Before Questions were taken I said that the Minister for Industry and Commerce had referred in his opening speech to the fact that increasing costs due to wage increases would price us out of the export market. I have since looked at the Minister's speech and I find that he did not make that statement. I apologise to him.
Industrial Development Bill, 1969: Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".
I did not think I had.
In view of the fact that so many Ministers have said this so often I hope the House will forgive me.
I was merely thinking of it in relation to the realities of this Bill.
The Minister did say so previously. If the Minister did not he must be the only Minister in the Government who has not repeated it again and again, obviously not being aware of the fact that up to this year the unit costs of production in this country have been dropping. Our unit costs are now the lowest in the world except for Japan and I think our workers deserve the congratulations of everyone for that achievement.
In 1968?
I am talking about 1967, 1968 and a portion of 1969. In 1967 production in this country was up by 8.2 per cent; in 1968 it was up by 10.5 per cent; and in January to March 1969—in spite of the strike—it was three per cent, and from April to June, 1969 it was 10.9 per cent. Those figures should be repeated over and over again because so many people seem to be under the impression that we have got a group of people who clock in in the morning, do nothing all day and clock out in the evening. It is about time that the real facts were brought to the notice of the general public. As a matter of fact, the unit labour costs in April to June of this year have increased. Again, I have to admit, the Minister was correct. I was taking the figure for only 12 months where we had a drop, but in the period April to June of this year there was an increase.
When the Minister talks about bringing new industry into the country I think he should look at both sides of the coin. Out of 14 countries listed in the OECD main economic indicator issued in September consumer prices went up by more in Ireland than in any other country. It went up by 8.4 per cent in Ireland; 7.3 per cent in the Netherlands; 7.2 per cent in Japan; 6.5 per cent in France; 5.5 per cent in the United States; 5.3 per cent in the United Kingdom; 3.9 per cent in Belgium; 3.7 per cent in Austria; 3.3 per cent in Norway; 3.1 per cent in Italy; 3 per cent in Switzerland; 2.7 per cent in West Germany; 2.5 per cent in Denmark and 2.5 per cent in Sweden. That is the reason why our workers are looking for increased wages.
When the Minister is talking about bringing in continentals, British or, indeed, Americans to set up industry here I think he should tell them what the facts of life are. The facts of life are that industry in general is organised and that trade unions organise workers. There is no point in bringing in industrialists and giving them the impression that there is an abundance of cheap labour here by showing them the agricultural wages board minimum rate and saying: "This is what is generally paid. You are all right to come in. You will get plenty of work done at a very cheap rate". I am not suggesting the Minister does this but I think the Minister should make it clear that this is not the right attitude.
The IDA certainly does not do this.
The IDA does not do this but the Minister must be aware that this is being done. It has caused a number of disputes in this country which could have been avoided if the people coming in had been told what the facts of life are in relation not alone to wages but in relation to hours worked and paid holidays. The Minister might be interested to know that in regard to paid holidays in Belgium they have 12 days annually legally, 18 laid down by collective agreement and a further ten public holidays, which brings the total to between 22 and 28. In France they have 32 days; in Germany 37; in Italy 37; in Luxembourg 34 and in the Netherlands between 28 and 35. In addition to that they have a bonus of ten or 12 days pay. I am sure the Minister must be aware of the audacity of some of these people who come in here and expect our workers to be content with a week's holiday and a second week given very reluctantly. The latest gimmick, when an industry is started down the country, is for the employer to say that they will give the employees their annual holidays and church holidays. They then work a system which will ensure that the workers will turn in on Church days and will work on bank holidays. They get extremely annoyed when they are asked by trade union representatives to treat the people they employ as human beings.
I am not aware of that. If the Deputy is referring to some specific instances they must be of very limited application because what he is saying is not true in most cases and I think it is important to make that clear.
I am not suggesting that at all. Certainly it is not true of most of these firms but when it is true of one or two it is wrong that it should be allowed. As a trade union official, I am at present engaged in discussions with a German firm who have tried everything under the sun to get away with something I would not even let an Irish firm get away with and I am darned if I am going to let them away with it. These people are only looking for what they are entitled to. I am quite sure the Minister is going to suggest I am travelling a bit wide on this Bill and he is probably right.
The Minister at the start of his speech referred to the fact that our own home market could not support expansion on the scale necessary if the aims of full employment and a better standard of living were to be achieved. I would suggest that there are too many goods imported which could be produced in the country. We tend to ignore the little things. Very many household goods and goods in ordinary daily use are imported. The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement has not helped because, apart from discouraging industries from being set up, it has prevented those already in existence from making the progress that they might have made. The Minister should carefully consider this matter. He should have a survey carried out of the goods being imported which could very usefully be manufactured here. If he does that he will be doing a good job not alone with regard to the question of employment but also with regard to our balance of payments.
The Minister referred to the fact that 1968 was our best year ever in terms of industrial promotion and said:
It saw the approval of 120 new projects which, when in full production, will employ 11,000 workers of whom 7,500 will be men.
Can the Minister say, of the 120 new projects approved in 1968, how many are in production and how many men and women are at present employed in them? I should like to have that figure if the Minister can give it to me when he is replying. I should like to hear the Minister disproving, if he can, the case which has been made here again and again by a number of people, including myself, that the number of workers finally employed by an industry does not live up to the potential mentioned when the project was being started.
I presume the Deputy also noted the reference to the number of new jobs between June of last year and June of this year?
Yes, I noted that, but the trouble is that the four factories which the Minister brought back from America some time before the general election seemed to have got mixed up with rabbits so that they became 44 during the election campaign.
That was in the Deputy's mind.
The Minister did stretch the longbow there. However I referred to that on a previous occasion. There are throughout the country a number of areas where land has been earmarked for industrial buildings. I notice that even in this Bill there is a proposal to give extra incentives to those who will go west of the Shannon. I shall not criticise the efforts made by this or any other Government to find employment for the people who live in the west of Ireland or to bring people who have left the west of Ireland back there, but it is unreasonable to suggest that people who want to start an industry in the east of the country should be discouraged. I fear that the tendency now of both the Minister's Department and the IDA is to do just that. If industrialists can be persuaded to go west of the Shannon they do not want them to start in the east. They speak of Dublin city having too many industries of a certain kind. If industrialists go down the country to my own constituency or neighbouring constituencies they find it extremely difficult to get approval for grant purposes, whereas if they go to the west they have no difficulty in getting grants. The mere question of haulage of raw materials and manufactured goods to and from a port would encourage industrialists to stay as near as possible to that port.
The Minister referred to small industries. The Minister should encourage even some of these small industries to set up in country areas. It might take 100-man jobs to make an impact in some towns but in a small area, a country village or town, an industry that would employ ten or 12 men is important. If support can be given to that type of industry it will be appreciated. There are a number of small industries that could be expanded.
On more than one occasion I have related to the House the story of a man who was making a number of things, including hurleys, and wanted a grant for the purpose of expansion. When he sent a query to the IDA he got a query from back on which the main question was what prospects there were for expansion in the Common Market countries. I know the King of the Belgians had a "go" at hurling when he was here but that is about the end of it. Possibly, in the rush for industries being catered for, the officials may have got confused and sent the wrong form.
Was that before the small industries programme?
It was. Let me add that I have not seen a great expansion of that industry since the small industries programme was introduced.
The Deputy knows that it applies to his own constituency now.
I know it does.
If it is not operating it is largely the fault of the people who should be using it in each constituency.
"The people who should be looking after it", perhaps, would be a better way of putting it.
No.
Possibly, I will be taking the Minister a few hard cases before very long which I hope he will look upon with a favourable eye.
I had a question on today's Order Paper which somehow got mixed up on the way through the channels that questions go through. Possibly it was my own fault or it may have been the fault of somebody else. The question was:
To ask the Minister for Transport and Power if he has considered the desirability of setting up an industry to provide——
I had "pre-cooked meals". This went down as "frozen food meals".
——to meet the demand of the tourist industry.
The Minister for Transport and Power gave me a reply which I suppose fitted pretty well. I do not know but I imagine the Minister is aware, because he travels around the country like the rest of us, that it is extremely difficult to get a meal late in the evening in many towns and, indeed, in the city unless one wants to go to a special hotel where arrangements have been made for such a meal.
What I was suggesting is that, as is possible in many continental countries, there should be set up here an industry for the preparation of food which would require only heating and serving. Such an industry would give very big employment to cooks who could be employed for a reasonable number of hours at a good rate of pay in preparing this food. I am sure that quite a number of hotels and holiday camps would be glad to avail of such a product. No attempt has been made here to establish such an industry, in spite of all the talk about encouraging tourism. No definite effort has been made to meet this demand. I suggested to the Minister for Transport and Power that he might look into this matter and he very kindly said that he would. Perhaps it is more appropriate for the Minister for Industry and Commerce. If the Minister makes inquiries, he will find the demand for this type of thing is very great and that it would be the easiest thing in the world to provide a home market for this type of product if such an industry were established. This is something in which there is very big money. It is a reasonably priced food and it is easy for anyone who has to prepare it to make it ready for consumption. That has been done elsewhere and there is no reason why it should not be done here. The Minister need not tell me that Erin Foods are doing it because they are not.
During the week I was interested in some question about a smelter to be erected in Cork. My information is that this smelter would employ about 1,000 men. It is likely to cost between £25 and £30 million. Before it has got off the ground at all I understand that a group of people in Cork are opposed to this project. Deputy Healy will be very interested in this. I do not know whether or not what this group suggest is likely to happen, but I do know that a few years ago I was instrumental in bringing a certain number of people interested in mining into this country. They did not find much in the mines in which they started, but they have now turned mining into a very big business indeed. If a smelter is erected the amount of business involved will be very, very great and the effect on our balance of payments will be colossal.
Any assistance that can be given to these people—I understand they are 95 per cent Irish and Irish capital— should be given to them and those who are always so ready to criticise adversely something which they fear may affect them should be made to prove their facts up to the hilt before they succeed in shouting down something which many of us would love to see in our own constituencies. I am sure that a number of Deputies here would, if they thought they could get an industry employing 1,000 men in their constituencies, stay up night and day in their efforts to get it. If Cork does not want it I am sure others will be glad to have it.
Cork wants it all right.
Apparently not everybody in Cork wants it. A very noisy group do not seem to be very happy about it.
On what grounds?
On the grounds that it will spoil a local golf course. In his speech the Minister said:
Apart from the specified criteria and the percentage grants limits, Deputies will notice certain limitations on the amount of assistance which may be offered. Grants for fixed assets and towards rent reduction may not exceed in total the appropriate percentage of asset values. While the Government may authorise grants for an undertaking under these provisions in excess of the limit of £350,000 binding the authority, the percentage grant limits may not be exceeded. The issue of moneys by the Minister to the authority is fixed at £100 million. Almost £50 million have already been issued in respect of the various current industrial incentives.
How long does the Minister think it will be before all the £100 million will be taken up? If it is likely to be taken up in a short time, surely provision should be made for a much higher ceiling than that suggested in the Bill.
Again, the Minister states:
Housing for key workers is essential to many new industries and the necessary social and other priorities of many local authorities do not always permit of their meeting this need promptly. The authority is being empowered to provide or procure the provision of houses for this purpose, normally, I expect, acting through the National Building Agency, and to subsidise rents as appropriate.
Would the Minister say how far has this question of building houses for key workers gone? Outside of the industrial estates how much housing is encouraged or assisted? What assistance is given to towns like Navan, Kells and Trim? Again and again we have come up against the problem of an industry requiring houses for its key workers and the only way in which the houses could be supplied was by the local authority making houses built for others available for these workers. That usually causes a local row. There seems to be a bit of a tightening up now on money for local authority houses and can the Minister suggest any way in which an industry can be helped in a matter of this kind? If an industrialist starts in a factory which is not in good condition how far will he be assisted towards providing a proper factory? Again, what assistance will he get in providing housing for himself and his key workers? This has come up on a number of occasions. Perhaps the Minister would comment when he comes to reply.
The Deputy appreciates that the kind of housing to which he refers has been provided heretofore by the National Building Agency. In this Bill the local authority, the National Building Agency and An Foras Tionscal will have power to provide houses. Up to this they did not have that power.
The Minister will agree with me that the only change is that, as well as giving grants for a factory, they can say to the National Building Agency that certain things can be done about housing. Up to this that was not possible. The National Building Agency have authority to build houses. I should like to know how far the activities of the National Building Agency are supervised because some of the houses built by them have not been up to standard and the external finish has left much to be desired. The National Building Agency should not be above the law in these matters any more than anybody else. Some criteria will have to be laid down to ensure that the houses are of the same standard as those provided by private individuals or by local authorities.
Later in his opening speech the Minister said:
From what I have said it will be readily evident that the general activities of industrial promotion and development have already led to very significant and tangible results for our people in terms of employment, living standards, and reduced emigration and to well-founded hopes for the future.
Would the Minister not agree that the tendency over the years has been to try to do things piecemeal? No effort has been made in regard to the provision of the money to do what the Government in power consider to be the only way to solve our problem; no matter what anybody may say our biggest problem is providing full employment. This measure will not solve our unemployment and emigration problem but, if the Minister and his Government put their minds to providing the necessary money once and for all, they would within a very short period reap the results of that investment. It is horrifying that we should have, year in and year out, educated and trained people who leave the country to seek work elsewhere. They are compelled to do this. At the same time, the average yearly rate of chronically unemployed runs at approximately 50,000. We have an average of about 50,000 who apparently are chronically unemployed. Because they are unemployed and drawing unemployment benefit or assistance and many of them, as the Minister knows, drawing home assistance because they cannot get anything else, there is a dead loss to the State in the money they must be paid, not to keep them in comfort but to keep them alive. The money they would pay to the State in insurance stamps, income tax and other ways if they were at work, not to mention what they would spend would recoup the State if some Government would have the courage to put the necessary money into industry in order to try to reach the goal of full employment. Somebody must do it. The Minister in his present proposals is going a certain distance but he is a long way from what is required. If he does not do it, I fear it will be put on the long finger and eventually somebody will come in with a Bill suggesting a further little improvement in ten or 15 years. That is not good enough.
I wish to join with the other Members in welcoming the Bill and recording our appreciation of the Minister's dedication to the furthering of industrial expansion as envisaged by the founders of the State and, before that, in the policy of Sinn Féin. This is one of the soundest Bills to come before the House in a long time. Not alone does it represent the work of the draftsmen, as inspired by the Minister, but it is unusual in that a firm of consultants were brought in by the Department, A. D. Little, Incorporated, who put forward their proposals and these were adopted by NIEC and included in the Bill. This gives the Bill a very sound footing and inspires confidence that the Bill will further improve our industrial structure.
As the Minister said, it will give an expanded and more sophisticated structure for industrial development. We live in a free enterprise society but I think the Bill is further proof of the balanced view of the Government in that, while we choose to foster and want to go on maintaining free enterprise, we realise at the same time that the State must encourage private enterprise to play its part in providing employment. The Minister could proudly and rightly boast that last year was the best year ever in terms of industrial promotion. It saw the approval of 120 new projects which, when in full production, will employ 11,000 workers of whom 7,500 will be men. This is in line with the Government's aim to promote job opportunities and one can believe that we are now on the right track towards full employment by the 1980s.
The trend of the Bill generally, as I understand it, is to emphasise industrial promotion outside the large urban areas. While it is right that we should have decentralisation of industry and bring industry to places where it does not exist at all or only on a very small scale, I should like to mention to the Minister—I am sure he does not need a reminder being a Dublin Deputy— that Dublin port is facing a challenge because of changing methods of handling merchandise.
About two years ago there was a report on the state of labour at Dublin docks and this labour will be so much decasualised that we can envisage in a few years the present number of Dublin dockers being reduced by about two-thirds. What will happen to them? This may be largely a matter for the Minister for Labour because these workers will have to be trained to take on new jobs but I think many of them will be too old for training which will bring the problem back to the Department of Industry and Commerce which will have to provide industries in Dublin to cater for the dockers who will be decasualised in the future.
The structure of all ports in the country is changing rapidly with the advent of container traffic. You will not need as many men to handle cargo in future. We have not yet reached the stage in Dublin where we have full employment. The situation is good and probably was never better but I want to have this fact borne in mind so that when industries are being sent west of the Shannon, as I agree many of them should be, we will not forget Dublin city and the port which at present employs a few thousand dockers, regular and casual. If it is to continue in existence it must face the changes in cargo services which may well mean more traffic through the port but less employment. I am, therefore, saying that we still need industries in Dublin. I know the Minister is aware of that.
Earlier a Fine Gael speaker spoke of worker participation in industry. Perhaps, the Minister would consider at some time that one of these new firms coming here should be encouraged to act as a pilot concern for worker participation in some form and, perhaps, also—and this may be more important—for a system of profit-sharing. This could be tested out in one factory to see how it works so as to decide if workers can be given a share in profits apart from wages. In other countries and even in Ireland it has been tried and has been successful. The Minister might get the opportunity of laying down a blueprint for this development when a new industry is starting off by saying: "We want a new type of structure: you are getting Government grants and we want you to test this system". That may be the beginning of a new charter for workers.
I know the Minister's dedication to the industrial drive and I believe that if he thinks it is proper to have such a system he will push it. We are facing great expansion in industrial employment and we should take it further than that and the Department in providing jobs should also provide for a new social experiment by having workers in some new pilot concern also shareholders. I think the end result would be a very prosperous and flourishing concern and many more contented workers.
Industrial unrest does not come within the scope of the Bill but Deputy Tully referred to the fact that very often warnings came from these benches about workers demanding increased wages. That is not quite correct, but I suppose what worries everybody, even NIEC, is that if we do not get lower unit cost production we cannot sell. People will not buy the goods and the result will be the employment content will fall. It is only by efficiency at all levels that we will have a really strong industrial economy.
The Minister has a big task because one of his tasks amongst others is the task of trying to provide employment for those who leave the land each year. If we could keep up the figures mentioned by the Minister for 1968 we would, perhaps, in a very short time be able to say that we had absorbed into industry those leaving the land. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the best Bills to come before the House for a long time. Not only does it cover industrial expansion but it shows how houses can be provided for workers in various factories. We have a factory in Ballymun which could manufacture the components of houses and transport them to any part of the country. In that way we would ensure that the workers would have the houses and also, if the industries are not coming into Dublin, the workers would still be getting the benefit by manufacturing the components and sending them to the various places.
At what price?
