Industrial Development (No. 2) Bill, 1975 (Certified Money Bill): Second Stage.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Bruton)

The main purposes of the Bill are, first, to increase from £200 million to £400 million the aggregate amount of Exchequer moneys which may be advanced to and expended by the Industrial Development Authority by way of grants and certain other payments of a capital nature, other than payments against guarantees and, second, to make separate provision that the aggregate amount of moneys guaranteed by the IDA in respect of principal and still outstanding and of payments made by the IDA on foot of guarantees shall not exceed £100 million.

There is a further provision that the IDA may not, without the prior approval of the Government, give a guarantee of repayment of principal exceeding £500,000 in respect of any undertaking.

At present there is a statutory limit of £200 million on the aggregate of Exchequer moneys which may be paid to and expended by the IDA on their various grant schemes and other capital expenditures. The Industrial Development Act, 1969, set a limit of £100 million on such payments and, subsequently, this figure was raised to £200 million in the Industrial Development Act, 1972. Issues to the authority of the relevant capital have now reached this limit and it is necessary therefore that the limit be increased, as a matter of urgency, to enable the authority to continue to discharge their duties. The present Bill proposes a new limit of £400 million. Such limits are usually pitched at levels which will facilitate review at reasonably regular intervals and thus afford the House an opportunity for periodic debates on the industrial development programme. The limit now proposed should come up for review again within a few years, given the present level of capital payments associated with the industrialisation programme.

The continuing success of the IDA is best indicated by the fact that between 1952 and 1970 68,000 new jobs were approved, while in the period 1970-74 inclusive 78,500 jobs were approved. This latter figure of 78,500 new jobs at full production relates to a fixed asset investment of over £880 million and a financial commitment by the IDA of over £225 million. The domestic component in planned investment is very substantial. For example, in the period April 1972-end of 1974 the planned domestic IDA aided investment was £268 million as against £432 million for the new overseas investment.

The IDA, as Senators know, are empowered to give guarantees in respect of loans raised for the provision of fixed assets for an industrial undertaking. Up to now the aggregate expenditure limits have included payments by the IDA on foot of such guarantees. In circumstances where the authority are approaching or have virtually exhausted their statutory capital expenditure limits the Authority would be unable, without an amendment of the legislation, to meet the liabilities they had undertaken under guarantee, should it be necessary to do so. To rectify this situation the present Bill has a provision which sets a limit of £100 million on the aggregate of loan principal which may be guaranteed by the authority and of payments in respect of principal under such guarantees. This provision will leave lenders and their advisers in no doubt as to the ability of the authority to meet their obligations.

At present guarantees either given or approved in principle by the IDA amount to about £40 million. Such guarantees are not given lightly and only cases of large investments have been involved, where the provision of a guarantee was the deciding factor in a firm's decision to establish here. This practice will continue and, in addition, section 3 of the Bill requires the IDA to seek the approval of the Government for any guarantee of principal exceeding £500,000.

Towards the end of the last session I brought another short Industrial Development Bill before the House. On that occasion I indicated that I proposed to introduce more comprehensive legislation in connection with industrial development activities. Work has reached an advanced stage on this more comprehensive legislation, but it recently became clear however that certain measures it was proposed to include were going to delay the preparation of the Bill. I had no choice but to prepare the present short Bill now before the House dealing only with urgent matters of a financial nature which are necessary at this time. I would therefore ask the House to facilitate the passage of the present Bill in the light of the knowledge that the further Bill, which I am endeavouring to have finalised as quickly as possible, will afford an opportunity for a further debate on the industrial development programme.

I accordingly recommend the present Bill for the approval of the House.

Mr. E. Ryan

I am certainly not opposing this Bill. In general the Industrial Development Authority have been doing a very good job. It will need further funds. We are entitled to know a bit more about what they need these funds for and what progress has been made with the funds they received up to now. I say this having regard to the fact that we are in the middle of a very serious economic crisis certainly the worst crisis we have had since the war and possibly the worst in the last 50 years. We would like to know more about what is happening in the industrial sphere. We would like to know what is the position in regard to the funds the IDA have spent up to now and what they want the further funds for.

The Parliamentary Secretary said in his opening statement:

The present Bill proposes a new limit of £400 million. Such limits are usually pitched at levels which will facilitate review at reasonably regular intervals and thus afford the House an opportunity for periodic debates on the industrial development programme. The limit now proposed should come up for review again within a few years, given the present level of capital payments associated with the industrialisation programme.

It is very necessary and appropriate that the needs of the Industrial Development Authority should come before this House regularly, thus giving us an opportunity for periodic debates. However, in such circumstances we should be given a little more meat, a little more information, more details, so that we could have a really worth-while debate in this House in regard to what has been spent and why further funds are necessary. For that reason I am disappointed that the Parliamentary Secretary has not given the House far more information and detail about what is happening in industry at the present time.

The Minister, the Parliamentary Secretary and other members of the Government have been and will be making many after-dinner speeches at this time. In many of these speeches they will be probably referring to Government plans concerning industry. This House is the place in which to give details of industrial development, to give us some idea what these funds are required for and how it is envisaged they will be spent. If this Bill means anything it means that existing funds are, if not exhausted, about to be exhausted. The House is entitled to some brief review of how these funds were spent in the period between the times this Bill comes to the House and the last Bill came to the House.

The Parliamentary Secretary has stated that the reason these Bills are regularly brought before the House is to give the Seanad an opportunity to debate the industrial development programme. Without some help from the Parliamentary Secretary it is very difficult to have such a debate. If the Parliamentary Secretary is merely taking the view that he comes into the Seanad, asks for so many million and then sits back and waits for criticism and for people to throw questions at him, that is a defeatist attiude. I would have expected him to take a more positive attitude, to say what has been done, what he proposes to do, and in that way help the Seanad to know what is happening, and also prevent the Seanad from merely making this an opportunity to criticise what has been done and also to criticise unjustifiably the policy of the IDA.

The Parliamentary Secretary has referred to the fact that a comprehensive Bill is promised and that it will give more detail about the industrial development programme and the IDA. This Bill may not be introduced for a long time. We are living in very depressing times from the industrial and economic point of view. We are in a situation where many people believe that our economy is on the point of collapse. It is an extraordinary situation, that a member of the Government comes before this House seeking very substantial funds in relation to something which is of vital concern to the country, our industrial development programme, and does not elaborate on what the Government intends to do.

The Government at present, in relation to every problem which arises, make the excuse that world events are the cause of the crisis, that everything that is happening is outside their control. I do not accept that the crisis is outside the Government's control or entirely due to world events. If the Government really mean that there is nothing they can do about the situation then what they should do is step to one side, resign and let somebody else do something.

