Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 4 May 1938

Vol. 71 No. 4

In Committee on Finance. - Agricultural Products (Regulation of Import) Bill, 1938—Second Stage.

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

I move that the Bill be read a Second Time. The special object of this Bill is to enable the Government to carry into effect the provisions of Article 9 (2) of the Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom. In this Article the United Kingdom Government recognises that it may be necessary for our Government, in pursuance of their agricultural policy, to regulate the imports of certain agricultural products, including those set out in Schedule 4 of the Agreement. The Article further provides that in such cases the quantities of United Kingdom products admitted from time to time shall be the subject of consultation between the two Governments and shall be fixed in accordance with the general principles of the Agreement. The products which are included in the Schedule comprise live pigs; bacon and hams; certain classes of cereals and of feeding stuffs for animals; certain classes of fish; certain classes of fruit and fruit pulp or juice; certain classes of vegetables; grass seeds; forest and fruit trees; and nursery stock and flowers. Article 9 further provides that duties may be imposed by our Government in agreement with the Government of the United Kingdom on the products referred to in cases where it appears that the benefits in view can be more conveniently effected by this means. There may be a duty imposed in certain cases, by agreement, instead of a quantitative regulation, and in a Bill already circulated to Deputies, which is the last of this series of Bills, they will notice that there is one Schedule which contains a number of duties to be imposed on fruits and fish, and in these particular cases quantitative control will not arise. There is a number of cases, however, where the United Kingdom Government is not agreeable to a duty, and we must, therefore, have consultation about quantitative control, and it is for these items that this Bill is necessary. These items will be live pigs and bacon, fruit pulp and juice and certain other fruits and rye grass seed.

The Bill, accordingly, enables the Minister for Agriculture to make orders regulating the importation of any agricultural or fishery product or any specified kind of such product. The order may fix the quantity of such product or kind of product that may be imported; the country or countries from which it may be imported, and the conditions to be attached to licences or permits allowing its importation. The penalties for infringements of the order are to be fixed in the order, which may also contain all such conditions as appear to be necessary for securing the operation and enforcement of the scheme of regulation contained in the order. Every order will be laid on the Table of both Houses of the Oireachtas. Goods prohibited to be imported by an order can be dealt with by the Revenue Commissioners in the same manner as other prohibited or restricted goods are dealt with under existing Customs Acts. In addition, the Revenue Commissioners are given power to serve notices on the importer of any consignment imported in contravention of an order requiring such person to export the articles within a specified time. Although the Bill, admittedly, gives wide powers, I think that at least I can say that it is not a difficult Bill to understand, and therefore I have nothing further to say about it.

Mr. Dockrell

While we can agree with the Minister in bringing in this Bill, there is no reason why, in a Bill such as this, the process of prohibiting imports should be brought to a pitch which has not been the practice formerly. I should like to point out that the prohibition of imports in Section 42 of the Customs Consolidated Act, 1876, refers to a list of goods which are known to be prohibited, and the forfeit and destruction of such goods should not be applied in the case of goods suddenly prohibited where a consignment arrives, the arrival of which could not be prevented. Such goods in transit should either be permitted to land or be allowed to be exported or confiscated at the wish of the consignee. Forfeit or destruction should only apply where the consignee was aware that the goods were prohibited.

There is a further extension of what we might call the policy of prohibition. Section 3 (2) goes further even than Section 42 of the Customs Consolidation Act in permitting officers of Customs and Excise to compel the importer or carrier to export the goods within a specified time with liability to a fine of £50 for non-compliance. This extension of the Customs laws ought not to appear in this Bill. It is an extension of the powers of the Customs which makes them really the judge and jury in the case of a consignment. There ought to be a preliminary period for goods in transit similar to the period in the Control of Imports Act, with the following addition—that fishery products and perishable agricultural products which were in transit at the date of the prohibition order and arrived within 24 hours of such date should be permitted to be imported under the conditions in force immediately prior to the prohibition order. It would be obviously unjust to hold up a consignment of fish, the arrival of which could not have been prevented, and it would be worse still if the importer were to be put to the expense of re-exporting under the proposed Section 3 (2). I am not going to charge the Minister with being unreasonable. At the same time there is no reason why he should take powers only short of taking off a person's head and then say: "Of course these regulations are not going to be enforced and we will deal with each case on its merits."

Section 2 contains an extension of the Minister's powers by means of orders. He may make a specific infringement of an order an offence punishable on summary conviction and fix penalties for such an offence. In all Acts it is usual in a section under which offences are possible to state that a contravention of the section is an offence and to specify in a separate section the penalty for offences under the Act. It is not in accordance with the usual practice of law to allow a Minister by order to specify crime and fix penalties. I suggest to the Minister that that is really giving him powers over property and persons which might be in conflict with the Constitution.

