Before the adjournment of the debate, I was examining certain statements that were made by members supporting the Government, particularly those made by Deputy Dockrell and Deputy O'Leary. Deputy O'Leary claimed that no word of explanation should be demanded from the Government because 500 men might be employed in the Avoca mines. Deputy Dockrell alleged that, because we asked certain questions about it, we were against the development of the Avoca minerals. I pointed out that, as Deputy Lemass had said, the Canadian interest involved in this may have £1,300,000 or £1,400,000 profit per year for themselves for a great number of years, and, if they paid as much as £10 a week, which would be a lot for them to pay for a beginning, that would amount to £250,000; the Minister for Finance would get a few thousand pounds out of this 4 per cent. tax on profits and, if it goes up beyond the £350,000, he is to get 9 per cent. The proposition is that we will give £5 in profits to the groups who will develop, £1 or less to the workers involved and a few coppers or shillings to the Minister for Finance.
Deputy Dockrell alleged that they should get this £5 out of every £6 because they took the risk. When a copper mining company go into a virgin country that has never been explored and are merely relying on surface indications or electrically recorded indications or geological surveys previously carried out, they take a great risk, but there was £500,000 of the Irish people's money spent on exploring these mines. A company having, as everybody has pointed out, the finest mining engineers in Canada, were not taking any risk when they could see the proved analysis of the Wicklow mines, when they knew that they had been developed for a great number of years and that in recent years £500,000 of the Irish people's money was spent on exploratory work, on proving that copper existed there and existed to the extent of the number of millions of tons that had been proved. So that, from the Canadian group's point of view, there was no risk. If the copper was there, if the proved analysis was there, richer than most of the copper mines being mined anywhere in the world at the present time, over 1.12 per cent., there was no risk involved.
In those circumstances, when the mines had been proved and when the Government was prepared to see £10,000,000, £12,000,000 or £15,000,000 profit being made on this in a few years, why did they not use some of these millions that can be made at the present price of copper, even if it goes no higher, to engage mining engineers, to buy equipment that would develop these mines and keep the profit for ourselves and, more important, over the years, insist that Irish people, Irish engineers, Irish analysts, Irish chemists were employed in the development of these mines?
The difference between the Shannon scheme and the Avoca mineral works is this: the Americans, in 1912, spent a great many thousands of pounds in surveying the Shannon basin. The first Dáil, in 1920, had a commission on water resources and they had the experience and the accounts of the American engineers for which the Americans paid and, when it came to 1924, when the Shannon scheme was put forward, the State had the benefit of the American report, plus the work that had been done by the Dáil Commission and they set up a State company, the E.S.B.
There the process was American money used for exploration and Irish money put into a State company to develop. Here we are putting £500,000 of Irish money into proving that the copper is in the Wicklow mines and are to hand over the benefit of that to a foreign company in which no Irish person is allowed to put a penny.
If the Minister for Finance and the Government were prepared to give the concessions to mineral companies that they propose to give in this Bill, why did they not offer those terms and conditions to Irish people? Why did they sell the mining rights and the rights to the profits to a foreign company without giving the Irish people an opportunity of putting their pounds together to invest in these mines? An explanation is demanded of the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce when he comes back, and of all the other Ministers. If the Government were prepared to give these tax concessions to get Avoca developed it should have been announced and the offer should have been made to the Irish people that if they put their money together they would get similar concessions. But it was only when the bargain was signed and sealed that anybody knew these tax concessions were made available and given to foreign groups. The first Government announcement confined those benefits to the Canadian company.
It was only afterwards they changed their mind because they saw they could not get away with giving these solely to Canadians without giving similar concessions to Irish concerns engaged in mineral exploration and development. But the mining rights of the Wicklow property, on which the Irish people had spent £500,000, were given to the Canadians and before anybody knew there were tax concessions. I feel certain that if the Government or the Minister for Industry and Commerce had put an advertisement in the Irish papers that they were prepared to grant these tax concessions—four years free of income-tax and a half of that again during the following four years—there would have been Irish groups who would have followed out the advice the Government gave on more than one occasion to bring back foreign assets in the shape of machinery to get the mines going.
