The Bill that has been brought before the Seanad is to confirm a Provisional Order made by the late Executive Council. As you know, under the Provisional Order, the Executive Council put a certain tariff on bacon coming into the Free State from certain parts, and unless this Bill to confirm that Order goes through we will find ourselves in the position that we will have to hand back the amount collected in duty to those who paid the duty. It is really for that purpose that the Bill was brought into the Oireachtas, and we want to have it made law before 30th April. Under the Act under which the Order was made it is provided that a confirming Bill must be passed within four months. The Order was made on 30th December, so that it would have to become an Act before 30th April. If any question arises on the merits of the Bill I will be glad to deal with it.
Finance (Customs Duties) Bill, 1932. - (Certified Money Bill)—Second Stage.
The Bill confirms the emergency Order but the Bill is not an emergency Bill. In the drafting of it it is quite apparent that it is to be a permanent Bill and that requires one to look into it more closely than if it was simply an emergency Bill to confirm the Order as an emergency Order. I intimated to the Minister's Department that I would like to have had some figures prepared and that I would like to get some figures regarding the effects of this Order, but I find from a report of the Dáil debates circulated this morning that answers were given last week which satisfy all the questions I had intended to put to the Minister. But the information given in column 155 of the Dáil Report of the 20th April raises quite a number of questions of considerable interest. First, one notices that the Order and the Bill impose a duty according to a scale based upon value but not applicable to bacon consigned from countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations or produced entirely within countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations. I would like to have from the Minister, and I do not think the matter has been discussed in the Dáil or Seanad before, some information as to what is the purpose of the Bill. As I understood at the time, it was intended to meet a possibility of considerable importation of very cheap bacon that might have been deflected from the English market at the time and therefore might have had a disastrous effect on the price of Irish bacon, but judging by this analysis of the imports of the three months, January, February and March of this year, I find that the actual quantity of bacon that did arrive in this country was 67,000 cwts., 50,000 cwts of which came from countries within the British Commonwealth and 16,700 cwts. from foreign countries. If one analyses the figures and takes the price of bacon from the British Commonwealth countries and puts it against the price from foreign countries, one finds that the average price from the Commonwealth countries is about 60/- per cwt., whereas the average price of bacon from foreign countries is 67/5. From the point of view of helping the Irish farmer, that is to say, to achieve the end that this Bill has been supposed to be formulated for and the Order which this Bill is intended to confirm, that end has not been achieved judging from these figures. It would seem that the necessary method of achieving the end sought for, judging from these figures, will have to include the imports from British Commonwealth countries. For instance, if you take Canadian bacon, 35,000 cwts. valued at £102,000, or an average price of 58/5 per cwt., is imported into this country, while from the United States 12,411 cwts. valued at £45,618, or an average price of 73/5 per cwt., is imported. If it is desirable to exclude all or put a tariff on the United States bacon for the purpose of protecting the Irish feeder and curer with the United States bacon selling at 73/5 per cwt.—it surely is more important to put a tariff on three times the quantity of bacon from Canada at 58/5 per cwt., which is a far greater peril to the Irish bacon. Even British bacon comes into this country at about 66/- per cwt., 2,000 cwts. valued at £6,600 being imported; and bacon from Northern Ireland comes in at 62/5 per cwt., 12,000 cwts. being imported. The figures do not seem to justify the Bill without some considerable explanation.
There is another point that requires some considerable explanation, but it is worth while asking the question. There is a reference to the revenue derived for the past three months being £15,915, and that that is upon 16,700 cwts. I am not able to reconcile the figures at all, unless perchance there was a big accumulation of bacon landed on the last day of December which did not pay tariff until the first day of January. Otherwise, it seems to be irreconcilable that a revenue of £15,900 should be derived from 16,700 cwts. of bacon, of which the average price is 67/5 per cwt. The point I want to arrive at is that, while it is necessary to pass this Bill, and that it should be passed before the end of the month unless we are prepared to pay back £17,000 worth of revenue, there ought to be a limit to the operations of this Act, so that there can be a review of the whole position at some time, say, this day twelvemonths. I mean that the Act should not be permanent, but that there ought to be an automatic review of the position.