One would think in regard to industrial development that the Government would take the opportunity presented by this type of Bill of telling the House what they are doing about industry; to what extent they think industry can solve the problems we have at present; to what extent industry can get us out of our present crisis; to tell the people what these funds will be devoted to and how that will help to get the country out of its present crisis.

It is reasonable to suggest that, if the Parliamentary Secretary does not take the opportunity when he is introducing a Bill of this kind to say what the Government's plans are, then it would appear that the Government have no plans or policies to deal with the present crisis and, as far as the future is concerned, they do not know what to do. They are still relying on the fact that the problems are being caused by world events, that the problems are outside their control. There is no guarantee that the many millions of pounds referred to in this Bill, even when they have been raised and spent, will contribute in any way, as far as the Government are concerned, to a solution of the economic crisis confronting the country at present.

Mr. Dolan

Ar an gcéad dul síos, níl aon duine ar an dtaobh seo i gcoinne an Bhille seo. Táimid sásta go bhfuil an t-airgead seo riachtanach chun forbairt tionscail na tíre a chur ar aghaidh. Rinne an IDA sár-obair san am atá thart. Ach b'fhéidir go n-innseodh an Runaí Parlaiminte dúinn cén fáth go bhfuil an t-airgead seo ag teastáil agus conas a caithfear é. Níl rud ar bith ar na habhair sin sa Bhille atá ós ár gcomhair. Ba chóir go mbéadh an t-eolas sin againn.

Like Senator Ryan, I am not opposing this Bill. We are very concerned that every encouragement and opportunity be given to the IDA to improve the situation in which we find ourselves at present. Never in the history of the State have the people had so little confidence in the Government as at present. Especially in the last fortnight we have seen the Taoiseach and other members of the Cabinet on the media preparing us-and this is a change—for the disaster which lies ahead. Never before did a Minister for Finance tell the people before Christmas to stop buying spirits, cigarettes, petrol and so on. It seems that these are budget leaks. I do not know whether he was afraid people might say to themselves: "At least we will have one good Christmas before we all end up in the workhouse" or whether he wanted to deprive the ordinary shopkeeper of any profit he might make during the festive season.

We should realise that if this our whiskey potential was developed properly as an industry for export, there are thousands of our own kith and kin all over the world who would be delighted to buy it. This would keep some of our people in employment here in one of our few remaining viable industries. It is a deplorable state of affairs that in 1975—and it is less than three years since this Government took office—we have 107,000, perhaps 109,000, or 110,000 people unemployed. I do not like having to repeat these figures here. I referred to them on a few occasions before when the figure was given at 103,000. Within a couple of weeks it escalated to 110,000.

Let us be sensible and reasonable about this. Politics may be politics, but I can assure Senators that nobody on this side of the House takes any pride in that fact. We know that the livelihood of our people depends on borrowed money. Fathers of families are out of work, drawing pay-related benefits and unemployment assistance of various kinds, some of them drawing, perhaps, as much, or maybe more, as if they were working. This will have a bad effect on future generations. There were about 10,000, 11,000 or 15,000 school leavers last year, with no hope of a job. There is no use in saying the Arabs are the cause of this, or that it was caused by world inflation, or any other lame excuse. I can remember 1949 to 1951 when the first Coalition Government took office. It was the very same pattern then. When they left office people were out of jobs.

Mr. O'Toole

They established the IDA.

Mr. Dolan

The Senator will get his opportunity to speak. I will not deny him that. I admire his courage in standing up to say anything, having regard to the deplorable position the country is in. I doubt if he could say it outside his own church gate. People are beginning to wake up now. People in Castlebar received their little allowances before the election. The cars came to the doors.

Mr. O'Toole

That is propaganda.

Mr. Killilea

No other part of the country got it.

An Cathaoirleach

Senators should not intervene. Senator Dolan should make every effort to keep to the Bill.

Mr. Killilea

Home truths.

Mr. Dolan

Many of the home truths were not made known until the Mayo election was over. There is a different picture now. I saw the Tánaiste on television from Wexford telling the people of the tough times that lay ahead. He asked the workers to stomach the pill he was trying to shove down their throats in 1975. Later on, the Taoiseach came down off his high horse and home from the hunt and made this wonderful statement on television. He told the people, as a Christmas gift, that there was nothing but woe and gloom and starvation before them and that the Government were not to blame, the Government of all the talents. The ship of State was handed over to them with her finances in order and with a further £35 million of EEC funds saved on agricultural subsidies ready to be distributed through the social services. Nobody was unemployed. Nobody was emigrating.

(Interruptions.)

We are talking about a serious situation. We are talking about what the IDA are trying to do in a very adverse climate to get industrialists to come here. Naturally they will be looking to the IDA to see what grants they will be getting, but they will also have to advert to the fact that they will have to invest a large amount of their own capital. They will say: "We can go to Puerto Rico, or Spain, or somewhere else". Naturally they will look at our labour relations. They will look at the skills our people may have and our proximity to markets. These things are all very important. In any industry, labour relations are very important. I am not slagging the workers in any way. I am talking about uncontrolled strikes.

The IDA will also have to take cognisance of the fact that the industrialist or the businessman from abroad, and also the Irishman who has worked hard down through the years and saved a little money will now say to themselves: "If I start an industry using some native raw material, such as gypsum in my part of the country, or stone facing, or something like that, I will have to put my money into it". These people should be thought highly of instead of being slagged and run down. The wealthy man who has enough confidence in the country to put his money into an industry should not be ballyragged, or exploited by an unofficial strike or something like that when he has the article ready for export. He should be encouraged. He is a patriot because he is actually risking his own money. Naturally he deserves a little profit. The banks made £20 million profit last year and God knows where they put it—probably in some foreign country. While I am on that subject, it is a pity something could not be done about that. However, I am merely saying the industrialist is an important person.

The Parliamentary Secretary should have a plan for this extra £100 million. He should tell us where it will be spent. He should tell us where the last £100 million was spent and how many people it put into employment. There should be some reference to the amount of money it takes to put a man into a heavy industry and that should be compared with the amount of money it takes to put a man into employment on the land. We often forget our farms. We have a good climate; we are in the EEC; and there is a good potential. There is no comparison between the amount of money used to put a person into a five-day week job in a factory and the amount of money a small farmer gets to rear a few sows to increase his income and perhaps, to give employment to one or two people. I do not know whether that comes under the Agricultural Credit Corporation. The IDA will have to interest themselves in it because industries based on native raw materials are very important, in particular industries such as the processing industries, milk powder factories, and so on.

Last year the greater part of our exports was not manufactured goods but cattle and sheep. A greater effort should be made to ensure that those cattle and sheep are processed here. A very substantial grant should be given to people, if necessary, to set them up in such a way that they will be able to process the various agricultural products and use native raw material and ensure that employment is found for our people.