Another question which I have raised repeatedly here is the sovereignty of this Assembly. Before any penalties are inflicted the Oireachtas should have an opportunity of seeing that the punishment fits the crime. I commend to the Minister these remarks which are not meant as criticism of the Bill as implementing the Agreement, but as a criticism of the extension of the extraordinary bureaucratic powers of various Government Departments and Government officials which ought not to be brought in under the guise of a Bill such as this.

Professor O'Sullivan

Perhaps the Minister would avail of the opportunity of saying what he expects from the operation of this portion of the Agreement. We had that Agreement before us when we passed it, naturally, but I do not think it was ever fully explained to us how exactly it will operate, what precisely is the view of both parties to the Agreement as to what will follow from the Agreement itself, which this is to enable the Minister to carry out. I hope the Minister will consider the points made by Deputy Dockrell. Is it necessary for the carrying out of the Agreement to take such drastic powers as the Minister takes? If so, undoubtedly we are committed to them. But, was all that drastic assumption of powers necessary? Is there no other method by which it could be done, without inflicting this loss on people who, on the whole, are innocent people so far as that is concerned? There would be great inconvenience caused, as Deputy Dockrell pointed out.

Mr. Cosgrave

This Bill raises in a very acute manner a point I put to the Minister in connection with a previous Bill. For example, under Section 2—

The Minister may, whenever and so often as he thinks fit, make an order regulating, in such manner and by such means as he thinks proper, the importation of any agricultural product or fishery product...

If, say, an order were made on a Wednesday night prohibiting the importation of fish, and if a consignment of fish were on its way on Thursday into the market here, does it follow from the making of an order that the purchaser of the fish has to deal with the arrival of the fish and pay for its transport back, if it was worth while sending back?

Similarly with regard to Section 4, which says:

Where an offence under any order made under this Act... was committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been so committed with the consent or approval of, or to have been facilitated by any neglect on the part of any director, manager, secretary, or other officer...

That is a very comprehensive list of persons, and neglect, I think, is qualified in most of the Customs code as being wilful neglect. I suppose the Minister reads newspapers occasionally, and he may have observed some pictures the other day in connection with a professor having forgotten about his car which appeared in a well-known Dublin newspaper. For a mere matter of forgetfulness of that sort, it would be a very severe penalty if a professor were fined £50 or sent to Mountjoy for three months. I think the Minister ought to consider the terminology of that again, and that, at least, notice should be given.

Directly this dispute between the two countries took place we were saddled with a new code here called the Emergency (Imposition of Duties) Act. In essence, this is really a sort of stepbrother of that particular statutory enactment and we ought to try to get away from that, if it is possible to do it. I am at one with the Minister in implementing the Agreement, but it would appear that we are taking very drastic powers. For example, take the question of an order. Does it mean that every fishmonger has to 'phone up Government Buildings to know if they are thinking of making an order on a certain day if he is thinking of ordering a consignment of fish? That would be a nuisance to the Minister as well as to the importers. If the order were only published in Irish Oifigiúil, some people might not see it, as they probably never heard of that publication.

In connection with this particular measure, and in fact every other measure implementing this Agreement, an endeavour should be made to make it as easy as possible for people who are in business, people who may suffer by reason of neglect even though it be not wilful, but through lack of information about these matters.

Dr. Ryan

A Chinn Comhairle, I can quite appreciate the points raised by Deputy Dockrell and the other Deputies on the rather drastic powers which the Revenue Commissioners would have under this Bill, and it is a point that I had considered before bringing in the Bill, but I was told by the Revenue Commissioners that from their long experience they find it necessary to have these powers more or less in that form. Now, the point about not mentioning the fine is one of some difficulty. There are some rather big items under this; fish, I suppose, would be the biggest item of import and bacon would be very big, and there are very small items like tomatoes and grass seeds and things like that, and we thought it better to have a moderate system of fines, but it is very difficult to put them into the Bill. The list that is published is not necessarily an exhaustive list. Other items may be added from time to time by agreement between the two countries. We could not possibly put down a fine as applicable to each article because we did not know what articles would be there, and it was considered a better system to have the fine mentioned in the order. Otherwise I think you would have to put down a very high fine as applicable in all cases. I can only justify it on this account because we may be able to arrange for smaller fines in the order than we could in the Bill, but I have no great objection if anyone in the House thinks it is necessary. It will have to be a very heavy fine in that case.

