I welcome the opportunity of speaking again on this motion concerning the various reports vis-à-vis the EEC. I was speaking the last evening about the general position where the Community is concerned and the extent to which there is pessimism abroad. Included in these four or five reports is the Tindemans report, the Belgian who composed an excellent report having had fundamental consultations in all of the EEC countries. We must be very much in sympathy with Tindemans because his attitude to Europe is that of someone from a small country and we are a small country. He does not have the big power mentality like the French, the Germans or the British. He is a committed European as are many people here. In his report he attempted to deal with the very broad issues of possible economic and monetary union and the question of direct elections to the European Parliament. He recognised what he termed the “crisis in Europe” and he saw his proposals as possibly helping in this crisis. The proposals, in summary, were increased powers for the European Parliament, to start with, and an adequate regional policy which effected a net transfer of resources from the wealthier parts of the Community to the poorer parts of Europe, something which has not even begun to happen to date. He termed this the net transfer of resources.
In general terms then, against a background of considering the Tindemans report, there is a great deal of room for pessimism when we look at what is happening within the EEC. I am glad that the speech of the Minister of State refers to this and adopts a really pessimistic tone. The Minister of State refers to the economic and monetary position, states that it has been sluggish in recent times and that the objectives set of economic and monetary union by 1980 are now clearly unattainable. I agree with that and, indeed, the language is not even sufficiently strong. It is not only sluggish. It has been practically non-existent because the major states do not see the European Community as we do. They are still holding on to their own sovereignty to a much greater extent and they see the EEC as a tool to be used entirely in their own interests. We saw all the problems of the economic recession caused by the oil crisis, the bilateral trading done by the various European nations with the Middle East and the practical breakdown of the sense of a unity within Europe so that economic and monetary union is an illusion. I think it is very much in the future.
It was good to see the suggestions in the Tindemans report of increased power for the Parliament. We are in complete agreement here because, presumably, when we reach the point of direct elections and have a directly elected Parliament in Europe, then with the increased democratic control and direct control by popular mandate from the people of Europe, it should help to get a Europe moving with more appeal for the people of these nine countries. Again, even there we are running into all kinds of problems because a year or two years ago there should have been agreement among the nine countries on the date of elections for the EEC. Due to the fact the British were not prepared, or did not have the will to be prepared, that decision, because of what might be described effectively as a British veto, has meant a full extension of a year or 18 months before these elections take place. Even today there is another mini-crisis over the siting of the proposed European Parliament. For many sensible reasons those involved in countries distant from the centre of Europe are not altogether happy about the position where the Parliament sits in venues such as Strasbourg and Luxembourg, which are not international airports and which cannot be reached in an adequate time.
For many obvious practical reasons there is a consensus to a large extent that the headquarters should be Brussels but, despite that, we read in The Times today that the people of Luxembourg have suggested to the Government that their national interest is at stake and there is even a threat of a veto which would effectively put the European Parliament elections off for another year or two. We have had a similar argument from the French where Strasbourg is concerned. It seems to me the siting of the Parliament should be the interest of the various people who will be members of that Parliament and their convenience rather than the national interest of any one state. I am merely giving the background to show the extent to which there is bickering and horse-trading and the extent to which the ideals of a decade ago are not being realised.
Looking at the proposed extension of the Community—we are talking about a period covered by these reports during which both Greece and Portugal applied for membership— since the tenth and most recent report Spain has also applied for membership. There is a receptiveness among the Nine to the applications of the Greeks, the Portuguese and the Spanish and that receptiveness has been explained by the fact that there has been weak democracy in Greece, Portugal and Spain. There have been Fascist regimes. There have been many problems. In the long term it could be argued that the security of the Mediterranean and of Europe itself is at stake if these countries are not shored up by the strong democracies of Europe. But there are immense problems involved in the entrance of Greece, Portugal and Spain into the Community. In matters such as economic and monetary union, such as the Common Market, the common argricultural policy, the regional policy and the need for the transfer of resources from the wealthier states to the poorer regions, there will be immense economic restraints and problems with countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain, having regard to the poverty in those countries by comparison with the Nine. Poverty in parts of these countries is much worse than it is here and we are the poorest of the Nine.
