I was commenting on the extraordinary manner in which this whole question is being discussed and the suggestion by a number of members of the Opposition that in some way or another, the proposal by the Minister would seem to suggest that where the State puts behind the enterprise its financial resources, it was in some way acting unfairly and that a publicly-owned organisation, when it competed against private enterprise, was taking advantage of the size of the private enterprise and in that way was doing something not quite creditworthy.
What the Deputies do not seem to understand is that in this issue very serious repercussions are involved. In the case we are talking about, Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, for instance, the very fact that the Government came to the rescue of private enterprise food-processing here in Ireland may have saved the private fortunes of the handful of people involved in the industry because it does not concern the worker. The worker gets as much, and possibly more, working for a State concern. He is not affected. The only people affected are a tiny minority who might be run into the ground as a result of the competition of the State company.
If a handful of people are put out of business because the enterprise is a tiny and inefficient one which has failed to use automation or mechanisation or failed to develop its markets, that is only the concern of a minority. Restricting the right of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann to operate in the home market has had repercussions on a very much wider scale where the public are concerned. The end result of this restriction has been that Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann have been prevented from going into the market. The result is that the public are denied access to presumably a better product— otherwise, private enterprise would not be frightened of it—a cheaper product and a good quality product and, broadly speaking, a more competitive product than that of the private company. If it were not more competitive, this howl would not go up from the people that they would not be able to stand up to competition from the State-owned company.
This is very much more serious than Deputy Barry's suggestion that a few people might lose their industries and might consequently go out of business. It is quite wrong to suggest that the minority might lose on this. An operative in the industry could not lose. The industry has to go on. As a consumer, he also gains. It is a particularly retrograde fact that a publicly-owned company such as Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann were called upon by their own Government to restrict sale to the public of a better or more competitive product in order to save the private incomes of a minority of individuals. It is, of course, a criticism of the fact that the public has not been truly represented by successive Governments which have operated in our society over the years.
The suggestion that it is not fair for this State company to compete against the private company is treating the whole matter in a completely frivolous way, as if the whole business were a kind of game in which we did not play fair because we produced a more experienced team in some sort of football match, boxing match or some other kind of match. It is not that. It is a very serious thing, indeed. The difference between these two points of view represents the difference between a national income of four per cent. going up to nine, ten or 11 per cent. The difference in that as far as the public are concerned is the greatly improved standard of living which would result if we were to extend the scope of the public company on the lines of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann.
It is not our fault if the private enterprise company has not expanded and if it has not mechanised itself and provided the money with which to buy the equipment to make itself competitive, not only on the home market but also on the foreign market. The failure in this industry is particularly regrettable because the food-processing industry, above all others, was a natural from the point of view of development by our Governments since the State was formed. It is a natural for the reason that it was based on rural Ireland and on the agricultural produce of rural Ireland. If these industries had been based 20, 30 or 40 years ago on the general principle of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, we would now have a magnificent industrial potential instead of the appallingly inept type of industrial infra-structure of which we have heard repeated indictments.
The obvious advantage of having the raw materials of one's own industries should surely be self-evident. Instead of that, we have these other absurd industries which, as we have been told recently, in many cases will have to cut down the number of persons employed by as much as one-third or, in some cases, completely close down altogether. The really regrettable fact is that this whole development did not take place 20 or 30 years ago. Political leaders, through the television, radio and newspapers, tell us that we are ready to get up and at them as far as competing with allcomers in Europe is concerned.
Most of us believe that to be a completely absurd proposition but it is made by the Government, Government spokesmen generally and their various economists. We are told that we can stand up to open competition from the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Dutch, the Danes and the British. At the same time, our own State-owned company, Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, are not allowed to interfere with the home market, to compete in the home market because it might put the home market out of business. Deputy Barry, who apparently has some expert knowledge, supported that point of view. He said the State company would steamroll our tiny food-processing industries into the ground. He is probably correct in that, but then where is the truth? If we are rearing to go, as the Taoiseach keeps telling us, if we are ready to go into Europe to compete against all these various countries with their expertise and their technological know-how, equal to the best in the world, how is it that we are not equal to poor little Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, our own State company? Why is it we cannot stand up to that company if we are ready to meet the giants of Europe?
There is a transparent contradiction in all this. I believe there is a transparent dishonesty in it all. It, of course, is based not on any acceptance by the Government that a State company is superior in its operations, or more efficient in its administration or in its tendency, to go and look for business and to try to get the optimum measure of efficiency in the enterprise, but to the Government's fear of those whom they are anxious to protect in the food processing industry here. Naturally the consumer suffers in the fact that he is clearly getting a less competitive commodity. The small farmers suffer in so far as they have been too damned lazy to get into the high level of efficient production over the years when they have had protection in order to maximise production.
The result of that is that we have really quite a limited amount of production going into these limited factories because they have restricted their output to the relatively tiny home market. In our consideration of markets, we must remember that at the moment two out of three people in the world go to bed hungry each night, and think of that unlimited market. In face of that, let us remember that private enterprise here over the past 30 years has made no serious attempt to get even the one-hundredth part of the market of a small part of a province of India, Ghana, the Middle East or Nigeria, so desperately in need of consumer goods.
Instead of that, we have operated behind our tariff walls. Behind them we have insisted on restrictive trade practices which have fixed the prices for the consumer against which he has no protection whatsoever. I do not know what the political leaders think their functions are in society, whether it is to protect a wealthy minority, their industries and profits. That must now come to an end when we enter the Common Market because we will meet competition which we never had before, but at the same time it has meant here that there has been, first of all, exploitation of the consumer and, secondly, a failure to develop export markets which would have doubled, trebled and even quadrupled our national income over the years.
