This debate was preceded six weeks ago by a debate on a Private Member's motion put down by my party to which, for reasons of form, Deputy Collins's and my name were signed. In the course of that debate, two Fianna Fáil speakers, the Minister, Deputy Reynolds and another Deputy whom I have forgotten, hauled out of the ashes of the general election either an interview or a discussion — I cannot remember which — in which I had taken part in February, and in which I had expressed reserves about the concept of a National Development Corporation. They thought this was a useful stick with which to beat Deputy Collins, who was in charge of the debate on behalf of our party.
I had said then that if the National Development Corporation which we originally had proposed was not going to provide productive employment, or be engaged in productive enterprise, in the long run it would be a very expensive millstone and one which we would be far better without. That is still what I believe. What I have to say, in hypothesis, about the National Development Corporation I am now going to say in the concrete about the employment agency which the Minister of State has produced here this morning. If the thing produces sensible work which could be understood, on commercial criteria, from which, at the end of the process, a product would emerge for which people would pay real money, then one could defend either an enterprise agency like this, or the National Development Corporation, but not otherwise.
Having heard Deputy Barrett, Minister of State, this morning and listened to that part of his speech which dealt with the National Enterprise Agency, I am completely in the dark. As Deputy Bermingham asked a few moments ago, has the Minister one single idea in his head about what this agency will actually do on the ground? That is what I want to know. It is easy to create a limited, non-statutory company, an ad hoc agency like this and it is easy — though, of course, it costs money because everything like this costs money — to give it a statutory basis. That is no problem. However, what I am still waiting to hear from the Government — and let me say with due respect to Deputy Bermingham, what I am still waiting to hear from his party, even when they shared government with us — was, what kind of actual, concrete, economic operation this agency, or the development corporation were going to engage in. I am glad to hear Deputy Bermingham express puzzlement, because I do not think that the obscurity in which this agency is shrouded was any less when we were in government, or any less before that when the Labour Party in opposition were recommending the institution of a development corporation.
If we can find finances from which the private sector have no good reason to stay away, in which the private sector might have made money, from which a product, or a process, or a service would have resulted for which ordinary people in ordinary commerce, not constrained by scrounging for votes, would have paid money, then by all means let us have a State corporation to carry out that function. I am not an ideologue against State intervention at all. I quite accept that there is such a thing as a stick-in-the-mud private sector, that there are parts of the private sector and of private industry which are stick-in-the-mud. Perhaps there are and perhaps it is up to the State to try to identify these areas and supplement private initiative in the way that Article 45 of the Constitution envisages in its Declaration of General Principles of Social Policy. Supplement private initiative, if we have stick-in-the-mud industrials and namby-pambies who are afraid to venture 6p, but I am still waiting to hear which these sectors are. I am perfectly open to conviction about that, and have no ideological objection in the wide world to an enterprise agency, development corporation, or ten of them. I want to know what are their functions in terms of what procucts will be turned out, what economic operations will be engaged in which will justify this House in taking £5 million out of the pockets of our people.
Deputy Bermingham described the £5 million as an insult. I hope I do not do his argument an injustice when I say that if £5 million is an insult and £20 million more respectable, I would like to stand that on its head. If money is going to be thrown away through this agency or corporation, I would far sooner the Minister threw away £5 million than £20 million. If we are in doubt as to what the agency is going to do, I would far sooner that the £5 million went down the drain while they were making up their minds about that, than that £20 million went down the drain.
All I hoped was that the Minister this morning, having signalled this enterprise agency, would tell us what it is going to do. Having listened to his speech and re-read it, I find that there is not a single clue in it. No businessman in the wide world would lend him 6p on the intentions and waffle and flummery — I say that with respect to his Department, whose officials have no option but to follow political directions which are given, even though they may not believe in them — there is not a businessman or private concern in the world unless constrained politically — and that is what is bringing us down — by the necessity to keep alive by scrounging votes off people and swindling them out of them, who would advance 6p on the security of the promises and proposals made by the Minister this morning. They would not know what they were. It is not simply a pig in a poke, because at least while you cannot see the pig, you can see there is something wiggling in there. This is a poke with nothing in it but air, so far as one can judge. There is no sign of life at all in it.