The problems in economic terms for our country will be very great. If, at this stage, we are dissatisfied with the slice of the cake we are getting in certain areas, such as regional policy, this will be compounded by the admission of these other countries. Considering the pessimism there is vis-à-vis the EEC at the moment, it seems to me, if the larger states in the Nine were very serious and committed to economic and monetary union as a multiple of political union, there would be a greater reluctance to widen the net at this stage because the widening of the net would result more in a federal union rather than a closely knit unit and we would be getting further away from the closely-knit unit through the type of extension that is now happening, an extension welcome in political terms because of the weakness of those democracies.
I would like to address myself now to the regional fund. I am glad that the fund for the next two or three years will be at a higher level than it was for the three previous years. We should not, however, get carried away by the extent of the fund. In the three years, December 1974 until recently, we spoke about a figure of £540 millions but in the regional fund for the three years starting now we are talking about £1,200 millions. It is slightly more than double what we were getting. We are talking about a fund three, four, five years after the earlier phase. If you allow the built-in factor for inflation, what we are getting effectively is better but not greatly better than what we had been getting.
Speaking as one who comes from the West, speaking of the kind of problems we have there, the single greatest disappointment where European involvement is concerned has been in this regional fund area. We were a bit idealistic at the time of the referendum and we got this tremendously large vote in favour of entering Europe. This vote was largest of all in the western counties. One of the strong cases in advocating that people should vote for membership of the EEC at the time was the fact that west of the Shannon we lived in that part of this country which has the poorest resources and the lowest per capita income. We knew, without being political about it, that successive Governments here simply did not have adequate funds to build the infrastructure to put in the industry necessary to stop the fantastic flood of emigration from which we suffered to a much greater extent than elsewhere in the country.
We said Europe has this policy of what Tindemans calls "the net transfer of resources", namely, a regional policy under which the generous Germans and the French and other countries were going to subsidise us to this very large extent and we would get this very large sum of money moving into places such as the west of Ireland and would help with infrastructure. People at that time were talking about a motorway from Galway to Dublin, which is as remote today as it ever was. This was the kind of thing in the air. The pittance that has emerged through this regional fund and the small extent to which it has helped has been a grave disappointment.
To put it into perspective, the regional fund needed to be a good fund for the west of the country. If we look at the extent to which we are a beneficiary of the EEC, the major area where we are a beneficiary is in the common agricultural policy, in which in 1977 we benefited through FEOGA to the extent of about £250 million. We benefited, indirectly, to the tune of about £175 million for the higher prices for exports through EEC involvement and there is the enormous benefit to the agricultural sector of about £400 million. But where agricultural policy was concerned, for European reasons and for broader reasons, we had all kinds of problems in the west vis-à-vis the status of the farmers, the development farm policies, and the categories into which many of our farmers could not place themselves because of the constraints of the size of their holdings.
If we analyse the enormous wealth and benefits that came to this country through the common agricultural policy we find that, proportionately, a huge proportion went to the south and south-east and the other parts of the country where there is intensive dairying. A very large proportion of this subsidy went to pockets of the country which are now immensely rich and have an income beyond all comparison to what they had. Where I live, our farmers are certainly much better off than they were, their income levels are better, their standards are better and their houses are better but in a relative sense the situation is incomparably different to that which obtains elsewhere in the island. The appalling background of an inadequate infrastructure is there today as much as it ever was.
Connacht in the west of Ireland, along with the Mezzogiorno in Italy, was the single poorest region within the entire Community and there has been no question of loosening the purse strings of the regional fund to get the money which should be moving into a region such as this. I hope the Government in such an area will assume a fairly radical position. We have been very idealistic in our approach, not altogether pragmatic at times. It has been a good attitude for a small country to adopt but when we see the extent to which other nations go in to get what they can out of the fund in certain areas such as this we should be more vocal than we have been in the past.
