Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 30 Jun 1926

Vol. 16 No. 17

IN COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - TARIFF COMMISSION BILL, 1926—SECOND STAGE.

Mr. BLYTHE

I move the Second Reading of the Tariff Commission Bill. This Bill may perhaps meet with opposition from two different angles: from doctrinaire free traders and from whole-hog protectionists. It is introduced to meet a need of which the Executive Council has been conscious for some considerable time. It may be quite frankly stated that with the passage of this Bill—if the Dáil and Seanad agree to it—we shall have said good-bye to doctrinaire free trade. The passage of this Bill will mean that we recognise that economic conditions over the country may be improved by the use of tariffs. It means, moreover, that we are prepared, in suitable instances, where a case has been made out, to use additional tariffs for the purpose of promoting employment, industry and general economic advancement in the Saorstát. The Bill also means that we feel that for the future applications or proposals for the imposition of tariffs should be examined more minutely and in a more formal and deliberate way than has been the case in the past. We feel that for the future we cannot impose tariffs without the fullest investigation and without the use of all the powers given in the Bill, particularly in Section 5, for getting at the facts.

When tariffs were first introduced, when the country had not been able to think about them, when not only individual tariffs but the whole policy was new and, in every sense of the word, experimental, it was permissible for the Executive Council, by such private inquiries as it could conduct, to come to a conclusion as to whether a particular tariff should be imposed in regard to a particular industry and make proposals to the Dáil. It has, however, been clear to all the Ministers who have been dealing with the matter for some time that with the machinery, or lack of machinery, that existed in the past it was not possible to arrive at the facts with the certainty and fullness that was necessary.

If you have only the people who will benefit directly by tariffs, and who are interested in the imposition of tariffs, coming before you, you cannot get all the facts. The people who speak to you may be entirely honest, may not wish to deceive you, at any rate, very much, but they would be more than human if they did not put the best face on their own case. They cannot be expected to call to mind any rather obscure facts or any reactions that are not obvious reactions.

Consequently, it has not been possible for us, in the past, to get as complete a picture of the whole situation as would be desirable before a tariff, with all that it means, is imposed. It has to be remembered that once a tariff is imposed, it is difficult to take it off. I am not speaking now of the political difficulty, although there is always a political difficulty in taking off a tariff But there is a difficulty that rests on equity. If a tariff is imposed and people invest money and take risks on the strength of that tariff, even though the results may not be entirely satisfactory, even though the cost to the public may be greater than was anticipated, it is difficult, without doing injustice, to remove that tariff.

Then, there is also the fact that tariffs have effects other than the direct effects which are so visible. Everybody can see the two or three hundred, or the two or three thousand, additional workers who may be employed, but it is not possible, sometimes, to see the other results — perhaps adverse results — which the burden of the tariff may have produced. For these reasons, we feel that machinery such as is proposed here should be set up before any further steps are taken in the matter of tariffs. As the Bill is drawn, proposals will only be considered when interested persons make application. They will only be considered when a substantial proportion of the people who are engaged in the industry, or when people who are proposing to engage in the industry, apply. There might be cases which could not come up for consideration under the provisions of this Bill, in which tariffs ought to be imposed. For instance, if we had not already dealt with the manufacture of beet sugar, the proposal to give subsidies or impose tariffs — and we do both — in respect of beet sugar, could not have been brought before this Commission, because there was nobody engaged in the manufacture of beet sugar and there was nobody proposing to engage in it. There were certain people advocating the manufacture of beet sugar, but they were not people engaged in the industry or who could give sound evidence, based on actual knowledge. We investigated the sugar beet scheme by means of an ad hoc committee. If anything like the sugar beet proposal loomed on the horizon again, we still think that it could properly be investigated not by a body constituted as the Tariff Commission is proposed to be constituted and operating on the lines which it is proposed the Tariff Commission shall operate on, but by some ad hoc body.

When dealing with proposals of that sort, policy is the principal thing. Schemes like the Sugar Beet Scheme are entirely experimental, however much we expect of them and however rosy our hopes in regard to them. You can only see what the industry means to other countries and you can only decide, as a matter of general policy, to try it here. Having decided that, you approach people who can undertake to initiate the industry, ask them for their terms, and then decide whether you are prepared to go on on those terms. Some investigations might possibly have to be carried out in regard to a particular manufacture like sugar beet. If that became necessary, it would not be proposed that the matter should be brought before this tribunal, but rather that we should carry out investigation by means of a suitable ad hoc Committee. The Bill proposes to deal with cases in which there are materials for detailed examination — where you can expect to get at economic facts and to come to a decision, knowing with a considerable degree of certainly what the results of your action will be. It is for that reason that we do not propose to have the Government itself refer proposals to the Tariff Commission and that we do not propose that bodies interested in protection or in industrial development or in any sort of propagandist organisation should be able to bring proposals before the Committee. There could be particular as well as general objections to allowing these parties to come along, because you might have bodies coming along and putting up a faked case, which would be undesirable. That is a particular objection. The general objection lies in this — that we want to deal with the people who have definite knowledge, who can make a concrete case, who can give the pledges of promises, if any, required, which pledges or promises can afterwards be implemented by legislation, if necessary.

It is not the idea that this Commission shall deal with general principles. It is not the idea that this Commission shall decide policy. It will not be necessary for the Commission definitely to recommend for or against a tariff in any particular case. Our view is that matters such as the imposition of tariffs particularly in a new and small country like this, are matters that should be the responsibility of the Executive Council and of the Dáil. What we do propose to get from this Commission is a thorough investigation of the facts — as complete an investigation as is possible. And we expect, under the nine heads set out in the Schedule, to get the material whereby the Executive and the Dáil can judge whether a case has been made for a tariff in a particular instance, what the results of such a tariff might be, and what its duration would probably have to be. With all those facts before them, they can come to a decision with a degree of enlightenment and with a degree of certainly that would not be possible if you simply had provided departmental investigation, which might not, even with the greatest care possible, result in the matter being viewed from all the angles from which it ought to be viewed.

The first section of the Bill enables the Minister for Finance to set up a Tariff Commission. The present intention of the Government is that the Commission shall consist of civil servants. We do not bind ourselves to civil servants. If it is found desirable and possible to appoint other than civil servants, we are free to do that. But after a great deal of consideration, the Executive Council are certainly of opinion that we will get better work done and get a more impartial examination of the facts by civil servants than we could get by a body whose personnel consisted of outsiders. There are very few men in business or in industry who are not prejudiced in this matter. It would be comparatively easy, if we wanted to pack a jury in any case, to pack a jury with outsiders. It might also be possible to pack it with civil servants, but it would be less easy, because the civil servant is a man who must serve every Government that comes, in turn, whatever his point of view is, and he is a man who is accustomed to looking at public affairs with a certain degree of detachment and impartiality. In any case, our object is to get people who will go into the facts, whom we know to be thorough, who will give us a good and not merely a superficial examination of affairs and who will report reliably and honestly on all the matters that come before them. It is proposed that every serious application for a tariff that comes to the Government should be referred to the Commission. It may be that, for the purpose of saving the time of the Commission, anything which appears to be ludicrous or trivial may not be referred to the Commission. In general, however, the idea is that all proposals for tariffs should be referred to the Commission for consideration and report. It is intended that the Commission shall hear all parties who have evidence to give — that it shall get at the facts.

We give power to the Commission to make regulations governing its procedure. Deputies will notice that the Commission is given power to decide upon the admission or exclusion of the public from the sittings of the Commission. So far as possible, it is intended that the sittings shall be in public — that the broad case for a tariff shall be made in public, and that all possible information that can be given to the public shall be made available for them. But, in order to get down to the facts in regard to a particular industry, it will be necessary to have evidence about the business and the conditions of individual firms. Individual firms would not give confidential evidence — would not give information that disclosed the difficulties of their position or their secrets of business — if the information was to go to the public. Certain parts of the evidence must be confidential, and here again we see the advantage of having civil servants. Business firms, acting honestly, are quite willing to disclose all their affairs to the Inspector of Taxes.

They do not mind us knowing that they are on the verge of bankruptcy. They try to prove it, in fact, but in any case you have the state of affairs that firms know that information given to civil servants of a certain standing will be treated as confidential and will not be divulged to their disadvantage. We believe that firms will much more readily give frank evidence of their private affairs to a body constituted of civil servants than to a body constituted, say, of rival or even of friendly business men. The Commission will have to be trusted to state in general terms the effect of the confidential evidence. Apart from that, the work of the Commission can be judged by the public, because the evidence, other than the confidential evidence, will be issued in White Papers and will be available, and anybody who dislikes or the questions in the Schedule will be able to read the evidence for himself, and see whether there is support for the conclusions of the Tariff Commission.

We propose to charge a certain fee to prevent the wastage of time on trivial applications or on applications which might be initiated but not pursued. We give the Tariff Commission the powers of enforcing the attendance of witnesses and of answering of questions that were given to the Food Tribunal. This power will be of great advantage, and it is a completely necessary power. So far, if manufacturers or others wanting a tariff came to a Minister to urge their case, the Minister could ask them questions, but he had no power of enforcing answers to any questions that they did not like to answer; he had no way of summoning other people in the same business, or other members of the same firm, questioning them, and checking the evidence of the applicant with the evidence of the others. In the same way he had no means of fully examining the evidence of those who were opposed to a tariff. Just as all taxation is supposed to bring ruin to the industry to which it applies, so all tariffs are supposed to ruin certain people, and when any tariff was suggested we always had people stating that they were going to be ruined in the interests of somebody else, and we had no means of checking the accuracy of such statements. We could not ask them to produce books or details of their business. We simply had to take their word, checking it as well as we could by a series of questions. But the check that was possible was a very unsatisfactory one and often left us in considerable doubt as to what the real facts of the situation were. Deputies have read the Schedule to the Bill and I am sure they will agree that if all the aspects of a proposal mentioned in the Schedule are fairly fully dealt with information will be available, not only for the Executive Council but for Deputies, which will enable them to vote very intelligently on any proposal which comes before them, if as a result of the answers proposals should come before them, or to ask why a proposal is not being brought before them if they think the evidence and the answers would justify a tariff.

I will conclude by saying that the object aimed at in the Bill is to get a business examination of a particular proposal and not to get an argument on some general principle dealing with protection or free trade. We want the Commission to get down to hard facts and to keep to concrete things in the consideration of proposals that may be put before it. So far as the question of policy may be involved, policy can be decided by the Executive and the Dáil when it has the facts before it. Other kinds of committees or commissions could be set up to do different kinds of work from which a different outlook would be expected. But here we want done the kind of work that civil servants have privately done in conjunction with Ministers in the Departments in connection with previous applications for tariffs. But we want the thing done publicly, so far as it may be done publicly; we want it done formally; we want it done with the use of powers to enforce the attendance of witnesses, powers to get full details, both in the case of those who apply for a tariff and those who are against it, so that we may deal with any proposal for a tariff that may come before the Dáil having an amount of information put before us in a regular form such as we had not in the past and could not possibly have had without the machinery which it is proposed to set up by this Bill.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

I want to oppose this Bill. I should say at the outset that it is not my intention at this stage to enter into any long discussion, or in fact into any discussion at all, of the principles of protection as against free trade, because I think this is not a suitable occasion for such a discussion. But as far as I remember, the Ceann Comhairle made a ruling that on this Bill, if Deputies so desired, a discussion could take place on the whole question of the policy of tariffs. It is not my intention at this stage to embark on such a discussion, but I would ask, in the event of a full discussion being opened on this matter, that I should have permission to speak again.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

If that happens the Deputy will not have the right to speak again.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

I am trying to facilitate the House. If the whole question is opened again it may give rise to a very prolonged debate, whereas if we confine ourselves to the principle of the Bill the debate might not be so long.

Mr. BLYTHE

If the Deputy wishes to speak again on wider lines than he now proposes, as a result of other people entering into a wider discussion, he could perhaps find an opportunity for doing so on the Report Stage.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

I am inclined to facilitate the House and to get this matter disposed of as quickly as possible. At the same time I do not want to hamper myself in regard to speaking on any matter in connection with tariffs on which I might feel called upon to speak in view of statements which may be made.

