——some predictable clichés on the subject of the responsibilities of different Governments for different things. Senator O'Kennedy returned to this subject somewhat. Although I do not agree with everything he said, the manner in which he said it was somewhat more constructive.
I should like, first of all, to ask the Minister some questions about promotion work. It was very disturbing indeed to see in the accounts of the Shannon Free Airport Development Company in their Annual Report for the year ended 31st March, 1967, appalling cuts in the promotion work, the sums available and spent on promotion both in tourism and in industry. I found the expenditure for tourism is cut from £67,000 to £16,000, by more than three-fourths. The estimated export creditor for industrial promotion is cut from £38,000 to £5,500, a cut of 6/7ths approximately. It seems to me that in times of financial stringency and difficulty which a country occasionally experiences, and which we experienced in the years 1965-66, we ought to have a better sense of priorities.
I have been astonished, and at times appalled, by the way in which savings of paltry sums in the context of a Budget of £250 million are effected at the cost of a vital national concern, the development in this case of the Shannon Free Airport Development Company, its factories there, its housing and the expansion of employment there when many millions of pounds are spent in other areas where a small cut, though possibly unpopular, would not have any like effect. The gearing of promotional expenditure in a case like Shannon to the return we get from it is so much greater than the kind of return we can get on many other forms of expenditure that it should be the very last thing to be cut, no matter how great our economic difficulties, instead of being the first thing to be cut as it was on this occasion and cut most drastically to such an extent that the board were provoked in their introduction to their report, which Senator McHugh quoted, to refer to the grave difficulties which this created for them and to state further on in the report on page 12, that unless this were remedied the expansion of the estate could not continue. They put it slightly more positively. The expansion of the estate could continue if adequate sums were available for promotion.
Mind you, it was not only the promotional side which was cut down during this period. If we look at some of the other figures we find a similar pattern. We find, for example, in housing there were actually fewer dwellings built on the 31st March, 1967 than in the year earlier although there is a reference to fewer dwellings sold, so apparently there may be some slight adjustment here. Certainly, however, there was no increase in the number of dwellings. It is a bit startling to find on the 31st March, 1966 that 455 dwellings were completed and 125 under construction and a year later 453 dwellings were completed and 125 under construction. It is a very long period for under construction, so long, indeed, that one wonders what "under construction" means. To me "under construction" means a building has started to materialise out of the ground. If that were the case with 125 dwellings in March, 1966 there must have been a bit of moss grown on them by March, 1967 if they were still not completed.
I am glad to see from the figures the Minister has given here that this dead stop of the accommodation for workers at Shannon, the new town there, has come to an end, and in the past year, in the year ended March, 1968, there was once again a further expansion of dwellings to the tune of about 127. In other words, what has happened in this year, if I read the figures correctly, is that the 125 dwellings which were under construction in March, 1966 and under construction in March, 1967 were completed in the year ended March, 1968 but that is all. Nothing else was completed.
It is nice to know they were completed and at least we have got to the point where the number of dwellings has risen from 453 to 580. I note, however, that there are now a further 130 under construction from which I gather the stop in activities at Shannon for several years, which held up development of the new town, has come to an end. One must hope that those 130 dwellings will not be as long getting their roofs on them as were the previous 125.
The slow-down in the growth at Shannon caused by the severe cuts imposed in its budget, wrongly by the Government, the effects of this also can be seen in the pattern of employment where there was an increase of only 181 jobs in the year ending March, 1967 as against 366 in the previous year. I am glad to see this also has come to an end, that employment has started again and that the unfortunate effects of the Government measures are no longer applicable because in the year ended March, 1968, according to the Minister, employment rose by, I think, 698.
This is a very cheerful picture. In fact, it is in excess of the 500 jobs a year target but it needed to be to catch up on the lag in the two previous years when in the two years together there were not 500 jobs created, never mind 500 each year. This slow-down in the growth of the activities there was to be seen also in the figures for the value added by industry at Shannon, the difference between exports and imports, which rose hardly at all from only £6¾ million to £7.14 million in the year ended March, 1967. This, again, has leaped forward to about £10 million. We can see here progress has again resumed after the effects of the cuts imposed in 1965-66. I should like to ask the Minister, however, because he has given us no information, what has happened on the question of promotion and development. Can we be assured that the cuts of 75 to 80 per cent imposed on promotional expenditure in the year ending March, 1967, have been removed and that the company is now promoting its services, as regards industry and tourism, on the scale it was previously? It is not much use building more houses or building more factories if, in fact, efforts are not being made to attract people to establish industries there. The promotional effort is vital to making useful investment to put into these factories on this site.
