They did not vote for this agreement in this House, as was stated this morning. They made clear the dangers. In not voting against it, we were doing so on the basis that this country would be joining the EEC and that, as a preparation for the EEC, and that alone, could this agreement be justified but, because of the risks involved, we did not support it.
I shall come later to the consequences of staying out of the EEC, the alternatives, but they are clearly so disastrous that they cannot be faced. To stay out when Britain joins would leave us in a position of utter economic disaster. I will develop that point and I trust to prove it to the satisfaction of everyone later on. Because of that, our sovereignty, the right to stay out, which we certainly have, is inexercisable since it can be exercised only at the cost of destroying this Irish community, of creating economic conditions in which the emigration of the late 1950s, which was at a rate equivalent to 85 per cent of our school leaving population going each year, would appear paltry by comparison with what would follow if we remained outside the Community when Britain joined it. It is not practical politics for us to stay out. That is a fact that has to be faced. There are some people who would join simply because of that. There are others—and my party and I are among them—who feel that the Community offers great opportunities. Whether one accepts that thesis or not the fact is that there is no alternative to joining at this point in time.
Britain's sovereignty, on the other hand, is not inexercisable. Britain, because of her economic power and strength, can exercise her sovereignty to our disadvantage and has done so with the normal disregard for the interest of other countries, which is a characteristic of power politics everywhere, no more and no less. I make no particular criticism of the British Government for this. The policies they have been following have been no more detrimental to us than the policies that any other great power would have followed. They have at times shown us more consideration than other countries would have. I have often thought and said that if one had to be colonised by somebody I suppose the British were the least objectionable.
The fact remains that Britain has pursued those policies, which have had the effect of exploiting this country. They have established and maintained since independence a neo-colonial relationship with this country by virtue of their agricultural policies which force down the price of agricultural produce in this country, which have left our agriculture in a position of permanent poverty and which have prevented this country from achieving the kind of prosperity which in conditions of free and equal competition it would have achieved.
Britain exercises her sovereignty in this way. She has the power to do so and she has no inhibitions about doing so. I would define sovereignty as a weapon the big use against the weak, the strong use against the weak. It has no other function because sovereignty of itself is useless if one has not the power to exercise it. The problem of this country is not that we have not enough sovereignty. We have too much sovereignty, more than we can use or can find anything to do with. The problem for us is that Britain also has too much sovereignty, too much for our taste, too much for our good health, and Britain exercises that sovereignty against our interests.
The only way we can solve this problem is by securing a diminution of British sovereignty that will deprive Britain of the right to exploit this country. That precisely is what the European Community does. It is extraordinary, looked at from our point of view as a small weak country in this position vis-á-vis Britain, that this situation should have arisen, that this opportunity should arise. It is an extraordinary thing, looking back over eight centuries of Irish history and looking back over 50 years of independence, that we should now find ourselves with this opportunity given to us on a plate, because Britain for her own reasons wishes to join—at least, the British Government and the British Opposition wish to join, whatever about the British people at this point in time. The British wish to join but in joining they would be giving up this sovereignty, the right to exploit us, and if we join with them we can benefit from this. This is a unique bonus. It might never have happened. We might have passed another 1,000 years in the kind of relationship of economic dependence combined with the theoretical political independence we have had for the last 50 years, but by the grace of God the world has taken a different course and we are now given this extraordinary opportunity of benefiting from an abrogation of British sovereignty which will remove Britain's power to exploit this country once and for all. There are people in this country who would turn their back on that and who wish to remain outside the Community so that Britain's power to exploit us would be retained and so that the consequences of that exploitation from being damaging, as they are now, would become disastrous.
We have never faced those realities. Ever since the Treaty debate—and I have no wish to raise issues in the past because what I have to say is fair criticism of both sides of the Treaty debate—we have been concerned with irrelevant symbols. We have not lived in a real world. We have lived in an unreal world, ignoring facts, ignoring realities, pretending that political sovereignty is everything, ignoring the realities of uneconomic relationships. Our independence movement was, perhaps, unique in that it was a movement of intellectuals and poets and, necessarily, gunmen, but a movement that contained no economists. I make no vast claims for economists but they have their small part to play. They can bring people back to earth with thumps which are often painful and which, indeed, make economists very unpopular, a particular hazard being a political economist, of course.
