I move that, pursuant to the provisions of any Act of the present Session to authorise the refund by way of drawback of the Customs duty paid on coal and certain like substances which were in stock at the cesser of that duty, it is expedient to authorise the payment to registered importers of a drawback at the rate of 5/- the ton on all coal and on solid fuel composed wholly or mainly of coal or coal dust imported into Saorstát Eireann, which were in the ownership or possession of such registered importers on the expiration of the 24th day of January, 1936.
Committee on Finance. - Finance (Special Drawback) Bill, 1936—Money Resolution.
Certain amendments have been put down, but I understand that they have been ruled out of order. I would like to discuss the equity of that.
Not the ruling of them out of order?
Oh, no, but the equity of drawing of Money Resolution as closely as this is drawn. The intention of this measure generally was to do justice to certain people who had incurred certain expenditure as a result of the tax of 5/- existing on coal up to the 14th February. In connection with the taking off of that tax, the managers of the labour exchanges in the country went to coal importers, and in some instances to coal merchants, and, at least in the case of a number of coal merchants in Castleblayney, asked them to reduce the price of coal from the 14th February by 5/- a ton. From the approaches made, and the documents placed in front of them, they thought that they were being given a Government order to reduce the price of the coal that they had then in stock by 5/-, and they signed the agreement. They have since made representations to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, but have been told that they did not come within the proposed scheme for the refund of 5/- per ton. So here we have a general class of people in the country who are being done out of this 5/-. In that class you have a certain number of people who, as a result of what I may call misrepresentation from a Government Department, reduced the price of their coal from the 14th February, on the understanding that they were to get a refund of the 5/- on the stocks they had in hands. Now these people are told that they are not to get that reduction. I would like to hear from the Minister for Finance what is the equity of this business, and whether he proposes to introduce an amendment in order to restore the 5/- to the merchants in the country who had substantial stocks of coal on hand on the 14th February.
I would have something to say on this matter, but Deputy Mulcahy has put, in a few words, anything I wanted to say, and I shall wait to hear what the Minister may say in reply.
I think the House heard me already on the Second Stage of the Bill. I am prepared to conclude now if called upon to do so.
The House is in Committee. If there is no objection I shall call on the Minister to conclude.
I object most strenuously.
Then I think we had better hear the case to be made. As I pointed out, we already had a full discussion on the Second Reading of the Bill, and I think it is unusual to open up such a discussion again on the Money Resolution.
But the Minister had information that managers of the labour exchanges in the country actually went to coal merchants and put documents before them leaving them under the belief that this was a Government order to reduce the price of the coal they had in stock, and leaving them under the belief that they would get a refund of 5/- per ton.
I have no information in regard to that matter such as the Opposition claims to have, but I do know that an official announcement was issued from the Government Bureau on the 25th January, indicating that it was proposed to reduce the duty on coal held in stock by registered importers on the 14th February. If any people were under a misapprehension they could have communicated with us. At any rate, I gather that the people in Castleblayney knew they were not registered importers.
Surely the Minister will admit that if it was possible for officials in the Department of Industry and Commerce to be under a misapprehension, then ordinary people can be excused if they were under a misapprehension in the matter, as a result of a conversation that took place between those people and the merchants, leaving them under the impression that they were to get this 5/- back. Surely they deserve some consideration in this matter. However, that is only one aspect of the question. I would like the Minister to deal with the equity of the position where a registered importer has a depot in Cork and a distributing office, as against a Limerick merchant who is not a registered importer. The branch office of the Cork firm is going to get a refund in respect of the coal it has in stock, but the Limerick merchant is not going to get a refund. I should like the Minister to say something as to the equity of proceedings of that kind.
I dealt with that question on Second Reading. This is an attempt to have another Second Reading debate. The House has accepted the principle of the Resolution, which if it is drawn in narrow terms follows the custom of basing the Resolution on the long title of the Bill.
The House has not accepted the principle of the Resolution. The House allowed the Second Reading of the measure to go through because it had enshrined in it a proposal which was just to one class of the community. The House could not oppose that proposal of sectional justice simply because there was another class of the community to whom justice was not being done.
