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Seanad Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 22 Mar 1977

Vol. 86 No. 5

Bula Limited (Acquisition of Shares) Bill, 1977: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I should like to make a number of comments on the Bill and, in particular, on the Minister's speech which, in some respects, ranged wider over the issue than the actual contents of the Bill. We should bear in mind the kind of publicity that has emerged in the debate in the other House with regard to the spirited and very dynamic opposition of the Fianna Fáil Party and, in particular, of their spokesman on Industry and Commerce. It comes very ill from that party which devoted so much parliamentary time three years ago, in the defence of private capital interests here, to adopt the line they are now adopting with regard to this Bill. Their opposition, at best, can be seen as being totally opportunistic and nonconstructive both with regard to the workings of the development of our natural resources and to the interests which it would appear they represent from time to time. I refer specifically to private business interests. That party has more coherently defended the interests of private companies in the past. Their attitude, and the attitude Senator Ryan adopted today, indicated a very clever argument of the minutiae of this Bill and cleverly avoided the implications of what they were saying.

We had that from a party that had been in power for more than 30 years and left us in the situation in 1973 that only 40 per cent of our mineral rights only were owned by the State, that another 25 per cent were in possible ownership and that 35 per cent were privately owned. This was the situation which was inherited then and one which was upheld, presumably, by the 1936 Constitution. That is more evidence which suggests that that Constitution badly needs to be scrapped and replaced with one that represents Ireland's needs and interests in this age. That is the first point.

The arguments made elsewhere and to an extent made today are arguments which do not give any real substance of criticism to this Bill and should be seen as such. The precise situation the Minister for Industry and Commerce inherited with regard to the Tara and Bula mines was an extraordinary complicated and messy one, and the Minister in his opening speech adequately described that. It comes extraordinarily ill now from the opponents of this Bill to be criticising someone who has to all intents and purposes extracted the best possible deal from a mess which was largely of their own creation. It is ironic that the memory of people in this House is so short that they seem to forget that situation.

It is fortunate that Senator Lenihan is not here today to argue against the Bill and to argue against an increase in the State's take of our natural resources, because I have a distinct recollection of seeing him in a photograph taken outside Kildare Street leading miners from the Tynagh mines who were objecting to a small increase, comparatively speaking, in the taxation of our mineral resources. I am annoyed that Fianna Fáil should appear to adopt a position of constructive opposition when, in fact, their attitude today and in the other House to this measure is both opportunistic and very destructive. In addition, I find this attitude totally contradictory, because what is at base in this Bill and what I consider to be the core of it is not so much the acquisition of this body of shares in the form proposed and under the agreement referred to but whether the Government, composed of Fine Gael and Labour, can propose to develop our natural resources in some form of positive and trusted partnership with other parties, private individuals in the State or foreign concerns.

Fianna Fáil have displayed a concern for private company interests in a real sense and for private individual interests in a substantial sense when they opposed bitterly the capital taxation programme introduced by the Government more than two years ago. They now appear to be attacking the interests they sought to defend two or three years ago in demanding that the agreements between the State and the private sector in this instance be subject not to scrutiny but hauled and dragged before the full debate of this Chamber in a way that would inhibit and prevent any private investor or private company from attempting to participate in a deal or partnership with the Government. I find Fianna Fáil's concern with the private company and private interests, as expressed in the past, to be totally at variance with their insistence that this kind of deal should be made public in this and the other House of the Oireachtas.

It is all the more contradictory and opportunistic when one considers that the numerous deals of State involvement through the IDA and Government support of one kind or another with private companies, foreign and Irish owned, were never made public when Fianna Fáil were in Government. What is before us is a very cynical type of opposition by Fianna Fáil, and it should be seen as such. They have contributed nothing but very minute and skilfully argued legal points in the debate in the other House and, indeed, a very professional, financial, legal contribution offered by Senator Ryan today. They did not tell us on any occasion or in any way how the benefits of those resources could be translated into positive benefits for our people. To that extent they are failing totally in their role as an Opposition, just as they failed in their role as a Government when in office. One needs to clarify the position with regard to the contribution of Fianna Fáil in this regard.

I want now to talk about a matter the Minister raised in his opening speech, the question of our relationship with the multi-nationals and the position of the State with regard to the development of our natural resources. He was correct in using the Bula and Tara mines position to set up some kind of framework and climate to encourage foreign interest to prospect for substantial deposits which we are given to understand may exist off our Continental Shelf. He was right to encourage foreign interests to explore for that kind of mineral resource. No contrary arguments has satisfied me that the State should undertake that exploration. I read with interest most of the publications issued by those responsible for the resources protection campaign, a group who have done an extraordinary good job in raising the consciousness of our people to the potential value of natural resources and to develop our awareness of how significant those resources could be in our economy. Their detailed criticism of participation or involvement at the exploration stage for mineral resources, particularly with regard to offshore mineral resources, are not substantial enough to allow me to be swayed by them.

The issue of confidentiality was raised during the debate in the Dáil. On this whole question of setting up a positive framework in which companies will be prepared to sink millions of pounds, in some cases into dry holes, off the west coast looking for oil we have to realise that if we get that climate wrong and do not give the kind of encouragement needed—we are certainly not going to have the political courage or will in this House or indeed in the other House to finance the exploration ourselves, offset against the very pressing social needs we have—we will lose ourselves in the sort of sidetrack argument Senator Ryan displayed today and Deputy O'Malley displayed in the other House with consummate skill.

I should like to take issue with the Minister in one regard, where he was talking about partnership in general and the role of the State. I accept that in the initial stages the State does not have the expertise to develop our natural resources automatically; we do not have it within our direct experience. But, by the same argument, neither did we have it with regard to the setting up of Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna or any State company. By the same argument, neither does Bula have that expertise.

However, it is difficult to argue about a rational policy for the exploration and development of natural resources on the Bula case because of the legal mess inherited by the Government and the necessity to establish a climate at a time when the prospecting licences had to be drafted. Taking the Minister's lead in his speech, his statement to the effect that he was not much in favour of a State company is one I would not agree with, if I interpret him correctly. I would like him to see the development over a short period of time of a State mineral corporation. As soon as we can acquire the expertise, either by direct experience from minority partnerships in such companies as Bula or Tara, I think the objective of the Government should be a State mineral corporation.

The Labour Party would be in favour of such a development. Unfortunately for us—and Labour Party members frequently have to be reminded of the fact—we do not have a Labour Government, we have a Coalition Government. As a member of a political party, many of the things you would like to have you cannot have. However, you can have a lot of what you would like. With regard to natural resources, I think the increase in the State take from under 10 per cent up to just 70 per cent is going very rapidly along the road to getting most of what I would want. We are not the only party without a full share of government. Helmut Schmidt in Germany does not have a Social Democratic federal Government; he has a coalition Government. So on throughout the west of Europe. The arguments thrown frequently at people like myself and others are that this is not Labour Party policy or is falling short of Labour Party policy. These arguments are made by people who fail to realise that we do not have a Labour Government and that we are attempting to get what we can. What the Minister has correctly gone for is the maximum available take, given the constraints both politically and financially. To that extent I support the Minister and I think in this instance he has done a very good job. What I would not like to see—and I would like him to clarify it in his reply—is the ruling out that our take would end at 70 per cent for all time, because the demands that the growth of the Irish population will make over the next ten to 15 years, as I have said before in debates in this House, will be so enormous that we will need every penny we can get.

On Committee Stage we will have time to look at some of the details of the various provisions and to hear the Minister expand his own views with regard to the necessity for confidentiality on this agreement. His views, having been expressed elsewhere, presumably remain constant so one can comment on them to that extent now. I would like him in his reply to address himself to this question of whether he feels, if this measure is enacted and if the company can start production quickly, that the benefit of between £25 million and £30 million he was talking about can be realised within the foreseeable future and if he would care to put a date on that foreseeable future. Certainly at the end of the day that is what all of us are really interested in—just what the take is going to be and how soon we can get it. Because the Minister has indicated a certain sense of urgency about this whole measure, I would ask him to point out just what the delivery date is, because this would make sense of that urgency.

In his opening speech the Minister made very deliberate reference to the whole framework of exploration for natural resources in our society. I would like him to say how he feels now about the prospects for exploration as a result of this measure coming into law and how critical the passing of this measure would be. We are being asked to take something on faith —there is no doubt about that. That is not without precedent. While taking the Bill on faith will not necessarily be any more difficult, it certainly would be much easier if we could get the Minister's assessment and assurances in regard to those aspects on which I have asked questions.

I am seeking, in effect, to get some kind of indication or assurance, without wishing in any way to breach the confidentiality of the agreement about the development by Bula of this resource and the manner in which it will be developed. I am also seeking assurances about the relationship of the Oireachtas to a company in which the Minister will be a 49 per cent shareholder.

I will start with the agreement and its reference to planning permission in some shape or form. On the basis of the figures given to us and the extraction rate proposed in the Minister's speech this resource will last for something in the region of 15 to 20 years— a very short time in environment terms. As an architect planner and someone who has a professional understanding of the environment, I am very anxious about how it is mined from an open-cast point of view. The way in which it is maintained during that process is very important. Otherwise, the amount of local blight that could be generated in a particularly dry summer, such as the one we had last year, could cause problems for the surrounding countryside. These are potential problems. Assurances would need to be sought by the State and by the Minister as a major shareholder in this company, irrespective of whatever considerations the local authority may seek to impose on it as a responsible developer of a natural resource.,

We cannot, in this case, use the practices that were used by opencast private mineral owners both in Europe and North America—I am thinking in particular of West Virginia where the devastation caused by open-cast mining on the environment was pretty savage in some areas. These are considerations which are legitimate and to which some attention would need to be paid at an early stage. The cost—conservation does cost money— would have to be properly assessed and allocated in a way that would not penalise the taxpayer or our take of the value of the resource. The value of the resource must be a gross value which will include the proper restoration of the countryside and not have it taken off our 70 per cent as a sort of additional charge after the ore has been extracted. I make that comment at this stage because one cannot refer specifically to that kind of point on Committee Stage.

The question of planning permission is a critical one. It is critical in regard to that alone and in regard to the diversion of the Blackwater. The resource of natural water fishing which we have, and the Blackwater is prominent in that, is similarly something that is increasingly an extremely scarce and finite resource whose life is much longer than the 20 years of the orebody, but whose value, obviously, is not anything like it. Value in finite resources is something that alters dramatically and quickly. Who can say that in 15 to 20 or 40 years' time a non-polluted and clear Blackwater could not be an extraordinarily fine resource in a highly urbanised part of Western Europe? The value and the restoration and the conservation of these resources must be built in at the beginning of the costings and not taken off the top, as is frequently done by private developers and private speculators. In other words, the community is penalised rather than compensated for this interference with the environment.

I am not sanctimonious about the environment, nor am I frightened by it. I believe that the environment is there to be exploited positively and rationally by mankind for the enrichment of humanity. I think we can do it in an intelligent and scientific way rather than simply ravaging it. We have enough knowledge now of the biological systems that go to make up the complex national environment to enable us to do it without doing the sort of damage that we do. I am very anxious that the Irish taxpayer does not have to pay for it. That is simply my point and I would trust that it is well and truly sewn into the relative sections of both the agreements and the policy, not just of Bula but indeed of Tara Mines as well.

The second point,—and I wish to conclude on this as I know there are other speakers—is the question of the smelter and Bula's commitment to making mineral ores available to the smelter. There is a lot of concerned contribution to the debate on natural resources in this country and there is a lot of ill-informed comment on natural resources. I do not profess to be an expert on natural resources or, indeed, on their potential, but one does not have to be an expert to realise that the multiplier effect of added value which the smelter would bring and which downstream industries could apply to the value of that £700 million orebody would be dramatic and very substantial. The real benefit of Bula will be multiplied in a geometric fashion if we can get the smelter.