Mr. JOHNSON

On a point of procedure. I take it that if this Bill passes Second Reading and goes to Committee Section 6 will involve a financial resolution. In that case the issue of tariffs, if desired to be raised, could be discussed at that stage, and I think that that would certainly be better.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

My opposition to the Bill is based on the grounds that the Minister is calmly and coolly setting up a Commission to examine into the details of applications for tariffs without taking any cognisance of the fact that neither he nor the Government, nor any Party in the House, has a mandate or authority from the people to embark on a system of tariffs. I have contended that by starting a system of tariffs the Government have taken a step for which they had no authorisation, and by setting up this Tariff Commission they have by implication stated that they are willing to continue and to extend the existing system of tariffs. I say that the very act of bringing in this Bill is a violation of the pledge given by the Minister to this House, and I believe that pledges given by Ministers to the House ought to be sacred. On the introduction of the 1925 Budget the Minister said: "After the present Budget this Government will not break any further fresh ground in the matter of protective tariffs before the General Election." I see no difference whatever between the Government itself breaking fresh ground by the introduction of new tariffs and by the setting up of a Commission which will have power to recommend the application of tariffs to the Government, and which the Government will in effect be bound, or almost bound, to accept, because we have the statement of the Minister in his Budget speech that the Executive Council would be bound to give very serious consideration to any recommendations made by this Commission. He said: "It would not be bound to accept any recommendation of the Commission." At the same time it is clear that if the Commission forwarded a recommendation supported by published evidence in favour of a tax the Executive Council would have to have very strong grounds for declining to bring the necessary proposals before the Dáil.

It may be taken for granted, I presume, that some applications for tariffs will be found by the Commission to be reasonable, at least as reasonable as those already granted. Those recommended will be brought before the Executive Council and, through the Executive Council, before the Dáil. Therefore, we will have new tariffs introduced, in spite of the promise given by the Minister that no new tariffs would be introduced in the lifetime of this Dáil. The question of tariffs is regarded as a question of major policy in any country. As we have started here with free trade it is only right that the people should get every opportunity of discussing the question of tariffs and of examining it in every detail, so as to be able to form an intelligent decision and pass that decision on to their representatives in the Dáil. Such opportunity has not been given to the people and the information which the average person has in reference to tariffs and their effect on the country is, in my opinion, most inaccurate. People have been influenced by propaganda, catchcries, and shibboleths, and they very rarely get an opportunity of hearing the question discussed or taking part in discussions and, thereby, opening their minds to all possible aspects of the question, with the result that public opinion is almost completely uninformed on the whole question.

The Government has no authority, at this stage, to appoint a tariff commission, and before it advances any further on the path of tariffs it should keep its promise and allow the matter to go before the electorate, so that the people should be given an opportunity of deciding for or against protection. If the majority of the people are in favour of a policy of tariffs, whether selective, restrictive or general, it would then be for the Dáil to set up a commission. A commission of that kind would then fulfil a useful function, because it would get definite information which would not be available to ordinary people considering the question. Pending the decision of the people as to the wisdom of embarking on a policy of tariffs, I oppose the Bill. The establishment of a commission, in my opinion, must mean one of two things. It must either mean what I have already stated — that the Government, having given a promise, are violating it and, having decided to impose tariffs, are throwing the responsibility on the commission — or else that the Government do not want tariffs and that this Bill is mere eyewash and is intended to engage the attention of people in favour of tariffs until time passes, until the present Government ceases to exist, or, at least, until the next general election, whether the present Government ceases or not. I contend that either policy is dishonest. Neither policy should be adopted, and the only justifiable policy is to allow matters to stand as they are. The Government have gone beyond any authority which they received from the people but, having gone so far, they should stand where they are and should not impose any further tariffs during the lifetime of this Dáil.

In regard to the Bill, I do not intend to make any elaborate comments upon it at this stage, beyond saying that one of the weaknesses, in my opinion, concerning the Commission is that there will be no organised body of evidence against the policy of tariffs. There will, on the other hand, be a strongly organised body of evidence in favour of tariffs. There is not in existence any strongly organised body in opposition to tariffs. The opposition to them is scattered and is not organised, whereas there is a strongly organised demand for tariffs, backed up by very considerable financial interests. There will, therefore, be only one side of the case put forward, and, whatever be the composition of the Commission, whether civil servants or outsiders, that body will get only one side of the case. There is no other body with sufficient resources to enable an organised opposition to be set up to the demand for tariffs. The Minister for Finance, backed up by the Minister for Agriculture, has definitely stated that the effect of tariffs will be to increase the cost of living. He also stated that the basic industry, that of agriculture, is not in a position to stand any further increase in the cost of living and the cost of production. Such being the case, I maintain that the imposition of any additional tariffs will have a detrimental effect on the struggling industry of agriculture. The Minister said in his speech on the present Budget that a definite increase in the cost of living must be a handicap to agriculture. I maintain that you will have a greater increase in the cost of living if, by means of this Commission, you impose any further tariffs. That being the case, and, having set out my objections to the establishment of a Commission, I desire to say that I am strongly opposed to this Bill.

Mr. JOHNSON

I think that the first question that ought to be asked in this matter is: why should we have a Bill of this nature brought in for Second Reading two days before the expected adjournment for the summer Recess? That, I think, is the most extraordinary incident in connection with the introduction of this Bill. Here we have a Bill which is of great importance, involving very big questions, being brought into the Dáil for Second Reading on Wednesday and we are expected, I do not know why, to pass it before we adjourn on Friday next. For my part, I shall oppose that by every possible means. The history of this Bill is rather curious. We have, as Deputy Heffernan pointed out, the assertion made by the Minister for Finance in April, 1925, that after the Budget of that year the Government would not bring in any further protective tariffs before the general election. That was confirmed in April of this year, confirmed with a proviso that "a particular industry may be beset by such special and peculiar dangers that there is great risk of its being lost for want of a comparatively small measure of help promptly given." He admitted that in such a case the value of the industry as a national asset should be weighed against the probable cost of saving it, and a decision taken on the merits. He went on to explain the proposal to set up a Tariff Commission, and outlined the work of that Commission, its functions, its authority and its composition. That was on the 21st April last.

Everything that is in this Bill was known to the Minister when he made that speech on the 21st April, and I want to know why the Bill had been delayed from April the 21st to June 30th. We have frequently been unable to meet because there was no business. For one reason or another we have been asked not to meet, and the Minister had this Bill up his sleeve evidently to produce it two days before the Dáil is expected to adjourn. That, I say, requires some explanation. I think that the Bill is intended to cajole and hoodwink two parties — the free traders on the one hand and the protectionists on the other. The Minister prefaced his speech by saying that it would probably not be acceptable to the extremists in either of these parties. I say that this is clearly an attempt to cajole and hoodwink one or other of those parties.

Mr. GOREY

Parties within his party.

Mr. JOHNSON

Yes. It appears to me, at any rate, that, notwithstanding the statement about the possibility that a particular industry may be beset with dangers, and that, possibly, circumstances would warrant the departure from the pledge given the year before, this is, of course, intended to satisfy the demands of the protectionists. This rather lame attempt is made to meet their demands and this Bill is brought in with no intention whatever of imposing such tariffs. Everything in the Bill is designed to prevent any new tariffs being imposed before the General Election, but if, by chance, a change in the balance within the Ministry took place, then the pledge would be overthrown and new tariffs would be imposed. This professes to be a Bill to set up a Tariff Commission, not, bear in mind, to examine some of these particular emergency cases that might be brought forward. Oh, no. A Tariff Commission the members of which will retain their office for two years and may then be eligible for re-nomination. That suggests permanence. That is not an emergency Commission to inquire into these rare, extraordinary and abnormal cases of particular industries which may be overwhelmed. This is a Tariff Commission to carry on. There is no date. It does not say it is a Bill which terminates on the 30th July, 1926, or 1927, or that it continues for the life of this Parliament or anything of the kind. It is intended to be permanent, and so far as the Government have made up their minds, this is their view of how the tariff question shall be dealt with. Here we have evidence of the Government's policy on tariffs.

What is that policy on tariffs? It is that interested parties should come and plead for concessions, should make application for concessions which will be considered apropos of the applicant, the position of the applicant and the interests of the applicant. The question of the national well-being does not enter into it on this Bill. It is not a national policy and the view exemplified in this Bill sets down the Government policy in this matter as being one tending to invite this question only to be discussed from the point of view of personal interests. If this legislature is going to lay it down that this question is conceived in the atmosphere of the struggle of personal interests, seeking some benefit for particular industries, then the whole proposition is damned from the very beginning. Those who are anti-protectionists or pro-free traders may applaud, but if you start by saying our approach to this question of tariffs is to be by way of rushing and shoving of personal interests, of course there is no prospect at all of national health. Right through the Bill all the references are: "Whenever an application is made by persons engaged in or proposing to engage in any particular industry, the application of these interested parties will be considered," and all with the idea of a concession. If you refer to the Schedule you will see: "The effect which the granting in whole or in part of the concessions asked for..." If you are going to discuss this matter in the light of applications by interested parties, for their own personal financial interests, and then grant them something by way of concession, you are damning the whole prospect, as I said, at the birth.

In my opinion this Bill is a declaration that that portion of the Executive Council which is anti-tariff has survived and dominated. Deputies of the Farmers' Party may take some satisfaction out of that, but, as I hinted at a minute ago, you never know how long that is going to last. There may be a change and then the door is opened. Not only are we to talk about applications of interested parties and concessions by the State to these interested parties, but the interested parties are to show that they are really in earnest by putting down cash. Put down your cash and let us see whether this concession is worth anything! We are asked to approve of a proposition of that kind when discussing this very vital question affecting the industrial life of the country and by a Ministry coming to us two days before the adjournment obviously divided on the matter. I hope the Dáil will give very short shrift to this Bill.

I have heard it whispered that this Bill has an ancestry, that it is supposed to be built up with reference to a precedent of the South African Tariff Board. I took a little trouble to examine the South African precedent, and the few of the changes that have been made are rather enlightening. Let us bear in mind that there is no real analogy between the position of the Saorstát and the Union of South Africa. This Commission is being set up to inquire into proposals for new tariffs on particular items of import, particular classes of articles, and the Minister says if any of these interested parties makes an application for a concession we will refer the application to a Commission, and the Commission will examine that application with special reference to a certain item in the Schedule. This Schedule requires that the Commission shall obtain information respecting all possible effects of a tariff and the conditions surrounding either the granting or the withholding of the concession supposed to be asked for by the applicants. The South African position, of course, is different. They had a general tariff. They have a tariff in being for a number of years, varying from high tariffs on highly manufactured goods, competing with home manufactures, to free entry for certain articles, and small duties upon certain other articles, but in the main a tariff general and protective as well as revenue producing. It was after that had been in operation for several years that the Board was set up. The duties of the Tariff Board were:

"To hear and examine complaints and recommendations which may be made as to the working of the customs and excise tariffs."

That Board has a different character obviously from this Commission. This Commission is not going to hear complaints as to the working of the existing tariffs. It is only to examine, like a board of assessors examines an applicant for a pension or the Trades Loan Guarantee Committee would examine an applicant for a trade loan guarantee, as though it were something personal. This South African Board is instructed

"to hear and examine complaints and recommendations which may be made as to the working of the customs and excise tariffs and to advise the Government in regard to the recasting of the customs tariff and the adjustment of anomalies which may from time to time occur in these tariffs, and such action as may be necessary or advisable for assisting and developing the industries of the Union and such other matters as the Government may refer to the Board for its consideration and advice."

Here we come to the basis of the claim that this Bill has its ancestry in the South African precedent:

"In considering the matters referred to it the Board shall examine and report upon the following so far as applicable"—

Then follows a long series of articles, some of which are embodied in the Schedule to our Bill. This particular schedule, which I will not read for time's sake, was amended by a new Act in 1923. It is just interesting to have regard to the position created in the meantime. As frequently happens when certain elements get command in the life of a community under the guise and cover of protective tariffs monopolies begin to develop, excessive profits are charged, and so on. There is an inevitable and necessary reaction and a check is required, a check which is not denunciatory or antagonistic to the principle of tariffs, but a check against the abuses which the tariffs have sheltered, and it was in consequence of the rise of these abuses that the 1923 Bill was passed extending the powers of the Board. Let me tell you that the Schedule in our Bill is obviously and clearly a compilation of the powers set out in the first reference as amended by the second Bill. But note the difference:

"The Board established shall in addition to performing the duties first imposed inquire into and report to the Minister upon the nature, extent and effect of agreements, arrangements, combinations, associations and trusts connected with or affecting commerce, finance, manufacture, mining, trade or transport in so far as they tend to the creation of monopolies or to the restraint of trade and submit to the Minister recommendations as to any action necessary or advisable for preventing such creation of monopolies or restraint of trade."

