When the debate was adjourned last night, I was speaking about my constituency and how it had fared under the original Act. It was no harm to say that the Act had proved itself another Fianna Fáil failure. This report of the CIO—this Bible—tells us that the centralisation of industry in Dublin was all wrong. I have heard Deputies for the past eight years thundering that in this House but the Government took no notice of it at all. Ministers would reply: "Well, we have not the siting of the factories. We cannot help this. If industrialists come along and say they want to put up a factory in Dublin, that is all right."
It was pointed out to the Minister that concessions should have been given to industrialists with the suggestion that they establish their industries in various centres in the country. It was suggested also to the Minister and to his predecessor that the proper thing was that the Department should actually give a direction to the people concerned. That was scoffed at by the Minister's predecessor, who is now the Taoiseach, and by the Minister himself.
However, here we have it in this report, which is to be our Bible, that now the best thing we could do would be to select areas down the country for industrial expansion. That is all to the good. However, we have been eating the lotus about this for the past seven or eight years. If anything emerges from our application for membership of the Common Market, at least that emerges and at least some kind of consciousness was hammered into the Government and the Government's officers that it was not a case of sentiment but that industrial development should be in the areas and in the places which suited industrialists.
I have no doubt, and I do not want to be told it again, that Dublin is the most suitable place but there are other parts of the country almost as suitable. That is what I want to put on the records of this House. I have heard criticism in this House and outside it, and it was uttered in the most venomous way by the supporters of the Government, when Great Britain or British industrialists were mentioned or if a British product were coming into this country which might be a detriment to an Irish product. Deputies would not come in here to try to defend the Irish product but to cast venom on the British product, on the British and on the ancient enemy.
Today, I heard the Taoiseach on this very important Parliamentary Question say: "Our trade arrangements with Great Britain are of basic importance." I wrote it down as he said it. I welcome it. I was beaten and physically assaulted by supporters of Fianna Fáil for saying that. I am glad now that it took all this running after the Common Market to bring the Government to their senses. The Government have come to their senses and this Bill says that the Government have come to their senses. Deputies from other constituencies as well as from my constituency can tell the Minister that we had our unemployment problems, that our people experienced great hardship and that we had people with great skills leaving this country, from our eastern and southern seaboards, for Great Britain or the United States—and there seemed to be no meas on them in this House and nobody seemed to care.
If entrepreneurs came in—and our information was that they wanted to come to places outside Dublin on the eastern or southern seaboard — they were directed to the western seaboard I have been trying to get information about entrepreneurs who came in here and who when they found that they would have to locate the factory in a part of Ireland which did not suit them at all — they would have taken Drogheda or Dundalk, Wexford or Waterford—decided against it. Their factory is now being built in Northern Ireland because they got the concessions there. It is a good thing that now we are giving the concessions and that these concessions are available. It would be well if British industrialists were amongst the industrialists asked or even enticed to come over here. It was strange — there must have been some reason for it—that, in all this industrial drive in the past year or two, British industrialists did not seem to come in. We had Continental industrialists and even Oriental industrialists.
I should like the Minister to make a statement about the industrial area at Shannon. I hope it is doing well. Is it a fact that some of the industries there closed and that the people concerned turned to something else and, for the purpose of statistics, they are shown as opening a new industry? If that is right, I should be glad if the Minister would say so and if it is not right, I should be glad if he would tell me it is not right.
Deputies should speak for their constituencies and I am speaking for mine as regards industrialisation. About 15 years ago, the stir came in Waterford after many years and a new industry came there, Waterford glass. That is one of the our greatest industries now. It did not come through any Government action; it did not come to Waterford because they liked the colour of our hair. It came because Waterford has a great tradition in glassmaking and because Waterford is known all over the world for the quality of its glass and therefore Waterford was the right place to open a crystal cutglass factory. That was done and done well by the promoters. The present Chairman of Hospitals Trust, Mr. Joe McGrath became Chairman of the Waterford glass factory which is setting a headline to Irish industry in its promotion, the way it sells its products and because of its great rule and great policy of high quality.
There are no "seconds" in Waterford glass or in the glass factory. If any of their products is not perfect, it is neither sold nor offered for sale but destroyed. That is a headline for Irish industry in a country where many industrialists have the idea that anything will do, more especially when they are behind tariff walls and when they have the protection of the Government.
There was another promotion in Waterford which was not due to Fianna Fáil but to the inter-Party Government. The paper mills were established in Waterford and later the metal industries were set up there. Deputy Norton was Minister for Industry and Commerce at that time. Then ACEC was established. These are great exporting industries, paying top wages and with splendid working conditions. We have some industries which were established before that, Allied Iron Founders, for instance, and I am proud to say that instead of coming up here and begging with their hats in their hands for tariffs, crawling for protection and begging for grants, we have there an industry making enamel ranges and although one of the greatest manufacturers of these is the Carron Iron Founders in Glasgow—one of the oldest, if not one of the greatest iron founders in Britain—the Waterford factory is exporting its products to Glasgow. That is a headline for Irish industry at a time when all the starry-eyed young men were going about to bring us into the Common Market.
We had addresses at chambers of commerce meetings and at various public functions in Dublin about all the production we were to have and how that production was to be stepped up and what they would do about it. I suggest to the Minister there is just a little more to it than production; there is the selling of it. I draw the Minister's attention to these Waterford factories that have salesmen able to go out and sell their production, and who have been selling it before ever there was a Common Market, in all the countries of the world. We have many of these young salesmen in Ireland who would almost need to be called in and told or even trained— although some of them have been salesmen for years—how to do their job because they have never sold in competitive markets. It is necessary for the Minister's Department and the Minister himself to bend to that task.
ACEC in Waterford make electric transformers, even monsters in size— it is not one of these small, piffling back-yard industries—and these transformers are sent to the ends of the earth, to India, South Africa and South America. Because of all this, years passed by and no industry was established in Waterford except one just recently. Anything that we moved to do was snapped away from us.
I should like to remind the Minister of the treatment Waterford got. I shall go back a few years, not too many. People from various constituencies and centres of population used to come to Dublin agitating for industries in their areas. We had to put up with industries being pilfered out of Waterford. An industry was established in Drogheda, the oil and cake mills in the 1930's. They went in for refining edible oils. That seemed all right. They were established under heavy tariff. I was farming at the time and my attention was first drawn to this factory because the price of dairy cakes and oil cakes doubled. I hope that will not be a headline for the nitrogen factory. When the war ended, a factory that had been established in Waterford in the early years of this century, McDonnell's margarine factory, was just transferred from Waterford up beside the oil and cake mills in Drogheda. No protest we could make would stop this.
I have discovered that when protests are made by Waterford people to the Fianna Fáil Government, they are not listened to. Fianna Fáil prefer to destroy anything that is there. There was another factory in Waterford, the HMV company, which was doing well. That did not close down but was transferred to Dublin. Afterwards, I heard that one of the principal reasons for the transfer was that the two golf courses available in Waterford were not up to the standard of the management who wanted to be near the golf courses in Dublin. Any protests made by the local authority, by Deputies or by the unions in Waterford were not heard by the Fianna Fáil Government. I think if there was a factory in a western area or perhaps in certain other portions of the country and it was doing well, the management would not be allowed to take it away from the provinces and set it up in Dublin.
We have heard something about the forgotten men in an industry and it reminds me of the treatment of my constituency by Fianna Fáil. We had a great industry in Waterford—an industry of buying live pigs, slaughtering them at home and exporting them.