A number of things become critical with the coming of a smelter into a country which has an orebody whose life expectancy is of that duration— the size of the smelter, the rate of extraction of the combined body. Certainly in both the agreements with Tara and with Bula the Government must have the right to review at a later stage, which I think is critical. I am very much against the idea of being locked into an agreement out of which we cannot come without very heavy penalties but we should be capable of being able to review rates of extraction and all of these things in order to maximise the benefit, depending on the fluctuation in the price of the asset and particularly in regard to setting up a smelter and the things related to it.

You cannot talk briefly about the Bula Bill in isolation because the measures are so minute and so particular. They generate so many implications and so many considerations that one's attitude to the Bill is coloured totally by one's attitude to the necessity to develop natural resources in our society. I found that the detailed legal opposition the Fianna Fáil Party put forward to this measure —and the skill with which they presented it—is remarkable, simply because they had failed in all of this to demonstrate how they would develop natural resources in our society. To that extent they, as a major party, are, in my view, indicted. I should like to hear the Fianna Fáil Party present their arguments as to how they developed our natural mineral resources in the past and how they would seek to have this done in the future.

The suggestion that the £9 million should be invested back into the company makes a lot of sense provided you do not actually own the rights to the mineral ore that lies below the body of the ground. If anybody can claim responsibility for allowing the state of affairs to exist in 1973 or in 1970 that only 40 per cent of the mineral resources in this country were actually owned by the people of Ireland, it is the Fianna Fáil Party that can claim credit for that fantastic piece of republican development. To that extent we simply cannot tear up a Constitution and deprive people of property rights which have been conferred upon them.

I should like the Minister to clarify the necessity for this kind of an agreement and say what he feels about the prospects for exploration of other mineral resources in our Continental Shelf and within our own physical land territory. I should like him to address himself to some of the points that have been raised with regard to the planning permission, the open-cast mining, the Blackwater diversion and the smelter.

I should like to make a few observations on this Bill and I should particularly like to comment on some remarks made by the previous speaker. It was interesting to note his apologetic defence of the Minister's behaviour in his dealing with Bula and the grave dissatisfaction that he expressed with coalition Government.

I should also like to mention an article published in The Irish Press on March 21st which includes what can be described as a bit of Tara-bashing by the chief executive of Bula. He did, in effect, say that there was a tunnel danger to workers and this was subsequently denied by the chief executive of Tara. What concerns me and concerns this House is that the Minister is a shareholder in both companies and there is some conflict. What does he propose to do about it? It is rumoured—I cannot say if this is fact—that the Minister's nominee on both boards will be the same person. That may or may not be true. The Minister is the only one who can deal with that. It is certainly an unhappy position. The Minister is a shareholder in both companies and we have this bit of bashing going on by the chief executive of Bula and the charges then being denied by the chief executive of Tara. If the Minister wishes, of course, I can quote. The statement of the chief executive of Bula was made in The Sunday Times and was subsequently denied, I notice, in The Irish Press on the date that I have given by the spokesman from Tara. Our concern is that there is a conflict of interest somewhere there and the Minister is a shareholder in both companies.

I should like to deal with other aspects of this Bill. The Government will be paying the best part of £10 million for an investment which has been valued at no more than £3.1 million. The best part of that £10 million will not go towards development of the mines but into the hands of the present shareholders. Shareholders are of course entitled to rewards for risk taking, but it is hard to understand why the Minister should be so pleased with a deal which sees him paying £6 million more than he has been advised by experts. Experts advised the value at one-third of the £40 million, £40 million being the figure arrived at by the arbitrators. It may well be the case that the orebody will have to be mined by underground methods rather than open-cast and the cost will increase and the value reduce. The Minister still claims that the investment is a good one. The argument that the investment is a good one does not stand up and does not make sense.

The Department were advised that the mine was worth between £1 million and £13 million. Yet they professed themselves happy with the valuation of £40 million. Perhaps the Minister could explain why he hired experts to advise him and then did not take their advice into account when making decisions. It is a case of spending taxpayers' money in obtaining advice and then not taking the advice. To me it is only wasting money. If the reason for the acceptance of the £40 million valuation is because there was no way out of the kind of contract he was locked in with Bula, then it was wrong for the Minister to agree to a deal when its financial commitment was outside his control. If the Government were bound by the arbitrators' decision then it was, as has already been described in the newspapers, nothing short of giving the arbitrators a blank cheque. I feel that he should have reserved the right not to take up the investment if the final valuation was not what the Government believe to be the true figure, particularly when he was dealing with public money.

First, I should like to welcome the Bill. The deal that has been done is the best it has been possible to realise in the circumstances. It lays the foundation for better things on the whole question of the development of our natural resources. Everybody would, I am sure, like to see a situation whereby all of the benefits of mineral resources would fall to the people through the hands of the State and that that wealth could be solely used in the interests of the people. That is a very desirable thing but I would have to agree with Senator Russell when he pointed out that the reality of it is that the amount of risk capital that is involved, the amount of expertise that is needed, the amount of general know-how, is just not available to enable the State to become involved in the actual production process and, therefore, the best type of development is the development of the nature the Minister has entered into.

I have not departed from the view, and never will, that where it is possible the State should control the natural resources of the country. As I say, I live in a world of reality. As far as possible I try to practise that reality. When I see the circumstances so overwhelmingly against this and the general desire in the mind of the public that we should continue to develop along the lines of a mixed economy then, like everybody else who thinks as I do, I must live with that situation and subjugate my own views to the particular needs of the community in general.

At the same time I believe that had the policies of our predecessors in Government not differed very substantially from the Labour Party policy concerning natural resources in these times we would be talking about something very different indeed, particularly in respect of having merely 40 per cent ownership of mineral rights for the State. However, circumstances alter cases and the circumstances to which I refer are concerned with the policy of the previous Administration which led to a favour, from my reading of events, in balance of private interests. When the late Gerry Sweetman first dealt with the question of making a tax concession he was dealing with it in respect of a period of time when little was known of the situation and little information had emerged. He gave a four-year period which was justifiable in those circumstances. But the concession that was later made to give the tax concession for a 20-year period was a great departure, particularly when a very substantial amount of evidence had been forthcoming that we were on the way into very good things in respect of the mineral wealth of the country.

The matter which may have thrown the balance in favour of private interests was the problem of the acquisition order being made for the Wright farm. The result of that, of course, meant that great difficulties were presented to anybody in office at that time, because there was now a situation where the matter was referred to the Supreme Court and from the High Court and Supreme Court rulings it was clear that it would be very difficult where private ownership was concerned to get any involvement at all.

With reference to the tax situation, the previous Administration, with all their criticisms, cannot escape the responsibility for what they claim is a bad situation at the moment. I do not accept that it is a bad situation but they cannot escape that situation. If they indulged in giving the tax-free bonanza for a 20-year period and took about 10p a ton in royalties, that was a clear indication that the State was not going to benefit to any great degree at all and in no way would we be near the type of deal that the present Minister has managed to arrange for us. Whether you like it or not, the likelihood of anything being left in a mine after 20 years is rather slight; there may be some residue but, by and large, the situation would be that there would be very little to extract in the nature of tax and so on. In that light, people who were perturbed about that concession were entitled to make the charge that the Fianna Fáil Government were actually throwing away money belonging to the public at a time when everybody else, ordinary working class people, were being hammered with taxes and so on. We had a tax concession to private interests that made it very difficult for lower paid people to understand why this kind of thing should obtain.

When the four-year tax concession, as I said earlier, was given by the late Gerry Sweetman this was done at a time when the area had not really shown its potential but there is no excuse for the 20-year concession because by that time the potential had been shown.

To deal with the second point of the reference to the acquisition order of 1971, this acquisition order, which was made by the previous Government in respect of the Wright farm, finished up in the High Court and the Supreme Court and these courts rejected the order. On the surface this seemed to me to be a decision that put the whole matter of mineral rights in so far as State control or State involvement was concerned out of reach, not only of the previous Administration but of anybody who might succeed to the office of Minister for Industry and Commerce and any other Government. I say this mainly because the question of the ownership was determined by the rejection of the aquisition order, which meant that the minerals were not then available to the Government. Between that order being rejected and up to the time when the present Minister for Industry and Commerce got his line cleared, nothing effective had happened in respect of the State's further interests.

Those two points must surely indicate the uphill fight with which faced the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the present Government. If the question of State involvement with private ownership was now determined by law, the State was to get involved with private ownership in a situation where it had been determined by law that it was beyond access to them. This is the struggle which I saw the Minister having at that time. Despite the fact that he had this struggle and despite the fact that a threatened court action was pending against him when he started to make his moves to try and negotiate his way—that action was subsequently withdrawn—the Minister did manage to get in and pull off what seemed to be a very difficult thing to do at the time. I did not believe we would ever reach the stage where he would be able to conclude such a deal as he has done in this case.

The proceedings leading up to the acquisition order and the rejection by the High Court and the Supreme Court of that order and what it meant in the sense of putting the question of the ownership of those mineral rights outside the scope of the Government left a mess to be sorted out. It had to be done in a way that would lay the foundation for negotiations that would eventually lead to greater State involvement despite the High Court and the Supreme Court rulings.

I suggest that the Minister had been left an unenviable task, so much so that a lesser man in the office of Minister for Industry and Commerce would have led us into a total acceptance of the High Court and Supreme Court decisions as being of the nature that the State had no longer any right to embark on a course of action that interfered in any way with private mineral rights. We might have then witnessed some sort of a deal being arrived at whereby foreign interests would have predominated totally and a few crumbs would have fallen to the State in the shape of royalties which would in no way represent the 75 per cent which will come out of the Bula deal, made up of the 25 per cent of free equity and the 24 per cent on a valuation.

The charge has been levelled against the Minister that £9.54 million is far too much for the 24 per cent stake. I would like to draw attention to the Minister's reply at column 510 of the Dáil Official Report of 1st February, 1977, to the debate on the Bula Limited (Acquisition of Shares) Bill, 1977. I will not quote all of it because I do not want to abuse the privilege of the House. The paragraph I will quote will clearly indicate that the Minister has made, in my estimation, a very reasonable explanation. He states:

The agreement enabled the arbitrators to call for evidence on both sides, as well as calling in independent experts of their own choice. It was provided in the agreement that any evidence submitted by one party would also be made available to the other. The arbitrators decided at an early stage that they would ask each to present its case. In view of the importance of the matter at issue and the certainty that there would be a wide divergency of opinion, it was inevitable that each side would employ reputable experts in order to put their best case forward.

The end result was that the estimates of the value of the private minerals in question varied from around £1 million to £106 million. This may seem to be an extraordinary situation. It should be borne in mind, however, that there are quite a number of imponderables in putting a value on a mining property since it is necessary to look into the future rather than into the past. One has to hazard a guess as to the future movements over a period as long as 15 to 20 years in such matters as metal prices, costs of production, including wages, and exchange rates.

In that paragraph the Minister makes quite clear the difficulties involved in actually getting a valuation put on a situation. I have not been a trade union official for a substantial number of years without suffering somewhat from cynicism when I am dealing with the question of experts; nevertheless I conceive they are necessary and that there can be great variations in their contributions. I think the Minister gave a very reasoned explanation in that paragraph. I could have selected others where other illustrations were given but I thought that was satisfactory. Therefore, I put it on the record of the House again. It was a very reasoned explanation of what was actually involved in arriving at the value of the 24 per cent element. Like everything else, it is open to debate; but I doubt if any explanation covers the true situation with regard to dealing with experts. To some extent that justifies my own view of long standing that I do not mind involving experts as long as I am not bound by all their views.

The Minister has to have regard to many considerations when experts are involved. I can well understand the type of situation he found himself in. When I mention the matter of not wanting to take the advice of all the experts, I am saying it in one way with a bit of cynicism and in another way I am being a bit facetious. When one considers the number of contradictions given by experts in many fields I think I can be forgiven my cynicism. At this point it is only right that I congratulate the Minister. The Minister's approach was an astute one. Not only did he come out of a mess which was not of his own making but he also had the very difficult and complex problem of assessing the varying valuations put on the 24 per cent.

