The practice of suppressio veri in this House has now been reduced to a fine art. The implication of this motion is that a big bad wolf on the Continent, when Irish Wire Products, Limited, Limerick, started to make screws, by giving a large discount under-cut Irish Wire Products, Limited, and that nobody ever saw a Continental screw until this big bad wolf came along and forced them down our throat. What are the facts? Nobody but a lunatic has ever used a Nettlefold screw in this country for the past 20 years. Guest, Keen and Nettlefold bought the old Chamberlain family patent which made a fortune for the late Joe Chamberlain. That patent showed merely how to put a point on the end of a screw. They became screw manufacturers in Great Britain. They made magnificent screws. I bought hundredweights of them in my day but they could never compete with the Continental screw. For the rough carpentry job, a sane man would never use a Nettlefold screw because it would be there in his great grandson's time when the woodwork came to be taken down. They were much too good for work of that kind. For ordinary work, 90 per cent. of the screws used were Continental screws.
What has happened? The boys floated a company in Limerick. To my sorrow I went and put some money into it. They then discovered that they could not make nails without charging about 80 per cent. more than the price at which you could buy nails on the Continent. We plundered the public in the price of nails and screws and we are now being asked by the Minister to give a licence to plunder them still further. If supplies of raw materials from the Continent give out this industry will go up the spout, with all the other crazy schemes for which the Minister for Industry and Commerce has been responsible. Has it struck anybody as a bit odd that old man England, having stipulated against quota orders in the Trade Agreement has suddenly relented and said, in regard to screws, that a quota order may be permitted. It was sabotage, it was playing England's game, it was striking at the foundation of an Irish Ireland, to protest against these quota orders in former days. Now we are bound to contribute to a tariff of 75 per cent. to keep out the big bad wolf. We had been putting on a quota to protect the quivering person of this young Irish industry in Limerick, and then we discovered that it had grown a beard overnight, and that it is our old friend, Guest, Keen and Nettlefold from the South of England. The quota that was put up to keep this wicked man out of the country, the tariff that was raised to enable Irish industry to plunder the consumers of this country, is now being used to enable Guest, Keen and Nettlefold to do it as it never was done before.
Now, I will be told that screws here are to be sold at the same price as in England. Anybody with any knowledge of the carpentry trade knows that there are 140 different types of screws, and that in each type of screws there are about ten lengths, so if I buy a package of screws for sixpence I have got to satisfy the Prices Commission that they are of a strength and quality and length similar to a package of screws sold in Bristol. The difference in the price may be a penny, and I am told that my ability to do that and to recover from Guest, Keen and Nettlefold, situated in Limerick, one penny, is sufficient guarantee to ensure that their undertaking to sell screws at the same price as they are selling them in England will be carried out. Will anybody believe that? Here again, no individual citizen of this State is going to be crippled by the extra cost of screws and nails, because none of us buys very many screws or nails in our lifetime, but it all contributes to the fact that the cost of houses is getting dearer. It all contributes to the fact that the manufacture of goods in Irish factories is being made dearer because their raw materials are being made dearer. It all contributes to the fact that another company in this country is being given a wide open licence to rob the consumers in this State.
Sooner or later we have got to face the fact that every penny of public money, or money from the citizens' pockets, that is invested in companies which depend for their survival on a licence to rob the community, is money thrown away, because the community may stand that for a certain time but they are not going to stand it for ever. There is no reason on God's earth why I or any other citizen should be given a licence to plunder the public through shares in a bacon company or in a nail factory either. It is unjust. It is contrary to public policy, and it is fated to arouse an opposition from the public in this country which will eventually overwhelm not only this kind of "cod" factory but also good industrialists, who, if given a fair chance, would be able to do a useful job. If the Irish people are led ultimately to believe that every industry is run in this country by chancers who only want to shelter behind a quota to rob the consuming public, ultimately the public will come to lump all Irish industrialists together and say "They are a bad lot." To do so would be a libel on many good citizens in this State who have built up good industries, paid good wages, and charged fair prices for their products. All of us know that. There are individual manufacturers in this country who have done and are doing a good job. It is this kind of transaction which is besmirching their name. I submit, in view of the fact that we have to deal here with two import quota orders, and a prohibition order to follow in a moment, that I am legitimately entitled to refer to the consequences of this type of order and the way in which they are exploited.