That is the first clause of the Bill. It was intended to correct developments out of the existing tariffs, evils that will arise under tariffs if not checked. It would be interesting to find that in this reference it had been required of the Commission to inquire into the nature, extent and effect of agreements respecting, let us say, finance. We might then have got more real light into the banking situation than we shall get out of the Banking Commission, but this also is omitted. We have it set out in the second section of the South African Act:

"Whenever a recommendation is made by the Board in favour of tariff protection or State assistance for any trade or industry it shall be the duty of the Board to specify the natural and economic advantages deemed to favour the ultimate success of that trade or industry."

That is embodied in our schedule, but we have this: "Set out the existing extent and condition of the trade or industry, the capital and number of persons employed..." That is embodied, but this is omitted: "the rate of wages paid and the average or standard profits being made." I wonder why that was omitted — deliberately omitted — from the Schedule? Any examination will show that the Schedule clearly embodies the greater portion of the references in the South African Act. But there has been deliberate omission of this reference to the average or standard profits, and surely, when you are going to inquire into all these other things, if you are to have regard to all these other things in advising the Minister, the average or standard profits in the industry is a vital item.

I think there is need for a Tariff Commission, but I think if that Tariff Commission is to be set up it must be a Commission with greater powers and very much greater authority. It must be a commission of an entirely different character from the one suggested in this Bill. It is no use saying that the Commission will have no authority in respect of policy, that its only business will be to give a business-like examination to every proposition brought forward, or rather any application that is made for a concession.

A Commission of this kind, certainly a Commission of the kind that ought to be in existence to deal with tariffs and the incidence and effect of tariffs, whether upon the industries or the public, should know what the policy of the Government is in regard to tariffs. You cannot say fairly to a Commission of this kind that it is to examine questions in the air, so to speak; that it is not supposed to have any knowledge of the policy of the Government on such a question. The Commission should have knowledge of the policy of the Minister that appoints them. It will take all these particular items into account. Practically every item put into that Schedule is intended to be a barrier over which the applicants must climb before their application is conceded.

I think the business of a Government, before it sets up any Commission of this kind, should be to get the confidence of its supporters in declaring that it is in favour of an extension of the operations of tariffs, or the decreasing of the operations of tariffs.

Mr. BAXTER

Let them be honest.

Mr. JOHNSON

We should understand what the policy of the Government is in regard to the matter. We do not understand that policy.

Mr. A. BYRNE

No.

Mr. JOHNSON

They may have two——

Mr. DAVIN

They have.

Mr. JOHNSON

They may have two entirely opposite policies, one in the ascendant one day and another in the ascendant another day. The Minister has told us here, to my surprise, that it is not intended the Government shall refer any question to the Tariff Commission to inquire into. It may appear obvious to the Ministry that an industry is capable of development and expansion if it get the benefit of a tariff. It may be a luxury industry. It may not affect the farming community.

The Minister by his speech to-day has debarred himself from referring a question of a tariff on that class of article to this Commission. Why? Obviously because they have the machinery for making inquiries. They have the Departments of Industry and Commerce, Finance and Agriculture: they have all the machinery necessary within their present administrative sphere to inquire into any question regarding tariffs except those questions which are the subject of application by interested parties. What does that mean? It means to me at any rate that there is absolutely no need for the Bill.

It may be that an emergency would arise in a particular industry, such as was foreshadowed by the Minister in his Budget speech in April. The Minister said:—"A particular industry may be beset by such special and peculiar dangers that there is grave risk of its being lost for want of a comparatively small measure of help promptly given."

In that case the Minister was proposing to set up a Tariff Commission; but supposing the owners of that industry were guilty of the charge so often levelled against them that they were supine, prepared to rest on their oars, what would be the position? Let us take it that the owners of the industry were making a nice easy living without putting much effort into it and they decided that they were not going to apply for a tariff; they could live all right and let the country go hang so long as they got a living out of the industry; from their point of view there was nothing more to be said and they would not apply for a tariff.

On the other hand, we have the advisers to the Ministry indicating that it is an industry which is capable of development and which, if it had some new capital and new blood, would help the country. They advise the Ministry that the industry requires the protection and the assistance of a tariff—the fostering, which is the word used in the South African Act, of some State assistance. The Minister debars himself absolutely from referring that matter to this Tariff Commission. It surely is a sign that there is nothing real or sincere about the Bill. In the very case where a Government should take the initiative they debar themselves from seeking the assistance of the Tariff Commission to make these close inquiries.

The Minister may, and probably will, answer that there is no need for this particular kind of inquiry; that there is no need for evidence on oath; that there is no need for seeking the inspection of private documents in such a case and that the machinery within our own Departments can find out all that is necessary. I believe that is true. These exceptional emergency cases that the Minister has told us would only be dealt with before the General Election, and none others, can surely be inquired into just as closely as is necessary by the Departmental machinery that exists.

I do not understand the history, the genealogy or the pedigree of the word "eye-wash," but it does describe, if one understands the significance of it, this Bill. I think that the production of this Bill is really a shirking of responsibility by the Government. They are afraid to say "no" to any applicant for a tariff because there are divided councils in the Ministry, and they will not say "yes" because of the pledge the Minister made. They will not come to a decision on their own account; they will not set in motion the machinery of their own Departments in order to make the inquiry. They say, "Let us force these people into a lot of publicity; let us use all the means we have of deterring them from making the application for a tariff; let us use every endeavour to prevent people coming forward to seek the salvation of their businesses and then we will be able to tell the country that we have set up a Tariff Commission and nobody was anxious enough to put in an application; they are all satisfied that they can carry on without any assistance." The Government will save their faces by quoting the history of the Tariff Commission Bill.

As I said a few moments ago, I believe there is need for the setting up of a Tariff Commission, but it ought to be a Commission with very much more authority and prestige than the Commission proposed in this Bill. It should not be a part-time Commission; its members should not be men selected to inquire into one application or another application, and when they have turned the applications down, return to their Departmental work. It ought to be a Commission set up by the Executive Council, a Commission which would necessarily have an immense amount of work to do, which would relieve the Department of Industry and Commerce and somewhat relieve the Department of Finance, but which would be a Commission with very considerable powers to inquire into the effects on the national economic life of tariffs which have been initiated and imposed, the effect upon the particular industries and the reactions upon other industries. The Commission should have power to inquire into the needs of an industry. It would require to understand what the policy of the State is in regard to the whole question.

Mr. BAXTER

It should understand that first.

Mr. JOHNSON

It should understand the policy in regard to State assistance. It would require to know that the State desired, and was determined upon, resuscitating old industries and initiating new industries. It should be asked to examine the reactions of every proposal put forward with that object in view. I quoted the South African precedent, where the Board examined not merely Customs duties on imports but other forms of State assistance to an industry. I can conceive that Ministers may decide that it would be unwise to put a tariff upon a certain article because of the small proportion of home manufacture and the large proportion of imports, but yet that it was an article the production of which ought to be developed and increased within the country, and the question would arise, how best to give encouragement to that industry. The Minister has referred to sugar beet, and a certain form of assistance has been decided on in respect to that industry. They may think it would be cheaper to assist a specified industry by means of a bounty. They may say that for, let us say, agriculture, instead of increasing the local grants and things like that, it would be more politic, more economic, let us say, to reduce the carriage on agricultural commodities.

Mr. WILSON

Like the main roads.

Mr. JOHNSON

There may be many methods in addition to, or in distinction from, tariffs whereby the State may come to the assistance of an industry. But let us understand whether it is the policy of the Government to use State weapons, State instruments, to assist to maintain or to help to revive existing industries or create new industries. It seems to me that whether that can best be done by tariffs, or by a bounty, or by some other method, is a matter which might well be referred to a Commission of the kind I am indicating.

I have put forward a series of amendments to this Bill which I hope there will be an opportunity of discussing, if the Bill passes its Second Reading. It is possible that they may be considered to be rather outside the scope of a Bill which has received a Second Reading. But I put those proposals to the Government as counter-proposals as to the form a Tariff Commission should take — the powers of the Commission, the prestige and authority of the Commission — and would suggest that the matter should be considered in an entirely new light between now and the resumption in the autumn — not in the light of people applying for a concession but in the light of the best way of serving a national need. It is quite understandable that a business or an industry may require to be encouraged, developed or assisted by a tariff even where the people concerned are not going to put themselves in the way of applying for a tariff. There should be some other initiative in the matter than the initiative of the people interested in the business. That is a matter as to which the Minister for Industry and Commerce has a right to exercise his initiative and not leave it to the seekers after concessions to make the initial move.

One of my amendments, which I hope may receive consideration, is also based upon the precedent of South Africa. The proposal is that if the Commission reports that the price charged for articles the subject of a Customs duty is unduly high, or that the rate of wages or conditions of employment prevalent in the industry, or any substantial part of the industry, are unsatisfactory, or that the proprietors of undertakings and businesses protected by a Customs duty are acting in a manner which tends to such a restraint of trade or the establishment of such a monopoly as is injurious to the public interests, Ministers shall forthwith, upon receipt of such report, publish the same in Iris Oifigiúil, and, following upon that, if at any time after the expiry of six months the Commission again report that no adequate steps have been taken to reduce prices, or to establish satisfactory rates of wages and conditions of employment, or to remove any tendency to restraint of trade or establishment of monopoly which is injurious to the public interest, that the tariff protection may be reduced or abolished by order of the Executive Council.

Mr. HEWAT

That touches the spot.

Mr. JOHNSON

As I have said several times, I am distinctly of the opinion that the State must come in at this stage of our history to assist in the maintenance and revival of industry. The form in which their assistance may be given may vary. We may have different views as to the best way in which that could be done if we were starting with a clean sheet, with no history and with an amenable public. But I have come to the conclusion that the best, the readiest, and the cheapest means whereby that assistance can be given is by tariffs on imports of manufactured articles which we can reasonably be expected to meet in competition. I am not, however, going to allow the proprietors of protected industries to hide behind that tariff protection for the purpose of extorting from the public unduly high profits or retaining the whole of the benefits of these protective duties for themselves and not to share them with the workers in the industries and the consuming public. I believe the Commission to be appointed should have power and be required to inquire into the effect of duties upon retail and wholesale prices, the influence of duties upon employment and revenue, the influence upon the industry itself and the reactions upon other industries; that inquiry should also be made in regard to the likely effects of new import duties and the likely effects and the comparative effect of a bounty, subsidy or subvention of any kind, or reduction in transport charges or in charges for power. The latter is a matter that we must necessarily take into account in view of the completion of the Shannon Power Scheme some day.

I think that the proposed Commission, therefore, is a mockery and a snare; that it is not brought forward with real sincerity; that it is going to do harm to both sides in this controversy and is not going to fulfil the requirements that a Tariff Commission ought to fulfil. Therefore, I intend to oppose the Bill and to plead with the Dáil not to allow it to pass; to ask the Government to reconsider the whole question between now and the resumption in the Autumn, and then to bring in a Bill more in accord with the requirements of the case and the needs of the community.

Sitting adjourned at 6.30 and resumed at 7.15.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

in the Chair.

Professor MAGENNIS

Deputy Johnson, it seems to me, is somewhat unfair to the Government in one of his strictures on this Bill. He declared that he was unable to discover what precisely is the Government policy of which this Bill is to be regarded as the embodiment. It is seldom—in fact, it never occurred before—that I have any advantage that I may rightfully claim over Deputy Johnson in these debates. But on this point I have one advantage. I was, as he was not, for several years a member of the Government Party—a member of that body which is facetiously described as "giving habitual support to Ministers." Consequently, I am in a position to understand not merely the genesis of, but the precise object with which this measure is introduced. The Government, at the present moment, is in pretty much the same position as was the army of Lars Porsena of Clusium when it was confronted, on a famous occasion, by The Heroic Three. Confusion reigned in the ranks of the army of Clusium, and those behind cried "Forward," and those in front cried "Back!" That is precisely the situation here. One cohort of the Ministerial Party, in the name of protection, cries "Forward!" and certain Ministerial leaders cry "Back!" The situation must be dealt with, and this measure is the result.