If the Minister's contention were held to be correct, it would be impossible for Deputies to say anything at all on the Resolution. We could not propose an amendment extending the principle, as that would be calculated to place an extra charge on the Exchequer. Discussion should be allowed on the Financial Resolution in order that the case may be argued in an orderly way that further and better provision ought to be made so as to permit of substantial justice being done to everybody. The plain reason for the Minister's attitude is very simple. As usual, the Minister for Finance lost his head, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce lost his head.
Did they make a bet about oranges?
They proceeded to flounder about, and they determined that the best thing they could do was to make this remission available to registered importers. There is evidence of that out of the Minister's own mouth. On Second Reading, he said that there were infinitely more registered coal importers than there were coal merchants, showing that he knew as much about the coal business as he knew about the Valencia oranges. Anybody who goes up and spins a story to him can get him to believe it, and then he acts on that representation. I believe that he thought he was doing substantial justice in providing for the registered coal importers. He thought that the vast majority of the people who deal in coal were registered coal importers and that by providing for them the remainder of the people engaged in the coal business would suffer only a trivial loss. Labouring under that misapprehension, he has made a grave mistake and done a substantial injustice. The coal merchants who are not registered coal importers far outnumber the coal merchants who are registered importers. The Minister has placed the registered coal importers in a very advantageous position for the purpose of competition in trade, and he has also penalised the coal merchants, scattered all over the country, who, in a desire to co-operate with him, laid in large stocks of coal and endeavoured to protect their immediate neighbourhood against any danger of shortage which would accrue if there were a coal strike in Great Britain. The Minister knows that as well as I do. The Government made it known pretty generally that they thought there might be a coal strike and that precautions should be taken, and the coal merchants of Letterkenny, Ballybofey and other towns laid in large stocks of coal to provide against that emergency. Within a week of the accumulation of these stocks of coal, the Government takes off the tax of 5/- a ton and demands that the remission be made forthwith all over the country. That is manifestly inequitable, and it arises from the ignorance of the Ministers responsible for drafting the law.
If it is possible to remedy that error of judgment, arising from incompetence and ignorance, I believe the Minister has the goodwill to remedy it, but, as he and his colleagues have frequently found, when they put their foot in it once, it is often very difficult to get it out. If they cannot get their feet out of this mess, then let some good, at least, come out of evil and let them learn from this example not to put their foot in it again, but to think for five minutes before they plunge into action. If they would only do that, it is highly improbable that they would find themselves in the awkward position in which they now are.
A point of some importance has been raised by the Minister and by Deputy Dillon as to the limits of discussion on a Money Resolution. The primary function of the Oireachtas is, the Chair considers, financial control. A Money Resolution affords opportunity for discussing all the aspects of the Bill which it covers. As to the suggestion that the debate is in the nature of a resumption of the Second Reading debate, I deprecate the suggestion, but the Chair should be loth to curtail discussion on a Money Resolution, Deputy Mulcahy was quite in order in raising now certain matters which he would be precluded from raising on the Committee Stage of the Bill.
Would I be out of order in suggesting that this is another occasion on which the Minister thrust his foot in it because he did not think for a minute?
Deputy Dillon talking about incompetence and ignorance reminds one of the old saw about Satan rebuking sin. I am not as prone to betting as Deputy Dillon is, but he did say that the number of coal merchants far exceeded the number of registered coal importers. As I said, I am not a betting man, but I am willing to give Deputy Dillon 2 to 1 in Spanish oranges that he does not know how many registered coal importers there are, and that he cannot at this moment tell the House how many coal merchants there are. He has led the House to believe that he has figures in his possession which will convict one Minister or another of ignorance and incompetence in regard to this matter. I know that it is difficult for the Deputy to sit in the House and remain silent. I shall give him an opportunity now of adducing to the House the facts upon which he based his statement.
I do not wish to say anything which would hurt anybody's feelings, but my reply to the Minister is: I do not know how many hairs there are on the Minister's head, and I do not know how many hairs there are on Deputy Donnelly's head, but I should risk the statement that there are more hairs on the Minister's head than there are on Deputy Donnelly's head, though I could not attempt to enumerate them in either case.
