I move:—
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £25,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1931, chun Taighde agus Forbairte maidir le Baiterí Leictreachais.
That a sum not exceeding £25,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1931, for Electrical Battery Research and Development.
The ordinary paper has been circulated in connection with this matter which states that issues will be made from this grant to the Minister for Industry and Commerce on his certificates as to the sums required by him from time to time. It states further that this grant, together with grants amounting to £5,300 in the aggregate, made for the same purpose in previous years will be repayable at such times, and on such terms, and conditions, as the Minister for Finance, after consultation with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, may determine at the date of the advance or subsequently. It is further stated that sums amounting to £3,900 have been advanced from the Contingency Fund, and a corresponding amount of this Vote is required to enable repayment to be made to this fund. The situation, therefore, is that at this moment I am asking for £25,000 for electrical battery research development, and I am indicating, while asking for that, that £3,900 has already been spent and of this sum of £25,000, £3,900 is required for the purpose of making a repayment to the Contingency Fund from which fund I got £3,900 for this purpose. Previously I had got from the House £5,300—£300 on a separate Vote in March of this year and £5,000 previously which was also by way of being a repayment at that time to the Contingency Fund. I had been able, previous to that date, to get from the Contingency Fund a sum of £5,000. The sum of £25,000 which is now brought before the House does not mark by any means the end of the expenditure that we may have to face in this matter.
I should like to divide that sum of £25,000 in this fashion:—The £3,900 for the repayment I have already mentioned; the rest is divided into two sums; a sum of £15,000 and a sum of £6,000 of which the latter is for contingencies and to cover certain possible payments by way of indemnity to the G.S.W.R. Co., for expenditure that they will incur and have agreed to incur on behalf of Celia, Ltd., which is the Company I have set up to deal with the development of what has come to be known as the Drumm Electrical Battery. The other item of £15,000 is for the payment of salaries, office expenses, for the construction of new batteries, for railway and road tests for this battery.
The finance of the battery to date is that a sum of £5,300 is being spent and I am asking for an additional £25,000. I want to point out, however, that I am only asking for that sum at this time as I believe that the third item of £6,000 is the full tot of expenditure that I may incur between this and the end of the financial year in respect of expenditure to be incurred by the railway company on my behalf in connection with this development. I can see ahead in connection with the development of the battery payments to the railway company to the extent at least of £20,000 more. I limited my figure to £25,000 instead of making it £45,000 because if I asked for £45,000 I could not expend under the subhead in payments to the railway company anything more than the £6,000 to which I have referred. But I think the Dáil ought to be informed that the expenditure envisaged at present is not £25,000 but nearer to £45,000, in addition to which I have already spent £5,300. What the people are being faced with at present, as between past expenditure, and what I see in figure is a sum of about £50,000.
The purpose of this Vote can be stated simply enough. It is for the development of the battery about which I first spoke to the House a couple of years ago. It is a development that has been carried on through the agency of a company called Celia, Ltd., formed by me in the year 1928 for the purpose of carrying on this development. There have been certain changes in the company which I want to refer to immediately before I go into the history of the whole matter. I need not go into the very distant past with regard to it. The origin of this dates from the late winter of 1927 when Dr. Drumm came to me and announced that he thought he had a discovery with regard to a storage battery of a particular type. He announced further that feeling, as some people have expressed it more recently, quite quixotically disposed towards the State in so far as he has got a certain amount of educational advancement through the State, and feeling that he should put his discovery at the disposal of the State because it seemed to be a good rounding off of the Shannon scheme, he made an offer that if I liked to advance a certain sum of money I could acquire the rights in this discovery and in return he would devote himself to the development of the idea. If again I advanced and financed the thing to a certain stage he would devote himself to the exploitation commercially of this battery. Dr. Drumm and myself had certain negotiations covering a period of the winter of 1927 and the first month of 1928. By degrees an arrangement was hammered out and come to as between us which gave me the majority control in this development.
In June, 1928, a company called Celia, Ltd., was formed. In August, 1929, I made, not a very fundamental change in the formation of that company, but in fact a very radical change took place. At that time, the development had advanced so far that I felt I must have much more easy touch with the discoverer and those intimately associated with him in the development than I could get through the medium of the company, and I persuaded the company to appoint Professor Drumm, Mr. Fay, Professor Nolan, of University College, Dublin, two of them as managing directors and the other more or less as chairman associated with them to carry on in more intimate association with myself the developments that had then reached a certain point. The company has been carried on really by the two managing directors and Professor Nolan acting as Chairman, in collaboration with myself as from August, 1929. That company is now undergoing another reconstitution when it will emerge lessened in number and comprising only four people instead of six as previously, two nominated by me and two nominated by the discoverer, one of my nominees having the right to become Chairman and having a casting vote and so ensuring complete control of this.
