I move the Second Reading of this Bill. As the House is aware, in accordance with the provisions of sub-section (2) of Section 1 of the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act, 1932, an Order made under the Act which does not merely revoke the Order previously made, ceases to have statutory effect upon the expiration of eight months from the date of making, unless in the meantime it is confirmed by the Oireachtas. This Bill proposes to confirm ten Orders set out in the Schedule to the Bill. The general subject matter of each Order is enacted in the Schedule. The earliest of the Orders to be confirmed is Order 68, which expires or is due to expire on 25th December next, and it is necessary that the Bill should become law before that date. The other Orders, in the normal course, would have a longer currency than Order 68, but, in view of the dates of some of them, it would not be practicable to defer giving statutory effect to the duties to which they relate until the Finance Resolutions and the Finance Act of next year. Their inclusion in the Bill at the present stage will obviate the necessity later on of introducing further Confirmation Bills. I assume that any detailed discussion which would take place on this Bill would take place on the Committee Stage. I, accordingly, move the Second Reading.
Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Orders) (No. 2) Bill, 1935—Second Stage.
It would be more convenient and it is our intention to raise matters of detail on the Committee Stage. But at this stage I should like to ask the Minister one question: that is, why is it not the practice to enact all outstanding Emergency Imposition of Duties Orders on the occasion of such a Bill as this? There are several Emergency Imposition of Duties Orders in addition to those appearing in the Schedule which will have to be enacted sooner or later. If they are to be made permanent, why not include them in this Bill and have a clean job made of it?
Some of them have in fact already been dealt with in the Financial Resolutions and the Finance Act of this year. Order 69 revoked a number of Orders, the duties imposed by which were implemented in the Finance Act of 1935. Order 71, which reduced the rate of Excise duties on pig carcases, was wholly revoked by Order 79. Order 70 was superseded by Order 79 and so on. In general the Deputy will find that is the reason why a certain number of Orders are allowed to lapse, and that the duties imposed by them which are not to be put on a permanent basis are not in this Bill.
The typical Order I have in mind is the Emergency Imposition of Duties Order, which imposed a Customs duty on thread. That is outstanding at the present time but it is not included in this Bill.
That has been superseded by Order 79. The Deputy will find that is so.
No, not Order 79, surely?
I quoted the wrong number. I think it is Order 76.
No; that Order has not superseded the Excise duty.
I think in that particular case the Order will probably lose currency.
Oh! is that the reason why the Minister is getting away from it?
That is why I raised the matter. It does give rise to a very difficult position. We are glad to co-operate in getting the business through, but we cannot be a party to the introduction of legislation which is for the purpose of covering up the Minister's tracks. This Bill ordinarily ought to include an Emergency Imposition of Duties Order that was made for the purpose of levying, not a tax really but a fine on a firm who perfectly legitimately imported thread into this country. What are the facts? Some time ago the Minister for Industry and Commerce——
This matter does not arise on this Bill.
——started negotiations with an English combine to set up a thread monopoly in Westport. At a very early stage it emerged that the monopoly had no intention of manufacturing thread at all; they were simply going to import thread, put it on spools and sell it. They were to be known as the Irish Thread Company. While these negotiations were going on, Messrs. J. & P. Coats, of Paisley, who are participants in a large thread combine called the Central Agency, in Great Britain, approached the Minister indirectly to know if they might set up in Dublin in the thread manufacturing, thread dyeing and thread reeling business, and they were told no licence would be made available to them because it was the Minister's determination to make a monopoly of this business for Westport. Before the Minister for Industry and Commerce had made any monopoly order, Messrs. J. & P. Coats and other firms connected with the Central Agency, Limited, of Great Britain, imported into this country considerable stocks of thread. When they were doing that, there was no reason why they should not. It was a perfectly legitimate trade. There was no law against it and no possibility of prosecution, because nothing had been done which any court would hold was an offence.