Industries have been protected here. This was necessary in 1932 because there was an economic war on. There were other reasons too, Irish industry was young then. Down along the line Irish workers and industrialists have improved immensely and their skills are practically second to none if channelled the right way. Therefore, we have great potential there. We have a work force. We have built new colleges of technology. We have done a great deal to ensure that we have qualified skilled workers. We have plenty of them now, if we could find the jobs for them.

There is another aspect which often strikes me, especially when I am travelling through the Parliamentary Secretary's constituency, that is, Tara Mines. There is tremendous potential there. We have heard a lot of talk about smelters, and so on. If it is, as it is alleged to be, the richest zinc mine in Europe, surely there should be no disagreement on from which port these concentrates and ores should be shipped out of the country. They should not be shipped out at once. They should be processed here and then shipped out. That is something the IDA and the Government should pursue. Years ago in Galway we had the Tynagh Mines and in the early stages many ores were shipped out of there. We learned as we went along. Tara is a very rich mine and I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary knows far more about it than I do. The row whether the port should be Dublin or Greenore, or Dundalk or Drogheda, could be settled if the right effort was made to provide a smelter not when the mines are empty, but now.

The road ahead is very difficult. There seems to be no forward planning. Members of the Government have already said that themselves. The pigeons are coming home to roost. That is nothing for any of us to boast about. It is a sad state of affairs that so many people are unemployed. We have had a spate of borrowing which seems to have run riot and left people so punch drunk that they do not know where they are. Millions of pounds do not seem to mean anything. We have to get away from that idea. We will have to ensure that when grants are given to industries in future there will be a proper hold on those who get them They are now paid on a sliding scale and that is the correct way because this is Government money given to encourage industries.

While I do not want to enter into the question of oil refineries, and so on, it is amazing the amount of time given on RTE to oil refineries in Dublin and objections to them. Many people have spent a great deal of time talking about pollution. A lot of it is nonsense, in my opinion. The important thing is to get the people into employment. I think Cork has been decided on as the location. There should be some finality. We must stop this shadow-boxing and get down to the business and get the industry in here. That is what is important. People at work are far more important than scenery, or pollution, or any of the other catch-cries which get far more attention from the media than. I think they are entitled to. Certain regulations are written into the provision of grants which will cope with pollution. It should not be used as a delaying method or to keep people on tenterhooks and cliff-hanging for months and months.

We have no objection to this measure. Why should we? The Parliamentary Secretary always seems to say he will be coming in later on with a Bill in much greater detail and he will give us far more information, and so on. In another couple of months he will come in, probably on the eve of a recess, and we will be told there is something around the corner.

I would not like to end by not wishing the Parliamentary Secretary a happy Christmas but, if things continue as they are, I doubt that he will be in that position next year.

Mr. Russell

I welcome this Bill as I think, in their hearts, all Members of the Seanad do. Notwithstanding the little bout of shadow-boxing we listened to for the past 15 or 20 minutes, I feel the Opposition party generally are glad to see this Bill before the House.

From the brief particulars which the Parliamentary Secretary gave us in his introductory address, all of us would agree that the Industrial Development Authority, over the years since their establishment 20 odd years ago, have a very fine track record. They were set up against considerable opposition. They were established as a statutory body to encourage industrial development. The fact that, over that period of years, they have been, by and large, very successful is indicative of the right choice made by the then Government.

I should like to include in my praise of the IDA's efforts, the record of their arm in the mid-western region, the Shannon Free Airport Development Company who are charged, as Senators are aware, with the development of industry in the mid-western region. They have done a magnificent job of work.

It is true to say that the IDA have been particularly successful in parts of the country which lacked an industrial tradition and where the only alternative to industrial employment was unemployment, or under-employment on small farms, or emigration. There have been criticisms in recent weeks and months about the type of industry encouraged by the IDA. This is a very topical matter and one which deserves deep consideration. It is easy to be wise after the event. I suppose all of us have the gift of hindsight. We should recall that the type of industry encouraged in the earlier years of the IDA's development, now referred to as a secondary industry, was about the only type of industry that you could get at that time. Even if looking back now, it was not the ideal type of industrial development, it did provide jobs and that was the essential thing. It provided jobs as the alternative to emigration in those days. It did more than that. It helped to create an industrial tradition in parts of the country where no such tradition existed.

Sometimes we are a little too critical of our own efforts, particularly in the field of industrialisation. We tend to compare our efforts with the efforts of long-established industrial countries like Great Britain, Germany and France. The mere fact of creating an industrial tradition is a tremendous effort. It takes a long time. It takes generations before an effective industrial tradition is created for new industries. Apart from providing employment, if the IDA did nothing else but create this industrial tradition, they did a very good job.

Unfortunately many of the industries established at that time were secondary industries, in many cases subsidiaries of overseas parent companies and the policy of such industries remained in the hands of the parent companies. It is not, as I have already said, the ideal type of industry, because it meant that in times of recession or in times of changes of policy it was possible for the foreign parent company to decide to shut down its factory in this country and to leave at very short notice. This, as we know, has happened unfortunately in certain instances but not in a great many instances.

We should also remember that when these secondary or semi-processing industries were established conditions were very much in their favour. Unit costs were low in this country; labour, production and transport costs were low. A United States or German manufacturer could afford to have materials processed or semi-processed in this country and shipped back to their own markets and still sell at a lower price than the same goods manufactured by the parent company at home. We were right to take advantage of that situation while it existed, but unfortunately that situation could not last forever and we are now at a critical stage in the further industrialisation of this country. We are now faced with a situation where unit costs are as high, if not higher, than in other competing countries. We are operating in a free trade area where export markets are difficult to get and home markets difficult to hold. Transport costs, particularly to outside markets, have substantially increased and high inflation and shrinking markets make it more and more difficult to maintain factory outputs at an economic level.

In these changed circumstances the question of the type of industry which should be grant-assisted assumes greater importance. It is evident that the Industrial Development Authority are alive to this situation. I should like to quote just a couple of lines from the IDA News of December, 1975, which indicates new thinking on the part of the IDA in regard to the type of industries which should be assisted at this time. They speak of the introduction of a project identifications scheme as a strategic new initiative in the national industrial development programme. They go on to talk about the substitution of imports and say:

In the past ten years, imports have quadrupled in value to a current annual level of over £1,600 million.

Then they go on to say that, using the initial import substitution market, the new industries being encouraged under this scheme will be well placed to move quickly into the export markets. That is a development greatly to be welcomed because it means that from now on emphasis will be placed on industries that will use Irish raw materials. It will also mean that imports which are now running at a fantastically high level can be, or will be, substituted by Irish industries using Irish raw materials.

