I suggest that the Fifth Stage be taken now if the House is willing.
Tariff Commission (Repeal) Bill, 1939—Committee and Final Stages.
Bill put through Committee, reported without amendment and received for final consideration.
We propose to divide on this Bill.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
It is very hard to discuss this question on the Fifth Stage of a Bill which, if it be passed, means nothing, but I think this is a suitable occasion for asking the Minister whether he has given any consideration to the matters that were brought before either himself or the Minister for Industry and Commerce when we were dealing with the Second Stage of the Bill. Is it the intention of the Government to set up any body for the purpose of examining the future five years of possible industrial development in this country and outside? What are the main industries that have to be taken definitely into consideration in a five years' development of industry, with a view to concentrating all the attention that is necessary on safeguarding development in that particular direction instead of having some of the most essential phases of our industrial development neglected through attention and interest being scattered over a very wide field, involving a very considerable amount of experiment and of trial, error and loss. When dealing with the matter before, we pointed out that neither the Department of Industry and Commerce nor the Prices Commission—the only two bodies left now—could, as a result of their experience or general attitude during the last six years, be expected to sit down to a systematic and concentrated review of the position. We pointed out that it would be found here, as it was found in Australia, that no systematic trading relations with Great Britain which would be in any way harmonious or which would safeguard our interests could be ensured unless there was concentrated thought immediately on the main, solid, sound lines of industrial development which we want to see carried on here.
Does the Deputy mean for the guidance of private enterprise?
For the guidance of private enterprise, if you like. I do not think you will have any sound industrial development if it is to be carried on here by boards hand-picked by the Executive Council or hand-picked from outside or inside the Civil Service. What we do want is some sort of group or body or commission that will outline for the people, as a whole, the lines upon which the concentrated part of our industrial development might be expected to follow within the next five years, so that all the widespread energies and intelligence of our people, being invited to travel along these lines, we may have these energies concentrated. If I understand the Deputy to be against private development, then I should like to tell him that industrial development by means of direct Government action is sweeping aside any chance of the ordinary people bringing their energy into play. No Government action can make up for setting aside the energy of the individuals that comprise the people so far as the proper lines of industrial effort are concerned.
I had nothing further in mind than to ascertain what the Deputy's idea was. I do not understand what the Deputy means by "concentrating the energies of the people on certain industrial lines." That is not the way industry arose in any country. Did it not arise by the people concerned with a particular line of development concentrating upon it and endeavouring to express their ideas in action? Surely, it would be a waste of time to ask the farmers, for instance, to consider what the lines of industrial development should be and to concentrate—to use the Deputy's word—on these lines. What does concentration of the people's energies mean? To me, it conveys nothing. The Deputy has not sufficiently explained what is in his mind. If he wants a board to direct private enterprise, that, again, seems contradictory of a number of things said by members of his own Party in this House—that private enterprise is well able to look after itself and that a Government body is not the best organisation to direct private enterprise as to the investment of its capital or anything of that nature. I am afraid the Deputy has left us all very vague as to what is in his mind.
I am afraid the Deputy was born vague.
I have a great regard for Deputy Moore. I never hear him speak without drawing inspiration from his intervention. With that unerring gift of his, he has placed the tip of his finger on the kernel of this problem, but he has not touched it with any other part of his body. Surely, he says, you would not provide facilities for the farmers to express their views on the lines of industrial development. That is the kernel of the whole problem. This Bill operates to abolish the Tariff Commission. When this commission goes, there will be nothing left——
The Chair is quite alive to the fact that the debate, so far, has not been strictly relevant but, owing to the accommodating mood of the House, the Chair has allowed the debate to proceed.
When the Tariff Commission was in operation, the procedure was that an industrialist applied to the Government for a tariff. The Minister put on an anti-dumping tariff at once and announced that he was referring the matter to the Tariff Commission. The Tariff Commission published a notice that they were going to consider the desirability of imposing a permanent tariff on the commodity referred to and that all interested parties could come before the commission and make their case. If you were about to put a tariff on galvanised buckets, nobody might think that that would affect the people down the country but, when the notice appeared in the paper, a farmers' organisation could intimate that they had a word to say in the matter and that they wanted to be heard so that they might explain to the Tariff Commission that while a tariff on buckets might promote their manufacture, that tariff would increase the farmers' cost of production and that, while you might put people into employment making buckets in Dublin, you might put more people out of employment down the country. The Tariff Commission would weigh those considerations and, having weighed them, they would set them out in extenso and give the Government their view of the relative merits of the various representations made to them.
