Undoubtedly some day —it will probably be fairly soon—I will bring a Bill to the Seanad which will create a row, but I have not succeeded in doing that in the four or five Bills I have introduced here. In the main they have been non-contentious. Today's Bill is also non-contentious. Although we have not had a row, on each occasion we have had a debate in which Senators have said things which I found helpful, interesting and stimulating. Even if we do not become contentious we can fruitfully talk to each other.
The phrase used by Senator West was the one which applies to my feeling about Shannon. It is a feeling of excitement mingled with a feeling of pride, because something genuinely new was created and something courageous. Senator Dolan referred to that also and he recalled a time when there was sharp political argument about whether it was right to develop Shannon at all. I can make my next statement with complete neutrality because I was not in politics then and I do not recall the arguments and I do not know the attitude of my party. I hope it was constructive and courageous but I am not certain about this. Whatever about the past, I have no doubt that the decision to go ahead with industrial and regional development based on Shannon and to defend the future of the airport and the region by means of SFADCo was a genuine innovation. It was new and it was something in regard to which there were sceptics. The sceptics have been routed; it was successful and those with vision and courage have been vindicated.
Mention has been made—this is not directly my concern in the sense of being the responsible Minister—of innovation, flair, the willingness to take a risk, the power to have a new idea, which is such a rare thing. There has been extraordinary flair and vigour in the management in SFADCo. Mention was made of the castles, which have been a great success. First, there was Bunratty, but it did not end there. Mention was made of the "Rent-an-Irish-Cottage", scheme which has been a success. No mention was made of a venture which for many years, since I first saw one in Denmark and later in Sweden, I have had a great interest in. That is the folk village at Bunratty. This is a stimulating and valuable innovation. One might state with hindsight that we should have had a folk village half a century ago, because Irish culture is more than the Irish language, Irish dancing, and so forth. It is the way people live their everyday lives, the way they make cloth, build houses, cook, and so on. We had to wait for SFADCo to introduce this. Thank God it is being done.
I am trying to reply to points which were introduced sequentially. Senator Whyte spoke about the future of Shannon, as did Senator Harte and Senator Markey. There is an airport there. It moved across the Shannon estuary from what was originally a place for flying boats. Then there was industrial development in the immediate hinterland of the airport. Now there is responsibility for a region. SFADCo have recently sponsored a study on the estuary. That estuary is a wonderful natural resource with extraordinary potential. There is the old town of Limerick, there is the new town of Shannon, there is the airport, the industrial estate, the development of industry in the neighbourhood and now there begins to be the real lift-off of the estuary as well. I am pleased to state there is an institute of higher education to the forefront of the type of scientific, technological and economic knowledge that will be necessary. This is a region with an immense potential and I am pleased we have the proven administrative ability and also the proven flair and vision gathered together in SFADCo. They have a great contribution to make to that development.
Senator Butler asked about North Tipperary. I cannot give much detail. In trying to see that there is the optimum use of public money—this is coming back to a point made by Senator Harte—each part of the country, each region and each part of each region have rights proportionate to their needs. I must ensure that the money is spread in the optimum way and that nowhere, as a result of conceivable pressure, is favoured beyond its objective deserts and that nowhere is disadvantaged when it has objective rights to extra help. Sitting here in Kildare Street there is a need for balance.
In the five years up to 31st March, 1974, there have been 22 new firms established in County Limerick, 17 in County Clare and in the North Riding of County Tipperary there have been four. This looks like imbalance though there have been two more since 31st March last in the North Riding and this is only part of County Tipperary. There have been 42 expansions to firms in County Limerick, 22 in County Clare and 26 in the North Riding of County Tipperary. County Limerick lost seven firms, County Clare lost five and the North Riding of Tipperary lost none. If we speak about job creation, new job creation in County Limerick was just under 3,000—2,943. In County Clare the figure was 464 and in the North Riding of County Tipperary the figure was 378. Therefore, if one compares the North Riding of Tipperary with the whole of County Clare there is not such an imbalance.