The national movement contained no economists and there was a complete lack of economic realities in the national movement with the single exception of Arthur Griffith who saw clearly the need to protect Irish industries although his policies were not, unfortunately, followed by the first government but were followed by the second, later on, a debt they have never particularly acknowledged, may I say. Throughout our history we have, until the last ten years, failed to face economic realities. It is only in the last decade that we have faced them and by facing them we have made progress. Credit must be given to the present Government for the work they have done in that sphere for economic progress has been achieved because the Government have faced some of those economic realities. They have not done it at times very intelligently or adequately. One might criticise them at great length on the subject. But they have, in fact, made and secured progress by facing economic realities. This has been true of all parties. It has been true of this Parliament.
Economic realities have been faced in the last ten years. Let us face them now. Let us face the international economic realities now. Let us not pretend that we have the economic freedom to do as we like. Those who oppose entry to the EEC proclaim that the loss of sovereignty would deprive us of the right to protect industry and this is perfectly true. It will, however, also deprive Britain of the right to exploit Irish agriculture. The real question, the only relevant question, is what are the relative benefits and losses of those two exercises. I am not aware of any attempt being made either by the Government or by those who oppose Irish entry to quantify those gains and losses.
Of course, precise quantification in this field is not easy but in every country which has a reasonably competent public administration and a reasonably competent government, economic quantifications of this kind are made as a basis of policy. In another country it would be unthinkable for a government to undertake the kind of negotiations we are undertaking without trying to assess the gains and losses. It is possible to quantify them, not with precise accuracy, but to an order of magnitude sufficient that if you find the gains exceed the losses by two to one on a rough approximation you can be reasonably sure that even if there are margins of error in both figures, the balance of advantage lies on that side.
This exercise has not been carried out. I should like to ask why not. If the Government wish to persuade the people of Ireland that entry to the EEC would benefit us at least they should tell us the benefits, should quantify them, and produce some figures. Indeed, if other people wish to oppose entry the least they can do is to do their bit of quantification and tell us what the losses will be.
I have made a crude attempt at this. I admit it is crude. I have not the resources the Government have and I have not given it the time I should have done, but on a crude quantification of this—and I am more than willing to discuss this in detail although this House is not the place to go into details of economic calculation—I calculate roughly that Britain's power to influence us adversely through exercising her sovereignty is worth twice as much, that is, is twice as damaging to us, as our power to protect ourselves from Britain through a protection policy is worth to us.
I would assess at this moment, on a very rough quantification, that the immediately direct consequences of Irish protection, that is the direct impact on the people directly employed as distinct from the indirect impact through the multiplier effect of their spending on other groups in the Community, at about £30 million a year. I would assess the effects of British exploitation of the Irish economy at about £60 million a year. Those are rough calculations. I am willing to go into them in detail with anybody who wants to do so and to refine them somewhat because they need some refining.
I am throwing them out as the best guess I can make as someone who has some concern with this side of things and is used to working with figures to do with the Irish economy. I should like to ask the Government what are their figures. We are entitled to know what they are. I should like to ask those who oppose this what are their figures, and how they arrive at them? In the meantime, pending figures from any other source in this House, I suggest tentatively that my figures might provide some basis for discussion until somebody contradicts them and produces evidence to the contrary. On the basis of those figures it is clear to me that sovereignty is an expensive luxury for this country, in its extreme form. The right to protect our industries in the early days of independence was vital. I regard it as providential and necessary that we secured complete political independence for a period of half a century and that we were able to protect our industries which did not previously exist, to build up industries behind protection. Had we not had that power, had we moved from participation in the United Kingdom, straight into the European Economic Community, our position would be very different, indeed, and there could then, perhaps, be arguments made for staying out, but it would be a very difficult case to make, even then.