The Minister then had to negotiate on behalf of the nation. He had to negotiate into private mineral interests. Out of that situation he delivered, on behalf of the nation, the best deal that was possible having regard to all the obstacles that had to be overcome in order to do so. It will be agreed by the public at large that to get 25 per cent of the equity for nothing, to buy into 24 per cent and to realise a total situation in which we have for the nation an overall 75 per cent share in the profits is an exceptional achievement, particularly when he was originally harassed by the threatened legal proceedings and bearing in mind how the state of ownership is legally determined. I made that point before, but it is terribly important and needs reiterating.

The Minister's performance was later even more impressive when one realises that the overall policy being pursued gives scope to the State to establish title to 25 per cent of privately owned minerals, in addition to the 40 per cent already owned by the State. I doubt very much, had the previous Government followed their own particular policies, that we would be here today listening to a debate that could throw up that sort of achievement. I believe with all sincerity that the most that could have happened would have been that we would have seen a great deal happening in the sphere of private ownership and that in the final analysis the State, because of the lack of foresight of the previous Administration, would be struggling for compensation. Too much was taken for granted at the particular time and the State body, Mianraí Teoranta, was not very active when the other Administration was dealing with the question of mineral resources and could not give very much assistance or could not be employed very much. I hope that situation will be changed in the future.

I mentioned earlier that the idea would be for the State to own and control the total mineral wealth but, taking the whole background into consideration, we have come out of it very well indeed, but particularly if we take into consideration that the State will also gain through capital gains tax, wealth tax and capital acquisition tax. Fianna Fáil were opposed to the introduction of those taxes. It is clear that, with their handling of the minerals position, and those taxes not on the Statute Book, the tax bonanza would have continued. It all adds up to supporting the arguments that, instead of getting the type of deal that has emerged, we would be still in the mess and the result of that mess would be that we would get nothing out of it at all or we would be just getting the crumbs from the rich man's table.

The question of mineral resources is a very emotive one. No matter how well one argues, even colleagues of my own party would be critical of the latest situation or would not be happy with it. I think the problem there is that it is a question of trying to impose an ideology if you like, where in fact that ideology cannot be applied because of the difficulties that are there and because the nation up to this time has not given us a mandate to pursue those particular lines. Consequently I could well, by supporting the Minister, be subjecting myself to criticism among my own colleagues. I make no apologies for the support I have given him and I make no apologies to my colleagues in the party who may well be critical of me.

In essence the whole scene reveals to me that what was practical and what was possible was done. When people hear the full facts or when they take time to read the debates and information available particularly the Minister's Second Stage speech today, and when we have gone through the Committee Stage, I think we shall be a wiser nation indeed. Even within my own party there will be many people wiser and they will realise that the present deal is the best possible at this juncture. It has laid the foundation for greater things to come in regard to natural resources. Other things are happening—for example, the Kinsale Head gas find—involving resources which the Minister referred to in his speech. When these things are combined I think the Minister will go down in history as the one who really tackled the question of how best the natural resources of this country could be utilised so that the benefits would fall back into the economy for redistribution to assist the economy to develop and grow and to assist the underprivileged and other people denied in other ways opportunities for advancement.

Judging by the Dáil debates I have read, not so much by what I have heard in the Seanad today, it appears that there is some disgust within the Fianna Fáil Party with the concept of State participation. If one went into it deeply enough probably an argument could be produced to say that the Fianna Fáil Party do not favour State participation where private ownership is involved. Frankly, I think that is the situation and that is what reading the debates revealed to me. If that is the case and if what I have said earlier is correct, we would not have anything to stand up and boast about. Not only would we not have anything to boast about but we would have nothing coming back to swell the finances of the State to be used in the interests of the State.

I hope I am not wrong in what I say in that respect. I would hope that somebody might prove me wrong in saying that they were disgusted over the question of State participation. I yet remain to be convinced. In saying that I would like to make the point to the Fianna Fáil people that we are not in the business of handing over total holdings to multinationals, particularly when all the indications show that what is favoured publicly is a mixed economy. This is the direction in which we have been going for some time. This Bill is another step in that direction. The public will see it as that and will be satisfied when all the other facts are known that this is the only way to go about it.

We had a lot of mudslinging about the secrecy of the agreement. I cannot see the reasoning in this line of argument. It has been suggested that it was all right to assert a right to secrecy when multinationals were engaged in the business of taking over—for example, when the multinationals took over the total holdings of Tara and where State resources were involved. On that occasion there was no declaration of the contents of that agreement. There were possibly very good reasons for that as there are in this case. It depends on what argument one uses. The Minister has given very good reasons for the necessity for a certain amount of secrecy about the agreement. It is a question of the decision between the principle of confidentiality and public knowledge. It is not an easy decision but, in his wisdom, the Minister has so far held the proper line on it.

In the case of the Fianna Fáil Party, when the multinationals took over Tara Holdings there was no disclosure of the nature of that agreement. The argument they probably used on that occasion was that the Mineral Explorations Act did not have the provision that allowed for the publication of any of the relevant agreements although it provided for the purchase of mining concerns. Perhaps in that Act, which has not been amended to any great extent, there is some great deficiency. But if it had been operating in a truly active way and with the correct powers we might not have the ridiculous situation of arguing about unimportant matters such as the details of an agreement or of saying that agreements were concealed when there was no such concealment. When something is openly debated and an agreement exists it would be unwise of a Minister to try to push through something that could be subject to a challenge outside the House if the contents of the agreement were not in order and in accordance with the best possible approach.

I mentioned the mining body, Mianraí Teoranta, and I was saying that if they had been operating in a truly active way we might not have had the ridiculous situation where we had to wait seven years before any production at all would take place. There has been no production yet in the real sense. It might have been helpful if the mining body had been properly functioning and properly staffed at that particular time.

I will conclude by asking that we have regard to the lengthy period ahead of us and to the whole question of the development of mineral wealth and natural resources in general. I would ask that the House bear in mind that it is anybody's ball game, that the whole development will be of long duration. If we could see it in terms of what has been realised and if we could accept that this was a novel venture by the Minister we could perhaps accept also that his actions have led to a very good deal in a vital commercial area which is affecting the wealth of the nation as a whole.

The Minister and the Government have confidence both in themselves and in the extent of our mineral resources. Perhaps the deal is not what everybody in this party would want but, as I said, in the circumstances and having regard to the mess which the Minister found on entering office, it is the best possible deal that could have emerged.

Apart from not liking secrecy there is another aspect of this that concerns me. I said that it is difficult to strike the balance between the principle of public disclosure and confidentiality. I think the Minister was wise in his approach to this issue. The point I did not make however was that Ministers who dealt with State bodies or semi-State bodies in the past have been privy to certain information which was not put before the House at any stage. I am not even sure that the new Oireachtas Committee to deal with State bodies will gain access to a lot of information. They will gain access to certain information but there will be some to which they will not be able to gain access.

Let us not forget that agreements were entered into in the past which involved the voting of moneys by the Oireachtas although the details of the agreements were never put before the House and there was no demand for that information. We had the Potez situation in the sixties where £1 million of State money was invested. In that instance there was a total loss. I have not looked back through the debates but I am sure the Minister of the day, had he been pressed for the nature of agreement on that occasion, would have possibly taken the same course of action as the present Minister has taken today in respect of how much can be disclosed and how much cannot be disclosed. There was an equity participation in Potez in the region of £1 million. That was lost and there was also the question of £1,500,000 that was spent by the IDA and other Government agencies and in respect of which details of the relevant agreements were never put before the House.

I wonder what all the hysteria is about on this question of secrecy. In the private section, I, as a trade union official, demanded certain information and got it. We even got to the point where by agreement we got a breakdown of a company's trading arrangements over the years. Even in that case we had to accept that there were certain things we should not press for because the disclosure of such information might be advantageous to our competitors. The details of the Potez agreement were never put before the House. When the tax holiday was taken away it did not stop people investing in it. The share value went up by £20 million. That was a £20 million increase in the value and it was at a time when the lease had not even been given and also at a time when there was no planning permission or anything else. I think that those arguments used now about the question of planning permission and so on are not very strong arguments when you have regard to that situation. If, after removing the tax concession you could get this growth in the share value before licences were granted, I have no doubt that the type of deal the Minister has delivered on behalf of the State will be found to be the best possible deal.

Tá an-bhrón orm nach féidir liom fáilte a chur roimh an mBille seo mar cheapaim go bhfuil an iomad cur i gcéill, easpa macántachta agus easpa muinín ag muintir na tíre ann. Ní thuigim ó thalamh an domhain cén fáth nach féidir leis an Aire téarmaí an mhargadh a dhein sé leis na ceathrar gur leo mianráí Bula a nochtadh do Sheanadóirí agus do na Teachtaí Dála. Is ionadh liom freisin nach bhfuil aon trácht ar smelter mar téann mianadóireacht agus smelter i ndiaidh a chéile.

I wish to oppose the Bill on the grounds that it is shrouded in too much secrecy. This is not, as somebody has said here already, opposition for opposition sake, but it is opposition based on the many points which are worrying the man in the street. I do not intend to go into the intricacies of shareholdings and percentages and so on. I shall relate my remarks to the points that are concerning the plain ordinary people. Many people believe we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke. We are asked here in this House to ratify an agreement the terms of which we do not even know. This is an insult to our intelligence, as it was an insult to the intelligence of the Members of the other House. It is very strange that there are civil servants and other people who know the terms of the agreement and that these terms cannot be released to Senators and TDs who represent the taxpayer who has eventually to pay the piper. I do not know what there is to hide. These terms should be released.

It is very strange also that a newspaper that had some of these terms was threatened with the Official Secrets Act in relation to divulging them. The Opposition have done a very good day's work in exposing to the Irish people how so much money could be spent without giving any account of the conditions underlying the agreement. At one stage the Minister inferred that planning permission had been sought and obtained. I have since found out that this is not so, that there is still a big question mark hanging over the planning permission. There are also questions, as has been stated here, of open mining and of the diversion of the River Black-water. These are major problems. Even trivial cases at county level in regard to housing estates and so on can take quite a long time. It could very well be that two big problems like those could take years to resolve.

I am surprised that this line has been taken because it smacks of a certain amount of dictatorship. It is a very far cry from what we were told would be open government. That is the biggest grievance I have at the moment because I have not the capacity to go into shareholdings and so on. It has also been stated that because of the handling of the Bula affair more than 100 mining licences have been withdrawn. I am afraid there will be a great lack of credibility in our country and in the institutions of State as a result of this failure to disclose the terms which the shadow Minister has repeatedly asked for in the other House.

Mar a dúras ag tosnú, tá fíor-bhrón orm nach féidir liom fáilte a chur roimh an mBille seo a bhaineann le saibhreas mianraí na tíre toisc nach féidir linn téarmaí an mhargadh a fháil ón Aire.

In this whole matter of the development of our natural resources the Minister has found himself in that unenviable position of being caught between two opposite points of view. First, there is the opinion held by those who maintain that State participation should be total and certainly should at least be more than what is envisaged in this Bill and, secondly, there is the opinion held by those other parties that private enterprise should be allowed to operate unimpeded and with the minimum State participation. The Minister has had to make the decision and he has tried to arrive at the right and proper mix and I congratulate him on doing so. His decision in the terms of this Bill is both fair and reasonable and sets a good precedent for future State participation.

The Opposition, in making quite a mouthful of this, have indulged in that exercise to hide the embarrassment they must obviously feel at what was a rather shameful and ludicrous tax-free holiday bonanza they offered when in Government to the mining companies. This Government had the courage two years ago to change that system and bring in one which will derive for the State adequate taxable revenues from all large-scale operations by private companies or by multinational corporations in the future.

Far from what has been said, that the ordinary man in the street is concerned about some provisions in the Bill, it has been my feed-back that the public attitude is one of "Let's get going with this operation". There is far too much involved for the public welfare in terms of employment and return in finances to have any more delay over this business. I should like to quote what was offered by the Minister in the Dáil as being involved in this operation by Bula. He envisaged:

Construction employment in Bula, 400; in Tara, 900; mining rate in Bula, 1 million tons per annum; mining rate in Tara, 2.25 million tons per annum; production employment in Bula, 250; production employment in Tara, 800; annual concentrate output in Bula, 134,000 tons zinc and 19,000 tons of lead; annual concentrate output of Tara 395,000 tons zinc and 65,000 tons lead; estimated payroll—very approximately—£1.3 million for Bula and £3.4 million for Tara.

