Seanad Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 25 Feb 1947

Vol. 33 No. 10

Customs-Free Airport Bill, 1947—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

The purpose of this Bill, as the House is aware, is to provide the legal basis for the establishment of a customs-free airport at Shannon. The Bill is of rather a technical character, but the explanatory memorandum which was made available with it will have explained to Senators its main provisions. The establishment of a free airport at Shannon is a logical development of the aviation policy which has been followed since the decision was taken some ten years ago to build an airport at Shannon.

A main feature of the policy has been to provide there all the facilities which the international civil aviation organisation considers necessary at a main transatlantic airport. In accordance therewith we are building runways which will accommodate the largest aircraft in commercial operation, providing the most up-to-date navigational aids and putting up a terminal building which will be capable of accommodating all the traffic which the airport may handle.

We are now proposing to make Shannon the first customs-free airport in the world. The idea of a customs-free airport is new. I think it can be said to be an Irish idea. It was our representatives at international conferences who took the initiative of securing that the various international conventions for the regulation of civil aviation should be so framed as to permit of the operation of customs-free airports. The original convention, that which was signed at Paris about 25 years ago, contained no such provision; but when a conference was held at Chicago in 1944 for the purpose of framing a new convention, our representatives there took the opportunity to secure international recognition in principle for the establishment of a customs-free airport. At a number of meetings of the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organisation at Montreal, our representatives also took the initiative in defining the requirements for a customs-free airport, and participated in the work of a special division which was set up by that organisation to consider that matter and other measures for facilitating international air services.

Having secured international agreement for the concept and requirements of a customs-free airport, we proceeded to make specific plans for the Shannon and this Bill is designed to put those plans into action. It provides that goods and passengers in transit through Shannon Airport will not be subject to customs examination. Goods brought by aeroplane through Shannon will be free from all customs restrictions so long as they remain within the boundary of the free airport. There will be no customs officials within the airport, and compliance with any regulations that may still remain in force will be secured, not by officers of the Customs and Excise, but by officials of the Department of Industry and Commerce.

There will have to be some restrictions in force. As Senators know, the staff of the Revenue Commissioners enforce restrictions other than customs restrictions at airports, seaports and land frontiers, such as the restrictions which are designed to safeguard the public health and to prevent the spread of animal and plant diseases. There are also certain articles the importation of which is prohibited in pursuance of international conventions to which this State is a party. We must carry out our obligations under these conventions. There is, therefore, provision in the Bill for the making of regulations reimposing these safeguards and prohibitions at the free airport, as well as for continuing the present currency control so long as it may be necessary. The regulations to achieve that result will be made in consultation with the Ministers who are directly concerned, and compliance with the regulations at the airport will be enforced by officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce appointed for that purpose.

While the establishment of a free airport confers great benefits on air travellers and those sending goods by air, it also offers opportunities and temptations to those wishing to defraud the revenue. It is, therefore, necessary to provide for powers of search and these powers are provided in the Bill. One of the chief difficulties experienced in framing the Bill related to internal traffic passing through the airport and to visitors at the airport. It was not desired to impose customs examination on sightseers or on people travelling by air from Shannon to Collinstown. The problem has been met by setting aside as a customs area a portion of the terminal building and part of the landing field adjacent to it. There will therefore be, in a sense, two airports at Shannon, a customs airport and a free airport. Persons travelling by air from Dublin to Shannon airport will disembark in the customs area and will not have to undergo customs examination unless they wish to enter the free airport to join an aircraft for a foreign destination. Visitors coming to the airport as sightseers or to meet their friends arriving by air will be permitted to enter the customs area without examination. The accommodation in the customs area will include a lounge, a restaurant and an open space from which the operations can be seen. In order to prevent possible evasion of customs it will be necessary to segregate transit passengers from disembarking passengers and from local visitors. The confining of visitors and disembarking passengers to the customs area will achieve that purpose. It will, of course, be possible to make special arrangements for persons who have particular business in the free port area to pass from one section to another.

Passengers or goods entering or leaving Ireland via Shannon will pass through the customs as at present. As goods may be brought free of duty into the customs-free airport from abroad and stored there, it will be of advantage to commercial interests to set up depots at the airport from which delivery made be made by air to meet orders from any countries in Europe or North America which have direct communication with Shannon. To facilitate such a development, a suitable transit shed is being constructed at the free airport. It is hoped that some manufacturers may find it desirable to undertake within the free airport the packing, processing and rehandling of goods. Any development on these lines will be facilitated. Already there is a fair amount of freight passing through Shannon, although it is yet difficult to forecast the prospects of the carriage of freight by air.

