(South Tipperary): There is a great deal in the Minister's brief for which we can be thankful. In general, he paints a relatively happy picture of our economy. Our exports have reached a new record figure of £222 million. We have, so to speak, for the first time in our economy broken the sound barrier of the £200 million mark. Our imports have also substantially increased. I understand the October figure of £347 million gives us a trade deficit of £125 million. It was always considered here that a trade imbalance of that magnitude, or much above £100 million, was rather getting into the red. We have, at the same time, a balance of payments deficit of £31.4 million. Were it not for various, perhaps fortuitous, circumstances, it might be worse. We happened to have a large measure of foreign investment. We had loans by Aer Lingus and the ESB during the year which brought us in some capital. Judging by our stock exchange activities, perhaps in measure due to economic conditions threatening in England, there has been a movement of capital from that direction also. There has been a considerable purchase of Irish properties, hotels, even land. These capital movements have kept our balance of payments at the figure of £31 million. In the Government's Second Programme for Economic Expansion, they are quite prepared to accept a deficit of £16 million per year. Perhaps they would call it a planned deficit. Even translating back £31 million to the 1960 financial level, we are still facing a balance of payments deficit which is too high to be comfortable.
I would emphasise that our economy is a very fragile thing. Let us take the position of the last returns for the United States. Their trading exports were greater than their imports by £1,000 million. At the same time, they ended up with a balance of payments deficit of about £1,000 million, largely due to the fact that they were financing an army overseas, that their industrialists were investing extensively in Europe, to such an extent that President de Gaulle tried to introduce some kind of squeeze on the dollar. The United States can operate on a planned deficit consistent with that kind of trading potential.
With a trade deficit of £125 million, our position is completely reversed. We cannot, without serious risk to our economy, lightly undertake a planned balance of payments deficit. Already, in the first quarter of this year, there is evidence—let us hope it will not continue—that our position may not be as happy as it was in the past year or two. For the first quarter of this year, our import excess is £43.3 million as compared with £31.9 million last year. If that is continued for the rest of 1965, we will have a very serious trade imbalance at the end of this year and one far in excess of what we have realised this year. Therefore, I would say our economy is entering a more difficult and more competitive phase than we have experienced up to date. We must not forget the fact that, as well as these capital movements, we have enjoyed over the past year or two fairly good terms of trade—terms of trade completely different from those in 1957-58 when the last inter-Party Government were in office.
I should like to express my appreciation of the efforts made by our industrialists during the past year, particularly their efforts towards increasing our exports and in the field of trade exhibitions, both on the Continent and in America. That is a forward-looking approach which, up to recent years, we in Ireland could not embark upon. I hope in the year ahead the equivalent activity will show itself among our export firms in regard to trade exhibitions and fairs all over the world and that it will help to sell our products abroad. We must remember that many of the countries in which we show our goods have a huge economy, and even a small amount of trade to them would be a very substantial help to us.
Looking at the trade figures, although the position has improved somewhat, we are trading with many countries who do not give us a £1 for £1 trading relationship. Certain countries, particularly those behind the Iron Curtain, have been prevented from conducting trade on that basis. We on this side have been advocating pressure on these trading blocs to ensure we will get a more equitable balance of trade between ourselves and them.
Again, looking at our trade figures, it is obvious agriculture is still the backbone of our economy. No matter what the Minister for Industry and Commerce may say about our expanding industrial arm, we have a long way to go before we can regard this as an industrial country. We will still be depending largely on exports, particularly of live cattle and food, to finance our industrial development here. When it comes to trade balances, there is no question which is the better type of export. When we export any agricultural product, there is very little corresponding import to balance it. Imports of a few other small items of that nature are the only outgoings we have to keep up an expanding agricultural industry. On the purely commercial side of exports, although we can expand our exports, we are always faced with the difficulty that we have to buy a correspondingly high percentage of goods.
In the Book of Estimates, I see a figure of £330,000 for the shipbuilding subsidy. This is the same as the figure for last year. I should have liked the Minister to have dealt with this item in a little more detail. Considering it is exactly the same as it was last year, the figure presents itself to me as some form of employment subsidy, rather than a commercial subsidy. Doubtless it will be £330,000 again next year. I should like the Minister to give us some information on the question of this shipbuilding subsidy. For how long will it go on? Will shipbuilding in the foreseeable future become a solvent concern, or are we to continue ad infinitum this subsidy?
I also notice a figure of £12,500 for St. Patrick's Copper Mines. I should like the Minister to give us some information on what this £12,500 is all about. I thought we had heard the last of the St. Patrick's Copper Mines, but apparently we are still paying some subvention. I should like to know more about this expenditure of £12,500.
