Would the Minister give the House some indication of the home consumption of these sheepskins relative to export? He gave the export figures as about 25,000 a week.
Sheepskin (Control of Export) Bill, 1934—Committee Stage.
Section 1 agreed to.
SECTION 2.
There is no home consumption; they are all exported.
There is no home consumption? Then, the Minister wants power to prohibit the export of a commodity 100 per cent. of the production of which is exported, and to allow none to be exported except under licence. Does that not mean, roughly, that he is going to license the exports? The articles must still be exported when there is no home consumption, but nobody will be allowed to export them except those who hold licences from the Minister. We had great dissatisfaction to-day about the giving of licences by another Minister, and this is a very serious matter. It is certainly not good business to ask this House, by Section 2, to prohibit the export of sheepskins, amounting to 25,000 a week —£7,000 or £8,000 worth or about £400,000 worth a year. There is no home market, and no home consumption for them, and the Minister proposes to prohibit export except under licence. Will we be allowed to do anything soon except under licence? This is a most glaring example of the attempt by the Government to rule our daily lives by Government order. It is a monstrous thing. We had his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, saying five minutes ago that the leading educationists in this State could not be trusted in performing a job of very great importance to this State, to divest themselves of their politics. Will the Minister be able to divest himself of his politics in this matter? I doubt it, because the other people referred to do not hold their public positions by virtue of their politics. They hold them by virtue of their educational qualifications and attainments. As the Minister is going to hold his job by politics, he is going to look after the politician who put him there.
The Deputy does not understand the situation. When I say that there is no home consumption of these goods, I mean that they are either exported as sheepskins or exported after treatment, by fell-mongers. In the future they will be still exported, but after the fell-mongering is done here. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that the fell-mongering will be done here. When the Bill is in operation no sheepskins as such will be exported, the aim being that the operation of fell-mongering will be performed in this country by our own people and not outside. The purpose, I think, is quite clear. If at some future date we succeed in establishing a light tannery of the necessary type for sheepskins, exportation will cease, but until that is done, exportation will continue but in a different form.
Does not the Minister think that it would be time enough to talk about prohibiting or curtailing the export of these raw sheepskins when the position is established here that a fair percentage of them can be treated in a tannery as suggested by the Minister? At the moment the sheepskin is the finished article as far as we are concerned, because we are not manufacturing it into anything further.
We may.
I just asked the Minister a moment ago what proportion of our production of sheepskins is utilised in manufacturing them into another condition here—either into leather of any kind, rugs, fell-mongering or any other form. Can he now give us an idea of the percentage of our production of these sheepskins, if any, that is utilised in industry at home? Is there any?
There is. Up to some time ago 100 per cent. practically of the sheepskins exported were fell-mongered here. There has been however, a rapid decline in the proportion of the sheepskins which were fell-mongered in this country, and the purpose of the Bill is to arrest that decline.
Can you give us any idea whether it is 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. of the whole production?
No.
Does it not appear to the Minister that on an important matter of this kind, he should acquaint himself of the facts as to the total production of a raw material in this country that he proposes to corner and not to let out of the country? Here on Second Reading he made an extraordinary statement that it is not going to affect the price of the carcases of the sheep, if the skins are taken off. He gave us a lecture in economics. God protect us from economics of that kind! When you take at least from 10 to 15 per cent. off the price of sheep at the present moment, by taking the hide off it, the Minister's economics is that you do not affect the price of that sheep.
No.
I am quoting you, and in the quotation I am using I do not understand myself, because I am quoting you. It is your voice, reechoed by me, that I cannot understand.
I do not recognise it.
I am not excited, but I am a bit surprised, though I have become so inured to it that I would be hardly surprised at anything coming from the benches opposite. I have seen the Minister thumping the table and saying one thing to-day and contradicting it the following day, because he knew he could not rely on the authority he produced. We are producing 25,000 sheepskins per week in this country. We are not manufacturing them into anything. Therefore those 25,000 sheepskins are the finished article as far as we are concerned. We are not attempting to do anything further with them. They are as much the finished article as a finished boot is the finished article of a boot factory. When we have no factory in operation to treat these 25,000 sheepskins they are the finished article in our scheme of production. The Minister thinks that he is going to make money out of these 25,000 sheepskins by stopping people from selling them. He thinks that because they will be glutted up there, 25,000 on 25,000 week after week, somebody will start making something out of them. They will; the dogs will have a good feed out of them.