The guarantee in the Ballymun scheme was that the price of flats would be comparable with and no more than the traditional flat. I know that that refers to flats, but if Danish firms can export houses to West Germany it should be no trouble for us to transport them from Dublin to Cork or Sligo. The prices should not be any greater than those obtaining for traditional methods. The fact that the Minister went to the trouble of having a well-known firm of consultants employed shows again the image which the Minister has created in his Department of getting the best advice before propounding a scheme for further industrial expansion and it is commendable. While we have plently of skilled workers and managers we can always learn something from others. The Minister has done this in this Bill. We may reach the position in the very near future when we will again have to look at our industrial position because of the many changes that have taken place and that are taking place all the time. If we are to offer our people a full life in their own country it must come through industrialisation.
Deputy Tully mentioned that a smelter factory which was to go to Cork was not being welcomed by some people. I am sure that the Cork people will want this factory but if it is otherwise we will always be pleased to find a site here for it. It is a great tribute to the Minister that he was able to attract a firm here which is offering employment to 1,000 people. If we had a few more firms like that we would be well on our way to full employment. I also want to pay tribute to the number of small industries which have been set up in recent times. This is the day of big business and of large combines but the Minister is striking the right balance. It is really sound economic planning to attract these small industries. I hope the Minister will press on with this idea as far as possible until we have small industries all over the country with the bigger industries naturally in the bigger areas.
If we look at the east coast we find that we have only one big port, Dublin, apart from Belfast. Sixty-four per cent of the Republic's trade passes through Dublin port. Here we have a port ready to handle any traffic, especially now with the modernisation which has taken place and which is taking place. Unfortunately, the fact that you get more traffic through a port nowadays does not necessarily mean that you provide more employment. Some 112,000 people are employed in and around the port area. Of course, not all of these are port workers. If any of them are affected by a scheme of decasualisation we must make sure that we will have other industries for them in the area. If we keep that in mind we will have a far better view of the expansion of Dublin port than we have had in recent times.
Deputy Tully gave a quotation about increased output and I should like to read that particular publication because it makes heartening reading and helps to lift some of the gloom when we consider the losses in output which we suffered through labour disturbances, this year particularly. While this is not a matter for the Minister, at the same time with his blueprint for industrial expansion he is ensuring that industries which are being set up will be strong enough to withstand the initial difficulties. If workers know that they have security, good conditions and good wages then we will have a happy industry, otherwise we will still have troubles like we have had recently and indeed which we are having all the time. I hope that before the time arrives to review this Bill we will have reached the stage of full employment in the industrial sphere. While the Minister has introduced many innovations and new policies into his Department I would ask him to go a step further and try to get some new firms to act in the pilot scheme to which I referred, to have workers shareholders in an industry. That could be the pattern for much happier industrial relations.
First of all, I should like to refer to a matter raised by Deputy Tully, the possibility there is for setting up a worthwhile pre-cooked meals industry. This is an industry which would have a very important bearing on our tourist industry. Quite a lot of tourists value being able to get food quickly and cheaply and this is one of the ways in which we can do it. Under our existing laws it is not possible to develop a behind-the-counter meals service. I would ask the Minister to consult his colleague, the Minister for Health, about such outmoded regulations. The Minister must be aware that it is possible to precook meals and to have a micro-wave heater. The meals can be stored on disposable plates with a plastic covering. A perfectly fresh meal can thus be provided in two minutes. This is operated in a number of hospitals, particularly for night staff. I have eaten some of these meals and they were as if they had been taken off the range after first cooking. Because of out-dated food regulations, this method is not accepted by various health authorities. A lot of kitchen equipment that has hitherto been a requirement, including some washing-up arrangements, and so on, are not necessary.
The Minister fears he might go outside the scope of the Bill but it would not be possible for him to do so in the light of the speech he made. I was not present when he made it but I went through it fairly carefully. More than three-quarters of it was like a speech on the introduction of the Estimate for the Department. I wonder if he will repeat it next week when introducing the Estimate for his Department and clothe it in different language. Much of it had very little if any bearing on the Bill. The Minister came to the subject-matter of the Bill only in the last couple of pages. I came into the House at the point where Deputy Keating was making his quite interesting contribution. I could not follow through on a lot of his recommendations. My own dear colleague from County Dublin, who is usually a very charitable man, followed Deputy Keating in the debate and tore Deputy Keating's speech to shreds. I think Deputy Burke was attending to his post most of the time Deputy Keating was speaking and, as a result, got only half Deputy Keating's story. However, I was not able to get the full story either.
Deputy Keating's thesis seems to be that we require cheap money. He suggested a separate Irish currency that would not flow freely outside the country thus giving us all the money we need—this is as I interpret his remarks. Was he proposing action such as that taken by Dr. Salazar in Portugal when he printed money to a volume equal to the economic requirement of the country and put everybody to work? Other European countries were then able to buy their stuff for practically nothing because the currency was so devalued. Very few people here would agree with such a proposal for this country. I could not follow the argument that this separate Irish currency would be a means of providing money at cheap rates of interest. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say in that regard.
Money is one of our scarcest resources and it is one of the main considerations in the establishment of industry. It was said here that some Government will have to put more money into industry but there is a limit to the amount of money available in the country to be put into industry. The establishment of industry will provide employment and money will come, in the last analysis, from the earnings of the people. The only way we can get it is by diverting it from consumption into investment. Workers and everybody else will have to make that sacrifice and postpone the day when they will reap the reward of more and better employment. So far, I do not think our people are in the mood to make that sacrifice, which is a pity. We have always wanted to eat our loaf before it was fully baked and it is certainly not fully baked yet. Deputy Keating regretted that we have so much foreign participation in Irish industry and said we were losing control of industrial production in Ireland because of this scarcity of money and that eventually we would lose our identity as a separate nation and a separate people. It is alarming that only 20 per cent of new "starts" are Irish. Does that give the full picture? Is expansion of existing industry taken into consideration?
No, just new industry.
One of the main purposes of industry is the provision of employment opportunities. There must be quite a bigger proportion of employment opportunities as a result of expansion of existing Irish industry, which would change the picture somewhat. I see no alternative to bringing in more and more industrialists from outside with a view to arriving at full employment. Deputy Keating said his objection was that we are exporting profits. The only alternative to that is to export people, which will happen if we discourage outsiders from establishing industry here. We must encourage them to come here and this Bill is a step in the right direction. However, it practically ignores the advice given in the Devlin Report as well as statements made in the Third Programme. The advice in the Devlin Report and the advice in the Third Programme was that all the agencies concerned with the establishment, promotion and expansion of industry here should be co-ordinated into one body. In that regard, this Bill proposes to co-ordinate only two bodies—two bodies that were to a certain extent the same in that for a long time they had a common chairman.
I think the Deputy should distinguish between co-ordination and amalgamation.
Perhaps, there is an element of co-ordination in this Bill that is not amalgamation, but I think it was amalgamation that was intended, and that all these other lesser agencies were agencies providing, perhaps, a lesser service. They would be a subdivision of one authority. In my view, it did not require a Devlin Report or a thesis such as we had produced in the Third Programme for Economic Expansion to recognise the importance of this. Anyone with any practical commonsense and experience would know this for himself.
I have had the experience on numerous occasions of coming across people who wanted to come in here to establish an industry, and I know what their problems are like. It is unbelievably difficult for people from outside the country to solve all the problems. They have five or six different agencies to deal with, and they are all under five or six different roofs with different addresses. This is deplorable in a country which is so dependent on industrial expansion for the employment of our people.
I am not painting a wrong picture here. People coming in here are bewildered by the number of agencies which have to be approached before all the problems are solved. When they go through all those agencies there is then the problem of the local authorities. They have the difficulties of planning permission, and the provision of services of all sorts such as sewerage and water, and electric current at the right volume and the right strength, and then communications and housing. These are all outside the large number of agencies they have dealt with. I do not need to list them. Everyone knows them. What we are getting now goes only a very small portion of the way towards ironing out the many difficulties confronting people who are anxious to establish industries here, especially outsiders coming in here.
I know there are some experienced industrialists who would be ready to admit that in their own country there is a good deal of red tape and nonsense and that it is nothing new for them to find these difficulties because they had come across them in their own country. It is our job to smooth the way and make it easy for them. I said this the year I came into this House. An industrialist should be able to come into this country from outside and say: "I want to set up a project in your country. Will you let me know what advantages there are?" He has probably heard something like that before he came over. He should be able to say: "Tell me the places in which I can establish this industry. Tell me the advantages of establishing it here, or here, or here." He should have a choice. He should not be pushed into a certain area. I think there is an element of that at the moment but I will deal with that later on.
He should have a choice of sites and one authority should be able to say to him: "What are your problems?" and, having got a list of his problems, they should be able to say to him: "We will solve your problems and you do not have to go outside this building." This is extremely important and it has been overlooked for far too long.
In regard to the percentage of our industries which are foreign based and the danger attaching to that, what was overlooked, certainly by Deputy Keating, was the fact that in most cases the industrialist coming in here has established export markets. That is one of our biggest difficulties. If we set up an Irish industry we then have to set up a marketing agency in some other country and, in most cases, we find that this is already tied up very competently in very big rings to which we do not belong, rings into which, in may cases, we cannot buy ourselves. This is an aspect we cannot afford to ignore.
The grants provided for the various industries are regulated, in the main, according to the area in which it is proposed to establish the industry. To some extent this is right, but there is one industry which gets no advantage grant-wise, that is, an industry that uses 100 per cent Irish raw material and is a 100 per cent export industry. In this Bill or in any other piece of legislation I have read, there is no advantage for that industry over an industry which is importing either some or all of its raw material. That is wrong. It also has no advantage over the industry which is selling partly at home and partly abroad. This is also wrong. There should be an added grant for an industry using 100 per cent Irish raw material which is also a 100 per cent export industry. I should like the Minister to have a look at this before this legislation goes through.
I agree with Deputy Tully that many goods are being imported which could be produced at home. It is extremely unfortunate that, because of the existence of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement, they cannot keep them out. There are certain foods and beverages of continental origin that we could keep out, but very little attempt is made to keep them out. It is always said that if we do this it will affect our tourist trade. I do not believe that. We all know that when we go abroad, either on business or on holiday, we have to take the food and beverages offered to us in the various countries. We should have something that is distinctly and distinctively our own to offer to the people who come here. People like to get something different and new when they go abroad.
I was dealing with the importance of the services provided by the local authorities. This Bill makes provision for something which I think is really important and something we should have been doing all the time, that is, the building of advance factories. This is one of the ways in which difficulties caused to a person coming in here to establish an industry can be ironed out and the local authorities should have been brought into this long ago. It is work which rightly belongs to them, because they know where the services exist, they know how the services can be readily extended to permit of various industrial activities and they know also where the necessary ESB services are.
The local authorities do not consider that they have an involvement in this to any extent. This again brings up the question of the county development teams. This is all-important but the county development effort is limited to a very small number of counties. Again, this is wrong. All over the country we should have this type of county development effort. When I was spokesman on agriculture one of the things I emphasised very strongly was that we should have a rural development authority taking into consideration everything in a county or a rural area that might add to the incomes of the people and provide viable holdings for them, or provide incomes at least that would enable them to bring up their families in reasonable comfort. I do not think we can do anything in isolation in a small country like this if we are to preserve what we have.
That leads me to deal with these growth centres. It is essential that we should have a number of growth centres distributed in various regions, but I would warn against going too far. One industry requires the services of another, ancillary services, and many industries could not set up in this country if they had not the ancillary services provided by other industries and if they had not got them within reasonable distance. Ireland is a very small country; in fact it is very much smaller than parts of other industrial countries, and no matter in what part of the country these services are available, they will not be that far distant from an industry provided the roads and the communications are good.
Our telephone system is deplorable. This is a profitable service and pays for itself. I cannot see why it is not taken out of the Department altogether and put in charge of some board like the ESB. The complaint one hears most frequently is the amount of time executives, busy industrialists, have to spend trying to get through from Dublin to some parts of the country or outside it. This is something to which the Government have not paid enough attention. If communications in the country were as good as they should be, the need for a large number of growth centres would not arise. If you have three or four growth centres at the most in the country you have enough. There is need for a more even distribution of industry throughout the rest of the country. In this way you could implement what our friend, the Minister for Lands, was proposing here the other day, part-time farming and part-time industrial employment. It does not matter how people get their livelihood as long as they get it honestly and this is one way they will be assisted to get it honestly.
Our first concern should be decent employment and decent housing for our people. Industrialisation is one of the ways you will get them and at the same time preserve the remoter parts of the country that are decaying. Therefore I would warn against the over-development of specific growth centres to the detriment of the rest of the country. We know the problems that are involved in this whole business of commuting long distances into a very big built-up area. What is required is the proper infrastructure which will attract industrialists. There are industrialists and top management people employed in industry who have lived all their lives in city environments and it is not easy to get them to live in rural Ireland. If we had good housing and good communications and all the other necessary facilities, they would very soon come to appreciate this type of environment rather than living in the centre of an industrialised city or very large town.
Other important matters are of course education and research. Everybody who has contact with industrial development here feels that our efforts at industrial research are totally inadequate and that industry requires much greater backing by way of industrial research and, with this, I certainly agree.
Vocational education and industry and the relationship of the two was referred to by some speakers here today. There is nothing more flexible than the set-up of vocational education. Wherever we have a vocational school and wherever we have adjacent industries, there is no difficulty whatever in getting a class set up for the training and the special education of the workers in that industry. I know that is the case in the Dublin city and county environment. I served on a vocational education committee for quite a long time and I know that there was never any difficulty and there was always the greatest concern and anxiety to ensure that the people in the local industry were provided with whatever education facilities they might require. There was always a first-class liaison between industry and the vocational schools. I personally think there are very few shortcomings in this regard.
Another matter referred to by some previous speaker was mines and minerals. This is a subject I often talked about myself. When I was at school, and as far as I can remember since, the information given was that we had no mineral wealth in this country worth exploring. The Geological Survey are responsible and I suppose they supplied this information. I wonder how it is that when foreign people coming in here have been given a free hand they have been able to find many rich deposits that we apparently were not aware of previously. I take it these people would not lightly embark on the exploration work they have embarked upon. I am wondering if they have got good value for their money; in fact I am wondering if they have "done" the Irish people and if they had knowledge that was not available to us in this country; or is it that geological surveys cannot tell what is underneath the earth at certain depths, what is the depth of seams or what is the richness of the deposits available. Certainly we do not appear to have this information and if we did, we did not set about utilising it. The fact that this wealth has been discovered will be of immense benefit to the country, and its effect on the balance of payments and everything else will be very considerable.
I think it is a pity that we did not take advantage of the existence of this. We did not sell it well; in fact, I think we sold it very cheaply. Boring is a costly business. I am sure it requires a considerable amount of experience and know-how. I think we should have been able to purchase this experience and know-how but we did not do so. On the few occasions when we have attempted to do this we made a mess of it. Certainly, we did not make the success of it that outside firms are making.
I am all for development and expansion of our industries and the promotion of new industries in spite of what has been said about the control these foreign industrialists are getting in the country. This is the only way we are going to develop and, even if the profits are exported, we gain an immense amount of employment for our people.
I should like to congratulate the Minister for Industry and Commerce for bringing before the House this Bill to develop industry in both the private and public sectors. As an innovatory measure for the development of our industry the Minister has certainly grasped the nettle, even though we on the Opposition side may feel he has only been half-stung.
We must ask ourselves what precisely we want from industrial development. In this sphere I think we will find ourselves at one in a somewhat apolitical sense. We all want full employment; we want a faster rate of industrial expansion and a proper distribution of industry in industrial growth centres throughout the country. If we are going to achieve these treble aims of full employment, a faster rate of industrial expansion and the emergence of dynamic growth centres we must have an increased volume of industrial exports. I think it should be placed on record that industrial expansion has occurred in a measurable and desirable sense. We cannot cavil with it to that extent. Last year was one of the best years of industrial promotion in the country. We saw 120 new projects which will give employment to 11,000 people, 7,500 of whom will be men, when they are in full production. Certainly, this is welcome. I would be the last to react in a snide manner towards such a notable achievement in the history of our economic development.
I do not interpret this success to Fianna Fáil policy. I think it stems in large measure from the development of the IDA itself. I do not think it would be inappropriate to place on record that it was the late Deputy William Norton, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, who instigated the development of the IDA. I may say he did so in many respects in the teeth of the opposition from the present Government Party then in Opposition. Looking back on it I do not look on it as a very laudable achievement for the Fianna Fáil Party.
I believe the late Deputy Dan Morrissey was also involved.
I think it can be said that the late Deputy Dan Morrissey was involved, but I think the brain behind the beginning of the IDA was that of the late Deputy Norton. I think it would be appropriate to place on record the sincere appreciation of the House of the tremendous work done by Mr. Walsh, the former chairman of the IDA, in the early days. In any contact which the trade unions had with him we found him to be a quiet but effective personality in that very difficult post. His integrity was an invaluable asset to the nation in the early development of this authority. In the November issue of Technology Ireland Mr. J.J. Walsh, chairman of the IDA said, in relation to the setting up of the authority:
At the start of the present campaign Ireland was regarded by industrialists abroad as a novel and not particularly attractive base for industry. The country was looked upon as essentially rural, with little in the way of an industrial tradition and a poor record in industrial exports. As new industry was gradually established and was seen to prosper on the basis of exporting most of its output, the influx of industry steadily increased, strongly supported by the expansion of some of the early comers. By the mid-sixties it was apparent that further expansion should logically lead to industries having more advanced technologies, and also to some increase in the number of relatively large-scale projects. It was also clear that such projects would require more complex examination and closer co-ordination with agencies responsible for services than would be required by, for example, projects for the production of sample consumer goods. The implications of such projects for the economy would also require thorough examination.
It would be churlish on the part of this House not to express our sincere appreciation in that regard. It is a measure of the tremendous development that has occurred. I would certainly agree that there has been anxiety but at times, I think, not a terribly involved anxiety, if I may say so with respect to the Minister, on the part of successive Ministers for Industry and Commerce. It is a measure of the development that from 1958 industrial exports rose from £33 million to £184 million last year bringing the share of total exports to more than 50 per cent, as quoted from the Minister's speech of 28th November, 1969. We of the Labour Party certainly welcome this development.
