A fair wage amendment has been tabled by Deputy Corish. I have informed the Deputy that the Chair is not prepared to accept the amendment at this late stage. Deputies are aware that amendments should, in the ordinary course of affairs, be tabled to the Committee Stage. This Bill has been before the House for some weeks and, though this is a different Dáil, we cannot lose sight of the fact that an identical Bill reached Committee Stage some months ago. No amendment of this kind was then tabled. Even had the amendment been submitted in Committee it is not at all certain that the Chair would have allowed it to be moved. It is a point that should be decided by an overriding statute, to obviate recurring debate on this question on the majority of legislative measures. Even had it been tabled on Committee Stage, I might state that the Chair would have great doubts as to whether it should be accepted or not, it being the type of amendment that might be brought on to any Bill and which would lead to recurring debate. It is on a par with amendments at one time submitted regarding the Irish language to Bills on which the same ruling was given.
Industrial Alcohol (No. 2) Bill, 1938—Final Stages.
I think the Minister ought to take a final look at a couple of figures in connection with this Bill. The Bill provides for the possible committing of the State to the extent of one million pounds, and it does that, as the proposals are before us at present, in order to reduce the present import of petrol by one-fortieth, that is, to reduce the import of petrol by one million gallons. There were 39,600,000 gallons of petrol imported into the country last year, at an import cost, as given by the Minister's statistics, of £760,199. If that is reduced by one million gallons a year, an expenditure outside this country of £19,000 a year is going to be saved. We are going to cease to exchange £19,000 a year for one million gallons of petrol. Yesterday the Minister quarrelled with the suggestion that petrol importers were able to buy petrol at an all-in cost of 1/-. Taking a figure of 1/2d. as the all-in cost to the importers to-day, nevertheless, the mixture of one million gallons of industrial alcohol with 39,000,000 gallons of petrol coming into the country is going to cost petrol users in the country at least a ½d a gallon. It is going to cost petrol users here £83,000 every year and it is going to deprive the Revenue of 8d. a gallon on 1,000,000 gallons, that is, of an income which they possibly would have of £33,000 a year. That has to be found in some other form from the taxpayer, so that, inside the country, two of the things which the Bill is going to effect are to charge consumers £83,000 a year more and the taxpayers £33,000 a year more. That is, £116,000 will have to be paid yearly in these two ways for the upkeeping of a system of production of industrial alcohol in the country which may involve an expenditure of £1,000,000 and which will hardly give employment to more than 300 men. In so far as we have been able to ascertain, from the information given to the House, that is the effect of this measure on certain money matters in the country.
If the only considerations which were relevant to an examination of this matter were accountancy considerations, a simple calculation will show that the benefits to be distributed exceed in value the cost of inaugurating this method of manufacture; but I submit there are many more considerations to be taken into account than those to which an accountant would only have regard. There are many enterprises undertaken here and in other countries for social reasons, for defence reasons and from various motives which have no very direct relation to the purely accountancy aspect of them. This particular enterprise, for example, was started primarily for the purpose of assisting farmers in parts of the country where potato growing was an important source of revenue, but a source which had been affected by the adverse conditions prevailing at the time, conditions which may reappear at any time in the future. There were, of course, other motives in the mind of the Government than that and they all mount up to justify the inauguration of this system.
If we were to have regard purely to the type of calculation which Deputy Mulcahy has just made, there is probably no industry in the country which could be regarded as fully economic from his point of view. That does not exclude the agricultural industry. There are many forms of agricultural production carried on here which could be proved to be uneconomic if we were to have regard only to the lowest price at which similar products could be purchased from some other country. You can, of course, get an accountant's paradise in which nobody could live and in which the only unaccountable factor would be the existence of a population. On that principle, this country was, in fact, governed for a number of years and during that period our population declined by 50 per cent. and our industries disappeared. In fact, the county home became the most prominent feature of the countryside in many parts of the country. We have departed entirely from that point of view. We are embarking on and carrying out an entirely different policy——
But the fall in population still continues and there are less potatoes grown in the areas most affected by this measure.
That statement is not entirely correct.
There is a smaller acreage.
The Deputy has not related his statistics to the areas affected by this measure.
I have. I have related them to the counties in which the factories are.
That has nothing to do with the matter. No potatoes are grown in South Donegal for use in the factory in the Inishowen peninsula; there are no potatoes grown in South Louth for the factory in the Cooley peninsula; and there are no potatoes grown in South Mayo for the factory in North Mayo, near Ballina. They could not use them because the cost of transporting potatoes to such localities would be altogether out of proportion to the price that could be paid for them. These experimental factories were located in these areas, not for economic reasons. If we were concerned with the manufacture of industrial alcohol at the lowest price at which it could be made, we would have established these distilleries at certain ports and we would have used entirely imported molasses, which is the material used in certain other countries. On the basis of distilleries located at a port and utilising these molasses, we could get the price of industrial alcohol down considerably from the figure we are quoting to the petrol consumers at present; but there is no importance to the country in having an industry established on that basis.
It was because it was desired to make this spirit from native raw materials and in areas where considerable benefit would be given to the population through the distribution of wealth, both by reason of the employment given in the distilleries and the purchase of agricultural products from the farmers in the vicinity, that these localities were chosen. However, there is no good in discussing general principles at this stage of this measure. I merely wish to state that we are not suggesting that the industrial alcohol distillery is justified upon accountancy considerations. It is not. This is an experimental development undertaken from a variety of motives and undertaken in the full light of the fact that the spirit that will be produced in these distilleries would cost considerably more than the figure at which we could purchase imported petrol.
If we are to take Inishowen as a small part of Donegal, and to take Cooley as a small part of Louth, and if the Minister implies that more potatoes are now being grown in Inishowen and in Cooley districts than were grown in former years, is part of the experiment that is being carried out, an experiment of seeing how the people in other parts of Louth, Donegal and other districts, whose economic position is such that they are growing less potatoes than before, are going to bear the increased cost of that end of the stick by increasing the growing of potatoes?
The inauguration of this project was decided upon because of the low price these people were obtaining for their product.
May we take it that this means more leisure for the farmers?
It guarantees them against the destructive prices for potatoes that existed formerly.
In limited areas?
Yes.
And the guaranteed price is such that in other areas they are growing less potatoes?
They are getting protection.
Who is getting protection against the increase of £83,000 per year in the bills of petrol users throughout the country?
In certain circumstances, that 1,000,000 gallons would be found to be a very advantageous thing.
So that is the kind of protection—war protection?
The question is: "That the Bill do now pass."
No.