A policy like this will of course apply to both established and new industries; and those at present in this country part processing should be encouraged to advance to vertical integration, if necessary by mergers with other companies in this country. In other words, every possible encouragement should be given by the IDA and the Government to industries to establish their bases more securely in this country, to use Irish raw materials from the land, the mines and the seas and to ensure thereby a continuity of establishment which will put them on a firmer base to export to other countries.

As has been mentioned from time to time by all in this House, the greatest possible encouragement should be given to small industries, even to talented individuals—a man with an idea, with an initiative—to expand the manufacture of new and competitive products. Apart from the extra employment this policy will give, it will also encourage small industries with established local ties to remain on in good times and bad. I have often felt that perhaps we did not give enough encouragement to the local man, to the man running maybe a small back lane industry with lack of adequate finance, but a man with an idea who could get on and expand with the necessary capital. These people are now being encouraged; and even more encouragement should be given to them, because they are not the sort of people who are going to fold up shop and run away when times are bad. They are the people who will stay on. They have no foreign bosses 3,000 miles away who will instruct them to shut down the factory because an article can be manufactured cheaper in some other country. They are going to sit it out because their roots are in this country. They deserve every possible encouragement by the IDA. Incidentally, I was glad to see recently that that type of encouragement to small industries is now available to small entrepreneurs in any part of the country, which is as it should be.

Recently we have had some discussions on the respective merits or demerits, as the case may be, of labour intensive versus capital intensive industries. This, again, is a subject which could form a debate on its own and I do not propose to dwell at length on it here. I should just like to make a few points. Undoubtedly there are strong arguments in favour of assisting labour intensive industries, but we should be realistic about it. Over recent years it has been shown that the industries that have suffered most are labour intensive industries. Selectivity of this kind, while possibly successful in the short term, would defeat itself in the longer term. It is very hard to decide where the demarcation line should be between labour intensive industry and capital intensive industry. In this day and age when industrialists are trying to reduce their costs every effort is being made to install new plant and machinery to bring down unit costs.

Capital intensive industries in this country have, by and large, managed to survive in the current difficult conditions. The competition and the need to lower costs will force more and more industries to install equipment and plant to bring down their costs of production. We should not forget that capital intensive industries, particularly the larger ones, encourage the development of allied activities, such as service and transport industries, which give considerable employment in their own right. The ideal to be achieved is a proper balance between labour intensive and capital intensive industries. Priority should be given to industry as a whole, whether it be termed capital intensive or labour intensive, where adequate employment can be given in competitive and efficient industrial conditions.

In the years ahead we face an enormous task. I do not decry that for one moment and I accept the points made by Senators on the other side. It was intimated in a recent television programme, and I read about it in recent publications, that in order to achieve full employment we will need to be thinking in terms of providing some 30,000 new jobs per year. This is a vast task for our small country, when one thinks that these jobs in the main must come from manufacturing industry, as employment on the land is likely to continue to decline, although we hope at a lesser rate in the years ahead. Employment in the service industries is by international standards adequate or even high at present in this country.

It is therefore obvious, and I think it will be accepted on all sides, that our future policy to create jobs must be concentrated on manufacturing industry. But manufacturing industry cannot succeed until it, in turn, is efficient and competitive in a free trade area. Our market should not be the three million people of this small state. It should be aimed at the 250 million in the Continent of Europe, our partners in the EEC. It is one thing to aim at it and another thing to get a slice of it. This is the crunch of our problem. At present not alone are we not holding our share of our trade but it is actually declining due to high costs of production. In order to reverse this trend we must invest substantially in new plant and equipment. We can only do that if industry is allowed to make reasonable profits and if incentive is given to industry to re-invest those profits in new plant and equipment. Borrowing there will always be, but borrowing from abroad in particular can only be regarded as a temporary effort, or should only be so regarded. The ideal situation would be for industry to generate the type of capital required for reinvestment from its own resources. This should be the aim of both the Government and the Industrial Development Authority.

We need better management. We do have good management in this country. There are outstanding examples of highly efficient industries here, but there are unfortunately many examples of poor, ineffective or untrained management. We need good industrial relations, with the full co-operation of the trade unions. Above all, we need a better and keener attitude to work by all sectors of industry. We need, in addition, a realistic education system geared to our requirements as a small open-ended economy with lack of industrial tradition in many parts of the country. In essence what we need is a combined national effort in which each sector of the economy pulls and is seen to be pulling its weight.

To create the 30,000 jobs I mentioned earlier will cost something like £600 million a year. The greater part of this sum will have to be borrowed or generated by industry itself. It is therefore urgently necessary that industry be placed in a position to earn the necessary profits to reinvest the vast sum required. A combination of IDA initiative and assistance and private enterprise can produce the necessary jobs, but it will be a hard task calling for fairly shared sacrifices by every section of the community.

Dr. Browne

This Bill introduced by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Keating, is a very strange production, but it is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. When the Minister came into the House towards the end of the last session he said he was bringing another short Industrial Development Bill before the House. On that occasion he indicated that he proposed to introduce more comprehensive legislation later. The odd thing is that, in 1972, when the then Minister was introducing a similar Bill, he said exactly the same thing: that he would produce a comprehensive Bill, given time. Indeed, that drew from the then Deputy O'Leary the remark: "The Minister is only a messenger-boy" when in a three-page speech he asked for £100 million. Now we have a two-and-a-half to three-page speech and he is asking for £200 million. I think it is an extraordinary production by the Minister at a time when most of us, the lay man in the street and the politician, were never quite so frightened of the future, so unsure, so insecure.

Probably the most frightening institution in this very troubled island of ours, North and South—and this includes the paramilitary organisations —is the present National Coalition Government. We are all watching the news on television and radio and in the newspapers never quite sure what catastrophe is next to be unloaded on our already tormented minds as to the level of the state of disaster which they have blundered into in the last three years. In the context of that, with unemployment the way it is— 110,000 going to Heaven only knows what figure; most people accept 130,000, 150,000 or more—and with inflation quite uncontrolled, they give the impression of controlling it with all sorts of cut-backs designed to deal with these terribly serious problems. This Bill is clearly a very important and vital Bill. It is concerned, or should be concerned, exclusively with the question of providing employment and the Government's terms for doing that. But it does nothing of the kind. It gives exactly the same short memorandum: "I want £200 million. Please let me have it by return and no questions asked."

It is very strange that the Minister should behave like this because he is one of the few Minister in the Cabinet for whose intellectual and political skills I have considerable respect. Therefore it is particularly odd that he should do this. At the same time as he produced this very short Bill, he upbraided the Deputies in the other House. At column 1485, Volume 286, of the Dáil Official Report, he said:

I had thought that we might have developed a national debate about the other aspects and have got a national consensus so that the enacting of further developments of basic industrial policy would have been made easier but we did not have a serious debate on this Bill.

