Undoubtedly, the Government will bear in mind that point of view, and I think that point of view has been met, if I may go outside the ambit of my own Department, by making it possible for Volunteers to undergo a great part of their preliminary training by means of these nightly drills. I think the Minister for Defence has had the requirements of and the position of employers and employees in mind when he adopted that expedient.
With regard to the point which Deputy Cosgrave made as to a considerable increase in the cost of the revenue service as between 1930-31 and 1938-39, there has undoubtedly been a very considerable increase in the cost of the service, very largely on the customs and excise side, and very naturally. The fact that we have embarked upon a policy of protection means that there are many more inducements to people to try to avoid the customs duties than there were prior to the change of governmental policy in that regard. Accordingly, we have had to expand the customs staff very greatly but it is altogether a wrong conclusion to arrive at, that because the amount of revenue collected by means of customs tariffs has increased, say, by £400,000 or £500,000 as compared with 1931-32, the additional expenditure upon customs officers has not been justified. After all, these customs officers are recruited to ensure, first of all, that no goods come in without paying tariff and, secondly, that any protective goods which do come in pay the full duty. The more efficient your customs staff become in enforcing the protectionist duties, by a strange paradox, the less revenue you are going to collect from protected articles, because people will not try to get stuff over the Border without paying duty. They know they are likely to be caught and, therefore, they will not put goods, so to speak, in transit. The more rigorously, as I have said, these laws are enforced, the less disposition there is for people to try to dodge the customs, and the more effective your protective duties become, so that I do not think you can equate the two things. I do not think you can equate the cost of the customs service to the amount of duty collected by it in respect of protective tariffs. You can relate it to the total amount of duty collected from all customs imports, but always in that regard you have to bear in mind that some allowance must be made for the effectiveness of your customs service. These men are, in fact, put on to enforce the tariff laws, to make sure that the customs barrier is effective and not primarily to collect revenue.