We have had, fortunately, and in God's good providence, 50 years of independence. Throughout most of that time we protected industrial development. We built up industries in this country which provided us with a substantial industrial base. Of course, those industries as first established were weak. The new industrialists were men of no experience. They produced goods that were often of poor quality and they produced them inefficiently, even within the limits of what was then possible. As time went on, however, that changed. As time went on, they gained experience. They were replaced by their sons or successors, by professional management, by people who learned their trade, having been sent away to other countries to learn it, who have come back here and who now produce goods whose quality is second to none.
I am not aware that there is now any general complaint about the quality of Irish goods. From my own experience in dealing with industrial problems I have come across at least one case where the problem with Irish goods was that the quality was too high or that excessive attempts were made to achieve too high a level of quality with results that they were detrimental in competition with goods elsewhere. The problem of efficiency in the narrow sense of producing a particular range of goods efficiently has been largely overcome.
Most of our firms attain a level of efficiency comparable with that of other countries. Of course, by the standards of perfection they are not efficient. One can always apply two standards of efficiency in any enterprise, whether it is a public service department or a State company or an industry. By the standards of perfection every Irish industry is less than perfect, but by the standards of other countries, within the limits of the kind of production in which they are engaged, it is my belief, from the experience I have had, which has been reasonably wide, that the standard of efficiency is as high as elsewhere and it is in many Irish firms higher than in many firms abroad.
We do, however, face a problem, not of inefficiency in the sense of not doing the job to be done efficiently, but one that arises because the small size of the home market has forced on us too wide a range of goods so that we have difficulty in competing. That has to be changed and that is the problem of adaptation. It is not a problem really of efficiency in the strict sense. It is not a problem of quality. It is a problem of changing the structure of Irish industry to orientate it towards specialised production for export rather than, as at present, towards the production of a wide range of goods for the home market. This is the problem to be tackled.
We fortunately had the opportunity to protect industry for a period, but protection is not a policy for an indefinite future. It is not a permanent policy. It was never envisaged as such. It was never suggested that it should be kept permanently. Behind protective walls firms have things too easy and they do not make the effort they should make. They cannot be persuaded to export and to benefit the economy by exporting because it is too easy to make profits at home. There are these difficulties. Protection is a policy which is essential for the development of an industrial sector in a country which has not got one. I do not believe, whatever other economic views there may be, that industries can be built up with subsidies and without protection. In practice, some form of protection is required. However, the maintenance of that protection indefinitely results in a weak industrial structure, incapable of competition and incapable of performing its job of serving the country by exporting and by developing exports to other countries on a scale that will bring in the purchasing power needed to buy the goods required for our standard of living.
We have had 50 years of independence. We have had 38 years of protection. We have had, in fact, a full generation of protection. I do not know how long protection should last to give the optimum results and when it should be phased out, I have read no textbook on this, but from sheer observation of the Irish situation I believe that protection, given the interruption of the war, should have lasted fully and without any inhibitions for about 20 years and then a process of phasing out should have started. It did not, due to defects of policy in the 1950s. We continued the policy of protection. Irish industry was not pushed, pulled or dragged out into the export markets at that stage, and some of the stagnation of the 1950s is due to that particular failure in policy on the part of our Governments here. I believe that after 20 years protection should be gradually reduced but should not, of course, be phased out completely, save in the context of some kind of agreement with other countries that they would do likewise, an agreement bringing comparable benefits in return. One would not normally hope for an agreement bringing benefits twice as large as what one would give up in giving up protection at a late stage in this process of developing new industries but that is what, in fact, as far as I can judge, we are offered, what we are likely to secure at this stage because the losses in giving up industrial protection at an advanced stage, such as what we are at now, are much less than they would have been earlier and because the benefits of fair treatment for Irish agriculture are so great that the gains we can secure at this point look like exceeding the losses by two to one. If anybody wants to quarrel with that figure they can do so and let us have a confrontation of data on the subject but on the information available to me, making use of CIO reports and the Second Programme consultations with industry on the one hand, and looking at the structure of Irish agricultural price levels in this country and price levels in Britain and in the EEC, it seems to me that the order of magnitude of the gains is about twice the possible losses.