We, on these benches, apprehend that, with the abolition of the Tariff Commission, we are going to have no review of a forward-looking kind. Anybody who goes and asks for a tariff representing that the industry he is going to start will employ 25 or 30 men is liable to get the tariff without affording the person who is going to be hit by that tariff an opportunity to make any representations at all. We all know that the home market is not sufficient to accommodate a potentially great industry. If we want to build up really solid, growing industries, we have got to get industries which will supply the home market but which will also strike out into the export market and extend. If you are going to raise the costs of the raw materials for an established industry, you can still keep the home market by raising the tariff on the finished article further, but you absolutely cut that industry out of the foreign market because, as you raise the cost of materials, so you raise the cost of the finished product, and the Irish-finished product ceases to be competitive in the markets of the world. That is of vital importance to all our industries. There are many industries —splendid industries—run by enterprising men which would get admirable markets abroad and add to the national wealth by their exports, which are being prevented from doing that because tariffs have been put on their raw materials to such an extent that the cost of the finished product has been raised above the possible export price.
Those concerned have been singularly quiet on the subject.
While that is true of industry, it is peculiarly true of agriculture. Fifty per cent. of the tariffs have operated to raise the cost of production of agricultural produce to our farmers who could not raise their price. The result has been to impoverish them and drive them out of production. Let us consider what happened under the old Administration. When application was made for a tariff on boots——
Might not these remarks be reserved for the Vote for the Minister's Office?
I want to refer to a case which was actually brought before the Tariff Commission which we are going to abolish. When a tariff on boots was asked for the Tariff Commission advised the Government of the kind of tariff which would protect the industry, but they also advised the Government of the measure of the burden which it would impose on the rural community. Acting on that advice, the Government of that day put a tariff on boots; estimated what that tariff would yield both in Customs and Excise and in increased cost of boots to the rural community, and sought to remit in the indirect taxation which was being levied on the rural community a sum equal to the extra cost of the boots and shoes protected by the tariff. What was the result? I know, because I was dealing with boots and shoes at the time. The tariff on boots and shoes represented no burden on the people at all, and we built up in this country a farmer's heavy boot industry which in 1931 was producing a farmer's boot superior to the British farmer's boot. If the tariff had been dropped in 1931 any intelligent boot factor in this country would have gone on buying the heavy boot in Ireland even though he could buy the heavy boot from England without paying any tariff at all. That was largely due to the prudent advice offered by the Tariff Commission. Nobody in this country felt under a grievance on account of the tariff, and the Government could not have got that information——
The Deputy has not, I trust, donned seven leagued boots for this occasion.
No. The Government could not have got that information without the Tariff Commission. If we abolish the Tariff Commission where are we going to get that information? You cannot build up industry without the goodwill of everybody in this country in the long run.
Since the Tariff Commission was abolished the boot industry has been made a national industry.
The Chair does not want us to go into an elaborate discussion of the merits of each individual industry.
The House is not in Committee.
This much is true, that we have had acrimonious debates in this House on tariffs which have been proposed. You have had men on one side of the House feeling deeply that the tariff ought to go on, and men on the other side feeling just as deeply that the tariff was going to do infinitely more harm than good. I think the Deputy will admit that. Those debates could not have arisen so long as you had the evidence which the Tariff Commission accumulated to present to the House, and there was goodwill on all sides in regard to the industrial advance which was being made. Now, an industrial advance is being made along lines which, in the opinion of many of us, are doing greater harm than good. It would be a great help to us to know that if the Minister proposes to abolish this Tariff Commission some other body will be provided to discharge those functions in the future. Does the Minister intend to provide such a body? If he does not he is doing good industry in this country very material injury, and he is doing them that injury for the benefit of bad industry. I want to see, and everybody else here wants to see, good industry thrive and prosper. I do not want to see them confounded or confused with the bad industry, the fly-by-nights, who are trying to rob our people. The Tariff Commission was the best instrument for separating the sheep from the goats, for showing up the fraudulent tariff-monger, and showing up the honest industrialist who wanted to give the community value for its money. I deplore the passing of an instrument which operated to that end. We all ought to be proud of the good industrialist, and we ought to chase the fly-by-night out of the country. The Tariff Commission was the machinery by which you could segregate those two categories of persons. In the absence of that commission they are being confused. The good man is being tarred with the same brush as the bad man, because there is no proper machinery for distinguishing between them. I want a machine which will distinguish between the good industrialist, who is a public benefactor and a national asset, and the fly-by-night, who is a public menace, public enemy No. 1 in this country. I want to be able to chase the fly-by-night with all my resources, and encourage and help the decent industrialist with equal enthusiasm. Unless we have something to take the place of the Tariff Commission we cannot effectively distinguish between them. I want to do that.