I had the great pleasure in the recent past of going to North Tipperary where there was a function organised by the chamber of commerce in Thurles. The reason for that function was that they got three new industries in the town in the recent past. There has been a recent announcement in Borrisokane to this effect, too.
The slight disadvantage in regard to grant level is not an indication of lack of interest or lack of commitment. One has to balance grant according to need. I make this statement coming from a constituency which is sharply differentiated against, as is most of the Dublin region, with regard to grants. This is justified as there is a natural growth in Dublin. We do not want Dublin to become the great wen which sucks everything in the country and leaves things more lopsided than ever. It is correct to spread development. It is not an indication of lack of concern or commitment.
We started, yesterday and again today, talking about this business of regional development. I would say for myself in regard to my own departmental responsibility that when natural resources are more or less settled in broad outline—that was the pressing thing when I came into office and I hope the broad outlines will have emerged over the summer and autumn —I have no doubt that regional planning is the next major problem in which I must be involved. In terms of trying to study it and trying to think about it I have been getting ready for this during the period that I have been in office.
We have two poles, as I said recently: one is the growth centre concept with neglect for the rest of the country; the other is the concept of spreading the butter absolutely evenly over the bread. There are strong economic arguments in favour of the growth centre, but it is bad socially and it is destructive of community, destructive of tradition and destructive of many of the things that are very precious to us. There are fairly strong economic arguments against spreading the butter evenly because you can build in pretty awful costs, awful transportation difficulties and indeed awful specialist servicing and infrastructural difficulties. The answer, as in so many things, is a mix. The answer is to get the good out of the growth centre and to skim that good off into the peripheral areas as much as possible. I do not think that this necessarily means a factory for every village because with easier transportation now the catchment area gets bigger, but it certainly means spreading it.
I am now going to anticipate a debate which I know will be an important one in this country in the next year or longer. My conviction is that we ought —and I am referring to what Senator West and other Senators said—indeed to be thinking of the way that Shannon has functioned as a core for spreading out into Clare, into County Limerick and into the North Riding of Tipperary. It is an interesting model. The balancing of the dynamic core plus the peripheral factory development is the whole art, as I see regional policy: it is not to go for one or the other in any simplistic sense; it is to get that mix right.
We have an extremely interesting model in Shannon from which I think we can draw useful lessons. I would urge the academic sociologists and economists to look at it. We had the book of Lucey and Kaldar about industrial development in rural Ireland concerned with a part of Clare, Scariff, and a part of Sligo, Tubbercurry. I would urge our bright young sociologists and economists looking for M.Sc. and Ph.D. subjects after they have done a first degree, to look at the economics and the sociology of Shannon in relation to future use of this knowledge in our industrial development because it will certainly bear a great deal of study.
Senator West talked about the core being a deep water-port, or a refinery, or a smelter, or a nuclear power station. I think this idea of the interplay between an industrial core, a growth centre in the Buchanan sense and a dynamic periphery with its budded-off factories, with its daughter industrial areas, is a central idea in successful regional planning and a very interesting one. Indeed, if I make a comment about what has been happening, I was delighted— I think I probably have it on the record of the Oireachtas somewhere already—with what seemed superficially like an accusation on the front page of Business and Finance. It was referring to what was happening in north Mayo and the caption was “Too Much Too Soon”. It is a joy to be reproached for doing too much too soon.
I think we may get a level of new job creation in a small number of large units in north Mayo in the fairly near future that will force on us the business of planning housing, of planning social development, of looking on that as a core that will spread out from north Connemara to well up into Sligo. Indeed Sligo itself is showing in a number of factories the same sort of dynamism. The ideas that Senator West and some other Senators were concerning themselves with in relation to this Bill are ideas that will become the centre of a national debate.