We want to get down to realities in this case. Good fat hoggets are making from 42/- to 48/- apiece. The value of their skins is from 6/- to 7/- apiece. If the butcher is not allowed to market the skins and realise 6/- or 7/- on the skin of each hogget, will he sell his meat at the same price? Will he give to the producer of the sheep the same money? Of course, he will not. One thing or the other must happen. He will give a smaller price to the producer or he will charge more for his meat. The Minister is very slick in getting out of corners. On this very point he said here the last day that it was the export price for our produce in the British market that ruled the price here. He went off at a tangent from that to give us a lecture. I think that before the Minister started reading economics we knew economics better than he knows them to-day. Supposing that assumption of the Minister is correct, then the export price rules the price here. We will assume that. The butcher has to pay that ruled price. If he cannot dispose of the hide of the sheep, is he not going to add that 6/- or 7/- that he would get for the hide on to the price of the chops which he sells to the people of Dublin? Of course, he is. What a fool he is! The Minister's alternative is to do nothing with the sheepskin. Somebody will arise "this year, next year, sometime, never," and start manufacturing these skins into something else, into leather, perhaps, the Minister said; into fell-mongering, perhaps, the Minister said. However, he has not taken any steps, before he closes the export market, to have the home market. The old country saying: "Do not throw out the dirty water until you get in the clean" seems not to have been learned by the Minister. Then, in that position, of course, there will be no consumption at home. They have to be exported still, and God help the butcher that has a pile of skins and will not give a subscription to Fianna Fáil. The Minister may laugh sarcastically, but it will not be a laughing matter for the butcher or for the public. The butcher will look for a licence, but the local Fianna Fáil Cumann will be acquainted and they will be asked what foot does the butcher dig with, and if he does not dig with the Fianna Fáil foot he will get no licence, any more than the feeders of fat cattle will get licences.
They might dig with the two feet.
Ah, it will take you to do that, Tom.
I think that Deputy Belton has been a little hard on the Minister in this matter.
Not a bit.
This section is designed to facilitate the skinning of sheep in this country. The Minister has been as busy as a bee, since he came into office, skinning everybody in this country. He skinned the farmers. He skinned the civil servants. He skinned the public, and his colleague even to-day set himself the pious task of skinning you, Sir, of your reputation for honour and probity in your capacity as Chairman of the Public Appointments Commission.
That matter was closed.
I wish, Sir, that it would be closed, but I am sure that the members of the Public Appointments Commission will not regard it as closed. As I was saying, why stay the hand of the Minister when he comes to skin the sheep? Give him time. He is engaged in the pious task of facilitating that operation, but in the process of that operation he proposes to take power to issue licences. Now, in connection with that general matter of licensing, I object to giving the Minister for Industry and Commerce power to control export or imports into this country or out of it by licence. Under a previous Act powers were given to the Minister to issue licences to import flour free of duty into this country. Shortly after those powers were vested in the Minister, a gentleman in Donegal approached the Minister and, according to the Parliamentary answer which he gave in this House, this gentleman approached him with the representation that he required flour for use in his bakehouse. Accordingly, the Minister, acting under the licensing powers he had, issued a licence for the importation of flour, free of duty, for use in this bakery.
The importation of flour is not relevant.
No, Sir, but if I can prove abuse under the previous licensing powers, that is surely a potent argument for withholding power to issue licences in this.
The administration of the flour licences is not relevant. Detailed questions on the Minister's administration of licensing powers might be raised on the Vote for the Minister's Department.
The Deputy should get his facts right first.
My purpose is to represent to the House that, to my knowledge, on a previous occasion we gave the Minister powers to license imports; that he abused those powers, and I desire to inform the House of the circumstances under which he abused those powers, and on that basis to ask the House to withhold from the Minister power to issue licences of a similar character. I submit that I cannot do that unless I lay before the House the facts of the case to which I refer and give the Minister a full opportunity of repudiating the fact.
