I do not wish either to support or to oppose the present motion. My reason for rising is to try to bring into perspective, I hope, some of the issues involved without throwing my own opinion on either side. This motion, I think, is connected with the debate we had this afternoon when we discussed protection in a general way. This evening we are debating another question which I might call local protection rather than national protection.
Every country seems to go through these two stages in its protective movement. In the first stage, the politicians, the leaders of public opinion, want to get industries established somewhere inside the national frontiers not caring greatly where they are located. So long as they get them inside the national frontier they feel that they have added to the industrial potential of the country. They regard every area of the country as equally likely to benefit from the industry. In that case, industry will always tend to settle down at the optimum point, that is, the new industries will tend to concentrate in or around the cities where the demand for goods is largest. This usually creates a certain concentration of industry in the big cities and towns owing to the advantages of concentration which arise.
The second stage in the protective history of a country always is that local politicians tend to like to see industries being established in their own constituencies, and a clamour arises for a local protection of industries in particular counties or cities. That is the second stage—local rather than national protection. I think I am correct in putting it this way—that whereas the arguments in favour of national protection are mainly economic—though I do not say that the arguments are always purely economic—the arguments in favour of the localisation of industry are mainly not strictly economic. They are sometimes sentimental—such things as the desire to prevent the depopulation of a particular area, to prevent people from drifting into the cities, where they would be liable to the various temptations and allurements of the city, to keep people in the happy innocent frame of mind in which the rural population of this country continues to dwell.
Another reason is to provide local employment, to have people settle in employment evenly over the country, in the belief that the drift to the cities and towns is only one degree less desirable than emigration itself.
Another reason, and a perfectly good reason, of a non-economic character for the dispersal of industry is one we have had here—to try to keep employment up in the native speaking areas, to keep the Gaeltacht prosperous and in that way to keep the language alive.
In other countries, more aware of the risks of war under modern conditions than we are, the defence argument is a very important one—the necessity of the dispersal of industry and of population in the event of war. It is a formidable argument for the decentralisation of industries in England to-day.
The point I want to make is that both types of protection—national protection and local protection—are really distortions of the natural pattern of localisation, in which industry would be directed into the area where it would naturally be directed because the cost of production in the area is below what it would be somewhere else. The argument in favour of national protection is simply that, in certain cases, it is worth the country's while to outweigh the cheapness of the international market, but it involves a distortion of the structure of localisation.
When you have an artificial localisation of pattern inside the country, such as is suggested in the motion, when you have a second type of localisation of that kind, you introduce a second distortion. When you introduce that, you tend to raise the cost of production a second time. Why should costs of production be raised a second time when the industries are spread out over the country instead of being allowed to settle down to the point of optimum advantage from the point of view of the businessman running these industries? The advantages of localisation in a big city, in settling down in a concentrated area, have been mentioned already by Senator Murphy. I will refer shortly, just to remind the House, to what he said.
The first great advantage is the large supply of labour of all sorts of degrees of skill and also educational establishments. The first factor of production, labour, is obtained in large quantities in a big city—which is not available in a country town. Another obvious advantage is transport. Take Dublin as an example. It is a big port and raw materials can be imported at the lowest possible price. There is a very large market in which things can be sold and then again the question of transport costs is relevant. In a big city, there is the presence of technical services and technical advice. There is also the availability of repairs to machinery. Many things can be repaired quickly and cheaply in Dublin, let us say, in a way they cannot be in a small country town.
There are other advantages perhaps even more important than those—a good water supply, good drainage and sewerage, good supplies of power and light. It is curious that this very evening, just within the past two hours, I was reading to-day's Times. I found there a perfect example of the importance of some of these physical factors in determining the localisation of industry and the way in which they can become limiting factors of distortion, the way in which an industry was held up by a shortage of water and sewerage facilities. I quote now from to-day's Times, page 5:—
"There are many areas where local planners still welcome newcomers; but concentration on the employment aspect may distract attention from other factors which, it is argued, are becoming more vital. Water supply is one; strangely enough, even housing may be. The rapid growth of industry in the Luton and Dunstable area has outrun the local housing, partly through difficulties over sewage disposal which hark back to water supplies. Labour is therefore brought in to the area daily from considerable distances, which seems like permanent poaching.
Often major industrial development in the chemical, steel, and atomic energy fields, requires main water supply developments and effluent disposal."
That is an example of how certain areas possess certain advantages over others and of how, if business people are left to settle down at the point of maximum advantage they will, generally speaking, settle down where all these advantages are to be found, namely, supply of labour, good transport, technical services, water power, drainage and other advantages which, of course, all tend to low costs of production. Senator Kissane gave examples of decentralisation such as turf production, which must be located on the bogs. You might just as well say that agriculture is a decentralised industry because production of agriculture has to take place in the country, spread over the land, and not in the town.