I suppose I have long enough experienced this sort of thing from both sides of the House to say that I very nearly could have written this speech of the Minister myself. I very nearly could have predicted what he was going to produce this morning and certainly would have predicted that the speech here this morning would include the fact that this would be the only concrete operation to be funded out of the £5 million — the recruitment of a chief executive and of staff. He might have added premises, auditors and cute little graphic designers to do the annual report cover. I have no doubt at all about the State's capacity to throw money away on these things. First get your chief executive, set him up with a suite, wall to wall bureaucracy, a stainless steel plate on the front with cute little logograms of the National Enterprise Agency and someone to translate it into Irish. That is the primrose path down which hundreds of millions of hard-earned Irish pounds have marched over the last decades. That is the only concrete project so far that we are getting for the £5 million which the Minister mentioned here this morning — to recruit a chief executive. I have no doubt the headhunters are doing it at this minute; they will also want their pound of flesh. When they have the stock and the premises it is only then they will think of something to do.
The chief executive's first idea will be to hire a firm of outside consultants for them to tell him what to do. They will also want their pound of flesh. If I am doing the Minister an injustice, he will be able to reply here today — although I hope he will not take it as a discourtesy if I am not there to hear him as I have to go very shortly when I conclude my speech. I will be reading, with great interest, what he says in reply. If I am doing the Minister an injustice and if he has got up his sleeve some details of the concrete projects that this agency will be either itself initiating, collaborating in or supporting, please let us have the details, not just to satisfy the Opposition but to discharge our duty as that House of the Oireachtas which controls the disbursement of public funds. Our duty to the people is not to spend their money and put it into the hands of a Minister who can do what he likes with it without knowing what it is going to be spent on.
Deputy Power, Minister for Defence, seemed to be reading over the speech for his own Estimate, which now looks as though it will not be reached for a while. I have no doubt that Deputy Power's Estimate for the Department of Defence will contain details of engines of destruction and warlike stores of all kinds which he wants us to invest in. I have no doubt there will be details in it of salaries, renewal of barracks and grandiose infernal machines of all kinds which he wants us to lay in a stock of. Whether one disagrees with that or whatever one's view of neutrality, whether it is of the old kind or of the kind we have heard enunciated for the first time in the history of the civilized world the other day, does not really matter. At least one would be able to see in one's mind's eye the range of hardware, extra salaries or extra barrack accommodation which this money is going to be spent on. It may perhaps be a fishery protection vessel, I do not know. Perhaps I should have read the Estimate. But we have no idea what this £5 million will be spent on or — I will stake my solemn oath on it — the Minister opposite has not got a clue either. I also say with the greatest respect to the officials who serve him, and I know they do it loyally and well, that not one of them has an idea either. They are going through the motions because they have to, under political orders of producing a speech and an ostensible excuse for spending £5 million. I do not blame them for that, but we already have a very complete apparatus of State bodies for doing all kinds of functions with an economic purpose, many of which are commercial enterprises of a sort in which there is a saleable end product. I can well see that a man might be put to the pin of his collar to see what else was left for an agency of this kind to do, if there was some serious project that it could undertake I do not want it defined in terms of "co-ordinating" this and "liaising with" that. I want to know if it is going to turn out bricks or mortar or both? Is it going to turn out tin cans or the labels for tin cans? The Minister will have a chance to tell us that. I hope we will not be told that he is afraid of having his thunder stolen by the private sector. I hope we will not be told that there is up the sleeves of the IIRS, the NBST or An Foras Talúntais some project for extracting wealth from some new process or exploiting some new form of natural resource which the private sector does not yet know about and which, if it did, would be falling over itself to get into. That is the duty and the job of the IIRS or the NBST or An Foras Talúntais, not to be keeping secrets up their sleeves because they too are funded by public money and subscribed for by the taxpayer. If they have suddenly thought up some process or some possible product which is worth something or which somebody not constrained by public necessity would pay good money for, they have a duty to let it out to the world and let the private sector get into it if need be. Let the people of Ireland avoid the millstone of risk which the super-imposition on this process of a bureaucratic machine inevitably will bring with it.
