The purpose of it is to delete the second item of the Schedule; in other words, to refuse confirmation to the Order made by the Minister reducing from 25 per cent. to 20 per cent. ad valorem customs duty upon slashers and slash hooks. I learned to-day when the Minister was introducing the Bill that this Order was made on the recommendation of the Industrial Development Authority following a review of the duty carried out under the trade agreement at the instance of the British Board of Trade. I recognise that under that agreement the Minister was pledged to refer to the Industrial Development Authority the question of this duty and I recognise that he is equally obliged to act upon the recommendation of that body. I certainly would not argue that the reduction of 5 per cent. in the duty upon slashers and slash hooks is sufficient ground to reopen the whole question of the agreement.
I, therefore, have no intention of putting this amendment to a division. But the fact that the British Board of Trade has the right under the agreement to secure a review of any duty in operation and that the Minister is obliged under that agreement to give effect to any recommendation which the Industrial Development Authority may make as the reviewing body set up under the agreement does not mean that we must silently accept the recommendation of that body. In fact, I think it would be an undesirable precedent to establish that all these recommendations must be acted upon by the Dáil in an unquestioning silence. There will again no doubt be references to that body at the instance of the British Board of Trade and similar propositions will be brought to the House for a review of duties; and it is well that the Industrial Development Authority should know and the Board of Trade should know that the Dáil will look with a critical eye upon all these proposals if they appear likely to have any detrimental effect upon industrial activity or industrial employment here.
As far as this particular duty is concerned, it is difficult to understand the basis of the recommendation, and indeed I think that where there has been a reconsideration of a duty by the Industrial Development Authority on the request of the Board of Trade the Minister should make it a practice to give, in general terms, the considerations which led to the recommendation for an alteration in the duties. The arguments against the reduction of the duty were those I mentioned earlier to-day—that the quality and the price of the Irish products have been always regarded as very good but that there is a natural tendency among shopkeepers in the trade to have something different to sell; and that a reduction in the rate of duty will probably lead to some increases in the imports of these things which might lead to a contraction of sales by the Wexford firm, to less efficiency and might make it more difficult for them to maintain their prices and the quality of their products.
Before I raised the matter here I contacted the firm concerned and asked them if they were agreeable to the alteration and if they desired that the motion for the alteration of duty should be opposed here. The information I got was that they opposed the alternation strongly—perhaps they thought they had made a sufficiently good case before the Industrial Development Authority. So there need be no feeling here that this is something being done affecting a particular firm in a particular county about which that firm is not aware and about which it was not consulted in advance. It is agreed that the rate of duty which was imposed was not a very high one; we have had some very much higher rates on other industries not dissimilar to this one. The rate of duty on edge instruments, the cutlery products of Newbridge, was increased recently and when the Wexford firm sought protection in the first instance it looked for 50 per cent. It did not get 50 per cent: it got 25 per cent. A further decrease in that low ad valorem rate is rather contrary to the interests of the firm, having regard to the estimate of the protection they said they required to develop maximum production with maximum efficiency. I formally criticise the action of the Industrial Development Authority, not the Government, in recommending a reduction here unless a stronger case was made for the decrease than was stated here.