In operations in the Great European War, we were made familiar with the device of the smoke-screen. One use of the smoke-screen was not merely to shut out the view from the enemy, but even to prevent the soldiers of the operating forces from knowing where they were being led. They were not quite sure as to whether they were executing a "masterly retreat" or capturing an advanced position. But they were moving. They were doing something under cover of the smoke-screen. The history of this tariff question is very simple. Quite recently there was a conference — a congress, I think it is called — of the Ministerial Party. The desire to take up some definite, clearly-understood position with regard to fiscal policy had become so lively and so strong that a resolution had to be moved and discussed. I understand from the Press reports that a resolution was passed in favour of Protection as the fiscal policy of the Free State. On that occasion, President Cosgrave declared himself an advocate of what, in a humorous mood, he spoke of as "selective protection." The titular head of the Party followed that by a speech in Cavan, in which he declared himself so thoroughly in favour of absolute protection as the fiscal policy to be pursued by the present Government that he was described in the leading article of the "Independent" as a "whole-hogger" in the matter. He was lectured in that leading article for giving the public to understand — or rather as likely to mislead the public into misunderstanding —that protection was an authorised programme. President Cosgrave said:

"they were prepared to impose additional tariffs, provided they were satisfied that the imposition would benefit the people and would promote increased employment, without adding unduly to the cost of living or throwing a burden on the consumer or on the State disproportionately greater than the advantage likely to accrue."

You will note, sir, that the President, speaking as head of the Executive Government — which, according to the Constitution, has common responsibility for State policy — was prepared to impose additional tariffs, provided the Council was satisfied that the imposition would benefit the people. He would have to be satisfied that the imposition of tariffs would comply with a number of conditions, which I have read. One of these is that the imposition should be for the benefit of the nation. Does that mean that the President, speaking for the Executive Council, is only prepared in limited instances — in the case of a few exceptional industries — to give the protection of a tariff? Does it mean that he wants a Commission to satisfy him as to what ought to be the fiscal policy of the Government? In 1923 — only three years ago — there was talk of setting up a fiscal inquiry, and the Federation of Irish Industries proffered their assistance in giving the Ministry advice as to the personnel, number and such-like of a Fiscal Commission.

I dare say the Federation of Irish Industries and the public were under the impression that things were well under way. We have seen where — in fact, some of us were present on the occasion — the President unveiled a memorial to Arthur Griffith. As one of the purposes of Griffith's life was to free Ireland from the financial domination of Great Britain, to ransom Ireland from economic dependence and subordination, one would naturally expect that those who set up a monument to that economic prophet would at least have so much of consistency, when they found themselves holding the reins of power, as to make some attempt to realise and to give actuality to a financial policy inspired with that design. If the spirit of Griffith could gaze upon his own monument and could read the subsequent speech of President Cosgrave his feelings would find fitting utterance in certain immortal words of Scripture: "These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." The Federation of Irish Industries made that recommendation. What followed? The Minister for Finance announced that the door was closed, that not until after a General Election would there be any new duties of the nature of tariff impositions. The Fiscal Commission disappeared from the map. At a later period this Commission is spoken of as if it were identically the same thing as the Fiscal Commission. I find this confusion of thought among colleagues and members of the public. I am not so sure that it does not affect the mentality of some Ministers — that a Fiscal Commission such as was contemplated in 1923, and the Tariff Commission to be set up under this Bill are identical in character and in aim. If we read the Title we see the real nature of this proposed Commission:—"An Act to provide for the establishment of a Commission to report to the Minister for Finance on proposals for the imposition, modification, or renewal of customs duties on the importation of goods into Saorstát Eireann, and to regulate the proceedings of such Commission, and for other matters connected therewith."

There is a Tariff Commission at work in the case of another member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Deputy Johnson referred to South Africa. Let me refer to that which operates in Canada. I am quoting, sir, with your permission, from the "British Board of Trade Journal": "The appointment and functions of a Tariff Board. An Order in Council has been issued appointing an Advisory Board on the Tariff consisting of the Rt. Hon. G.P. Graham, Chairman; Mr. Alfred Lambert, manufacturer, Montreal; Mr. D. G. McKenzie, farmer, Winnipeg; and Mr. Hector McKinnon, Toronto, Secretary," The Order prescribes the Board's functions. I suspend the reading of the prescribed functions for a moment to dwell upon the fact that the functions in question are those of a Tariff Board such as this Bill by its Title ought to have in view. It is a Tariff Board appointed by an Order in Council to give effect to the national decision to have a fiscal policy of protection — that is to say, the decision as to the policy, the economic course to be followed as the stated policy, preceded the appointment of the Tariff Board. That is the rational sequence.

Has that rational sequence been followed here? I will read an extract from the statement of the President in the Dáil with regard to the Fiscal Committee in a speech delivered on the 15th June, 1923. "The Committee"— that is the Fiscal Commission —"is not intended to be an instrument by which beneficially interested parties can secure the acceptance of particular doctrines; its purpose, on the contrary, is to secure a disinterested, balanced and exhaustive analysis of a complex problem on which the future of the whole country largely depends." I adopt those words and endorse that doctrine of the President wholeheartedly. It is a complex problem on which the future — he means, of course, the solution of it, not the future of the problem — of the whole country depends. Why has not a fiscal committee of this character been set up? Why was there talk about it sufficient to give the public the impression that something of the sort was to be set up, that the Executive Council was sympathetic towards the composition of such a body? "What we feel is essential," the President continued, "is that we should have a committee consisting of persons with expert knowledge of all the various factors and circumstances that make towards the economic welfare of the country, who are at the same time disinterested parties and can accordingly give impartial consideration as between the interests of the general community and the interests of any particular section that may seek to establish a privileged position.""The country may have full confidence in the ability of the Committee appointed by the Ministers for Industry and Commerce and for Agriculture to ascertain and present all the data necessary for a right conclusion." The concluding paragraph of that is so like Section 1 of this Bill that many people would imagine that the Committee to be set up under Section 1, nominees of the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and the Minister for Lands and Agriculture, is identical in aim with the other.

We are forced to the conclusion either that the Executive Council does not know its own mind with regard to this matter, which, on the pronouncement of the President, is one on which the future of the whole country depends, that it cannot make up its mind clearly as to how it stands, or what its attitude, its orientation, is towards the problem, or else it is deliberately attempting to throw dust into the eyes of the Irish public and, what for the immediate present is much more important, to throw dust into the eyes of those who are to vote in favour of this measure. I admit that it is very ingeniously contrived, because it would be possible to make a plausible statement to the effect that surely to appoint a tariff Board of any kind, no matter what its composition, which shall take evidence regarding proposals to have preferential tariffs imposed for the protection of a particular industry is, ipso facto, the adoption of a protection policy. A very plausible case could be made for that, that there would be no meaning in setting up a Tariff Board if it were not on the presupposition that tariffs were favoured. Let us test that case. The President would be satisfied to impose tariffs if the imposition would benefit the people. The Minister for Justice, speaking in Clonmel, could not risk a sharp and sudden rise in the cost of living, which, I may say in passing, is a delightful illustration of the famous fallacy of begging the question that tariffs do raise the cost of living. But his President had announced at that Congress of Cumann na nGaedheal: “Our policy is selective protection.” Plausible again. All protection that is not protection gone mad is selective. No lunatic in the history of mental diseases and of mental institutions has ever been known to propose that the absolutely raw materials of an industry should be taxed on their incoming. Protection in the sense of imposing tariffs on every article imported never was proposed by anyone; so that all protection is selective.

That is merely, it may be said, a verbal matter. Let us go into it more objectively. Read in the light of its context the President's declaration, like that of the Minister for Justice in Clonmel, was for retaining the old fiscal system except as regards reserved cases. In other words, when we have come into the possession of certain powers of self-government one of the first exercises of them is to be a declaration in favour of retaining the British system until it can be proved before a specially appointed board that departures from it would be beneficial to the country. Where was the sincerity of all the protestations against misgovernment? What sincerity was there in the repeated pronouncement that here more than elsewhere was exemplified the policy of Great Britain, as the predominant partner of the Empire, to use her conquered lands, her colonies and her dependencies purely in the interests of the commercial greatness and the commercial expansion of Great Britain herself? If that policy is not to be departed from except in reserved cases that have been reported on favourably by a special board, what ground was there for the statements that we were misgoverned and kept as helots of the Empire, that our land was no more than a grazing ground for cattle to feed the British artisan, while he kept the supremacy in the market for British manufactured products?

Now, as to the functions of this board of inquiry. "The duties of the Board in Canada shall be to inquire into and hear representations on all matters pertaining to the tariff and other forms of taxation, as may be directed by the Minister for Finance, and to advise the Minister in regard thereto. The said Board shall be under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Finance, who may make such regulations and give such instructions as he deems expedient or necessary to carry out the purpose and intention thereof." Further, "the Board shall avail themselves of information and advice from such officers of the Departments of Agriculture, Customs and Excise, External Affairs, Finance, Labour, Trade and Commerce, or other Departments of public service, as may be able to be of assistance to the Board." That is the type of board that Canada sets up. That is the mild character of it in the exercise of its limited functions. With your permission, sir, I shall venture later on the relations which the Departments of administration bear to it in regard to the giving and taking of evidence, but I am still on this point of the President's selective protection. He will preserve, and I think the Minister for Justice will preserve, the system of free imports, with few exceptions, and that is called selective protection. Selective protection, in reality, would be that imposts would be imposed on imported articles when these articles were competing without handicap against articles of our own production, unless the Committee shows that it was more advantageous for the country to allow them in.

I put it to you, sir, and the House, that if the President really means selective protection in any proper sense of the word, that is, as a departure from the British fiscal system that reigned here so long, prompted by the policy dating from, at least, 1840, when the commercial side of England's civilisation began to have predominance over the landed class and when commercialism became the god of the British population — selective protection, I maintain, should mean for the President, who has given us the formula and asked us to adopt the policy, not the retention of the British fiscal system, and departure from it only in exceptional cases as recommended by the Tariff Board, but quite the opposite. It should mean the Griffith policy of protection for Irish industry, with only such departures therefrom as a tariff board would recommend. Then, what tariff board? What sort of a tariff board? One on the Canadian model, I suggest, and not one on the model of the Minister for Finance — if I am not wronging him in making him responsible for its extraordinary composition. The Tariff Commission "shall consist of three members, of whom one, who shall be chairman, shall be nominated by the Minister for Finance; one shall be nominated by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and one shall be nominated by the Minister for Lands and Agriculture"— with high court powers to demand the attendance of witnesses, and the production of documents on penalty of imprisonment for failure to comply with the order and to be cross-examined on oath. With regard to what, sir? Schedule 1, "the efficiency, extent, and relative importance of the industry in respect of which the application is made, the amount of capital invested therein, the number of persons employed therein, the total annual value of the goods produced by the said industry, and the cost of production of such goods in Saorstát Eireann as compared with such cost in other countries."

When this was first mooted, when first the country heard of the setting up of a Tariff Commission consisting of three civil servants, there was a protest, but the country little guessed with what extraordinary powers, to what sinister ends, the Tariff Commission was to be set up. Here is the Canadian Tariff Board for making recommendations to a ministry that has adopted protection. It consists of a representative manufacturer, a representative farmer; I do not know, unfortunately, whether the Chairman, the Rt. Hon. G. P. Graham, represents the professional classes — he is an Independent — but I presume that is so. There are no High Court powers there, no civil servants, subordinates of ministers. I am wrong. There are civil servants, but in what relation? Do they sit on the tribunal? Are they judges, ordering the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents? On the contrary, they are in their natural healthy constitutional position. In Canada they have a better understanding of what a civil servant's proper duties are. It is not the first time, sir, in this House that I have had to protest against the departures from well-established practices of countries that are long experienced in self-government, departures with regard to our civil servants, instituted by Ministers. When the Civil Service Regulation Bill was under discussion here, I drew the attention of the House to one important element of its proposal — the Executive Council was to be at liberty under that Bill to make certain appointments outside of examination, competition, or anything of that order, and we were told by the Minister for Finance that the safeguards which the public had were the operations of public opinion and of the Civil Service Commission. He insisted on that point.