I hope the Minister will not make himself ludicrous by telling us that he has commercial secrets up his sleeve which he did not want to tell the House about for fear they would be stolen by somebody else. I do not know Deputy Barrett all that well but I always felt he was a serious man and I do not believe he would do himself the discredit of advancing an argument like that to the House. It cannot be that I am asking him to divulge any commercial or trade secrets or of trying to prevent the private sector from stealing something. I repeat that I would like to know what he or his Department envisage this thing doing on the ground. I make the House a free gift of this fact: I was not able to understand and not able to find out, during the eight months I was a member of the Government, what was proposed by the National Development Corporation either.
I started out without any ideological prejudice against the agency, had the Minister been able to point to some process, product or function which it could usefully do. But, since he has not done so, I am within my rights in regarding it as the twenty-fifth wheel of the State coach. It is superfluous, redundant, expensive and was thrown out as an idea in the middle of an election campaign to scoop in a few votes, and that is all. This country has a very complete battery, as complete as all the hardware that Deputy Power will be looking for money for, of State agencies with all kinds of functions. What is there in the powers of the Industrial Development Authority which disables it from engaging in the kind of thing which was foreseen for this agency? Can it be that its statutory powers, the lengthy legislation on the Industrial Development Authority, are missing a couple of clauses which would enable it to engage in the functions, vague though they are, which the Minister outlined here this morning? If so, why not amend that legislation? If the IDA are bursting to be let loose, except for the fact that subsection 3 (g) of section 14 of the Act inhibits them from doing so because of the Attorney General's reading of the clause, if they are bursting to get involved along with the private sector in something or other, why not bring a simple Bill in here to give them that power? Are we to go through the entire pantomime of setting up a special State body with a budget and a chief executive and a chief executive's car, rather than simply amending and extending the existing legislation under which the IDA function? Might the same not be said of the Industrial Credit Company on a more moderate or a less high profile level?
At page 9 of his script the Minister referred to the development of projects "involving the use of natural resources, for example, downstream value added projects based on agricultural, timber or marine based resources". Where is the lack in our battery of semi-State agencies which prompts us to suppose that we need this agency merely to develop natural resources in downstream value-added industrial production? Suppose that some new saleable product becomes identified as being capable of being produced from turf. Have not Bord na Móna already got adequate statutory power to engage in that process? It does not involve milled peat for electricity production, or anything like that. They already turn out stuff for gardening, and God knows what else, and why cannot they keep on doing that? What is to stop us from further developing that natural resource by the statutory agency that already exists?
Was the Minister thinking of something in the food processing line? Have not the Sugar Company got all the powers they need to engage in that, although not with very notable success to date? Have not An Bord Bainne got powers of that kind? Does the Minister want the agency to get into biomass production, for example? That can be a very valuable crop, I am told, on marginal land. Have not Bord na Móna already got power to do that? Not much longer than a year ago I saw the only biomass experiment of any size in the country being conducted on Bord na Móna land by Bord na Móna workers.
Does the Minister want to get into early flowers for competition with the Scilly Islands, or orchids or other exotic blooms? The ESB have already done that: They have been doing it on an experimental basis for years but I do not know if they have ever got beyond that point. They have done it, very sensibly using the waste heat from their generating stations.
Is it fish farming he wants to get into? The ESB do that too and have the power to do more of it, again using the surplus heat which, though it sounds very unappetising, is said to encourage the growth of fat fish. It is a form of exploitation of peat and fish biology which is economically interesting. Is it something to do with sea fish? We have An Bord Iascaigh Mhara to do it. Does he want to get alcohol from potatoes, as has been frequently suggested, or out of some other easily grown root crop, perhaps to produce some sort of fuel on which cars or other machinery might be driven? We have Ceimicí Teoranta to do that for us. They were set up originally to do nothing else but that.
I want to know what kind of projects involving natural resources the Minister has got in mind and why is the apparatus of this agency necessary to exploit them?
On page 9 the Minister referred to "projects having a substantial import substitution effect". We have all been into import substitution for years. Ever since I became an Opposition spokesman I have been asking questions about it, hearing about it, reading and writing scripts about it. The IDA have been concentrating highly on this. They circularise on it. They have programmes in which they try to identify products now imported which could be manufactured here. They may not have a whole section of their operations devoted to that but they have an element of their operations specifically oriented to encouraging industrual development based on import substitution. What more can this agency do?
