I should like at the outset to welcome the Minister and I want to put a question. I know she is capable of giving not only me but the House and the country a very firm answer. On 29 March The Sunday Tribune ran a very interesting article. I would like to quote a few paragraphs:
Two devastating commentaries on the performance of our Governments emerged last week.
The most startling was the revelation that between 1981 and 1990 the State paid £1.6 billion (£1,600,000,000) in grants to private companies in order to create jobs, and that by 1990 this had resulted in just 7,000 permanent jobs. In addition, tax reliefs of almost £3 billion (£2,980,000,000) were given.
Thus the total cost per permanent job to the Exchequer was £654,285.
This figure excludes grants from the European Social Fund and Section 84 loans. Thus the real cost to the Exchequer per permanent job created may be in the region of £750,000.
I seem to have missed any reaction from the Minister or the Department to that article. I presume what the paper is doing is calculating the entire cost of the service. I do not know what the IDA staff complement is. Many people throughout the country are concerned with the problem of unemployment and with the difficulty of creating real jobs. I would like if in the course of this debate or in her reply, the Minister would explain this to the House, if there is an explanation. It seems a high figure for the creation of a single job. I think that kind of information is offputting. In the agencies serving in this area there should be a greater amount of risk capital at an earlier stage for people who have ideas and who want to get a business going.
However, it is a completely different scenario if you are talking about multinationals or large, established firms coming here. They have all the in-house facilities available. I think, perhaps erroneously, that there is a clique, well established firms of consultants to whom a businessman must go in order to make progress establishing jobs. Next year hopefully, there will be closer European Union. The Minister and Government must look very clearly at the basis of our industrial development. According to the headlines in this week's newspapers, the Apple multinational propose to transfer some of their industrial development to the Third World to avail of a cheaper labour force. Should we not more clearly identify a few areas of high quality production in which we excel? Should we not, for instance, take another look at agricultural production? Agriculture is in difficulty because over the years, the big players in agricultural processing have been content to sit back and take the easy shilling by putting everything they produce into intervention and bellyaching at whatever Government were in power to ensure that additional space was made available in cold storage for meat products, milk powder and so on.
I remember many years ago when Joe McGough or whoever was in An Bord Bainne and the old Pigs and Bacon Commission were able to sell quality Irish products across the world, even in the under-developed countries but the incentive to do that has been lost. I am rather nervous when talking about organic products because in the forties, in my youth, when we did not have access to artificial fertilisers, sprays and pesticides, organic farming was a pain. It was very difficult and you had to creep along the ground, pull weeds, thistles, docks, etc. It is easier now. With better machinery that can do a good job tilling the soil, organic production might work. There must be room for organic production of white meat especially. Unless a significant premium is paid for the organic production of beef it would not as profitable as it is for people involved in beef production who are using injections and the hormones that are illegal but are still unfortunately, being used.
I would like to see a Cabinet subcommittee including the Minister present and the Minister for Agriculture and Food to go study in depth job creation and to have markets identified. I know the markets are there in the Golden Triangle of Europe where top quality products can command a premium price. It would be in our interest to produce for that market if we could set up a system of farms and the Department could certify that the production was organic or free range. We cannot compete with industrial farms in Europe, especially in Holland, that are availing of the cheap meal substitutes and are able to produce food, with the aid of various chemicals, very quickly and rather cheaply.
Another area in which I think there must be greater prospects, but in which the Government do not appear to have much interest, is non-food production. The Minister for Energy summarily dismissed it as being uneconomic and not viable. I do not think his figures could have been up to date. I would like to see the Departments of Energy, the Environment and Agriculture and Food getting together to see what the prospects are. The Minister wrote off the idea of rape seed for energy as taking 500,000 acres to replace the diesel required for our road service. When you consider that the acreage of beet allowed to be sown in this country under both the ANB share contract from Europe is only around 80,000 acres and that there are contracts on barley and every other crop, so what if it takes 500,000 acres. We have over one million acres of arable land with very little to sow. A few months ago the market even for prime beef was shaky because we did not have sufficient buyers. There should be greater direction from the Government.
We are moving into a new era and we should have a very definite policy on the way we intend to go. Many specific areas have a marketing advantage based on low cost production and a clear, environmentally friendly image that we like to portray here. Over the last number of years introduced seven pieces of environmentally friendly legislation on air pollution, water pollution and so on. Are they being implemented? Have the county councils been financed to put the legislation into effect? I do not think so. Have the regulations promised been drafted? We have a lot of Irish solutions to problems that will worsen unless penalties are introduced.