The sovereignty whose retention secures gains of, say, £30 million but deprives one of gains of £60 million in return, and which secures gains in the urban centres but deprives one of gains throughout rural Ireland, in a country where we wish to protect, preserve and develop the rural parts of our country, is a very peculiar policy. It is a wrong-headed policy and it involves attaching importance to the symbol of sovereignty rather than the reality. Sovereignty is a means to an end. There is nothing in absolute sovereignty which is valuable for its own sake. We are a sovereign State because we needed to be a sovereign state in the interests of our people. We needed to exercise that sovereignty for the benefit of our people. If, by giving up some part of this sovereignty and securing, in return, part of a sovereignty over a western Europe of 300,000,000 people, we can benefit our people far more than we disadvantage them, then surely if we have any common sense at all we make that change?
It is a question of extending our sovereignty on the one hand and getting benefits far greater than the losses involved through giving up a small part of our sovereignty. It is only a small part. Talk of the Treaty of Rome replacing the Constitution is wide of the mark as has been said on both sides of the House. The Treaty of Rome concerns itself with very important areas, certainly, of economic and social life. It does not concern itself with foreign policy, with political union, with cultural affairs. All these aspects are left over. They are matters to be settled by other means. Many of them are matters which are solely appropriate to the individual nation to settle for itself. The Treaty of Rome is concerned with economic and social matters and that is the area in which we give up limited sovereignty in return for an extension to the rest of Europe of our sovereignty over those areas.
So far, I have spoken of the positive effects of entry, given a free choice. I feel the case for entry, given a free choice, is conclusive on those grounds alone. What about the negative effects of not entering? I have referred to this briefly before. It has not had sufficient airing in this House to my mind to date in this debate. What are the consequences of staying out? We have not heard anything from the Labour benches on this. It is dealt with in a pamphlet by Anthony Coughlan which is a very useful and full statement of the arguments against joining the EEC. Mr. Coughlan, of the Common Market study group, is to be complimented on producing this. One of our difficulties in 1961 and, to a lesser extent, in 1967 was the absence of any adequate statement of the case against. While I will happily try to refute virtually everything in the pamphlet it is very useful to have it to refute because if there is not a case made on the other side, one is in a difficulty in presenting the position to the Irish people. If we did not have opponents of the calibre of Mr. Coughlan I do not think we could get across to the Irish people what is involved. It would be disastrous if we joined this Community without our people understanding what is involved. If after we had joined and when we suffered some of the disadvantages which are certainly there, as well as there being advantages, the Irish people should come back to their political leaders and say: "You did not tell us what it was all about; you did not tell us this or that would happen" we would all be in trouble and rightly so. It is not easy to make a case for something unless there are people putting up counter-arguments. I welcome the initiative in putting this forward. In 1961 and 1962, in discussing this issue in public myself, I recall the difficulty of getting people to controvert with. In fact, I remember the first time I heard Deputy Thornley was when he spoke against the Common Market in Trinity College. I was so delighted to find somebody to controvert with that I persuaded the Irish Times and RTE to lay on controversies between the pair of us on the subject to get some kind of discussion going. I have an idea it was the first time Deputy Thornley appeared on RTE, but not the last.
This case then is useful. We have not heard from the Labour benches what they think the effects of not entering would be, how they think we should cope with them, beyond a suggestion about association. However, Mr. Coughlan has made the case here and I think we should look at it. Let us take it phrase by phrase. Because the case is made much more fully here than anything said from the other benches I am using this as my stalking horse.
Mr. Coughlan starts off by saying:
If Britain joins the Common Market, the only course which would preserve for the Irish people some control of their own affairs would be for Ireland to stay out, aligning ourselves with the smaller European countries and retaining freedom of action to diversify our trade, reduce our excessive dependence on Britain...