I have a number of criticisms to make. I regret that I may not be able to remain to hear the Minister's concluding speech but I would welcome comment on his part in regard to one matter. I regard it as being a mental blockage or an ideological throwback that the Minister and some members of the Cabinet do not seem to know at this point of time where precisely they will go in terms of industrial development area by area and step by step. We can have a number of solutions. I think the Minister has not yet made up his mind as to what precise line he wants to adopt. There are the three see-saw possibilities for development. We can certainly have industrial development in the rural areas and in the small towns and villages near to the farms from which labour will tend to move in the decades ahead. This is one of the realities of Irish life. Secondly, we can have industrial development in the Dublin region, if we want to have it in the Dublin region. While this would not necessarily help the rest of the country, it is a possibility. Dublin is still very strong and vibrant and a great deal of industrial development has occurred and is occuring in that area. Thirdly, there is the possibility of providing new jobs in selected urban or semi-urban areas outside Dublin and, perhaps, outside of the Cork city area.
These are the harsh political choices open to us. It may seem somewhat cosy coming from a Deputy from a dormitory suburb but I suggest that one can afford to be somewhat more objective than Deputies coming from other constituencies. I would submit that the Government have not yet admitted that in practice a great many rural areas suffer from intrinsic infrastructural disadvantages which make them not entirely suitable for a great deal of industrial development. I do not think the Minister has admitted this. He is a man who can hark back to the old style Fianna Fáil republican idea of having a little factory in every village and every rural area and that all will be well. The inimitable philosophy of Fianna Fáil tends to emerge, despite the welter of technology and so on from his relatively naïve assessment of industrial development.
I submit that we could have had far faster industrial development and a more dynamic system of industrial development. Apart from the very substantial growth in exports and employment which we have had in recent years, had the Minister and the Government taken into account the disadvantages of scattered industrial development as outlined very sincerely and competently in the years old fourth report of the committee on industrial organisation, we would have had a more rapid expansion of industrial development. We would not have had the disadvantages of what I call the purist rural strategy of the Fianna Fáil Party and I am very conscious that in saying this one is liable to be crucified by the rural Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party and told that that is no more than an urban orientated city slicker, econometric style Labour approach and a lot of brouhaha about industrial expansion.
We have to take into account that a small country with relatively scarce economic resources and relatively scarce industrial grants to give to either private or public enterprise, native or foreign, has to make this harsh decision. Even on the score of the location of factories in rural areas there is a tremendously difficult problem of transport costs. Firms in such areas must bear the cost of transportation to main centres of consumption, more particularly in Britain and abroad.
Deputies should not misconstrue what I am saying about the rural areas. I am talking about the greater Dublin area in the context of one million people, taking in from Drogheda to Bray which is the Pale of industrial development in one growth area. I do not think one could cavil at such a broad definition. Unless raw materials are available in these rural areas the cost of transportation from importing centres is also extremely high and there is the cost of re-export of finished products which almost inevitably is quite heavy. These are factors which must be taken into account, ignoring the comment made by Deputy Clinton that telephone costs in these areas can be prohibitive. There are other major disadvantages such as the difficulty of establishing and maintaining business contacts with firms outside and the fact that businessmen tend to feel somewhat isolated from those with whom they could discuss markets, methods of production and general sources of supply.
It might be said that they would not be near local authority offices and agency offices. A great deal of time could be spent in decision-making. There would be disadvantages in respect of maintenance and servicing and supply. They would have to build up their own structure in their own areas if they were to develop effectively. These are major disadvantages, leaving aside the very prohibitive cost of setting up in any of the very small towns. There is the prohibitive cost of local training services, which can be very high for small firms. These are major factors, closeness to schools, secondary and vocational, and closeness to colleges of technology at the level of local amenities, which, whether we like it or not, may not just measure up. I do not think the argument requires any further emphasis.
I come down rather heavily then on the third general possibility. I have dismissed the second location. It has been my experience that foreign industrialists, notwithstanding all the efforts made by the officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce or the IDA to attract industries into rural areas, are inevitably attracted to the two major cities, Cork and Dublin, Dublin coming first and Cork in second place. Because Limerick is somewhat short of labour there is, apart from the special attractions of Shannon, a reluctance on the part of the industrialists to go to that area. Whether we like it or not then, we are compelled to fall back on the third major possibility of industrial development.
The Minister can go on reorganising the Industrial Development Authority for the next 20 years, amalgamating it with An Foras Tionscal, with all kinds of magnificently vertical and horizontal structural arrangements, but if he fails to have even an elementary conception as to where we will have our major centres, then, quite frankly, money, effort, expertise, skilled manpower and the time and energies of public servants are being poured down the drain, and all this in an effort to get a more dramatic expansion of industrial development.
There is a sound argument for providing new jobs in a number of towns, towns which must be selected as centres for major industrial development. This was recommended as far back as five or six years ago by the committee on industrial reorganisation. The fourth report of that committee specifically recommended it. The advantages are considerable. A concentration of industry could be built up in selected towns like Dundalk, Drogheda, Arklow, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and so on around the country. There could even be industrial concentrations around the coast, taking in Galway and Sligo. I do not accept the mental aberration of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries who wants a major industrial growth centre complex in, for example, Letterkenny. Much as such a centre might pay him, or me, I do not regard the proposition as a feasible one. We must face realities. The tragedy has been that we have had governments which could set up at the drop of a hat colleges of technology, regional hospitals and regional development, without any great difficulty, but no attempt was ever made to decide where to put regional industrial growth centres. I do not want to sound churlish, but I disagree with some of Lieutenant-General Costello's comments. I may be a follower of lost causes or I may be one who appears to pick holes, but I certainly do not accept Lieutenant-General Costello's strategy of scattered industrial development as against the location of a number of industries in a particular area, industries which would tend to promote the growth of an industrial tradition and lead to the development of a skilled pool of labour, thereby making the area more attractive from the point of view of further industrialisation.
The Government will have to make up their minds very quickly because, as has been pointed out very emphatically by the National Industrial Economic Council, the need in these major industrial areas will be for the basic services like water, electricity, transport, housing and education. If these are concentrated in an area development can take place at a much lower cost and a major contribution could be made to the emergence of a secondary expansion at the grass roots level. We must develop large urban centres. I would urge upon the Government the designation of major industrial growth centres. This is of the utmost importance. Whether or not there was in June, 1969, internal warfare between various Cabinet Ministers as to the designation of these centres, the failure of the Government to designate the centres means that the Government stands indicted on this aspect of Irish economic development. When we come to write our economic history it will be shown that the growth rate of industrial development could have been much more effective and a great deal faster than it has been had the Government done what any responsible Government should have done. There has been a delay of seven years by the Government. The Government have failed to take into account the recommendations of the Buchanan Report. Looking at the situation objectively, it seems to me that that report was worthy of much more urgent Government consideration than it has had to date.
With regard to the industrial development we have had, there has been an excessive tendency on the part of some—the former Taoiseach and a former Minister for Industry and Commerce—to take a gamble. There was that tendency on occasion and that is amply borne out in the case of Potez. In the case of Potez, it almost looked as if certain members of the Government were enamoured of individuals whom they met casually on the continent and to whom were offered massive inducements. It was in that setting we tended to get Potez into Ireland, without the necessary prior thought and prior intensive examination. I do not consider our industrial failure rate is so bad. I think it is quite normal that we should have a 10 per cent failure rate in terms of industrial development. It is not disastrous but I think it could have been lower if there had not been some serious personal misjudgment on the part of individual Members of the Government in respect of individual entrepreneurs of either British or continental origin coming to Ireland.
In that context I do not fault the IDA but rather the post facto attempts by the Government to justify commitments already entered into with individual entrepreneurs. Therefore I urge the present Minister to be cautious. It may seem very presumptuous for me to say so but the present Minister does not seem to me to be without his personal quota of naïveté and I strongly urge him to place his trust in the IDA, in their expertise, and in the other State sponsored bodies before he becomes involved in any escapade of that nature in the future. One Potez was enough and I do not think that in terms of any capital-intensive industry where you can with the stroke of a pen write £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 down the drain one can afford these personal misjudgments.
I wish to make a strong case to the Minister for the reorganisation, perhaps, of the rate of expansion of the role of the IDA. I welcome the present Bill in which the Minister has gone far but not, I think, far enough. This may sound somewhat bureaucratic or quasi-socialist but after all, I have the backing in coming into this House of such a pragmatic assembly of signatures as is contained in the Devlin Report where, in affect, there is put forward what the Labour Party has been advocating, articulately or otherwise, down the years the idea of a national development corporation which is, effectively, what would develop were the Devlin Report fully implemented. It is in that setting that one may be critical of the present Bill; that the fusion of IDA and An Foras Tionscal is not enough, that it must be broader and greater in scale and in encompassing services.
Therefore, I want to make some suggestions to the Minister. In respect of the board of the new Industrial Development Authority I suggest there are three bodies where he might consider the desirability of ensuring more effective co-ordination which I think is necessary and more effective rationalisation of a number of other bodies. I think one must bring into account in this development the Institute of Industrial Research and Standards much more effectively than has been done in this Bill; that there should be more effective co-ordination of the work of Córas Tráchtála Teoranta in respect of this development and that he must integrate more effectively the work of AnCO, the industrial training authority.
Córas Tráchtála has its own special area of responsibility in dealing with marketing problems. AnCO has its specific problems of industrial training and we have the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards with its own particular role in technological and technical inquiry and analysis. If the directors-general of these three organisations were ex officio members of the board of the new Industrial Development Authority, I think you would ensure that the terrible confusion of function which I know exists among them could be, to a great extent, eliminated and there would be more effective liaison and co-ordination between them.
I think this idea would be welcomed by the new chairman of the IDA. I have had no contact with him but I have a high personal regard for the ability of Michael Killeen. He possesses a broad, open attitude and awareness of technical developments. We have the unique situation that he was closely involved with CTT, very intimately involved with AnCO and is certainly well aware of the work of the Institute of Industrial Research and there is very good reason for effectively involving these three bodies, particularly after what I would call the preliminary analysis of intended projects.
I am cynical about anybody suggesting in these days of exploding technology when a whole production range may become completely out of date literally within a couple of weeks, when we have a new industrial development authority that it should have to shoulder sole responsibility for a direct devaluation process and for saying "Right, here is £5,000; go ahead; come to Ireland and set up a new plant" when in fact CTT with its marketing expertise may regard the project as totally non-viable, when the Institute of Industrial Research may think the project is not viable in terms of Irish technological breakthrough or technical standards or in terms of general availability or when AnCO may say that the trained industrial workers are not available or will not be available for, say, another two years.
Therefore, there should be an interlocking on a co-ordinated evaluatory basis of these three organisations on the Board of the IDA. I do not accept some of what I might term the ultra-caution that does exist that the functions of IDA are ultra-confidential and that we cannot involve anybody outside on a State-sponsored basis until the project has achieved finality and is ready for general publication. I do not believe in confidentiality; I have yet to meet it in the world generally. Somebody knows or knows somebody else who knows that a project is going on. It is very difficult to keep industrial projects under cover to that extent and while there are political, social and commercial considerations involved I think that in respect of the work of CTT, the Institute for Industrial Research and AnCO, fundamental confidentiality will certainly be respected in the general development. I make my recommendation, therefore, strongly to the Minister as one worthy of serious consideration.
Another aspect I want to mention is the climate of industrial relations for firms coming here and the Government's efforts to ensure that they do not run into major industrial relations crises when they come. In this regard I refer the House, in summary, to the attitude of the trade union movement to the involvement and role of foreign based firms coming to Ireland. I think the trade union movement has gone on record as generally welcoming such firms and assuring them of co-operation in the promotion of stable industrial relations here.
In saying this we cannot condone in any way, and certainly we would condemn, the attempts of some foreign firms to deny workers their rights to full trade union organisation. This is a matter which should be placed firmly on the records of the House. We, as a parliamentary body, should call upon the Government to ensure that in the promotion of foreign industries, either by the Industrial Development Authority or the Government, in any discussions with firms intending to come here, they should be informed emphatically that they should conform to the accepted tenets of our society which include free trade union organisation, that the overwhelming majority of our employers recognise that fact and that workers in our manufacturing industries are organised and exercise this basic freedom. There may not be a need for the introduction of formal legislation to ensure this but we should ensure that where the Government are involved in industrial promotion the firms concerned are informed that in the long or short term they will have to enter into collective agreements with trade unions.
Indeed, I know of no good reason why there should not be on the board of the Industrial Development Authority a trade union representative. I do not think that the appointment of a trade union official to the board will necessarily solve anything and it does not mean that as a board member he is going to be any the more reactionary or the more progressive. If one accepts the idea that the board of the authority should be expanded by putting on designated officials it might be a useful idea that a representative from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions should be on the board. He could advise the board and could, as a director of the authority, advise new firms and give them a comprehensive picture of industrial relations here so that months later, or even at the time when decision making is imminent, they would not be hurriedly seeking liaison with the trade unions to find out the facts of life of our industrial relations. This is something to which I would urge the House to give serious consideration.
The Minister, wrongly I think, has shunned making a comment on or an analysis of the extent to which we must face up to the role of public enterprise and the extent to which it should be co-ordinated and effectively involved with private native or foreign industrial development. There has been a rather unfortunate and rather glib political reaction to the development of public enterprise. Public enterprise has played a major and decisive role in our economy and in general it has been remarkably successful, bearing in mind the haphazard manner in which it was approached, the confusion regarding public accountability which exists in the mind of the Government, and the kind of ideological schizophrenia with which Irish people have approached public enterprise in recent decades. Companies such as the Sugar Company, Bord na Móna, Erin Foods and Aer Lingus have not only provided considerable employment but have been relatively efficient. They reflect credit on the ability and brains of our people when their energies are properly harnessed in the development of public enterprise. I should like to see greater consideration given to the role of such organisations as An Bord Bainne, the Pigs and Bacon Commission and Heinz-Erin with a view to their expanding more rapidly. This applies, too, to An Bord Iascaigh Mhara and its commercial role in the context of industrial development.
I know that all sorts of arguments can be advanced by what I would call the lunatic fringe opposing this kind of development because it may transgress the sacred ground of private enterprise which over the years has received something like £20 million or £30 million in adaptation grants or of the taxpayers' money in one form or other, to keep them viable. Certainly companies like NET—although I am sure Deputy FitzGerald will share reservations with me about the Government's slightly dishonest approach to its financial underwriting—is an example of the State-sponsored company which should be developed in the context of the Industrial Development Authority and subjected to very considerable scrutiny.
I am appalled that the Government, in regard to An Bord Iascaigh Mhara, should have continually avoided the opportunity to develop our fishing industry, with all the potential around the coast and on the continental shelf. Of course, why should they when, bluntly, many of the fishing interests are up to their tonsils in Fianna Fáil's Taca organisation. This is a reality of political life: the Government are not prepared to extend the terms of reference of this board. As far as I am concerned I am sure my remarks will be strongly endorsed by the crews of the 15 trawlers in Dún Laoghaire. Only three or four trawlers went out three or four years ago. The number has now expanded, but for what? Because we have not the nerve as a nation to expand industrial development without caring for the private, personal fishing cartels which built up the industry.
These are some random observations which are not in any way novel but which most certainly merit general support. I will conclude by saying that our industrial development must be geared towards external markets, that we have a population of some three million of which about 200,000 are employed in manufacturing industries and that consequently we have a very limited domestic market. We must concentrate on external markets and build up a very effective industrial complex. Our industrialists have an opportunity open to them. Our nearest neighbour, Britain, has 60 million people and EFTA has about 100 million people. For the Common Market, the figure is about 280 million people. The Government must face up to all of these questions. The Minister conveys an impression of amazing self-satisfaction that we have had industrial development and seems to imagine he had some responsibility for it, whereas I do not think the dynamism which came into Irish industry was in any way politically-inspired. Belated though its arrival was, our industrial expansion is extremely welcome. It is time the Government implemented a strategy of planned growth industrial centres and of effective industrial training allied to it. We require a local government service to new industry. There must be an expansion of the board and of liaison of that board with IDA. There must be a general enlargement and intensification of effort by IDA and by the country. That will bring about a new drive.
The Department of Industry and Commerce seems peculiarly denuded almost of industrial initiative in some respects in recent years due to involvement with the Department of Labour and the hiving-off of part of its expertise. This side will give the Minister every support in that development. We wish the Minister well when he next goes to Saudi Arabia. There are pressing problems in Ireland at this period of time which are worthy of a bit of "gut" industrial development politics.
I compliment the Minister on the introduction of this Bill. The IDA are doing a tremendous job. More industry should be channelled into Laois-Offaly. Down the years, Bord na Móna have given tremendous employment but machinery has curtailed it. I appeal to the Minister to ask the IDA to bring industry further down the country; at the moment it is concentrated in our cities. From the female labour point of view we are all right, but we could do with more male employment.
I would ask the Minister to increase grants where possible, especially in country areas such as the midlands. Some people may say that since 1940 when Bord na Móna went into operation we have been pretty well served, and that is true. However, machinery has curtailed employment there and it is necessary to channel more industry into the midlands. Some local authorities are doing a lot to acquire land but if it has not water and sewerage an industrialist will not be attracted there. I would ask the Minister to direct local authorities to procure more sites for industrial development. It may be said that I am harping on my own area but every Deputy will in some way or another allude to his own area.
Last year 11,000 new jobs were created as well as 120 new projects. That is no mean feat for Fianna Fáil. Mention was made of failure: is ten per cent a failure? I do not think so. If we do not try we shall not succeed. If another country had got Potez there would have been mutterings here that, if we had tried, we might have got the industry and questions might be asked as to why we did not try to get it. Our intentions were good and, if they did not succeed, it was not through any lack of effort by this side of the House. A lot of destructive talk on the far side of the House did not help the situation.
There is a shortage of workers in the building trade at the moment. In the midlands, there is a grave shortage. Due to the Government's expansionist programme, more industries are going up and absorbing labour. When the Coalition Government was in office from 1954 to 1957——
Forget about it.
Deputy Desmond went back further.
The Deputy was not in the House then.
All over the country, one can see new industries being established. It takes labour to build them. Furthermore, we have to find the money for that purpose. Fianna Fáil found the money. I was in the heart of the bog when the inter-Party Government were in office—the heart of the bog, where Deputy Desmond was not reared.
Grow up.
Some of the projects Bord na Móna was to go ahead with were shelved by the Coalition Government. When we came back into power we put the machine in motion again. That is why Bord na Móna got back on its feet again. Anything that was ever done to provide employment was done by this Government, not by the inter-Party Government who were trying to close down Bord na Móna. The former leader of that Party said: "Wheat, beet and peat—up the spout with the lot".
Has this any relevance to the debate? Very tenuous relevance I think.
If it were not for 1957 Fianna Fáil would be in very hard luck. Give us more about Coalition.
Deputy Desmond was not interrupted.