I think that that is fair enough.
It is a "hairy" reply.
That is exactly the situation.
The Deputy risked the statement about oranges.
There is no reference to oranges in this Resolution, nor to lemons.
The Minister should satisfy the House as to the equity of another aspect of this proposal. I notice that recently the Ministerial Press and Ministers are running into this betting business. Only the other day the Government organ found a reporter who found a coal merchant who offered to pay £10 to any one of three charitable organisations in the city if it could be proved that coal importers were making a profit of 2/4½ a ton on coal. The day after the Controller of Prices came along and with one sweep, the Minister for Industry and Commerce told us to-day, an order was made, after a little bit of persuasion or recommendation and 1/- went wallop off whatever profits less than 2/4½ a ton the poor importers were making. I am not impressed by that argument. I should like to put a case to the Minister on the Money Resolution before the House which proposes to give relief to registered importers only. Take the case of merchants who bought, when the 5/- tax was on. That 5/- has had to come off. Merchants have had no margin inside which to make any recoupment in respect of their loss on the tax. It does not seem to me to be so with coal importers.
There was an announcement recently that the Controller of Prices had intervened, saying that 37/- a ton was too much to charge bellmen at the present time. Whether by order, by suggestion or by recommendation the cost of coal to bellmen as sold by importers, was reduced by 1/- as a result of the action of the Controller. The Controller of Prices intervened on the question of prices to bellmen two years ago, when the import price of coal at the port was 21/4. He told the importers that a margin of 8/8 between the import price and the price at which they were selling to bellmen was unreasonably high.
The Chair must reluctantly intervene now. This Bill has nothing whatever to do with the Controller of Prices.
This is the sixth time the Deputy was told that.
I am only making a simple comparison of the position of importers and merchants. I wanted to say that if 8/8 was too much of a margin two years ago, when there was intervention recently by the Controller of Prices, after taking off the 5/- tax, importers were allowed to keep a margin of 10/9, so that they are 2/1 a ton better off in sales to bellmen to-day than they were two years ago. That class has been particularly picked out by this Money Resolution to get the assistance and relief that is enshrined in it. The people who are being assisted owing to the lifting of the tax are the people who seem to have been best able to soften the blow of the tax. That action makes the iniquity of the proposal all the more unreasonable.
Deputy Dillon talked about coal, and about the stocks that were in Letterkenny and Stranorlar. Surely it is only a month ago, and hardly that, when the Deputy might have seen in the Press a statement that there was a scarcity of coal in Letterkenny and Ballybofey.
A Deputy
They were hoarding.
It was stated they were holding on to the coal to sell at a big price. That was the reason that came from that report from County Donegal. Suppose the position was the other way around. This has been one of the luckiest strikes that Deputy Mulcahy has made for a long time. I do not know what the Opposition would have done if Deputy Mulcahy had not fastened on to the price of coal in the interests of the poor.
The price of coal does not enter into this discussion.
It was a lucky find for the Deputy.
It should not enter into this discussion.
Suppose it was the other way, and that the additional tax had been put on, would Deputy Mulcahy come in here with the same enthusiasm and advocate that point of view if merchants raised the price of coal? He cannot have it both ways. If a rebate was given to importers I should like to hear Deputy Mulcahy's explanation of the position then. He is taking a great interest in the position of merchants and importers. What special machinery has he in mind that could be devised to force importers to hand on any margin to the merchants? I wonder if the Deputy has studied that or if he is able to throw any light on that side of the question.
If the Deputy will tell me what he thinks importers have to hand on to the merchants I will suggest a way.
The importers have got a rebate of 5/- a ton and the Deputy's case is that that rebate should be handed to the merchants.
No.
I understood the Deputy to make that case.
