide with the return of the reporter-prodigals to the Dáil. I am not initiating a discussion on the respective merits of Free Trade or Protection. I am trying to arouse some thought as to whether or not the best thing has been done in the procedure outlined by the President in his statement. Further, I regretted to hear the President say that such a matter as this could only be discussed on a vote of no confidence in the Government.
I think that that is not an accurate statement of the case, and if I say that in my judgment, judging from certain public statements by the President, that he is lacking in what I would call economic vision, it does not follow that I have the slightest lack of confidence in himself or his Government as administrators, or as excercisers of the functions of Government. I believe they have as such earned the confidence of the people and it is to try and prevent that confidence being impaired by what, to my mind, is rather a mistaken step, that I raise this question at all. On last Friday when I intervened in this matter, Deputy Johnson rose and, to my amazement, he said: "This is a private inquiry." I want to know is the economic future of Ireland and the fiscal policy of Ireland to be settled in private by a bunch of Professors. A private enquiry! The thing affects the whole fabric of the nation in the years to come, and Deputy Johnson says the enquiry into it is a mere private affair.
I think I said it was a Departmental enquiry.
Here is the report: "May I suggest in the way this matter has been brought before us that it is merely a Committee set up by a Department to advise the Department and the Ministry of what is going on. It is a private enquiry, and there may have been a dozen private enquiries of the same kind within the past twelve months."
There has never been another enquiry of this kind since the Free State came into being. Now the idea of those things being done in private is not likely to inspire confidence in that element of the community, who, I regret to say, have been alluded to here from time to time as if they were so many mendicants trying to sponge upon the benevolence of the Irish Exchequer. The business-men of this country, the men who have acted in the capacity of captains of industry, are men who count in Ireland's life, and I have some doubt as to whether or not these men who are conversant with the vital things, the things that matter in the industry and commerce of the Nation, will be prepared to have the things that are vital to them moulded by three or four University Professors. I do not want to say anything that may be considered a reflection upon any of these gentlemen; I want to say that most emphatically. The Chairman of that Committee is a personal friend of mine; I appreciate his great abilities and I esteem his friendship. It is the one crumb of consolation, I think, that manufacturers or industrialists can find in the statement of the President, that this gentleman has had some business experience before he became a Professor. There is no indication that any of the others had. I do not know whether Professor Smiddy still retains his knowledge of business, because it is a considerable time since he became a Professor. I hope he has. Professor Bastable, we are told is a man who has written a work on taxation and has a reputation which extends beyond Ireland. Undoubtedly he has. He has the reputation, I believe, of an eminent worshipper at the shrine of the Manchester School of Economics, and I have no doubt that he will be a stout defender of the theory of free imports. Professor Henry, I believe, is an excellent selection, inasmuch as he will be the link between North and South economically, and will bring to bear upon the deliberations of this Committee an influence which is very desirable. I pass over Mr. George O'Brien, the historian, and I come to—I was nearly going to say the man from God knows where—Professor Smith of Birmingham. Is the future fiscal policy of Ireland to be made in Birmingham? We are told Professor Smith is a native of Galway. How long is it since he was in Galway? How many years have elapsed? What knowledge has he of the conditions in Ireland? How is he competent to decide what is the way in which Ireland's fiscal policy should be moulded? I want to know when business men, merchants, and industrialists, read that Professor Smith of Birmingham is to be one of the gentlemen who will decide the fiscal policy of Ireland, will that inspire them with confidence? Will they not be inclined to ask who is Professor Smith and whoever heard of him before? I doubt if half-a-dozen Deputies in this Dáil ever heard his name before it was announced by the President. He may be as popular a man eventually as the Village Blacksmith.
Or as "P. L."
His name may have extended outside Ireland, but it has hardly penetrated into the world of Irish economics, as far as I know. I do not object to Professors as such. I think there should be Professors of Economics on this Committee, but I do object that they should have a monopoly of it and that we should be over-dosed with Professors, or forcibly fed by Professors with their own peculiar kind of economics. In view of what Ireland has gone through at the hands of Professors, we ought to be somewhat chary about this kind of thing. I was nearly going to say "Thanks be to God we have no Professors here in the Government," but I look around and see Professor MacNeill. Most of us, I am sure, have had experience of the temperament of Professors. They have an unhappy knack, an inevitable knack from their training, of imagining they are always at the blackboard with a piece of chalk in their hands, giving tuition to pupils.