The Minister does not need me to emphasise further what I have been saying. Having listened to his speech, I am sceptical. I had hoped I would get an answer which I did not get when we were in Government. I have not got an answer. I am sceptical about this thing, about pouring money down the drain, putting a sum of money which, contemptible though it may seem to Deputy Bermingham, I regard as a large sum of money, at the disposal of an agency which, to use a trendy word, will have no "remit" that I have been able to see in terms which would enable me to assess what the end product the agency are to take an interest in will be.
On page 8 of the Minister's speech he paints on a broad canvass the object of the agency. He told us this should facilitate more effective "co-ordination" of the work of the various State agencies involved in industrial promotion and development. I would associate with that a reference from page 13 in which the Minister mentioned the IDA in connection with the National Enterprise Agency. He said a representative of the Department of Industry and Energy is on the board of both bodies and this should reinforce "liaison" arrangements between them.
Could we lay aside our party uniforms for a moment and would the Minister imagine that he and I are in the bar having a drink or out having a walk in the country, and could the two of us just sit back and have a good laugh at the idea of a country of this size, barely three million people, having so many barriers and distances between the various elements of the State aparatus that their activities have to be "co-ordinated", that there has to be "liaison" between them, if you please?
The word "liaison" in modern usage — I am only saying this from the top of my head — goes back to the First World War when, because of ethnic and cultural differences, the Serbian Army had to have a liaison officer with the Belgians, or the Germans with the Bulgarians, or something of that sort. There is every excuse for liaison there because people might have come to blows otherwise. Here we are talking about a limited number of officials, the important ones of whom all know each other by their first names. They are well able to lift a phone and talk to one another. They read the newspapers. They all know what the others are doing and they are not so prodigal of the State's resources or so neglectful of their duties as to be deliberately going in for something that would wastefully duplicate what other agencies are doing.
These scripts I see every other day from Ministers — the same was true of us — includes such things as "to co-ordinate this" or "to identify that", to "monitor", to "evaluate", or "to promote". This is all aimed at stringing out inordinately a series of simple intellectual functions which are natural to anybody engaged in ordinary business. For instance, a shoemaker naturally co-ordinates this and that: he actually liaises with this and that, naturally identifies opportunities. It would never occur to him to put big words on them because they are natural, instinctive, an intuitive part of every business project and of every administrative project if it is being conducted properly. It is ridiculous that we are to have a special agency of this kind to co-ordinate and set up a liaison, if you please, between Pat this and Tom that, both of whom were at school together and have known each other for 30 or 40 years, live in the same suburb, play golf with one another and, if they are not on friendly terms, they are well able to phone one another. They are not at the same distance as the Bulgarians or the Serbians in 1914 or 1915. We do not need an agency for liaison. We are all in the same boat together and it has been springing many a leak, and if the boat sinks we will all go down. We are all keen not to waste the State's money. We are all keen to get value for what we put into projects. That goes just as much, if not more in my experience, for public officials as it does for the rest of us, and they do not need a special agency to co-ordinate or liaise them. If they are doing their job properly that would happen automatically.
I want to end by putting to the Minister my suggestions for spending the £5 million, since he seems to have it to spend. I do not know where it is coming from. This is a Supplementary Estimate so I can only take it that we are going to be borrowing this £5 million. It is not envisaged in the original Estimate; it is not envisaged in the budget arithmetic. Therefore it must be taken as topping up our deficit and must be coming from abroad.
If we are going to borrow £5 million and we want to spend it productively I have a few ideas that do not involve any shiny new stainless steel authority or anything of that type. I would put more money than I was able to put into the marketing effort of Coras Tráchtála. I would enlarge the scheme, which I do not take personal credit for because it was not my idea but was given to me by somebody else and I was lucky enough to be able to pick up the ball and run with it, of temporary subsidisation of Irish firms that are not yet in the export marketing business, to enable them to recruit executives who are based abroad permanently or most of the time. This time last year only about 30 Irish firms had full-time marketing executives abroad. Coras Tráchtála believe, and I believe with them, that that figure is disgracefully small. If it were multiplied we would see a multipyling of Irish exports and consequently an increase in the employment dimension of Irish industrial production.