No. If there is an importer in Cork with 100 tons of coal on hands, and if he has a subsidiary store in some town in County Limerick in which there are 200 tons, consider the position of another merchant in some town in County Limerick who gets coal from the Cork importer, and who has 200 tons on hands on which he had to pay the 5/- tax. On such stocks as were on hands on February 14, merchants reduced prices by 5/-, and the importer, in respect to stocks in Cork and in the Limerick town got a refund of 5/- a ton, while the other merchant with 200 tons in stock will not get it, although he has not only paid the 5/- tax to the importer but, if the position was examined, has paid 6/- or 6/6. Two months after the tax went on there was an unexplained rise in the price of coal charged to bellmen in Dublin. I am talking of bellmen's prices only because these are the prices that are easily ascertainable for good standard household coal.
The best way to talk about the question is to get the average consumer to think that you are the champion of his cause.
It is of interest to the country and to every consumer who gets in coal by the ton. You should hear what is said about people who say that the increase in the price of coal is really measured by bellmen's prices. They add 10/- more.
And every time that Deputy Mulcahy rings the bell it means more kudos for Fine Gael.
Surely. That is all the best for the country.
There is a terrible lot of play-acting about this.
Deputies
Hear, hear!
You will not say "hear, hear" in a moment. The Minister has included in the Bill a rebate to coal importers. That seems to be accepted as bare justice but the Minister, either now or on the Second Reading, did not give any reasons why a refund should be given to importers and not to merchants. Surely coal or any commodity is not in production until it is in the hands of the consumer. Coal in the hands of an importer is no more in the hands of a consumer than coal in the hands of the producer. Whatever case could be made for one could be made for the other. If it is justice in the one case I hold it is justice in the other case. All this prevarication of Deputy Donnelly will not get away from that fact.
I am as anxious to see justice done as the Deputy.
The Deputy reversed the position, and asked if Deputy Mulcahy would advocate, if there was a tax of 10/- imposed instead of a reduction of 5/-, that the merchants should pay it.
Deputy Mulcahy knows it was done before.
If it was done when a tax was imposed in the past, and if the merchants got the benefit, did not the importers also get the benefit? Can Deputy Donnelly deny that they got it, and probably got a greater margin than the merchants got? If it is unsound because of that reason to advocate a rebate to the merchants, it is equally unsound to include in the Bill a rebate to the importers. As Deputy Dillon pointed out, everybody in this country was expecting a shortage of coal because of the threatened strike in Great Britain. Having no alternative, under the republican form of government, but to import coal from Great Britain, a strike in Great Britain meant no coal here. If importers and merchants filled their stores with coal in these circumstances were they not performing a national duty? What a howl would go up from the people if some morning we woke up and found no coal coming in from the country to which we had bound ourselves hand and foot to import from and from no other?
They were not doing it as philanthropists.
Take a little of your own medicine. There is no use in labouring the point. Anybody who honestly thinks for a moment sees it. The whole point boils down to this. It is conceded that it must be given to the importers. Why not give it to the merchants? I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce admitted that case and perhaps made some attempts to make the case, on the Second Reading, that they had to draw the line somewhere. I agree with that. But that line should only be drawn when it comes to the point where, if you cross it, the coal is in consumption. If a factory bought 500 tons of coal for its own use that coal was in consumption and that would be a reasonable place to draw the line.
You do not mind about the consumer at all. He is the person who matters.
That is the person whom the Deputy does not consider. The Deputy will not go as far as the consumer, he will not even give a rebate to the merchant who supplies the consumer.
I am putting it the other way round.
You cannot blow hot and cold. You are definitely not going to give any refund to the consumer. I am not advocating that the consumer should not get it. The reasonable line of demarcation between production and consumption is at the point where the trader parts with the coal to the consumer. If it were practicable to go into every cellar and examine the amount of coal in it, a refund should be given; but if the Minister said that was not practicable I would agree with it. It is not practicable when we consider the number of cellars with a ton, or two tons, or three tons, or five tons of coal in them in this city, and the other cities and towns in the country, bought in for consumption. We have to draw the line, and I think that would be a reasonable place to draw it.
