I hope Deputy Healy, if he does not stay to hear everything I say, will at least read the whole of my speech afterwards. I found him in my years in the Dáil someone who is always concerned with the decencies of public life, with accuracy and with fairness, and I believe that the answers I have to give will convince anyone who is fair that the accusations made against me and also, much more importantly, against NET, are unfair and are, in fact, pandering to chauvinist instincts, which are easy to arouse but which are also harmful to arouse. I do not for a moment try to pass away responsibility for this decision, not because I am involved continuously in the decisions of the semi-State companies responsible to me—of course I am not; of course they must have freedom to get on from day-to-day with decisions big and small—but in the sense that if they make a mistake, I have the power to call them in; of course, if the worst comes to the worst, I have the power to dismiss a board and to reverse a decision.
This is something that arose not in the first week of May. This controversy has been going on now for more than a year; it is not new and I am very familiar with it. In that sense the Minister responsible for any State company working to him, in the end, carries responsibility for those decisions, even if he was not consulted beforehand and even if it is not desirable in the normal day-to-day functioning that he should be, because obviously you cannot have every decision going over a Minister's desk.
It is suggested that the action of NET is costing unemployment, is costing jobs in Ireland, that it is eroding confidence in Ireland and in the terms of Deputy O'Malley's motion he said his way would benefit the Irish economy and so the inference is that this way is damaging the Irish economy. I must rebut all of those charges and, I hope, when people have heard me finish, that those who are fair-minded will believe convincingly.
We are concerned with an area of demarcation, because at the two poles there can be no disagreement. Everyone agrees, I take it, that as much as possible of any construction task or of any other task should be done in Ireland. Then we get into the area of definition: how do you define "as much as possible", and I will come to that. Everyone who lives a practical life from day-to-day in Ireland knows that there are areas at the other end of the spectrum where you cannot have everything Irish, and nobody—Government, Opposition, man in the street—claims for a moment that you can.
We do not insist that Departments of State have what I might call Irish motorcars; there are some assembled in Ireland, some not, but there are no motorcar companies owned in Ireland, only motorcars owned by American firms, British firms, Italian firms, German firms and so on. Nobody claims that Aer Lingus should fly Irish-made aircraft because there are none. We are very proud of Aer Lingus, but we are realistic enough not to make that claim. Nobody claims that RTE which, I take it, again many of us are proud of, should use Irish equipment on the floors of studios, because we recognise it does not exist. There are many areas where the claim is never raised because it is known to be unreal.
There are other areas where you get into a grey section of decision, where decisions are not easy. I do not claim, for example, to know all the reasons and I do not, therefore, offer judgement on the action I am about to mention, but I would give it as an example of a grey area, not judging it but mentioning it just to show that sometimes decisions may be difficult. I understand that all of the colour work of The Irish Press group of companies is done in England. There may be very good reasons for that, and I am not offering a value judgement on it. I am saying that there is a company, associated very intimately both in its foundation and in its present management with the Opposition, where this happens.
Therefore, there can be decisions of all kinds, and we have the two poles. What we have to do is to try to define accurately where the balance of benefit to Ireland as a whole lies. If that can be defined, then it is not just something that politicans and Ministers may do, but something they must do, to take a decision that may be unpopular with a section of the people, as this one is, as I am perfectly well aware, for what I am satisfied is the greater good, much the greater good, as I hope I can indicate. As I say, we are in this area of demarcation.
Deputy Healy says there is a shortage of information. I gave what I thought was a lengthy, helpful and non-contentious parliamentary answer to this recently, but it has not stopped the misunderstanding and so I want to put some facts on the record first, and some arguments after that.
First, on the matter of the scale, the cost of the project to NET in Cork is £74 million. That to me seems to be an immense affirmation of confidence in Irish industry, in Irish skills and jobs, and in investment in Ireland, and something that I am proud to have driven along with all the strength and all the wheeling-dealing capacity I had to get positive decisions. I think that is an affirmation of confidence in Ireland.
I said this is one of the biggest single ammonia urea plants in the world. It is also a case that we are racing against time. We know the time the gas will be coming ashore and we know the rate of plant construction. You cannot quantify it exactly, but to give people even an approximate figure, every month lost will cost the State, both through NET and in other ways, £1,500,000. If you look at that £1,500,000 in terms of industrial grants, jobs created and so on, you will see what that can mean to our economy. It is not a year lost, but a month lost. That is the order of magnitude.
Anything going wrong with this in regard to time of completion—I have quantified that very roughly—in regard to reliability of the work, in regard to the total cost, which means the efficiency of production, has a bearing on the jobs of the people at Marino Point in Cork; it has a bearing on the people in Arklow, because they will take ammonia from the Cork plant; it has a bearing on the viability of the whole project in conditions of free trade, and people who know a little about the fertiliser market will know what fertiliser free trade can be like. Therefore you have to guarantee the company the absolute maximum of efficiency and competitiveness, and the best way to build up the confidence which Deputy Healy talks about of Irish industrial enterprise—and what can be more Irish than NET—is to let them have success in profits and exports, to let them grow and have no failure, no difficulty and to achieve this huge contract under NET management as quickly as possible. That is the best thing for confidence.
It has been suggested over and over again by Deputies—and I beg them not to move on misbeliefs without investigating the facts—that no contracts were given to Irish firms. I must assure the House that that is not so.