Our aim is to be ready to cope with any developments that may occur. As I have said, Shannon Airport is equipped to take the largest aircraft at present engaged in freight service or that are likely to be engaged in the service in the immediate future. The developments which are contemplated there will ensure that it will be able to cater for any type of cargo aircraft that is likely to be employed on the transatlantic service.

This is a Bill that is, to some extent, experimental. There is no similar legislation in any other country and, consequently, we are submitting it to the Oireachtas in the clear knowledge that in the light of its experience some of its provisions may have to be modified. The problems which arose in the drafting of the Bill were not inconsiderable and they have been surmounted only because of the general desire to help it forward shown by all parties concerned. I should like particularly to say that all the airline companies operating through Shannon have been most helpful in working out a satisfactory scheme. When the Bill is passed, we shall have secured that air traffic passing through Shannon will be relieved of most of the restrictions which air travellers all over the world are desirous of having relaxed. It is, therefore, I think a very necessary step in the general policy of developing Shannon as a main transatlantic airport and for that reason I feel confident that the Oireachtas will pass the measure.

Mr. Douglas

So far as I am concerned, this is a Bill to which I give my unqualified support. The Minister says that it is an experimental measure and that he does not know how exactly it will work out. That being so, obviously I am not going to pretend that I know how it is going to work out. I suppose it must be 20 years ago or more since I made an effort to persuade some people that a customs-free port in Ireland would be of very considerable advantage to the country and that it might contribute a considerable amount in the way of shipping to the business of the country. I quote that because, whether the idea was good or bad, it appealed to me as one that could be of very considerable value to this country. A small country can achieve prosperity only by giving facilities and services to other countries from whom it obtains a very considerable amount of assistance. I very much hope that this scheme will be a success and I also hope that it will lead to the granting of facilities for the storage of a very large number of articles which Europe and the world needs and which we also need. If they could be stored somewhere in this country, they would be of very considerable advantage to our manufacturers. Of course, we know it will not be done for that purpose alone; it will be done only if it is of advantage also to other countries. This is not a Bill which we can usefully criticise because we know very little about the system which it proposes to initiate. Although we may have some experience of free ports, we have no experience of free airports. The Minister, however, has established a sufficiently strong case for the experiment and I am strongly in favour of the principle of the Bill.

Mr. Duffy

May I say that I am very glad to see this Bill, although I have still the same doubt I expressed earlier when the Harbours Bill was before the House as to the advantages of a free port over the other form of control which has been adopted now, I think, in most countries of Europe, that is to say, the transit shed, the drawbacks and all those things which are associated in the shipping world with the development of a mercantile marine. Actually, the idea of a free port for shipping purposes was considered in England many years ago, but nothing ever came of it. Subsequently, it was adopted by other countries, but one by one they abandoned the idea of a free port and set up instead transit sheds, custom houses and all the other paraphernalia associated with the shipping world.

I agree at once that there is a distinction between a free airport and a shipping port. I wonder whether the distinction is so great as to suggest an advantage in the establishment of a free port, unless it is intended that industry and commerce will operate within the free port. If the port is to be used merely for the handling of goods, the unshipping and reshipping of goods within the port, then all the facilities which are required would be available in the transit shed without the difficulties which are going to be created by the establishment of a free port. Let us bear in mind that there will be a wall, so to speak, erected round this free port. It is foreign territory in the fiscal sense, so far as we are concerned, and there is bound to be interference with the people entering and leaving it, people who break their journey at Shannon.

I am, therefore, wondering whether there is a case for the free airport unless the Minister is satisfied that industrialists will find it desirable to establish certain industrial plant there, or that commercial firms will consider it desirable to have warehouses within the territory of the airport. If that development were to take place, it is obvious that there must be a free airport of rather large dimensions in contradistinction to the bonded warehouse and the transit shed which serve their purpose in territory in which no manufacturing or commercial processes take place.

My next point is that this is a Revenue Bill. I am wondering, therefore, why it should be presented to the House by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The officers who will operate under it will, in fact, be doing the work of the Revenue Commissioners and not work proper to the Department of Industry and Commerce. Provision is made in the Bill for conferring upon those officers all the functions of revenue officers. Why not use the term "revenue officers" in the Bill? In looking up this matter I find that in the legislation of most countries the officer who, for instance, enforces the Aliens Act regulations is a revenue officer, and that the officer in most ports who enforces the public health laws is a revenue officer. I am just wondering whether there is some special reason here why the officers to be engaged in administering this measure, in relation to a free port, should be officers not of the Revenue Commissioners or of the Department of Finance but of the Department of Industry and Commerce.