Why is the blaming the other Members of that House when quite obviously he has made no attempt at all in this speech to initiate a national debate on the important industrial questions in which we are involved at present, in order that we might have some idea of what this politician of certain skill thought should be the guidelines for our people in these very worrying months ahead of us?

One difficulty with the Minister, Deputy Keating, is that we do not really know what he believes. We know that at one stage he made some very rude remarks about monopoly capitalism. He said that capitalism has desecrated the whole of the undeveloped world through imperialism; that the leopard of capitalism had not changed its spots; that it had not suddenly become benevolent and altruistic. He said that people who believed that were too naïve to be given the leadership of any nation, particularly the leadership of a weak nation such as this, which was in desperate peril of its future and of its very existence. That was in 1970.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I take it the Senator is quoting? Will he please state the source?

Dr. Browne

I am quoting from a document called The Liaison Bulletin. That is an authentic quote. If the Minister were here I would be very glad to repeat it for him.

I am not attempting to score points off the Minister at this stage because I think the situation is dreadfully serious. We want to get at the truth, if we can at all. This is a man who quite clearly, in a cold, intellectual way, using the Swiss watch type of brilliant mind he has, came to this conclusion many years ago. As a serious and deeply-read Marxist, this was his conclusion about capitalism, and I share it; I have shared it for many years. We find him faced with this dilemma, this disastrous situation, as a key Minister, as one of the two serious politicians in this Coalition, the other being, in my view, the Taoiseach.

That is not an exaggeration. They are in debt to the sum of £1,000 million. They have spent money like a band of drunken sailors. There seems to be very little money left to spend. There is this terrible conseqential unemployment growing worse. He comes in with this three-page document as his blueprint for prosperity. It is an extremely conservative right-wing document, basing the whole approach to the re-establishment of prosperity here, the movement towards full employment, on monopoly capitalism, private enterprise capitalism. What has happened to Deputy Keating? Is he saying this is in order to please Fine Gael? Does he believe it? Is he convinced now about the IDA's capacity to create full employment or to deal with the existing unemployment position? Is he seriously intellectually convinced that this rubbish will solve our problems? Or is it simply a rather insolvent and impertinent smokescreen in a kind of dialectical game in which he is involved at present with the Fine Gael Party in the Coalition? Is he trying to put them off the scent? Does he still believe there is only one solution to our social and economic problems and that that is a socialist solution?

He is the Minister who spoke with remarkable eloquence and effect on the question of the Common Market. He forecast precisely this position: the disaster the EEC would mean for this country. He foretold how foolish the advocates of membership of the Common Market would look, that is the Members of the Fine Gael Party and the Fianna Fáil Party. In April, 1972, at col. 796, Vol. 260 of the Dáil Official Report, he said:

Time will tell whether our industry will be able to withstand this free trade. Personally, I am happy to be in the position of having been with others who oppose full membership of the Community and of having been one of those who sounded warning signals on this issue. My regret is that the public memory is so short because I believe the leaders of political and economic thought who declare us to be a developed economy, capable of withstanding this kind of free trade, will look very foolish indeed in five years' time. He was referring to the Taoiseach and his colleagues in the Government. That was 1972. He was a couple of years out. We will forgive him that. These are the colleagues he said are very naïve if they think that capitalism could be made to work and were very foolish for suggesting that Irish industry could survive if we joined the Common Market.

What does Deputy Keating really believe? Does he believe in these proposals he is putting before us? Has he undergone a sea change? Does he really believe in the IDA? Does he really believe we can make good within the EEC and that industry can be made to survive in competition with the enormous cartels of central and western Europe—the Belgians, West Germans, the French? Does he seriously believe that, having given us a list of the most cogent and compelling arguments against the likelihood of this being so?

I do not know how many of the Senators have troubled to read this IDA report. Did Senator Russell read the IDA report? Phenomenal sums of money have been paid out through the IDA. The 1970-74 Review of the Industrial Development Authority Ireland contained in their Annual Report, December, 1974, states:

The IDA from the start established a planning framework for its activities and has continually refined this framework in the intervening years.

The main features of this approach are as follows:

(1) Identifying the economic and social needs both at national and regional level which industrial development must aim to meet and setting objectives and targets consistent with meeting these needs.

Does the Minister seriously believe that the IDA have taken that particular bromide seriously since the State was formed and since their formation? Presumably, the economic and social needs of the community would have been to provide us with enough money for care of old people and so on. Do they believe this? This is the great conflict. Is industry simply an organisation to make profits for the few or is it to create enough wealth, as we socialists would say, for the community as a whole and ensure that they have a high standard of living? This is what I should like the Minister to explain to the House.

Have the IDA organised industry so that we could provide a high level of social care for old people, disabled people; a high standard of care in our health services; a high standard of care in relation to education; a high level of housing and supplying the housing needs of our people; provide for—this last letdown by the Government—equal pay for everyone, no kind of apartheid in relation to male and female within industry? Have they done that? Does the Minister seriously believe that the IDA can do that and will do it? These are questions which should be asked. Is this pious aspiration worth the paper it is written on? Has it any meaning or validity? I do not think so.

The IDA have been operating up to very recently within the situation in which an in-built platform of all parties—the two major parties at any rate—was continued emigration, approximately 50,000 emigrating every year. This, of course, relieved the pressure on employment. Therefore, the IDA were working towards a very restricted objective, they were really not applying themselves to the total unemployment or new employment needs in our community because of continuous emigration, which has now ended primarily on account of the great collapse of the British economy. This creates a completely new situation for the IDA which, in the years December, 1969, to December, 1974, provided the country with a net growth of 5,500 new jobs. It is the one chink appearing in the otherwise wildly euphoric PRO job, which is this report. This may appear disappointing, and it is. It is clear, however, that without the substantial flow of jobs mainly deriving from IDA approved home and overseas projects there would have been a severe constriction of the manufacturing workforce in that period.

Having unloaded heaven only knows how many people on the emigrant market, 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 a year at the time, they still did not provide the country with anything like full employment or the wealth to make any significant improvement in comparing it to other Western European countries in the social infrastructure in our society. After the years of activity of the IDA the Economic and Social Research Institute survey of industry in October showed that 71 per cent of firms—this is the wonderful industrial arm of the whole job-creating and money-making activity of the State— reported production at present to be the same or lower than in previous months. Eighty per cent of the firms saw no improvement in production in the months ahead. Ninety-three per cent of the firms saw no improvement in orders. Ninety-four per cent of the firms saw no improvement in employment. Thirty-two per cent forecast an active fall, while only 6 per cent predicted a rise in employment.

It is very difficult to add to the load of woe which everyone has had to sustain in recent weeks and months, but surely these facts are a particularly grim foretaste of what will happen to Irish industry in the weeks and months ahead. As a panacea for that disastrous kind of information from Irish industry we receive this silly little inconsequential three-page document from an important development Minister, the Minister for Industry and Commerce—a Labour Minister, too.