No one interrupted the Deputy. I have spoken only a few times in this House but we on this side of the House have given the Deputy and his party plenty of time to speak. When they get up to speak we give them two or three hours. We do not begrudge that to them.
We are sick of coalition.
I know the Deputy is. They got their answer on the 18th. Continuing——
On the Bill?
——I would ask the Minister to look after the rural areas and the midlands. I would ask him to direct more industrialists to Edenderry, Tullamore, Birr, Portarlington, Portlaoise and the centre of the midlands——
The Deputy forgot Rathdowney.
Rathdowney is gone. They have got it.
What about Borris-in-Ossory?
I would ask the Minister to continue with his expansionist programme so that we will have plenty of employment and not people going to the mailboat as they did when the Coalition Government were in office.
I should like, first of all, to make a few remarks about the general question of foreign industrial development which this Bill is designed to stimulate. It is clear that people are of two minds on this subject. On the one hand, we are seeking to attract foreign industry by every method we can, with a view to providing employment. On the other hand, we are inclined—and sometimes the same person is of two minds at once —to be critical of it and to feel that, in some way, the development of foreign industry here may damage our national interests.
We ought to try to clear our own minds on this, because there is confusion of thought. It seems to me that, if we are to achieve the rate of growth of employment that is necessary over the next ten years to move towards a full employment situation—and the most optimistic target that anyone has dared to set is that we would reach something approaching full employment in the 80s—we need at this point in time injections of capital and know-how and market control from outside which we cannot provide ourselves. I should like to think that we could. I should like to think that Irish private enterprise and public enterprise, which could and should be playing a greater role than they are in industrial development would be able to do this.
This is not the case and it is no good pretending it is the case. It must be clear to us that we have a choice either between encouraging foreign industrial development on the one hand, and accepting that this means a significant foreign-owned sector of our economy, or alternatively of not attaining the kind of growth in employment that we need. Indeed, even with an injection of foreign industry we are unlikely to achieve anything approaching full employment over a decade. We need to be clear on this.
There are reasons for this. One reason is that our capital resources, including what capital we could reasonably expect to repatriate through the provision of investment opportunities attractive to Irish investors, are not sufficient for what would be required in order to achieve this development. At the same time, this is the least of our problems. It is not actually as important a problem as the fact that we do not have in respect of many industries with a high technological content either the know-how or the control of foreign markets necessary to establish them here.
I shall give one case in point of an industry with which I was in contact several years ago and which was thinking of coming to Ireland. Unfortunately, it did not. It was nobody's fault. I would not in any way fault the Government or the Government agencies for the way they handled the case. There was a change of mind and a change of policy on the part of the company in its head office in America This industry is a good case study of why, if certain developments are to be achieved, they can only be achieved by foreign investment whether we like it or not.
This industry was one which could have used a by-product of the milk industry, a by-product which is now going down the drain and is not used at all. Therefore, it would be a most desirable industry. The control in the world market of the products that are produced from this by-product is vested effectively in two large concerns, one American and one British. The American concern achieves a far higher and more advanced technological state in the development of the product and, instead of simply marketing it crude and at a low value, it markets it in many varied and specialised forms and at a much higher price.
Clearly we could only produce this product if we could sell it, and we could only sell it if we had a link with one or other of these two major world concerns. Of the two, clearly if we wanted to do it as profitably as possible and with the maximum advantage to our agricultural sector, it would have to be a link with the American company. It did not come off, and this by-product is still not being used. It is nobody's fault, but the point I want to make is that this is not a case where you can produce a simplified answer: set up a State industry to produce it.
I suppose a State industry could produce it. It might even be able to attain the level of technological achievement of the very major British company involved. I do not think that if the British company is unable to achieve it we could attain the level of achievement of the American company involved. Even if we could produce the goods, perhaps, to the British standard, we could not sell them without a link with one of these companies, because they control the world market. This is true of more products than one likes to think.
The reason why we require an injection from abroad is not simply the capital. It is also control of markets, which sometimes is held by foreign concerns, and we have no other way of getting into markets except with their assistance in some form of participation with them and using the know-how these firms have developed, which sometimes is peculiar to them and which simply is not available, either for reasons of their expertise or for reasons of patents, to anyone but them. We have to face this fact and we have to make a choice.
The choice we have made is to seek foreign industrial development. There are people who fear that this will at some point in time give excessive control, over the assets in this country and over our affairs, to foreign interests. If that day should ever come, we would all be united in dealing with it. This is, in fact, further away than some people fear because the character of the foreign industrial investment we are getting—and this in one aspect is, perhaps, something of a demerit but from the point of view of control is a merit—is such that it is extremely dispersed geographically.
The Minister made reference to this, and this is one of the points I should like to take up from his speech. He mentioned that of the projects now under review and which are under negotiation, 25 per cent are British, 20 per cent Irish, 20 per cent American, 15 per cent German and others are from Holland, France, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, India and Spain. In fact, one can correlate these figures with those given in the report "Survey of Grant-aided Industries", a document on which I should like to congratulate the Minister, a most useful document. The only thing I can say about it is that it should have been produced long before it was. It is long overdue and it was pressed for for many years.
On page 41 of that report there is a table which shows the origins of firms establishing industries here. From this table one can see that there is a wide range of variation in size and that the small firms are predominantly Irish and the larger ones are predominantly from other countries. I think, perhaps, the Minister has eliminated the small firms from this part of his speech because he goes on in the next paragraph to talk about the small industries programme results and, therefore, I assume that in the previous paragraph he has not included them as he deals with them separately.
Eliminating firms under 20 employees which, I suppose, is a fair assessment of what is covered by the small industries programme — the average employment, by the way, in the firms he mentions is only six, so I think that in taking firms with under 20 employees out of the list I am being generous—one finds that the percentages are as follows, if you subtract the smaller firms—and one notices, incidentally, that the percentage of Irish in the new firms the Minister is now negotiating with is smaller and, indeed, I should like to ask him how he then talks about being particularly pleased to see an increasing number of Irish-based projects figuring in the list because the percentage seems to me to be smaller than it was up to 1966—27 per cent Irish, 11 per cent American, 15 per cent British, 20 per cent German, and seven per cent other nationalities. What is clear about this, apart from the low proportion of Irish firms over any significant size, despite what the Minister says about that and despite the fact that the proportion seems to be diminishing, is that foreign industrial investment is so dispersed and that no one country dominates; a very wide range of different countries are involved. Moreover, the actual size of these firms of which there are a very large number is such that no individual firm has a dominant position. Out of the total amount of grants paid to date, £23 million, I think, the largest grant paid to any firm is £900,000, to Semperit, and that was up to March of this year. That represents four per cent; thus no one firm got more than four per cent total grant payments. It is clear, therefore, that the foreign investment we are getting is dispersed both geographically and as regards the size of firm, and that we do not face a situation where any one firm or any conceivable grouping of firms or firms from any one country could secure a dominant position. It is true that there are many old-established firms in the country under foreign control and that some of these have a dominant position in certain industries in the home market, as we know from the CEO reports, and we might be legitimately concerned about that in some instances. However, I do not think there are any grounds for concern about the danger of these new foreign-based industries securing this kind of dominant position.
It is important to make that point. I do not think the Government have brought this out sufficiently. Although the Government have been pursuing energetically and enthusiastically the work of attracting foreign industry, I do not think they have sufficiently met the latent criticisms on the subject which exist. I am bringing out these points in the spirit of trying to assist the Minister with the case he has to make, in this regard, and I suggest he ought to make more use of this kind of facts in getting this theme across. I hope in the next month or two to see him opening a factory somewhere and quoting my statistics for that purpose.
Getting back to the Minister's speech, it is most encouraging to see the progress being made, and it is right that we should say so. Even if one allows—I will not say exaggeration—for the particular formulation of the statistics, which always makes them look better in anticipation than they turn out to be in reality, and even if all the jobs do not turn up, as they never do—one-third of them never materialise—the scale of the new activity now being generated is very encouraging and is reaching a level which is becoming really significant for our economy.
The IDA and An Foras Tionscal have made an enormous contribution to this country. They have been slow to get off the ground. You had the period of the 1950s when the scale of activities was small; something of a break-through coming into the 1960s when they began to operate at a somewhat higher level of activity; then something of a plateau around the mid-60s, and now there is evidence of a further break-through to a higher level of activity which could make a significant impact on our employment problem.
I agree with Deputy Desmond that the Minister must concentrate as much as possible of his time on the policy issues involved in this country, that he has a big job to do here, that he has problems in some cases with his colleagues and in other cases with public opinion generally, and problems also in making all these different State agencies under his control work effectively together. I agree he should concentrate on his work here; at the same time, I think Deputy Desmond was a little unkind in dismissing totally the work the Minister has done in travelling abroad. The Minister, perhaps, does too much of it in relation to how he should balance out his time, but he has been most energetic and I am sure that some of these visits have yielded results which might not have come if the Minister had not gone abroad himself.
Again in relation to the Minister's speech, I want to refer to the industrial estates. The Minister has given together figures relating to the two estates. Would he tell us something about the two industrial estates separately? Is it the case, as has been suggested, that there is a difference in the degree of success being achieved, that the Minister is having greater difficulty in securing new industrial development in Galway than in Waterford? I think we should know if this is the case so that we may consider what might be done to achieve a better balance. The aggregate figures for the two estates, while not impressive, are encouraging, but I should like to know whether the encouragement is to be taken from both of the estates or only from one. The Minister then goes on to say:
To me the most heartening feature of recent development is the progress of the industrialisation in the west and north-west.
If I challenge him on that he will come back in his final speech and talk about particular projects, this major project in Sligo, for example, to which he has referred, and there are such projects. There are a couple of encouraging developments, but I should like to put this in perspective: we are not facing adequately the problem of industrialisation of the west, and I think it is being fudged. The whole approach to the Buchanan Report looks as if it is going to endanger the possibility of doing something for the west. From the best of motives the western lobby may undermine the future industrial prospects of the west because they are concerned not with the west as a whole, not with getting industry in the western half of Ireland as distinct from the eastern half, but with getting industry into small towns and villages all over the place. This could undermine the prospects of major industrial growth in the west.
The tone of the Minister's remarks are complacent and the facts and figures I want to put before the House will show that conclusively. I should like, first of all, to give the House some figures in regard to the growth of employment between 1952, when the Undeveloped Areas Act was first introduced, when grants were first used to generate industrial growth in the west, and 1965, because 1965 is the latest year for which there have been published figures of the scale of industrial activity by counties. Over that period of 13 years, the census of industrial production figures—and they are much the more charitable; the census of population figures show a much more disturbing trend—industrial employment in the undeveloped areas has risen by 5,350, and that in the rest of the country, it has risen by 21,500. Therefore, on these figures, which are not as comprehensive or as reliable as the census of population figures, 80 per cent of the growth in employment has occurred in the developed areas, not a particularly encouraging record in the light of all the effort put into giving higher grants to the west.
I want to contrast this with the figures published by An Foras Tionscal about the employment which these projects are supposed to generate. There is a certain time lag between when projects are approved and when they are actually in operation. Therefore, if I want to get figures for the period 1952 to 1965 for actual employment, I think it is right to take the figures up to 1963 or 1964 for jobs promised at full development in industries for which grants have been approved. They are the only figures at my disposal, and I think it is fair to take them for either of those years. The figures given are for undeveloped areas: at 31st March, 1963, 10,570; at 31st March, 1964, 12,340. Averaging them out to get some sort of approximation, of the number of jobs this would involve in these areas by about 1965, the year I am taking for this purpose, you get 11,500 jobs.
The Foras Tionscal figures for the undeveloped areas show for both years 15,700 jobs. For some reason the jobs were 40 fewer in the second year than in the first; in other words, in that year the new projects approved were fewer than the ones that were cancelled during the course of the year by about 40 jobs. Therefore, we have 11,500 jobs in the undeveloped areas promised which should have materialised by 1965, and 15,500 in developed areas.
What, in fact, happened? We know from the CIP figures that there were 5,500 in the undeveloped areas and 21,000 in the rest of the country. If one takes out the effort of An Foras Tionscal, one must be charitable and assume that the figures promised were achieved. In that period of 13 years there must have been an increase in employment in established industries, not a grant aided increase, of 6,000 in the developed areas and a reduction of 6,000 in the west. This is a very disturbing picture and it shows the magnitude of the problem. We are not faced with the problem of grafting on to a developing western industrial economy some additional industries to give it a greater growth potential; we are faced with the fact that the basic industries have been declining in the west of Ireland over the last two decades and employment has been falling. An Foras Tionscal are fighting a losing battle. In this period the best that could be done was to provide 11,500 jobs which offset, twice over, the decline which was occurring in that area. As for the rest of the country the grants were reinforcing industrial growth.
I think we need to be clear how serious the problem is and in order to do this we have to talk in terms of figures. I am always disturbed to hear generalisations.
The figures which the Deputy is quoting only go up to 1965.
I am coming to the other figures.
The reference which I made was to recent times.
I quite appreciate this but if the Minister would allow me to develop my theme he will see that I shall bring it up to this point. I want to deal with the population figures for the years 1951 to 1966. In this period, according to the census of population, and we have to remember that the census of population is accurate to one per cent, during this 15 year period employment in manufacturing industries fell by 1,000 from 27,000 to 26,000. I am deliberately excluding County Clare because, due to the location of the Shannon industrial development area, industrial employment has expanded by 1,400. If one takes the overall figures, excluding Clare, there was a drop of 1,000 and this was concentrated mainly in Connacht. Employment in Connacht fell from 11,000 to 10,000. That is the record of 15 years' grants generating new industry.
Let us look at what has happened since the grants were first paid. In 1965. In 1965 and 1966 and 1966 to 1967 the grants paid in the country were broadly the same. From 1965 to 1966 £900,00 was paid to the undeveloped areas and £1,060,000 was paid to the rest of the country. From 1966 to 1967 £1,300,000 was paid to the undeveloped areas and £1,200,000 was paid to the rest of the country. At that time they were in harness. The new industrial development was clearly evenly spread at that time. From 1967 to 1968 £1 million was paid to the underdeveloped areas and £2 million was paid to the rest of the country. The even balance was destroyed here. There was twice as much development occurring in the rest of the country. From 1968 to 1969 the figure for the underdeveloped areas was £1,300,000 and for the rest of the country it was £4 million. Here we have a rapid development year after year and yet in the west it does not even reach the 1966 to 1967 position. I have covered the whole period since the grants were introduced.
The future is predictable here because we have the figures for grant approvals. There is a time lag between grant approval and grant payment of just over two years. One can match the two graphs very closely together. In 1964 and 1965 approvals for grants for the underdeveloped areas were £2 million and for the rest of the country they were £1,900,000. That was reflected in the lower grants paid in the next couple of years. Turning to more recent figures we find from 1966 to 1967 approvals for underdeveloped areas amounted to £1,700,000 and for the rest of the country they amounted to £5,700,000. From 1968 to 1969 grants approved for the underdeveloped areas were £3,300,000 which was an improved grant, but for the rest of the country the figure was £8,800,000. Whether we look at the distant past, the immediate past, or the future we can see that the industrial development, for which the IDA and An Foras Tionscal deserve congratulations, is not occurring to any significant degree in the west.
There is still the disparity between the west and east which these grants were supposed to resolve. This disparity is increasing because of the failure of the Government to come to grips with the issue and their failure to face the fact that, until we develop growth centres capable of attracting major industries, our success will be sporadic and this is something which everyone in the west of Ireland should accept. Anyone coming from a town in the west of Ireland who is working away against a growth centre policy in order to generate an industry in his town is working against the west as a whole. I exaggerate a little; of course, he should work for his own town but he should not try to sabotage a policy of establishing growth centres which would bring major development to the west. If he does this he will be working against the interests of the west as a whole. I know there are many people in this House even in my own party, who will disagree with me but I think it is important that these things should be said. The whole pressure of public opinion and Government opinion, judging by the repeated utterances of Government Ministers in recent months is working against the growth centre policy and they are working against it for the wrong reasons.
Would the Deputy have a different approach if the facts were different from what he has purported them to be?
Yes, if the facts were different. I know the Minister has been hinting for some time past that there will be a different approach from that of Buchanan and I will have to hear this before I can reach a verdict on it. I do not think it is sufficient for the Minister to say that things have happened since the Buchanan Report. If one looks at the figures for grant approvals one can see there is an improvement in the west. Grant approvals amounting to £3,700,000 have been made.
The Deputy's figures would come up to June of this year.
March.
The Deputy is aware of one project in Sligo which would not be included in the figures he is dealing with where it is estimated that about 550 people, mostly men, will be employed and it is expected that this figure will grow. There are others which I am sure are not included in the Deputy's figures.
I am sure there are others. I appreciate that this is the case. I know from what the Minister said in the debate in July that he has things up his sleeve for improving the position but, even when one takes full account of this, it will not show such an improved picture as would justify an attempt to undermine the growth centre policy or deprive the west of the growth centres necessary if it is going to develop.
I should like to refer briefly to the question of part-time farmers and to point out that what I have to say is directly relevant to this debate. The number of people in manufacturing employment in Connacht in 1966 was 9,900. The number of farmers with under 30 acres was 46,500; the number of farmers with between 30 and 50 acres was 25,500; the number with 50 acres: 16,500—89,000 farmers altogether.
I should like to know what is meant by this policy of part-time farming. I have the greatest sympathy with and would certainly give the strongest support to any policy which enables people to stay on the land and have other employment and I believe this can work extremely well. I believe it is working well around Shannon and working well in County Meath and other parts of the country, but what I am not prepared to go along with is any hypocritical attempt to persuade the Irish people that this change in policy is likely to solve the problems of the west. What does it mean? It is fair to say that the chance for most farmers with 30 acres or less in the west of Ireland, with the kind of land they have, of making a decent livelihood such as any man is entitled to, of having a decent return on his capital, is a chance which is valid for a few but not for most. We can take it that any farm of that size is unlikely to provide the kind of livelihood that people will be willing to accept in 1980. There are 46,500 of these.
What this policy of part-time farming and not having any structural reform means is that you intend to provide industrial or other employment for the whole 46,500, all going to be uneconomic on their holdings, and if you do nothing to make them economic, everyone of them will need an industrial job. A policy of industrial reform could make half of these viable so that they would have all viable farms and would not then have to be found jobs.
What are the prospects of finding them jobs? There are 9,900 people employed after 15 years of the industrial grants policy—1,000 less than when it was started—and with an achievement after 15 years of minus 1,000, we are apparently promising not just to find jobs for half of these people who would need employment if a policy of structural reform were pursued but for 46,500 of them, or something like that. Indeed, many of those with more than 30 acres would need part-time employment with some of the kind of farms there are in the west.