I should also like the Minister to tell us what, in fact, was the square footage in factory space in March, 1968. It is a figure usually given to indicate the growth of the factory area there. We had it for previous years in the annual reports, showing once again a complete stop in the growth in the year ending March, 1967, and I would like to know what the figure is for March, 1968, if the growth in factories has been resumed.
On the question of the extension of the regional responsibilities of the company, I, like others, would like to welcome this, more particularly because this is a matter I have pressed before without success until now. I was most disturbed, and I so expressed myself in the House, when works started on development centres in Galway and Waterford that the centralised authority responsible for these new development centres failed to make any use of the experience, knowledge, skill and enthusiasm of the people who had built up the Shannon Free Airport Development Company and the industrial estate there. There was consultation. Somebody was asked to see them but their skills were not unleashed on these problems because work on development of these industrial estates at Waterford and Galway has been held close to the chest of An Foras Tionscal with no consideration for local interests and no attempt made to unleash the skills and abilities of those who made a success of Shannon. It is nice to know that although they have not been allowed to help, as they would willingly have done in those industrial estates, that at least they will be allowed to make a contribution to a wider area than this estate. Knowing the abilities of the people concerned, I am satisfied they will make a great contribution and that their abilities are such that the growth of Shannon will not be slowed down or their efforts to develop the industrial estate will not be diluted by the responsibilities of these people being extended to a wider area.
I am, however, a little concerned about the dividing of the responsibilities of the company between two different Ministers to two aspects of its work. Here is something which may require further thought. There is a difficult problem because the company is undertaking two different kinds of activity, tourist promotion and promotion of transport services on the one hand, and on the other hand, promotion of industrial development, and housing associated with industrial development. Yet, it is logical that it should do this. The idea of having a local promotional body concerned with the whole range of local activities operating at local level with local people involved is something that one must welcome and endorse, but the problem of co-ordinating this local development with the very split-up responsibilities of Government Departments is a difficult one. Here difficulties and problems may arise and the answer that has been found so far may not prove satisfactory. I gather from what the Minister said that the widening of the responsibilities of the company will be accompanied by the provision of extra funds and one presumes that there will be no question of slowing down the growth of resources available to Shannon itself when these responsibilities are spent.
There is something Senator Quinlan said implying that there could be a saving in infrastructures by developing in locations rather than building a new town. There is some truth in this, but it can be exaggerated. The fact is, and we have to face this and we are not facing it squarely, that the infrastructure — housing, water supply, sewerage, roads, transport services—in most Irish towns is not at all adequate for the extended needs of industrialisation. There is a delusion in Ireland that our towns and villages are in a position to absorb, with their present facilities—and I should have mentioned educational facilities—new industries, making a fuller use of existing services without the need of expansion of services. This is the kind of idea people have in offices in Dublin but people who live in those towns tend to see the effect of a new industry starting, with some hundreds of new jobs being created, young people coming in and having children, and affecting schools. People at local level have not this delusion. It is something we have to watch because there is this idea of delusion that it will do. A good blurb is to plonk down an industry in an Irish town and leave it at that. A lot of our difficulties arise from this approach. The fact is that most Irish towns are not adapted to the establishment of new industries of any size and require considerable infrastructural investment to make them so established. There is no Irish town, even, perhaps, Dublin, that could absorb a really substantial new industry, though Northern Ireland picks up usually at the rate of about one per year—a new industry employing say, 2,000 people. People have said to me that if they have to face the problem of such an industry, where to put it, how to provide housing for the workers, water, sewerage, transport and educational facilities and do this in the time that the industry could get established it would be a nightmare and quite impossible. There is nowhere in Ireland that could accept a large industry, nowhere in the Republic. No attempt is being made to develop our infrastructure, to absorb that and we are codding ourselves in thinking that we are competing for large-scale industrialisation. Such industries go up automatically in Northern Ireland which is geared for them, and we get the small ones.