The Minister will not be allowed to go into details on this matter, and neither will the Deputy. It is not relevant.
Well, Sir, I make the charge that powers to issue licences on a previous occasion were abused by the Minister. Am I to take it from you, Sir, that I am not free to refer to the abuse I charge the Minister with?
Not on this section. It would be relevant on the Minister's Vote.
Well, the House knows very well, Sir, the text of what I was about to say. Accordingly, Sir, I bow to your ruling. I invite the Minister to bear clearly in mind all that I was about to say.
Impossible!
I pass on now to the question of cattle licences. Deputy Major Myles to-day asked a question as to the allocation of licences and as to the powers conferred on the Minister.
For the information of the Deputy, sheepskins are not got from cattle.
When did the Minister learn that?
I mention it for the Deputy's information.
I thought that, perhaps, the Minister had been farming in his own constituency recently, cutting hay on the roofs of the houses and sowing wheat on Arran Quay.
And the prairies of Cork Hill.
Yes, and the pastures of Patrick Street. I was about to refer to the licensing powers which a colleague of the Minister has under the quota Acts, and it is common knowledge all over the country that those powers are being corruptly used, and corruptly used in order to grease the path of the John Browns and the other——
A Deputy
Skinners.
——Yes, and the other skinners, as my colleague very aptly interposes, who are at present on retainer by the Attorney-General's Office.
Neither the Minister for Agriculture nor the Attorney-General has introduced this measure. The Deputy must realise that he is making a Second Reading speech.
Sir, I am speaking now with strict reference to Section 2 of the Bill, which provides——
The Ceann Comhairle is the judge in that matter.
I do not wish to mention anything outside Section 2, which provides power to issue licences, and I submit that in every case in which such powers have been issued previously those powers have been grossly abused and that we ought not to give the Minister any further powers. As I say, they have powers to allot by licence quotas for the export of cattle to the British market, and those powers are being grossly abused. I asked the Minister for Agriculture here, by way of a Parliamentary Question, to state the quota that was allotted to a certain individual, and the proportion that that quota bore to that individual's shipments in the previous year. The Minister for Agriculture got up and said: "It is not in the public interest to do so and the information will not be forthcoming." So that this House has absolutely no check whatever on the corrupt transactions that go on as between the Ministers who have those powers and their supporters and the supporters of their back benchers. So far as the proprietors of these 25,000 or 250,000 sheepskins are concerned, it is not going to provide the Minister with a very wide field for corruption. A very large part of the butchers in the country are behind the Minister already because they never bought sheep or butchered them since they first used a cleaver. The Minister has reduced the price of meat more than ever before, but there may be a few recalcitrant butchers still in the country who take a long view of things, who have not yet come to heel and done homage at the altar of Fianna Fáil, and the powers are sufficient to bring anyone to heel who is anxious not to suffer financial loss. It must be remembered, however, that the commodity in question is a highly perishable commodity. It has got to be handled comparatively soon, or it may very seriously deteriorate. Therefore the licensing power becomes all the more potent in the Minister's hand with his record behind him and with the record of each of his colleagues who got similar power behind him.
I think it is pure folly on the part of this House to give him those powers unless we are determined that it is in the public interest to give him sufficient rope to hang himself with and, mind you, there is a great deal to be said for that course. When you cannot convert a man, when you cannot turn a man from his evil ways, one of the ways to make an end of it is to give him the fullest possible liberty in the certainty that he will end up on the scaffold with a rope around his neck pretty soon. So long as we have the Fianna Fáil Party here—thank Heavens, it looks as if we will not have them too long; there are not many of them here now, they cannot even raise a laugh; they are waiting in the library ready for the summons to come up—we cannot stop him by the votes of this House. Therefore, there is a good deal to be said for giving him all the licensing powers we can, and his abuse, his corrupt administration of those powers will, sooner or later, stir up opinion in the country and will hurry on the eminently desirable day when he and his colleagues will be forced to go to the country and, in a general election, we will be able once and for all to put an end to the type of abuse that is growing up in this country during the last two years as regards the licensing legislation which has been principally sponsored by the Minister who sits there now.
