To-day I asked the Minister for Supplies whether he would take steps to make available adequate supplies of warp yarn of suitable quality to the weavers in the Dunlewey district of Donegal, so that the weft yarn locally spun can be used by local weavers in the production of home-spun cloth. Dunlewey is one of the oldest centres of the home-spun industry in Ireland. It is a valley in Donegal in which, I believe, there are not more than 20 weavers, but all of us who are familiar with that special craft know that those people have had an extremely difficult time. With the admirable assistance of the Department of Fisheries, immense progress has been made in the last 10 or 15 years in the improvement of the quality and design of these home-spun cloths. As a result, the grave damage that was done to the industry during the years 1919 to 1924 had been largely undone, and the reputation of Irish hand-woven cloths from West Donegal and other parts of the Gaeltacht was increasing by leaps and bounds.
With the arrival of the emergency, a situation of the profoundest gravity arose. One of the reforms in the improvement of the industry as a whole was that, instead of using home-spun yarn for the warp and weft, modern investigation and practice had established that it was better, when dealing with hand-woven cloths, to use a machine-spun warp yarn and a hand-spun weft. There are several reasons for this. One is that the hand-spun yarn is not as even a yarn and is bulkier than the machine-spun yarn. If you try to have the warp and weft hand spun, it means that the cloth becomes bulky and unacceptable to the expensive class of trade in which this cloth finds its readiest market. Secondly, the home-spun yarn, being more uneven, naturally—and it is one of its principal attractions that it is uneven—has not got the tensile strength of an even machine-spun yarn, with the result that, if you use it as a warp, it is liable to break on the loom. That makes the process of weaving very much more difficult and, if there are too many breaks, that character would seriously militate against the quality of the finished cloth.
The third danger, if the supply of this machine-spun warp yarn were to dry up completely, is that, unfortunately, from the technical aspect of the weaver as distinct from the cloth merchant's view of the cloth, a cotton warp yarn is just as easy to weave as a machine-spun worsted yarn. There is grave danger that, if the machine-spun worsted yarn is not forthcoming, unscrupulous persons would offer weavers shoddy yarns and say: "Do not worry about the quality, whatever the quality, we will dispose of the cloth." In the existing scarcity, it would be possible to dispose of inferior cloths of that kind—hand woven cloths of cotton or worsted woven yarn; but if any quantity were put on the market by unscrupulous persons and the hand-spun cloths were mixed with a whole lot of shoddy, it would result in a bad reputation for the whole industry in that district. Already in Donegal, certain unscrupulous persons are going around offering people shoddy cotton woven warp yarn. I seriously apprehend that, if reasonable supplies of machine-spun warp yarn are not available to the weavers, we may have a recrudescence of the evils which manifested themselves in this industry after the last war.
The Minister, in his reply to me, said that he regretted that it was not possible to provide supplies of machine-spun warp yarn for hand weavers in the Dunlewey district because the woollen-weaving mills which have yarn-spinning facilities can use all the woollen yarn spun in the mills. Of course, they can. They could use ten times as much woollen yarn as is spun in their mills at present owing to the acute scarcity of cloth. I am asking that these mills should be compelled to share this essential raw material of the weaving industry with the hand-loom weavers of Dunlewey, who are less fortunate. I am not asking anything which runs contrary to established principle, because it is well known that the Department of Supplies has laid down that, if you succeed in importing a parcel of merchandise, the Department is entitled to say to you, although it was your industry and zeal which secured this parcel of merchandise, "We will not allow you to avail of this parcel exclusively. On arrival at the Dublin docks, you must hold it at the disposal of the Department and we may direct you to give a part of it to your trade rival, so that everybody's factory will be kept going pari passu.”
We all know that the Minister has constrained newspapers in the City of Dublin to share whatever newsprint they had or imported. I know of a case in which a Donegal firm had an old business connection with Manchester. As a result, they were able to get 5,000 lbs. of woollen yarn over and above the allocation the British Board of Trade had already made to this company. An influential friend succeeded in getting an export licence for them from the British Board of Trade. They then went to the Department of Supplies to ask their leave to import the yarn. The Department of Supplies said that they must try to get the yarn elsewhere. They tried and they went back and said to the Department: "We cannot get it elsewhere, but we can get it from the firm we have mentioned." Then, they got a permit to import but, with the permit, they got a notice somewhat in these terms: "When you import the yarn, you will not be allowed to use it. We will take the whole parcel of yarn and distribute it amongst Dublin manufacturers who want it worse than you." If the Department of Supplies consider that they are justified in doing that in the case of a Donegal knitting firm, surely they would regard themselves as justified in going to the worsted mills and saying, not that they propose to take their entire supply of woollen yarn, but saying: "We are not asking you even for enough yarn to keep the weavers of Dunlewey busy; all we are asking you to do is to give enough warp yarn to set up the looms of 20 weavers so that, on that warp, they can weave their homespun thread, which will go unused unless they can get this supply from you." The Minister may say that the weavers can use home-spun warp in the weft but, if they do, they will produce a cloth which will be unsuitable for sale in virtually every district outside Connemara.
The kind of cloths woven in Dunlewey are not woven for use in the locality, as are the cloths woven in Connemara, where the people use them in going about their daily work. The great bulk of the cloth manufactured in Dunlewey is sold in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and other such centres. It is badly wanted in Dublin, Cork and elsewhere for making men's, women's and children's garments. It is vitally important that this admirable material, which has a splendid reputation, should not be depreciated in the public estimate during this period when, probably, a much larger number of people will come in contact with it than would come in contact with it in normal times. The amount of woollen yarn required to protect these people from material disaster is infinitesimal. I do not deny that, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, it may be burdensome to the worsted mills to be asked to part with portion of their yarn but, weighing the advantage to the weavers of Dunlewey against the disadvantage which would accrue to the worsted manufacturers who turn out hundreds of thousands of yards of this material, I do not know how the Minister can convince himself that the injury done to the millers would be greater than that done to the hand-loom weavers of Dunlewey.
I recognise that the Minister has many interests to reconcile, but it has been the policy of every Government in this country to foster the hand-loom industry as an industry peculiarly suited to the social and economic conditions of the people who live in that part of Ireland. It has been an undoubted boon to them. The Department of Fisheries has made a great effort to save that industry from extinction, and it would be disastrous if one of the casualties of this emergency were to be so invaluable an industry.
I seriously apprehend that disaster may overtake the industry if some assistance is not forthcoming in the shape outlined by me. I do not conceal the fact that I have a special interest in the weavers of Dunlewey. The craft has been handed down in that valley from the earliest times. Some of the finest people this country has produced have lived all their lives there, somewhat removed from contact with the beaten track. I do not conceal that they are peculiarly dear to me, and that is the reason why I venture, though no longer representing Donegal, to speak on their behalf in this House. I did at one time represent them, and I am profoundly beholden to them. If the Minister would consider the special circumstances of these people and weigh their claims against the legitimate claims of the worsted manufacturers and cloth manufacturers on a large scale, he would, I think, agree with me that, whatever small sacrifices these large users of yarn would be called upon to make, it would be just and right to ask them to make such sacrifices so that this small, much more vulnerable and more venerable industry, may be preserved not only for the present, but for the future, to help in the solution of the many social problems that occur in the poorer parts of the north-west of Ireland.