There is an increasing subvention for industrial research which I welcome. The subvention is increased from £191,000 to £375,000. Again, I would like more details as to the nature of that expenditure. It is now of such magnitude that one would expect an annual report from that body. Maybe there is. Other research bodies who receive amounts of money of that nature usually try to produce an annual report. If a report has not already been produced by this body, I would recommend it as a suggestion to the Minister.
Another matter in which I am interested is the question of coal and anthracite. On page 66, paragraph 189, of the Progress Report on the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, it is stated:
Consumption of coal in 1964 is estimated at 1,475,000 tons or about 9 per cent less than the previous year. Home production of semi-bituminous coal and anthracite was about the same as in 1963, i.e. 207,000 tons. The continued decline in the demand for coal reflects the trend towards oil, particularly in the manufacture of gas and in industry. The feasibility of using low-grade semi-bituminous Arigna coal to extend the local generating station is still under consideration.
I raise this matter because it is of concern to me in Tipperary in the Ballingarry mine, and in the neighbouring mines in Kilkenny. Indeed, the Minister for Transport and Power was asked a question today on the matter. Apparently there is increasing difficulty in disposing of the products of our mines. I think it desirable to draw the Minister's attention to it, and I presume it comes within the ambit of his Department to find if an alternative outlet can be provided for coal from those mines. It would be a serious matter if the coal were accumulated at the pitheads and there was no sale for it. There would be considerable unemployment in my own county, and in Kilkenny.
I wish to join with other speakers in giving my due meed of praise to the Committee on Industrial Organisation and the various survey teams who at relatively short notice have produced so many excellent surveys. Considering that so many of the survey teams must consist of individuals who could not perhaps be expected to have the technical background information which people in a narrow industry would have, of necessity, we must accept the fact that they produced very excellent surveys, 26 in all. I do not pretend to have read them all, and probably the Minister has not either, but those I have read were quite worthy productions.
I notice the Minister is disappointed that there have not been more applications for special grants and loans. He mentioned 450 applications and a disbursement of £254,000. That is not too bad. About a year or a year and a half ago, the position was considerably worse. I would say most of the applications must have come in the past 18 months or so. I know that in the preliminary stages when these grants were introduced, there was a considerable time-lag before any application came in at all.
We all welcome the success which the Minister intimated of the Buy Irish Campaign. I hope that when the levy is lifted, our people will have become adapted to the purchase of Irish goods, and will have got over the kind of traditional distrust of articles of Irish manufacture which has for too long handicapped industrialists in this country.
I was disappointed in the Minister's very skimpy reference to foreign associations. For the past three or four years, there has been talk of our becoming a member of the EEC; yet from the Minister's speech, we seem to be doing nothing whatsoever about membership of that Community. I cannot even gather from his speech whether we have an observer out there. We seem to be piously waiting to see if someone will ask us to come in. This is important to us because we seem to suffer from lack of membership of most international organisations. We are now applying for membership of GATT and at the moment apparently our membership is being considered. Again there was no information in the Minister's brief as to how our application for membership was progressing.
We have announced our readiness to participate in the Kennedy Round and we are all aware that the chief difficulties confronting the Kennedy Round were the tariff barriers, the non-tariff barriers and the import quotas and protection devices. They were particularly related to supporting agriculture. Agriculture was the basic difficulty in the breakdown in negotiations as regards Britain's application for membership to the EEC. It was always believed that the Kennedy Round could not come to fruition until the question of serious agreements in the EEC was arrived at. Now that has been arrived at, so the Kennedy Round does not now prevent discussion at EEC level. But, in the Minister's brief, I find little concrete information, except the mere statement that we are again interested. The truth of the matter is that we are unable to do so until Britain does so first, and, judging by recent pronouncements by the British Prime Minister, it looks as if British membership of the EEC is not a matter likely to be considered in the near future. Therefore, our prognostications for entry to the Common Market by 1970 may be extremely unreliable.
Again, the Minister made no reference to EFTA. It is another important trading bloc which by next year will have removed its internal tariff barriers. There is not one word in the Minister's speech with reference to it. Yet, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, he should be very much concerned with EFTA activities and should be in a position to make some statement as to our standing vis-á-vis EFTA.
There was a recent United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at which there were 120 nations. This work is to be continued by a 55-member Trade Development Board appointed by that Conference. We did not hear anything from the Minister as to whether we were represented at the Conference or whether we became a member of the 55-member Trade Development Board, or whether we were merely relegated to the group of 77 undeveloped nations which were there. These are all important aspects of our industrial economy and of our agricultural economy, and I am extremely disappointed that the Minister did not make more specific reference to our position with regard to these bodies. I would, therefore, ask him to indicate whether he has more concrete information to offer than the rather nebulous chapters he incorporated in his otherwise reasonably balanced brief.
Before I sit down, I offer the Minister congratulations on appointment to his new post and I wish him many years of success.