That is the fundamental difference between us. I think I know whereof I speak. I was closely and intimately associated with this whole business for a long time. He is embarking upon a dialectic the inevitable end of which is that the boat-owning fishermen will disappear from our shores and the tragedy for me is that, once that happens, it is an irreversible process. I admit that the consumer in this country may derive a certain price advantage from this development but he will lose in the quality of the fish which will be available to him and, what I think is much more important, he will lose a great volume of dignified and solvent employment for between 1,000 and 2,000 families in the West, North West and South West of Ireland, where there is no conceivable possibility of providing any alternative form of employment. We are faced with the lamentable fact that this Government seems to have made up its mind that the right policy for the congested areas in the West of Ireland is to knock down the cliffs and let in the sea and push the people out. I think that is all wrong. I think it is a complete illusion. It is this horrible doctrine enunciated by Mr. Cahan, who was here recently from the O.E.E.C., that what matters is efficiency and high money-earning power. It is an illusion and, for this country a disastrous illusion, because, in that climate of competition, nothing can happen to us in international competition but that we should go to the wall. If we refuse that competition and elect for our own kind of life, certain economic consequences may be inevitable but we preserve something worth retaining.
If we embark upon this other frantic scramble to try to constitute ourselves a competitor with the black country of England and the Ruhr of Germany, we simply become a poor, neglected slum. We do not belong in that camp. We are prepared to accept the kind of life that this country can afford its people. We have probably, in my judgment, one of the best kinds of life to be had in Europe or, indeed, in the world. It does not appeal to everybody. It manifestly does not appeal to Mr. Cahan but, at least, it gives us sufficient resources to pay our part of Mr. Cahan's wages and we have not defaulted in any of our international obligations to pay. I see no prospect of our ever having to do so.
I seriously apprehend that, if we throw away what we have got, and substitute trawlers for boat-owning fishermen and aspire to the day when those who are at present boat-owning fishermen go to sea as hired men in deep-sea or middle-sea trawlers in the employment even of so charitable a person as Mr. Venner-Gren, we make an irreversible decision which hereafter we shall have bitter cause to regret.
I think Section 4 is a thoroughly bad section and it is necessary that the facts relating to it should be fully known. I know that marketing conditions have materially changed but I think it is well to remember that we have three trawlers, or had three trawlers, operated by Bórd Iascaigh Mhara. I do not know what has become of them. I think they are being used for training now. But, what was our experience operating these three middle-water trawlers—and they were operating, not into Killybegs but, at the end, into Dublin? In one year, in any case, we had a loss in excess of £11,000. I know they were very bad trawlers in that they were in a miserable state of repair but I do not think they ever made a profit in any year of their operation.
I am told that middle water trawlers of this kind, that is to say, boats that are neither inshore fishermen's boats nor steam trawlers suitable for going to the Greenland coast, have been heavily subsidised in Great Britain but consistently at a loss. In the six years up to 1947, 400 such middle water trawlers had been scrapped in Britain and I believe the reason for it is that the fishing grounds acceptable to middle-water trawlers are largely fished out.
I have not read the Minister's most recent circulation with sufficient care to ascertain whether he has adjusted his estimate of the available market for fish products in Great Britain which, on one occasion, I think he described as being in the order of £33,000,000. These figures are very often illusory, particularly when you come to examine that figure and discover that, of it, £12,000,000 represents imports of whale oil.
Our interest in imports of whale oil into Britain is relatively remote. It is used for a certain type of lubrication. These purely economic considerations are not for me to discuss in opposing Section 4 of this Bill. The reason I oppose it is because I am perfectly certain that it marks the emergence of a dialectic which is going to lead to the extinction of the boat-owning fishermen along our coasts. I despair of the situation if the present Minister is to be succeeded by Deputy Moran. If that happens anything can happen but our only hope is that we shall get them out before irretrievable damage is done to this form of life.