The Attorney-General denied that the previous Coalition Government had cut out the Estimate for Mineral Exploration from the 1948 Budget. In that year we had prepared the Book of Estimates before leaving office and there was a sum of £85,000 for mineral exploration. That, as everybody knew, was to continue the exploration and the proving of the size of the body of copper and zinc and sulphur in Avoca. The Attorney-General, as I have said, denied that the first Coalition cut out that sum for development.
Before I proceed further, I want to quote from the Attorney-General's speech in 1948, when he was the Minister for Finance. At column 1,040 of Volume 110 of the Official Report, the then Minister for Finance is quoted as saying:—
"There will be no draw on the Vote for Athletics (£25,000). A saving of £10,000,000 will result from dropping the special arrangements for transfer of harvest workers. The scheme for exploration of mineral deposits, for which £85,000 is provided in the Estimate for Industry and Commerce, will not be proceeded with."
That is the quotation for which the Attorney-General asked. He has no shortage of impudence, because I have heard him time and again in the House deny that he made certain statements. He thought he might get away with it simply because the volume was not available. That is a quotation which shows that, in the first year of the Coalition Government, one of their first steps was to cut out the £85,000 which was to have been spent on the exploration of the copper and zinc and sulphur in County Wicklow. I am not surprised at the Attorney-General, but it does strike me as rather strange that the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who used to threaten anybody who wanted to put a shilling into Irish industry that he should be put behind the thickest walled jail he could find, should go off to America and Canada looking for foreign capitalists, not to be put behind the thickest walls but to become the beneficiaries of tax concessions not available to Irish capitalists.
Deputy Dockrell said the labourer is worthy of his hire. So he is, whether he be a mining engineer or somebody with a pick and shovel in a mine shaft. We could get mining engineers skilled in digging out proved bodies of ore in Wicklow for very much less than £13,000,000 or £14,000,000 in the next few years. If necessary, we could employ skilled engineers from other countries, and indeed we have plenty of Irishmen who could do the job of shifting a body of ore and who would not regard it a very big day's work. There are places in the country where over 1,000,000 tons of material are shifted in a year, so that taking out the rock at Avoca is not a very big job, once you know that you are going to get money for it. I do not think there is any risk, either, about the future price of copper. Certainly a great number of people would be prepared to invest a few hundred pounds in this project, if only they thought they were going to get a few hundred pounds a year out of it. This company hopes to get 100 per cent. There are many people who put money into industries with no greater expectation than a 5 or 6 per cent. return.
Deputy Dockrell also said: "We must spend the money ourselves or get the money from somebody." Is not that a strange statement from people who have been always talking and prating throughout the country about bringing home our external assets and using them for productive purposes? He said we must spend the money ourselves or get the money from somebody. We still have external assets which, if we can find a reproductive proposition of work for them, should be brought home in the form of machinery or in payment for skill. The amount of money being raised for this mine is only a couple of million pounds. We are sending £35,000,000 down the drain this year without very much increase in our capital assets and I think a very good alternative expenditure for some of the £35,000,000 we spent last year would have been to have put £2,000,000 in the form of imported machinery and skill into the Wicklow mines.
Is it to safeguard the level of our external assets that we are now looking for foreigners to develop our resources? Are we afraid to spend our external assets on machinery and the payment of skill to develop these mines and other similar projects? Has the pendulum swung completely the other way, so far as Fine Gael and the Labour Party are concerned? Whereas a short time ago they wanted to spend every penny of our foreign assets, they are now quite miserly about them and are prepared to give 100 per cent. to any foreigner who will come in here and who, by bringing money into the country, gives us the opportunity of avoiding the expenditure of our foreign assets.
I hope we will have a better experience with this Avoca mine than we had with sugar. When Fine Gael wanted sugar grown here, they employed another foreign company to come into this country. They built a factory down in Carlow. Within a couple of years, it was on the point of shutting down. The acreage of sugar beet had fallen to 2,500 which would not keep the factory going for more than a week or two.