The Minister to conclude.
The debate to which we have just listened would be very interesting to a student of folklore, because he would have seen how folklore was created upon a basis of sheer fanciful, exuberant imagination. Deputy Mulcahy has endeavoured to leave the House under the impression that this Tariff Commission had very wide powers, powers in fact to lay down a plan of campaign for the whole industrial population of this country. It had nothing of the sort, and Deputy Mulcahy knows that as well as I do.
And the Minister knows that I know it, and that I called attention to that fact.
This Tariff Commission had very limited powers. As I said on the occasion upon which I was moving the Second Reading of this Bill, I think the real purpose of the Tariff Commission was to fight a rearguard action on the part of the hide-bound free-traders who then constituted the Executive Council in this country. During the whole period of its existence it considered thirteen applications, including such intricate questions as a tariff on down quilts, rosary beads, and fish barrels, and I think its recommendations in regard to tariffs upon certain of the other things were extremely limited and of little value. Not merely is Deputy Mulcahy an artificer of folklore, but Deputy Dillon far excels him. We have heard from the Deputy a very eloquent speech about the magnificient work which the Tariff Commission did in regard to the proposal to put a tariff on boots.
The application for a tariff on boots was never referred to the Tariff Commission. That tariff was, in fact, introduced and made part of the fiscal code of this country two years before the Tariff Commission was set up. That is the sort of argument, based upon figments of the imagination, that this Government and the country are expected to treat seriously. There was no reference whatever to the Tariff Commission of a proposal to put a tariff on boots. What was referred to the Tariff Commission were applications for tariffs on margarine, flour, rosaries, down quilts, fish barrels, woollen and worsted tissues, vehicles and vehicle bodies, cement, glass bottles, packing and matting paper, cardboard, sole leather used in the manufacture of harness, a modification of the existing tariff on woollen and worsted tissues, paper, linen piece-goods and made-up household goods made of linen. The case that Deputy Dillon made for the maintenance of a body of this sort in existence, on the basis of good work done with regard to the boot industry, completely vanishes. It might as well be part of the mid-winter snow of the present year. It has melted away, the same as the whole of the arguments for the retention of this useless body vanish, once we begin to examine them in the light of the true facts.
I am perfectly satisfied that the Department of Industry and Commerce keep under continuous review the need for proper industrial planning in this country and the manner in which industries have been started, not all of which have been successful. No one is going to contend that every effort of any body of human beings is going to end in full success, but the manner in which industry after industry has been started during the past five or six years, each one fitting into the other like mosaic, must have convinced the people, and would convince the Opposition, if they were open to conviction, that there has been a proper planning for industry. It does not suit the Opposition to say so. That a Bill like this, designed to abolish a body for which there is no use in the present scheme of things, a body which has done no work for the past two or three years, and which is costing the ratepayers and the overburdened farmers, about which we heard so much last night and at the election, £3,000 or £4,000 to keep up—that such a Bill, designed to secure useful economy without injuring any interest, should be opposed, as I understand the Opposition are prepared to oppose it, and to press it to a division, beats my sense of reason or fair play.
Question put:
The Dáil divided: Tá 57, Níl 35.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Carty, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Cleary, Micheál.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Friel, John.
- Fuller, Stephen.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lyneh, James B.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moran, Michael.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Munnelly, John.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William J.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Dillon, James M.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Everett, James.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, James.
- Hurley, Jeremiah.
- Keating, John.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- O'Donovan, Timothy, J.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.
Tellers:—Tá, Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.