What does "aligning ourselves with smaller European countries" mean? He does not explain it. Does it mean trading with Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Iceland? What is our trade with those countries? It is 2 per cent of our total trade. We are to align ourselves with a group who buy 2 per cent of our exports—1/35th of our exports to the United Kingdom. Where the other 34/35ths is to come from is not stated. Even if this were possible—which it is not because of the provisions of GATT —just consider the relationship between 2 per cent of trade with those countries and 35 times that amount of trade with the United Kingdom.
Then he talks of "retaining freedom of action to diversify our trade". It is a nice thing to have such freedom of action to diversify our trade. We have been exercising this freedom of action to the best of our ability— various Governments composed of parties from all sides of the House including the Labour Party—and how much diversification have we achieved? We have achieved only a certain amount. Freedom of action to diversify our trade will not of itself enable us to diversify it. Nobody will prevent us from doing it. A person is free to jump off O'Connell Bridge into the Liffey but he may not have the courage to do so. Freedom to diversify one's trade is no use if one is unable to do so because no one else will diversify with you. Freedom to marry is great. It is no use if nobody will marry you. These are just words: they are not developed any further in this pamphlet. They tell us nothing of any value; they contribute nothing to the discussion and offer no alternative.
Then we are told that there is no doubt that Ireland could obtain such a trading agreement with the EEC so as to regulate our industrial and agricultural exchanges with the enlarged community. How advantageous such a trade agreement would be would depend on how flexibly and imaginatively the Dublin Government forwarded our political and economic interests and how determined it was to act independently. Let us examine the interesting statement that there is no doubt that Ireland could obtain such a trading agreement with the EEC— there is nothing to explain the word "such"—so as to regulate our industrial and agricultural exchanges with the enlarged community. Our Government attempted to negotiate one some years ago but the benefits were so tiny that neither side thought it worth while signing the agreement. The EEC did not, anyway. As I recall, the benefits to us would have been a halving of the duty on fresh mutton and lamb and a redefinition of butter. Yes, we could obtain a trading agreement with the EEC, but on what terms? The EEC could give us no trading preferences: GATT forbids it. We could get from them only a reduction in their external tariff multilaterally. The only thing our Government could think of that they could give us which would benefit us particularly, and which would not involve other people to any great extent, was the tariff on fresh mutton and lamb because nobody near the EEC has much fresh mutton and lamb to sell. They cannot give us any bilateral preferences because of the GATT obligations. You can get changes in quota arrangements but the EEC abolished industrial quotas in 1961 and they also abolished agricultural quotas. There are no quotas to get increases in from an EEC trading agreement. They protect agriculture by levies. Under the GATT provisions, they would not give preferential levies nor could they be prepared to do so.
It is certainly feasible to sign an agreement with the EEC and it would be beneficial, I think, to our mutton and lamb industry. The only thing we could get if we decided to stay out of the EEC I believe would be a phasing out of our relationship with Britain. It is generally thought that New Zealand will secure a special phasing out arrangement for her butter exports to the United Kingdom. I am not sure that Ireland could get an equivalent concession because we are a European country and it is open to us to join as members. New Zealand cannot join. Possibly they would not make such a concession to us. The most we could hope to get would be a phasing out. That is the position about this trade agreement with the EEC.
Then he goes on to talk about Britain's interest in trade with this country and about our being Britain's third best customer and that it would be against her interests to curtail all her trade with us drastically. Under the GATT agreement, Britain would have no power as a member of the EEC to do other than curtail her trade drastically with us. Moreover, to talk about her third best customer sounds grand until one discovers that Britain sends 4 per cent of her exports to us, but buys 67 per cent of our exports. We can forget about the third best customer argument. We buy only 4 per cent of her exports.
Then we are told by Mr. Coughlan that the terms depend upon our negotiators: he is confident they will negotiate the impossible. Turning to a later page, we discover a total lack of confidence in the negotiators' ability to negotiate. He fears we will be done down by the clever Europeans. I find this viewpoint thoroughly unconvincing.