Obviously, it is the superiority of the public company in relation to agriculture, demonstrated in the magnificent marketing systems, the magnificent organisation of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann in the supply of seeds, of fertilisers at attractive prices, the zoning of its growth, the certainly of the price, the guarantee of market and outlet, that provides the best example of how markets should be exploited. Nobody can reasonably object to that approach to the question. Anybody who knows anything about the turkey producer or the person growing vegetables, or the egg or pig producer, anybody who knows anything about our own Dublin city market, could not help knowing the absurd, chaotic marketing conditions for the sale of potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, and the uncertainty of the producers' market.
If there is a glut, the bottom falls out of the market; if there is a shortage the consumer cannot get food, and this idiotic marketing system has been allowed to meander on, year after year, because people like Deputy Barry have a sentimental attachment to the out-of-date economic point of view of private enterprise. This continued adhesion to something which has been completely discredited, even in our own country, is much too costly. A number of people have been able to make it operate successfully but it has failed in 99 cases out of 100.
The only tiny sector which was allowed to go into this part of agricultural production, Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann—CIE and other such State bodies are merely public utilities— are clearly outstandingly successful in practically every sphere of their activity, and the more one examines their marketing processes, their buying and selling processes generally, the co-ordination between them, the public and the farmers, and the end product, the more one finds how outstandingly superior they are to anything in private enterprise.
There is another factor in connection with public enterprise as distinct from private enterprise and that is that all the money goes back into the enterprise. It ideally should go back to continue to finance it, to continue to finance its expansion and re-equipment or to reduce prices. It is clearly very superior to the idea in private enterprise, where the surplus is distributed among a number of people who do not have to work for it.
Deputy Esmonde and the Minister did mention away back the suggestions that public companies, once they were going concerns, should put their shares on the market and then that most of them should be bought out by wealthy members of the public and that the money thus liberated could be used for other purposes — that public money advanced by the Minister for loans could be liberated for other enterprises. That sounds very attractive and plausible but it leaves aside the argument that one would spend all the public money as very high risk capital in adventures of one kind or another. I do not see why public money should be spent in that way.
If we have put our money into various companies and enterprises, into Aer Lingus or Irish Steel Holdings or Bord na Móna or Forestry, we have done it because we were allowed to do it by private enterprise who saw it was not a profit-making enterprise in the first place, who saw it was a very tough nut to make anything out of, because it was a very difficult administrative or technical job to do. If we put our money into these enterprises and if we make a success of them, we should see that they are retained, so that their benefits may continue to flow to the public in the times of their prosperity, so that as soon as the cream appears on the milk we do not allow it to be skimmed off for stock exchange speculation. The ideal arrangement is that we take these risks with State companies so that when they produce a surplus that surplus will be realised by the public in the form of lower prices and improved social services of one type or another.
Deputy Esmonde also made the point that we had not the money in private enterprise for this type of accelerated deep freeze type machinery that would be required to carry out the process. That is probably typical of what has gone on in the private enterprise food processing industry in Ireland over the years because too much of the money has had to go in dividends. Anybody who reads the annual reports of Crosse and Blackwell, Batchelors and the other firms, who issue their reports every year, will see the colossal amount of money which has to be handed out in the form of profits of one kind or another. The shareholders expect dividends.
Public money is put back into a public concern. Therefore, it is possible for a public company to keep up to date with reorganisation, re-equipment and modernisation of its industry without looking all the time towards the annual general meeting and fearing criticism from shareholders. They are able to reinvest their capital all the time.
I suppose that that probably explains why, over the years, Irish food manufacturing industries, have not made the progress they should have made. CIO reports make it clear that in all the branches of industry they have investigated up to the present there has not been reinvestment in industry. The result is that we are grossly underequipped. In many cases we are equipped with grossly inefficient, out of date equipment of one kind or another.
We have not invested sufficiently in industry in order to create work for people, jobs for people. The result is that we have a whole lot of derelict farms throughout the country which are not producing goods, vegetables, agricultural produce of one kind or another. If the food processing industry were operating at its optimum, these farms would contribute towards creating a demand which probably could not be met, even if every acre were producing to its total capacity.
That is why it is no good to suggest, as Deputy Barry or Deputy Donegan suggest, that these private enterprise firms should be kept as sorts of pets that we should pay for them. They are too costly pets. We cannot afford them.
We are entering a very highly competitive society in which a man shall be judged not on the fact that he is a friend of somebody, that he lives in my constituency, that I knew his father or that his firm is a good old family firm. He will be judged on the quality, price, availability of the product and the certainty with which he can fulfil orders. These are the completely acid tests of success and represent the difference between prosperity and general debts.
In some ways I am opposed, as everybody knows, to the general idea of the Common Market. However, I suppose that in some ways it will be a benefit, in so far as it will bring this moment of truth home to Irish industry. The fact that they have operated in a sheltered atmosphere for the best part of 30 years will make them now most unlikely to be able to face serious competition from outside. To the extent that it will expose that position for the first time, I suppose it is a very desirable thing that it should happen.
I do not understand how the Minister can continue, as he appears to be Continuing, to restrict Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann in the way he does, in the light of his statements on the readiness of our society to enter into the EEC. It is good to know that, even in one tiny sector of our economy, there is prosperity and that we may be able to create at least one competitive industry. It is even more heartening to know that that particular industry happens to be the only industry—outside forestry of fisheries or whatever it might be—based on the natural produce of the countryside and the seas around the land, and that it is the most intelligent industry we could develop in a field, which, regretfully, over the past 40 years we have so much neglected by leaving it to private enterprise.