I want to suggest to Deputy Dillon that he should be a little less free with his charges of corruption. He may think it is in the interests of his Party to make wild allegations of that kind here on every suitable occasion, but he should endeavour to bear in mind that, whether he likes it or not, the allegation is being made against a Government elected by the Irish people, and that controls an Irish Civil Service. It may be of some temporary advantage to him to bandy those charges about, but in the end it is the country which is going to suffer, because he is deliberately endeavouring to create in the public mind, and in the mind of persons outside this country who may read the reports of this House or the daily papers, that the Government of the country is corrupt, and that the Civil Service is corrupt.
No. I said nothing about the Civil Service.
These licensing provisions are administered by civil servants and I think we can say that the Civil Service here is freer from corruption than any Civil Service in the world.
Deputy Dillon rose.
The Deputy will sit down.
I will not sit down. On a point of order. I made no reference to the Civil Service good, bad or indifferent. I referred to the Minister and his colleagues.
That is not a point of order.
The Deputy can now take his medicine. He came here and, with reckless irresponsibility flung out these charges.
I repeat every one of them.
Can I be allowed to speak? He made those charges thinking only that by making them he could get some temporary, petty Party advantage and regardless of the damage he might do to the prestige and credit of the country. I appeal to the colleagues of the Deputy, who have some sense of responsibility, that they might, having regard to the national decency and national dignity, endeavour to suppress him when he seeks to take that line again. That is all I have to say about him. I think otherwise that the type of speech we have heard is beneath contempt.
Those remarks might be addressed to the Minister for Local Government.
The speech we had from Deputy Belton was based on a misconception of the position that this Bill is designed to deal with. It will not be the position that, exportation being prohibited, 20,000 sheepskins are going to be piled up in this country every week. I informed the Deputy the other day that there are fell-mongering firms in this country. Some ten years ago there were about a dozen fell-mongering firms in this country all doing well, all employing a not inconsiderable number of male workers. During the period of the Cumann na nGaedheal blight most of those firms went out of existence. We are now trying to revive them. Fortunately, the change of Government took place before they were all gone. The three strongest firms in the trade managed to survive ten years of Cumann na nGaedheal Government and are still in existence. They have been struggling along in anticipation of protective measures, of getting from the Government the assistance required to enable them to re-establish their industry in this country. Those three firms are still there. It is our hope that when the Bill is brought into operation some of the other firms that went out of existence while Cumann na nGaedheal were in office will come back into existence and re-establish this industry in the towns in which they were formerly established—Carlow, Limerick, Mullingar, Mallow and Clonmel, as well as Dublin and Cork. Those firms are capable of handling by far the greater quantity of the sheepskins available weekly here. Until all these sheepskins can be handled, licences for the export of the surplus will be issued. As soon as those firms or other firms are able to handle that surplus no further licences will be issued.
The purpose is to ensure that the fell-mongering will be done here, but the products of that fell-mongering industry, namely, pelts and the scoured wool, will be exported. So that the same volume of exports will be maintained, but instead of raw sheepskins going out, pelts and scoured wool will be exported. These are of greater value than raw sheepskins, the greater value being represented by the labour applied to them in the Saorstát. There will be no difficulty in securing a market for those products. In fact, the demand at present is substantially in excess of the supply, with the result that there was during last year a 50 per cent. increase in price. The operation of the Bill will not, as the Deputy appeared to assume, have the effect of making sheepskins valueless. There may be some diminution in the inflated price——
Inflated price!
——that operated here during certain periods.
The present price?