I take it that people will be leaving this port in large numbers. The work people engaged in operating the port will be leaving its frontiers every day, and probably two or three times a day. Who is going to do the search in their case, because the people leaving the confines of the free airport will be liable to search? Is that search to be carried out by a revenue officer, or an official of the Department of Industry and Commerce, or a member of the Gardaí? These considerations suggest to me that there must be some reason for presenting the Bill in this manner, a reason that has not been explained so far to either House. It seems to me that it is one that we should understand more fully before we subscribe to a provision which transfers the functions of the Revenue Commissioners and of the officials of that Department and of the Department of Finance to the Department of Industry and Commerce.

Questions will arise within the airport in relation to the importation of goods where that importation is prohibited by law. There will also be cases in which goods will be imported in excess of permitted quantities — that is to say where we have a quota system. Under that system we are entitled to import, say, so many gross of gramophone needles, but double the authorised quantity arrives at the airport. I want to know what happens then. Bear in mind that the importation does not take place until the goods leave the free airport. As I understand the Bill, the importation is assumed to take place only after the goods cross the frontier of the free airport and enter the domain of this country because the free airport is foreign territory in the fiscal sense. There is no provision in the Bill for dealing with the two cases that I have mentioned. Goods, say, are imported in excess of the permitted quantity. What happens? They are presented at the barrier for importation into this country. If they are refused, do they lie at the airport and, if so, under whose control? Is the importer, if he lives in Dublin or Cork, to be called up to deal with them? If there is no means of storing the goods at the airport, what happens? Likewise, what happens in the case of the importation of explosives? Their importation is prohibited by law. Assuming that explosives are carried to the barrier for importation to this country, what exactly happens? The Bill gives no clear picture of what the situation is going to be like when the free airport is established.

I am not offering these criticisms for the purpose of finding fault with the idea behind the Bill. I am anxious that the Bill should provide for this country what it sets out to provide: that is to say, that it will offer greater facilities than are available now in this or any other country to the free flow of goods through the airport, and to the free movement of passengers using the air services passing through Ireland.

I am, therefore, anxious to raise this point that it may be considered. The Minister may indeed have dealt with these points in some way that escaped my notice. If he has dealt with them that is the end of the matter. There is only one other matter to which I want to refer. I have no means of knowing the minds of the people using transatlantic airlines, but I have been reading the views of people who profess to know something about this matter and I gathered from what I read that Foynes is likely to be used for the transport of goods as well as Rineanna. I take it the free airport will be Rineanna. I do not know whether this point has been considered or not, namely, whether provision will be made to deal with the transit of goods passing through Rineanna for European countries as well as dealing with what may pass through Foynes. Beyond raising this point I have nothing to say except that I welcome the Bill and believe that this House should facilitate its enactment as rapidly as possible.

Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha

Is ceart dúinn comhgháirdeachas a dhéanamh leis an Aire faoin mBille seo do thabhairt isteach agus is cinnte liom go nglacfar leis go fonnmhar, bíodh ná fuil ann na socruithe go léir ba chóir do dhéanamh chun aerphort neamhchustamach do chur ar bun ins an tír seo. Níl fonn orm tagairt níos mó a dhéanamh do théarmaí an Bhille ach ceist do chur ar an Aire, cad iad na socruithe atá ina aigne maidir le hábhair ioncháinithe a tabharfar isteach san aerphort sin agus a bheidh le breith amach arís go háiteanna eile seachas an tír seo. An gcaithfear na hábhair bhreise sin ná húsáidfear sa tír seo do bhreith thar náis amach as an aerphort in eitealláin, nó an bhfuil le tuigsint go mbeadh cuid acu le breith as i longa, cuir i gcás, nó i dtréanacha go calaphoirt éigin sa tír seo le breith thar lear? Cad iad na socruithe atá beartaithe againn chun go dtéigheidh siad sin uainn slán thar lear agus ná beadh caoi ag daoine mí-mhacánta, le linn a dtaisteal, cuid acu do chailliúint nó do chur amú go láithribh in Éirinn nár measadh iad do thabhairt do réir dlí importála na tíre?

Tá ceist beag ba mhaith liom a chur ar an Aire, cad chuige dó a bheith ag siar-thagairt do "Shannon" mar ionad don aer taisteal seo? Cad ina thaobh go bhfuil dearmhad oifigiúil á dhéanamh ar an ainm "Rineanna" áit is oiriúnaí ar fad chun eitealláin do theacht anuas ann ná iad do theacht anuas ar uisce na Sionainne? Dá mba calaphort a bheadh ann i gcóir luingeas mara, d'oirfeadh "Shannon Port" go céillí mar ainm dó san, ach níl ciall, measaim, le "Shannon" do luadh mar ionad túirlinge d'eitealláin aeir.