The development of the idea itself has progressed apart from these changes in the company formed to take charge of it. In the very early stages, in the early part of 1928, and even after the company was formed, developments proceeded along certain lines. I got the best technical advice both from the electrical standpoint and the legal and patent standpoint I could have about the matter. Basing myself on the advice I received, I proceeded in the middle of that year to form this company and progressed with the company for the whole of that year. Through the good offices of Dr. Coffey, President, University College, Dublin, the laboratories of that college were given over to certain of the professorial staff who had at that time become interested in this discovery—notably Professor Nolan, Professor of Physics in that college, and Professor Taylor, who were especially interested, and by their help a certain amount of development was done of a laboratory and research type during the period of 1928.
I said, when speaking of the company itself and the change that occurred round about the summer of 1929, that I felt that the development had advanced to a point at which we should get more intimate association with those who were working in the matter than I could then get in the company. I need only say now that in the early part of 1929, and even in the late part of 1928, there was not the completest agreement amongst the members of the company as to how far the development of this discovery should be pushed. Luckily for me, and, I think, for the country, the technical people on the committee at that time stood firmly by the idea and buttressed me strongly in supporting the view that the development should be pushed further than it had at that point gone. Certain changes came about in regard to things we were working on and certain patents had to be fortified by additional patents.
In the end of 1929 I made the changes of which I have spoken. I had associated in the most intimate way with the development Professor Nolan, Dr. Drumm himself, and Mr. Fay. About that time I came to an arrangement with the Chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company, Sir Walter Nugent, that he would allow certain constructional work to be carried out at the Inchicore Works. At that time, not having a sufficient amount of money in hands granted by the Dáil, I could not make any definite promise to him, but I promised that if the whole matter came to nothing, if it collapsed, I would seek the authority of the Dáil to indemnify him against any losses which the company might have suffered from expenditure on this constructional work. The Chairman of the railway company had the courage to take the risk involved in that and put a certain portion of the works at Inchicore at the disposal of the discoverer. We got to a certain point towards the end of the year 1929. Development was proceeding smoothly. Everything was working out as had been forecasted. The scheme seemed to be developing well and the constructional work was proceeding, at Inchicore. With regard to practical demonstrations of the advantages of the battery, in the early part of 1930 I again thought that I should fortify myself with further advice on the technical side, on the purely scientific side, and after a good deal of cogitation I was advised that Professor Allman of the University of London represented the best advice in the electro-chemical world which I could avail of.
I made contact with him, and he came here in the middle of January of this year, the arrangement being that he was to come here to examine this discovery on the spot, and, if he thought that it was worth pursuing, he was to write me a preliminary report, and to follow it up, after certain investigations had been made, with a final report. He came here on the 14th of January, and one of the best guarantees which I have had of the final success of the discovery was the fact that, after being at Inchicore for a certain number of hours he was able to declare to me in my room that he could then write me not merely a preliminary but a final report, that he completely agreed with the claim made by the inventor, and that it was an extremely novel and practical proposition. He gave me the completest guarantee which any man could ask from an expert that success was bound to follow this development. About the same time, when we had got into smoother water, I decided to get advice on another matter, namely, a report as to the practical application of the discovery to working conditions. I established a Traction Committee, consisting of Mr. Fay, Mr. Morton, Engineer of the Great Southern Railways Company, and Mr. Monahan, Engineer of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. I asked them—in conjunction with the Technical Committee, Celia, Ltd., and Professor All man—to follow the developments that were taking place, to give me reports regarding them from time to time, and to indicate the best way in their opinion in which the invention could be brought to success. Professor Allman eventually sent me in writing what he described as his complete report. It is of a very technical type. The claims made by the discoverer were segregated under a certain number of heads, and in regard to certain of them which had reference not so much to the scientific side but rather to application, he consulted a colleague of his in London University. His final report fulfilled and carried out most of the promises he had made in my room to me on the 14th of January. It gave me every hope that this development would be a success. Early in that year we decided—it was really decided for me by the Traction Committee and the other group—that it was better not to dissipate our energies in trying to develop along three or four different lines, but to concentrate completely on development for railway use in the country, while we did not lose sight of the fact that the discovery had uses outside railway development.
As I say, it was decided to concentrate almost completely on railway development. We did so, and with the help of the railway people and under the supervision of Celia, Ltd., and in accordance with the wishes of the Traction Committee, a certain type of coach was prepared, of which most Deputies have heard. Demonstrations were given on that coach towards the end of July and the beginning of August of this year. To these demonstrations were invited technical people of different types. While I can mention the name of Professor Allman, as he was engaged by me to write a report, I am not at liberty to mention the names of others who came, but I am at liberty to quote their views generally in regard to the invention.