There is a peculiar finding in the psychiatry courts, belle indifference, which is found in people who are hysterical. What happens is that they tell you terrifying things about themselves, that they will kill themselves, their mothers or fathers or whatever it may be, and at the same time they sit looking at you with this quiet smile on their faces. Obviously, what they are telling you does not relate at all to what is actually happening. One is really reminded of this kind of condition when one listens to the important Ministers such as Deputy Keating and the Taoiseach. They seem to be totally remote as if there was a thick plate glass window between them and reality. Then we have the absurd proposals from all sides starting with the CII and the Federation of Manufacturers, with each of the Ministers saying that the real solution to the problem will be either not to give equal pay or to have a wage freeze, when there is an urgent need to try to adapt this particular body in a way that will make it work and make it do the job it certainly has not done up to the present time.

One of the strangest things about our society over the last 50 years is that the infantile faith that private enterprise capitalism gives us freedom to operate as we wish and we will create enormous areas of prosperity. I was interested to hear Senator Russell talking about the early days of Irish industries and the inevitable fact that they had to be secondary industries, subsidiaries of foreign industries and so on. But that was not true. The whole basis of Irish industry should have been the then raw material—not to speak of the present wonderful ones—of land, labour and capital, with the best climate in western Europe. I remember reading in an emigration report of a New Zealander talking about the grasslands and saying that how wonderful they would be if they were properly developed. Irish industry should have been based on agricultural food processing industries. People are now talking about the cattle industry and the chemical industry that can be based on cattle and the raw materials for many other industries. Instead of that cattle are all exported on the hoof. We had the primary resources at that time and they were not used. We exported them to other countries, as we now propose to do with our zinc, lead and copper, and then we bought back the wool and leather products.

The whole process of Irish industry since the State was formed has been particularly and consistently inept. The development of the motor car industry, an absurd industry for our society, is now one of the greatest devourers of one of the most expensive of our imports, oil and petrol, as well as absorbing an enormous hire purchase debt—a useless non-productive outlay of money. I am not saying that they should be closed down, but I am sorry for the men and women who work in these industries which are obviously now in the greatest jeopardy when one looks at the position in Great Britain in the Leyland and the Chrysler works. What is going to happen to ours here? There is a dreadful insecurity in working in those kinds of jobs.

The IDA have done nothing significant to change these conditions or reorientate in any significant way this insistence on our acceptance of our role as primary producer in relation to agriculture and fishery, and then, of course, in relation to mining—zinc, lead, gas and oil. This is where the Labour Party Minister, Deputy Keating, has failed so dismally and shamefully. It could be said that his predecessors did not have the same access to the same capital or expert knowledge or technical information. He has all of these things and for some inexplicable reason—I do not understand it and I would have liked, if he were here, to have asked him—he chooses to stay silent on the complete inanity of the proposals included in his three-page Bill and to rely on faith in the IDA to get us out of this very serious economic situation.

As regards faith in private enterprise —and we had it here from Senator Russell—I do not understand these people because they protest their independence and insistence on their continued independence. They do not want any Government interference. We have heard that down through the years: "We want to run our own businesses our own way and we will be better off that way". Yet we see this £100 million from the EEC and this new £200 million. Incidentally, the Minister refers to this small Bill asking for an increase in potential of £200 million, and yet they are lucky if they get £100 million from the new EEC loan, and he calls that a small Bill. He does not bother to really deal with the implications of this new increase in the loan capacity. This money will go to provide grants for industry; it will go to build factories for these industrialists, £10 million went on the last lot; it will go to re-equip and modernise machinery, presumably; it will go on rescue activity; it will go for grants for product and processing development; they will be told to get on with modernising their methods, improving their output; it will go on joint venture programmes—the Irish taking some share in overseas ventures of one kind or another; it will go on establishing overseas industry; it will go on grants under the European Social Fund. If this money is needed and if all this help is needed, where does private enterprise come in? Surely this is public enterprise? We are footing the bill and they take the profit.

We always hear at budget time: "We must have a reduction in taxes as an incentive to increasing production", while they ask for a wage standstill at the same time. But I always understood that the reason a high level of profits was looked for was so that they could expand their industries, modernise industries, train management, train apprentices, train new staff, enter into negotiations for deals with other countries outside Ireland. It seems to me that what we do is we provide this money to provide these free industries for these industrialists and that they do very little else except take great profits out of them. For instance, the IDA paid £13 million approximately to Ferenka which, I understand, is in very serious financial difficulties at the present time.

However, that is not my point. We paid £13 million approximately to Ferenka and we own only 7 per cent of the shares. Why in the name of heavens do we hand away all that money to a foreign-based company, which is not apparently very successful, and have no control whatever beyond this minority shareholding? We have another firm called Snia in Sligo into which we put £7 million in 20 per cent shares. I understand that the total shareholding of the IDA is £1.2 million in a £100 million investment; those are approximate figures. Surely that is absurd, not to exercise control of the operation of these industries if we put so much public money into them.

The Minister, Deputy Keating, knows as well as I do that the driving force in private enterprise is simply the driving force of making profits. They have no social interest at all. They do not care what the old age pension is or how sick people get looked after or whether working class children get a good education beyond an education in a technical college in order to run their machines for them. You can see that now, the way they have stopped investing in Irish industry because the profits are falling. They do not care what happens to the country as long as they do not get hurt in the process. Yet the Minister is implementing what are blatantly conservative Fine Gael policies here without any labour socialist content in them at all, in spite of the fact that at the most recent conference the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and various other unions, moved a resolution that the greatest State control be asserted over the development of our natural resources in the process of industrialisation. Many of these recommendations were by his own party, by his own union. What is the quid pro quo of the Labour membership of the national Coalition. What are we getting out of it—108,000 unemployed, 130,000, 150,000, inflation and a wage standstill and no equal pay for men and women? That is all perfectly reasonable Fine Gael doctrine. I know that dogma. This is common form over the years. They have never believed in anything else, but this is not Labour Party policy and never was.

I am not blaming the Fine Gael people for getting these things for themselves. That is their business. I am blaming the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who is a member of the Labour Party, not only for the rubbish that he is talking now about the likelihood of our survival within the EEC and the likelihood of private enterprise capitalism solving our problems, but of the fact that he and his Labour Party colleagues are silent within the Fine Gael Coalition about these problems which we should now be talking about. They should all be giving the same kind of advice to the people that I am trying to do here and outside just at this very critical time in our history. Nobody in his senses the most infantile illiterate, seriously believes that this Government are going to solve our social and economic problems.