Merchants who have a couple of hundred tons in their yards paid the tax on that in the inclusive price at which they bought it. They have to sell that coal. If they do not get a refund, they will lose that 5/- tax. Their competitors, the importers, can drop their prices immediately and have the same margin of profit as before. Deputy Mulcahy says they have a greater profit. I do not know, because I have not gone into the figures closely. I am dealing entirely with the principle. I suggest that when the Minister made up his mind to give a refund to the importers he should have extended that principle to the merchants. There was no use in his looking for information on the 21st January in connection with something that came into operation on the 20th January. The Government have many organisations throughout the country which could have procured that information for them. Before the Minister made it public that the 5/- duty would be remitted, he should have taken stock of all the coal in the merchants' yards and in the importers' yards. Whatever information he got about the importers, he could as easily have got about the merchants.
There is no need to labour the principle too much as the Minister sees it. I understood that the Minister and his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, admitted the principle on the Second Reading, and that the only excuse they gave for not including the merchants was the difficulty of ascertaining what stocks they had. That being so, I consider that the Minister handled the situation very badly.
Once you had ascertained what stocks the merchants had, you would go no further, if you were Minister?
I do not want to give the Deputy an opportunity of playing to the gallery and saying that he is for the consumer. The Deputy is not for the consumer; he is many degrees away from him. He has not got over the merchants, big or small, to get to the consumer. I would say in reply to the Deputy that the same principle operates in the case of merchants for a refund as operates in the case of importers. Whatever reason there is for refunding the tax to the importers, there is precisely the same reason for refunding it to the merchants. I should be glad to hear the Deputy drawing a distinction between the two, as in both cases the coal is in production. The coal is in production till it is taken over for consumption. It is in production while in the possession of the importer; it is equally in production while it is in the possession of the merchant. When it leaves the merchant's yard and goes to a firm which is going to use it, it is then in consumption. That is a definite line of demarcation.
There is nothing in the Bill admitting the principle that the consumer should get a refund, but there is a provision in the Bill to give the refund to the importer. I cannot see why that principle should not be extended to the merchant who is equally in production with the importer. I want to emphasise this point, that the Deputy's innuendo or insinuation is that my concern is with the importer and the merchant and that I would not extend it to the consumer. Does the Deputy advocate extending it to the consumer? If he does, I will support him. Does he advocate that now?
Why should Deputy Belton wait for me to advocate it?
Why does not Deputy Donnelly's boss advocate it? Why is it not advocated in the Bill? If it were possible to put in an amendment extending it to the consumer, I am quite sure that Deputy Smith and Deputy Donnelly who have thrown in interjections, would go into the lobby and vote against it.
I hope they would be intelligent enough to do that.
If I were looking for intelligence I would go to somebody who had more intelligence than I had myself. I certainly would not go to the Minister for it. If he has enough intelligence for himself he is very lucky.
Apparently Cumann na nGaedheal had too much when they gave Deputy Belton away.
Nobody could give you away, because you could not be kicked away. You stick on there to your job. I will accept the Minister as having far superior intelligence to me if he can give this House a sound explanation as to why an importer of coal is entitled to a rebate of 5/- a ton and the merchant who bought coal off that importer, and who still has it in his store waiting to sell it to somebody else, is not entitled to any rebate. If he can give a sound explanation of that he certainly has intelligence superior to mine, and his powers of perception are far superior to mine. But the Minister gets away from that. I asked Deputies Donnelly and Smith not to wave the flag of the poor consumer at all. These Deputies see the game. I would be very glad to hear the Minister dealing with that point, for in reality that is the sole point in this whole discussion.