That is what the public is concerned about and why they wish to see this enterprise going ahead without delay.

The Minister has indicated that the State investment of £9 million will be repaid within eight or nine years and that thereafter the income from the State shareholding in the region of £25 million to £30 million in present money terms will be profit in entirely. That is something the public look forward to and why they do not want any delay on this.

The Minister has gone to some pains to point out that the tax system envisaged by him for getting revenue intake from these operations is preferable to any tonnage royalty system. Any layman will realise that in any royalty system at a time when the royalty beneficiary expects to get the best from production, that can be the time when the concern produces least. It has been proved in the history of royalty payments that production can indeed show a downfall at times, investment can be discouraged and the rate of growth in that business need not be as good as would be hoped.

There has been much play about the non-disclosure of the contents of the agreement. The Minister has gone as far as one would expect any prudent person to go in giving what must be regarded as confidential information in the case of a large commercial undertaking such as Bula. We have had many instances where State agencies have had to undertake confidential agreements with private companies and large concerns. There has never been any hue or cry about disclosure in those instances.

Why is such keenness shown now for a disclosure of the contents of such a tremendous mining operation as envisaged by Bula? One can only have suspicions in that regard but I hope they are not well-founded. There has been much blowing of hot and cold and blowing of froth by the Opposition in this regard. Those who have been most vociferous in this regard are the same people who, if they were in the position of having to make the decision which the Minister for Industry and Commerce had to make, would be insisting on the right of non-disclosure of certain elements of this agreement. Ordinary business sense dictates that there are instances where there must be confidentiality, particularly when we hope to have other large private companies, multinational corporations and so on, dealing with the State in the future. We must ensure that they will not be frightened away by any disclosure of information which they would regard as a breach of confidentiality.

There has been talk of the investment by the State being too excessive. Only time will tell that. The Minister is like the person, who, if he makes the right decision, all the hue and cry and the roaring about his ears will not be worth anything, because he has been right. If he is proved wrong, it will all be in the past anyway. We must remember that mining is a risky business and investment in mining also carries a risk element. If the State wishes to enter into a risk-bearing field such as mining and oil-drilling, it must be prepared to take risks. We cannot on the one hand be shouting for entrepreneurs and risk-takers to lead this country into industrial progress if the State is not prepared to take some risks. I have no doubt this is a risk that will be well justified when the development costs are first recovered after eight or nine years. After that we will be in a profit-earning situation.

I am particularly concerned about the environment and its protection in this development. I know Navan town and many of its inhabitants. Those people will have to live during the course of what may well be open-cast mining operations, and will have to live there after those operations have concluded. We must ensure that the environment in which they live is safeguarded to the maximum possible extent. The Tara Mining Company have tried to give the people of Navan every confidence that they are concerned about this matter. They have tried to play a leading part and give example in social and recreational life of Navan. This is highly commendable and I am sure Bula will do likewise. However, we must ensure that the monitoring arrangements and the controls for the protection of the environment are kept constantly under review. When these mining operations are finished in 20 or 25 years we do not want to see the inhabitants of the town and area living in an environment which too patently bears the scars of mining.

The local authority concerned, Meath County Council, should not hesitate to take whatever stringent precautions are necessary to ensure that the people of Navan and the surrounding area are protected as far as possible. It is always difficult to preserve an environment when one wants to develop our natural resources. There must be a little give always and we cannot hope to continue with the same quality and value of countryside, the same quiet environment as we would have in the absence of such development. However, we must try and strike the proper balance between the two to ensure that the State is participating as far as can be hoped in private operations and that the people of the area will not be prejudiced in the enjoyment of their environment.

I hope Tara and Bula will co-operate to the maximum extent. Navan is a small provincial town and I do not wish to see two large companies like these at each other's throats. There is scope for them to co-operate in the operations they are engaged in. I have confidence in this respect.

It is important that out of all this should come an Irish smelter. It is even more important that there should come an assured supply of concentrates for that Irish smelter. I know the Minister, in his desire to have as much possible State participation and State take-back in regard to these mining operations, will do all he can to ensure that an Irish smelter is established.

The precedent established by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this Bill in terms of the volume of the investment and the tax take-back by the State appears to be fair and reasonable. I do not think it will cause any fears or disquiet in the boardroom of any private company or multinational corporation. Those concerns can with confidence deal with this Government in regard to the future development of our resources.

The most distressing thing about this Bill is how little it appears to be appreciated by the people generally. I do not know to what extent the politicians appreciate what they are doing or what a total betrayal the policy implicit in this Bill represents to future generations of young Irish people. It is clear that the Labour Party has to conform totally to the extremely conservative policies of the major party in the Coalition, the conservative Fine Gael Party, in all aspects of our life. The dreadful consequences of that are to be seen in the cut-backs in education, shortage of money, cut-backs in health, downgrading of the quality of services, cut-backs in spending on housing and roads, cut-backs in investment, unemployment at a level never before reached in the history of the State, with prospects even worse particularly for young school leavers, savage assaults on the living standards of the workers in the recent effective wage freeze and a positive reduction in their living standards. These dreadful consequences of four years of domination by the conservative party in the Coalition pale into nothingness compared to the betrayal of the national interests involved in mining policies.

I hold the view that what Deputy Keating, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, is doing is just as totally irresponsible, criminally irresponsible, as was the decision of a predecessor in Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lalor, when he gave 18 or 20 years' tax remission in a mine that was going to last 18 years. There is just a question of the degree of this betrayal by the present Minister. In the ground in Navan is the raw material of hospitals, institutions of all kinds, houses, roads, communications, schools, universities, old people's homes, capital for investment in industry, jobs and the highest possible standard of living for the people of this tiny country. I remember speaking like this on one occasion when Deputy Cosgrave, the Taoiseach, came to the House. Even though I knew he was a very conservative politician, for the sake of the wonderful things his party could do with the wealth that is in the zinc-lead mines in Navan I put that to him. Bula is the fourth largest of the 100 mines in the world, and it is smaller than the Tara mine. This is a prodigiously wealthy country for its size and population. The greater part of that wealth is going to leave the country and we have no reason to believe it will not leave in the form of the unsmelted raw material of the ore. We have the example of Tynagh—a hole in the ground, no smelter, no downstream industries, no serious employment.

One must take a number of things into consideration in a comparison between Deputy Lalor and Deputy Keating. Deputy Keating—and I have frequently said this to him when he was here—probably has one of the finest political minds in Irish public life. He is a man of positive erudition in the whole complex question of the politics of Government, enormously well read, an agile mind and a fine intellect. Therefore it is not quite fair, with his magnificent educational background, to compare him with Deputy Lalor. One must make allowances for the differences in the opportunities one got and the other did not get.

Deputy Lalor made a statement the other day that they had produced 500 jobs in Tynagh mines and he was delighted with that. He thought that was an achievement. I put that totally fatuous misjudgement of the serious situation, the wonderful missed opportunity of that Government, I put that fatuity, the vacuous idiocy of that remark—500 jobs for millions of pounds that have left this country and for which we built a railroad to ship it out; I recall seeing it on television; we were proud of shipping it out—on a level with the present Minister's presentation of this as a good deal, a sound and solid one for the Irish people.

The rather dreadful thing about the present Minister is that this is, for some reason or another which I do not understand, a very conscious betrayal. He knows well what he is doing. For some reason, best known to himself, he has put on this magnificently clever gloss, which we know well he can put on any case, to try to create the impression that this is the best deal, as the previous Senator said, we could get. It looks as if we are back in the position of Cecil Rhodes and the rape of the African, Indian and Middle Eastern countries in which we call in the multinationals to help us. Deputy Keating, as a particularly highly read Marxist, knows this full well. It defies belief that he could have changed his serious commitment to socialism in the years I knew him to his commitment to the capitalist system. The handing over of this enormous raw material of so much happiness for our people to the various multinationals is a savage betrayal of the Irish people today and in the future, and he knows that well. I honestly do not believe Deputy Lalor did; Deputy Haughey may have known it; but Deputy Keating does know it. Oppenheimer, the Anglo-American Corporation, are getting out of South Africa, for very good reasons. Why are Deputy Keating's Ministers and their apartheid views, tolerating these people investing now in this wonderful, biggest zinc-lead mine in Europe in Tara with an enormous market at their disposal? It is fair to say that the Minister is unable to disclose the details of this scheme because he is ashamed of them. Bad as we know them to be and as has been made clear to the public through the contributions of Deputy O'Malley in the other House, if we knew all the facts it is possible that the deal is worse than we know of from the absence of facts we have about the deal but about the surmises we must make ourselves.

The Fianna Fáil record was a dreadful one in relation to mineral resources. As a Minister in the first Coalition I remember a memorandum being submitted to us which showed conclusively—I was interested in Senator Russell's remarks about the experts being wrong—and proved to us all— I do not know who prepared the document but it was done by experts—that there was no mineral wealth in Ireland at all. That was in 1948 or 1950. It said that this was a poor, poverty-stricken country. There was then the experience of the copper mines in Avoca. Presumably, when we came to Tynagh it was possible that there could be a lack of assurance, that there could this be feeling, as the previous Senator talked about, of the risks involved in mining. This all may have coloured the attitude of the Fianna Fáil people, and I am sure to some extent it did as well as their obvious ignorance of what they were doing, or partial ignorance on the part of some of them. But we have gone on making these mistakes. Since 1972 there has been a great change in the world in relation to natural resources, as we know to our cost where the Arabs and their oil are concerned. They are becoming more critical of the so-called developers' methods, of the so-called developers and the reasons for the benevolent attitude of developers coming into countries to develop various nations' raw materials.

I do not honestly believe that there could be any suggestion that the same risk attitude, or attitude to risks in relation to mining, which did frighten off many predecessors, is operative here with the present Minister for Industry and Commerce. He knows well that in Navan, in Bula, we are on to a good thing. This is an enormously rich mine. I cannot understand all the Ministers explaining to us why we must accept lower living standards, lower education standards, lower health standards, lower care of aged people, lower quality of roads, communications and, sadly, when I see the trade union leaders accepting that kind of nonsense from the Government when we live in this enormously wealthy country. It is about time we began to use that phrase about Ireland, not the poor, poverty-stricken country, the béal bocht. It is not true any more. For our size and population we are an enormously wealthy country except that we are now, to my astonishment, handing this wealth over to various foreign investors, Canadian, American, South African, British and so on.

There are various issues that affect two-party Governments of this kind. In our own time I can recollect things like Mr. MacBride's preoccupation with breaking the link with sterling, my own interest in health and Mr. Murphy's interest in housing—various issues which could probably lead to a conflict in Government and be considered to be a conflict which the minority party might take a stand on because of their enormous importance. Possibly it would be very difficult to expect a minority party to take a stand on any of the other issues I have mentioned, but not this issue.

This is an election issue; a break-the-Government issue for a radical or a socialist party. This is not a go-along-and-serve these policies situation because this is health, education, old age, housing, schools, colleges, communications, living standards, employment. This is the whole lot rolled into one. It is an issue on which I believe in conscience the Labour Party should have insisted on getting the only thing that mattered, not the question of the amount of royalties or the form of taxation but those three additional shares, 51 per cent or control of the mines, effective control of the disposal of the mineral wealth. This should not just be for Bula but in the Navan mine as well.

We have seen the various methods that are used by different countries— acquire, compensate if you feel like it. Think of President Kaunda in Zambia. There are various ways in which the State can acquire mines of this kind over a long period using the reserve itself as a security. Personally, I am not that concerned about the compensation side of it. The priority is the people, not any small section of the people. As we know from the fact that 5 per cent own three-quarters of the wealth, that has been the position in our society in the past. The minority was the predominant interest of the conservative parties since the State was formed. It is about time the majority got a fair deal for a change. They have made too many sacrifices for too long. I do not think the Minister has any right to be proud of himself because he has got this minority position in this mine. This is not the kind of position a mining banking firm would accept, that one should lend or give as much money as we have given to these people. The Minister must know by now that he was mistaken in signing this agreement in the terms that he signed it and the way that he is now committed to whatever policy will be laid down by Bula Limited.

