Deputy T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan) gave notice of his intention to raise the subject matter of Question No. 18 on to-day's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Imported Baths in Ballymun Scheme.
(Cavan): For some considerable time past building grants payable by the Department of Local Government have been subject to a proviso that Irish materials will be used. Grants were refused if this proviso was not complied with and imported material used. In fact, I understand that this condition was, and is, being operated very strictly. If a man, even unconsciously, used foreign materials in a building, his grant would be either refused altogether or substantially reduced. We know also that local bodies are compelled to include in their contracts for building a proviso that Irish materials will be used.
Six months ago the Government launched a Buy Irish campaign to encourage everybody to buy Irish products only in the interests of the national economy, which at that stage had gone a bit out of gear and which now, according to the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture, is badly out of gear and needs drastic measures to get it on the rails again. It therefore came as a surprise to me when I was told today by the Minister for Local Government that he had sanctioned the use of 3,000 imported baths in the Ballymun housing scheme, especially when baths of a superior quality were available and were being manufactured by a County Cavan firm in Bailieboro'
Let us be clear about these baths from the start. The County Cavan bath is manufactured completely and entirely in a foundry in Cavan and is finished there. The imported bath is a pressed steel bath. It is imported from Great Britain, "dolled up" a bit here, enamelled and sold on the Irish market. I want to assert straight away that the Bailieboro' product is a much superior bath. I do not think there can be any doubt about that. The best evidence I can give the House of that is that these imported pressed steel baths have been coming into the country for some considerable time free of duty; and, notwithstanding the fact they are coming in free of duty, the Bailieboro' bath secured and held 95 per cent of the Irish market since the firm was established in 1948. Not alone did they secure 95 per cent of the Irish market but they also secured export markets in Great Britain and West Africa in the face of considerable opposition.
If further evidence is required that the Bailieboro' bath can hold its own, I wish to tell the House that it is recognised in practically all, if not all, of the Six Counties as suitable for installation in local government buildings and has secured, and holds, a considerable market there. That is not for love of the bath or love of the people who make the bath. It is because it is a good bath and a bath that can compete with any baths produced by large firms in Great Britain, the home ground for Northern Ireland.
Since 1962, the Bailieboro' firm spent about £30,000 in providing new plant, machinery and premises and the capacity of the foundry was increased from 10,000 units per year to 30,000 units per year within that time. That is no mean achievement. The £30,000 spent in re-adapting the factory and preparing to go ahead is considerably more than the total original capital of the company in 1948.
It will be appreciated that an order for 3,000 baths is a sizeable one when I tell the House—and I do not think this can be contradicted—that the total home market for baths absorbs 22,000 baths in one year. Therefore, 3,000 baths represent approximately one-seventh of the total Irish market. That is not to be sneezed at. That is something that could not be described as a "nugatory" contribution to Irish industry. The effect of this on Bailie-boro' will be the loss of from six to eight weeks full-time production. In cash, it will mean a loss to the workers of Bailieboro' of between £12,000 and £16,000 in wages. That is a considerable sum and it would be a considerable contribution to the Irish economy.
Let us have no nonsense about this. It is admitted by all concerned that this imported pressed steel bath has always been a cheaper type of product and has always been available on the Irish market cheaper than the cast-iron bath. I do not wish to be offensive to the manufacturers but it is an inferior type of bath in the sense that it is not as good as the cast-iron bath. I am told there is no standard specification for a pressed steel bath. The hallmark of an article, I understand, is that it is built to certain recognised specifications. In this particular instance, there is no standard specification. I am also told that this bath is much more easily damaged in installation and that the life of the bath is shorter than that of the cast-iron bath. Furthermore, I am told that enamelling it here is not satisfactory because the enamel should be applied to a pressed steel or, indeed, a cast-iron bath very shortly after the final manufacturing process has taken place. That is not possible if the bath is imported from abroad and brought in here to be enamelled.
Surely the Deputy ought not to be so derogatory about an industry here which is giving such valuable employment in the town of Clonmel?
The Deputy is entitled to make his case.
(Cavan): I must make my case. The Deputy can stand up for his hometown industry any time he likes. He will have ample opportunity to do so.
I shall do it.
(Cavan): I am standing up for a completely manufactured Irish article.
The Deputy is not entitled to make such derogatory statements about another industry of which he knows nothing.