I wish to present this case from a slightly different angle from that of the previous speakers. I regard this Bill from a slightly different standpoint. Most of the Deputies who have spoken, whether they meant it or not, have been possessed by one idea—that there is a clear-cut distinction between the coal importer and the coal merchant. That is not so so far as my county is concerned. I hold in my hand circulars of which I presume the Minister for Industry and Commerce has got copies. They are from people in Castleblayney and Ballybay. For the information of Deputies, I should like to give a few particulars, being as I am so near the Border. I will take the town of Monaghan, for example. Every coal merchant in the town of Monaghan is a registered importer of coal. That is because the Minister for Industry and Commerce, owing to its convenience, allowed imports of coal across the land frontier up to last year. Those people in the town of Monaghan and along that section of the country are coal importers and coal merchants at the same time. But the towns of Ballybay and Castleblayney are on a different line. They are on the line from Dundalk to Clones. They never had any need to become registered importers. They dealt directly with the coal as they got it. I am talking now of my own county, and I am giving an example of two different types of merchants who are dealing with coal. On the one side you have the coal importer who, under the terms of the Bill, would be entitled to a drawback or rebate, whereas the coal merchant who bought all his stocks from the importer would not be entitled to this rebate of 5/-. These two classes are of course operating in the same area; one might call them distributors to neighbours in that area. In the matter of contracts with local asylums, the practice has been that wherever Government interference came in—that is, in either putting taxes on it or taking off taxes—the amount of these taxes was added to the contracts, or vice versa in cases where the taxes were reduced. But now in this particular case we have the fact that the manager of the local labour exchange called on these merchants in Castleblayney on the 24th January last and asked them to sign a circular bearing the Government's stamp agreeing to reduce the price of coal by 5/- a ton. That, to my mind, was an act unprecedented in its operation—that people should be asked to sign a circular to reduce their coal prices by 5/- a ton and asked to do this officially. One would expect that such an order would not be given unless the Government contemplated making some concession to these coal merchants. That is the case that has been put up by those people. I think it is very reasonable, when the Government interferes with the normal course of business, asking the merchants to reduce their prices by 5/- a ton—and the merchants took this as a compulsory order—that they should be given a corresponding relief. Now it appears they have not been given any relief whatsoever.
I do not think Deputy Donnelly should accuse me of trying to get any kudos for Fine Gael from it, but I only want to point out the direction in which this leads. Why should we give such a concession to a coal importer who is also a coal merchant and leave the coal merchants who are not importers without any concession? If the rebate is good for one it is equally good for the other. Some Deputy pointed out earlier this evening that some time before the 24th January a strike was threatened in the coal mining areas in England. Naturally, merchants were anxious to be in a position to serve their customers. They were not doing it for nothing, but, after all, a man in business wants to be in a position to supply stuff to his customers. These people put in stocks of coal, and like a bolt from the blue this change came and 5/- a ton was allowed on the stocks of the importers, but nothing was taken off the stocks of those people who had large quantities of coal in their stores. We all know that the ordinary business man must take his chance. Here you have the position where a Government official appears with an official order and goes to the merchants and says: "You must reduce your coal by 5/- a ton from to-day." Surely under these circumstances there should be something given to these men to recoup them for their loss. That is my point of view in this matter. It is only reasonable that when there are stocks of coal that can be certified in the merchants' stores on the 24th January, that these merchants and distributors of coal have just as good a right to the rebate as the coal importer. None of us believe that the coal importer is in the business for the love of it. But if he is importing the coal and paying the tax and putting that tax on to the merchant, why should a rebate be given to him and none to the coal merchant or distributor?
Deputy Belton described the arguments of the Government Party as playacting. It was almost as good a word for it as anything else. Certainly there is no logic in either the Minister's defence of this proposal or in the defence of any Deputy who spoke on that side. If the Minister has to agree to a drawback at all, then he should certainly not discriminate as to certain classes of persons who are entitled to that drawback. If X is entitled to a drawback. on certain coal which he retails, having already paid the tariff which has now been remitted, then certainly Y, who trades in exactly the same coal on which the same tax has been paid, is entitled to the same privilege. The Minister's only defence, as far as I can see, was that it would be difficult to get information amongst the several coal traders in this country. The merchants and coal traders all over the country are just as reliable as the average importer, and measures could be adopted to estimate correctly the amount of coal they had in stock on 24th January, just as measures have been arranged to estimate the quantity which importers had. There would be a little difference in it, but not very much. The real reason behind the whole argument of the Minister—which is devoid of logic—is that the Minister, having tried to bamboozle everybody that he was giving a drawback on the coal which was imported and not retailed, is trying to save money for the revenue by a subterfuge. That is the long and short of it. He is saving, by subterfuge, at the expense of the unfortunate retailers in this country, who are in exactly the same position as the importers to whom he is giving the privilege.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolution reported and agreed to.
I hope the Minister is quite clear as to the principle that has been subscribed to.
I do not know.