Tom Roche, the Irish entrepreneur, is a tough, hard, ruthless, pitiless, selfish, self-interested businessman, the same as them all. The Minister has often said worse than that about these people, so he should not be frowning now. We know what those people are in business for—their own self-interest. They are not interested in houses, schools, roads, old people or anything else. We will be subject to Mr. Roche's policies. It was once said that what was good for General Motors was good for America. What is good for Mr. Roche is good for Ireland. Does the Minister seriously believe that? It is particularly pitiful to watch the Minister waving the green flag about these Irish entrepreneurs, what noble, generous, kindly people they are likely to be, so much nicer than the Oppenheimers, the French and the Belgians who have raped the world for the last 200 years in their various forms of imperialism. The Minister does not seriously believe that there is any difference between Roche and Oppenheimer or in his policies or in his selfishness or his self-interest. I recall that other great Irish entrepreneur, Mr. Tony O'Reilly. He sold 300,000 shares.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Browne, I must interrupt you. It is not customary to attack somebody who has no right to defend himself in the House.

A Leas-Chathaoirleach, I would not dream of attacking anybody. All I did was refer to certain qualities that these people would be proud to profess. The facts about Mr. O'Reilly are well known. He sold 300,000 shares in an Irish company to the Canadians, Lorinda, for £2 million, tax-free, without bothering to tell his fellow directors. These are the gentle folk who the Minister now tells us will concern themselves with our interests in the future and worry about our sick, poor and uneducated. Would the Minister come clean and tell us what he is playing at? He could not believe the kind of nonsense he has given us in his speech.

Would it be more likely that this is what the Minister believes? Capitalism has desecrated the whole of the underdeveloped world through imperialism. The leopard of capitalism has not changed its spots. It has not suddenly become benevolent. Those who believe that are too naive to be given the leadership of any nation, particularly the leadership of a weak nation such as this which is in a desperate position. These are the people we are dealing with. These are the multinationals the Minister now says we need. This is the serious part of this Bill, not the question of whether we get the royalties or tax. The tax fiddles are notorious. Nobody believes for a moment that these people will pay what they are meant to pay. There are plenty of precedents—I will not quote them—for declaring one level of profits here because they sell at a lower price and selling in offshore islands where they have other companies at the real price.

This is no safeguard. The Minister knows this very well, much better than I do. Senator Russell very modestly said that he is no expert; certainly neither am I an expert on mining. But the Minister ought to be an expert by now.

The Minister, for his own reasons, is buying himself back into the Establishment. Is he doing that or is he pretending to do it? What is he doing, do any of us know? He is a very facile gentleman, a very able person, very articulate, very complicated. Do not take him at his face value. The Minister is simply concerned, it appears, to do just what the Roches do—get the stuff out of the ground and get it out of the country. The greater part of the profit then goes to the Roches. This is not the decision of a responsible Government. It is not the decision of a responsible Minister. We have the precedent of the Norwegians in relation to their oil. That is responsible behaviour. A decision must be made that we need so much wealth in the next five or ten years. The possible projections for national needs can all be weighed and assessed and the output related to those needs. That is responsible, not this—dig it out at all costs, make this silly agreement for the Irish people and let these entrepreneurs get digging before there is any kind of radical Government or radical political party here.

The Minister has become very respectful of private companies. Because they are private and he allows them to be private, they get certain protection. We are not allowed to do things to them which would conflict with their interests. They can do what they like in conflicting with the interests of the ordinary people. The Bula Navan deal was a most sordid exercise in mine jumping. Everyone knows that, including the Minister, and it is now getting the sanction of enterprising Irish entrepreneurial skill. Roche simply outbid Tara. As far as the Irish people are concerned, it was cynical speculators fighting one another for something that belongs to us, the ordinary Irish people. I do not care who owns it. As a socialist I believe it belongs to the ordinary Irish people and everybody else's rights have to be subordinated to the common good. It is a phrase we hear tell of sometimes.

Again and again the Minister in his speech tries to give the impression that he has some kind of control over what will happen. It has been pointed out, of course, that he does not even know that he will ever get near the minerals in the ground, because it is possible that the company might decide not to go ahead with the development anyway. He gave us one interesting figure at the end of his speech about the kind of metal that zinc is, cobalt 609 or something. Zinc obviously is becoming a precious metal because there is so little of it. We might see a position where Bula might decide that they are making so much money in their other entrepreneurial activities that they do not want to develop this mine yet. What can the Minister do about it? Has he any power to do anything about it? If they sit there looking at this mine and say that they do not want to develop it now, it is not convenient, can he make them? The Minister knows well that he cannot make them. The Minister knows well that he cannot tell us when this mine will start operation because he is not sure he is going to get planning permission. Even if he does get planning permission he has no power, at 49 per cent, to make any decisions about how the mine will be operated or at what speed it will be done.

Have we any guarantee, if they do get around to obtaining planning permission and it is decided that it is worth developing the mine, that the raw material will all go to an Irish smelter and that from that Irish smelter we will have the downstream industries which are so desperately needed at the present time? Have we any guarantee about that at all? Does anybody care whether we have or not? I see they are developing Dublin port in order to ship it out and the Irish coolies will dig it up and ship it out for them. It defies understanding in this day and age. They have given it up in Africa even. We are meant to be an advanced European society and we are still doing the coolie job for these people.

Deputy Lalor was delighted because he had provided 500 jobs in Tynagh, at about £1 million a year per job. The Minister is now doing much the same thing except on a terrifyingly greater scale. It is a betrayal not only of his socialist principles, which he has set aside for the present time, but even as a simple ordinary Irishman with concern for our people and our standard of living, the way our people are brought up, educated, looked after from youth to old age. He has absolutely no guarantee about any of these things. They can do what they like with the mine. If it was possible to do it they could set fire to it tomorrow and the Minister could do nothing about it.

I wonder was I wrong in my earlier assessment of the Minister. I wonder if he is a very stupid fellow really. Were we all marvellously misled by the totally fraudulent erudition that he has not got? I am beginning to wonder about that, the more one thinks about this Bill and its implications. He wept all over the place about the need to preserve confidentiality and the need to protect these private people from the inquiries of the public. The public paid something in the region of £10 million for the right to make inquiries. That is quite a lot of money. If a mining finance bank went into this and if they were told by the Bula people "Sorry. You just give us the money and we will let you know how things are going from time to time, drop you a card", does anybody in his senses believe that they would have accepted the kind of deal that the Minister has now accepted on our behalf? Having made the astonishing blunder that he appears to have made, he then shelters behind this completely absurd claim of confidentiality.

I have no time, as most people know, for private enterprise. But, if it is there, it is there and if it decides to operate and spend its own capital then, within certain limits, there is no reason why it should not be allowed to do that. But when it comes whimpering to us, the public, for money, surely the situation is different. Surely we buy rights like shareholders buy rights. We must be given the right to know if we are going to do this more and more as time goes on. We cannot continue to carry on—God forbid we would—under the totally amoral conventions of monopoly capitalism. If we are rescuing most of these disastrous private enterprise operations, as we tend to be doing more and more in most of the western countries, then we must have the right to lay down our own conditions.

We are the Government. This is one of the most astonishing aspects of life in Ireland. As long as I can remember I have had difficulty with Ministers who do not appear to realise the enormous power that a Government have and that, if it is in the public interest, they can take these decisions. The Minister, while handing out this money which belongs to the taxpayers, tells us to leave everything to him, that he knows what he is doing. Does anybody seriously believe that this Minister in particular knows what he is doing? He is the Minister who went into Coalition guaranteeing stable prices. I remember a Labour Party conference just after the Government was formed at which he gave a very long erudite dissertation: world raw material prices were falling, therefore prices had reached a plateau and they were bound to fall because world raw material prices were falling. This is the kind of nonsense he had talked about. Did he learn anything from it? I do not mind people making mistakes. We all make mistakes. Has the Minister learned anything from his mistakes—that he could be fallible, that he could be making a disastrous arrangement in relation to this £9 million or £10 million? When it comes to his credibility one has to recall the time when he was a very noisy, articulate and at times very offensive revolutionary socialist or communist, whatever you like. I remember I was a right-wing bourgeois deviationist because of the views I held about parliamentary democracy at the time.

So the Minister can make foolish mistakes. This could be one of the most foolish and expensive mistakes he has ever made. He is putting all his faith in private enterprise. Because we have no power, we simply bought the shares, minority shares. He is putting his faith in private enterprise capitalism.

We have had 50 years of private enterprise capitalism. One in three emigrating; a million of our people overseas because they could not get work here; poverty-stricken health services, educational services, housing slums, people living in caravans, overcrowding, joblessness. Monopoly capitalism can only survive now by a positive assault on working-class living standards. The Minister is now advocating more poverty, more unemployment, more uncontrolled price rises for the sake of profits. This is what we have to build our faith on now, according to the Minister, private enterprise capitalism. After South Africa, how could the Minister put forward these kind of views? It is no good saying Liam would not let you. You are over 21 now. You could resign. You could say you would not be party to this horrible betrayal of the Irish people, a denial of their rights to reasonable living standards. Whatever you bought you paid too much for it.

I will deal specifically with the Bill rather than with the Minister who is with us today. If the Supreme Court had not decided otherwise the previous contribution might have sounded more valid.

This Bill is unique in that it is the first time that a Minister of State has during his period of office come before the Houses of the Oireachtas to give an account of his stewardship, so to speak, and to explain the situation. This situation is very different from the normal daily dealings of a Minister for Industry and Commerce carried on under the auspices of the Industrial Development Authority. These dealings are recognised to be, and of necessity must be, highly confidential—dealings with industrialists from nations all over the world interested in developing industry in this country. These dealings are carried on by way of negotiations for grants, loans and so on, and regularly involve public expenditure through Fóir Teoranta in paying out public money to firms which run into financial difficulties.

The Bill's coming before the Houses of the Oireachtas is a unique and very welcome exercise. I wonder if, with the brief the Minister has, this coming before us was necessary. Being a Minister who not alone has the full facts and can stand over the deal he made, he was anxious to involve as far as possible the Members of the Oireachtas in setting before them the reasons for this Bill and the benefits that would derive to us from it. The terms, as outlined by the Minister in his Second Stage speech this afternoon, have been subjected to the most extraordinary levels of debate both in the Dáil and in the news media. Indeed, the Minister, in fairness to him and in his own defence, has put his reputation on the line. All he asks of us, whether we are his party colleagues, his Government colleagues or those in the Oireachtas, is that he be judged by the end result. This reputation he has laid on the line is one that is respected throughout the country, irrespective of what the previous speaker might have tried to insinuate. This reputation stands head and shoulders over the reputation of any previous office holder in Industry and Commerce. For my money this is as good a guarantee as this country can get in regard to its mineral resources. From the employment point of view and from every other point of view it is the best we can ever hope to achieve in this vital area of mineral wealth.

Deals by the previous Government have been referred to. Many of them come to mind immediately, such as the handing over to the Marathon Oil Company of our off-shore oil rights for a paltry sum of £500. Such deals stand to question the credibility of the Minister's critics. There is a vast difference between giving away something which is rightly ours and purchasing something which is not ours. The previous Government gave away for paltry sums things we owned constitutionally. The present Minister has bought shares on our behalf into something which the Supreme Court decided was not ours.

In the 1971 agreement referred to by the Minister he indicated that the lease to Tara in respect of their State-owned minerals, although it had no terms or conditions applied to it, was still legally binding on him. If we take this agreement and all the other messing that went on in Industry and Commerce for so long, we must realise that the present deal we are discussing, in its effect on the future of our economy, particularly in regard to a smelter—something which we need and which will be of tremendous financial benefit to Ireland and its people—is the best obtainable. Short of nationalisation, which some people called for in this particular field of mineral wealth—and with nationalisation go all the problems of compensation, lack of expertise, lack of capital investment and the tremendous demands on an economy such as ours—in a situation such as this it is the best possible agreement the Minister could get after a long and tedious battle of financial wits. When one considers all the legal constraints upon him and other matters, including the extraordinary climate between Bula and Tara, there is no doubt that the Minister has signed for the people a deal which is unique.