It is interesting to note that where the EEC regional policy is concerned the EEC state that they want to base that policy on consultation with national governments, to knit their regional policy and their regional funds into the national government's policy in the area of the regional field. I want to speak briefly again about a matter which concerns the west. Presumably, we can expand on that in other debates here over the next year or two. As a Senator and as a member of a county council in the west, I regret very much that the Government made a decision to dispense with the establishment of a western development board which we sought. It was tied into other matters. It was apolitical in many areas, in that many people of all persuasions thought that this kind of autonomy, this kind of decision-making within the province, indeed within other provinces, was a means on which we should build the country in regional terms. Additionally, had the seeds which were sown been developed and had that board been created it would have crystallised within the country the region of which we spoke and, in turn, could have led to the funding of much of its work by the EEC.
It is interesting to note that where funds from the EEC regional policy area are concerned, it is in two sections. There is a section which contains 650 million UAs which is the normal section where we get the grants to the different states for different projects. But there is a second section of 100 million UAs which is roughly about one-seventh of the total kitty, which is about 13½ per cent. That section of the fund is set aside for specific Community action, specific Europe-wide policies, as conceived by the Commission which could be allocated in specific areas. It seems that the development of the board about which I have been speaking would have crystallised within the country a new pressure group for funds from this other source, for example, in Europe. I hope that if we speak in a rational manner about matters concerning regional policy over the next year or two the Government will listen to what many people will say, and, hopefully, there may be a rethink about that particular area.
The other area in which there have been decisions by the Government in the area of regional policy was the decision made to examine what we call the sub-national regional needs of the country, through the Department of the Public Service. I understand that there has been some uncertainty about this aspect, of whether or not this analysis will go ahead. I hope the Government will, at the very least, get this report moving to see what is needed in the country in terms of such development. There are anomalies. Members were speaking about the Shannon Free Airport Development Company in the Dáil last week and, presumably, we will be speaking about it here next week. Deputies, and no doubt Senators next week, have been paying tremendous compliments to SFADCo, its principal officers and the people working in it, for the great work which they say has been done in the mid-west region. I go along with that view to a large extent. They have done marvellous work and one of the reasons for this has been that annually the Government have given them a sum of money to spend within their particular region and, to a very large extent, they have been the masters of their own destiny within that region. Yet this process does not happen in any other part of the country.
The Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy, referring to SFADCo made a good point. He said that these bodies, set up for specific purposes—SFADCo was set up initially to help Shannon Airport when it was in dire straits—should not necessarily be thought of to have the same function forever once they had done their job. It could be usefully asked, if SFADCo had done their job and there was not another one, is it necessary to continue with SFADCo? Alternatively, it would seem logical that if SFADCo had done a good job in the interests of that region that the Government by this stage should have learned lessons from that experience and that that experience should give a pointer to what might be done in other parts of the country, that it would be logical to have a similar structure in, say, the south-east or the south-west. We have seen unwelcome extensions of this type of thing where SFADCo did an excellent job particularly in the tourist field. Because of the lack of a similar structure in the west, we had situations where SFADCo were coming much farther north and beyond their brief to an extent to become involved in other areas in work which should have been carried out by a regional structure within our own part of the country. Presumably this is wider than the scope of the motion before the House. It is relevant to this extent, that the EEC regional policy will be interlocked with national regional policies.
It is important that the Government have their priorities right in regional policy. There are things we need to sort out in that particular area and I hope we will make some progress, even though the Government are acting in a manner in which I am disappointed in this respect, but at least we can discuss these matters over the next few years so that better things will happen.