I do not want to say anything about the present price, but the position has been that English fell-mongers, by offering a higher price than Saorstát fell-mongers considered the market justified, having regard to the price of pelts, were able to put the Saorstát fell-mongers out of business and corner the supply for themselves. Whatever diminution in price may follow will be of minor consequence and will not affect the price of sheep. The statement I made was that the price which will be paid for sheep will be determined by the export price. I always regarded it as something which all Parties in the House accepted as an axiom that where there is an exportable surplus the export price determined the home price. Apparently the Party opposite are changing their views on that matter. Their economic theories, like their principles, appear to be variable at discretion. Assuming that, in their lucid moments, they are able to grasp that essential fact, then it will be quite clear to them that whatever effect this Bill and the restrictions imposed on the export of sheepskins under it may have on the price of sheepskins, they will have no effect on the price of sheep which are exported with their skins on them.
Deputy Dillon, of course, was completely misinformed also about the purport of the Bill. The operation of this Bill will not result in one more sheep being skinned in this country than would otherwise be the case. That is some consolation to the supporters of the Party opposite. If there are any more sheep skinned here it will be because the people here will be buying more mutton; otherwise, this Bill will not affect the number of sheepskins. It is merely designed to secure that a supply of sheepskins will be available to the fell-mongering industry to enable that industry to be revived. That is, I think, a very useful development. I have no doubt that in 12 months' time the Party opposite will be endeavouring to conceal their opposition to this Bill, just as they are now endeavouring to conceal their opposition to most of the other Bills which were introduced by this Government during the past two years.
I just want to raise a few points. The Minister said, in effect, if he did not say entirely, that the fell-mongers came to him and said that the price paid for Irish raw sheepskins by British fell-mongers was inflated, and was crushing them out of production. I think that, substantially, is an accurate interpretation of what the Minister said. Before he came to this decision the Minister consulted the fell-mongers; he consulted his Department; he consulted the Department of Agriculture; but he did not consult the sheepskin producers—neither the primary producers of sheepskins nor the secondary producers, the butchers. I want to put this case to the Minister; I have bought about 40 tons of artificial manure this year. I will want about 50 more. That means I will spend between £550 and £600 on artificial manures. Supposing I came to the Minister and said to him: "Those manure manufacturers whom you are protecting are charging me an inflated price for manure; they will put me out of production," would the Minister tell them to cut down the price? No; of course, he would not. When the farmer is concerned, the Minister consults the Department, and consults the fell-mongers, and the budding manufacturers; he then proceeds, not to skin sheep, but to skin the people.
The Minister knows that, apart from Party affiliations, for every inch of the ground he would go towards protection and the starting of any industry in this country, I would go an inch and a half. I travelled the ground before he ever came out on protection; in many cases I helped, with others, to show him the way. There is no danger that in 12 months we will regret the doing of anything which is successful by his Ministry, or by any other Ministry. There are two ways of doing everything; there is a wise way and a foolish way. The Minister is playing the fool and trying to look wise. The statement made by the Minister is what I am going on. I would accept the Minister's statement if he said that there were 5,000 or 10,000 sheepskins being used in this industry here; that there should be protection to use up all this raw material; and that a sheepskin which we are selling now for 6/- or 7/- would, by dressing it and putting labour into it, sell at 15/- or £1; but he does not give us that information. He has not told us what the value of this 6/- sheepskin would be when Irish labour has been put into it. At present we have a market for the undressed skin; the Minister says it is an inflated market. He is not so strong of opinion that for the manufactured article from that raw sheepskin we will have any kind of market, inflated or otherwise. He should tell us that before he asks us to give him the power he wants under this section.
I have attended as many protectionist meetings in the last 20 or 30 years as any man in Ireland, and I have never yet heard any protectionist advocate the prohibition of the export of a raw material unless we were ready to use up that raw material here, or unless we were, with a little more effort, ready to use it up; say, for example, that we were using it to the extent of 60 per cent., 70 per cent. or 80 per cent., and that with a little more effort we could use it all, and that the pinch during the transition period would not be felt. The Minister will not get any economist or anybody else in this country to back him in this matter except the fellmongers who want to get the stuff for nothing at the expense of other people. That is not economics; it is not nationalism; it is not patriotism; it is not government. He consults those people who want something for nothing, but he does not consult the people who are producing that something, and want a fair price for it. That is on his own admission. He told us that during the war years a lot of those skins were being used up. He did not even put a figure on what was being used of the available sheepskins when fellmongering was booming here.