I have no doubt that the other problems referred to this afternoon— the problems of planning, the protection of the environment, the rerouting of the river and other such problems—can be amicably settled by the Minister in his wisdom and with the expertise and the advice available to him so that at the end of the day a good deal will have been made.

I think we shall all be grateful to the Minister for the work he has done and for the slating he has taken not alone from the Opposition—who were perhaps fulfilling their function—but from the Press which apparently had the most extraordinary information available to it, information which is not normally available to the media in regard to the acquisition of mining property involved and concerning not alone Irish companies such as Bula but multinational companies. These negotiations go on daily in a most secretive fashion—of necessity. I hope that the deal the Minister has put before us will get the support of the people as soon as the benefits to be derived from it come on stream and as soon as the workers who will be involved not alone in construction but in mining and later at the smelter level, are in employment. This is the best possible deal that could have been got at the time and I hope everything the Minister has done will be justified in the future.

I am glad of the opportunity to say a few words on this issue before we end the Second stage debate. Although some of the major issues have been fairly well dealt with by other speakers there are some particular points I would like to make in support of this Bill and indeed of the approach taken to it by the Minister concerned.

First, I would like to say a few words about the whole concept of confidentiality and to bring, if I may, whatever experience I may have to bear on this particular issue which is certainly a major issue in this Bill. As somebody who until recently was a full-time working journalist and who still maintains a certain number of links with the journalistic world, I think I most definitely would like to go on record as being in favour of the greatest possible degree of open-ness, not indeed only by Governments but by all organisations, either public or private, in the conduct of their business. I believe that in many respects there is a long way in which we can go both in Government and outside it to make sure that the greatest possible amount of information is always available to people who may be affected by decisions taken on their behalf or indeed sometimes without their knowledge.

I have held, for example, that the Government themselves should make much more public some of the information which at the moment is private. We may remember the confusion and the controversy that surrounded the debate as to whether the amounts of hotel grants payable by semi-State corporation should be disclosed. There was even a controversy about the identity of the recipients of such grants. I would like to see a disclosure of the amount of money paid by the Government for land for afforestation and things such as this.

I do not think in the long term democracy has anything to lose by this type of disclosure in relatively orthodox areas. But when we talk about confidentiality in this particular context we must beware not to get sidetracked by false issues and we must concentrate on the real issue. When I talk about the need for open-ness and the need for publication I am talking essentially about the orderly disclosure in accordance with law, or regulation or practice by Government departments and by companies individually of information which they are required by law or which they have decided themselves to release. The issue that has been raised here is one of a confidentiality not within a particular autonomous institution, Government Department or whatever but between two different institutions joined together in a contractual relationship which has a right to remain private as between the two parties concerned.

The answer to the general problems raised by confidentiality and the need to retain legitimate parameters of confidentiality both in regard to the work of the Government Departments and in regard to the work of public and private companies is not to seize on one particular agreement between two particular agencies and attempt to use this as the lever to make radical changes in our company law and indeed in our Government practice. The answer is always to continue widening the area of disclosure on a national basis on a sound legal footing both within Government Departments and within private and public companies. The EEC—against which the present Minister argued so eloquently at the time—is at present engaged in a review of company law which will, I hope, further increase in a responsible fashion the parameters of information which will be available to members of the public with regard to the operations of companies both public and private. This is the way in which things will be done, so that if changes are to be made they will be made across the board democratically and fairly. We cannot use this particular occasion to attempt a back-door radical change in the way that a Government go and, in this particular case, must go about their business.

I should now like to turn very briefly to the attitude of the Opposition, which has been very vociferous on this issue but which has puzzled me in some respects. It seems to me to be very strongly inconsistent internally. For example, we have had over the lengthy period of the debate in the Dáil a virtuoso performance by the Opposition spokesman on Industry and Commerce, Deputy O'Malley, relating to this Bill and the issues raised. He fulminated against the agreement and the non-disclosure of the agreement in terms which certainly, to my mind, made quite clear his opinion that the Minister has kowtowed to a nasty assortment of capitalists and their advisers.

I find this attitude, this sort of interest in socialism if you like, sits rather strangely on the well-tailored shoulders of the gentleman concerned because among other things he has to contend with a very widely varying set of utterances made by other Members of his party, not least by the former Minister for Finance Deputy Haughey. In the recent budget debate, for example, Deputy Haughey went to considerable lengths to castigate the Minister's attitude on the whole question of off-shore exploration and he alleged that the Minister was not being reasonable enough in his dealings with the multinational companies operating in this area. If he had been more reasonable, according to Deputy Haughey, more wells would have been drilled, more employment created and so on. We do not need too much imagination to come up with the correct translation for the word "reasonable" in these circumstances. In line with at least one hallowed Opposition tradition, it means that the Minister should have lain down and allowed the multinational companies to walk all over him. There are two very distinct strategies here—Deputy O'Malley's, which is categorised by the phrase "an opportunist grab", and Deputy Haughey's, which is I suppose a more-or-less "give it all away munificence". Which of them represents the authentic voice of the Opposition? It is important that we know.

Bringing up the rear of this rather extraordinary cavalcade we have the figure of the former Minister for Industry and Commerce already mentioned by Senator Browne in this debate, Deputy Paddy Lalor. Deputy Lalor cheerfully admitted that he got a very lousy deal out of the Tynagh affair but justified it solely on the grounds that it created employment when employment was needed. At the time of the Tynagh deal—and I need hardly stress this—unemployment did not by any means present the problem that it does now. But even at that stage, when so much of our unemployment was concealed by emigration, Deputy Lalor was prepared to make sweeping concessions to one multinational company in return for an immediate, if not necessarily permanent, increase in jobs. The logical extension of this position is that the present Government and the present Minister in particular should, at a time of even greater unemployment, be prepared to be even more supine on this issue. But it would not only be more difficult to adopt a more conciliatory position than the horizontal one chosen by Deputy Lalor and his colleagues; it would be economically and politically disastrous. It would be saying to all such companies: "We are prepared to accept short-term political and economic gains, for example, in employment and sign away in return forever the prospect of a realistic share in our developing natural resources."

There is no reason, incidentally, why any Irish Government should differentiate between native and nonnative or multinational owners of capital whether they are engaged in the exploitation of Irish natural resources or not. The important issue here that we should find out and the country should be told is: whom are we to believe and whom are the multinationals to believe? Deputy O'Malley's blustering or Deputy Haughey's soft reassurances? This is the real issue behind this Bill. The Opposition, I believe, must not be allowed to have an each-way bet on the natural resources policy, and on the evidence of the Dáil record this is exactly what they are trying to do, however unlikely it is that they will get away with it.

Considerable reference was made in the other House to the question of whether or not Deputy O'Malley was right to deal or attempt to deal in shares in particular mining companies at the time that he was a Government Minister. I do not propose for a moment to go into the propriety or otherwise of the Minister's action at that time. I would just like to point out one single fact, that the amount of money which the Minister at that time paid or was prepared to pay for the purchase of shares in a mining company is roughly equivalent to the amount of money a single man on unemployment assistance at that time would have had to live on for an entire year. This is the kind of gambling with which we became familiar under the last Administration. It is not the kind of gambling, I trust, which this Administration will involve itself in.

I find the lacklustre showing of the Opposition in this debate in this House even more revealing. It makes me wonder whether they are even behind their spokesman in the Dáil on this matter. When we look, as we must look, at the Opposition to this Bill we must ask ourselves where is it coming from. Is it coming politically from the left or politically from the right? I think we will be in little doubt that the huge majority of it is coming overwhelmingly from the right.

The House will be interested in a recent statement by Mr. Hugh Monroe in the current issue of Hibernia. Mr. Monroe is a classic exponent, I think, of right-wing economics, very articulate and intelligent. He comments directly on the particular business before us in these terms:

Successful businessmen have real skill of a kind academic intellectuals and civil servants just don't have. They do not even begin to understand the nature of that skill. No doubt, Justin felt three years ago but he was far more able than Michael Wymes and Tom Roche. Perhaps now he has learned his lesson and in future will leave business to businessmen.

This is the cry of the right in this debate. They want business to be left to businessmen. The actions of this Government, of this Minister for Industry and Commerce in particular, have, I think, shown that we are not prepared to leave business to businessmen. This is all the more relevant on the question of the development of natural resources in which the multinational companies involved have consistently shown that if given an inch they will take several miles. We must have some form of native Irish presence to stand up to them. I am convinced that the Minister is taking steps—and this will not be the last of them—to create such a countervailing presence.

The situation which the Minister had to face when he came into office was a daunting one by any standards. He was faced with the very difficult task of making bricks out of straw. I believe he has done that. I believe that he has, out of the ruins of a policy or out of a non-existent policy, fashioned the beginnings of a policy which we will be glad to look back on in ten or 15 years as the essential initial steps—not by any means enough, not by any means the whole thing that we are looking for, but the steps without which the other steps cannot be taken.

Pursuant to an order already made, the Minister is now due to conclude.

It sometimes occurred to me, listening to Senator Noel Browne, that he would have preferred the Minister to have made gold ingots out of the straw with which he was faced. But we do not have the philosopher's stone. We do not have the magic which Senator Browne would like us to have. We deal instead in the hard currency of national and international politics, of national and international finance and indeed of our whole natural resources policy. I am quite happy and confident to leave that job in the hands of the present Minister.

Do we stop at 8.30 p.m.? I have three-quarters of an hour?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Yes.

I shall take a little less. It is just to know approximately how much time I have. One of the early comments on this whole Bula debate was a non-verbal but a very able one from a very able cartoonist. I am referring to a cartoon by "Doll" in the Irish Independent. It simply showed the lower part of two male individuals, intended probably to be Deputy O'Malley and myself. They were standing facing each other and the top half of them was completely obscured in a cloud of vituperation so that people did not understand what the issue was about. It has been like that. It has become very complicated and people do not understand it. A great many people are holding off making a decision because they do not understand what it is about. In the end, I am now saying, perhaps articulating it clearly for the first time, it is not a difficult debate. Fundamentally, it is an easy one. It is about the control of Irish natural resources. Secondly, and more precisely, it is a matter between a David and a Goliath. The David is Irish—one might say a Daithí—and a Goliath in this context, because Bula is much smaller and is not supported by the great mining finance houses of the world and is indigenously Irish; whereas Tara, not by its personnel in Ireland, who are indeed Irish people, but by companies like Cominco-Noranda and Charter Consolidated, distantly, at the back of it, is controlled by some of the greatest financial forces in mining in the world.

The object of my predecessor was to deliver the whole of the orebody, the publicly owned and the privately owned part, to Tara. He told me in the Dáil—I am referring to Deputy Paddy Lalor—that I should have made another order, that I should have persisted in that purpose, that in fact the orebody should have been delivered to one owner—which one was rather difficult to identify because we do not have rights to know the fine details of the shareholding in Tara Exploration and Development —who was a foreign owner. The national interest requires that we deal with that group of people—and we have dealt with them—but also that we have an indigenous Irish group with a State participation and shareholding in both and that we increase the knowledge of the State as we go along.

In fairness, I do not believe this is the voice of Fianna Fáil or the Opposition because, though I was consistently on many issues in opposition to Fianna Fáil down the decades, I know that the Fianna Fáil of my childhood and the Fianna Fáil that I have said before in public my parents supported for many decades, was a party sometimes mistaken on issues but whose basic patriotism was impossible to doubt. Now, we see a section of the leadership of Fianna Fáil articulating the point of view of the largest multinationals in the world against the interests of our indigenous Irish industry as well as against the interests of the Irish people. I cannot believe that that is the voice of Fianna Fáil as a whole. It is interesting that there is a section who, with great passion and a very well-briefed sustained attack, were concerned in the end to break the Bill—breaking me was incidental—so that the Bula deal would not go through and so that in the end I would do what Deputy Paddy Lalor tried to do and said I ought to do, which was to make another order and deliver the whole orebody to Tara.