I am very much heartened by the way in which from the different sides political party was not obvious at all in the debate we have had. If we can get deeply into the question of regional planning in an objective and non-partisan way, simply concerned with the best use of existing resources and existing knowledge, we can have a very good debate about a subject that has been kicked around a bit in debate over decades and one which has never been faced up to.
Senator West paid tribute by name to Brendan O'Regan. I should like to add my praise to that specific name. The best measure of an efficient executive, the best definition of what an executive does when he is working really well, is to make himself redundant. When he has produced a team around him who are so good that he can go away and do something else without the efficiency of the whole operation suffering, then he is really functioning well. I think Brendan O'Regan, in addition to the flair and imagination he has shown, has done that. There is a very good team of people there. He has found the time apart from other things, to be concerned with the Third World and with passing on the knowledge that has been accumulated in his time in Shannon to the solution of Third World problems in a way that shows a very great social concern and social vision. I am sure it is right—as Senator West urged we should do at Government level—that we should find good executives and trust them. In my period, in visiting places like SFADCo, I have been impressed by the level of the executives. We have been building efficient middle-level people who can go anywhere and do anything. I know that they are worthy of trust. I am sure this is the right approach—finding them, being rigorous in their selection and then letting them go and do their thing freely.
I was interested in people having some reservations about the community spirit in Shannon. Senator Whyte, for example, mentioned this. I do not claim any intimate knowledge of Shannon, of the feel of the place. The first time I was there was eight years ago when I was broadcasting and covering a lot of Ireland making programmes. I have been back there many times since. Maybe this is true. On the other hand, it is a marvellous thing to see the mixture of a concern with tradition and with Irish culture that is there. Because of the tremendous high technology that people have in those two estates, there are all sorts of very sophisticated sports. There is this mixture of high technology, of being very modern, being up with all of the recent things, and yet being traditional. Maybe you can generate the community spirit to the level we would wish when a new town grows but I must say, bowing to the greater knowledge of Senators, that I have been impressed by the amount of community feeling that has come into existence and by the sense of a town that is there in a short time.
To some extent I was a little surprised at that aspect of Shannon being criticised. Again, I think it is a matter for our politicians on the one hand and all of our leaders in society on the other hand. Let the social scientists have a look at some new structure that has come into existence, which should be vastly interesting for them, and if they can pinpoint defects I see no reason why social scientists should be purely descriptive. They have a perfect right both to pinpoint defects and then to advance methods of solving them. If there is a structural defect in Shannon let us have an analysis of it, let us isolate it and let us try to find mechanisms for overcoming it. I know that there is a great sense of innovation and flexibility among the people involved in SFADCo and indeed in this new and very skilled and highly educated population that live there. There would be all the confidence and all the flexibility to solve the problem like that, if it were shown to exist.
Senator Harte talked about further research into the development of the area. This is an ongoing task by SFADCo, and I instanced the study of the estuary as an example of the sort of research they are doing, or are having done for them. Shannon now—I do not mean this as a pun—has lift off in the sense that the growth, to some extent, is now self-generating. That does not mean that it can be neglected at all: that will not happen. It means that if one looks beyond the immediate airport to the estuary and the higher educational aspect, and of course to the industrial estate and to the bits of industry in the extended Mid-West Region, one can look at general problems and not just the problem of the growth of the town or of the industrial estate.
I believe that SFADCo are continuing and deepening that study, and of its different aspects, the social and tourist aspects as well as the industrial ones, with a good deal of flair, vision and originality. I expect that they are going to continue coming up with the sort of initiatives, suggestions and propositions that have characterised them in the past. I am sure that that task of research is necessary. We are getting a good deal of it. We have a sort of passion around the country for social surveys, for planning and for looking at the possibilities we have and SFADCo are in the forefront, and it is an important activity which they are doing.
I think I have covered most of the points made, perhaps a little discursively, but I was interested in what was said: it raised important and broader issues. I should now like to urge the Seanad to give this Bill a Second Reading.