Surely, the Deputy does not feel justified in excluding Shannon completely from the west?
I am not excluding Shannon from the west.
In arriving at a figure of 1,000 less jobs, I think he is.
I am sorry. I am narrowing it down to the problems of Connacht. I explained that at the beginning. Take the figures for any other area you like. The province of Connacht is from this point of view the crucial area, the one that can be easily pinpointed and, frankly, the work of extracting statistics county by county in the kind of form that applies to this is rather time consuming. Connacht exemplifies this problem in a particularly acute form and the problem is mainly a Connacht and south Ulster problem—Connacht and Monaghan and Cavan—that is the area of real difficulty.
I am afraid this is not true. In Monaghan they are advertising for labour abroad.
In parts of Monaghan they may be, but in other parts they are not. In any event, the problem is one of Connacht and neighbouring counties or counties to the north-east of it. Let us not be too specific. In that area you have this situation. A policy of part-time farming, if it means what it says, means that you are in some way trying to persuade these poor divils that without making any of their farms viable, so that you would have to provide jobs for them all, they can be provided with a good living. What hope have we in the foreseeable future, no matter what progress we make, no matter what policy the Minister adopts, of providing jobs for half of these people? If that could be done it would be a wonderful achievement. Then you would have sufficient land available with a policy of structural reform over a period to provide viable agricultural holdings for the rest but with a policy of not trying to make any of them viable so that some kind of low-grade job has to be found for all of them—if it is to be a high-grade job you are really setting your sights at an extraordinarily high level—with a record of minus 1,000 after 15 years, to promise to produce 30,000 jobs in so many years is simply not realistic, not serious. While the idea of part-time farming is an excellent one, to try to pretend to anyone that it is going to solve the problems of Connacht when, in fact, it will aggravate them by creating a situation in which far more people will need jobs, is something which is indefensible. I do not think that anybody in this House should go along with that kind of humbug.
Coming back more directly to the things dealt with in the Bill and the Minister's speech, he distinguishes clearly the situation in the mid-west region, where the Shannon Free Airport Development Company is to continue to have a free hand, from the rest of the country where the IDA are to set up regional offices. I raised this point before and I raise it again: I can see no good reason for this distinction. The fact is that the Shannon Free Airport Development Company has been a success not only in Shannon but is now being a success in developing its region. It is a success because it is a separate enterprise organised locally with local loyalties and local enthusiasm for that region. That having worked, the Minister then becomes fired with enthusiasm for the regional approach and decides to have a regionalised system but instead of creating similar bodies to do this job seeing how this particular area has progressed, he does it by regionalising the IDA. I am not convinced about this. The fact is that SFADCO has been a great success in that area because it is a separate body with all the enthusiasm and loyalty that people have to the area in which they are working. I do not think regionalising the IDA is the answer and it shows once again the unwillingness of this Government to delegate and devolve authority. There is this basic conception of centralisation which they attempt to cover up by the spurious pretext of sending Ministers and civil servants out to places like Castlebar and Athlone when, basically, they are not prepared to devolve authority of any kind in any area whether it is education, agriculture or industry. I think this decision is the wrong decision here.
The Minister goes on then to refer to the question of capital-intensive industries. I must say he worried me a little here and depressed me a little because he sounded a very negative note. He spoke first of all about the desirability of having some large capital-intensive projects. He then went on to list a number of attractions: high quality employment, highly skilled staff, an in-built tendency to expand rapidly; can have a substantial impact on other industries and services and provide resources to attract ancillary industries. That is grand. I am with it. But, what comes next? This extraordinary turnabout:
Such projects, however——
"however" is a word to watch. It always means you are turning in the opposite direction to the one you have been facing——
Such projects, however, can be costly in terms of infrastructure and of the incentives that must be offered in the face of the sharp international competition for them.
We cannot afford them, in other words.
Their cost to us would limit the number we could seek to attract but in any event we could not at this stage of our development accommodate more than a limited number of them.
The cost argument I can understand although I do not accept it. I do not accept that cost should limit us in getting first-class industries with all the qualifications the Minister mentions about them. I do not see that cost must force us to confine ourselves to industries which have not got these particular qualities of high quality employment, highly skilled staff, in-built tendency to expand rapidly and that they can have a substantial impact on other industries and in attracting ancillary industry. I do not believe we are in the position where we cannot afford such industries. We have to afford such industries. These are the kind of industries we want. We are told that not alone can we not afford them but must take low grade industries that have not got these characteristics; we are told that even if we could afford them we could not accommodate them.
What on earth is the Minister talking about? Not being able to afford is an argument I can understand, even if I do not accept, but not being able to accommodate them is an argument I cannot begin to understand. Have we got no room for them? Have we not got the land for them to build on? Have we not got the workers to train for them? What kind of inability to accommodate them is the Minister talking about? These are the very kinds of industries that we should be looking for. If it is impossible for us to provide sufficient grants to attract these industries, if they want to come here, this is a bad enough situation indeed but to say that we are not even going to try to attract them because even if we had the money we could not accommodate them is the most extraordinary statement I have heard on the subject of industrial development in the last ten years. I do not understand it. I trust the Minister will explain it or at least explain it away when he comes to reply.
It is a pity the Deputy would not just take what I said at its face value and not be trying to read other things into it that are not in it.
I will read it again. I will read it without comment and the House can decide. I will make no comment on it.
The Deputy did make a comment. He said one statement meant that we could not afford it and that is not what it said. The next thing is, he kept asserting that we could not accommodate it. Full stop. The sentence does not stop at that word. There is no use saying you are reading it without comment.
I read the full sentence. I read to the full stop. I have it in front of me:
Their cost to us would limit the number we could seek to attract.
I have translated that in English as that we could not afford to attract all the numbers that might come.
That is not what the Deputy said. What he said was that we cannot afford them but it does not mean that.
"Would limit the number we seek to attract." That is the first part. Now the next part:
... but in any event we could not at this stage of our development accommodate more than a limited number of them.
I want to know why could we not? What do we lack? Is it the workers we lack? Is it the land that we lack? What part of the capital do we lack if, indeed, we lack the capital for them?
What page is the Deputy reading?
Column 2294—the last two lines in that column.
That is no help to me.
There is a full stop after that. He goes on to say:
... in any event we could not at this stage of our development accommodate more than a limited number of them.
I must confess that, if the Minister did not mean that, although it is difficult to imagine that, in the Second Reading speech, which is a stencilled document, he had something down which he did not mean. We are not now talking of an off-the-cuff comment or an interruption in the course of debate. This was a formal statement of Government policy: we cannot accommodate more than a limited number of these capital incentive industries. I would like the Minister, if he did not mean what he said, to explain what he did mean at the conclusion of the debate when he comes to reply.
The Deputy knows well enough that he should not take something completely out of its context.
I have read it in its context. I read the entire paragraph at that point.
Read it again.
I am sorry. I have other things to do. I should like to be allowed to make my speech at this stage. I have commented sufficiently on that. The Minister sees I have a point and, if he thinks I am wrong, he can explain why in his reply.
I come now to the question of the merger of the Industrial Development Authority and An Foras Tionscal. This, I think, is desirable. I share the doubts of other speakers on this side of the House as to whether, in fact, this is adequate or whether, in fact, it should go further. It seems to me that in industry, as in agriculture, the producer is faced with far too many bodies offering their services in different ways.
What the industrialist needs and what the farmer needs is one man who will come to him on behalf of the Government and say: "What are your problems? Let me see what they are and I will then tell you what assistance we can give." He sees the plan for the farm, or the plan for the industry, and he can then say: "Yes. You need some cattle exports. You need some help and capital, perhaps, and the best mix we can give you is such-and-such and bring in these experts from these various agencies and they can work it out with you." We need field service general practitioners for this purpose. Instead of that we have a proliferation of agencies each of which is busy dealing directly with the industries and dealing directly with the farmers and sometimes pursuing conflicting policies because no amount of co-ordination at the top will prevent the man at the top and the man in the field from having conflicting views and putting them forward. I do not think the kind of co-ordination we are getting is sufficient and that view is, I think, pretty generally shared in industry. I think it is also shared in the trade unions which are closely in touch with all this. I think we need to go a bit further than we have gone. However, having said that, I must welcome the merger so far as it goes and I join in the tribute Deputy Desmond paid to Mr. John Walsh for the work he has done. I have been in touch with him for more than ten years in his work in the Industrial Development Authority. He has done a great job for this country and much of the credit for the development that has taken place must go to him.
I appreciate that the Minister sees that at this point his services are needed in the Fair Trade Commission because that body is now being expanded to undertake new functions and it must be made more efficient and its work must be speeded up. The Fair Trade Commission has a deplorable record for slowness and it is vital to have somebody energetic there who can speed it up so that it can effectively take on the new and wider functions it will have.
I can understand why the Minister may feel it necessary to put Mr. Walsh in there. He has had prior experience of the Fair Trade Commission and I certainly think that the appointment of Mr. Michael Killeen as the new head of the Industrial Development Authority is an excellent one—it is one on which I congratulate the Minister—and I am sure that under Mr. Michael Killeen the Industrial Development Authority will continue to make even more progress than it has made in the last ten years. I think all this is good, though I still have doubts about the adequacy of the co-ordination of these various services.
Another point in the Minister's speech related to the usage of home materials. He placed some emphasis on this and the importance of linkage between industries. The report on grant-aided industries shows that about 40 per cent of their materials are purchased from outside this country. That is not a very high figure, but I appreciate what the Minister says; this is not abnormal for industries in other countries and I think it would be a mistake if we tried to confine ourselves to industries which used only domestic raw materials. I think there is, perhaps, too strong a lobby in that respect. The fact is that our domestic raw materials are fairly limited in range. Apart from minerals, which are not even smelted here and are not, therefore, available domestically for the firms using them, our raw materials consist effectively of foodstuffs and it is a fact that the demand for food, even for processed foods, is much less dynamic than is the demand for other types of products. If we were to confine ourselves and our efforts to developing industries based on domestic raw materials we would be confining ourselves to a slow-growing section of industry and condemning ourselves by adopting such a policy to slow economic growth. The Government are, therefore, quite right to diversify industry in this way and to encourage industries, even if some of these do involve importing raw materials. There are many countries, like Holland and Belgium, which have built up their prosperity on the processing of imported raw materials. There is no reason why we should not do likewise. We should, of course, never neglect any opportunity to use our domestic raw materials and we should not be so foolish as to confine ourselves to such a policy.
On this question of linkages between industry and the development of industrial complexes here, I think the idea needs a lot of expertise. I think it has not, perhaps, had sufficient expertise available to it in the past and I think this has been appreciated and the new projects research unit is an indication of this. This is referred to by the NIEC in their report and it needs, I think, to be fully developed. It may, in fact, be necessary for some of the expertise needed for the kind of jobs to be done here to employ people from outside the country. The fact is that when you come to developing appraisals of projects of technologically extremely complex industries, which is what we are going to have to do, very often you find that there is nobody in this country who has this particular skill of appraising the industrial prospects of a very complex industry. We should never hesitate to buy expertise in an area in which we have not got it ourselves and will never have it. There will be highly specialised areas in which we will not have it and if the Industrial Development Authority have to spend a lot of money on consultants of that kind for a particular purpose they should do so. If they have to employ a man here on a five year contract, possibly from outside the country, and if they have to pay him a salary higher than the chairman's, they should do so without hesitation because if we can develop really first-class products of this kind, which we can then go and sell to industrial enterprises abroad, having done our homework and being able to put to them a project which is fully worked out and one which will attract them, the benefit to this country will be immense. No cost should be spared in doing that job effectively so that the project put to the firm abroad will be one so well presented that, quite apart from the attractions, the proven attractions, to the firm concerned, they will feel that this is a good country to come to; here are people who really know their business; they have not put forward a half-baked project; they have put forward something as good as we could have done ourselves. That is the way in which you get really first-class industries into this country and there should be no hesitation about employing that kind of expertise and, if we have not got it here, we should hire it and have no inhibitions about doing so.
I want now to come to one aspect of the Bill which bothers me. It is the provision in the Bill for different levels of grant payment in undeveloped areas depending upon whether the industry concerned is a new industry or an existing one expanding. The NIEC were very specific on this in their report. This has been done by adding five per cent to the grants for new industries in undeveloped areas. This is a serious mistake—not the addition of five per cent—but what I would do in these circumstances, if the Government did feel there were strong reasons for paying 40 per cent for new industry, is pay 40 per cent adaptation grants also in those areas. It is quite wrong to ignore the case made by NIEC because it is one which carries much weight.
The attitude here to new foreign industry has been very much influenced by the feeling that they are getting different kinds of grants but for the Minister deliberately to flout the NIEC recommendation here, add on five per cent for new industries and not do the same for existing industries in the western part of the country, is a serious mistake. I should like to know why, because the Minister's speech to me seems not to explain it. In fact, it does not even advert to the NIEC recommendations, and as far as I can see—I am open to correction—I do not see any reference to the NIEC in that part of his speech at all, although in fact the proposal he has implemented, subject to this and one other change, is not the proposal of the consultants whom he does mention. A. D. Little & Co. are mentioned as the consultants who produced the report but their proposal had serious defects which were corrected by the NIEC, which put forward a modified proposal on which the Minister's Bill is based, with two changes. Yet, the NIEC get no mention; the foreign consultants do. I do not understand that and I shall particularly press the Minister on the Committee Stage of this Bill to change the policy here. For the sake of an extra five per cent on adaptation grants, about how much is involved——
Surely the Deputy is omitting from his argument a very important factor? His argument is that domestic and foreign industry should be treated in exactly the same way. If this is so the same conditions would have to apply and, as the Deputy reallises, in almost all cases of foreign industry getting grants they are obliged to export all, or virtually all, of their products. If we were to apply the same test to re-equipment grants most of the firms getting them would not be qualified.
The Minister does not appear to have understood the NIEC report. One of the main purposes of the NIEC recommendations was to get rid of the inhibition to the provision of grants to firms operating in this country. That is precisely the point, so that there would not be a necessity for making the distinction that if you want this kind of grant you must export while with an adaptation grant you can sell at home. Has the Minister ever read paragraph 54 of the report?
The Deputy is missing the whole point.
To come back to this point, what would it cost if we were to do this? How much money is spent on adaptation grants in the undeveloped areas with 9,900 workers in manufacturing industries? Here are the figures going over the years : £278,000, £280,000, £331,000, £744,000, £342,000. We are talking of adding to the existing level of 25 per cent another one-fifth and for the sake of some £70,000 on average, the Minister abandons the NIEC recommendation and continues to discriminate between foreign industry and domestic industry or to give the impression of doing so and prevents making progress towards the point where grants could be given for industries competing at home. They need not be confined as they are at present to export orientated industries. This is very foolish cheeseparing and I propose to put down an amendment on this subject on the Committee Stage.
I welcome many features of the Bill. The three new schemes are all good— the interest grants, the guarantee scheme and the research and development grants. They were recommended by the NIEC and I am delighted that the Minister has accepted them. I note that the first two are excluded from the maximum limits of £350,000. In replying, the Minister might indicate why they are excluded. I do not think it is very important but there must be some reason why they should be excluded. On the face of it, and I think this was the view of the NIEC, one would expect they would be included. If the Minister has a reason he should tell the House about it.
Here, as on other points, I cavil at the Minister's failure to explain the Bill in the Second Reading speech. There is a tendency for Ministers in Second Reading speeches to talk very generally around the subject. This is not confined to Ministers but the Minister has a special responsibility in presenting a Bill to explain the reasons for what is in the Bill. There is a tendency to generalise and not explain the contents of the Bill. A number of points should have been explained in the opening speech. The purpose of the debate is to understand the reasons behind the Bill so that we can, if necessary, propose amendments on the Committee Stage.
I should like to ask why, on another issue, the NIEC recommendation was abandoned. The NIEC said there should be a maximum percentage for the total sum paid in grants and loans under all those different schemes. They felt it was very important that there should be some limit, that firms should not be able to accumulate an interest grant on top of a guarantee scheme grant on top of a research and development grant on top of an industrial grant on top of an adaptation grant to the point where you ended up by getting 110 per cent, as if you were doing it through Irish. I speak humorously but the fact is that there should be some limit. The Minister has abandoned this. The NIEC propose that nobody should get more than 65 per cent of the total cost of the project by various grants in developed areas nor more than 75 per cent in the underdeveloped areas but, as far as I can see, that maximum does not appear in the Bill. The £350,000 limit appears but not this maximum percentage. I should like to know why. That was a necessary safeguard. The NIEC in their report were concerned primarily with expanding industrial development here and, if they proposed a safeguard, despite their preoccupation with this problem I think that safeguard deserves serious consideration and again, the failure of the Minister even to mention the NIEC report, even to mention the recommendation——
That is not true. Would the Deputy look at page eight of the script circulated?
I will repeat in more exact words now that I see no mention of it in this section of the speech—I am very sorry: there is one reference where the name is given in full and not in initials. I missed it. The Minister has stated that the main recommendations were approved by the NIEC. The whole point is that they did not approve them: they made a number of important changes in them, most of which the Minister has accepted. The only reference to NIEC is, to my mind, completely misleading. I am glad the Minister drew my attention to that. I had missed it.
Homer nods.
Nods on both sides of the House. The Minister's proposal to introduce a power to purchase shares in these concerns is important. It would be a very good thing if, in many cases, the State had a shareholding in these concerns. I do not think we should insist on this if it would prejudice a project coming here but the provision is a good one which I certainly welcome.
There was one point of fact in the Minister's speech with which I quarrel. Perhaps it is a misuse of words or perhaps I am wrong, but towards the end of his speech he makes the remarkable statement in regard to the fixing of the limit of capital—that almost £50 million has been issued in respect of current industrial incentives. I am puzzled by this because my reckoning is that £48,000,000 has been approved up to March and £23,000,000 issued. Could it be that in the period between March and October of this year £27,000,000 had been issued, more than in the previous 17 years? I do not think so. I think what the Minister means is that almost £50,000,000 has been approved and that he should not mislead the House by saying that money which has been approved has been issued when, in fact, some of it will never be issued because the projects will fall through and some of it will not be issued for several years until the projects mature. It may be a slip but I am perturbed to find that at several points in this speech, which is a written document in stencilled form prepared in advance and circulated to this House, there is a very loose use of words, to put it as charitably as I can. The Minister might clarify that in replying.