I was interested in Senator Horgan talking about the each-way bets. But the most authoritative person on the Opposition's mineral policy is my predecessor. I would like to put on the record of the Seanad an extract from the Official Report of the Dáil debate, of 10th February, 1972, about a year before he lost office. The column reference is 1664, and I quote:

It is the policy of the Government not to participate directly in mineral exploration and development but to provide adequate facilities and incentives to competent private enterprise concerns to engage in such activities. No change in this policy is envisaged.

That is the authentic voice of Fianna Fáil, not the rhetoric of the Ard Fheis. It has been repeated over and over that that is the policy—no participation. Let me again put on the record of the House approximately what that cost, not about Tara or Bula or that orebody because they might say "Ah well, we would have changed". Let us talk about what it did cost in some previous mines and orebodies in the country. I have had a calculation made comparing the royalty we got on this magnificent royalty basis with what we would have got following the policy I have been able to introduce with the current tax regime of a royalty and a State participation of 25 per cent. I said in the Dáil on 2nd February, column 711 and 712, that over the last 11 years, 25 million tons of ore were mined at Tynagh, Silvermines and Gortdrum. With royalties the total State take was £2.8 million or about 10p a ton. The royalty was 10p a ton, £2.8 million over 11 years. On the tax regime of the present Government one cannot say exactly but the take would have been between £20 million and £25 million, approximately ten times as much. There is a real difference in policy.

The other item that interests me very much is the weeping for the spending of this amount of public money to get the State a 49 per cent share of an orebody which was held to be private minerals. If we have heard one figure more than another, we have heard £9.54 million accompanied with the splashing of tears. Hypocrisy, I am afraid, and hypocrisy admitted by my predecessor, Deputy Lalor, and I am quoting from the Dáil Official Report of 2nd February, 1977, column 613. I had made the point in my opening speech that had we perfected an order which stood up in court there was a very real chance that we would then, having obtained the private minerals for the purpose of delivering them to Tara, have to pay the full commercial valuation for them. I said that. I now quote what Deputy Lalor said in reply, as reported at column 612:

The Minister made the point that he got legal advice from the senior counsel that if the order made by the Minister was a successful order, Mr. Wright could, by way of compensation, seek the full value of the minerals under the ground.

Remember the orebody was known. I am interjecting into the quotation because the orebody had been proven, had been measured: it was known before the order was made how much mineral was there and what it was worth. He continued:

That is why I fully accept that the legislation, from that point of view, needs to be updated.

The man who made that order, who sat in my chair, who agonised over the order and got plenty of advice as to how dangerous it was, knew that not 24 per cent but 100 per cent of minerals might have to be bought, if the order was successful, at the full commercial value rate. So how can I be too perturbed at the tears of the people who bewail the spending of £9.54 million for 49 per cent when I might have had to spend four times as much just to perfect the State's title so that I could transfer it to another company? How can I believe that it is not hypocrisy when that is what Deputy Lalor said? He understood the situation very well, better indeed than Deputy O'Malley and Deputy Colley because he had to wrestle with it. I think a time came when they chased him out of the debate because every time he participated in it he would agree with something that the Opposition did not want to have said. His contributions to it are very interesting and revealing.

It is funny the way things do not travel: perhaps if one says them often enough they begin to travel at last. I said at the opening of the Second Stage debate in the Dáil and closing it, I said it many times in between and I said it in opening this Second Stage, that there were three possibilities in reality. One was to make another order. I had plenty of advice against doing that. It was good advice and it would have been crazy to have ignored it. Another was to do nothing, in which case the possibilities for chaos were almost endless. The other was to go and make a deal with the people who were there. When I hear terms like "claim jumping" I cannot help remembering that one of these "claim jumpers" was a man called Wright who owned the farm and who owned the minerals under it. The people who were hurling that expression were people from Noranda, Cominco and other distant companies. But Mr. Wright did not wish to be pressured by companies or by government, so he brought in some friends that he knew had experience in this field, people who took very considerable risks. I did not choose them. They were there. They had taken those risks and their rights were upheld in two courts. Indeed, there was a very considerable element in the acceptance of those rights by my predecessor when he made the order. By making an order of compulsory acquisition one is going a long way in reality towards acknowledging that the person against whom the order might be made is the owner. That situation stems from 1971.

There were three alternatives. One was to persist, which might have been tremendously expensive and would have resulted in the whole orebody belonging to the companies identified. Then we were to do nothing. I shall not tease out the circumstances but anyone with a little imagination can see risk of that course—the risk of chaos, of war between the two bodies. Retrospectively you cannot make a law reaching into the past to undo something which was done according to the law of the day and done in good faith. You can, but it is extremely chaotic and messy and bad for the law in general and for the general atmosphere of the country. The third one was to go and deal without too many cards in my hand because, firstly, we had lost in the Supreme Court, and because the undertaking to give a lease to Tara existed and because they were suing me.

Let people go back and read the court's report of what they were saying about the nature of that lease. I had not my hands free. Let me reiterate— and perhaps it will travel this time——that if I had not got a free 25 per cent from Bula I could not have driven the deal with Tara for my three-quarters of Tara. If I had not had those two, when it came to deal with the oil companies and to get a 50 per cent, I would not have been credible and they would not have believed that it was Government policy. In fact, they would have mounted so much pressure that, whatever I might have wanted to do, they had merely to say that our terms were too stiff and that they would not sign. It holds together.

I will talk about Senator Browne in a minute, but let me just in parenthesis say in regard to his praise for the Norwegians that I have had the great pleasure of being praised both publicly and privately by the Norwegians about our natural resources deal on the Continental Shelf because, at one leap, from having no policy we went right up jumping past the British and the Danes, up almost to the position they were at. Therefore, if he likes what they did he ought in logic, at lease in regard to the Continental Shelf, like what we did—not that I expect he will.

It is also interesting that, while there was beautiful nit-picking of a legalistic kind in the other Chamber, nobody offered a way to unscramble the mess that I inherited. Nobody offered a better alternative. Nobody talked about alternatives. It was not what they were on about, because of course this was a real situation which required a real solution. One of the possible things we could have done was to end up paying the full commercial compensation. What is interesting though is that in terms of the valuation the question "Which valuation was used?" was posed all the time by the Opposition both in the Dáil and here. There was a Bechtel valuation, the extensive details of which were published. That was £94.36 million. There were two Sykes evaluations. They were for £63.1 million and £61.5 million. A Professor Carsberg did three evaluations on different assumptions. He is a very distinguished chap in this area. His figures were £82.58, £95.14 and £104.8 million. But the only reference was to the one prepared by Lazards. That one was stolen and sent to the newspapers. It was the one which the Opposition seized on. Perhaps it was sent to them, too. It is an interesting thought that we are getting to the stage of industrial espionage and "plumbers" in Ireland and that information that is available in other ways is not information. What comes under a plain wrapper as a result of a theft of a confidential document is information. That is an interesting moment in our political and economic history.

I want now to talk about the point— obviously I cannot deal with all the points the Senators made—that Senator Eoin Ryan made. He organised his material by saying that there were three things wrong—too much was paid, that we did not know the terms of the agreement and that some people were aware of the terms although Deputies and Senators had no such information. I shall not reiterate what I have just said, but Carsberg, Sykes and Bechtel are as distinguished as Lazards. The estimates did run from £104.8 million to £7.75 million. What the arbitrators did was to come out just on £40 million in a range from more than £100 million and less than £10 million. I do not purport and my people—though I have good experts— do not purport to be wiser than arbitrators who had a whole section of information available to them. I think that if the Oireachtas—either House of it—gets to the stage of trying to be wiser than the next person we get a little bit fatuous, a little ridiculous. I accept the arbitration. It was carefully carried out by experts who did their homework. That is what in the light of their expert knowledge and their unbiased position—I believe they were unbiased—they came up with.

What do you want of arbitration except that sort of fair and neutral judgment? It is possible, of course to say that we paid too much. It is possible, of course, to say that we paid too little. It is worth remembering that we got 49 per cent for the price of 24 per cent, so there is a certain amount of compensation built in if the evaluation was a bit out. Remember that we had more than 100 per cent. We had 200 per cent of the price we paid and that allows, if there were errors, a good deal of compensation. We could play forever that game that the price was too high. We will know that in a decade. We do not know it now. All we can do is to build in margins for ourselves and trust experts and not try to be wiser than the experts. The margin was to get 49 per cent for the price of 24 per cent and that was a fair margin.

In relation to the second point made by Senator Eoin Ryan, and which was made again by Senator Aherne and— I shall deal with it as I noted it from her and not from Senator Ryan— where she said that the Seanad was being asked to ratify an agreement, the terms of which are not known, I would say that that is a nice, neat and clear formulation of it. As the Attorney General said in the Dáil, as I said in the Dáil and as I said here in my opening speech on the Second Stage, the Dáil and the Seanad, with great respect, are not being asked to ratify that agreement. It is an agreement between myself and certain other parties and it does not depend for its validity or its legality on this piece of legislation. I am sorry if people believe that they are being asked to legislate the agreement, to make it the law of the land and, therefore, are outraged if they do not see it. But they are not being so asked. That was a misunderstanding—I hope it was a misunderstanding—which got off the ground from Deputy O'Malley right at the beginning of this debate and has persisted. We are not asking people to make the law of the land something they have not seen. That is not what the Bill purports to do.

The third of Senator Ryan's three headings was that the terms were made available to many people and to certain institutions. Of course some bankers and civil servants know them but so do they know the agreements made every year by the IDA, SFADCo and Gaeltarra Éireann which amount to about £80 million. Every time the IDA either takes equity or gives a grant, of course there is an agreement involved. The State cannot deal with an Irish or a foreign company without such a legally binding document, properly drawn up and signed. Of course, they exist. Nobody ever asks for them. But the contents of those agreements are as available to the banks, to the institutions, to the civil servants, to the staff of the IDA and SFADCo and so on as is this agreement.

It has been said that there was a lack of respect for the Houses of the Oireachtas by what was done in this Bill. I deny that. There was no such disrespect either intended or offered. But if the argument is made that in this Bill there is such disrespect, such a lack of consideration for the proper rights and prerogatives of Oireachtas, so is there many hunderds of times every year in other agreements and so has there been for decades. Why is this one different? Because the amount is a little more? All right, it is a large amount of money. Because it involves a new departure by the State into the area of natural resources?

Senator Michael Ferris asked if it was necessary to come before the Houses of the Oireachtas with this Bill. No, it was not necessary. I or my officials could have thought up a mechanism. It could have gone into my Estimates and you all know how quickly Estimates are put through. They do not come to the Seanad at all. They go through in three-quarters of an hour although they involve tremendous amounts of money. I did not choose such a mechanism—perhaps mistakenly in the light of the debate that took place, since it focussed not, on the fundamental issues nor on the policy choices but on what I have called nit-picking minutiae. But I wanted to have a debate on those issues. If we were up to any sort of skulduggery we would not have done it this way. I wanted to have a debate on it. In the end we have got a debate on these issues. We got a lot of nonsense and irrelevancies along the way but, in the end, we got a debate about the choices.

So those are the three things. Was it too much? We got some experts; we got a result. I do not have a certainty about that but the decades will provide the answer. But it was not possible, in any prudence, to go on and make another order. It was not possible, in any prudence, to do nothing and leave it there. It was necessary to deal with the people who existed. I believe that this is a good deal, that it safeguards much. But there is no certainty about that. Often a Minister will get advice from civil servants. They may advise him to kick for touch. It is possible to kick for touch. I do not think this is a low-profile, low hazard alternative that I have taken. I admit that there are risks. If it comes out the very best it will be magnificent for the people of this country; it will means tens of million pounds every year for many years. If it comes out at the very worst, the existence of the orebody, and the fact that ore is a relatively rare metal and that therefore it more than compensates for inflation, means that we have an asset corresponding to our money, a very tangible, measurable, known and defined asset. Therefore, at the very worst we cannot lose. I said that in the Dáil and I was accused of being weak, defensive and uncertain about it. At the very best it can be very good indeed. At the very worst we cannot lose. We have often lost State moneys but at the very worst we cannot lose this. The real outcome will probably leave us somewhere in the middle but we have got a policy, an atmosphere and an environment for that which is very valuable to us.