Where, however, there are industries such as the ordinary typical industry that imports its raw materials and does not depend on local circumstances such as the turf industry, the advantages of settling down in the big cities are very great. What is proposed in the motion is that something should be done to neutralise these advantages and prevent industry inside the country, where it has been attracted by protection, from settling down at the point of optimum advantage, at low production costs and, therefore, a lower price to the consumer—in other words, that the distortion involved in national protection should be followed up by a second distortion in the interests, real or imaginary, of some particular locality.
The question we have to consider this evening is what price is worth paying for these advantages. To my mind, some of them are nebulous but, at the same time, I do not say they are not real in certain cases. The question really is what price should be paid. Senator Kissane has mentioned the large inducements already existing under the 1952 Act in favour of undeveloped areas—taxation relief, rate relief, subsidies, grants for building and machinery—yet all these advantages do not seem enough to do the trick. Now, in 1955, we have a debate here asking for more and saying that the inducements to move out of Dublin and big cities are not enough.
The real trouble is that the price for this move may be partially or wholly concealed. We can see what taxation costs and also subsidies and grants. Everybody knows what they cost but the price may be high prices of the commodity. Of course, it is very difficult to say that the article is dearer than it would be if it were produced in another part of the country. There is always room for certain disagreement there. An even more difficult case to argue is the quality of the article. That article, the physical commodity, may be produced quite satisfactorily in the small country factory but, by the time all these obstacles to efficiency are overcome, the quality of the product may not be as high as it would otherwise be. In a protected industry, it may be that the consuming public would have to pay more for the article. Probably there is the cost of getting it to big centres of consumption such as Dublin, and, by the time the article has been consumed, the country may have been involved in a large number of costs, some tangible, others less measurable but no less real. High prices, bad quality and the disadvantage of being at the mercy of a monopolist who may be an even less efficient monopolist than he would be if he were in a big town, these are some of the considerations that seem to me to arise in this debate.
I am not speaking for or against the motion. I am putting some of the considerations which I think are relevant before a decision can be taken. All I ask is that, before a decision of this kind is taken, people should be quite clear that every gain involves a certain cost and that the Minister, the Government, the Legislature and the community should all be satisfied that the gain is at least equal to the cost.
Two final observations of mine on the subject are, firstly, that we must not allow business decisions to be swayed by purely sentimental reasons and, secondly, that decentralisation and dispersion of industry over the country is not in itself a self-evident aim of policy.
There was one matter referred to by the mover of the motion to which I think I should refer. That was the desirability of University College being "decentralised". By that I understand that it is considered desirable that the college should be moved out of Dublin to a country site. This is a matter which has been debated ever since the beginning of the days of the college. Oxford and Cambridge were always pointed out as examples of universities, not situated in the great cities of England, which derived considerable advantages from being in secluded university centres.
The position in regard to University College is entirely different. I, as one of the representatives of the National University, voice, I think, not only my own personal opinion when I say that the moving of University College to anywhere outside Dublin is quite out of the question. The cost would be considerable and it would be an unpardonable mistake of policy. A large number of people are prepared to criticise University College on many grounds. One complaint which one hears constantly voiced is that going to Stillorgan Road is going too far from the centre of the city. That is a matter of opinion. It is the old eternal question whether it is better to house people in flats in the middle of a city or to go out to rural housing areas, whether we should have a skyscraper building in the city or a beautiful estate in the country. Whatever may be said about going to the proposed new site, there is nothing to be said in favour of going to Athlone, Kells or the various other places suggested by friends of ours as places of exile or purgatories.
Before this matter is allowed to go any further I want to put it to the Seanad that our college is a great centre of professional education. You just cannot move 3,000 or 4,000 students quite as easily as is suggested. It must be remembered that the housing problem is such that it is difficult for students to get accommodation and lodgings in Dublin. At least half our students come from Dublin homes and, if the college were to be moved to a rural centre or a country town, it would simply mean that you would have the same number of people looking for lodging accommodation as before. The only difference would be that, whereas now they are looking for lodging accommodation in a city where it exists, they would then be seeking it in places where is does not exist.
From the point of view of the medical students a good medical school necessitates the proximity of hospitals. You must have clinical teaching in regard to medicine. The relation between the university and the hospital is getting closer and closer every day. The suggestion that, while great hospitals are being planned for Dublin, University College medical school should be moved is one which shows a complete ignorance of the realities of the situation.