The argument is also made that other European countries are staying out and, if they can stay out, why can we not stay out? I submit to the Government that if they are serious about getting into the EEC they ought to try to explain this to the Irish people. When you tell people that Sweden and Switzerland, for instance, are staying out, and ask why Ireland cannot stay out too, the argument sounds sensible and it needs to be answered. I have not ever heard any member of the Government adverting to this. It is time it were dealt with. Let me now do the Government's work for them here, as I have also to do it for them in other matters.
There are two answers to this. The first argument is that those countries are differently situated from us in respect of their trade. The second argument is that they are differently situated as regards their whole living standard and their level of economic activity. Switzerland is used as a comparison. Switzerland is described as a land locked island surrounded by the Common Market. It is true that she is a landlocked island surrounded by the Common Market apart from her frontier with Austria, but this little landlocked country has not got anything like the concentration of trade with those who are landlocking her as we have vis-á-vis our sealocked neighbour, Britain.
I have been looking at the Swiss trade figures in the OECD report on Switzerland. The figures are a year or two old but they cannot have changed much in that time. I reckon that Switzerland sells only 40 per cent of her exports to the whole EEC, which surrounds her completely. We sell 80 per cent of our exports to the EEC and 67 per cent to Britain—that is, to an enlarged EEC. Taking the EEC including Britain, it would be responsible for 80 per cent of our exports. There is, therefore, a very considerable disparity between the two. Switzerland, by virtue of her much lesser dependence upon the EEC, which is only half our dependence on an enlarged EEC, has correspondingly greater freedom of action than us.
Moreover, Switzerland has a highly skilled population built up because of the fact that Switzerland was a free country when we were not. She was running her own affairs for centuries when we could not run our affairs. It is a country with over-full employment, with hundreds of thousands of foreigners having to be brought in because there are so many jobs and so few people to work. We recall the recent referendum in which they nearly voted to put out the foreigners but did not quite. It is a country with over-full employment on a massive scale and with all-the-year round tourism.
We are told to equate ourselves with this country, one of the wealthiest in the world, one of the strongest countries in the world financially, a country with the most over-full employment in the world, a country which more than any other country in the world has an all-the-year round tourist season, a country whose population probably has skills beyond those of any other country in the world, a country whose dependence on EEC trade is half ours. We are told the Swiss are staying out and why cannot we? What kind of argument is that? That needs to be said. I never heard that from the opposite benches and it is about time it was said from the opposite benches and that these arguments, with their superficial attractiveness, were nailed.
May I also say that I have reason to believe Switzerland may not necessarily stay out of the EEC and that, in fact, at the moment in Switzerland serious consideration is being given to how to get out of their neutrality position. I do not know if the Minister is aware of these developments. I recommend him to make inquiries through diplomatic channels. My information is that the Swiss, despite all these advantages, which put them in a totally different position from us, are, in fact, seriously, if quietly, considering what might be done to overcome the neutrality obstacle to participation in the EEC, because they regard being excluded from it as being so dangerous to their economy, despite its far greater strength than ours, that they are prepared to consider giving up their neutrality of centuries old standing which is totally different in character from our neutrality in the last war.
What about Sweden which has no equivalent dependence to ours on the EEC? I have not got the exact figures, but it is very much less than ours. It is a highly prosperous country with full employment and could perhaps afford to stay out. Will it? It is far from certain. The stated policy of the Swedish Government is to stay out but I recall Dr. Lange, the former Norwegian Foreign Minister who, I regret to say, has since died, speaking at the European seminar here three months ago and saying he believed the Swedes will "re-interpret" their neutrality. That may be right or it may be wrong, but certainly in Sweden a lot of deep thinking has been going on about the consequences for Sweden's economy, and for Nordic unity, of Sweden staying out of the EEC when Denmark and Norway join. I am not too sure that Sweden would be such a strong reed to lean on in the arguments against Irish membership of the EEC. In any event, the Swedish economy is in a totally different position from ours.