On the first point of novelty, I heard nobody express any opinion other than that this discovery of Dr. Drumm is of the most novel type. One continental expert expressed himself in this way: that it was a platitude to say that no scientific man had written of any development such as this, but that it was equally true to say that no scientific man had been working along the lines of Dr. Drumm's advance. That point of view has been corroborated by many technical people, or rather by a certain number of technical people who came here. I make that correction because the number of technical people who came was not big. Many of them had reports of it and were intrigued by what was going on and asked to be allowed to come over later. Nobody has yet questioned the novelty of this discovery nor has anyone ever questioned its practicability. There is only one thing outstanding, only one thing left to be proved, and when it is proved, we can confidently claim that we have got here a discovery of first-class importance. The one matter outstanding is the question of the life of this battery. When I say that it is outstanding I do not want to have any doubt cast on that matter. I do not want people to believe that we have any reason to think that the tests in regard to the life of the battery which are now going on will not be successful. We have progressed to the point at which I am able to declare with a certain amount of confidence, but not absolute assurance, that we will get a very long life out of the cell.
If that question is answered in our favour, we have got something in the way of battery development which no country has, as yet, achieved. Tests are going on with regard to the life of the battery, and I do not think that these tests can be shortened in any way. We are progressing as speedily as we can. In addition to the actual cells at the rear of the coach, which runs on the line at Inchicore, there is a cell which is being subjected to a certain kind of laboratory test sufficient to test the life of the battery. It is being tested for twenty hours out of the twenty-four. It has been tested for twenty hours out of every twenty-four hours' cycle for the last four or five months and has stood up to every test. It shows no sign of depreciation, although the life test that is put on it is something that is pretty serious. I am asking for this sum of £25,000 to meet salaries and expenses, the construction of batteries for rail and road tests, to meet contingencies and to cover payments by way of indemnity that I may have to give to the Great Southern Railways Company for certain expenditure by them in the near future. In this again I am acting on joint advice. I am acting as a result of the report received from the Traction Committee on the one hand and from Celia, Limited, on the other, as it has been constituted since August, 1929.
It has been recommended to me that we should get two double coaches, each capable of seating about 100 passengers, to run for suburban traffic around Dublin—a double coach weighing about 75 tons, including the weight of the battery itself, so designed that it will have an acceleration rate of about a mile per hour per second and capable of a maximum speed of from 50 to 60 miles per hour. It has been represented to me in discussions I have had with both committees that these coaches, built in this way, and charged in a very short space of time, will give us all the advantages of third rail electrification, and will give us these advantages with an amazing reduction in the cost that would attach to third rail electrification. Meantime, while these coaches are being built for service in the suburban areas in the neighbourhood of Dublin, the life test on the single cell will still continue. I am acting in this connection again both on the recommendations of Celia, Limited, in the form which I have described it and the Traction Committee.
In regard to another side of the question, the patents side, a fair amount of money has had to be spent to secure protection of the patent type in a number of countries. We have covered twenty-four countries in all. In this connection, I have had the advice of probably one of the best legal firms the country has, added to the advice of the best firm of patent agents I could get in England. They have always worked under the supervision of Celia, Limited, and myself, and, where necessary, the Traction Committee. Patents have been taken out and we have covered ourselves in certain ways in twenty-four countries, and, under the rules of the international convention, a certain period is allowed in which we can seek protection in the countries covered by that international convention. I am not at liberty, inasmuch as patents have been applied for and have not yet been granted in a number of countries, to go into the technical side of the question. I can only put it to the Dáil, that in asking for a sum of £25,000, I should make the case that in all I have done I have depended on the best expert advice I could get. I have described where I got these experts, and mentioned some of them who were there by name. I have said, and I can say with absolute accuracy, that in the development which I am now seeking I am acting on the advice of these particular people.
I do not know if the Dáil would like further technical information. Some technical information cannot be given at the moment as, as I have already pointed out, patents have been applied for in certain places and have not yet been granted. There may be certain other technical information that could be given, but I am not disposed to give information merely for the interest of the Dáil; I am disposed to give it only if it is demanded to fortify the Dáil in its opinion that this sum of £25,000, in addition to another £25,000 next year, is reasonable to carry out the development which has been carried on and which I have tried to describe. That information can be asked for in the course of the discussion, and I can then see how much of it I can supply. I have given what I consider to be sufficient information to warrant the Dáil in passing this Vote, and I would not like to be forced to give any information beyond what I have already given.