I was listening to a colleague on the radio one day last week as I was driving up to town, giving out about the smell of slurry being spread around the countryside. That is the problem if you are in cattle production. You have to find a way of disposing of the slurry. If we were to be on top of the job from an economic point of view, surely Eolas, the Government or An Foras Talúntais should be funded to come up with a gas digester that could be applied at farm level to take the methane gas from the slurry and put it to economic use on the farm or the household or sell it in containers or in cans as Calor Gas or Kosangas is sold. The residue used to fertilise the land would be odourless. It is not much use giving out about production and the byproducts, whether they are smells or noise. We need more jobs.
It is a shame that 300,000 people are unemployed. I do not say that to be critical. It is a problem for this country. I know the Minister and the Government will try to find ways to solve this problem. We will not get one factory here that is going to employ 100,000 or 300,000 people. We must explore all avenues to encourage employment. I would ask the Minister to try to find a way to lower the cost to an employer of employing someone. This is a huge problem.
The labour relations legislation — such as the Unfair Dismissals Act — are very necessary, and are an improvement. Years ago you could ask a friend or a neighbour to employ somebody and they could do that but if one takes on somebody now who proves unsuccessful or does not fit the niche on offer, it is very difficult to get rid of them. We should be conscious of that problem
The Minister for Finance should find ways of raising money other than by taxing direct employment. I would prefer to see income tax and PRSI lowered and perhaps an increase in the spending tax. VAT could be increased so that people who are spending would pay. Then, if people do not want to spend, at least they would have control over their own income.
I would like to see much of the legislation that has been enacted by the Oireachtas over the last number of years implemented. It should have the force of law. It is not much use having legislation on the books if it is being ignored. If we are going to compete, and if we are going to fall back on agriculture and tourism, the environment is of great significance. I would like to see the role of Eolas and Teagasc being greatly increased through increased funding.
We have had, for instance, in the last 25 or 30 years an industrial research station on peat development at Lullymore, County Kildare. I do not know whether it is closed, but it certainly is not as active as it was. A huge body of research was very clearly identified there. I find it inexplicable that Government policy is to hand over the cutover bogs to Coillte instead of producing the very wide range of vegetables and agricultural products that can be economically produced on such bogs. Research has been done in that area.
Despite the fact that we have a Minister of State with responsibility for horticulture, we import £40 million worth of ordinary vegetables such as carrots, onions and leeks which could be grown easily in any part of the country. That is a national disgrace. It is unnecessary. The problem may be that the housewife finds that the home grown horticultural products are not being marketed or presented properly and do not represent good value. There can be nothing on the market in a fresher state than something that is grown at home; imported products cannot be fresher. If the cost of air transport is added, the imported product cannot compete with the home grown product on the basis of price. The Government must look at import substitution. It is not a big task, but it has to be tackled. It is nonsense to find imported vegetables from Holland, Cyprus or Israel in our towns. I am not against importing products from any country, but why do we not encourage people to grow vegetables at home? The supermarket chains seem to have a facility of doing what they like. They import in bulk, probably through some sort of contract system and they may frown on a local producer going in with a cartload of vegetables.
The Government have a responsibility to ensure that acceptable standards are enforced. If the Trade Descriptions Act was adhered to, people would be able to buy good Irish products. It is through ventures like that that we will pick up a few jobs here and there and they can add up to a sizeable total.
We have an excellent education system. We have a healthy race of people and we have a very bright young population but we do not seem to be able to find them gainful employment. I read, with great interest, the Culliton report. They are still looking for grandiose new factories which are expected to create thousands of jobs. That is not the answer. We must find employment for three, six or ten people here and there right across the country in small private workshops which will be trying to compete with craft industries from under-developed countries. We have to work on that.
A number of emigrants have returned from the UK over the last number of months. Many of these are craftsmen, some are skilled people, probably in the building trade. Some of them have tried to set up workshops to make small pieces of furniture. They seem to be competing with imports from Taiwan or Third World countries. There is a temptation for them to stay on the dole here. An agency, whether it is the IDA or some other organisation, should be able to finance such people. The amount they would get on the dole for a year could be aggregated to try to set them up and to see if they could create a small manufacturing unit for themselves, employing one or two persons. The research and the development should be financed on a county level. The regions are too remote, if you are talking about an individual in a village, or whatever.
When looking at the prospect of industrialisation of our country, we must remember that there has been a significant contribution to the upgrading of infrastructures in every county. While we have roads, railways and telecommunications in place the creation of jobs is not following after them. In practically every county there are county development officers. I do not know to whom they are answerable.
It is important that an effort should be made to monitor the number of new jobs created in each county. Young people who wish to start up and become self-employed should be given every encouragement by the State. The State should find a way of capitalising their dole entitlement over a year or 18 months, to see whether, with a once-off injection, or whether, it would be possible to sustain them while they get on their feet. If the experiment failed, at least we will have tried. I wish the Minister success in her task. The task is enormous with 300,000, mainly young people, unemployed. We must get greater productivity from the IDA, Shannon Development and Údarás. They must be able to compete with what is being offered in other EC countries.