I am turning now to the question of the future of the negotiations on the Common Market and our failure in that respect. We may feel that we have gone through what was rather a trying period and the lesson we learned in this House was the unwillingness of the Government to take the House into their confidence, or make any positive use of the House in facing the problems in that period. Senator Moloney, in his excellent contribution, mentioned the very fine work done by the Defence Council during the emergency when there was a combined effort to study the vital defence problems of the time. It was a pity that we did not have such a combined effort to study the problems created by the Common Market. Those problems have been shelved only temporarily because we all expect the negotiations to get under way again some time in the future. It may take two years or it may take three years, but the drive towards unity cannot be blocked by a single individual or nation within the group.
We hope that when the movement gets under way again, the Government will make more use of this House, and I am speaking only about this House, although of course the same applies to the other House. Perhaps they would start in the coming year to study some of the problems involved because those problems seem to arise on this all-out effort to prepare for competition. Whatever group we are in, we will have to prepare for competition on all fronts because we are living in a competitive world. In this regard, we have the very commendable efforts being made to get our industrial arm into a competitive position and the excellent work done by the CIO and their various study groups.
In the past year, we have had positive action by the Government in reducing tariffs and we are promised more moves in this direction in the coming six or eight months. We hope the Government will keep their resolution in that respect and force our industries to measure up to competitive standards by a gradual lowering of the protective tariffs which they have enjoyed for so long. Admittedly, that lowering probably will not need to be as rapid as it would have been if we had to make immediate plans for entry into the Common Market. It goes without saying that the efficiency and training of management and workers alike need to be carefully planned and guided in the future.
Next we come to our second arm, our agricultural arm, which I mentioned last evening. What we can learn here is that we must bring our agricultural position into line with the position in Europe. In doing so, I think we could learn a great deal from the Danes because in the past, in anticipation of getting into the Common Market, the Danes made very radical changes in their agricultural structure. Those changes were made by raising prices of agricultural produce on the home market, to bring them into line with the average prices in Europe at that time. We are well below them, and apparently we are having great difficulty in raising them, due to the repercussions on the export of our agricultural produce. The Danes are also exporting agricultural produce and I suggest that we might study their methods with profit.
The Danes were the people who charged us less than three years ago with dumping on the British market. Apparently they have perfected a legal way, and we should try in future to find a legal way of dumping that will get us, like the Danes, around whatever difficulties are in the way. We do not want to be excluded from the British market because of any policy we follow here, but we could follow a policy that is substantially the same as the policy the Danes are following: a two-price system.
The other arm we have to strengthen is the research arm. I know that great strides have been made, but as I pointed out last evening, education is now big business, and will be bigger business in the future. We must look to the expansion of facilities which is needed for training students from abroad. I dealt with this question mainly at university level last night, and the same goes for the secondary school level. In fact, there is a crying need in England today for places in secondary residential schools. If we have any surplus places we could easily fill them, at a proper stipend, from England or elsewhere.
Turning to the research angle, we can learn from what is happening in Europe today where research is really big business. It is an industry on its own. In America, I would say that at least 60 per cent of the university effort is labelled as research and paid for on a research basis. When we get links with other countries, we may expect an accelerated flow of funds to research here. In the past, we have had support from the Rockefeller Foundation, which is perhaps the oldest one, from the Ford Foundation, and from other scientific and industrial research institutes in England. Recently Dr. Andrews has persuaded some private firms to contribute. All those are only tokens of what we can really do in this field if we get down to it. Research requires capital investment like any other industry. I would ask the Government to consider seriously the position of this industry—and I use the word "industry" deliberately—in the future planning of our country.
There is also the question of joining groups. Having failed temporarily to get into the Common Market, there is a tendency to swing to the other extreme and say that we should join EFTA. Of course we should not join any group until we have some idea of what the advantages of joining it are. It looks as if EFTA is inclined to exclude agricultural produce and, so long as it does, it has no positive advantage for us, but it has the negative advantage that our industrial goods will not be subject to restriction going into England. That is something we will have to study carefully.
There is also the question of having some type of association with the Common Market. I do not think that idea has been fully explored. Association would be a different relationship from full membership, and while it does not seem that it would be of any real advantage, we can never really know until we explore it fully. Many of us were highly disturbed by the fact that in the negotiations for entry into the Common Market, we had apparently less contact than other countries like Denmark and Norway, who were right up with the negotiations, and I understand that Danish membership could have been agreed on within a very short time of the British admission, whereas we had not made that positive progress they had made at that stage. I wonder why we had not made the progress?
Then we look to the fact that we are anxious to join groups. In the past year a great wave of emotionalism has been created here about our being Europeans. Apparently we were more than Europeans: we were almost determined to lead in that regard. That is all very good but you ask yourself: really, what have we in common with the French or the Germans? We have far more in common with the English-speaking world and, above all, with that group that is the United States, whom we seem to have considered least up to this in the matter of ties. I do think it is high time that some trade mission was despatched to the United States to seek out the links we can create there. I do think it would be possible for this country to create some type of economic link such as Spain has created.
We were prepared to face our responsibility in joining the Common Market, in both defence and other respects. I do think it would be worth exploring what similar arrangements we could make with the United States, even if it went to the extent of having some Polaris bases, or a Polaris base, established in consideration for very great economic advantage. I do not see that we could object to that in this modern world where our whole future hangs on the power of the deterrent. I do think we should explore that much further.