Mutatis mutandis, I would say on this proposal, under Section 1, that the Minister for Finance recommends most things by pleading that it is the procedure in Great Britain. I said to him that in regard to the procedure in Great Britain, when great strain is laid on the independence and strength of character of a public official, collateral security of independence is provided in the shape of a permanent position and a colossal salary. No one who has any regard for the purity of administration and for the healthiness of that great instrument of government, the Civil Service, would ever dream of forcing civil servants into a position that inevitably would arouse suspicion of their integrity, no matter how high their character hitherto. I say it is not fair, to put it on no higher ground, to a civil servant, if we were to put him on a tribunal and set him up as a judge to compel witnesses to give evidence, to produce their documents, to put the civil servant, in other words, in such a position that he must become the object of public criticism, of newspaper comment, of continuous criticism, as regards the discharge of his duty. I do not make the case that he begins his work on the tribunal with a suspicion that he is merely the tool of the Minister who appointed him. I have too high an opinion of the Civil Service, I know too many members of the higher Civil Service, to believe that they would accept the position on those terms, or even that anything like an understanding that they were to be the pliable instruments of the Minister who appointed them.

That is one reason why I insist that it is utterly unfair; more than that, that it is not only inequitable, but opposed to every idea of public policy, to take a higher official of the Civil Service and put him on a tribunal in a situation like that. He is forced to resign. A high-minded man, finding himself forced to resist his Minister, would have no alternative but to resign. This is what the President and the Minister for Finance recommend to us as an impartial tribunal. The citizens of Canada have so high a sense of citizenship that their Government may safely appoint a representative farmer, a representative manufacturer, to the Tariff Board to consider these matters. Such, however, is the defective education, such the low standard of morality, such the poor level of character attained in the Free State that her merchants, her farmers, and her professional men are not to be trusted in matters such as these and the Government must get salaried civil servants. That is to say, we are to outrage public opinion, outrage all principles of high public policy, as understood by those accustomed to deal with those questions, we are to outrage both public opinion and public policy, to secure an impartial committee. Now, let me suppose, sir, a body of Irishmen who are trying to establish a new industry in the State. I will suppose that what they propose to produce will be labelled "A," and that it has to compete in the Irish market with the British product, which I shall call "B." The promoters of this industry are confident that they have, as a common phrase goes, "got hold of a good thing." They believe that with proper assistance they could really, in a comparatively short time, drive article B out of the home market.

I am not talking at random. I have an actual concrete case before my mind, a project at the present moment. A chemical analysis is made by an expert Irish chemist of article B. What it is composed of and in what particular proportions is known, and the promoters of the new industry who will market A have a better chemical basis of materials procurable in rich quantities in Ireland under conditions that provide them with inexhaustible stocks, practically, of raw materials. If they got the assistance of a tariff they could dispense with embarking on fairly large capital to begin with. Very good! We will suppose, still further, that they are sufficiently ill-advised as to make application to the Minister for Finance and he refers them to his tariff board. They must be prepared to answer questions as to the amount of capital and the cost of production, and it rests with the discretion of the tribunal to hold the investigation in public in presence of the Press. How could an industry of that sort be set up under those circumstances? The amount of capital is revealed to the British opponent who already has established article B as one of the household requisites, so that practically every family in the country buys it week after week! It is a monstrous proposal that a man with public spirit enough, with enterprise enough, with the ability and with the courage to invest Irish capital, should be submitted to an inquisition of this sort, precedent to his getting State assistance. State assistance to do what? To confer a great benefit upon the citizens of the State and to provide a further Irish contribution to the Irish Exchequer. Surely no representative in this House, who has regard for the whole interests of the country, could justify a vote in favour of a measure of that type. I hope, sir, there will be no talk about leaving it to a free vote of the House. This is a matter of fundamental policy and the members of the Ministerial Party must make up their minds —"Under which king Bassanio?" Are we for Ireland and the development of her future civilisation as a rich and varied civilisation or are we to vote for a measure that, no matter how its advocates, its progenitors, may try to defend it, would inevitably operate against that result?

Now we know very well, especially anyone who has been a member of the Ministerial Party knows very well, what is behind all this. I can understand the wobbling of the President on this matter of fundamental policy. I am quite sure there are many of my colleagues on my right who understand it too. Quite recently in the Dáil the Minister for Agriculture, the fidus Achates of the Minister for Justice, delivered himself deliberately of the real mind of those with whom he co-operates in the Ministry. He repeated his statements at Mitchelstown. If you will allow me, sir, I will read portion of the report. It happens that the copy of the report that I have, most conveniently, is that in the “Tipperary Star.”

Mr. BAXTER

You got it in Cashel.

Professor MAGENNIS

I got it in Cashel. It gives statistics which were afforded to us previously. The total exports for the year amounted to £43,000,000. Of this sum £32,000,000 represented the value of agricultural products of one kind or another. "A significant fact," as he himself styles it, more than £31,000,000 of that £32,000,000 of agricultural yield is made up from exports of live stock and live-stock products. "The one fact, therefore, says the Minister, "which was quite clear is that at present our agriculture depends almost entirely on the production of live stock and live-stock produce." Now we are asked to rejoice over that, sir. Prodigious expansion of the country! Wonderful enlargement of the national wealth! Exports £42,000,000, of which £31,000,000 are represented by the product of grass.

Mr. BAXTER

Nonsense. Do you know what live-stock products are?

Professor MAGENNIS

I do; I will deal with that. The Deputy is a little premature in his espousal of the cause of the economic dependence of Ireland. "The one fact, therefore, that was quite clear was that at present our agriculture depends almost entirely on the production of live stock and live-stock products." Even if I were so ignorant as Deputy Baxter and Deputy Gorey would like to believe, I have the information here as to what live stock and live-stock products mean. Does Deputy Baxter imagine that I read only the one paragraph that is the "give away"? What a happy stroke of good fortune that would be, that I should be spared the labour of reading this speech and hit upon the one illuminating paragraph. I know very well what live stock and live-stock products mean. But when I say the product of grass, I am referring to the larger part of that live-stock production. I am not, of course, referring to bacon, butter and eggs, nor even to pigs. But cattle and sheep, as live-stock products, form the major portion of the exports, and how much of human labour, would Deputy Baxter tell me, is involved in the keeping up of a ranch to export your major portion of the £31,000,000? This is the sort of statistics that are meant to make the people happy by the feeling that the Free State is rich. Yes, the amount of wealth in the country has increased by that. What about the population? What the Minister for Agriculture failed to state in his Mitchelstown speech was another piece of statistics, that in 1924 the number of emigrants that left our shores was about 24,000; in 1925, 30,000. There is a case "where wealth accumulates and men decay." We talk about providing for the home market. We argue that the normal flow of trade is the exportation of surplus, the importation of articles that must be imported, because they are not to hand in the production at home. The Minister for Agriculture is well aware that there is such a doctrine, and here is how he seeks, by anticipation, to refute any criticism. He says people may draw any deductions that they wish from these figures. It is palpable what deduction he wishes us to draw when he follows up with this: "Our agricultural economy is rooted in the conditions of the country." I would beg the attention, sir, not only of this House but of those who may have only superficially read the newspaper report of this speech to this very remarkable utterance: "Our agricultural economy, therefore, is rooted in the conditions of the country. It does not need change, but it does need development."

I wonder would it be in order, sir, to remind you and my colleagues here that many Ministers are merely as gramophones. The heads of the Department put upon the instrument the disc that it has to play. The Department calls the tune and the Minister is the instrument that plays it to an audience. Here is the policy of the Department of Agriculture, as declared through the mouthpiece of its Minister: "Our agricultural economy is rooted in the conditions of the country; it does not need change." Therefore, to do as other self-governing countries do in the exercise of their powers, an example not to follow here — here we shall keep, here we shall loyally preserve the agricultural economy that is rooted, rooted by the British régime in this country.

What about providing for the home market? Here are extraordinary economics. Anything more remarkably astonishing than this I have never read:—"The population of this country would need to increase from its present figure of three millions to something like ten millions before the home market could absorb our total production of agricultural products." That is what Mr. Hogan said. It is difficult to conceive that a Minister could utter such an amazing proposition. What assumption underlies that statement? According to the Minister, the population of this country would need to increase from its present figure of three millions to something like ten millions before the home market could absorb our total production of agricultural products. There is an assumption there of a surplus population. Now, how is that?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Hear, hear. How is that?

Professor MAGENNIS

As a Deputy removed at a great distance from the Ministerial Benches, I am not always able to hear Ministerial mutterings. If it is intended that I should reply to them the courtesy should at least be extended to me of articulating. The Minister for Lands and Agriculture talks as one who believes the home market is provided for as regards the food products of the Free State and that these exports about which he is in ecstacies are, as they ought to be, exports of surplus products; but we know they are not. We who live in the city or who have visited the towns of the Free State know that there is scarcely a grocery that is not stocked with foreign foods — Danish and New Zealand butter — it used to be Russian eggs — and Czecho-Slovakia sends us honey, if you please. Ireland importing honey from a little agricultural population, a new State like itself!

In this "Tipperary Star," in another portion of the paper, I find resolutions from Borrisokane in favour of the use of a mixture of 25 per cent. barley with Indian meal for the feeding of pigs, and a protest against the importation of Indian meal. So we are importing the foodstuffs to feed our pigs as we import the foodstuffs in some measure to feed out horses and cattle. Above all, we import the foodstuffs for our human population.

The Minister for Lands and Agriculture, speaking as the mouthpiece of his Department, assures the Irish public that we would require to get a population of ten millions to absorb our agricultural products. Why, as a matter of fact, he ought to rejoice at the prospect of such an increase. Does he think an increased population brought about by the retention of the sons and daughters of the Irish farmers in their own land would be detrimental to agriculture — that our exports would drop off? Does he not realise, if he has any knowledge whatever of the food-producing countries on the Continent, that in proportion as their food production enlarges, their exports enlarge, so likewise does their population?

Ireland is in an unnatural position. I do not comment upon it with an original comment. It has been noticed by economists and by visitors from other countries, and it has been commented upon unfavourably again and again — the wholly unnatural situation in which a country is exporting millions of valuable foodstuffs and year by year its population dwindles away. That phenomenon is visible in no other country on God's earth. It owes its beginning to the British régime. That co-existence of enlarged exports of agricultural produce and the decay of the Irish people in numbers and in quality is part of what the Minister for Lands and Agriculture euphemistically describes as our agricultural conditions.

Our agricultural economy, he says, is rooted in the conditions of the country. Of course it is, but who made them the conditions of the country? Who stereotyped those conditions? The British. Is Britain still ruling us? Is our fiscal policy still dictated from Westminster or from Downing Street? If it is, let us know the worst. I asked, when we were debating the London Agreement in December, what other secret pacts had been made, and intimated that once the country had recovered from the stunt of learning what had been done in its name, it might find itself prepared to endure the knowledge of the worst.

What meaning are we to take from this statement emanating from the Department of Agriculture? The Minister says the people may draw any deductions they like. Our agricultural economy is rooted in the conditions of the country, he says. From the moment that Great Britain decided upon a commercial policy, an artificial famine was created in this country. There are very few Deputies in this House, I take it, who have not read John Mitchel's great book, "The Last Conquest of Ireland — Perhaps," in which he exposes in all its hideousness the creation of an artificial famine in Ireland. At the time when England changed her policy to commercialism, there were eight millions in this country. If anyone forgets the statistics, at any rate he remembers John O'Hagan's poem:—

"How did they pass the Union?

By perjury and fraud,

By slaves who sold their land for gold,

As Judas sold his God."

And he goes on to say:—

"Eight million necks are stiff to bend,

We know our might as men."

There were eight millions when he wrote. "The Irish are gone and gone with a vengeance," triumphantly said the leading article of the London "Times." Yes, indeed, "gone with a vengeance," but not in the sense that the leader writer meant. The Irish are going now with a vengeance. The emigrant ship would be filled still more were it not for the limited quota provided by the United States. Mercifully a foreign Government has come to our rescue.

The British policy was, as we all know, to provide herself with ample supplies ready to hand, constant in supply, easy to procure, safe even in time of war, of good wholesome food for her artisans. We were to have no industries. Sufficient for the Irishman the occupation of driving bullocks to pastures and to fairs. How could we have that rich and varied civilisation of which I spoke? We spoke in this House, when it was called the Chamber of the Provisional Government, about reviving, and preserving where there was no need to revive, the traditions of the Gael. We spoke of the civilisation of which this land had been the centre, the civilisation that emanated from this centre and created civilisation among Continental races. And we will willingly, by exports of live stock and agricultural products, consent to this being stereotyped as the destiny of our people. Anyone who knows anything is aware that you cannot have a varied and a rich civilisation if your people are kept on a pastoral level. All the history of the development of people to higher and higher grades of civilisation cries out against this doctrine of which the Minister for Lands and Agriculture allows himself to be the exponent. Pastoral peoples have their virtues, no doubt.