Mr. Lemass

The official name of the airport is Shannon Airport. Shannon Airport includes not merely the landing field at Rineanna and the flying boat base adjacent thereto but the flying boat facilities at Foynes. It was never intended that it should be called Rineanna. It was, I think, newspaper reporters who discovered that Rineanna was the name of the place and they popularised it. It was never my intention that the airport should be called anything but Shannon Airport and that, in fact, is the official title. The purport of the observations of Senator Duffy in regard to the Bill is not quite clear. So far as the first of his points is concerned, I cannot attempt to forecast the extent to which industrialists may use the free airport facilities for the purposes of processing goods for re-export. If any such development should appear likely we will be glad to facilitate it. Primarily the establishment of the free airport is designed to facilitate the transit traffic in passengers and goods. Shannon Airport is primarily a transit airport. The bulk of the traffic is going on to other destinations. On this account it is desirable that we should facilitate this traffic by the removal of customs and other regulations.

If there should develop in consequence of the existence of free port facilities a type of industrial processing such as is associated with free seaports —well, that will be all to the good. But even if we do not ultimately have such a development I think it would be still well worth while enacting this measure.

There will be no customs officers in the free airport. To the extent that officers of the customs and excise perform duties other than revenue duties, such as enforcing public health Acts or supervising the imports of plants and animals that might bring infectious diseases, or other restrictions of that character, these restrictions, in so far as it is considered essential to keep them in force, will be made effective by officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce. The customs officers will be on the perimeter of the airport and movement in and out of the airport of goods and passengers will be supervised in precisely the same way as movement across the land frontier.

Senator Duffy asked about the possibility of goods being brought to the perimeter of the airport for import which would not be allowed in. That may happen. It happens regularly at the land frontier and the method of administration which the Revenue Commissioners will follow will be modelled on the practice at the land frontier. We would have preferred that all these restrictions on traffic should be removed but it will be clear that while we can go a great distance in freeing traffic from customs formalities and similar restrictions, the bugs that might bring infectious disease or affect plant life would not respect our regulations, and the restrictions which are necessary at seaports will be equally necessary even at a free airport.

Similarly we could not claim to have fulfilled our obligations under international conventions regarding certain articles if we permitted them to be imported into the country, even into a free port and, consequently, we must have officers on the spot who will ensure that our international obligations are carried out, within the free airport area.

But all the restrictions which are removed by this Bill will be re-enforced only to the extent which experience shows to be necessary to protect our own interests or fulfil our international obligations. The revenue officers will be outside the airport and will be conducting their duties there in precisely the same way as on the land frontier. Let me make it clear that beside the custom-free airport there will be a customs-airport and visitors coming to see the airport and to meet friends arriving from across the Atlantic will not ordinarily enter the free port at all. They will go through into the customs port and will not be liable to customs examination unless they, for any reason, want to enter the free port. Normally they will be only allowed to enter the free port if they are themselves travelling to some destination outside the country or for some special reason.

There is one matter in respect of which powers have to be retained for the Revenue Commissioners in administering the airport. In some free ports all dutiable goods are sold duty free. We did not regard that as a desirable position at Shannon and, consequently, no goods can be imported into the airport for sale in the airport, nor can any goods be sold in the airport that have not previously been imported into this country and customs duty paid on them. That will mean that such goods as whiskey and cigarettes will not be sold cheaper inside the airport than outside it.

Mr. Hayes

Is there in the present Bill a provision for preventing sale of cigarettes within the airport.

Mr. Lemass

Yes. A provision prevents the sale of goods brought into the airport otherwise than across the perimeter of the airport. Section 6 of the Bill so provides. That particular section of the Bill might be worth reconsidering after a while. At one time it was suggested there might be an advantage in permitting the sale of perfumes and certain other commodities of that kind which are subject to duty at the airport and permitting the goods to be brought in there and purchased by people in transit and taken out again. I would not like to agree to such a provision until we see precisely how it works out. Clearly in the present circumstances you could not have a situation in which our whiskey and cigarettes would be sold at cheaper prices inside the airport than outside it. I do not think the traders in Limerick would do very much business and if we were to try to keep people out of the customs-free airport the risk of smuggling would be very great and the difficulties of administration increased. I think the safest course is to ensure that within the airport area, goods which are subject to duty will not be allowed to be sold except that duty has been paid on them. At some future date we might reconsider that decision.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage fixed for next sitting day after this week.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.