I would like to have some information as to the effect of the working of this Act, and as to how it has influenced Irish feeders and Irish curers, and whether it is necessary to secure the end sought for—that there should be at least some duty paid on British Commonwealth bacon or just no duty on any bacon at all. If the Order was imposed simply in view of an apparent emergency of importations of very cheap Polish or Lithuanian bacon or bacon from any country in the Continent of Europe, is there any reason to fear that that is a continuous menace? One finds, for instance, Argentinian bacon being imported at about 35/- per cwt., Polish at 44/9, and Danish at about 56/-. That is, in fact, the bacon that was being imported. I would like to know if there is any evidence that any considerable portion of bacon threatened to be imported was deflected by virtue of the Order, or what, in fact, was the justification of the Order, and why should this be a permanent Bill.
I support this Bill because I believe it will go some way to reduce the importation of bacon. I do not believe that it will do much to raise the price of pigs for the producers, but I am convinced that we should prohibit the importation of all classes of meat into this country, and my principal reason for advocating that is in order to preserve a clean bill of health for our livestock.
It has been clearly proved now, and admitted by most people, that foreign meat imported into Great Britain is the principal cause of the spread of foot and mouth disease. I presume the British people cannot do very well without foreign meat, but they are suffering for it, and the importation of foreign meat is costing them an enormous amount of money. There are spasmodic outbreaks occurring repeatedly all over England in different parts at places 200 miles apart and which could have no connection with one another. The opinion of the Research Committee set up is that the disease is contracted through the bones of imported cattle, particularly from the Argentine, and for that reason I would like to impress upon the Minister the necessity of prohibiting all classes of meat coming into this country, particularly the countries which do not adopt the process of slaughtering to eradicate the disease.
In answer to a few of the points made, I am not able to explain the points raised by Senator Johnson that the amount collected in duty does not seem to fit in or correspond with the amount of bacon imported. Certainly a fair amount of bacon came in on the last few days of December, and it is possible that that might be the explanation, but I could not really say. With regard to the other question, that the Bill has not achieved its purpose, although we have cut down the imports of bacon from Poland, taking the first three months as compared with the first three months of last year, from 22,000 cwts. to 500 cwts., and from Denmark we have cut them down from 15,000 cwts. to 1,000 cwts. On the other hand, the imports have gone up from Canada and the North of Ireland. We imported 35,000 cwts. from Canada in the first three months of this year and our trade was practically negligible last year—only about 500 cwts. So we have bacon imported from countries within the British Empire instead of bacon we were importing from the Continent up to this. We have taken a note of that and we believe that it will be necessary to put some tariff on bacon from countries within the Empire, but there are considerable difficulties with regard to the North of Ireland—the trade in live pigs going from the Free State to the North and the trade in bacon coming back. As the Tariff Commission is giving a good deal of thought to this question I would like to delay until we hear what they have got to say. Naturally the knowledge they have acquired and their recommendations may be useful to us. It is questionable if we can wait because the pressure from some of the people concerned near the Border is rather embarrassing at times, and we may have to give way to that pressure before the Tariff Commission will report. So for the present that is our position. Now with regard to Senator Counihan's question—the prohibition of the import of meat for reasons of health of our live-stock—I am informed that it is against the international code to take advantage of a Disease Order unless there is good proof that we are justified in taking that line, that we should not do the thing in that way, and that we should do it by tariffs if we want to keep meat or anything else out. We had, for instance, an order here against the import of potatoes for disease reasons. We could have continued with that order except that we were informed by countries anxious to send in potatoes here that we were going against the different international conventions that were formed in maintaining the order for the prohibition of imports of potatoes on the plea of disease, when there was actually no disease. So we in that case had actually to come along with a tariff in order to limit the import of potatoes. We are in the same position with regard to the import of meat. If we want to keep meat out we must do it by a tariff and, if we like, make it prohibitive, but we cannot prohibit it completely and say that the reason we are doing so is because we are afraid if we allow it in we may endanger our live-stock and expose them to certain dangers of disease. That is the present position. In answer also to Senator Johnson I may say that we have no intention of leaving this as a permanent Act. It is, of course, there without any limit as to period, but I think that our policy with regard to bacon will probably be revised within a very short period.
In view of the report——
Cathaoirleach
The Minister has concluded the Debate.
I do not know whether I am entitled to speak.
Cathaoirleach
The Minister has concluded the debate.