There is one particular omission in the Minister's speech. It is a grave omission because we have had a lengthy speech of about 30 pages under a great many different headings. The Minister has not, at any stage in the speech, dealt specifically with industry. He has dealt with economic and monetary matters, with trade, with regional policy and with fisheries, but there was nothing about industry. Industry is one of the most critical areas we need to watch in so far as the EEC policy is concerned. We need a watchdog on that one for the next 12 to 18 months. If we look over the very recent history of industrial policy, for some years there has been pressure of varying degrees on successive Irish Governments to dismantle the grant structure and the huge incentive of tax relief on export sales on the basis that we have been too successful in attracting industry to this country which is in competition with industries in Britain, Germany, France, Belgium or Holland. There has been trade union reaction from the continent of Europe and we have been under pressure for all of these reasons. They are pressures we need to resist as strongly as possible. When all is said and done, despite the relative wealth of this country in comparison with the Third World or other such areas, we are still by all the criteria which are used infinitely less well-off than the other eight members of the EEC. We are living on the fringe of Europe with the transport costs involved in industry, in importing raw materials, and reexporting the finished product and in relative terms we have a poor industrial infrastructure. If the incentives which we have been allowed to give to industry to come to this country and to native industries to start here were dismantled in the morning we would be in an extremely parlous and serious position.
I was glad to see that Commissioner Dick Burke some months ago got the wind of what was happening in Brussels and apparently immediately consulted the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy. The battle is not by any means over because at a recent national conference of the Confederation of Irish Industry a speech was made on policy in the European Community by N. Davignon, Commissioner for Internal Policy and Industrial Affairs. Again in that speech he adverted, despite the noises the Minister had made, to the policy that we cannot allow protectionism, grants or incentives for a limited period to continue forever. It is an area that is fraught with danger and one in which, if the Government choose to show backbone, they will have all the support possible from this side of the House. I regret that the Minister did not deal with it in his speech. It is probably singly the most serious and critical matter facing us at present. I hope that the Minister will deal to an extent with this question of industrial policy and the backbone we will need to have within this country to retain the incentives which we have been giving and which have been remarkably successful.
Despite the remarkable success we know the limited extent to which they have been successful in solving the job situation. Through the economic crisis, the downturn in the textile field, in woollens and areas such as this, there was not all that great net increase in jobs even with all these incentives. If it is a question of retreating from this, we are in extremely dire circumstances and under no circumstances should such a move be tolerated. That is all I want to say about that.
I might mention also that the future in the area of competitiveness is gloomy. It is very difficult to be optimistic about the job position. One's heart tells one that we should be. It would be great if certain policies come off. But, on analysis, one's head does not agree with the heart. Looming in the future as well are the trade agreements with the Third World and the necessity to bring Africa and other countries into the mainstream of Europe. We are facing an era where we are going to have very much more competition for markets from the Third World, where people are working at a much lower rate for the job than we are doing. The future is not as bright as some people would like it to be.
I would like to refer briefly to one or two aspects of foreign policy within the EEC. I welcome the fact that they have become involved in the Middle East issue. Despite the pessimism there has been for many of the reasons I pointed out earlier on and the gloom in the economic field, we have to be thankful for one or two things which we tend to take for granted to a very large extent. The Common Market had its origins to a large extent in the will that existed in the mainland of Europe for future peace in Europe, having been decimated in two world wars in this century. This matter of peace is always taken too much for granted because you only begin to value peace and freedom when you do not have them. The single most remarkable achievement of the EEC was this political dimension which got the French, British, Germans and others in the cockpit of Europe sitting around a table and agreeing initially on economic matters and, hopefully, at a later date on matters of a political nature. This consultation and unity at root has had a tremendous psychological effect in creating an environment within Europe for possibly continuing peace. We can be more optimistic about peace in Europe today than we might ever have been post-World War I or World War II.
By extension of that it has had other effects on world policy in the unity of the Nine and their adopting common policies in the foreign field. As an aside to this, it is interesting to know that the ambassadors of the Nine in the different capitals around the world as distant as Tokyo meet on a regular basis to consider the policy of the Nine in Europe viv-à-vis the world. It is very healthy when you see them tackling in foreign policy matters such as the Middle East. I was glad to see that the EEC in a statement in November 1973 adopted a very strong policy on the Middle East. It was really a restatement of UN Resolution 242 in which they demanded an acknowledgement of the State of Israel and its right to exist in the Middle East. They also sought the recognition of the establishment of a just and lasting peace which must take into account the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. They also went on to refer to the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.