On the question of subsidies for houses I want to ask on what scale these subsidies will be. Will houses provided for industrial workers be available at rents equivalent or similar to those at which houses are available to them in the ordinary way in city areas if they are rehoused by the local authority? Will there be a lower rate of subsidy so that these houses will be more costly and so that we shall have a continuing inhibition to industrial workers being housed because, naturally, if they find in the housing provided by the National Building Agency on behalf of the IDA that they have to pay a higher rent they will not easily accept it and we shall have a continuing housing problem? Will the Minister assure me that the subsidies will be on the same scale and that the rents will be on the same level and that there will be no discrimination against industrial workers being housed by the IDA?
There are one or two things in the NIEC report to which I should like to draw attention, although they do not arise on the Minister's speech. The report emphasises the importance of State industries adapting to free trade conditions. This is something about which many people are deeply concerned and the NIEC for years past have been concerned about it and concerned, as is evident from some of their progress reports or industrial reviews for the past five years, about the lack of progress and the constant shoring up of inefficient activities of State bodies—and some of them are inefficient—and protecting them in ways that shelter them from competition and prevent them from facing up to free trade conditions.
We had an example of that here today at Question Time in regard to Irish Steel Holdings. The idea that we should be told at this stage, in 1969, that there are plans under consideration which would involve putting Irish Steel Holdings on a different basis so that it might be competitive when Irish industry since 1961 in the private sector has been exhorted by the Government, year after year, to adapt to free trade conditions.
What did the Government do? They introduced a plan in the early 1960s to make Irish Steel Holdings less efficient, less specialised and which undermined its competitiveness and they have been shoring it up since at the expense of small scrap merchants and at the expense of the people when they should have been forcing it to adapt to free trade conditions in the same way as the private sector has been adapting.
If the Deputy had paid a little more attention to what I said he would have noted that it had adapted quite successfully and that the other reference to future changes was not relating to adaptation.
The Minister covered himself subsequently by saying that they had adapted when——
I am telling the Deputy the facts.
We will see from the record what was said. The NIEC pointed out that both public and private enterprise will face the same external competition in free trade conditions and that subsidisation of public enterprise will not be permitted by the terms of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement and the Rome Treaty. The report said that the need for adaptation measures was at least as great for public as for private manufacturing industries. They said that short-term pressures which might be particularly acute in the public sector, to preserve their existing fields of operation where they were not viable, should not be permitted to hold up the progress of adaptation and diversification. The report also said that the State had a responsibility to ensure that manufacturing enterprises in the public sector gave the lead to the private sector in this matter.
It has been the view of members of the NIEC for the past five years that this lead has not been given. While the private sector is adapting, many State companies in the manufacturing sector are not facing up to the problem, are giving a bad example and risking employment when free trade comes because they will have to face it like everyone else. Article 90 of the Rome Treaty indicates that there is no way out by subsidising these firms. The Minister has responsibility for most of these firms and he should be giving a lot of attention to the problem and not be seeking to bolster them up with hidden subsidies like cheap scrap. He should be forcing them to become competitive. These firms should have been working throughout the 1960s, since the CIO was established, to this effect. It is astonishing that any of these firms has still to be protected. How can the Government accuse industry of failing to adapt when their own bodies are not only protected but some of them more highly protected than they were nine years ago?
To which bodies is the Deputy referring apart from Irish Steel?
To go into that detail would be clearly out of order. If the Minister refers to the industrial review published by the NIEC, and which goes into a great deal of detail, he will find the enterprises referred to. The NIEC also recommended that the IDA should maintain contact with new industries after they had been established. I believe that this is done. The evidence of the number of industries which come back for further grants shows that the contact is being maintained, by the industries anyway, whether the IDA does it or not. In the earlier years they did not maintain the contact and after a firm was launched they lost interest. I am glad that there has been an improvement in this regard.
The NIEC further recommended that booklets on our industrial relations should be given to foreign concerns coming in here. I do not think this was meant to be funny but I must say in the light of the last year or so I am not too sure that this was a good recommendation. It could be that the less we say about our industrial relations the better. Having said that, it is desirable that they should be informed about some aspects of our industrial relations. I support what Deputy Desmond said about the subject of union membership. It is very important that nobody should be misled on this point. I know there is no legal requirement on people to become members of a trade union, and I hope that there will never be because it would be an interference with individual freedom, but at the same time there is strong pressure in regard to it and no firm should be left in any doubt about the possible consequences if it pursues some reactionary policy of excluding union members.
The IDA has a duty to impress this on industries coming here and any industry that does not pay attention to this is risking disruption, as some have been disrupted. The unions generally have been extremely responsible in this regard. They have bent over backwards and indeed many established Irish firms complain that unions are prepared to waive all kinds of restrictive practices in the case of a new foreign firm but they would not waive them for an Irish industry because that might affect existing employment. The unions cannot be faulted for their attitude. Another recommendation of the NIEC was that unilateral tax credits should be given pending the conclusion of double taxation agreements. Something has been done about that and it is an important matter.
Finally, I want to refer to the infrastructure which Deputy Desmond referred to as a cliché. It is a serious problem here. We have not got the infrastructure for the kind of industries we need. Outside of Dublin it is very hard to see where you could put a really major new industry, where the pool of employment would be available, where there would be the water supply available, where there would be an adequate telephone service and electricity, although the electricity side has been pretty well looked after. That is why this growth centre policy is very important.
Take the position which would arise if a major industry which could employ 2,000 people wanted to come here. They have a dozen of these in the North of Ireland and we have none here. We would have to say to them that we really could not look after them except perhaps in Dublin. Why has the North of Ireland got about a dozen large industries while——
We have also to ask why their level of industrial employment is the same as it was 20 years ago.
That is preposterous.
Look at the figures.
(Interruptions.)
They had there an enormous problem of providing new employment for people who had become redundant. They tackled that problem intelligently by going for big industries, by providing the infrastructure, cutting red tape and creating a number of places where they could take really big industries. What has been done down here? Seven years after the CIO recommended growth centres the Government are still hedging because they are afraid of the political consequences. They do not care how many people will have to emigrate in the next 15 to 20 years because of their unwillingness to grasp this political nettle. You can provide an adequate infrastructure for large modern industry only in relatively a few places and the only place available here is Dublin and therefore large industry tends to come here. We should be trying to get industry out of Dublin by creating conditions——
The Deputy is answering the question he asked earlier about what I meant when I said we could only accommodate a small number. He is giving the explanation now. I thought it would have been obvious.
The Minister is content that we can accommodate them in Dublin and nowhere else?
The Deputy need not put words into my mouth. I said there were only a few places where you can get sufficient water and this is one of the big factors. The Deputy said this himself and he must believe it. Would he relate that back——
I have flushed the Minister out. This is precisely what I tried to do earlier and failed. When we say we cannot accommodate them what we are saying is that even though the money were there, even though we had the workers and even though we had the land——
We do not have sufficient quantities of water——
Fianna Fáil have been in office for 13 years and yet they have failed to provide water where it should have been provided. I am talking of centres where there is an adequate pool of labour. The Minister tells us we cannot now accommodate industries in parts of the country——
Is the Deputy not talking about huge quantities of water needed for large-scale industries?
Apparently there is nowhere to accommodate those industries. Nothing has been done about the pool of labour——
Perhaps Deputy FitzGerald might be allowed to make his case without interruption.
It is a pity he is not more consistent.
I have got from the Minister tonight an admission which we could never before get from the Fianna Fáil Party, an admission that we could not accommodate them. I thought I might get the Minister to say that Fianna Fáil had not done anything about providing houses, sewerage, water. It is not because we have not the labour that we cannot accommodate them. They are still going out of this country at the rate of 15,000 to 20,000 a year. The infrastructure is not there. The water is not there. The sewerage is not there. The houses are not there.
This is unworthy of Deputy FitzGerald.
It is a condemnation of Fianna Fáil policy over this period. I am glad I have flushed the Minister out. It justifies the use of the cliché "infrastructure." I have got out of the Minister the admission of guilt in respect of their performance over the past 13 years. It is something which nobody so far has got out of the Government.
(Dublin Central): It is interesting to listen to an economist like Deputy FitzGerald. I enjoy reading his articles in the Irish Times. This is the first occasion I have known him to condemn our industrial sector. He has asked why we do not create large industries in rural areas. We must be practical. Take counties such as Leitrim and Donegal and places such as Connemara. These areas are suitable for small industries. We must realise that we have certain amenities such as plentiful supplies of water in certain places. It is not possible to create large industries in certain parts of the country because there will not be there an adequate supply of qualified labour and other factors which the Minister will point out in his reply.
This is a very important Bill for our society and our economy. We can justly be proud of our industrial arm. Industrial development will provide a solution for our employment problem. An examination of our record will show that Fianna Fáil have been very successful in relation to new industries. Our policy is to create good jobs, a good standard of living and good social welfare. With an efficient and productive industrial arm, we hope to achieve these aims. The process is slow. We are a new country in the industrial sector. It is unfair to compare us with Northern Ireland or with Britain because we have started only very recently.
We have too many organisations catering for industry. The amalgamation of IDA and An Foras Tionscal will to some degree cut out overlapping. As Deputy Desmond pointed out, there are other sectors where we could amalgamate. Córas Tráchtála is interested in the promotion sector. It is a matter for discussion whether it is desirable that organisations dealing with industry and the training of people for industry might be got under the same roof. We have many organisations dealing with the promotion of industry. Overlapping presents unnecessary difficulties for new industrialists.
The Minister pointed out that 1968 was our best year ever in terms of industrial promotion. There were 120 new projects which, in full production, would employ 11,000 workers. This is an indication of the confidence people outside this country have in our economy. It shows they have confidence that we shall implement our Third Programme. We are creating the right atmosphere which will encourage outside commercial firms to come here. We are giving good grants but, in return, we expect the people coming here to contribute to the social and economic welfare of the country and to create jobs here. By and large, the firms have contributed to our economic expansion. False propaganda about a failure rate is stupid when it is demonstrably true that our failure rate has been remarkably low. By and large, it is the lowest failure rate of any European country engaged in our type of economic expansion.
I have been hearing about Potez since I first entered this House. There is no gilt-edged security in running a business especially when industrialists come here to engage in the export market. Undoubtedly, they can make a very genuine case about sales abroad for their products but factors can change in a foreign market. Goods and products which are very acceptable can become out-of-date or the demand for them may slacken. Whenever the Government decided in favour of the establishment of an industry here there was a very good case to be made as regards its potential. The comparatively few industries which failed did so for reasons completely outside their control. Nobody can decry the efforts of IDA or of the Minister in regard to the establishment of any industry here at any particular time.
We should cease to have a complex about our small percentage of failures. It is depressing and, perhaps, has a bad effect on other people who would like to come into this country and start an industry. We must generate an air of confidence, a feeling that our workers and our people are capable of handling, and are qualified to do, the jobs they will be offered. If we do this, not only will we exceed what has already been done but we will achieve the target set out in the Third Programme for Economic Expansion of full employment in the 1980s.
Deputy FitzGerald spoke about the large industries. We should try to gear our industries along two lines, small industries and large industries. It is generally accepted that you get a larger percentage of male employees in the larger industries. I do not believe that these large industries are suitable for the rural parts of the country. We must disperse small, industries throughout the towns and villages. We know how encouraging it is if even 15 male workers are employed in a small town in the west of Ireland. This generates a considerable amount of confidence in that town. We should try to encourage the setting up of small industries in these places.
If the State could make available advance factories, this would help small industrialists, but I do not think we should have any advance factories for big industries. Any firm that comes to this country should have a stake in the factory as well as the plant. It is too dangerous for a big company to come here and hire a factory, even if they are capable of employing 200 or 300 people. I do not think they would have sufficient interest or sufficient capital investment and, if some difficulty arose with a trade union or with the Government, they could close shop and pull out. This would be a dangerous step. I would prefer that a large company should own the factory in which they are operating. We should help the smaller industries, and we would get more small industries if advance factories were available. It is difficult for some of our small people who are keen to get started to acquire a factory and to secure enough capital. Every help should be given to the small man who is keen to start. We must realise that research and marketing abroad are big strains on his resources.
I mentioned worker participation earlier. I hope this will come eventually. It is the best way to get management and workers interested. One way to get the workers interested would be if some of our small companies went public. This would encourage the employees, even on a small scale, to take small shares in the factories in which they worked. I am not sure whether this is feasible, but it is something I should like to see happening. Nothing is more encouraging to a worker than to know that he has a share in the factory no matter how infinitesimal it is, even if it is only £5 or £10 he has invested. This generates an interest in the product and he will encourage its sale in every shop. If we could get some of our smaller industries, and even some of our bigger ones, to go public and give the employees first preference for investment, and even encourage small investors with reasonable incomes to take an interest in those companies, we would be sure that every support would be given to them by the public at large.
There is one of our bigger companies in this city and I attribute much of its success to the fact that the bonus at the end of the year depends on the amount of profit made. The people working in that factory realise that the more profit that company makes the bigger their bonus will be. You can see the interest which they take in promoting the sale of the product of that factory. This is a factory which markets its product very prominently in the city and throughout the country. Its best advertisers are its own workers. Something in the region of 3,000 people are employed and each of them is an ambassador for the company. He speaks about the goods. He encourages the sale of the product.
We should also try to encourage our emigrants to take an interest in such firms and to help to promote their products in Britain and other countries where they live. The means we should employ to encourage these people to invest is something we might consider.
Our exports have been increasing continuously. They have increased from £33 million in 1958 to £184 million last year. All of us in this House can be very proud of this. All credit to the Minister, the Department, and the various organisations working within the Department. Certainly no criticism can be levelled against this sector. Whether we criticise housing, or education, or health, or anything else, we must agree that this sector in the Department of Industry and Commerce has increased its output every year. It has increased the number of men and women in employment. If the policies which have been set are pursued, I believe we will continue to make progress.
We are getting a name for ourselves abroad. Our products are being better marketed, our designs are better, and our packaging is better. Proper marketing abroad and proper salesmanship cannot be over-emphasised. There is no good in manufacturing an article here if our marketing is not right. We must have proper design and proper packaging when our goods reach the British and Continental markets. Sales techniques are becoming more sophisticated. We can see from articles in some of our shops, which have been packed by British manufacturers that there certainly are new techniques in salesmanship and packaging. The importance of this cannot be emphasised too strongly. What meets the public eye is important. It is like dressing up a meal. A meal that is not properly dressed has not got the same appeal. The same must apply to the articles we send to foreign markets.
This may not come within the ambit of this Bill, but I often feel that in some supermarkets which are owned by foreign interests, the produce of their own country gets a little more space on their shelves than produce manufactured here. However, I know that is not in the Bill and I shall not pursue it further.
Dublin has become completely lopsided and it is important that we should encourage industries out of the city into other parts of Ireland. We have succeeded to a limited extent but we shall have to intensify our efforts. Transportation cost is probably a factor which an industrialist coming to this country would consider. The Department of Industry and Commerce should consider the possibility of equalising transportation costs so that it will cost the same to take goods ten miles as to take them 140 miles. This should be considered both in regard to the raw material going to the factory and the finished article coming back to Dublin. Bringing the produce back to Dublin might not be the best solution; it might be much better to take it to some other port in the south or west of Ireland.
One problem which was mentioned to me was the payment of grants. If you go to a bank and get an overdraft the Grants Board will pay you the full grant. If you want to replace plant worth £70,000 and the grant is in the region of £20,000, if you negotiate a loan from a bank and buy the plant, you will automatically get the full grant. If you have to arrange this through a hire purchase company, the grant is paid only in proportion to the amount of hire purchase paid. A manufacturer recently approached me about this matter and pointed out that such an arrangement was eroding his working capital. The grant should be paid on the plant immediately the hire purchase agreement is made. If the total amount were paid it would reduce the amount of money due to the hire purchase company. The Minister should see if something can be done about this.
When Deputy Justin Keating was speaking last week on the Bill he put forward his policy on State industries. He said the State-owned industries would provide more security for the people, but where are we to get all this capital to start State industries? Even if we could get the capital to start such industries, I would prefer to see private enterprise establishing them. A limited number of our State industries have done reasonably well, but comparing them as a whole with those in the private sector, you will find the records are much better in the private sector seems to generate more confidence. The worker himself seems to take a keener interest in the private sector and, by and large, the workers are paid better in the private than in the public sector. Anyway I do not believe that having too many State industries is a good thing, apart from the fact that it would not be possible for us to raise the finance. We need an injection of something in the region of £12 million of foreign capital if we are to aim at full employment in the 1980s.
It is important that we should press ahead as quickly as possible with our economic expansion. It is a fact of life that employment in agriculture is falling and will continue to do so. This is a pattern to be seen in other European countries as well as in America. I do not think we can check it here. Therefore, we must concentrate all our efforts on industry. Employers and employees, the trade unions and the State must all play their part if we are to generate and expand industry. No particular sector can take too much out of the economy because this will cause dissatisfaction. Team work is what is required, and if we pursue this policy we shall attain heights which we have not even dreamt of.
It is important that when new industries, whether small or big, are set up, the IDA should keep in touch with them, should have consulations with them, have inspectors calling. This should be completely on a voluntary basis. We should not impose ourselves on these factories or companies but should make services available to them in case they encounter difficulties, as they can, after going into production.
I know that Córas Tráchtála is able to help them. However, I am not talking about their primary effort which is concerned with disposing their manufactured goods abroad. It is very encouraging to see somebody from the Department visiting these concerns; it shows that the Department is all the time interested in the expansion of the project. We should adhere to the lines laid down in the Third Programme.
I know the Department of Industry and Commerce extremely well. On one occasion I sent an official minute to a person in that Department and he did not speak to me for two years afterwards when he retired and I left. The refusal of the Department of Industry and Commerce to provide white flour to Jacobs destroyed one of our largest industries because Jacobs moved to Liverpool. The reason for my speaking on this Bill is that one sentence in the Minister's speech has needled me. The Minister states that:
Our progress is dramatically reflected in the increase in our industrial exports from £33 million in 1958 to £184 million last year and a doubling of the share of total exports bringing it to over 50 per cent.
This is an outrageous claim. Our total exports were £323 million.
They were £364 million. I do not think the Deputy was including the figure for Shannon.
I should like to make a few remarks with regard to our exports. Let us take the claim that chocolate crumb is an industrial export. What does it consist of? Roughly speaking it consists of one-third cocoa, one-third milk and one-third sugar. The cocoa is imported, the milk comes from our own cows and the sugar could be considered an agricultural product. I do not think chocolate crumb is an industrial export; I think it is an agricultural export.
I would just like to point out that the Deputy has not included the figure for exports from Shannon. I am sure he will appreciate that the exports from Shannon are almost 100 per cent industrial exports?