Another point raised by Deputy Dockrell was that we came down suddenly and stopped the import of certain goods. I think what he has in mind probably is that there was what could be regarded as normal trade between two countries and that we stopped that trade. What has happened is the trade was stopped already. I think fish is the only item which is coming in. No tomatoes, no bacon, no fat pigs, none of those things that are mentioned are coming in at all, so that if we do make an order we are not going to injure anybody, because if we give two days' notice it is two days' notice to the people that they may begin to trade then, not that they must stop within the two days. In the case of fish, which was raised by Deputy Cosgrave, I can assure the Deputies that if we do have to regulate the import of fish —we shall certainly have to regulate it in some way—but when we do make a prohibition order, at the same time we state that a certain quantity will be allowed in each week from the United Kingdom and not allowed in from elsewhere, so that nobody will be upset practically at all under such an order. And if there were any possibility that we would be upsetting traders in any way we would give notice. Fish is one of the things where we could give good notice, because you cannot very well arrange to have a dump of fish brought in and kept here; it does not keep well.

Now, Deputy O'Sullivan asked me how did we visualise this operating. If we take a few examples it is the easiest way to explain it, I think. Bacon is one. There are certain interests in the United Kingdom that believe they could do a certain trade in perhaps a choice type of bacon here, and we, on our side, could not argue very strongly against the case. If they want to send bacon to us and we are sending bacon to them we could not argue against it. If they agreed to add that quantity on to our quota, which they would, then we would allow a certain quantity in and then we would do what they do, that is, we would send a permit for a certain number of cwts. per month to the British Government and they would look after that part of it and give it to those they thought right, and then they would export it and the exporter in sending bacon into this country would send also the permit—one of the permits that is given to the British Government—and our Customs people would allow the bacon through when accompanied by that certificate.

Tomatoes is another example. We import a certain amount of tomatoes here during our own tomato season and the British producers have a surplus of tomatoes now and we see no great objection to taking some of that surplus from them provided we have a deficiency in our own production here. In the same way, we issue certificates weekly or monthly—I do not know which in the case of tomatoes—the periods have to be arranged to suit the particular commodity—but we issue these certificates to the British Government and again they give them to whoever they think best themselves to export the tomatoes from the United Kingdom into this country and the tomatoes come in accompanied by that certificate.

Seed oats would be another example, but it would come in all at once at a particular time of the year. I think, in the case of seed oats we would give a permit for so much. That is one of the cases where we have practically reached agreement with regard to quantity. Say, 25,000 cwts. of seed oats would be allowed in for the season. In that particular case we would give, I think, the whole permit at the same time, say, in the month of September or October and it could be imported here at any time up to the 1st May—give a liberal day anyway for the sowing of oats. Seed oats accompanied by that certificate would be allowed in by our Customs people free of duty and so on. There would be no duty or anything else on seed oats coming in.

That is the way, roughly, these quotas will work. As I said, the list that is given in the Agreement is a list of articles that we thought might be dealt with this present year, that is, dealt with by a tariff or by quantitative control. But you will see that the Article enables the two Governments to add other items to the list if necessity arises for it and therefore there may be other articles covered by this Bill that are not mentioned in that Schedule and it does make it difficult to deal with penalties and other things on a firm basis at the moment and that is why this Bill does provide for perhaps wider powers than usual in the Orders that we put before both Houses.

Mr. Dockrell

Than ever before!

Dr. Ryan

Yes. I quite agree. That is true.

Mr. McMenamin

Does the Minister agree that these penalties, owing to their magnitude, apply to importers who are importing considerable quantities of stuff? Take the question that he is dealing with—seed oats. Assume that I am importing 1 cwt.—not importing it at all, but that I am smuggling it—a small farmer, living on the Border, smuggling 1 cwt. of oats. On the other hand, somebody else is an importer, importing a considerable quantity of oats; and for my 5 stone of corn that I want for a small bog field somewhere am I to be fined £50, and the man who is importing 10 tons or 5 tons, or trying to do it, is he only to pay £50? I think this penalty business is a bit overdrawn. I would like the Minister to reconsider this section with regard to penalties. If the Minister would look at the definition section—paragraph (b) of Section 1. What does the Minister mean by including in (b) of 1, "any animal"? Every animal is to be an agricultural product?

Dr. Ryan

Any animal, yes.

Mr. McMenamin

Any animal?

Dr. Ryan

Yes.

Mr. McMenamin

Is a dog an agricultural product?

Dr. Ryan

Oh, yes, certainly a dog is.