All.
All? There was none exported.
No.
Will you put a figure on what is being used now?
I do not know.
Do you not think it was your business to find out before you put this up to us?
It is not possible to find out.
If it is not possible to find out, it is not possible to put this Bill through, or for any man honestly to vote on it until he knows what he is voting for. The Minister has put up a Bill to this House, and is asking this House to vote on a Bill, in connection with which he himself does not know the material facts— and it is not possible to find out! There are three fellmongers—I can assume from what the Minister said— that the Minister consulted. Can they tell how many sheepskins they dress in a week or in a year? Is it that the amount is so small that the Minister would rather affect ignorance of the matter than acknowledge the smallness of the amount of sheepskins dressed? I take it they are negligible. I take it that it is like the Rosary beads factory in Smithfield; there are three aliens working in the Rosary beads factory and none of them is a Christian. I could bring him down blindfolded and show them to him.
You cannot, on this Bill.
That is a good one.
I will show them to you, Tom. They are in my constituency. You would never think it would happen in Dear Dirty Dublin, the capital of the Island of Saints and Scholars.
Mr. Kelly
And farmers.
This is the farmers' skinning Bill. You will know more after this. You might get some down in an out-of-the-way place in West Cork, but you will get none of them on the plains of Dublin city.
They are wolves in sheep's clothing.
I think if the Minister is really serious about this he should give us those facts. If he can show that a fair percentage of those skins is being used up in this country, then he has made a case; he has made a prima facie case, a substantial case; and I do not think anybody would be justified in voting against this Bill. My opposition to-day is not inspired by a selfish desire to get a better price for sheep, because I do not farm in sheep. I have no interest in sheep beyond the Minister's interest—to get a cheap chop or a cheap leg of mutton. I have no productive interest in sheep. I would be as interested as the Minister in developing the industry if the right method were adopted. You have £40,000 worth of raw material; you have no consumption for it here—none whatever. If the export market is shut down in the morning, is there anyone to buy a sheepskin in the City of Dublin for use in the City of Dublin? There will not be a Jew in Dublin who will not be buying sheepskins next week and making a corner in them and every Deputy knows they have cornered the trade in Dublin.
I know one Jew who will not buy them, anyway.
That remark of mine had no reference to Deputy Briscoe, and I am sure Deputy Briscoe knows it.
All right, Paddy.
We do not want a corner in our trade, and for every sheep that will be skinned next week the Minister will be bombarded with applications for licences. Sure the thing is monstrous on the face of it. Deputy Dillon dealt with another aspect of this matter and I dealt with it also myself already. I do not want to labour that point, but I do not want the Minister to get away with it that our opposition to this thing is opposition to industrial development.
Of course it is.
The Minister is in business in Dublin. How would he like somebody to come up to his place, lock his door and say to him: "You cannot supply your customers"? Would the Minister be satisfied if such a thing happened to him? Would he not naturally ask: "What am I to do?" The Minister would be in the position that he could not supply his customers. Would the Minister smile? Of course he would not smile. The thing is a joke. Anybody who is seriously interested in the country or who knows the country or who has read the elements of economics would be ashamed to stand sponsor for a Bill of this kind. We are not opposing industrial development, but the Minister is clogging the wheels of industrial development either through design or malice.
It seems to be rather an axiom of the Fianna Fáil Party that industrial development in this country cannot take place in any way without doing a certain amount of injury to the agricultural industry. Hence we are told in the matter of the economic war that the farmers must suffer for a time, but they say: "Look at what we are doing industrially; look at the factories we are raising and look at the home market we are cultivating." This Bill seems to be drafted with the same kind of mentality. We should have some more information upon it. This is not a Protectionist Bill. It is not a Bill to protect the market. It is a Bill to destroy the market. It is a Bill to destroy the sheep trade, a trade that brings in a good deal of solid income to this country. It was the Minister for Finance who said that this trade of fellmongering could not be carried on here because the skins were not available except at prices at which they could not be purchased by the fellmongers. Hence it is that the export of these skins must be prohibited so that the fellmongers can buy them at any price or at the price they care to pay.
