A Chathaoirligh, the first thing I want to do this evening is to thank you for your impartiality in allowing this matter be discussed now, in that there was some difficulty in the manner in which it was arranged. For your decision, as Cathaoirleach, in allowing it to be discussed I want to express my thanks. I am sure I am expressing the thanks of Senator Hussey as well on your having seen to it that what I thought should have happened is now happening, as pronounced by you. This has been certainly an old swan song, as it were, in the Houses of the Oireachtas over the years, that is, the proposed closure of the Tuam sugar factory as part of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann Teoranta's national enterprise. It has arisen again, this time through the statements of the chairman, Mr. James E. Fitzpatrick, at the board in a recent television interview in which he talked about the report and accounts of the company for the year ended September 30 1982. Here I want to quote from The Irish Press of Tuesday, 8 March 1983. One can see from that statement the desire of the Sugar Company — illustrated by the statement accompanying the Report and Accounts of the Sugar Company for that year — that from their point of view there was no other option left for the salvation of the Sugar Company who found themselves in a £22 million loss this year, but to propose the closure of the Tuam sugar factory.
The Tuam sugar factory itself had a working loss of £1.4 million. There is at present a lot of hypocritical talk about that figure. I do not accept, nor do the people in the Tuam area of County Galway, or the west generally, the cost penalty basis pronounced by the chairman of the Sugar Company — obviously endorsed by many members of the board of the Sugar Company — that because the Tuam sugar factory is situated and operational where it is there is a cost penalty incurred to the tune of £1.6 million. This argument is advanced just because it is located in the west. That is not acceptable to any politician, of any grade, on the west coast. That is not acceptable to any of the people whom politicians of any political party accept on the west coast. Most certainly it is not acceptable to me.
I welcome the Minister here this evening to listen to our case. He could have passed this matter over to any of his Ministers of State, although I know one in particular who might not have liked to undertake the task. However, it happens to be in his constituency. I am delighted that the Minister is here this evening. I want to point out to him a few matters of which he may be aware already, which we, in this Parliament, speaking through the people, want to see implemented. What the total capital allocation of £50 million made available to the Irish Sugar Company since the end of May 1978 meant to the Tuam sugar factory was a total of £765,000. Therefore, how easy it is for the chairman of the Sugar Company to pronounce that had he got rid of the Tuam sugar factory then an anomaly adversely affecting the whole financial structure of the Sugar Company would have been eliminated. We do not accept that.
The chairman of the Sugar Company made another pronouncement in that same issue of The Irish Press which I cannot understand at all — that in the company's rationalisation plans 150 jobs are to be eliminated by end September. I want the Minister to listen to the following facts. When the last programme of the closure of the Tuam sugar factory was before the Houses of the Oireachtas — which was diverted at the instigation of the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party, the then Taoiseach, the works committee, the “Save Tuam Committee”, all the people implicated in the industry, on a given programme, advanced that they would cut their costs in Tuam. From 25 September 1981 to the 28 January 1983 a reduction in the number of workers in the Tuam sugar factory alone took place to the tune of 58 people. Yet the chairman of the Sugar Company tells us and he boasts about it in black and white that he will have 150 fewer people employed in the entire Sugar Company by the end of September. Tuam accounts for more than half that number.
I ask the Minister is that a justifiable programme that he has asked the Sugar Company to provide him with, so that he can make his case to the Government for the salvation of Tuam sugar factory? There are many other reasons. Those are points that are very relevant and must be taken into account. They sought rationalisation in Tuam and got it. Out of a total investment of £50 million freely given by the Government to the Sugar Company in the last four years we in Tuam have taken merely £765,000. That is quite a small amount of money in terms of the total cost. There was a loss factor of £1.4 million in the workings of the Tuam sugar factory last year. Yet Mallow subscribed only a profit of £750,000; Carlow subscribed a similar profit. Thurles had a £1.4 million loss and Tuam a £1.4 million loss. One can see from those figures — when one takes that meagre amount of capital of £765,000 for Tuam — that we behaved adequately in the Tuam sugar factory. A loss of £1.4 million is very little, when one sees that the Sugar Company lost £22 million in one financial year.
For the last 12 years, in this House and in other places, I have begged and beseeched every Minister of every political party to do something about the abnormality of the Sugar Company and their performance in this city. They have a seven-storey building in St. Stephen's Green packed with people from all the country, doing what, I do not know. In my opinion therein lies the cost. There in lies the ruination of the Sugar Company — seven storeys full of them. What they are doing or what productivity they yield to the Sugar Company I have never been able to understand. In all the rationalisation programmes that have taken place there, will the Minister tell us this: how many of their senior executives have been made redundant? As I know, from managerial positions upwards, only one redundancy was effected in the Sugar Company. I can tell the House something else — it was enforced on a man who had ability and gave a lot to the Sugar Company in his 20 years employment. There are many people knocking around at that level who did not give half as much as he but who are still on their £15,000 or £20,000 a year. They are the people who are bringing down the Sugar Company not the Tuam sugar factory, not the workers in Tuam sugar factory, or the farmers who gave 7,000 acres last year, and who would give 10,000 acres this year, when all the Sugar Company could take from them was 9,000. We have an over-filled contract whose worth to the farming community of Connacht last year was £4.5 million, and to the workers in Tuam only £2.1 million approximately. The tax paid to the State, not like other companies in the west, was £1,160,000, and rates paid to Galway County Council were £40,000. That is the Tuam contribution to the State and it is nothing to be ashamed of.
I would be ashamed of any Minister of any Government who would even tolerate any expression whether on the part of the chairman or any member of the executive of the Sugar Company of closure of the Tuam sugar factory. I am sure the Minister will not allow it happen on this occasion. I humbly beg him to face facts with them, asking them to cut, where necessary, and not down in Tuam in the west.
