Vol. 285 No. 10
I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £430,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1975, for the salaries and expenses of the Stationery Office; for printing and binding, paper, publications, office machinery and other office supplies for Public Services, and for sundry miscellaneous purposes.
The Stationery Office meets the needs of the public services, including the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Defence Forces, the courts and the Garda in the matters of printing, stationery, certain office machines, principally typewriters, and the miscellaneous desk supplies used in offices. It has had to face rising prices and the supplementary grant now sought is required to provide at current prices the same general level of services as was provided last year and also to meet increases in pay in accordance with the national wage agreement.
I would expect that in line with the normal introduction of Supplementary Estimates, a copy of the Parliamentary Secretary's statement would be circulated. This is the usual pattern in dealing with Estimates. Because of the normal movement in the House at this time of morning it was not very easy to hear what the Parliamentary Secretary had to say—I have been given a copy now.
I take it that, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, this is a straightforward statement on the overall inflation that has hit the Stationery Office and this Supplementary Estimate is to make provision for the additional £30,000. We fully appreciate the demands on the Stationery Office and the need for this extra money.
Under this heading I might comment that during the past year I had occasion to complain about the fact that the Stationery Office in procuring some of its requirements was not as alert as it might have been in regard to the purchase of Irish manufactured articles. I raised the matter with the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in relation to the procuring of supplies of notices affixed in telephone kiosks in connection with increased charges when an order was placed with an English firm for the supply of these notices which were procurable in Portlaoise, the capital town of my own county. Unfortunately—I will not say due to that order not being placed; it would be a contributory factor—it transpired during the discussion on the matter in this House that the Post Office and the Stationery Office were unaware that this item could be and was being produced here and could have been procured in Portlaoise. Since then the firm has gone into liquidation and it is upsetting to feel that the liquidation was contributed to by the fact that the Post Office and the Stationery Office were unaware that they could secure their requirements there.
It would be wrong to try to make a serious issue of this because the order would, I suppose, basically be insignificant. The Minister for Finance in replying to me said it would only keep one man employed for two hours. Nevertheless, in view of the purchases made by the Stationery Office and the equipment they have to procure I think it is vital that the purchasers should be fully aware at all stages of the type of supplies that can be procured here without need to place orders elsewhere. Otherwise, we on this side of the House have no objection to the provision of the additional money necessary as a result of the huge inflation affecting the country at present.
I am grateful to the House for accepting this Supplementary Estimate so swiftly. In response to Deputy Lalor's remarks I should like to say that the Stationery Office makes about 90 per cent of its total purchase at home. It was in response to the difficult home situation that in the case of paper the Minister specifically authorised its acquisition from an Irish firm—I think the only firm making a suitable paper—even though that firm was not able to supply the paper at as cheap a rate as it could be purchased abroad. As the Deputy, and the House, will appreciate, the Stationery Office, or any other buying source on the State's side, is in constant conflict between the necessity to save the Exchequer the expense of buying something dearer than it can be got and, at the same time, supporting home enterprises. I am certain Deputy Lalor understands and recognises that conflict from his own experience.
It is a conflict which the Stationery Office has to solve on a day to day basis; making one decision one day and another the next day. It has solved it for the moment by buying 90 per cent of its supplies at home and, in some cases—I have just given an instance of paper—buying at home in order to protect Irish employment notwithstanding that what the taxpayer is paying at home for the Irish product is somewhat above what the same product might have been got for abroad. I hope the House will understand the dilemma of the Stationery Office in this regard and accept that a decent attempt is made to keep down the public expense and to support home industry.
Why not 100 per cent? We ask everybody to buy Irish but we do not do it ourselves. We should not ask people to buy Irish if we do not do it ourselves.
Off the cuff my own guess is that there are some items of office utility which are not made here.
That is different.
I am told that only 10 per cent of the requirements of the Stationery Office are bought outside the country and that must include a very substantial proportion of items which are not made here. Deputy Callanan's concern about the matter is shared by the Minister and the Stationery Office.
This is a suitable moment for me to pay a tribute to the human face of the Stationery Office. When I was in the Seanad a few years ago and was involved in helping the free legal advice centres when they were starting I asked the Stationery Office if anything could be done about supplying these centres with a stock of statutes of a kind which would be useful to legal advice centres, such as Rent Restrictions Acts and Landlord and Tenant Acts. I met with the most immediate co-operation and the greatest generosity in time and painstaking attention from the Stationery Office on that occasion even though I was not in a position of authority and had not the faintest authority there; I was approaching them more or less as a private citizen. Instantly, the Stationery Office came forward and from their large and probably inexhaustible stocks fully supplied the free legal advice centres operating in Dublin with relevant statutes.
These statutes were supplied on a complimentary basis and I hope nobody will pull a long face about that. It was an extremely kind and appropriate gesture of solidarity on the part of the Stationery Office and I am glad to have had this opportunity to pay tribute to the Stationery Office and to thank the officials responsible.
