I move:—
Go ndeonta suim na raghaidh thar £35,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1937, chun Deontais-i-gCabhair chun Forbairt na Móna.
That a sum not exceeding £35,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st March, 1937, for a Grant-in-Aid for Peat Fuel Development.
Deputies will have noted that on the face of the Estimate the following note occurs:—
"This grant will be paid over to a deposit account from which advances will be made to the Peat Fuel Company, Limited, by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in such sums as he may from time to time determine. The amount advanced will be secured by a debenture charged on all the assets of the company and will be repayable at such times and on such terms and conditions as the Minister for Finance, after consultation with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, may determine at the date of the advances or subsequently."
It is, perhaps, desirable to make it clear to Deputies that the Peat Fuel Company, Ltd., referred to there, is not the Turf Development Board which was established by the Government and which is financed annually by moneys voted here in the Estimates. The Peat Fuel Company, Ltd., is a private company which was formed in 1934 for the purpose of engaging in the production of a particular type of peat fuel by certain original methods— original both in respect of the harvesting of the peat and of the manipulation of it—which it had the right to use under licence from the patentees. It was financed with a capital of, approximately, £57,000, and made an application for, and received, a trade loan guarantee for £90,000. At the time that the question of the application for the trade loan guarantee was under consideration I went very fully into the question of the practicability of the method of working which this company proposed to operate, and arranged for an expert examination, both into the plans of the company and into the actual working of a factory in Denmark where the same method of operation was being tried. On the basis of the information supplied in the report of these experts as well as on the general conclusions I have reached from the plans submitted by the applicants, I decided that the object was one worth supporting.
It was obvious, of course, that their plans were very experimental in nature and that the particular method of operation which they proposed to adopt might or might not prove suitable in the conditions prevailing in this country, even though they did appear to be working satisfactorily in Denmark and elsewhere. In fact, the company found that the particular machinery which it had designed for an operation here was not altogether suitable. The bog at which they were operating, situated in County Kildare, was a very wide and deep bog and different in its nature to the bogs existing in other countries, and the machinery, although in the opinion of these experts satisfactory in principle, was too heavy for successful operation upon Irish bogs, which involved the redesigning of that machinery to a very considerable extent.
The process which the company, apparently, is operating is divided into two parts: first, the winning of the turf, and, secondly, the manipulation of that turf and its manufacture into briquettes. So far as the briquetting plant was concerned, the company were successful in their operations. The plant was created and, as a result of working on the amount of material that had been harvested, it produced satisfactory briquettes. In any event, the company were secured by a guarantee from the designers and directors of the plant as to its efficiency. The difficulties which the company encountered all arose in connection with the particular process of harvesting—a rather elaborate process involving the use of machinery to a great extent. The company, as I explained, found that the machinery which had been designed by their experts, and which was put into operation, was unsuitable. It was unsuitable mainly because it was too heavy, although in certain other respects it had to be redesigned and additional equipment was considered necessary. In any event, the company were involved in considerable expense as a result of the necessity for changing their plant, and early in last year they approached my Department to explain that their liquid resources had become exhausted and that, if the experimental and operating work of the company was to continue throughout 1936, certain additional financial assistance would be required. After consideration of the case they then made, I agreed to the creation of a new debenture which would rank in priority to the general debenture which the Government had secured upon all the assets of the company, and which was the security for our trade loan guarantee. Unfortunately, however, 1936 proved to be a very unsatisfactory year for this company. As Deputies will remember, it was exceedingly wet throughout the whole of the summer.