(Cavan): I should not expect any complaint from the Labour Party about my action in supporting a home-manufactured article. This Bailieboro' product has held 95 per cent of the market. The Minister will probably make the case that this bath was ordered because it is cheaper. I cannot accept that, because an even cheaper pressed steel bath is available from another part of the world. The order has been given and there is nothing that can be done about it, but that does not mean that I am making this plea now for the sake merely of political publicity. I want to know if this is going to be a precedent, a precedent which, I understand, though not on as reliable an authority, has already been followed in a building scheme in the Dún Laoghaire area. Are we to take it now that, while the Minister and the Government are appealing to all and sundry to buy Irish and to use Irish materials, it is not a case of do as we do but rather do as we say? That is a bad example to set. Are we to take it now that the use of Irish materials, when they are available, is to be dispensed with as a condition for obtaining grants for houses?
The Deputy realises that this question relates to only one scheme, of course? It relates to the Ballymun scheme and that is all that can be discussed. I will read the question:
To ask the Minister for Local Government why he approved of the installation of 3,000 imported pressed steel baths in the Ballymun scheme notwithstanding the fact that superior cast iron baths of Irish manufacture and finish could be supplied by an Irish foundry (name supplied).
(Cavan): With the greatest respect, I have asked why a certain thing has been done and I submit I am entitled to discuss the effects of doing that certain thing and the reason why it should not have been done.
That is so, but the Deputy must not enlarge on it and discuss the policy of Local Government; the policy of the Department in relation to other schemes may not be dealt with on this.
(Cavan): That is the whole point in putting down the question.
If the Deputy wanted a general question, then he should have put it down, but he is limited in this question to the Ballymun scheme.
(Cavan): Having regard to the fact that the Minister and the Government are spending money appealing to the people to buy Irish goods and to use Irish commodities in the interests of our staggering Irish economy at the moment, the Minister and the Government should set a good example by using home-manufactured goods themselves. The Minister may say there is a difference of £12,000 between the two but that £12,000 can be whittled down very considerably when one takes into consideration the difference in the quality of the baths and the fact that a great deal of money, £12,000 to £16,000, is being lost to Irish workers.
It is no part of my case here to attack any other business in the country. I make my arguments merely to anticipate the Minister's possible argument and to show that there was available on the Irish market as good an article as the imported article. I ask the Minister for an assurance that, if he expects Irish consumers to use Irish goods and Irish-manufactured articles, whether they like them or not, he will himself give a lead by showing a good example.
Deputy Fahey rose.
There is only half a minute left.
I should like to take that half minute to point out to Deputy Fitzpatrick and the Fine Gael Party——
(Interruptions.)
Give him a chance.
——that a great part of the work on these baths is done in this country in the town of Clonmel. Listening to Deputy Fitzpatrick, one would think that the only place in which there are Irish workers is the town of Bailieboro'. Irish workers are engaged in the manufacture of these baths in Clonmel.
(Cavan): And in Birmingham probably, too.
I should like to say——
I cannot allow the Deputy to go any further. This is the Minister's ten minutes.
The Minister is telling him to go further, so the Minister has taken over the Chair.
The Deputy does not know what he is talking about.
The Minister often does not know.
Deputy L'Estrange will surely enlighten the House if given the opportunity, and I have no intention of giving it to him. Deputy Fitzpatrick, with his tongue in his cheek, talked of things here tonight which he already knew as a result of being on a deputation which I met a week ago. If Deputy Fitzpatrick sees fit to denigrate a product that is manufactured by people other than the Bailieboro' people, to do justice to Clonmel, it would follow that I should join Deputy Fitzpatrick in abusing the product manufactured in Bailieboro' but I just want to tell Deputy Fitzpatrick that I have a great deal more regard for both Bailieboro' and Clonmel than to use this House to abuse the product of either town.
(Cavan): The Minister would not know how.
They are both manufacturing products which are the products of Irish firms. The situation which I was faced with was that my technical advisers and the technical advisers of the National Building Agency, in conjunction with the advisers of the consortium in relation to Ballymun, were and are of the opinion that the Clonmel product is more suited to their particular project in Ballymun than the Bailieboro' product. The decision I had to make was not a decision to buy either one or the other product but merely a decision that I would not penalise the consortium, the NBA or Dublin Corporation, and ultimately their tenants, by refusing to allow them to purchase and use the Clonmel product, if they thought fit to do so.