I want now to take up a number of points seriatim. Senator Russell and others mentioned Mianraí. Let me say with regard to Mianraí that in the Green Paper there is an absolutely explicit commitment to put Mianraí into being as a proper State mining company. By that I understand a company which would look after the State's participation and acquire skills but which would itself prospect mine, process and market—a total mining company. I am quite clear about that. It is what we need. In my view, we do not need, in any currently foreseeable time, the policy of saying: "No foreign companies, no private Irish companies." What we need is a mixed economy with the mixture and the mixture that guarantees the State's position is a State company with a totality of expertise.

Some Senator was concerned about the civil servants wanting too much control. The civil servants want to have a company like that because they know that the building up of that expertise over a time is absolutely essential if we are to be protected. It is absolutely essential that we have those skills in our own camp.

I should like now to make some comments on what Senator Dolan said. He said it was a pity that there was a difference between the first people, Tara Mines, and Mr. Wright, the farmer who owned the land and the minerals. It is a pity in a way, because of course there is an argument for developing a single orebody. It was not a pity of my making. All that failure to agree took place at the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971. Deputy Lalor was not so long in office but by the time he got to it, let alone by the time I got to it, they were already a pair of very separate camps in conflict with each other.

I was asked about the Whistlemount Channel and I was asked about the smelter by Senator Dolan also. We have known about the Whistlemount Channel for a considerable time and we have known from a number of sources. We have had the Royal School of Mines commissioned by the Department to look at reports of both of the companies. The Royal School of Mines, for example, looked at a report on general safety. They reported, at my request, on Tara's general safety plans and the plans of Tara at the time. In the light of the Whistlemount Channel knowledge and the Royal School of Mines advice, the Tara plans were considered safe and reasonable plans as scrutinised by them. The two sides have thumped each other. We are all fed up with it. For everybody's good, including their own good, I do not think they should be trying to score off each other. There has been a good look by neutral experts at the Whistlemount Channel. The Royal School of Mines people did not carry out a detailed investigation but they studied the reports of others.

In regard to the river diversion, there was available a report of a zinc company. Bula Limited got this and it was available also to the Royal School of Mines. Dr. White of the Royal School of Mines dealt with the Blackwater Channel vis-a-vis the implications for orebody development. That was commissioned by us. He recommended diversion on grounds of safety and also on economic grounds. In other words what it comes to—and I am not going to talk technical detail —in regard to the Whistlemount Channel, in regard to the Blackwater, is that good professionals have had a good hard look at it. If the existence of something like that channel creates a difficulty, then you find a solution to the difficulty. Once it is looked at by expert people, the problem is not a major or insuperable one. It has been thoroughly examined both by the companies and by people on our side who are aware of the risks and believe that the steps being taken to counter those risks are reasonable; prudent and practical.

I have been asked by a number of people about the smelter. I am not going to make any announcement on that now except to say that my commitment to a smelter is of long standing and is unequivocal. I completely accept also the downstream arguments. You have to have downstream. I am not going to make an announcement as part of this debate but the sort of timetable I have given previously is being followed and followed rigorously. I completely accept the argument. As far as I am concerned in my period as Minister if we had not resolved the question of the smelter and if we had not also resolved the question of the downstream—because just making metal for export is not very interesting—I would consider that I had failed in my Ministry. I will not say more than that. I think it is clear enough.

A number of people compared Norway with our situation. I would like to tell the Seanad that we have been to Norway, both myself and my staff. We have leaned on the Norwegians more than we have leaned on any other country in this regard. They have been unfailingly helpful. We have benefited enormously from their wisdom and skills in the whole natural resources area. When we finally came—this is not about Bula but about natural resources in general —to make our definitive agreements they were very pleased because they were afraid that we would be soft and let them down and leave them exposed as the very tough country. They said they were delighted with the result because they felt that we had not done that. We are very close to the Norwegian position in all sorts of ways and I share the admiration of Senators who have expressed their regard for how well the Norwegians have done it.

I was asked some specific questions by Senator Ruairí Quinn. He asked about Mianraí. Perhaps this is the moment to spell out what I think of as current policy. We have a mixed economy. It is not a private enterprise economy. I repudiate the policy that I quoted from Deputy Lalor in 1972, when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, of letting the private sector do it. Neither is it an economy where we have a consensus of people wanting to do it as totally State and totally nationalised. What is appropriate, what corresponds with our experience and our stage of development and indeed our traditions, and very much with the attitudes of the foundation of the State, is that we have a genuinely mixed economy where the State and private sector learn to work together and sustain and help each other. They both have strengths. That is the stage we are at and will be at for some considerable time. We need State companies, but not exclusively State companies, to build their skills slowly. We need the private companies and the multinationals. I can be castigated about it by people as much as they like. The phrase I used was that we want them as partners and not as masters. That I would go back to I would believe that the nation states have learned so much about the multinationals over the last few decades that they are now able to treat them in the natural resources area as equals. They were walked on by them, but a lot of lessons have been learned.

With regard to the pay-back, we talked about the £25 million to £30 million per annum at fruition. I have given some figures on this in the other Chamber. We think of a pay-back of about seven years on Bula. Tara will come into profit a little sooner than that. They have a lot of development work done. That is the sort of time schedule.

I wanted also to say something about planning permission. I have said a lot about this and I do not want to repeat myself too much. I am an environmentalist and conservationist of many years standing. With regard to planning permission, we are back to expertise. We want the trade-off between the protection of the environment which is right and reasonable, on the one hand, and the right to develop the national resources and get a good return for them, on the other. It is not for me, although I am interested in these things, to say where the balance point is and what is the best way to develop that mine so that it gives a good return while at the same time protecing the environment. I do not know about the latest techniques for keeping dust down or for curtains of water or whatever. It is not my job to know that. Neither is it the job—and I say this with respect to this Chamber—of Senators either. It is the job of good professionals who are neutral. They get properly briefed and they do their job and you get the trade-off for them. I will not generate hysteria one way and I will not say that we can have the sort of strip thing that was done in American States. We will get to know about this and have a balance and it will be a reasonable one and will be reached by professionals. Whatever it is, first I will not try to influence it and secondly I will sustain it when it comes out, but I want it to be genuinely professional and technical and not political in either way. I want a good technical solution from good professionals. We have them in this country and I am prepared to trust them.

I should like to refer to Senator Browne, who went on for a long time, was very cross and very vituperative with me but I do not propose to be the same with him. He said one interesting thing and here I will stop. He thinks that what we did was frightful. That is all right but he said it is a break-the-Government issue. If you break the Government—we have not the alternative Government that Senator Browne or I might like, we have the alternative Government that everybody knows—then the policy of that alternative Government is private enterprise. The interesting end which he achieves so often is that by criticising things from the far left he in fact sustains the right. That is what he does objectively. By demanding the moon he would end up by getting private enterprise and by getting that orebody in the hand of Cominco and Noranda. I hope that people on the left will read his speech looking for alternatives, looking for practical things to do at a given time in the light of the existing legal framework. The choice is before us, both the choices of Government and the choice of partners. I think the Senator made—and I do not want to use harsh words at him—a self-indulgent, unresearched, unserious speech. I have heard the vituperative bit many times before and the analysis bits I did not find were there at all. I think it would have led us back if it were to believed by large numbers of people.

I should like to quote from a letter to my own Department by a civil servant whom I will not name, but expressing the opinion of the Department. It was in 1971. It states that mining here is a matter for private enterprise and the role of the State is confined to making available facilities and incentives. That is what he would get, that is what ultra-Leftism always gets; too far left is right. It is just unanalytical and self indulgent to indulge in that sort of vituperation without offering alternatives.

Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 23; Níl, 9.

  • Blennerhassett, John.
  • Codd, Patrick.
  • Connolly, Roderic.
  • Daly, Jack.
  • Ferris, Michael.
  • FitzGerald, Alexis.
  • Harte, John.
  • Horgan, John S.
  • Kerrigan, Patrick.
  • Kilbride, Thomas.
  • Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
  • McCartin, John Joseph.
  • McHugh, Vincent.
  • Markey, Bernard.
  • Moynihan, Michael.
  • O'Brien, William.
  • O'Higgins, Michael J.
  • O'Toole, Patrick.
  • Quinn, Ruairí.
  • Robinson, Mary.
  • Russell, George Edward.
  • Sanfey, James W.
  • Whyte, Liam.

Níl

  • Browne, Patrick (Fad).
  • Dolan, Séamus.
  • Eachthéirn, Cáit Uí.
  • Garrett, Jack.
  • Hanafin, Des.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • McGlinchey, Bernard.
  • McGowan, Patrick.
  • Ryan, Eoin.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Harte; Níl, Senators Hanafin and Garrett.
Question declared carried.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

When is it proposed to take the Committee Stage,

It is suggested that we meet at 2.30 p.m. tomorrow to take Committee and remaining Stages of this Bill and finish by 6.30 p.m. Some of the Opposition Senators and some of our Ministers are in some difficulties. In my opinion this arrangement would meet all parties.

I originally suggested the Committee Stage to be taken next week but I understand there is some difficulty about that. I would not object to taking the Committee Stage tomorrow but I would not like to give a commitment at this stage that we could finish all Stages.

The Minister has considerable problems. I am doing my best to find a solution. The alternative from our point of view would be to meet at 10.30 a.m. I know that would not suit. We do not want to appear to steamroll or anything like that but if we could have an arrangement to finish all Stages by 6.30 p.m. we could do so. There should be no difficulty.

The most I can say is that we will finish Committee Stage by 6.30 p.m. We may do more than that but I certainly could not agree to anything further than that.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is it agreed that Committee Stage be ordered for 2.30 p.m. tomorrow,

Is it not possible to finish the Bill tomorrow,

Could we meet at 1 o'clock tomorrow and finish at 6.30?

Very reluctantly I am agreeing to take the Committee Stage tomorrow. It should be taken next week. Having been pressed to accept this, that is as much as we should be asked to do. We may finish all Stages tomorrow but take the Committee Stage and finish it by 6.30 p.m. is the most I could agree to.

That was on the basis of meeting at 2.30 p.m. I am suggesting now that we meet at 1.30 p.m. I do not want to have Senators called to sit on Thursday, which is the only other alternative, maybe for a couple of hours' work.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Could we agree about when the next Stage will be taken?

We would like to have the package deal at this stage.

I cannot agree to sit before 2.30 p.m. tomorrow to take the Committee Stage and have it finished by 6.30 p.m. That is the limit I could agree to.

I suggest 1 p.m. tomorrow?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The proposal is that the Committee Stage be taken at 1 p.m. tomorrow.

Question put: "That Committee Stage be taken at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd March, 1977."
The Seanad divided: Tá, 22; Níl, 7.

  • Blennerhassett, John.
  • Codd, Patrick.
  • Connolly, Roderic.
  • Daly, Jack.
  • Ferris, Michael.
  • Harte, John.
  • Horgan, John S.
  • Kerrigan, Patrick.
  • Kilbride, Thomas.
  • Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
  • McCartin, John Joseph.
  • McHugh, Vincent.
  • Markey, Bernard.
  • Moynihan, Michael.
  • O'Brien, William.
  • O'Higgins, Michael J.
  • O'Toole, Patrick.
  • Quinn, Ruairí.
  • Robinson, Mary.
  • Russell, George Edward.
  • Sanfey, James W.
  • Whyte, Liam.

Níl

  • Browne, Patrick (Fad).
  • Dolan, Séamus.
  • Eachthéirn, Cáit Uí.
  • Garrett, Jack.
  • Hanafin, Des.
  • McGowan, Patrick.
  • Ryan, Eoin.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Harte; Níl, Senators Hanafin and Garrett.
Question declared carried.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.45 p.m. until 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd March, 1977.
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