A couple of years ago I saw a statement which showed that exports from Shannon amounted to £27 million but the imports to make these exports amounted to £21 million. It is all very well to boast about how much stuff Shannon exports without adding the amount of stuff they have to import to make the exports.
I admire Mr. Seán Lemass for setting up the Shannon Industrial Development Company. I think it was one of the best things he ever did, but it does not give anyone the right to boast about the present position. All I am saying is that this is grossly inaccurate.
The Deputy has not demonstrated that.
I am not going to argue with the Minister. I have made my point.
The Deputy is asserting it but he has not demonstrated it.
I have demonstrated it. The Minister did not contradict me when I stated what the Shannon free airport exports were— £27 million in the year 1967 and £21 million were imports. Can the Minister deny that?
I can tell the Deputy that in 1967 the exports were £32,600,000. I do not know what the imports were.
Go on. Give me the pence.
That is not the point.
What were the imports?
I have said that I have not got them. I have them in the total figures.
That is a smart way for the Minister to come into the House. He has not got the figures.
The Deputy made an assertion and he has not justified it.
I have demonstrated it absolutely. The Minister helped me but does not realise it. The Minister having needled me into speaking, I have now needled him into helping me. The Minister has helped me by raising this question. I suppose he thought I do not read my documents because I do not always talk about it. I keep up with my reading.
(Interruptions.)
I am not going to be interrupted. I am going to make the few points I got up to make. I have made the first of them and have demonstrated that it is absolutely correct.
The Deputy has asserted it, yes.
I have demonstrated it. The Minister made me a present of it when he drew down the Shannon free airport development area. I have said that I thought it was one of the best ideas ever thought of in this country. The former Deputy Lemass had a couple of other ideas including the one to establish the first oil refinery in western Europe. I do not want to keep credit from anybody. I am only interested that official documents should be accurate.
Let me make my second point. It was not really necessary for the Minister to say this and I really wonder why he brought it into his speech: he talked about the improvement in manufacturing industry and then he said that this increase conforms with the employment target set out by the National Industrial Economic Council for the whole industrial sector, including manufacturing industry, as a requirement for the achievement of full employment by 1980.
Every time anybody talks about full employment in 1980 I go mad. The year 1980 is still 11 years off. This body of men—I do not care how distinguished they are, how many university professors there may be—showed no respect for the people of Ireland, none whatever, when they talked about full employment in 1980. I certainly have no great expectation of being on this orb in 1980 but I am not finished just yet, I hope. The good Lord is kind to me. It is typical of this body that the Minister said produced 30 reports. I am grateful to the Minister for making me a present of a major point when he talked about exports from the Shannon free airport development area.
With my compliments.
Subject to saying that, it showed contempt for the ordinary people that any body of men who had produced 30 unanimous reports should have said that. The Government act as a unitary authority but when you set up such a body it is the usual thing that men act as units and that you get minority reports. The easy way out is to allow someone with a facility of expression to write the report and for everybody to sign it. Obviously there was a decided element of that in this forecast of full employment in 1980. Do not misunderstand me. It is the irritation that this kind of claim causes.
I am not quarrelling with what the Deputy is stating but he will appreciate that, since these things have been hurled at me, I can take credit when I do read it and point it out.
The Minister sticks to his point. We will leave it at that. I have demonstrated what I wanted to demonstrate and I am grateful to the Minister for his help.
(Cavan): I want to deal with one net point. I hope, however, that I did not gather since I came into the House that the Minister feels that any worthwhile large industries must still be located around Dublin or the larger cities.
These words were put into my mouth. Lest the Deputy develop that argument, I did not say that.
(Cavan): I gathered from the Minister's interjection that he more or less conceded that.
No, no.
(Cavan): I would certainly hope that the Minister was being less than fair to himself when he gave that impression.
He did not give it in his opening speech. Let us be fair to him.
(Cavan): A serious effort should be made to decentralise industries and to encourage larger industries to come to the country. Up to the present not enough has been done. When foreigners came in here and intimated that they proposed to establish an industry they were given a free head. We were always led to believe that the Department of Industry and Commerce or the various industrial promotion boards did not direct these industries to any part of the country. I am not so sure that that was correct.
Naturally, promoters of industries selected the most convenient spots and, consequently, some parts of the country were left without industries and without adequate employment. One way of effectively directing industrialists to parts of the country where industrial employment is required would be to provide developed sites or ready-built factories. That has not been done here as far as I know. It has been done with effect in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I am glad to see that this Bill gives power to the new Industrial Development Authority to provide advance factories, sites and services for anticipated industrial development throughout the country. That is a good idea and I hope that the power given by this Bill will be used to site industries where they are wanted and in areas that up to now have been, for one reason or another, neglected.
I do not at all subscribe to the idea that distance from Dublin or from ports is the making or breaking of an industry. It is a fact that some old-established family industries are competing successfully with industries more conveniently situated from the point of view of transport facilities. Therefore I welcome this and I urge the Minister to see to it that this new provision is wisely and effectively operated.
I wonder could the Minister have gone a little further. The Minister knows I have a bee in my bonnet on this particular subject, but I have good reason to have it. I wonder could the Minister have provided for some control over the fixed assets of undertakings which receive large grants on the understanding that they will provide worthwhile employment and, in fact, provide no employment at all. In my constituency there is an undertaking which got something in the neighbourhood in £200,000 to establish a large factory. A very large factory was built. It was anticipated some hundreds would be employed. At any time the employment provided could be counted in dozens and the last time I spoke about this here the employment was eleven.
This is a white elephant. Ownership has actually changed and I understand the foreign interest has been bought out. I want now to accuse publicly the owners of that factory of being dogs in the manger. They will neither get on with the business and provide badly needed employment nor will they make the buildings available to some other undertaking which would and could provide employment. The county development team—these teams are doing an excellent job in the counties in which they operate—are interested and if this factory were made available there would be plenty of space in it to accommodate those working there at the moment and another worthwhile industry. I understand the owners talk about the building as if it was their hard-earned money that had been put into it. If the situation were analysed I believe the amount of their money in it would be found to be negligible. I understand they talk about the premises as being very valuable to them and they are seeking an exorbitant rent. That is not good enough and, at the risk of being accused of interfering with private property, I would go so far as to say that where the State has a large investment in an undertaking like this it should retain considerable control in order to ensure that that investment is put to proper use.
Hear, hear.
(Cavan): The Government should ensure that the public whose money is invested in these undertakings get a proper return for that investment. I do not believe that does violence to private ownership, or anything else, because what I am talking about is not really private ownership. It is the taxpayers' money invested in a white elephant. I am certain the Minister knows the concern and I do not believe I have exaggerated. This attitude is keeping a worthwhile industry out of Cavan town. If the Minister could even persuade these people to be reasonable and either to use the building themselves or, if they cannot do that, to make the building available at reasonable terms to someone else, worthwhile employment could be provided in Cavan. As I said, the county development teams are doing a good job.
There should, I think, be a better balance struck between male and female employment. There is a serious scarcity in Northern Ireland. Perhaps there is a scarcity here in Dublin and in other places and the result is that the factories coming to the country are, by and large, employing practically all female labour.
I appeal to the Minister to ensure that what has happened in regard to the investment of State money in industry in the past will not happen again. I appeal to him to try to undo some of the harm that has been done because it is bad for prestige. People are given to believe that employment will be provided and then they find that the so-called industry is a complete failure.
My namesake made reference to Potez. Potez was a very costly failure. Indeed, it never got off the ground. I am glad to think the Minister has learned from experience and there is provision in this Bill for the employment of consultants and so on. These powers were not available before. They were certainly not available at the time of Potez. When sums of the magnitude involved in Potez go down the drain it is only right and proper that the Government should have the benefit of consultants and of the best brains to advise them.
We had, perhaps, a rather lengthy but, on the whole, interesting debate on the Second Stage of this Bill. Very many points were raised and I shall endeavour to deal with as many as possible.
First, Deputy Donegan who opened the debate for Fine Gael, complained that I did not, in my opening statement, discuss the failures in the industrial field and sketch out guidelines to avoid future failures. I have dealt with this problem before in the House. The previous speaker referred again to, perhaps, the most notorious failure, the Potez project. It should be clearly understood that of the total of new start-ups up to 31st March this year, 10 per cent failed. If account is taken of those factories which reopened under new ownership the net failure rate was about four per cent.
Another factor that should be known is that of these failures almost 60 per cent were in respect of projects approved prior to 31st March, 1960. There were probably two main reasons for this. One is—a point that was touched on by Deputy Fitzpatrick a moment ago—that consultants are used to a much greater extent now than before. There is also a great deal more experience and expertise in the IDA but also—and this is very important— in the early days of the industrial development campaign it was inevitable that a great number of the industries coming in could be described as light industries. Capital investment in light industry is relatively low and consequently if things go wrong it is much easier to close down and pull out than in the case of heavier industry with greater investment. But this is a pattern which we must go through in our early development. We must go through this stage of light industries. Deputies will be aware that that pattern is changing radically now. Many of the new industries starting up are much heavier industries with very much heavier capital investment and if things become difficult in such industries it is much less likely that the promoters would pull out because they have too much at stake.
While other countries do not seem to be very anxious to publicise their failure rates, yet, as far as we can ascertain, our failure rate is quite low by international standards. Finally, I want to stress again something of which I think the House is well aware, and that is that if we are to have any hope of a successful campaign of industrial development we must take some risks and we shall lose on some of the projects. We know this now. The most that can be expected is that all reasonable precautions will be taken to avoid failures but if one adopts so many and such stringent precautions to avoid failures that one ensures no failure, one can be quite sure of no success also.
Deputy Donegan also raised a question, as did Deputy T. O'Donnell, about the new board to be set up under this Bill. This is dealt with in the Second Schedule to the Bill which provides that the board will have nine members. The comment was made that it should not be confined to professional executive staff. I agree with that. There will be some civil servants on the board but there will also be a number of non-civil servants and non-State body employees or executives. It is intended that the whole board, apart from one, will be part-time and that includes the Chairman. The one exception will be Mr. Killeen who was recently appointed as chairman ad interim. He will be a member of the board and will be Chief Executive, but he will not be the chairman of the new board.
The question was raised as to whether the grant scales proposed in the Bill are an improvement on the existing ones. On the face of it, it may appear they are not but in fact they are, because under the existing rates, maximum grants were not given and in fact the rates written into this Bill are higher than the average grants which were given either in designated or nondesignated areas. In addition, this Bill provides a wider range of incentives, including grants towards leased assets, subsidisation of interest rates and the guaranteeing of loans and grants towards research and development. Re-equipment grants in designated areas are now 35 per cent whereas heretofore the adaptation grants for which they are substituting, were 25 per cent. So, from the point of view of the actual level of grants and the range of incentives in the package that can be offered under this Bill, the provision seems to me to be a considerable improvement on what we had before.
There was a suggestion from Deputy Donegan that the Government should encourage existing Irish industries to go public. This is a sector where I believe the Industrial Credit Company will be increasingly active in future. The company has, in fact, established a subsidiary with the object of promoting mergers between existing Irish industries and mergers promoted by that subsidiary and also by the commercial banks are almost certain to encourage an increasing number of Irish industries to go public.
The point has also been made that new industry grants should be available for existing Irish firms which undertake major expansion. The answer is that new industry grants are available in those circumstances but you must draw a distinction here between a re-equipment scheme and a major development of an existing Irish industry which, in effect, is equivalent to a new industry. In the latter case the major development is eligible for all the grants and incentives in exactly the same way as a new industry set up by a foreign promoter. In the case of foreign promoters doing this there is almost always a condition attached that the whole or virtually the whole of their production be exported.
Deputy Keating, as has been said by earlier speakers, made quite an interesting contribution to this debate but I would quarrel with the point he made that my opening statement revealed—I think he said—an extraordinary complacency. The figures I quoted are figures of which I am very proud. We can all be proud of them. I have never claimed that success in this sphere is due to me personally or to the Government or to the IDA or to some other State bodies. I have always been at pains to make clear that the momentum behind our industrial development now is to a great extent a product of many years of hard work in the past when one had to go through a fairly lean period and, as I said earlier, a period when most of the industries starting up were light industries. This was inevitable.
It is reasonable to say if, as has happened on a number of occasions, I have been taxed in the House by Members opposite with failure for instance to reach the target set out in the NIEC Report on Full Employment, that in circumstances where we do reach the target I should tell the House that we have done so and be proud that we have done so. It is my belief that success is attending our efforts; that we have achieved a momentum; that the success is not solely due to any one political party or State organisation; that it is due to the Irish people working together, using their brains and their brawn. What we have achieved in this regard is something of which we can all be proud but it is important to realise the momentum behind it.
I got the impression from some of the remarks made during the debate that the significance of the figures I gave may not have been fully appreciated. I said that last year was our best year so far in industrial promotion. I gave the figures, the number of projects and the potential employment, but then I gave corresponding figures for the first half of the present year which were way ahead of the record year of 1968. What I was trying to demonstrate was the momentum behind our industrial development. Lest there should have been any idea that I was only talking about potential employment I drew attention to the fact that the actual number of new jobs created in manufacturing industry for the year ending June of this year was 11,000, which was the target set out in the NIEC Report.
I do not like to make forecasts because there are so many imponderables involved and it is dangerous to do so, but I think I should say that in the light of the momentum behind our industrial drive, in the light of the pattern emerging, as shown by the figures to which I have referred, it is reasonably safe to say that, assuming matters continue on their present course without major interruption, we are very likely far to exceed if not double that NIEC annual target in the fairly near future—indeed, the sooner the better as far as I am concerned and I am sure as far as any of us is concerned.
Although I have complimented Deputy Keating on his speech, and I will come to that again, nevertheless there are still one or two matters he said which I ought to take up. When talking about my alleged complacency he suggested that if we took comparable statistics for the EEC and the United Kingdom we would find that the remarkable progress to which I referred was illusory and that in fact we were on the tail of a world boom. Incidentally, he said that a world boom had been going on for years and that the only time it stopped for a short time was when the two Coalition Governments were in power.
He was right. In 1955.
It is a strange coincidence——
(Interruptions.)
Not in the first one.
It happened in the two. I want to draw attention to the fact that if you are talking about comparable statistics you have to bear in mind that we have a very small population and we have an emigration problem and the industrialisation in this country really commenced about 100 years after the countries about which he was talking. Nevertheless, for the purpose of the record, the figures published by OECD indicate that for manufacturing industry the Irish growth rate was eighth among OECD countries between 1960 and 1965 and in the period from 1966 to mid-1968 it was higher than the overall rate for the total of the OECD countries in Europe, for the countries of EFTA, for the EEC and for North America. Despite all the difficulties I have mentioned our growth rate in manufacturing industry was higher than any of thoses countries between 1966 and mid-1968. As far as I know there were no comparative figures published after mid-1968. It is worth recording that, because I have a feeling that Deputy Keating and many others are not aware of this fact.
However, when Deputy Keating talked about the question of more State industry he obviously touched on a very important point and judging by subsequent remarks in the course of the debate it is clear that other Deputies also felt it was an important point. Of course it is. I do not want to go back over the ground covered by other speakers but I must refer to certain matters briefly.
In spite of our circumstances of unemployment and emigration, if we want to solve these problems everybody is agreed that the primary way we can succeed in solving them is by industrialisation. We are faced with a choice. Do we embark on industrialisation as fast as we can possibly do it in order to remedy unemployment and emigration as fast as we can, or do we rather choose to develop industry but on a slower basis, concentrating only on such industry as can be developed within our own resources, whether State or private enterprise? I have said about this problem in the past, without any statistical basis, but purely as a guess, that it seemed to me that if we were to approach it on that basis we might not solve the problem for 50 years longer, or maybe 100 years, or perhaps never because our people might not be left.
I do not think we have a choice. This is an academic question. We have to go ahead to industrialise as fast as we can. If we have to, then in practice we cannot choose to ignore the methods of bringing in expertise, know-how and access to markets from outside. The aspect of access to markets is the vital one. We could be strained if we were to provide all the capital ourselves but I believe it could be done. The technical know-how is more difficult; in some areas you can buy it, in others you cannot, but you cannot buy access to markets and this is the big fallacy in the argument that we should rely solely on our own resources, be they private enterprise or State enterprise. Consequently, as I have said, I do not think we have any choice, we have to continue on the course on which we are going as fast as we can.
However, Deputy Keating raised a legitimate point. Incidentally, what impressed me most about his approach was that unlike some of his colleagues in the past he did not come in here pretending that public enterprise was wonderful and without flaw and that private enterprise was wholly bad and without benefit to the community. He was much more realistic and suggested that we ought aim at a mixed economy, not to disturb the existing balance but to concentrate much more on State enterprise in the future. I should like to make it clear that as far as the Government are concerned, as has been shown by the Government's record, we have no antipathy to public enterprise; indeed, some of the successful commercial public enterprises were started by the Fianna Fáil Government. Indeed, some of the State companies—in fact all of them which are in commercial operations—have had instructions from the Government and from me, personally, to see what can be done by them, as a matter of urgency, to expand or diversify their operations with the objective of creating viable employment.
Quite a number of them have taken steps in this regard. Others have plans which are going through at present but, in my view, it would be very unrealistic to depend for further expansion in our industrial sector on State enterprise only. In fairness to Deputy Keating, this was not what he suggested. He suggested we ought to aim at a mixed economy on the lines, I think he said, of Scandinavian countries. Some years ago I recall reading an official document issued in Sweden which at that time indicated that 98 per cent of Swedish industry was privately owned. It was a figure that surprised me.
Deputy Keating and some Fine Gael Deputy—I am sorry I have not a note of his name in this connection— seemed to support the same idea— that we ought to control our own currency in order to avoid the very high interest rates obtaining at the moment. I would be all for this if I thought it would work. Whatever the argument for breaking the link with sterling, it does not seem to me that one can reasonably argue it will bring down interest rates.
As I understood Deputy Keating's suggestion, it was that we should control the outflow of capital and, in effect, compel people to invest in this country and prevent them from investing outside. He seems to think that, by doing this, we could make all the capital required in this country available at lower interest rates than those obtaining at present. This is not how I would see this working out. Even assuming one could do it legally—having regard to provisions in the Constitution—it seems to me that various methods would be found to evade the regulations. It seems to me we might well have a substantial outflow of capital that we did not know anything about and almost certainly that it would prevent the inflow of capital. In any event, unless we had sufficient capital available to us inside this country we could not run away from the fact of the world level of the price of money. It does not seem a practical proposition for a small country like us to think that we can do this and ignore the price of money on the world market.