Mr. BAXTER

Very few.

Professor MAGENNIS

I am not forgetting the Old Testament. I make a present of the argument of the Old Testament against me. If pastoral land is pastorally civilised the values there are very high in certain respects, but they are not comparable with the complex civilisation of a later development. I realise how we are ringed around as a result of British commercial policy. It is impossible to export one of these animals or any item of agricultural produce except in a British-owned vessel. Every article that we produce and export to the British market pays toll to British railways and British steamboat companies. We are making work as well as food, and money as well as food and work, for the British population. I am not objecting to that. I hope that the population of Great Britain will extend and its wealth will immeasurably grow, so that it may be in a position to buy more and more millions from us. But that this should be the determined policy of the State, that we are to look to nothing beyond that we are to be satisfied with producing agricultural produce for the British artisans' consumption, it is against that I protest.

We must try to provide occupations for the sons and daughters of the farmers. Look at what is happening. Only a little while ago we were voting over four million pounds in aid of education. The parents of the boys and girls of the country are at the expense of rearing them. They and the State are at the expense of educating them, and at the very stage at which their intelligence is developing and when they will be competent employees, they are driven by the force of economic circumstances out of the country and they go to enrich the foreign competitor. We buy the manual article back that was made in a foreign land by Irish hands, and those hands could acquire that skill and make those profits at home if the opportunity were provided. Who in the way of private capital investment would embark upon enterprises if he believes that the fiscal policy is as represented here in this idea that we are doing well, doing thoroughly well, our agricultural economy being rooted in the conditions of the country and needing no change?

I want to see freedom, not only politically, but freedom in the larger, fuller measure—financial freedom. Freedom is only an empty husk, a deceptive shell, unless you have fiscal freedom. Ringed round, as I say we are, with British shipping, British agencies of transport, obliged to compete against massed capital, massed production, are we not ever to make a beginning to set up in our own land agencies for providing the necessities of life in the way of manufactured goods which the country is capable of providing?

When the Minister for Finance assured us some years ago that he was going to make experiments in tariffs, I supported him. It seemed to me at the time that the problem of changing the fiscal system was a colossal one. I was not blind to the difficulties, nor unsympathetic to a Minister who would attempt to alter the system. We are all aware, I daresay, that when an individual organism has become saturated with alcohol, when he has been for years an habitual drunkard, that only the frenzied zealot for total abstinence would straight away give him a pledge and put him, as our medical friends would say, upon the water waggon. I, therefore, sympathised with the idea of the Minister for Finance, that we should make cautious beginnings and develop. Now I find, from the declarations of the Minister for Justice in Clonmel, from what are the legitimate deductions invited by the Minister for Finance from his speech in Mitchelstown, from the self-contradictory and wobbling utterances of the President, that this is not the beginning of a sincere attempt to alter the fiscal system in the interests of Irish development, but that it is a blind.

The Minister for Agriculture tells us the real mind of the Executive Council: what has been shall continue. The utterances of the Minister for Education are the only bright spot I can discern. He speaks of developing technical education; therefore he must have in view the setting up of machinery that will conduce to the retention in Ireland of the youth who will have some hope, some reasonable expectation of employing the technical skill that he would have acquired in a technical training school. If I were to accept the doctrine of the Executive Council speaking with one voice, I should prefer to take the utterances of the Minister for Education. But I prefer to regard the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Justice, with his fidus Achates, the Minister for Agriculture, as expressing the real inner mind and purposes of the Executive Council.

Emigration is talked about. Emigration is declaimed against by people who evidently do not visualise the facts. When they hear of a stream of emigrants, they hear words, they do not see realities. If they go through the country they will see vast tracts without a dwelling-house or without a sign of life, except the life of the quadruped; they will see the remains of mills that once were busy; they will see decayed towns. They do not associate these things with emigration, and they do not associate emigration with fiscal policy.

Now, the other night we had a debate in this House with regard to the report made unanimously by the Tobacco Committee. The Executive Council, with brutal callousness, insisted upon a division in which its supporters were obliged to go into the Lobby against what Ministers must have known were the serious, well-considered convictions of those Deputies. I call upon those Deputies now on this opportunity to give evidence of the faith that is in them. The country will not be patient with shilly-shally. When the first sense of amusement has passed—amusement at the clever device of setting up a Tariff Board which, by its provisions, will prevent earnest men from coming forward to seek for protective tariff assistance—when that amusement phase has passed, a natural indignation will arise and some sense of the realities of the situation will be reached.

We were always told by our national leaders—it was one of the stock commonplaces of the national leaders in my childhood, it was the habitual item of doctrine, the cardinal article of the gospel of our national leaders in the most recent days—that the first employment of the powers of self-government would be to change the fiscal system. If there is anything of consistency, we shall not find Deputies voting for fixing with comparative permanence—that is to say, until the arrival of a new Government—the fiscal system that was imposed by the enemy as fetters and manacles upon the Irish people.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

resumed the Chair.

MINISTER for JUSTICE (Mr. O'Higgins)

Deputy Magennis, at the commencement of his speech, discussed the position of the Government Party on the question of Protection. I am wondering just what condition would satisfy Deputy Magennis. If there was uniformity we would, no doubt, be ruthlessly machined; if there is, in some degree, diversity, we do not please him either. Similarly, I wonder if we could have brought in on this question any Bill which would meet with a less scathing denunciation from him than the Bill this evening. The Government Party he likens to the army of Lars Porsena of Clusium when confronted by the heroic three. Who the heroic three are in this connection we are left to speculate — possibly Deputy Magennis, Senator Colonel Moore, and Deputy C. Byrne. But the Government Party, at any rate, are so appalled by being confronted by this heroic three that sections of it cry "Forward" and sections of it cry "Back," and there is general confusion and pandemonium. This Bill, if we are to accept the speech we have just listened to, is a much more sinister document than I took it to be. Once more Deputy Magennis has impeached Warren Hastings.

Professor MAGENNIS

Who is "Warren" and who is "Hastings"?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

A frequent comment of his on the infrequent occasions when I trouble the Dáil, is that it is a habit of mine, or a strategy of mine, to set up ninepins for the pleasure of knocking them down. I invite the attention of Deputies to the technique, the strategy, the general scheme of the Deputy Professor's speech this evening. It was, in effect, by clever manipulation, by taking sentences out of their context, to ask the Dáil to believe that the policy of the Executive Council was to maintain this country in a purely pastoral condition. Having worked along that line to his own entire satisfaction, he proceeded to denounce such a policy. There is, of course, no such policy before the Dáil; there never has been any such policy before the Dáil. It is not for the sake of maintaining this country in a purely pastoral condition— simply the producer of flocks and herds —that we have entered upon the Shannon Scheme, for instance, and decided upon a very considerable expenditure on that scheme. There is nothing in this Bill despite the perfervid rhetoric of Deputy Magennis, which would give justification for any such bogies as he has created. There is no desire to maintain this country in a purely pastoral condition; there is every desire and every intention to foster industrial development here and that policy has been announced again and again.

In his address to the annual convention of the Cumann na nGaedheal organisation, the President enunciated the fiscal policy of the Executive Council. He said that we were prepared to impose a tariff on any commodity in connection with which we were satisfied that a tariff would be beneficial to the people. Is it wrong to be prudent? Is it wrong to investigate? Is there some inherent virtue in a tariff, and is the correct policy for an Executive Council, with responsibility to the people, the policy of "protection right or wrong"—"protection and damn the consequences"? I was not here when the Minister for Finance introduced this Bill. I understand that he said the Bill was a definite good-bye to doctrinaire Free Trade, that embodied in it you had the attitude and the policy that in every matter in which we believed a tariff would be beneficial to the general community, we were prepared to impose a tariff and that we were setting up this tribunal to investigate and to recommend—and to recommend only, because it is not sought to set up between the Executive Council and the electorate any buffer. The fiscal policy when arrived at, and the fiscal decisions when adopted, will be the policy and the decisions of the Executive Council.

Deputy Magennis referred to a speech which I made at Clonmel, when I said that we did not wish to create a sharp and a sudden rise in the cost of living. Was that wrong? Should we, with the cost of living swinging between 88 and 96 above the pre-war figure, invite or create a sudden and sharp increase in that cost? But it was an offence in the Deputy's eyes— an offence to say that we must be cautious in our tariff policy, that we must not simply rush ahead along a line that would create an excessively high cost of living figure for a people whose basic industry has been for some time, and still is, undergoing a period of almost unprecedented depression. I have no apologies for the statements I made at Clonmel or at Navan or elsewhere, on the undesirability of creating a sharp and sudden rise in the cost of living. But the Deputy says that I was "begging the question," that there was "an insidious fallacy," that my statement seemed to contain the implication that protection would increase the cost of living. It is, I think, the essence of protection to make the foreign article dearer, so that it may not under-sell the home products. Does the Deputy disagree? He does not disagree. Therefore, to whatever extent the home product fails to cater for and meet the home demand, the cost of living does in fact become higher, people having to pay more for the imported article. The Deputy dissents. Perhaps he would explain his dissent.

Professor MAGENNIS

I should not interrupt but that the Minister invites me to do so. I give him a particular instance—the tariff upon boots. Has that tariff made boots of the type produced in Ireland dearer to the purchaser? I know it is not so. Quite recently a friend of mine, Mr. Stephens, of Stephens & Bourke, who joined in the creation of a new boot factory in Dundalk, bought a pair of boots there at a certain price—I think it was 28/-. He took the boots into the American Shoe Shop in Grafton Street. He asked them did they recognise the boot. They recognised it as a boot of the American type they made. He asked them what was the price, and they stated the very same price.

Mr. HOGAN (Minister for Lands and Agriculture)

That will not do.

Professor MAGENNIS

I have dealt with that point, and I do not want my explanation to become argumentative. In the first stages of an industry, it might happen, in some cases, that the cost of an article would be increased. I make a present of that to the Minister. I make that admission, but that does not follow inevitably in every case It depends on the capacity of the people to produce. If the Minister permits me to continue my interruption for one minute longer, I should like to remind him that this difficulty was met in Grattan's Parliament. In the days of Grattan's Parliament, you had an extraordinary revival in Irish production, and a Committee was appointed that prevented profiteering. Its business was to regulate the prices. Everyone speaks with regard to protective tariffs as if it baffled the wit of man to devise a corrective of that sort, although we have an instance in our own history of how the danger is avoided of Irish manufacturers meanly taking advantage of the situation.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I trust the Deputy has made the matter quite clear now. I am probably either dense or obstinate, but I adhere to the idea which I had before the Deputy spoke, that it is an effect of protection and an effect of a tariff to raise the price of the protected commodity. It becomes, in every case, simply a question as to whether that increase is worth while— whether it is worth while for the people to bear that increase for the resultant good that may be expected to flow from the imposition of the tariff. The resultant good will be different in each case. I have held all along on this matter of fiscal policy that it is simply idle—simply futile—to discuss it in the abstract, that it is eminently a matter in which, if I may use the phrase, every herring has to hang by its own tail. It is with a view to having each specific demand for protection examined on its merits, without any undue advertence to doctrinaire rhetoric on one side or other of the issue, that this Bill is brought forward to set up a Tariff Commission.

Mr. DAVIN

Does the Minister admit by what he has said that the Executive Council or the heads of Departments, have not made any inquiries of the kind he is referring to in cases where tariffs have already been imposed?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

They made very considerable inquiry.

Mr. DAVIN

By what means?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

There was Departmental examination in connection with the tariffs that have been imposed. I do not think the Minister for Finance himself would claim that that examination was as full and as complete as he would have wished. It may be a subject for regret that the Tariff Commission was not in existence and functioning before those particular tariffs were imposed. We are not, I take it, going back on that now. I am simply stating, in a general way, that I see nothing sinister in the proposal to examine, on its merits, each specific application for a tariff. But we are told that we have a design to wipe out the population of the country, to keep the country a purely pastoral country, producing flocks and herds for British consumption. That, we are told, is our sinister aim. And yet the fact stands that, without any Tariff Commission, we have imposed tariffs on more than 50 per cent. of the imported produce into this country other than agricultural produce. That can scarcely be described as "doctrinaire free trade," and it scarcely denotes any inveterate hostility to the idea of development along the lines of protection. But because we are cautious, because we wish to have a full and complete and scientific examination of any further tariff proposals, the Deputy, at some length, indicts us as people engaged in some sinister conspiracy against the wellbeing of the country and of the people. I dissent from the view that this is a matter which can be judged in globo or in the abstract. The result of a tariff on any particular commodity will be very different from the result of a tariff on another commodity, and each proposal is sufficiently important to warrant full and close examination. The resultant good must be weighed against the disadvantage. And there is no use in pretending that there is no disadvantage—that you can indulge in a policy of whole-hog protection, and that the people will not know you have done it three months afterwards. They will, of course, know you have done it and there will be an increase in the prices of commodities. It really becomes a question of whether or not that increase is worth while.