I would use some of that £5 million to subsidise technical training in the directions here in which there are still many vacancies because people cannot be got to do the jobs as there are not enough people with the necessary training. To go back to marketing for a moment, I would use it also to subsidise language training because we simply cannot expect to be able to sell products in countries through the medium of the language which we ourselves speak, a form of English. It is true that it is foolishly said that in Germany or in Holland they all speak English. Most of the people engaged in business there do speak it, after a fashion. But anyone speaking a foreign language, no matter how well he speaks it, is operating under a certain mental constraint in that he has to concentrate on the form of what he is saying as well as on the content. He is not as accessible to persuasion or taking an interest in something as he would be if the thing were made easy for him. For an Irish firm to sell something abroad when it has not got a single member of the firm who is able to put ten words together in the language of the customer is crazy. The Japanese do not behave like that; the Germans do not behave like that; the Dutch do not behave like that. We are very backward in that regard for historical reasons. It is not the Minister's fault or his party's fault, and it is not our fault. The reasons lie back in the development of the patterns of middle class convent secondary schools, religious-run education in the nineteenth century. I have no doubt that there are other factors as well. But we are very backward here and I believe that money put into this — and it would not need to be a lot of money — would produce enormous dividends in terms of the force of the Irish marketing effort which is very much under-estimated.
My other suggestion — and this is a pet theme of mine which I have mentioned before in the House — is to put some of that £5 million into trying to develop in an arbitrarily selected small number of pilot communities a total economic cooperative. Again it would not need to be a lot of money. This is my own idea in which I have never been able to get anyone else to take much interest. Although I tried very hard during the months we were in Government to do so I could never get a serious response quite along the lines I had in mind. It is to try to find some way of selecting a very small number of pilot communities and provide a staff of advisers picked from the various specialised agencies we have, a tourist authority, an industrial development authority, a fishing authority and so forth, to go and live in these communities for a year or two and try to examine every aspect and dimension of the community's resources and try to bring it, by a combination of very small sums of subsidy and of ordinary human leadership, to the optimum condition that the few hundred or thousand people inhabiting that little bit of land are capable of bringing it. That would operate as a kind of a flagship or beacon or token to the rest of the country of what could be done. I do not disparage or decry the efforts and all the valuable and very important things that have been done by State agencies, but they are too widespread. The little we have is too thinly spread and they are undermined even further by the Irish psychology which is poisoned by the atmosphere of competitive politics here whereby people are encouraged to look to the State to do everything and to themselves to do the minimum.
That is what I would do if I had £5 million to spend. There were things I could have done during the time we were in Government with a very small fraction of that money and I was not able to get it. The Minister now has £5 million to play with and I would strongly advise him to put the money into modest unpretentious schemes of the kind I have been outlining and forget about an agency for which he has no concrete plans. I want to give him a friendly warning, from man to man, that if he does not do that and if he presses ahead with his empty, vacuous agency, it is going to join the list of State-sponsored spooks of which we saw a few in the 1977-81 period. It is going to belong to the same select, ignoble little group of which the founder members were the "Employment Action Team" which was disbanded within a matter of months, and the "Sean Lemass-style Industrial Development Consortium", which we were promised in the 1977 manifesto but which, as I often said before, never had an address, never had premises, never had staff, never had a budget, never had even an office cat. It did not even have a telephone number although there were conditions in the country then that might have explained that. It existed only as a wraith in the building across in Kildare Street. I called it the spook of Schoolhouse Lane. That is what it was, the "Seán Lemass-type Industrial Development Consortium".
I do not do this with any pleasure because we are all in this together and I feel we have had enough competitive politics where no serious ideology divides the sides, but I want to warn the Minister in a friendly sense and advise him that if he does not want to find himself with his tail between his legs in a years' time defending the waste of £5 million, he should remember those examples that have gone before, the "Employment Action Team" and the "Sean Lemass-type Industrial Development Consortium". Slán beó leis an Industrial Development Consortium agus leis an Employment Action Team. Why did they fail? Why did they amount to nothing? They amounted to nothing because there were no plans for them and there was nothing serious they could do. There was no product or project which was ever envisaged for them for which anybody would have paid a penny. So too will this £5 million be wasted unless the Minister can think up a useful, concrete project for this agency or unless he devotes the money to humbler, more modest projects of the kind I have suggested.