I said the other night that this is a completely new situation. I referred the other night to the new development, the new OPEC-type development in relation to all the other raw materials of industry, manganese, copper, iron ore, phosphates, all these other very important materials. You cannot run industry without them. They are all going to escalate too in price because of various cartels which are being developed among these countries. This is a totally new situation altogether. These old strategems, which never worked anyway even when things were easy to operate, will not solve our problems. Nobody knows that better than the Minister, Deputy Keating, because, as I say, he is a man who has given a lot of thought to and worked very hard at this whole study of the operation of politics and the conflict between capitalism and socialism, labour.

This Bill, this three-page document, makes no attempt whatever to introduce some measure of Government planning. In this three-page document there is no reference whatever to a factor to which the Minister, Deputy Keating, used to refer so frequently when he was a Deputy and when I heard him on many occasions frequently ridicule the then Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, for his failure to see that one must have a strong public sector in any economy such as ours. In April, 1972, he said:

In fact we are such a tiny and open economy that if you decide to run it without a strong public sector, if you decide to run it in a laissez faire way as we have been doing, there is little that you can do in regard to most of the significant factors.

There was very much more on those lines, ridiculing the then Fianna Fáil Government's failure to do anything about their laissez faire policies. Yet there is not a single word about the Government taking over any kind of control whatever of this seriously ailing economy.

Again, on the same occasion, Deputy Keating, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, said:

The sort of efforts at planning and at trying to direct and organise growth in our economy and to move towards fuller employment that were respectable in the early sixties now seem totally abondoned and we seem to be responding to the shortest of short-term situation and to have no strategy and no planning at all.

Is it not fair comment to say that this document concerned with the future of employment in our country has no reference whatever to a strategy for planning, a strategy for the introduction of a strong public sector?

What has happened to Deputy Keating? This is the question that keeps coming back to me. Is he on your side of the House or ours? Has he sold out, or is he playing some kind of long-term trick and later on will he surface again as the serious socialist that I once knew him to be? He defended the failure to build the new ships for Irish Shipping in Haulbowline by saying that the Japanese were so much more ready for this kind of thing than we were. As far as shipbuilding is concerned, we should look after our own people in Cork before we consider anybody else. One of the most important steps that one could take is to look to the next shipyard in Ireland which could benefit fellow-Irishmen. If Cork shipyard could not handle a job of this size, what about Belfast? The Government does not seem to include that as part of the country at all. These are the kind of worthwhile gesture which I feel would be of help in dealing with the great differences between us.

Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary in his reply could give us some explanation for the brevity of his own contribution and the contradiction between his suggestion that we should have a serious debate on the industrial structure of our society and his refusal to engage in that debate himself. There are three main areas in which the Government should involve themselves. I have no trust whatever in the IDA, as presently constituted. I do not believe that they see their job as concerning itself with the total national interest in the broad sense I outlined earlier. The Government should, in considering the question of serious industrialisation, have the three main bases in mind. The first is the base of agriculture, of exporting nothing that is not fully and finally processed. We are a primary producer. The suggestion made by Senator Russell that we have to have industries based on subsidiaries of foreign countries is completely false. We always could have been the primary producer in relation to agriculture and fishing. We heard last night on the "7 Days' " programme that we fish 10 per cent of the potential of our seas around our coasts. I remember well 25 years ago, when I raised this matter with Mr. Dillon, apparently the big impediment was the fact that there were 7,000 inshore fishermen. That was a big lobby then, the preventative to developing a serious trawler fleet. Based on the trawler fleet could be the canning and tinned food industry. We import enormous amounts of fish, exporting most of ours in a raw state. This is squandering our assets in the most irresponsible way and it has gone on. The Minister is in office nearly three years. He had time to do something about it. He should have done something about it. If he could not do anything about it because of the conservative intransigence of the Fine Gael Party, then he should resign. He should not give them the respectability of the Labour component of the present Coalition. He makes the case always that Labour did not get a majority and therefore cannot implement his policies, but neither did Fine Gael get a majority and yet we are implementing their policies. Why do we have their policies and not Labour Party policies? If it is a fact that he cannot get his policies implemented, then he should resign and let us go to the people and tell them that there can be no solution. Surely that should be clear to everybody by now. How long have we to wait? Until we have 200,000 unemployed? Hunger, poverty and our already depressed standard of living—the lowest in Western Europe—is obviously going down very rapidly under this new proposal for a wage freeze if the unions accept it.

Then there is the third matter of raw materials to which the Minister made no reference at all. The magnificent raw materials which I have been speaking about now for about five years—mining, zinc, lead, copper, too, but zinc and lead particularly—what an enormously wealthy country we are now. There is no need at all for the béal bocht put on by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce. For our size, for our population, we are probably the wealthiest country in the world now. Let the Minister refute that if he wants to. Instead of using the raw materials or, in introducing this Bill, taking the opportunity of saying: "We are going to use our raw materials and in order to do that we are going to build two smelters. Our riches are so enormous apparently that we are going to need two smelters, not one. The downstream industries are a product of these smelters. We would be like some of the middle eastern States then"— instead of that the Parliamentary Secretary is haggling with the problem as all the successive Dublin Governments have done for the last 50 years.

On the Labour component in the Coalition Government, but particularly on the Minister for Industry and Commerce—as I say, Deputy Keating is an erudite politician—there is a very big responsibility. If he allows this terrible development towards a massive attack on all fronts on the living standards of the workers which is involved in the wage freeze, plus the feeding into the economy of increased prices for posts and telegraphs, transport, oil, petrol and the various other proposals which they have in mind, it must lead to a very serious depression in the standard of living. The CII report the other day showed that a man, with two children, unemployed for nine months has already dropped his living standards by 50 per cent. That is a terrible drop in living standards. People on fixed incomes and pension rates dropped by 25 per cent. People can be asked to make sacrifices in time of war or in time of famine or great natural calamity, but this is so unnecessary. Knowing that he is very conservative, I remember asking the Taoiseach—when he was, I think, Minister for Finance—why he allowed this situation to remain when we had this enormous amount of raw materials and great wealth, and asking if we were going to export it and then buy it back at prices fixed by some foreign cartel.

I very much regret not having the opportunity of presenting the Minister with his own comments on industrial organisation in the past. The Minister is now saying that unemployment will rise unless we have some sort of wage freeze and so on.

And there are many detriments in inflation. I am not suggesting that higher wages are not one, but what I am saying is that anyone who says it is the only one is simply a liar.