Mr. MORRISSEY

Will it not be followed by a very definite decrease in the number of unemployed?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I am coming to that point. I am not shirking that issue. I was coming to it by the route of showing that in each case it is necessary to inquire as to what is the resultant good that can reasonably be expected and to set that off against the disadvantage. That is why it will be the function of the Commission to inquire from the individual manufacturer seeking a tariff on the rival import what he expects to be able to do if he gets it, what probable development he foresees for his industry, how much additional employment he will be able to give, and when you have got the data and the facts you can then decide whether the resultant good that may reasonably be expected from the tariff will offset the undoubted disadvantage and inconvenience that will, and must, flow from its imposition. Is all this so simple, so obvious, so much on the surface that there is no need at all to set up a tribunal to make these inquiries? Is it, for instance, an absolutely self-evident fact—and I do not want to come down on either side of the issue—that the imposition of a tariff on agricultural implements would be beneficial for the country? Is it something so patent that it is an absurdity, a futility, a waste of time, to ask a Commission of competent persons to examine the reactions of any such tariff?

Mr. WILSON

What about cigarettes?

Mr. MORRISSEY

And woolens?

Mr. DAVIN

Has not the case of agricultural machinery already been examined by the Minister and turned down, thereby being prejudiced in the eyes of the Commission now being set up?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I think that the electorate generally, who are not simply rabidly partisan one way or the other on this matter, who have not committed themselves to any doctrinaire view as revealed truth which must not be questioned, will feel that we are doing the right thing in establishing this Commission and that the question of the reactions of a tariff, or half a dozen tariffs, on their welfare and on their interests is sufficiently important to warrant caution and to warrant investigation, despite much to the contrary that we heard from Deputy Magennis to-night.

Deputy Magennis made references to the writings of the late Arthur Griffith. I think I had, and have, as much respect for the late Arthur Griffith and his memory as the Deputy, and that I will not be misunderstood when I say that the propagandist political writings of any man cannot be accepted simply as revealed truth, requiring no further investigation, something that must be accepted for ever as beyond question, beyond doubt, beyond the need of examination. And so it is of no account for the Deputy simply to work himself into a frenzy and denounce the President for inconsistency because he unveiled a monument to Arthur Griffith's memory and introduces this Bill with a view to investigating the reactions on the people of any further tariffs. It does not hang together. It sounds well when the Deputy is uttering it, because the Deputy is a great orator, if I may say so, and a great actor, but it does not hang together when coldly examined. If Deputies will take the trouble to get the official Report of this debate and to read the Deputy's speech in the solitude of their own rooms, they will find that there is much matter in it that does not hang together, despite the occasional picturesqueness of the language.

If it is not wrong, if it is not criminal, if it is not utter folly and absurdity to investigate, then we may move on to the question of the means of investigation, to discuss the question of the propriety of setting civil servants to this particular task. It is not a task, Deputies will note, of taking decisions. It is a task of investigation and recommendation. Sanely viewed, are we likely to find many more competent, many more impersonal, to undertake that task than we can find in the ranks of the higher civil servants? Could you pick at random, or not at random, many people in whose qualifications to perform the task you would have the same confidence as you could have in the case of many of the higher civil servants? A businessman, spending his life in the building up of his own particular business may, no doubt, become a specialist in that business, may acquire a great deal of knowledge about it. Bring him out side that sphere and can you rely equally upon his judgement? There is no iniquity, as the Deputy suggests, in asking civil servants, carefully chosen from three Departments, to undertake this task. It is not relieving the Executive Council of any burden or of any responsibility. When the decision is taken it will be the decision of the Executive Council, and there will be no disposition to make a buffer of the Commission and no disposition to shirk the full responsibility for whatever course is adopted. Deputy Magennis says that civil servants will not dare to make sound and proper recommendations for fear, forsooth, that they will be dismissed. That is a joke, and the Deputy knows it, and only the Deputy's rhetoric could carry it off. People will vote against this Bill for many reasons. Some will vote against it because they are doctrinaire free traders, and others will vote against it possibly from the extreme, opposite view-point, because they are rabid and doctrinaire protectionists.

Mr. DAVIN

On your own side.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Others will vote against it because it is introduced by the Government. But to Deputies who are not rabid or doctrinaire I issue the invitation to vote for this Bill, because I believe it represents a sound and cautious and responsible approach to a question sufficiently grave in its reactions to warrant caution, to warrant the fullest investigation. Lately, over the last few months in fact, there has been a disposition to charge the Government with responsibility for every unemployed man in the country, and here to-night there was an evident disposition to charge us with responsibility for every young man who decides to seek his fortune elsewhere. In the neighbouring country one reads that the unemployment figure stands at 1,600,000 odd, and here Labour Deputies, in the height of an unemployment debate, and certainly not anxious to minimise the dimensions of our unemployment problem placed it as high as 80,000. I will not comment on that figure; it may be a true figure; it may be too high; it is possible that 50,000 would be as near or nearer the mark. But whether it be 50,000 or 80,000 it is a high figure and a serious problem, and there is no desire to make light of it.

Mr. MORRISSEY

You have been doing it for four years.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

The Deputy is scarcely fair if he says we have made light of it at any time.

Mr. MORRISSEY

Will the Minister deny that our unemployment figure is higher than it was three years ago?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Does the Deputy affirm that it is higher?

Mr. MORRISSEY

Yes.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I do not accept it.

Mr. MORRISSEY

They were given by the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I do not accept it.

Mr. DAVIN

Give us the correct figure then.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Has the Deputy the correct figures?

Mr. DAVIN

The Minister has Departmental information on the matter, or he should have.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Neither unemployment nor emigration are problems to be taken lightly. But it is not fair nor quite honest on the part of Deputies simply to put the responsibility for every unemployed man, and for every young man or young woman who leaves the country, on the shoulders of the Government. Many of the causes of the economic depression that we are undergoing lie outside the power of the Government to remedy, lie elsewhere than here, lie in the conditions that exist in England and in the conditions that exist on the Continent, lie in the facts that we, together with England and the Continent, are simply undergoing the aftermath of the Great War——

Mr. DAVIN

In which we did not take part.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

What is the use of the Deputy interrupting to say "in which we did not take part?" Is no country suffering economically from the aftermath of the Great War except those which took part in it? The just and moderate line of criticism would be simply to steer clear of wild accusations that there was Government responsibility for every unemployed man and every emigrant and ask oneself whether the Government was taking adequate steps to deal with the problem.

Mr. JOHNSON

That is what we challenge.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Very well. On that the Deputy has his own opinion and I have mine. At any rate, it is a reasonable course. Are we quite sure that the way to remedy unemployment and to stop the leakage of emigration is to run amok on a whole-hog tariff programme? Are we quite sure that that would diminish, rather than increase, unemployment in the country? Are we quite sure it would not mean the last straw for many on whom the burden is pressing most heavily at present? I am not, and it is because I am not, that I stand in with the President and my colleagues in the Executive Council to subject to examination, sane and calm, cold and scientific examination, the question of the proposal for any additional tariff. I take that attitude, not with a bias against tariffs, but I realise to the full, the need there is to drain up such unemployment as exists and to reduce, to the irreducible minimum, emigration. I say that it is not obvious that the sovereign remedy lies in the unthinking and uninvestigating imposition of tariffs. One could produce many things here if sufficiently high tariffs were put on imported articles. I have no doubt that one could produce tea here under special conditions and if a tariff wall were run up against imported tea. It is a question whether it is wise or economic. That question will arise on every specific demand. Is it wise, is it economic? What are the possibilities of the home manufacturer catering for the home demand? Can he do it, or is he likely to do it over a period? What is the gain, how much additional employment will be given, and how much additional burden will there be on the consumer? One must be weighed against the other. Because it is evident that these individual demands cannot be weighed with the care and the detail they deserve by Ministers themselves, it is proposed to set up this Commission to do the investigation, and to make recommendations, giving with those recommendations the data on which they are based. That is wrong, criminal and sinister. Then the Deputy spoke about the manufacturer with a secret who is going to be dragged up and have his secret exposed to the public and the Press for publication. He knows well that under the Bill there is provision made to take certain evidence otherwise than in public, and he knew, when he was making that point, that it was an unsound point and an unsound criticism against the Bill, but he thought that that, together with a good deal of other material of which he unburdened himself, would go down.

Professor MAGENNIS

Would the Minister quote the reference which makes me a liar? I challenge him to show any item in the Bill that what he says is a fact. The words I quoted were that it is left to the discretion of the tribunal as to whether the inquiry is to be in public or in private.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I will send the Deputy a marked copy of the Official Report.

Mr. JOHNSON

Before the division is taken?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

No. This is purely a personal matter as between myself and the Deputy. Section 3 says:—"The Commission shall make regulation for the governance of its proceedings and may by such regulations make provision for all or any of the following matters, that is to say." Then the section goes on in paragraph (e): "The admission or exclusion of the public to or from sittings of the Commission," and in (f): "Such matters as appear to the Commission to be necessary or expedient for the proper conduct of its business." If (e) were not sufficiently broad to cater for objections which the Deputy urged, then (f) is surely broad enough.

Professor MAGENNIS

Then it is left to the tribunal's discretion?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Yes.

Mr. BAXTER

However one may sympathise with the position of the Executive Council and the Government Party on this very vexed question, one will have to admit that the case made for the Bill by the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Justice is not sufficient to warrant its acceptance by the Dáil. Undoubtedly, in examining the Bill, one has to have cognisance of the conditions that make it necessary that we should consider such a matter at all. While it is true that there are divergent views in the Government Party as to whether we should or should not have whole-hog or limited protection, that is not a great offence, but these are the conditions that made it imperative that this measure should come before us now. It seems to me, so far as we can observe, that the sooner the country knows exactly where it stands in the matter of free trade and protection the better. I confess that I cannot conceive conditions that will make it possible to reconcile the divergent views of those who say that protection is necessary for everything and those who are pursuing a policy of what may be called selected protection. I have no hesitation in saying that in the different Parties and among the people there are divergent views on this problem which can only be expressed by the electorate when they get a chance. It seems to me that no decision to set up any Commission, however capable, no recommendations or findings of any Commission will do anything to solve the problem until the people pass judgement on it. Up to the present the Government have pursued a policy of protection, and I think the Government will admit, whatever their inclinations may be, either for sentimental reasons or in the belief that it is in the best interests of the country to protect industry, that there is no clear mandate for such a policy among the electorate to warrant them in going so far as they have gone in this policy of protection. I think that it is only now that the Government Party themselves are beginning to appreciate how far they have gone, without any mandate from the electorate. The cost of living is kept up to a higher level than it would be if tariffs had not been imposed. I challenge contradiction of that statement. I will confess, if industries have to be built up, they can only be built up at a certain cost to the people. The people will have to pay the price for the building up of industry in hard cash.

The people should be consulted as to whether, at this juncture, to-day or to-morrow, they are prepared to pay, out of their very limited resources, a contribution to the building up of industry. Until they give a decision that may be regarded as a mandate to the majority of Deputies of the Dáil to pursue such a policy as that, the policy that is advocated here this evening is only a contradiction of democratic government. The Minister for Finance, in his Budget statement, indicated very clearly that tariffs mean an increase in the cost of the tariff articles, and the Minister for Justice followed with a similar statement. We, down the country, have definite evidence that that is true. I could give specific instances demonstrating the difference between the article manufactured in this country, and the foreign article. If, as the Minister for Justice says, they feel that they do not want to create a sharp and sudden rise in the cost of living are they justified in pursuing a policy that undoubtedly is going to create a slow and steady increase in the cost of living? That is just where they stand to-night. The Minister in introducing this measure told us that with the passing of this Bill we might say good-bye to a policy of free trade. If the citizens of this State are prepared to give such a mandate to their representatives, I am quite prepared to recognise the right of the majority to carry on such a policy as that. From what I know of the conditions I do not think that the majority of the people of this country are prepared to pursue such a policy at the present time. I want to lay particular emphasis on these words. No Deputy on these benches and no representative of any section of the people of this State can lightly advocate a policy that is to be in any way detrimental to our industries. I say that the policy of the Government is inopportune because I believe the people of this State to-day are not able to bear the cost nor are they prepared to pay the price that the pursuance of the Government's policy at the present time means to them. Undoubtedly they have to pay all the costs and when they consent to such an imposition the Government will have a right to pursue the policy with the will of the Irish people that they have been pursuing, I say, in spite of their will.