We have a Committee of Professors, and I can imagine that if the business men do go up to present their case, these Professors, men sitting in array at the table, will look upon these business men as so many pupils coming up to be taught their business. Now, I think if we reverse the process, and got the Professors to go up and give their evidence to the business men, the business men would be more likely to translate the evidence of the Professors into something more in accord with the realities and requirements of Irish life and interests than the Professors will be to translate the evidence of the business men to a like purpose. Now, one Deputy who is not here to-night, was very vehement and indignant about this Commission. I thought he was going to explode with indignation on the last night. I refer to Deputy Gorey. I certainly thought he would be here to-night to express some opinion on this matter. I do not agree with Deputy Gorey that any particular section should nominate their particular representative. I do think that it is essential if this Committee is not to be simply an expedient to shelve this question, if it is going to effect any real good for the country, there should be sitting on it men who are in actual contact with the realities of industrial and agricultural life. We are told now that people who are likely to be beneficially interested parties are not suitable for this Committee. Now, if you want to get a body of men who will not be beneficially interested parties, well you will have to go somewhere very far from Ireland to look for them. Because every citizen of the Free State is a beneficially interested party in the result of this inquiry. If you want to narrow it down to exclude individuals connected with certain industries who have a private and selfish interest in these things, then I think that is casting a stigma upon a certain element of the community which is quite unwarranted. I believe it will be quite possible to get men of standing and ability, men of quite a national outlook, national in the sense of viewing the economic future from a national point of view, men entirely without private interests, who are immediately in contact with these interests and affected by the existing fiscal system.
I believe that if such men are not brought into contact with it, other than that of giving evidence, if such men are not allowed a place in the membership of such a body, I am afraid that the work of the Committee will fall far short of what it might have been. Now, I cannot understand the contention of the President that such men should not be eligible, because they happen to be interested. We have an Agricultural Commission sitting at the present time. Has that same principle been adopted in regard to that Commission? Is it the rule that no one likely to be beneficially interested in the Agricultural Commission should sit in that? I believe there are one or two farmers on that Committee. I believe they are likely to be beneficially interested parties in the findings of that Commission. Surely if they can be relied upon to act with impartial but informed minds on the matter the same thing should apply to this Fiscal Committee with equally satisfactory results. The President stated in Limerick last Sunday that we had "to carry out Article 5 of the Constitution which had reference to financial adjustments, and in doing that they might have to ask for the assistance of the best financial brains in the country." Now, there is quite a contradiction there. I am sure those financial brains might be possibly interested, and if you are going on the same principle as you act on this, you are not going to be asking for the assistance from the best financial brains in the country, but from those who know nothing at all about finance. The President also stressed the description of those people as being impartial. Now, we have heard a word within the last few months very similar to the word "impartial." It is the word "neutral," people who do not take sides at all, they tell us, but the next moment they begin to denounce the Free State and laud the Irregulars. Now, this impartiality that is going to dominate the Committee is the impartiality of the Free Trader.
They do not take sides. They are quite impartial. But they have, after all, the idea that Free Trade is something that has come to stay. I want to know is this the impartiality of the permanent officials who are now in the service of the Free State but who received their training under the fiscal system of Great Britain or England and whose personalities and mentality are absolutely saturated with the virus of the old fiscal system? Is it those who want as little change as possible in the fiscal system of this country so that their mental training will be in no way affected, and they will not have to adapt themselves to any new circumstances that may arise in the Free State. The voice was the voice of the President, but the hand sometimes was the hand of the permanent official.
I want to know if this is a Committee of Inquiry or is it a Tribunal? If it is a tribunal, then I think a very great blunder has been made. I believe that a tribunal will have to be set up, but it should be one that will come at the conclusion of an inquiry, an inquiry not by professional economists and not by men who live in a world of detachment from the realities of industrial and agricultural life. Let us have a flavour of professional economists if you like on it. But let us have the thing that really matters —let us have this inquiry conducted by men who know their business.
Again, at the beginning of my remarks I said that I did not raise this as a trifling question, that I had the hope that members would regard this subject as a serious subject, and I can say this much at any rate, that if members or Ministers here treat it as a trifling matter they will find sooner or later a very different view prevailing when they come to meet the people of Ireland at the polls on a matter like this, and they may find that the constituencies of Ministers may not be inclined to say "hear, hear" to their economic policy. I say we want a Commission of Inquiry into this, and I hope the Commission will be conducted by men in contact with the realities of Irish life, and that at the conclusion of that inquiry, after the full facts are ascertained, that there will be a tribunal set up of men competent to deal with this matter. But until then I am afraid it is not only inopportune but a mistake to create such a tribunal. We are further told that some of these gentlemen are experts and that they possess not only a knowledge of the conditions in Ireland, North and South, but also a knowledge of the Colonies of Great Britain and the United States, countries with which the trade relations of the Saorstát are of enormous importance.
One would imagine that Ireland's relations to the outside world are confined to Ulster, Great Britain and the United States. If that is the scope of these gentlemen's knowledge I venture to say that that knowledge could be supplemented enormously by traders who have a knowledge of trade relations with other countries and many more countries than these.
