I move amendment No. 2:
In page 2, after line 45, to add the following subsection:
"(4) Not less than 50 per cent of the aggregate amounts of grants referred to in subsections (2) (a) and (3) (a) of this section payable after the passing of this Act, shall be paid to Irish citizens or Irish controlled companies."
The purpose of this amendment is quite clear. It seeks to have 50 per cent at least of the various grants referred to in section 2, which will be payable in the future, paid to Irish controlled companies. The reason I put down this amendment, as I stated at some length on Second Stage, is that, in common with many people, I am a bit disturbed at what appears to be the low rate of participation of Irish entrepreneurs or industrialists in our industrial drive over the past 20 years. Since the late 1950s there has been a major effort to attract foreign industry, a very commendable effort, an effort which in its time, and up to quite recently, was eminently successful, and the wisdom of which one could not question.
In the past couple of years due to various circumstances things have changed. I believe, and this Party believe, that a far greater proportion of our new industries could be Irish owned, Irish controlled, or have a much larger Irish content than they had hitherto. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that there has been a recession which caused foreign companies to be less anxious to stay in Ireland if their whole group were running into difficulties. Secondly, because of the industrial policies which have been followed successfully in the past, including the attraction of a large amount of foreign industry, the necessary skills, the necessary experience, and so on, are now available in Irish hands to a much greater degree than was the case in the past.
The necessity for the heavy predominance of foreign participation in our industries, and in particular in our new industries, is much less that it was in the 1950s, the 1960s, and, perhaps, even in the early 1970s. I believe active encouragement should be given to the IDA to seek to promote in so far as they possibly can Irish enterprise and Irish controlled industries. The Minister will probably tell me they do this already as best they can. While it would not have been appropriate in the past, some form of statutory obligation is very arguably appropriate in the future.
I am not tied to the figure of 50 per cent, although it seems a reasonable one. If the Minister were prepared to accept the principle of what I am saying, I would be quite happy to see it reduced to 40 per cent or 35 per cent if he or the IDA thought it was necessary to reduce it in that way, and, perhaps, in five years' time or so, we could increase it to 50 per cent. I am in no way tied to that figure but I am tied to the idea that a fixed percentage of our new industrial enterprise every year should be under Irish control and should be on the part of Irish citizens.
I endeavoured to obtain from the Minister the figures of the grants paid in the past five years to Irish citizens and Irish-owned companies on the one part and foreign citizens and foreign-controlled companies on the other part. I had a question down for oral answer today and it was not reached. I took the written answer which is:
Apart from the difficulty of defining the terms used in the Deputy's question, information is not available in the form in which he has asked for it.
However, I have been informed by the IDA that the amount of capital grant payments made in respect of new industrial projects initiated by foreign promoters from 1st April, 1970, to 31st December, 1974, the latest date for which information is available was £48.237 million, while the corresponding figure in relation to new projects initiated by undertakings within the country was £14.026 million.
It goes on to talk about re-equipment and adaptation grants which are not quite relevant to this point.
I worked out roughly the proportion of these two figures and it is 3½1. From my reading of the Minister's reply, I am afraid this is not a full reflection of the actual position because the Minister does not state that the £14.026 million was given to Irish-controlled companies or Irish citizens. He said it was given in relation to new projects initiated by undertakings within the country. That suggests to me that any existing factory is included in that figure. As we know, a high proportion of our existing factories is foreign owned or foreign controlled. Therefore, the actual figure I was looking for in relation to Irish citizens or Irish-controlled companies may well be only half of that £14 million or could even—I do not know: I am only speculating—be substantially less than half of it.
Inevitably in recent years many of our grants were given to foreign projects which were already established within the country. A good factory were going ahead and employing 100 or 200 people and they decided to have another one to expand their existing factory substantially. For example, EI in Shannon, which had a big factory, opened one in Galway a couple of years later. Scripto in Shannon opened a factory in Limerick. There must be many other examples such as that. Therefore, the proportion of 3½1, when you analyse it, is probably more likely to be about 7:1 or 8:1 in favour of grants to foreign-owned or controlled projects as against Irish-owned projects. I fully accept that in the 1950s or the 1960s that kind of proportion was inevitable because we did not have the tradition, expertise, capital, experience and the enterpreneurs to enable our citizens to take up a higher proportion of the grants available.
It is very disturbing that in the years from 1970 to 1974 Irish citizens seemed to be getting only one-eight, or perhaps less, of what is going in terms of industrial grants under all these various Acts and sections that are set out here. The time has come when this House should, through statute, compel the IDA to ensure that a higher proportion than was so in the years between 1970 and 1974, should now be reserved to and paid to Irish enterprise. They may well say that Irish enterprise would not be able to take it up. If they got the necessary encouragement I believe they would be able to take it up, even if not to the extent of 50 per cent, as set out in my amendment, which is a fairly pious hope, at least a much higher proportion than the one-eight or one-ninth which they were able to take up in the five years we have been talking about.
I am primarily concerned here with the principle of the amendment rather than the actual percentage. I would be happy to withdraw it if the Minister was prepared to say that he would substitute a different amendment with some lower percentage but nonetheless would give a guarantee to Irish enterprise and place an obligation on the IDA to start looking around at home perhaps to a greater extent than they have been doing up to now.