The Bill before us in a way seems simple. I am not opposing it for the reasons put forward very learnedly by Deputy Magennis and by Deputy Johnson, but for other reasons. We recognise that we must vote against this measure because if we acquiesced in the passing of it we would be acquiescing in the policy the Government are pursuing without any mandate either from their own supporters or from the electorate generally of the country. We candidly admit that this problem is undoubtedly complex. There are many facts to be made known about the good and the evil of it that can only be made clear by an inquiry into all the circumstances. We believe, too, that there are views held about it by people who might be forced to change their views if they understood the problem better, and we recognise that inquiries along certain lines would be beneficial. But in being asked to support this measure to have inquiries made we are being asked to consent to the acceptance of the policy. That cannot be done. It will and must for a long time remain a major matter in the political life of the State. We will have contending elements—people recognising that to support certain industries they have got to pay a certain contribution out of their own pockets or pay it into the Exchequer, so that it might be paid out for these industries and objecting to the pursuance of such a policy. We will have the other mind of men of the type of Deputy Magennis, who looks at those connected with agriculture as people incapable of understanding or participating in what he would call the more complex life that he would desire to see here; people I suppose he would suggest who are incapable of being raised out of the pastoral level. There is, from his point of view, and his angle, nothing meritorious in the life of an Irish peasant. There is no beauty nor charity nor honesty in our Irish rural homes. Everything will be much better and more glorious from the artistic and the cultural type when we have changed the smiling plains into the industrial centres that will compare with Lancashire.

Professor MAGENNIS

Would the Deputy quote any passage, short or long, which would sustain in the remotest degree the slander that he has just uttered against me?

Mr. BAXTER

I may be unfair to the Deputy. I did not wish to be unfair. I am trying to express the impression that his words left on my mind.

Professor MAGENNIS

On a point of explanation, I specifically disclaimed any such views as he attributes to me. I even referred the House to the Old Testament, to the virtues of the pastoral life. I made no attack upon agriculture nor upon the farmer. Nothing was farther from my thoughts.

Mr. BAXTER

I do not understand what the Deputy meant——

Professor MAGENNIS

Very good.

Mr. BAXTER

——by being kept to the pastoral level.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

He is looking for votes from the farmers now.

Professor MAGENNIS

Deputy Heffernan says I am looking for votes from the farmers. I think he should be obliged to withdraw that.

AN CEANN COMHAIRLE

I am afraid my duties in asking people to withdraw would be very onerous if I were to ask Deputies to withdraw that kind of remark. Deputy Heffernan is in order.

Mr. BAXTER

Whatever Deputy Magennis may think about pastoral life in Ireland, I say the farmers of the country will not subscribe to the doctrine he enunciated this evening.

Professor MAGENNIS

You are in favour of emigration. Their sons and daughters are to go elsewhere for work.

Mr. BAXTER

I have lost as much and probably more through emigration than Deputy Magennis. If Deputy Magennis understands so little about the conditions of rural life in Ireland as to suggest that by a pursuance of the doctrine he enunciated here this evening he is going to stem the tide of emigration, I suggest he should sojourn to the country for longer than a couple of days. Let him spend two or three months there and he will come back enlightened. Will the imposition of tariffs do anything or do much towards stemming the tide of emigration? Will it do much even to relieve unemployment? As a responsible Deputy in this House I have to ask myself that question. In my opinion, the imposition of tariffs will do very little to stem the tide of emigration and it will do very little towards relieving unemployment as we know unemployment in this country.

Mr. DAVIN

Tell us what will, then.

Mr. BAXTER

I will try. What training have the unemployed in this country? Or what training have those who unfortunately are ready to emigrate, to engage in industries where technical training is required? Absolutely none, I declare. If I am asked for a remedy for unemployment, I say that ninety-five per cent. of the unemployed in this country will have a better chance of being employed through the operations of the Drainage Acts and through construction and reconstruction along those lines than by employment in any industry that you can mention here. How many of them are capable of working in a boot factory or any other factory? Our people unfortunately are not technically trained, and that is one of the great difficulties with industrialists here. Those who advocate the imposition of tariffs as a solution for the unemployment problem should bear that in mind. Those who have to emigrate are in many cases the sons and daughters of the small farmers. How are they equipped to march into these new factories and take up work there? At what cost to the nation could that be done? That is what we have to ask ourselves. What kind of manufactures are they capable of turning out? What tariffs would we have to impose on imports that would enable industries to be run here with unskilled labour and turn out an article that would compete with what is produced elsewhere? If industries are to survive, that aspect of our life has to be understood and some attempt made to alter the conditions that exist. It cannot be done by Deputy Magennis's whole-hog protection. That would increase by probably ninety-five per cent. the costs of production to the Irish farmer, who is the man who is carrying the State on his back to-day, the man that Deputy Magennis would like to keep to the pastoral level, but who, I can assure Deputy Magennis, is aiming at higher things and better things and who is just as desirous of improving the culture and civilisation of this State as those who move in more exalted spheres. Recognising that the solution of this problem is going to be very difficult, and recognising, too, that the wisest thing may not always be done— the policy of the Government in other matters has been that the majority of the people should decide and the will of the majority should be accepted—I submit respectfully that the Government finds itself in a position that it should not find itself in because of the attitude it has taken up without authority from the people of the State, and until the position is clarified, until we definitely know that the people of the State are to bear the cost of protecting industries, we are not justified in going along with that policy.

If the Government, before it set out on that path, discovered what the will of the people was, it would not find itself in the difficult position of trying to reconcile the divergent views of members of its own Party by the presentation of such a measure as this. We know quite well—it is an open secret —that members of the Government Party honestly and rightly hold that the policy of protection all round is the best policy in the interests of the State. Let us visualise what may happen, assuming this measure is not withdrawn and that it becomes an Act. Let us imagine what may happen when a recommendation is made by the Tariff Commission to the Executive Council that an impost should be put on certain imports. Some members of the Executive Council, honestly recognising that no authority is given them by the people, may say: "Is it wise now to go on with this?" I ask them to realise the difficulties they are storing up for themselves.

The PRESIDENT

The Deputy was never present at an Executive Council meeting.

Mr. HEFFERNAN

No, but he will be yet.

Mr. DAVIN

On a Free Trade ticket?

Mr. BAXTER

If the Executive Council are not prepared to accept the recommendation of the Tariff Commission, what will the members of the Government Party say?

Mr. BLYTHE

Wait——

Mr. BAXTER

Yes, wait and see; that is what the Minister for Finance says. How long will they be content to wait and see? Possibly there are hopes that a decision on this matter may be staved off for a time.

Professor MAGENNIS

Until an election at Christmas.

The PRESIDENT

Oh!

Mr. BAXTER

The honest thing to do would be to leave over a decision on this matter until the whole problem is considered by the electorate of the Saorstát. If the Executive Council think that by passing this measure they are getting rid of the bogey for the time being, I warn them that they are not. They may think they are putting off the evil day, but I assure them this measure will not have that effect.

If one turns to the sections of the Bill, I confess that I cannot find myself in agreement in regard to the personnel of this Commission. It may be unfortunate that certain names have been mentioned in connection with the Bill, names of men who are known to most members of the Dáil as being very capable officials and undoubtedly very able men.

The PRESIDENT

At no time since this matter was first raised have there been any names before the Executive Council.

Mr. BAXTER

That disclaimer clears the air, and I am very glad to have it. We are then in the position that no names have been considered by the Executive Council relative to the personnel of this Commission. We have it from the Minister for Finance, however, that the members of the Commission are to be civil servants; he stated definitely this evening that they will be. I support Deputy Johnson's contention that it is inadvisable from every standpoint that they should be civil servants.

Mr. JOHNSON

I did not make that contention at all.

Mr. BLYTHE

Deputy Magennis.

Mr. BAXTER

Well, Deputy Magennis's contention. He will not feel honoured because of that. We have to recognise that this Bill, if it passes, will continue to be the law of the State until other times and other men come along. It is true that there might be an amendment of the law. Being called upon to decide a question of such political importance, as well as being a complex economic problem, puts a civil servant in the position that at times he may be compelled to give a decision contrary to the political views held by the Government in office. I do not know exactly what the feelings would be of men who are forced by facts to give such a decision as that.

The PRESIDENT

I think that calls for some explanation. The Deputy is wrong in saying that civil servants have got to give a decision. They simply make a report on the evidence which is submitted to them. I would not like it to get out that what the Deputy says is the fact. They are not called upon to give a decision.

Mr. BAXTER

I would like the President to interpret the very fine distinction between the positions occupied by men who are called upon to make a recommendation, and men, who arrive at what the President calls a decision.

The PRESIDENT

I did not say that the members of the Tariff Commission give a decision.

Mr. BLYTHE

It is not necessary even that they should make a recommendation. They report on certain aspects of the applications submitted to them, under the nine heads of the Schedule.

Mr. BAXTER

I do not mind how the President or the Minister for Finance arrives at a decision in this matter. One cannot give an answer to any of the nine points of this Schedule without coming to a decision. Every answer the Tariff Commission gives is a decision on their part, and an answer to any one of the nine questions set put in the Schedule may be a decision which will, in fact, be contrary to the views held by the political party in power, the political party of the day. Any Minister can easily appreciate the very difficult and delicate position of a higher civil servant working under a Minister holding strongly a political view, when a contrary decision has been given by that civil servant. It would undoubtedly be a most unsatisfactory position.

Without any desire whatever to say anything derogatory or suggest anything unfair about any higher civil servant, when a matter like this, which is of major political importance, has been decided by the State, and when a party comes in to take up the reins of Government, perhaps with a sweeping majority as the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs generally aims at getting, it is going to be very difficult indeed for the members of the Tariff Commission, especially when they are subordinates to members of the Ministry, if they are called upon to examine applications in an impartial manner and give decisions that may not be to the satisfaction of their superiors. It is not, I hold, a wise step.

The difficulty of finding independent, unprejudiced, impartial men outside will be great; the difficulties will seem almost insurmountable if this Bill is to go through and if the Executive Council are called upon to find the men. The difficulties will be great, but the danger will not be nearly as great as that which lies ahead if the Ministry pursue what the Minister for Finance has indicated this evening is their policy.

There is very little to be said on the other sections of the Bill. I cannot see eye to eye with the contention that the Commission will not make recommendations. If the Government Party feel that they themselves are wanting in knowledge as to the facts, let the Government Party institute inquiries and let them take full responsibility for coming here to introduce tariffs on other articles. Let them not ask the House to do what Deputy Johnson says they have power to do already and what the Minister for Finance has told us they have done already. The Civil Service has already done all that it is proposed to do now. The only difference is that civil servants are to make inquiries in public that they have already made in private for the Executive Council. If the inquiries they are to make in public and the decisions they are to arrive at are no wiser and no more fruitful of results than we have had as a result of the policy pursued by the Government in the matter of tariffs so far, it is better that a decision on this matter should be left to the people than that we should be asked to pass a measure which I think is meant to make those who stand for whole-hog protection believe that they are going to get something that perhaps they will not get.

On the other hand, those who stand against tariffs at the moment are to accept it that tariffs will only be imposed after the most searching inquiries have been made and only in such extreme cases as when the industry is threatened with extinction and when the cost to the State is going to be so little that the State and the people, even with their present depleted resources, can very well afford to pay. I think the Executive Council would be better advised to withdraw this measure. Even if it is passed, and if the Tariff Commission is set working, it will only leave people more dissatisfied on the subject than they are at present.

Mr. HEWAT

rose.

Mr. BLYTHE

Perhaps it would be more advisable if Deputy Hewat would move the adjournment of the debate. It would be more convenient to resume to-morrow.

Mr. HEWAT

What I have to say will not take very long, but if the Minister insists, I have no desire to stand in the way. Accordingly, I move the adjournment of the debate.

Question put and agreed to.