That statement is in Volume 262, column 1871, of the Official Report of 13th July, 1972. There are many more quotations of that kind, quite offensive quotations from Deputy Keating, who is not usually offensive, deriding the naïvete and innocence of the then Taoiseach for suggesting that the workers were the cause of the trouble. Then it was not a wage freeze, but rather a wage rise which they did not think was high enough. The situation now is much worse. The Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Taoiseach are looking for something quite different— a wage freeze and so on.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce is faced with what is undoubtedly a terribly serious situation. It is a situation which has developed progressively and which quite obviously has been influenced by the oil prices. One of the questions that has occurred to me is why we did not introduce oil rationing. I know it sounds terrible but there is a war on—a war for people's living standards. There should be petrol rationing as if in war time. It is such a costly raw material for such a useless exercise—driving around in motor cars. Are all of these kind of devices, which could probably be had in a socialist-organised State, forbidden to the Minister for Industry and Commerce? It may interest the House to know that the Minister for Industry and Commerce has produced this three-page document and this absured reliance on the IDA which have so failed the country up to now, while at the same time he is mandated by his own conscience to call for—the most recent one—"complete public ownership, control and development of all our resources: the planning and development of downstream industries for metals and gas oil processing; all direct and indirect servicing of these industries to be undertaken by Irish personnel; demands that two production platforms for the State-owned gas field off Kinsale be built in Ireland." Whose side is he on? What is there in this National Coalition for the Labour Party and for those unfortunate people throughout the country who have the faith in us to vote and support us?

Mr. Ferris

I am not surprised that Members of the Opposition have used the opportunity provided by this Bill to make anti-Coalition speeches. However, some remarks were made, particularly by Senator Dolan, to which I object. I should like to put the record straight. He made a sweeping, unfounded attack on union leadership. It was unwise in the present economic situation. If it got publicity abroad it might create the impression in industrialists' minds that industrial relations in Ireland are chaotic. In view of the efforts of the trade union movement to deal with wildcat strikes and unofficial stoppages, which none of us condone, to say they have not control of the situation is most dangerous. We are not living in a Communist dictatorship. When a situation like this arises we must deal with it in a humane manner by negotiation and not work the "big stick", which has been tried here before by other administrations and which is never effective.

Senator Browne deals with the problem in isolation, as if Ireland were a little island around which we had built a little wall and we were living in a situation in which we could develop completely on our own without help from any Industrial Development Authority or help from abroad. He dealt with factories like Ferenka which are in production already in this country. He pointed to the level of IDA investment in Ferenka. He ignored the amount of employment that was generated—industrial employment in the Limerick area—and the tremendous wage packets being paid by Ferenka. Any industrial development stimulated by the IDA has had a tremendous impact on rural areas. Any investment the IDA can put into an area which will attract industrialists from any country, America or otherwise, must be welcomed by all sides of the House.

The Opposition say they do not wish to oppose this Bill and they talk about the economic crisis we are in. Surely the setting up of new industries and the resulting new jobs will help towards alleviating our present economic crisis. New jobs are the responsibility of the IDA. Their records from 1970-1974 of 38,500 projected jobs at full production is a fair indication of their progress to date. This is something the IDA should be proud of.

In a wider field the IDA are not confined to industrialisation in Ireland or assisting people to set up new industries, small or big. They have a broader policy of development with industrialists from overseas. I saw recently in America the hard work that the IDA team there have put into the task of encouraging foreign industrialists to come to Ireland. In view of the worldwide economic crisis this task is now very difficult. I was very impressed at the calibre of the IDA team, all Irish lads. I was proud of them. They are excellent ambassadors of Ireland in America. With their help Ireland will become industrialised.

Senator Dolan mentioned pollution and I agree with him that objectors can frighten away industrialists. People have their constitutional right to object to what they believe will spoil the area they live in. They did that in Tipperary. But they can intimidate industrialists intending to come to the country. Statements that the trade unions have lost control of their members, or the actions of people who go too far in their objections and do not accept recommendations from the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, can create animosity in the minds of industrialists who are then dissuaded from coming here. They go to Puerto Rico or elsewhere to set up their industries. I am pleased to say that, with the withdrawal of the objections in Tipperary and with the assistance of the IDA and the county-development team, my area will benefit from the new industry which is about to come on stream now as well as from the 1,000 new jobs in the construction of the new industry. This will mean £100,000 a week in salaries and wages for workers in the construction and £50,000 a week in industrial wages when the factory is in production. This is what the IDA means to the ordinary people in rural Ireland.

I wish that Senator Browne would look at that aspect of it and not just the narrow, ideological aspect concerning what particular Ministers can or cannot do in economic situations. What is important is what the IDA can do for us at this particular time. This is not a blueprint for prosperity. This is a Bill to enable the IDA to continue their excellent work. Through their efforts I look forward to assistance for small industries in Ireland, assistance for any clean and pollution-free industry which will have the added advantage now of being able to export to the Common Market. I would welcome at some future date, as has been promised in the speech by the Parliamentary Secretary, an opportunity for a full discussion on industrial development in Ireland.

Mr. O'Toole

First, I should like to welcome this Bill. Senator Noel Browne has referred to the three-page document as a demand for payment of £200 million. I listened to him attentively and I heard a dissertion on his own unique ideology, his own unique form of socialism.

This is a very important Bill because it ultimately deals with people and the lives of people. It is being introduced to provide the means by which people will live in the not too distant future. The provision of jobs has direct economic consequences. There are also the social and educational aspects which are the broader issues involved. We often seem to overlook the broader aspects of employment and industry and the way they should be approached.

Anybody conversant with current IDA thinking must welcome that body's new approach. They have stated that their new initiative will be directed towards giving assistance to Irish industries where they find them viable and in a healthy state. In the IDA News Sheet of December, 1975, they have outlined broadly the three main aspects of Irish industry at which they are looking at present:

(1) the spin-off opportunities to supply goods to the growing population of new industrial concerns creating manufacturing facilities in Ireland as well as in many Irish firms expanding their production capacities;

(2) the industrial construction sector where activity is currently pitched at a high level mainly because of the national industrial development programme;

(3) the general area of import substitution.

They go on to give figures for the past ten years. The figure in the case of import substitutions has been quadrupled. This is a very welcome trend.

The idea has been abroad for many years that in order to get a grant from the IDA you must speak with either a Continental or an American accent. This of course is not so. The position that has obtained heretofore is that there was a concentration of effort on promotions abroad to induce foreign industrialists to come here with foreign capital. The consequence of that has been that we have a much higher proportion of IDA money involved in the assistance of foreign industrialists than is involved in the assistance of Irish industrialists. Economists tell us that this approach is the proper approach, and has been in the past in the financial climate then obtaining But now that we have reached a certain stage in our development it is seen to be the correct approach to turn to our home industries and our Irish industrialists and see what can be done for those people who have viable projects on hand and who are prepared to look to the future with confidence and expand their projects and, therefore, expand their exports.

Debate adjourned.

The Seanad adjourned at 10 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 18th December, 1975.

Seanad Éireann debate - Wednesday, 17 Dec 1975