I do not say it is the Minister's intention. I am trying to explain to the Minister what is going to happen. Perhaps, as Deputy Corish suggests, it might be better to say the "result" of the Bill. It is to put the local authorities into the hands of the rings. I am trying to explain why this Bill should be voted against at this stage. Otherwise, I do not see how the local authority can keep out of the toils of the ring. I do not want to circumnavigate your ruling at all, but I think it is relevant and I want to submit a picture of what is actually going to happen when this Bill comes into force and the local authority, say, the Roscommon County Board of Health, goes to buy bacon or flour for the County Home in Roscommon. These two bodies have an office in Dublin and they meet once a week, when they summon to their meetings a representative of every producer of that commodity who belongs to their associations. They say to their members: "If we all stand together we can get any price we want. Therefore, although you get individual applications from the Combined Purchasing Board in the Custom House, let us agree to-day that when we fill in the figure on the tender all of us will fill in the same figure." That is the position with which the Minister will be confronted. In the old days the Minister, if he got a whole series of tenders which appeared to him to be the result of a conspiracy, was entitled to tear them up and say: "I wanted to give preference to an Irish firm and tried to do so, but I was met by a conspiracy amongst them to abstain from competition. Faced with that conspiracy I will go outside, and I will take quotations from Belfast or Liverpool or New York. I did not want to do it: I tried to give a preference at home and it is only because they conspired against me that I am driven to the other resource." He cannot do that now, because there is an overriding law prohibiting the importation of flour, and he is face to face with a conspiracy such as I have mentioned. Previous to this, the local authority could go to a local merchant or flour vendor and say: "If you will supply at a cheaper price, your tender will be accepted and the miller will be left sitting there."
Now they have to enter into a 12 months contract on the basis of any price the flour miller chooses to put up. Many people in this House will say "If the flour millers are in a conspiracy, how are you going to get a better price from the local merchant?" In practice you could, but I admit that that is not easy for the average Deputy to understand unless he has had some experience of rural trade, but when you come to the bacon men— and I am not going beyond this: I stop at these two instances—it is quite clear that we could at present get a better price, and I want the House to know why.
There is a ring in the bacon trade representing the larger curers, but there are, as Deputies know, a number of small curers scattered about the country, men who do about 300 pigs a week. Under the existing system, if the Minister got, as he certainly will get, a flat price from all the bacon curers for supplies of bacon, it was quite open to the Roscommon Board of Health to go to the Ballaghaderreen bacon curing company and to ask them if they would take 5/- or 10/- less for so many sides of bacon than the central purchasing people had fixed as the price, and, in the vast majority of cases, they would have got a cut in the price of bacon. So much is that so that Deputies will remember that I produced in this House an angry letter from the leaders of the bacon ring addressed to the small curers and remonstrating with them because they were not playing the game. Do Deputies remember that? I produced a letter from the big men in the bacon ring addressed to the small men, saying that it was monstrous that they should be cutting the price of bacon, and that if they would only stand fast they could get any price they liked out of the consumer, "and," went on the letter, "if this does not stop we will take steps to stop it." Most Deputies, when they heard that letter read, were astonished and shocked that such activities should be going on. This Bill is going to make it clear to the small bacon curers that it cannot possibly be of any interest to them any longer to cut the price, or to offer the consumer better value because it will do no good. The central purchasing board, or the local authority, are committed, under the contract, to the ring price and they have got to take it.
The precise error underlying this whole legislation arises from a confusion of thought. Before the extreme tariff policy of the present Government, it was considered a patriotic thing to prefer Irish manufacture, and it was considered the legitimate thing to give Irish industry a hand wherever you could in any legislation which you were passing through this House, because it was felt that they were then open to intensive competition and required other kinds of help; but now all these industries have got immense protection, water-tight protection, and we are trying to give them, having given them that protection, the kind of help which we thought it was legitimate to give them before they had any protection at all. I put it to Deputies that the consumers and ratepayers of this country are entitled to some little consideration. Every burden imposed by this House is ultimately carried by the ratepayers and taxpayers of the country. They have to carry a very substantial burden as a result of the protection policy of the Government. Is it right, once they have consented to accept the burden created by tariffs, to pile on top of them a further burden by delivering them, tied hand and foot, into the hands of the rings that have been created behind the tariffs, or should we rather say that having given the industry as a whole adequate protection, it is up to that industry to compete within itself in order to afford the consumer, the taxpayer and the ratepayer a chance to get the best value that efficiency and hard work is capable of producing within the country?
I submit that it is bad and unjust to the taxpayer and ratepayer to pass this Bill. I submit that there is even a greater evil than that in this Bill. I submit that this Bill is an invitation to Irish industrialists to be content with the second best. It is a way of telling them: "Even if your stuff is not as cheap as it ought to be, even if your stuff is not as good as you ought to be able to make, we are going to force the people to buy it from you in any case." That is no service to the industry itself because anyone who is concerned with industry or trade knows that we are all human, and that, if we have no competition, we are inclined to let things ride and do not break our necks trying to improve things, but if we do get a bit of competition we wake up and try to make things better than they were, and when we find ourselves under the necessity to make that endeavour, we go down to the men who are actually working on the bench and say to them: "So and so's product is outstripping ours: we shall have to exert ourselves to make ours better and cheaper."
Unless we are in a position to say to ourselves and to the men who work with us: "Unless we put a little more effort into this business, we are both of us going to lose our livelihood," you cannot get that increased efficiency which progress demands. If you go down to remonstrate with your colleagues in any enterprise on the ground that the product is not good enough, with the passage of this Bill, they, in so far as they are supplying local authorities, are entitled to say: "It will do. They will have to buy from us in any case, so what is the use in our breaking our necks trying to make things better when we will get the same price for this?" What answer have you to make to that? It is perfectly true. There is no inducement to do things better, and there is no reason why anybody should work a bit harder, or be a little more careful, to produce a thing as well as it can be done, because this Bill is an invitation to produce anything, and get it accepted. I put it to the Minister that instead of doing Irish industry a service, this Bill is going to do it an injury. I put it to him that it is going to impose on the taxpayer and ratepayer a far greater burden than he realises, and, on those grounds, I invite the House to vote against it.