A DEPUTY
With Cork.
With Cork. That would require a Commission in itself. We know that the mentality of Cork is something that surpasses all understanding but this I hope is not a Commission to inquire into the mentality of our industralists; it is a Commission to grapple with what are the facts upon which the stability of Ireland's economic future depend. I believe that a great error has been committed by confining the personnel of this Commission merely to University Professors with the one addition of a man who is practically in the same boat. I think a great error has been committed, and one that is likely to impair the confidence of the commercial world in the usefulness of this inquiry. I said at the beginning that this is not a question of confidence, or lack of confidence in the Government; it is a question of confidence or lack of confidence in the Committee that the Government has set up to carry out what to my mind is one of the most important duties that have been undertaken since the Free State came into being.
Is there any intention to continue the discussion upon this matter under the rules of debate?
The discussion can be continued for some time. It is not necessarily limited to half an hour after 8.30.
I understood a debate on the adjournment could only be continued for half an hour after 8.30.
It can be continued by the leave of the Dáil for some time longer.
With what Deputy Milroy has said regarding Professors I cannot agree, being by way of being a Professor myself, but with his general criticisms on the absence of business people on the Commission set up to inquire into the fiscal system I entirely agree. I have the greatest respect for Professors, naturally, and I do believe that some of the Professors on that Commission of Inquiry are eminently suitable for an inquiry into the fiscal system in this country and for reporting upon it. But I submit for the President's attention and the attention of the Government that it is quite impossible for any body of men who have not had practical experience in the flow of imports and exports to report upon the fiscal system of this or any other country. It is essential to have practical experience in order to understand how even the incidence of taxation works. This Commission of Inquiry, even if it is only a Departmental Commission of Inquiry, we are to suppose must take into consideration every aspect of the life of the people in the Saorstát—the connection between the different industries and the different forms of industry, the incidence of taxation, the necessity for having free trade in certain commodities, the necessity if the necessity exists of protection in other directions, and consequently they must understand agriculture, they must understand the Labour problem, and every industrial project in this country, and the relation of this country with other countries.
Now, from a certain point of view, some of these Professors are experts within their own domain, but I do submit most earnestly you cannot get the proper report from that Commission, even if it is only a Departmental Report. This whole question is of great importance to the future fiscal policy of this country, and it will have to be considered here, and you cannot get a proper report for the guidance of this Dáil or a future Dáil without having upon that Commission of Inquiry men representing the various interests and who thoroughly understand the particular matters in which they are engaged.
I submit it is necessary to have on that Commission agriculturists, industrialists, and men connected with the Labour movement. I think one of the Ministers may bear me out that a model of Commissions of Inquiry was the Economic Commission set up before the signing of the Treaty, in regard to its scope, and, as far as my recollection goes, in regard to its general personnel; I do not mean with regard to the individuals there, but with regard to the interests represented. My own view of the matter is, that this Commission may report to the Government, and even the present Government may put before the Dáil the result of that Commission, but this whole question, the future fiscal policy of this country, will have to be thrashed out here, and not alone here but in the country itself. Judging by what we got from previous Commissions and Committees, and if I may use the word, the bulldog way in which some Ministers stick to the findings of any Commission set up, I think it is absolutely essential, at the beginning of this economic inquiry into the fiscal policy of the country, that men who have had practical experience should be on that Commission. The argument of the President was that they would be personally interested parties, the assumption being, of course, that they would only take a narrow view, in other words, that a man engaged in business would only look at his own business interests. Now, there are men even in Ireland, and even within the limits of the Saorstát, engaged in business, who do not take a narrow view of things, and who are quite as competent as Professors to take a broad view of things. There are men who are not merely interested in their own little business, and who upon such a Commission would not be always thinking of their own little business. Furthermore, there are certain industrialists, and it is quite impossible for them to consider only their own business, because their own business is so bound up with other things. The kind of thing I refer to is that persons engaged in certain manufactures have not alone to consider their own industry, but they have also to consider the general agricultural and industrial condition of the country. Of necessity, they are forced to consider it. If the President reconsiders it I think he will find that that argument does not hold water. The only thing one can do at this stage, if the Government here are not absolutely committed to this matter, a matter of such essential importance, apart from the alternative of throwing the Government out of power and letting someone else assume the Government, is to urge upon them to reconsider the advisability of putting on this Commission men who have had practical experience in business, persons who are known throughout the country to have a wide outlook, and consequently persons who can give advice. They may agree or disagree with the Professors, and there may be various reports, but at all events they will be competent to give advice as to what the future fiscal policy should be. I agree entirely with Deputy Milroy that this is a most important question, because the report of that Commission, if it be accepted by the present Government or by a future Government, and goes in one direction rather than in another, will settle one of the very burning questions of this country, the question of emigration. If the policy is in certain directions, the emigration will continue from this country, but if the policy is in another direction it may be the means of re-establishing industries in the country and of fostering new industries, and consequently checking the flow of emigration. I would appeal generally to the President and the Government to reconsider their position with regard to having this Commission composed only of the present gentlemen, who in their own sphere are, I admit, entirely competent, and to enlarge the Commission by putting on it industrialists, agriculturists, and some representatives of labour.