More recently Sadat seized an initiative to meet Begin in Jerusalem and people had hopes of the beginnings of peace resulting from their meeting. I admire Sadat very much for his initiative despite the controversies created in the Middle East, but vis-à-vis the enlargement of territories I regret that Israel since then sought to start settlements in the Sinai desert which was a particularly sensitive issue and which has not won very much for them in terms of public opinion. However, I am glad to see the EEC getting involved in this and the work which is being done. Indeed there was an Irishman, Eamon Gallagher, who was involved at an earlier stage in many of these negotiations in the Middle East but this would not be widely known within this country.
I am glad to see the EEC Committee are meeting again. They have not met for a very long time and it is past time that they met. With hindsight, and I was a member of that committee for four-and-a-half years, we were dealing with historical matter to too large an extent. We were not acting as a sounding post sufficiently. Whether the fault lay in the membership, the chairmanship or in the officers of that committee—I suppose it lay with all of us—it seemed to me that committee to a large extent should spend their time through liaison with the Irish Embassy to the EEC, in looking ahead towards imminent legislation to see what is under discussion at a particular time by the Commission, so that the discussions within our EEC committee can bring some influence to bear on results rather than be entirely historical. In my experience it was largely an historical matter. For example, you get some EEC regulations coming out which are absurd.
Recently I saw one that I am aware of through a business connection—a very simple matter of an egg grading machine. The regulations in Ireland and Britain have been that you have three different grades of eggs and you have a machine which literally grades them into these different sizes and then you pack them into boxes. There is a new EEC regulation on nine different grades of eggs. It is monstrous, there is no commercial basis for it, there is no consumer demand and it is simply an entirely unnecessary and a bureaucratic notion. Nobody knows why in Europe they might seek nine different grades of eggs. The whole business is farcical because while you get goodwill of course from the people charged with implementing a regulation, such as those in the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy or the Department of Agriculture, then again if we adhere to EEC regulations such officers have a duty to implement the regulations. If the committee were aware of regulations such as the egg-grading regulation before it got into legislation, before it got past the post, there would be some opportunity in such ludicrous areas such as this to influence events, whereas if you look at a regulation in an historical sense there is no possibility of doing anything about it.
The social fund is very useful to us and I am glad to see that there is quite a bit of money coming from it. I think the figure was about £22 million last year—it was over £20 million which is about 8 per cent of the total fund, which is generous. In this country I would like to compliment AnCO on the job which they have done. They have done a remarkably good job in training people for industry, and I note that in 1977 about 12,500 people received training from them which was a very substantial increase on 1976. In addition to that, there was training in other sectors as well. There were private companies in co-operation with AnCO and there were 5,000 people involved in such training programmes.
The social fund has been a tremendous fillip and a great deal of industrial training simply would not have happened had there not been this injection from the EEC. It is a scheme of which I approve completely. In the last few years with the emergence of free education to all levels and the over-reaction of people to this policy in the sense that it has been the ambition of most families to go through the arts and such disciplines, there has been a tendency to denigrate technical education and I am delighted to see the very strong contra-move in very practical terms in the field in which there will be a very good future for people who are involved. As long as we are going to be an industrial nation, this is where there is tremendous scope in a very practical sense. I am glad that that work is being carried out.
I have a short note here about fisheries. I am not going to dwell at length on it as I presume we will have debates on fisheries here over the next year or two. I note that a decision in the case against Ireland in the Court of Justice is fairly imminent. I am tempted to make one or two political remarks on the fisheries matter without getting into the bones of it. I remember four years in Government through an era in particular when our Foreign Minister, Deputy Garret FitzGerald, spent a tremendous amount of time looking after fishery interests, doing everything that he possibly could, carrying out every manoeuvre that he could in the national interest. We were vilified by all kinds of elements. It seems to me that the position has turned full circle and that we see the immense problems that exist. It is extremely difficult and I do not know where we are going to end up with regard to a solution but I hope that the fundamental interests of the country are furthered when the matter is finally agreed. I have said what I want to say. Finally, if I could ask the Minister for State—presumably the Minister will be in the House at some stage?
