I want to enter a protest that the information I requested in my question to-day was not made available for this discussion. I asked for the last accounts of one of the companies named in this Bill and its subsidiaries and the Minister chose to interpret that as meaning accounts to the 31st March, 1963. I did not ask for those because I knew there was no hope of getting them. I knew that I had on many occasions to ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce to ensure that that particular company would fulfil its statutory obligations and file its accounts and it did not do so at the proper time. The circumstance that the Minister for Finance neglected to provide the accounts relating to one of the companies named does not make the discussion of this Bill any easier. We may be able in some respects to clarify some matters but others may have to wait until the Report Stage.
I find the greatest difficulty in understanding what the Minister means in regard to this Bill. If it suited him to jibe in his reply on the Second Stage, he is welcome. It will not prevent me getting the information the House and the public are entitled to get, nor will the fact that the Minister misled the House in his opening or closing speech on the Second Stage assist the passage of the measure. I do not know which was the true position, whether his prepared speech at the beginning was the correct one or his reply at the end, but in many aspects of the matter, he was not as frank with the House as he should have been.
First, he said there was no need for an explanatory memorandum in regard to this Bill because the Minister for Industry and Commerce had forecast the entire contents of the Bill. I challenge the Minister to produce any speech or statement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in which he mentioned a word about a Bill to cover Aviation Development Limited. I challenge the Minister to produce anywhere a statement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that this Bill that was to be introduced was to cover a company to be called Aviation Development Limited or that such a company would be for the purpose of developing one aspect of the Potez aircraft factory. The fact is he did not. Obviously, before he made comments on that, the Minister did not take the trouble to read what his colleague said in this House on the occasion to which he referred.
In column 295, the Minister made it clear to the House he was proposing to utilise up to £2½ million for the purpose of paying off the Industrial Credit Company Limited amounts expended in relation to the Industrial Engineering Company and its subsidiaries. It was clear to anyone that he meant they were to pay up to £2½ million. We all know—and I showed it to some degree on the last occasion— there is not anything like £2½ million worth of assets there. Then the Minister proceeded to change his feet when he was challenged and, in column 317, say they were not going to pay the £2½ million, that they were going to pay only what the shares and loans were worth at present. I venture to say that the two statements by the Minister are recklessly inconsistent. I do not know which is the correct one. I hope the second is correct.
It is easy for people to comment on criticism of moneys expended in this way and say that the moneys provide employment. But what we want is not merely the temporary employment, which passes if capital moneys are spent foolishly, but the permanent employment that wise productive capital expenditure will give. The Minister cannot get that wise productive capital expenditure unless the projects involved can stand up to the light of day. If they can, if they are viable projects, economically, commercially and nationally, nobody should object to their being examined in public here. It is entirely wrong for public money of the size involved to be expended without proper evidence in support and without proper explanation to this House and to the country.
I might add that the Minister misled the House in other respects in his initial remarks. He said in column 292:
I should add that these will be confined to the relatively small number eligible for grants from an Foras Tionscal in excess of £250,000.
When he was challenged as to where that was in the Bill, he then proceeded to tell us something entirely different and to say that, while that might be the general position, there was nothing in the Bill, as I knew, and that in addition to that it was not even intended to confine the provisions exclusively, as he had undertaken in his opening statement. When we are dealing with sums of the size involved in this, it is, to say the least of it, unfortunate that the Minister should not be accurate.
This Bill was to deal apparently with the taking up of shares in a company to which a grant or guarantee of borrowing has been or is to be given under the Tourist Traffic Acts. I admit quite frankly that when I read the section I took that to mean resort development and so on. I did not appreciate it would cover hotels as well, although I wish to make it quite clear that the Minister in his introductory speech did make it clear that hotels were included as well as tourist development associations and so on. I must have failed to hear him at the time.
Before we provide the money for this Bill, I should like to know whether it is proposed that this new company will take over from the Industrial Credit Company the stake the Industrial Credit Company have put in the new hotel being erected near Santry. If so, what are the terms of that arrangement? Are the terms such that there is an adequate risk capital being placed by the entrepeneurs themselves and equally a chance of a satisfactory return for the State? If public moneys are paid out to an individual concern and the individual concern does not put a proportionate part of its own money to the public moneys paid out, we are likely to get ventures of a sort that will not be permanent.
We are entitled in this House, and should as Deputies satisfy ourselves, when Bills of this kind come before us, that the balance being kept between the private moneys being provided by the owners of the concern and the public moneys provided by this House is reasonably fair and proportionate, and that it is not a question of the matter being taken in a way that the entire risk is in one pocket and the entire profit, if things go well, in another.