Austria has also been mentioned. Austria's position is unique because Austria is required by international law to be neutral. Austria cannot join a Community which would impinge upon its neutrality and, because this is a legal obligation, account can and will be taken of this in a way that it would not be taken in the case of another country like Switzerland, or Sweden or Ireland which merely chooses to be neutral. However, it must be pointed out that Austria's dependence on the EEC for trade is also far less than ours, despite the fact that Austria is almost equally landlocked to Switzerland in the EEC. Less than 30 per cent of Austria's trade is with Germany and only 45 per cent with the EEC as a whole, despite the fact that she is much more involved in the EEC than we are involved with Britain in a geographical relationship.
We are told we should do as Spain is doing, and that Spain is staying out. This ignores the fact that Spain wants to get in and has applied for membership but is not likely to be let in because it is not a democracy. Portugal is in the same position. These are the countries which are looked towards. It is nice to have a left-wing pamphlet telling us to look towards Spain and Portugal and to link up our economy with them. It is an interesting theory, but it has not much relevance because, by the time we had linked up with them, they would quite likely have become democratic and joined the EEC. One of the pressures towards democracy in these countries is that if they do not become democratic they will not be let in. They are so anxious to get in that they are even prepared to become democratic over the next few years, and that is saying a lot.
These examples that are taken are mirages. All of them will seek association of some kind with the EEC anyway, although I do not think that any country except Austria is likely to get it. They are mirages put before us to bemuse us, and they will bemuse us if nobody tells the truth about them, if nobody produces the facts. I again suggest to the Government that they should get down to their job. The Taoiseach said that, if we believe we should be members of the EEC, it is our job to convince the Irish people of this before the referendum. I entirely agree with him but I wonder when he will start.
So much for the Coughlan pamphlet producing the arguments for staying out. They are as thin as the pamphlet itself. From the Labour benches we have had, from the leader of the Labour Party, an alternative suggestion of association, sometimes incorrectly called associate membership. Let us be clear about association. There is a good deal of confusion about it. This is partly the fault of the EEC, which has changed its mind on several occasions as to what association is to mean. What it means in the cases where it exists—and I believe it is to be narrowed down rather than broadened our for reasons I will mention in a moment—is free trade for industry only, with, perhaps, some minor agricultural concessions in areas not adversely affecting the Community's own agriculture.
It also means that in due course one has to join the Community. A package which would involve the ultimate obligation to join the Community, so that you do not get out of membership by this method, and which requires you to free your industrial trade and suffer all the losses, but gives you no benefits on the agricultural side, is a singularly unattractive one. One could, perhaps, accept the thesis that one should give up some benefits and accept some losses in order to stay out indefinitely but, if the only consequence of paying this price, of losing the agricultural benefits and suffering the industrial losses, is to put off membership of the EEC for a period, this does not seem to be a very useful policy, even if it were open to us. I do not believe it is.
I do not believe that association with the EEC will be open to us. I believe the policy of the EEC has changed on this. The EEC has found its relationship with Greece and Turkey, the two existing associates, thoroughly unsatisfactory as, indeed, have the Greeks and Turks because it is, of its nature, a neo-colonialist relationship and, as such, makes everybody unhappy on both sides, particularly those who are neo-colonised. It is a relationship in which the peoples of the countries concerned get certain benefits which tend to orientate their trade even more towards the EEC and make them more dependent on the EEC, but deprives them of any voice in EEC policy-making.
This has not proved satisfactory, even disregarding the political complications in the case of Greece. The thinking of the Community over the years has moved away from this. It has been found that the complication of having to have two separate sets of association institutions on top of their own institutions is cumbersome, and that the countries concerned become dissatisfied with neo-colonialist relationship because it is so one-sided and they have no adequate voice in policy. The EEC found it expensive also in the aid it had to give to Greece. It is particularly unsatisfactory in the case of Greece because Greece ceased to be democratic, but that is another matter altogether and it does not concern us here. At least, we hope it will not concern us here.