The question of the dangers involved for us as a result of foreign ownership of industry is one that of course concerns every thinking person in this country. I have no doubt that most of us would not hesitate, given the choice —if we had the choice—to have our industrialisation programme completely Irish controlled. As I tried to demonstrate earlier, this choice is not open to us: it is purely an academic point. It does not exist in reality.
The question of how much danger there is to us in foreign ownership is one I intended to deal with. Deputy FitzGerald dealt with it earlier. He seems to think he was making me a present of a number of arguments which I had not thought about and suggested I could use them some time in the future. I am grateful to him for the kind thought. In fact, I had intended to deal with this very important matter when replying to the debate. What he said is quite correct. As I indicated when introducing the Bill, the spread of these industries around different countries ensures that no one country is having a dominant position in our market. Furthermore the size of the industries does not give them a dominant position. It is certainly my experience, as it is the experience of a number of people with whom I have spoken that, in the case of industries which set up in what, in their point of view, is a foreign country, they are always very anxious to conform with what the Government of the day require. The last thing they want is a confrontation with the Government. I think that the dangers to us of foreign investment here can be very greatly exaggerated.
An examination of the benefits accruing to the economy but in particular to the people of Ireland in obtaining employment here where otherwise many thousands of them would have to emigrate are such that we ought to be extremely grateful that we can succeed in getting such industries to set up here. It is to the benefit of all of us that we should do so and that we ought to press on with this programme as far as we can.
One other matter referred to by Deputy Keating which I want to mention is mining and our approach to it. He referred to the Continental Shelf. He seemed to be thinking only in terms of oil and natural gas from the Continental Shelf. It is more than likely that there are substantial mineral deposits other than oil and gas in the Continental Shelf. I understand that modern techniques of development are making the exploitation of these resources a much more likely proposition. I am having this examined with a view to seeing whether that kind of exploitation can be done by the State. If this seems feasible, it will certainly be done.
Deputy Coogan mentioned the shortage of houses in relation to industrial development. It is, of course, a difficult problem. Provisions are made for it in this Bill. He referred specifically to the problems in Galway. Perhaps I should tell him that An Foras Tionscal has arranged with the National Building Agency to build 200 houses for key workers in Galway: it is expected that the first batch of these houses will be ready towards the end of next year.
A point raised by Deputy T. O'Donnell and subsequently made by quite a number of Deputies concerned the profusion of organisations dealing with industrial development. From some of the comments made, I think some people may have misunderstood some of the reports they read, which talked about co-ordination of these bodies. Some Deputies said: "You are providing in this Bill for the amalgamation of An Foras Tionscal and the IDA, but you are not providing for co-ordination of these bodies", as though the two things were the same—amalgamation and co-ordination. Of course they are not. This Bill would not in the normal way provide for this unless we were actually amalgamating these bodies.
I have given a good deal of thought to the importance of ensuring improved co-ordination of the efforts of these various State agencies. They include Córas Tráchtála, the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, the Irish National Productivity Committee, the IDA, of course, and the Industrial Credit Company. All these agencies perform separate but complimentary functions for industry. I have set up, under the aegis of the industrial reorganisation branch of my Department, a co-ordinating committee between these bodies. This committee is meeting regularly and, by and large, the co-ordination between them is fairly effective. I do not say it is 100 per cent effective. I suppose one could never claim that. It is reasonably effective.
The problem which was conjured up by some Deputies of promoters coming in and having to go around to each one of these bodies in turn is an imaginary problem. That does not happen. This problem was there before, to some extent, between the IDA and An Foras Tionscal. It is being got rid of under this Bill, but it is not true to say that people had to go around to all these bodies separately. In fact, when they see the IDA, if it is necessary to have co-ordination with the other bodies, this is done by the IDA for them.
With regard to the question of the relationship between the IDA and the Shannon Free Airport Development Company in the Limerick-Clare-North Tipperary region, I hope to bring before the House in the near future a Bill dealing with SFADCO. SFADCO will retain its existing grant-giving functions in relation to the Shannon Industrial Estate. In the remainder of the region, it will act as an agent for the IDA. It will have power to build and rent out factories and to incur promotional expenditure in relation to industrial development and, of course, it will deal with promoters, but the actual payment of grants will be done by the IDA.
In this connection I should like to say that the regional development provided for in this Bill has been criticised to some extent on the grounds that we are not providing for another SFADCO in each region. This is true. We are not doing that, not at the moment at any rate. I think Deputy FitzGerald referred to this and said he could not see any reason why we would not do it. It seems to me that there are a number of reasons. One is that we have SFADCO in existence. It has a great deal of expertise acquired over the years, and we also have a Lichfield Report in relation to that particular region which did a good deal of the preliminary work necessary.
We are having certain studies carried out in regard to the other regions. They are preliminary studies. The IDA officers operating within each region will further these studies and will be working primarily in close collaboration with the local authorities and local interests in the development of the region. I do not visualise the creation of eight more Shannon Free Airport Development companies in the other regions, not in the immediate future at any rate. I do ultimately contemplate some similar kind of structure in each of the regions. It would be quite premature to do this now for the reasons I have mentioned. I contemplate something like that in the future.
Questions were raised about industrial estates and their advantages. It is generally accepted that they are advantageous. We cannot, of course, build industrial estates all over the country, nor is it contemplated that the IDA would, if given the power provided for in this Bill, dot the country with advance factories. What is contemplated is that they will build advance factories where it appears to be advisable. In some places, rather than building advance factories, they will provide serviced sites. They will have the power to do this. Heretofore the IDA did not have power to build advance factories outside the official industrial estates.
I should perhaps remind the House, that, apart from the official industrial estates in Waterford and Galway, there are quite a number of private industrial estates. I think there are about a dozen in Dublin and three in Cork. There are, of course, serviced sites, provided by the local authorities mainly, in eight other centres.
In connection with the industrial estates in Waterford and Galway a question was asked by Deputy FitzGerald I think. I had given some information about the two together. The position about these estates is that there are 24 firms operating in the two industrial estates, divided equally between Waterford and Galway. All of the factories which have been built have either been occupied or are reserved for firms coming along. In fact, further extensions are needed in some of them. The capital cost of the industrial estates is £2.4 million. It is divided almost half and half between Galway and Waterford. On the basis of projects in production or under construction, the projected employment in the two estates is 1,700, with slightly more in Galway than in Waterford. It is visualised that 2,000 will be employed in each of the estates eventually.
Some doubts seemed to be expressed by some Deputies as to the eligibility for grant assistance of factories provided by local authorities or private developers. Under this Bill, the position will be that, if local authorities or private developers build an advance factory, they will not be eligible for a grant in respect of it but, if the factory is acquired by someone who gets a grant, if the person purchases the factory from them they will have to pass over the grant or alternatively if they rent it a grant of an equivalent amount can be given which has the effect of reducing or subsidising the rent. The advance factories provided for in this Bill are those built by the IDA only and not by anybody else.
I do not want to go into too much detail on the point raised by Deputy Tully, but I want to confirm that we had a considerable rate of increase in the volume of output per person employed. In 1967, in the manufacturing industry it increased by 6.9 per cent and in 1968 by 8.3 per cent. It is estimated that in the first two quarters of this year output per person engaged in the manufacturing industry will continue to rise but at a much lower rate —between one and two per cent per annum.
The reason for this I think is—apart from certain other factors which might complicate it like the maintenance strike or that kind of thing—that there has been a rapid increase in employment in that period in the manufacturing industry. This has led to increased output but not to a rapid increase in output per head. In other words, we have taken up the slack. This, in fact, reinforces the figures I was giving about the increase in employment in the past year.
The words "provide and arrange the provision of housing" which are in the Bill were questioned. This is designed to cover various circumstances which might arise: for instance, if the IDA were to purchase a site on which there was a house standing, this would enable the IDA to let the house to a worker. The intention is that the IDA would cause houses to be provided for key workers to supplement the accommodation otherwise available, and it will normally use the facilities of the National Building Agency to do this. Furthermore, in regard to the charges, the IDA would subsidise these houses at the same rate as the local authority; in other words, they would be available on the same basis as the local authority houses would, and they would be the same kind of houses.
Reference was made by Deputy Dr. Gibbons and by others to the question of the equalisation of the cost of freight transport for factories. This is a difficult problem. As the House is aware, I have a working party operating on this at the moment, but the report is not yet available to me. I understand it is in the course of preparation. However, Deputy Tom Fitzpatrick of Dublin touched on one of the difficulties when he referred to this: if you simply subsidise freight rates to equalise the costs, you could end up having a great deal of the freight going through the port of Dublin. This is not necessarily the best solution. It could be that it would be more advantageous to develop a port on the western seaboard and arrange for regular shipping services through it. This might be more advantageous to industry in the west than subsidising freight rates. However, I am awaiting the report of that working party.
Deputy Patrick Lenihan referred to the importance of education and said he did not notice any reference to the role of the universities in this whole business of industrialisation. That was a reasonable comment but I should tell him that the universities have been utilised on a number of occasions by the IDA in consultancy work in relation to certain problems. I hope this will continue in future because they can provide a very useful service to the IDA in this regard.
Deputy Collins referred to the necessity of making working capital available for small firms which are exporting. There is a proposition in this regard with the commercial banks at present, and I hope it will emerge successfully from their consideration.
Deputy Dr. Gibbons raised a number of points. I shall not go into all of them, but there is one I think I should refer to, that is, a geographical area which he described as the north west, not, perhaps, as it is generally understood, but he described accurately what area he meant. He referred to the serious problem there, to the social aspects of it as well as the economic. I agree with him that there is a very serious and difficult problem there and, in line with his suggestion, I intend to refer the particular problems of that area to the special services division of the IDA which will be working in conjunction with the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, particularly with a view to determining the suitability of particular products for that area. I know there is an acute problem there which requires special treatment. Of course, apart from this particular examination of it, the availability of the small industries programme and, in the fairly near future, of the regional office of the IDA with closer contact with the area, will, I hope, help, but I realise that more than that is necessary, and this is why I am undertaking to refer this problem specifically to the special services division of the IDA.
I am hoping that the regional offices will improve the performance of the IDA and not slow down the operation as Deputy Gibbons thought might happen. If it does happen it will defeat the whole object of what we want, and I shall want to know about it if it is happening, because that is not what is intended; it is intended to improve the performance in the region.
Deputy Tully raised the question of potential employment. He asked if I could give the figures for those employed in industries at a particular date. It just is not possible for me to do this. All I can do is to give the figures at the commencement of an industry, and we have to take them on a calendar year basis; the industries that start in that year; what the estimated employment is in the first year, and what the estimated total employment will be. I do want to make it clear that the IDA just does not take the word of a promoter as to how many will be employed. They have a good deal of expertise now in this and, where necessary, can check. If they have not got the expertise themselves, they consult with people who have as to what is the reasonable content for a particular project. However, I cannot give accurate figures for this, as Deputies will understand, because you would have to have a census or a survey done of all these industries a few times a year to get any kind of accurate figures at different times. The only figures, apart from those I mentioned that can be given, are those in regard to the actual number of new jobs created, and I have referred to them in my opening statement, that is total not related specifically to new industries starting up in a particular year. Ultimately what all of us are concerned with is the actual number of new jobs created.
Deputy Tully also referred to an announcement which I made prior to the election about 44 new industries, and in a rather indulgent kind of tone he seemed to suggest that, of course, this was just electioneering and was not to be taken seriously; it was somewhat fictitious, something that had grown up out of four industries in respect of which I conducted negotiations in America previously.
He was emphasising it was a well-timed announcement.
I will not dispute that it may have been well-timed, but I will dispute any suggestion that it was fictitious. All of the industries concerned were announced and details given, location, in almost all cases, the names of the firms. There were only a few where we could not give the names because the promoters objected at the time; I think the names have come out since. If people care to check on the list, it exists, and they will find that the construction of the factories is going on at the moment; in other cases where it is not actually started, if they inquire locally, they will find they are going ahead all right. I can assure the House there is nothing fictitious about that list. I am not in the habit of issuing that kind of statement.
Deputy Moore and Deputy T. Fitzpatrick from Dublin referred to the question of profit sharing. It would be difficult for me to direct any firm to undertake this. However, although it is not directly my ministerial responsibility, I am very concerned about it. I have carried out certain studies in relation to this. I have been in consultation with the Minister for Labour and we are endeavouring to see what can be done in this regard. It may be possible to tie this in with the establishment of new industries, but I certainly cannot undertake that this will be done.
Deputy Clinton raised the point about the establishment of an industry to produce pre-cooked meals, which, he said, was being prevented by Department of Health regulations. I shall consult with the Minister for Health about these regulations, as I am not familiar with them.
Deputy Desmond is of the opinion that I am rather naïve about industrial development. What he said reminded me of something that was said very much more succinctly by a certain magazine when I announced the small industries programme. The placard read: "Colley's misty mercantilism." I think this is the point that Deputy Desmond was trying to make at greater length. I should say that the magazine had the grace subsequently to show, by other contributions which it published, that it had changed its tune. I suspect, because Deputy Desmond does not know enough about the economic facts, that he has been led into this error. In the case of the article about the small industries programme I do not think the writer knew what the facts were about small industries in the most highly developed countries in the world, and I suspect that Deputy Desmond does not really know the facts of life involved in the industrial development of this country.
However naïve I might have been when I was first made Minister for Industry and Commerce, I do not think it would be possible to have been Minister for Industry and Commerce dealing with this problem for me still to be naïve. One has to learn the factors that operate, and one often finds out that something which might have appeared to have been an important factor is not really important. Deputy Desmond, with all his experience in other fields, has not so far and in the foreseeable future is not likely to have the experience of being Minister for Industry and Commerce so he will have to take my word for this.
I was somewhat disturbed by one thing that Deputy Desmond said. I do not want to misrepresent him but it seemed to me that one of the things he hinted at was that he might be prepared to favour the solution of our industrial development by simply developing the city of Dublin. He did not exactly say that but there appeared to me to be an inference to that effect in something he said. We could solve the problem by concentrating our development on Dublin, but if we were to do that we would not have the social fabric of a country any more. We would not have an Irish nation as we know it. I hope all Members of the House will reject that out of hand.
Deputy Desmond and Deputy FitzGerald made it very clear that they were in favour of the idea of growth centres. However, they seemed to think that there was no problem in dealing with this as far as the Government were concerned except a political one. They seem to think that the Government do not want to make the political decision of having a growth centre here and a growth centre there and that the rest of the country will be so upset that they will take it out on us. The Government have made much more difficult decisions than that without too much trouble.
What does not seem to occur to either of these two gentlemen, despite their economic training and academic achievements, and I was trying to hint at this when I was interrupting Deputy FitzGerald, is that they may not have all their economic facts right before arriving at a conclusion. Deputy FitzGerald gave figures which he claimed showed that in the past and in the future industrial development in Connacht was not going to be sufficient to solve the problem. He argued that we were doing a great disservice to the people of Connacht by not setting up a growth centre, pouring our resources into it and building it up in that way. Leaving aside all the social objections of such a policy, I have the gravest doubts as to whether such a thing is economically right. These doubts are based on the practical experience I have of what is happening in the country.
I have referred in the past to the fact that there is a discernible change in the pattern of industry coming in from abroad. Some large scale industries are coming in and starting off on the basis that they want to go over to the west. Over the years we have had an additional grant for the west which did not operate nearly as strongly as it is operating now. It is my belief that the reason for this is the availability of labour there compared with the corresponding difficulty of obtaining labour on the eastern side of the country. I think there is a lesson here for the planners, for Deputy Desmond and Deputy FitzGerald that you cannot interfere to any great extent with the operation of basic economic laws.
The additional grants which we made available did not have the effect of persuading people to go to the west; the basic economic factor of the availability of labour has brought about this changing pattern. One can theorise about putting in resources to build up a growth centre and this has great attractions, but I am beginning to suspect that the idea of doing this on a major national scale, to the exclusion of large areas of the country, is not only wrong socially but it is wrong economically. When I see a firm wanting to go to the west, choosing a place, which would not have been chosen by the planners, in which to set up an industry—and I cannot give figures because this is not an announcement— which will employ more people than any other industry we have set up, I have to ask: "Are the planners right or are these people right?" Because it has to be remembered that these people are putting in their money as well as ours. The fact of the matter is that when industries are set up there they will automatically make a growth centre. If we were to follow the dictates of Deputy Desmond and Deputy FitzGerald we would not let them do that, we would say: "No, you must go here where we are providing facilities".
I do not think the Minister is being quite fair to Deputy FitzGerald. I think the point he was making was that the net employment in industry in the west over the last 15 years had been minus 1,000 and, with that figure in mind, the statement by the Minister for Lands last week in regard to partial industrialisation of the west, which Deputy FitzGerald said would mean providing jobs for 23,000 people, did not seem to him to be a viable thing in the foreseeable future.
It is true that he did say what the Deputy has just said but he went on then to develop the thing that I am saying. I am glad that the Deputy has reminded me of one thing that Deputy FitzGerald did say. He spoke about a loss of employment of 1,000. I thought he was talking about the west and the Deputy has just quoted him as saying the west. In actual fact, he said "Connacht" because he was excluding Shannon. It seems to me that Shannon was set up to help the west and because it is successful it is excluded from the figures and then we can say "Connacht". However, that is a debating point. I will not pursue it. I feel I have kept the House too long. Perhaps, there are other points which I should have replied to. I may be missing out something.
Deputy Fitzpatrick from Cavan mentioned a case in his own constituency. I think I know the case to which he is referring and I will look into that and see if anything can be done. I am not too sure whether it can or not. He also referred to the necessity for a balance between male and female employment. This is very important but the Deputy is under a misapprehension if he thinks that most of the new employment being created is female employment. In fact, it is the other way round. Increasingly, it is male employment. We do not want a preponderance of either male or female employment. Experience has shown that in some areas where there is a preponderance of female employment the men go away and the women will not stay and, vice versa; in other areas where there has been a preponderance of male employment the women will not stay. So, you need the balance. I should not like it to be thought that the majority of employment created now is female. In fact, the contrary is true.
Question put and agreed to.
Next Stage?
Next Tuesday.
Yes. There should be an understanding that amendments can be accepted up to a stated time on Monday. Given the shortness of the time, this should be done.
I am just suggesting that the next Stage be ordered for Tuesday but whether it would be taken would be for arrangement between the Whips.
It is scheduled for a short period on Tuesday and we should be given a time up to which amendments may be submitted.
Amendments should be submitted by tomorrow but not later than noon on Monday.
That is right. Thank you.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 9th December, 1969.