Has the Minister given any assurance or is he in a position to give any assurance that they will pay the export value of the skins? And if they pay the export value of the skins why not leave the market as it is? If the home fell-mongers are not able to pay for the locally produced skins on the basis of the export value it is difficult to see why a trade of this kind should be killed to subsidise the local fellmongers and to give them freedom to pay any price they like. That is my objection to this Bill and it is going to hit the primary producer of these skins. The farmer is going to be hit by the creation of a corner in a product of this kind. To that extent I object to the Bill.
The matter of the licensing has been raised and certain questions arise. I do not approve of this matter of licensing. The question of making licences available to people interested is not carried out with fair discrimination. Perhaps it is difficult to expect that it would be carried out with fair discrimination. Perhaps the Minister cannot divest himself of his Party affiliations. If six men come looking for licences and three are supporters of Fianna Fáil and the three others supporters of Fine Gael it is easy to realise what is to happen. All the betting will be that the licences will be given to the backers of the Government before they are given to any others. It is on the ground that this is destroying the very lucrative market there was for these products and the very lucrative trade that there was in them that I object to the Bill.
At an early stage in this Bill I said I objected to giving licensing powers to the Minister because the administration of the licensing powers the Minister already has is corrupt. I want to repeat that. The administration of these licensing powers is corrupt and grossly corrupt. I never referred to any member of the Civil Service in this connection nor do I refer to them now. I am entirely satisfied that if the administration of the licensing powers were left in the hands of the civil servants there would be no corruption. But they are not left in their hands and there is continual discrimination in the granting of these licences in favour of the Fianna Fáil Party, and not only in licences but in everything else. That matter has been raised again and again and I shall raise it as often as I can. I shall raise it on the Vote of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I shall raise it on the Vote of the Minister for Agriculture. I invite the Minister for Industry and Commerce now and the Minister for Agriculture to submit the administration of the granting of licences for imports free of duty and the allocation of licences under the Quota Acts to an impartial investigation by a Committee of this House.
I will undertake to submit it to an investigation of the members of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party who have had dealings with my Department in the matter of licences. I will undertake to submit it to a Committee composed of Deputy Dockrell, Deputy John Good and other Deputies in the Opposition who in relation to their ordinary business have had dealings with my Department and I will abide by the decision of that Committee.
Very well, I accept that.
Deputy O'Neill nevertheless made the much rottener suggestion that it was only natural that the Government should be corrupt. That suggestion is no less contemptible than the suggestion made by Deputy Dillon. The Government in office here was elected by the Irish people, and the Executive Council is elected by the representatives of the Irish people. The Government is typical of the Irish people, and the charge which Deputies are making is that the people of this country are naturally corrupt. If they think that is going to enhance the credit of this country, or to enhance the dignity of the country, or raise the opinion which other people hold about us, they have an extremely warped mentality. I invite Deputies before they make charges again to consult the members of their own Party, who have personal knowledge of how these matters are worked.
I would like to draw a distinction between political corruption and political favouritism.
I know of no such distinction.
Will the Minister say how he proposes to allocate or allot the export licences? Will the Minister grant licences to export to anybody who applies for these licences, provided, of course, that he is satisfied there is a surplus? For instance, you start at the end of a week and you have 20,000 or 25,000 skins to export. How do you arrive at the percentage for export? A certain amount is required at home. You cannot give a 100 per cent. licence to export. You must allow for home requirements. Is there any datum to work upon? Are you going to give a licence for 60, 70, 80, 90 or 95 per cent. of the quantity required to any man?
There are a limited number of firms engaged in the business of exporting sheepskins, and licences for whatever quantity it is decided shall be exported will be issued to those firms pro rata.
Does the Minister propose to grant licences for export to traders in skins only?
To the people engaged in the business of exporting sheepskins.
I think that some butchers export skins.
Only a very small number of people export.
Would the Minister consider representation from the butchers if application were made to him?
Certainly.
Sections 2 to 5, inclusive, agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment.
Agreed to take Report Stage now.
Report and Final Stage agreed to.
Bill ordered to be sent to the Seanad.