I do not want to follow this discussion to the limits of its logic as a result of the matter raised on the Fifth Stage of the Bill. It is not necessarily a virtue to do in 1956 or 1958 something that we did in 1908, if the only recommendation for continuing the policy is to say: "Well, that was always the old pattern."
I know there are people who prefer that they should be allowed to buy from London tea merchants—to use the London merchant to store their tea, to get credit from the London merchant, to let the London merchant pack the tea, to let him insure it, to let him ship it and generally to act as the warehousing authority for the wholesale or the retail merchant here; but is this consideration not worthy of some notice: If we buy tea in the country of origin—and I know of no reason why tea should be sold cheaper in a country which is not the country of origin, than it can be sold in the country which produces it—is there not an obvious advantage, where you can organise your collective purchasing strength, —how you would do it is another matter and I will come to that in a second, is there not an obvious advantage where you organise your collective purchasing strength, transport the tea and warehouse it in your own country, providing in your own country all the employment in warehousing that you would otherwise provide, if you are satisfied to do your dealings with the London merchant who will do all the thinking on tea for you and where you can make sure that the insurance on the transport of 24,000,000 or 25,000,000 lbs. of tea can be undertaken by Irish companies, that all the packing can be done as a matter of policy in Ireland, and where you can envisage the possibility that you can provide the ships to transport the goods back here?
We can, if we like, say: "Let the London merchants do the tea buying for us; they are the wiseacres in this matter—let them buy the tea, and insure it, pack it and transport it for us." Of course, the Irish consumer will pay all those charges. It is not the London merchant who will pay them. All these charges will go on the price of tea and the Irish consumer will have the privilege of paying for these additional charges. If he is going to pay warehousing, freight and insurance charges, why should he not, as a matter of intelligent national planning, provide these benefits for Irish organisations here who are engaged in that trade? In my view, the more buying, warehousing, insuring and packaging we do ourselves and the more transport we do ourselves, the more it is all calculated to inure in the long run to the benefit of the Irish people. In so far as we employ agents in London or anywhere else to do this kind of work for us, we lose to that extent a national advantage.
I do not contemplate a State sponsored body continuing to purchase Irish tea requirements elsewhere. Tea Importers, Limited, came into existence in a very special way and for very special reasons. There is no question that you have not to love Tea Importers, Limited, to admit this fact, that bulk buying of tea by Tea Importers, Limited, did enable them to buy tea cheaper than the individual wholesaler could have bought that tea in the circumstances operating during those particularly difficult years. I have not yet decided the form of organisation we should have for the purposes of buying tea, but I think it ought to be possible, while permitting the manufacturer to select the kind of teas he wants and to buy them in whatever countries produce these teas, to get wholesalers together into some kind of co-operative organisation—not a State-sponsored or State-controlled body, but a co-operative organisation where their collective buying would be organised to the advantage of the tea trade and of the country as a whole.
The control of that kind of body, if I contemplated establishing it, would be in the hands of those who know the tea trade in this country—not in the hands of a Government Department, but in the hands of those who know the trade. That organisation would represent the buying organisation for the tea trade in this country, giving the individuals who are members of the co-operative organisation the opportunity of ordering whatever classes of tea they wanted. I think something of that kind, as a substitute for Tea Importers, Limited, and as a means of avoiding the rigidity which goes with the establishment of a State-sponsored body for a particular trade such as this, has a good deal to commend it. However, it is quite clear that tea can always produce a good discussion in our Parliamentary Assemblies here, and I have no doubt that, when the new Bill is introduced in both Houses, there will be many views to express. In this whole business, our main objective ought to be to try to work out whatever is nationally the most beneficial. I have no particular axe to grind in this matter at all; I am only concerned with doing whatever is best for the common good, not merely of those engaged in the tea trade, but utilising such a very substantial trade in such a manner as will enable it to react beneficially on the whole Irish economy.