This is a matter which has not been very lightly considered by the Ministries concerned. They are deeply interested in this fiscal question, which, however settled by Professors or business men, will certainly not result in what Deputy de Roiste thinks—the stoppage of emigration and employment for everybody. We have to suffer the same troubles and inconveniences as are affecting other countries. There is unemployment in other countries, and every country is anxious to improve its business and to improve its trade, and to make its people prosperous. In one country above all there is more employment, I think, than in any other, and that is Germany, but I believe the conditions there are exceedingly bad. In looking at this question from the beginning we considered that there were many factors in it, and many people affected. The ordinary manufacturer or industrialist has before his mind the expansion of his business. If it is found that his business cannot expand unless the community is charged a higher price for certain goods that would otherwise be cheaper, the benefit is for the few and the disadvantages for the many. A question of this sort must be considered in relation to our present business and how it stands. Our exports are very considerable. While one might be inclined immediately to impose a tariff on all goods coming in, it must be considered what effect it may possibly have on exports. If the Commission be enlarged who is to represent the great body of the people? Are they to have no representation? Are they of secondary interest only? Those gentlemen who have been so much criticised by reason of their academic distinctions and ornamentations can certainly examine as many witnesses as they please, or as many as wish to come before them. They can present a report. It is not a cast-iron report, and you are not wedded to it. You need not adopt it if you do not wish, but, at any rate, you will have before you the considered opinions of students of this particular work, and not of any particular section of it. Even if these had a good report it is not the last word on our fiscal policy, which may have to change as the years change. If it be no use, if it be defective in any particular, there is nothing to prevent you in the light of the information you have gained, as soon as the report is furnished, from setting up the business men's commission that has been suggested, but it must be remembered that there is bound to be dissatisfaction both from the view-point of the agriculturists and of the industrialists, that the new powers that we have of fiscal independence are not immediately used for their benefit, and in order to expand their business. It is very easy to make mistakes with regard to that, and to injure even the trade that they have. There was the old idea that we had of Professors with telescopes looking at humanity from a distance, and with some suspicion even at that, but we should get away from that and think of Professors as we think of our very able colleague in the Ministry—Professor MacNeill—who is a perfectly human individual, and, I believe, just as good a business man as any of the business men or industrialists we have been told about. If we associate him with Professors alone instead of his ability in answering questions, put by critics, I think it is possible for us to fall into a great mistake.
We found that during Professor Smiddy's time in America he gave us much more satisfaction than a very able business man might give us there, and certainly much more satisfaction than certain people who think they are able business men, and if we were to examine this case closely we would find that there is a certain busybody at the bottom of the whole of it; a busybody who thinks he is capable of formulating a fiscal policy for this country, and if we say—"Let them take it or——"
On a point of order——
I have no imputations to make on the Deputy with regard to that. I do not associate the Deputy with it, good, bad or indifferent. I believe he would be incapable of doing it. But only within the last couple of days I have been told by a certain prominent and respectable business man that I objected to industrialists or manufacturers on this Committee because they had an axe to grind. I said no such thing, but I do say that we have to go very carefully in this matter. We have, at any rate, a fairly good export trade, and it is very important to the country that we should keep it. I do not like any tampering with it, and certainly I do not like to have our whole fiscal business interfered with unless, we have something better to put in its place. I would like to have the advice we get something we can rely upon. I have as much experience of business as the ordinary business man. I was not a large importer or exporter, but I do think that a man's experience in business is very much limited by the class of business he does, and exporters and importers are not always growers or producers. It is just as easy for the business man to make a mistake as for anybody else. I made them in my time, and I am positively certain, from what I know of the ordinary business men, that they make just as many themselves. Certainly if we were to take the ordinary business men of this country for some time past one would think that they have made nothing but mistakes. I think the Deputy is satisfied.
I am not satisfied with the explanation.
The only other thing that I intended to say was that on the same plea one might say that you should not appoint a man here as Minister for Finance who had not had some experience of that work, and still you have had to do it.
I would like to ask if the President referred to us, because we did not interefere with these gentlemen at all?
Oh, no; I did not.
Some of the Deputies might think he was referring to us. We are certainly very interested in the matter, but we made no criticisms.
I am not so sensitive as to think he referred to me, because I know he did not.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 3 o'clock on Thursday.