All the evidence is that the Community is not disposed to extend this kind of arrangement any further. May I suggest also that this thinking is not confined to the institutions of the Community. I think I am right in saying that the socialist parties of the Community are so unhappy with this neo-colonialist relationship that they do not wish to extend it. It would be rather nice to have a situation in which an Irish socialist party were seeking association because it would establish a better relationship and avoid anything neo-colonialist, but was being opposed by the socialist parties of the Community because they did not want to neo-colonise Ireland! It would be almost worth while going ahead on those lines because of the irony of the situation which would thus be created.
I do not see any future in changing our neo-colonial relationship with Britain to a neo-colonial relationship with the EEC, involving ourselves in having to free our industrial trade with that organisation, but not securing participation in the agricultural market and having no voice in policy. Those who advocate that policy have not thought much about it.
The issue which has not been faced by those who oppose this is the alternative. Vague talks about association and the position of Switzerland or Sweden does not answer the question. Let us face the facts of what staying out of the EEC would mean. A trade agreement with the EEC would give us nothing except a five-year phasing out of our access to the British Market. Association would leave our agriculture out in the cold in exchange for extending the period of transition of industry—making a blunder but getting very little in return.
We have been told that it is madness to think that Irish industry could face up to free trade in a transitional period of five years. It has been a bit longer than that. The CIO was established in 1961. We started reducing tariffs in 1963. Assuming we join and taking account of the EEC, the transitional period which is likely to emerge, we will have had a 15-year period of tariff reduction during which time tariffs will have been reduced on two occasions unilaterally vis-á-vis other countries and subsequently under the Free Trade Area Agreement with Britain.
Throughout that period the CIO reports have been preparing Irish industry to adapt itself for free trade. The view of most people concerned with industrial economics is that if you have more than a five-year period of transition it would be useless because industrialists will not face up to the crunch until they see the whites of the eyes so far as free trade looming ahead is concerned. If we were to have a transitional period of ten years, industrialists would drift along adapting in a vague half-hearted kind of way for five years and, as soon as they came within five years of free trade, they would get on with the job and really adapt themselves.
There is no doubt about it, they are very adaptable. The one thing which can be said for private enterprise industry is that it is by nature adaptable —it has to be in order to survive. If we were to extend the transitional period for more than five years, which would give us a total of more than 15 years of tariff reductions, it would not help in any way. It would merely prolong the agony and, what is worse, it would postpone the achievement of the benefits of membership for Irish agriculture without gaining any commensurate benefits for Irish industry.
The alternative to membership if Britain joins—I am arguing on the hypothesis that Britain joins—as far as I can see, and I defy anybody to produce any kind of a realistic model of the alternative to join, is poverty and unemployment on a massive scale. Everybody recognises in his heart of hearts that this is the case. The views expressed by the Labour Party can be interpreted as meaning that they do not like the EEC but they accept we have to join. We are in a difficulty here because we have not had a clear voice on this. I listened with attention to an excellent address by the Labour Party spokesman on EEC when we jointly attended a meeting in Cork some months ago. The message came across loud and clear on that occasion. He did not like the EEC; he found many things unattractive about it, but he had the honesty and sincerity to refute the allegations made by some people in the audience that it would be a disaster for Irish agriculture and that Irish industry would be wiped out. Whilst not accepting the extreme statements he saw many things unattractive about it but he said we had no alternative but to go in.
Indeed, we have had the same statement from Deputy Thornley. He said the Government were quite right in reactivating our application because there was no alternative. Deputy Cruise-O'Brien when speaking on the subject, as reported in the papers this morning —I was not here for the latter part of his speech—said that the Labour Party opposed a Referendum to modify the Constitution to enable us to join but he proceeded to argue that the Labour Party, by taking the line they had, by acting as a responsible Opposition, were helping the Government in their negotiations by toughening the Government's bargaining position. This is a very fair point. It is very helpful to have the kind of fears which have come from the Labour Party expressed in this House. It will strengthen the Government's hand; I have no doubt about that. It is very welcome, but I think we need a little more clarity in the expression of this viewpoint.