I asked the Bailieboro' people on the occasion of this deputation, in so far as anything outside this question is concerned, which is Ballymun and Ballymun only, if they would furnish me with everything they feel should be said in their favour and told them that I would ask Clonmel to do likewise. When I have got all this information, the question Deputy Fitzpatrick is posing here tonight can be gone into in the light of all the circumstances then prevailing, but I should like to say that the amount of saving, which is not less than £10,000 and may well be £12,000, almost approximates the total amount that would be paid in the wages of labour used if the baths were to be manufactured in Bailieboro' and, while we are talking about 3,000 baths, that is not for use this year or next year but spread over three to three and a half years. Taking it as three years, the total number required in any one of these three years will be about 1,000.
As I understand it, the demand for baths and the use of new baths likely to have arisen on the Irish market since 1959 would have risen from 13,000 to 24,500 this year. Deputy Fitzpatrick maintains that 95 per cent of all baths used in this country are manufactured in Bailiboro' and goes on to point out that that is indicative of an overwhelming preference by the Irish public for this product but what he fails to tell the House is that this may well be attributable to the fact that all State-aided housing in these years past has been so directed and administered as to favour the use of only the Bailie-boro' product.
(Cavan): That does not apply in Northern Ireland, surely.
If Bailieboro' can compete in the Six Counties against all comers, the loss of 1,000 per year for the next three years, to a group manufacturing and selling this year 22,000 —to take Deputy Fitzpatrick's figure— the need for which would never have arisen if this additional job at Ballymun were not being done, cannot be significant to Bailieboro' but the work and the value of it is significant in the case of Clonmel because circumstances have been such that they can have had only a share of the five per cent left by Bailieboro' in so far as the supply of baths to the Irish market is concerned over recent years.
If the saving approximates to the total wages that would be paid for the manufacture of these 3,000 baths, all one can ask the House is whether or not the total Irish-manufactured product, where its total labour content is only fractionally greater than the actual saving that would be made on the production of the Clonmel baths, which is partly Irish and partly foreign, does all this talk by Deputy Fitzpatrick really ring true? Does all this talk about using Irish products ring true? Is he advocating that, regardless of cost, regardless of wages paid, Irish manufacture, whether suitable or not for the job, should be used? That is the only conclusion to be drawn from what Deputy Fitzpatrick has been saying here tonight.
I want to say again that the decision is based on the technical advantages, as agreed by the advisers to myself, to the National Building Agency and to the building consortium in Ballymun, that these technical advisers set out that these baths are more suitable for Ballymun than the Bailieboro' product, that the difference in price is not to be sneezed at, that it is not unsubstantial and that it approximated to the total wages that would be paid by Bailieboro' if they were to be commissioned to do this job.
(Cavan): The Minister for Transport and Power thought £1 million to be a “nugatory” amount.
I doubt very much if in fact Deputy Fitzpatrick, in all his enthusiasm here tonight, is concerned greatly about the future of Bailieboro'. Is he really doing both firms down by castigating the product of Clonmel and at the same time trying to make it appear that Bailieboro' is being done an injustice and in the same breath, trying to draw from me a condemnation of the Bailieboro' product, which condemnation, added to Deputy Fitzpatrick's condemnation of Clonmel, would add up to the fact that neither of the two products from the Irish point of view was suitable?
As I said at the outset, I have no intention of doing that. I do not want to be drawn into doing it, although to give the proper answer to the attack by Deputy Fitzpatrick, that would be the way to go about it. I am not going to do it because I regard the Clonmel product and the baths produced in Bailieboro' as both useful adjuncts to the Irish economy and I can only say to both of them that the market in Ireland is expanding, no thanks to Deputy Fitzpatrick, his Party or the alleged policy of that Party but rather due to the fact that the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government over the recent years has boosted the market for both so that it has risen from 13,000 six years ago to over 24,500 this year, with a 95 per cent preference on the part of the buying public for the Bailieboro' product. If this is not real Government support in the truest possible sense, I do not know what is. It is certainly far more help to Bailieboro' than Deputy Fitzpatrick's outburst here tonight and it certainly may be some help to Clonmel to continue to serve some little part of the market. It is only a little part of it that they have had. I leave this by again mentioning the technical considerations favouring the Clonmel product for the job in Ballymun, plus the overwhelming difference in the cost of the two products.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 11th November, 1965.