Professor O'Sullivan

There are one or two questions I am not clear about. One I am quite clear about, I admit. I understand the Minister himself was rather surprised at the drastic powers he was taking and went to the Revenue Commissioners and asked them. He was not surprised with the answer, I expect, that they could not do without them. What other answer would the Minister ever get from the Revenue Commissioners? There is another point the Minister might clear up. Take the question of the importation of fish. I gather that the amount to be allowed in will be decided each week. Suppose I am a fishmonger in Tralee and I want to import fish. Friday, of course, is the day for which I want to import it, because, otherwise, I am practically out of that business. What will be the position with regard to the gross amount that will be allowed in every week and how will that gross amount, in the case of fish or seed oats, be divided amongst the different people who order from here? Is there any method of dealing with that? For instance, a Dublin merchant may order the whole quantity and get in first. Must all the people down the country take it from him, or can a man get it from a fish wholesaler on the other side? A fishmonger is never sure whether he will get it or not until it is too late for him to lay in a supply for the Friday.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy has picked out one of the most difficult items to deal with.

Professor O'Sullivan

I may say that the Minister helped me to pick it out.

Dr. Ryan

I think that in the case of fish, we would have to announce the weekly quantity well beforehand and over and above that, we should want to have a provision for importing our deficiency. If we were bringing in 100,000 cwts., which is a large quantity, in the year, we might say: "We will issue licences for the whole year on the basis of 1,500 cwts., but we will vary the remainder from week to week." How we are going to manage that variable amount, I do not know at the moment.

Professor O'Sullivan

The individual fishmonger down the country will be considered?

Dr. Ryan

He will get a certain quantity, anyway.

Professor O'Sullivan

It will not be a case of the smartest fellow getting it?

Dr. Ryan

No. We hope to get advice from the people concerned. We are not pushed at the moment with regard to fish. We can take our time and consider what is the best way to do it, getting all the advice we can. It is really a difficult problem. Seed oats, will, I think, give no great trouble because we can decide in August or September that we will allow so much in for the season.

Mr. Cosgrave

It is a question of the distribution.

Dr. Ryan

That is a point which has to be decided. In some cases at least, we would prefer, for our own convenience here, to give the permits to the British Government and say: "You give them to whatever exporters you think fit" and in some cases, we might give it to our own importers. If, however, we wanted to have an easy time in the Department, we would give them to the British Government, but that might not suit in all cases.

Professor O'Sullivan

That means sacrificing the great bulk of individuals to the advantage of a few, because they would immediately get in touch with the big wholesale houses across the water.

Dr. Ryan

That is true. These things, however, will have to get every consideration which we can give them. We are up against only a few items which we have to fix up. Bacon is one which we shall have to fix up soon. In the case of others, we shall have time. Seed oats, grass seed and so on are seasonal, and we shall have plenty of time to think over them. With regard to Deputy McMenamin's point, I do not think that the Deputy read the section closely. The Revenue Commissioners cannot inflict the maximum penalty of their own volition. They must go to court and they are not likely to get the maximum penalty. If a farmer claims before a district justice that he is a poor man, and that he tried to get in a cwt. of oats, our experience is that the poor farmer gets off very lightly.

Mr. McMenamin

But the procedure is that the Revenue Commissioners ask for the maximum penalty, and the justice recommends a mitigation, and then there is all this palaver with Deputies, and Deputies going to the Revenue Commissioners.

Dr. Ryan

I do not think there is anything to fear in that respect.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Minister is going to fix maximum penalties and not minimum penalties.

Dr. Ryan

Yes. I think the Deputy knows that the Revenue Commissioners have power, as Deputy McMenamin says, to insist on a maximum penalty.

Professor O'Sullivan

That is what I was afraid of.

Dr. Ryan

Even if this section does not go in they have that power.

Professor O'Sullivan

That proves Deputy McMenamin's point. The analogy of the poor man going before the justice does not apply.

Dr. Ryan

But he has to go before the justice.

Professor O'Sullivan

And he must fix a maximum penalty.

Dr. Ryan

That is so.

Mr. Cosgrave

It is a question of the infringement of an order, which is different from the ordinary Excise code.

Dr. Ryan

I should like to argue, as I argued against Deputy Dockrell, that it is better to leave it in the order so that we can keep it fairly low in certain cases.

Mr. Cosgrave

If the Revenue Commissioners have the last word it will be as high as Mount Everest.

Question put and agreed to.

An Ceann Comhairle

Committee Stage?

Dr. Ryan

To-morrow.

Mr. Dockrell

When will it be necessary to have amendments in?

Dr. Ryan

To-night, if possible.

Mr. Dockrell

That is very short. The Minister must remember he is mixing two things. We have a Bill implementing the Agreement, and he is also providing for an extension of his powers, which is what we object to. The Minister ought to give us to-morrow.

Dr. Ryan

If the Deputy is anxious to draft amendments, we could leave the Committee Stage until Friday.

Professor O'Sullivan

When does the Minister want all the Bills through?

Dr. Ryan

Friday evening.

Professor O'Sullivan

Including the Seanad?

Dr. Ryan

Oh, no. The Seanad next week.

Committee Stage ordered for Friday next.