Then I come to another item which I hope it is possible to touch on without engendering too much of the emotionalism which this subject has aroused, that is our foreign policy. In the past year we have been conspicuous by the absence of our pronouncements in this respect and to those of us who disagreed strongly with much of the previous line, that was a very positive step forward. But I do hope that we will do more, that we will begin to take the initiative and, this time, I hope, with sounder guidance and sounder advice. It does seem to me that our policy will be based as it always has been, and rightly so, on stronger support for the United Nations, but that support must be based on a rational foundation, on the basis that we want the United Nations to do the work it was set up to do and that whenever we find it going wrong we should be the first to insist, on principle, on proper investigation, where necessary.
There is a very great contradiction at the moment between what our Taoiseach has said officially on behalf of the Government and what others have said. Speaking on 23rd September, 1961, the Taoiseach said that our troops had been sent to the Congo on the understanding that the function of the force would be to preserve peace, while the Congolese people were working out a solution of their political problems, and that they were not to be used to impose any particular solution on the Congo. That is a statement by the Head of our Government of the basis of which our troops were sent out. We have a flat contradiction of that by Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien in his book To Katanga and Back, where he says, in effect, that what the Taoiseach said is nonsense, that the troops were there to impose a political solution. They were being used to impose a political solution and that solution was in contravention of the fundamental Charter of the United Nations.
All I am asking here is that our Government should take the initiative in getting an investigation into that, to ascertain whether the charges made by Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, and many others, are right or wrong, and in insisting on scruplous observance of the Charter of the United Nations in the activities of the United Nations. Otherwise, it will become, in effect, a lawless body, a body that would directly threaten to become a dictatorship in the future. I hope we do take our part in that and also that we will continue to lend our support to this drive to feed the hungry, so that our agricultural potential may be developed and used to feed some of the hungry millions in the world today, both to our advantage and to theirs.
Again, one other thing I think our UN delegation should rightly insist on is that United Nations activities should be carried through with a proper regard to cost. It is simply fantastic that salaries paid to civilians in the Congo force should be at American level while the ordinary Congolese exist on a small percentage of that. In other words, you will not be able to establish the type of United Nations we all want and the activities we want from it, if the people serving it are there largely for the lure of the money they can pile up for the year or two they serve. I think that the UN being close to bankruptcy, being about £73 million in the red, we should insist that the rates payable to United Nations personnel in any country should bear a direct relation to the rates prevailing in that country, and if those serving have not got the courage or the patriotism to serve under those conditions, then I think the United Nations would be better off without such people, who, in effect, deserve the name of mercenaries, if their sole motive in being there is the bank account they can accumulate from their year or two serving in a foreign country.
There are one or two other minor points I wish to make in concluding. I want to draw attention to the failure of the Government to grapple with the question of the sale of land to foreigners. It is much more acute in the south and west than it is around Dublin, but there is a growing wave of resentment against the encroachment of foreigners and the way they can beat all local competition solely by the size of their bank balance. Any large place that comes up is immediately taken over by foreigners, and, to make matters worse, in Cork especially, we have had growing insolence by such people and they are actually denying our citizens the right to beaches which they enjoyed over the past centuries. That has to be stopped, and those people will have to be taught that there is a limit to the patience of the Irish people. They may try court injunctions and all the rest but they should realise that the Irish people have many weapons to counter it and that the Irish people are not impressed but displeased by resources of money which very often have their origin back in the service of Hitler's Germany. I need not say more on that but I speak for many people in Cork in that regard who view with alarm the sealing off of beaches from the Bantry region and lately in the Ringabella region quite close to Cork. No native henceforth shall set foot on those. That is all wrong and I appeal to the Government to take drastic action to see that that stops, otherwise the local population will be forced into action. The weapon of boycott they used before will have to be called for again and those may have to learn that Prussian militarism is going to be resisted here as it was resisted elsewhere.
Finally, I come to the Government's policy of entertainment as shown by the development of the Television Authority in the past year. The best news, I think, I have read of this service was in yesterday's paper when the headline said: "Hours of Viewing to be Reduced ". That is a step in the right direction undoubtedly. I think the fundamental mistake has been made in harnessing this medium to advertising because so much of our national income is spent on it. Taking, as the case of a television set, at capital depreciation of £10 or £12 a year or more perhaps, with the licence fee added, it means we are spending £8 million to £10 million a year of our national income on this medium. Therefore, we should not allow the tail to wag the dog. The additional £1 million which comes from television advertising is scarcely worth it.
We would be for better off if we had a service divorced from dependence upon advertising and if we adopt a rational approach such as they do in Holland, a much wealthier country than ours, where they have just three hours viewing every night. If we had three hours viewing we could cut out many of the fillers which are used in the present programmes—fillers which are neither educational nor entertaining. I do hope we may be able to make some advance in that regard in future. Also, I understand that the high cost of advertising on TV is draining away advertising funds from our newspapers and that some of them are in quite poor financial circumstances as a result of it. I think that is to be deplored. We have only four newspapers and I think for the good name of the country and public opinion they should remain healthy. It is essential that all these survive and that we have freedom of the Press and the diversity of opinion expressed in our papers today. Consequently, I appeal to the Government to ensure that no paper is pushed into bankruptcy by the loss of advertising due to the inroads of TV.
We face some rather unpleasant prospects in the coming Budget and perhaps the Minister might devise some ways and means of harnessing the national enthusiasm to the successful tackling of the tasks that lie ahead. Let there be no mistake about it. The only way this country can be developed is by additional work. No Government and no Party can do it without work and to my way of thinking at the moment the greatest contribution that can be made in the year ahead would be if every citizen were prepared to work an additional three, four or five hours extra a week. If the amount of money represented by that extra work were put into the national effort we would be in a healthy position. We cannot expand the economy of the country without putting work into the effort.