But Messrs. J. & P. Coats forgot the fact that a new offence has been created in this country, and that is the offence of vexing Mr. Lemass; not outraging the Minister for Industry and Commerce in his official position, but vexing Mr. Lemass. The Minister for Industry and Commerce discovered that, Mr. Lemass notwithstanding, somebody had actually brought in considerable stocks of thread and had them in the country. Possibly some Deputies will say that this was an act of sabotage, and it meant that these huge accumulations of thread would be there and the Irish Thread Company would not be able to dispose of their production. Nothing is further from the fact. The truth is that the Irish Thread Company cannot fill the orders of any of their customers. The Irish Thread Company have orders to-day for as small a quantity as 100 gross of reels. They have had that order for three months and they have been unable to fulfil it. They have been giving out dribs and drabs to a variety of customers.
Can the Deputy relate those particulars of the trade of a certain firm to the matter under discussion?
I will, and I will astonish you when I do. There was nothing of a reprehensible character in the act of Messrs. J. & P. Coats bringing in considerable quantities of thread, because they are passing into consumption and, at the same time, the Irish Thread Company is unable to meet the demand for thread. But the Minister for Industry and Commerce, by an Emergency Imposition of Duties Order, placed an Excise duty on thread in such a way that nobody would pay the Excise duty but Messrs. Coats, because he stipulated that it should apply to no thread unless the thread was in the ownership of a person who had more than £1,000 worth, or else £500 worth in his possession.
Perhaps even £10,000 worth.
It does not matter. The purpose was not to raise revenue, not to protect the home market, but to penalise an individual who had done something which, at the time of its being done, was a perfectly legitimate thing to do. He did, in fact, collect under that order thousands of pounds from this individual firm and he now says it is the intention of the Government to let that Order lapse. Having wreaked their vengeance on one particular individual, they now intend to let the Order lapse and they thereby admit that they had no other purpose in view than to mulct this firm. It is quite unnecessary to go into the merits of the matter, but it is evident that in future if you vex Seán T. Lemass——
The Minister for Industry and Commerce.
Exactly, but I refer now to the individual who has no Ministerial position at all, the private individual, Mr. Lemass.
He must be referred to here as Minister for Industry and Commerce.
I am very sorry to hear it. I had hoped one would be permitted to differentiate between the extraordinary activities of that gentleman, Mr. Lemass, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The Minister for Industry and Commerce constitutes himself prosecutor, judge and jury between himself and any individual citizen. He makes up his mind that the personal pride of the Minister for Industry and Commerce has been outraged by something that has been done by a citizen of this State, and then fines him in any sum that he thinks necessary. There is no appeal, no legislation to support it, and the matter is never brought before the House, because the Order is allowed to lapse before the statutory time comes for its enactment. We had lettres de cachet by the pre-revolutionary Government in France, and a Star Chamber, but at least they went through some kind of formality and stated boldly that they were going to victimise certain individuals. But in this country the Revenue Commissioners are to be used for the purpose of despoiling anybody of any sum that the Minister for Industry and Commerce thinks proper to take from them, if they should vex his person or if they should in any way resent the tyrannical activities of the Department over which he presides.
What astonishes me is that into that kind of conspiracy the Minister for Finance allows himself to be drawn. It is the responsibility of the Minister for Finance to bring before the House every Emergency Imposition of Duties Order on the assumption that they were all made with a view to the permanent good of the country. It is to his discredit that he has allowed himself to be dragged into this conspiracy to victimise one individual. It is to his discredit that he allows the Revenue Commissioners to be used to exact heavy fines on individuals whom the Minister for Industry and Commerce does not happen to welcome here. It is a great abuse of the powers conferred on the Government to use them in the way the Minister for Industry and Commerce uses them here. Unless the Minister for Finance is prepared to say in future that he will not tolerate the use of the Revenue Commissioners for the purpose of venting personal spites of that character, I will challenge a division on this Bill.
From what the Minister said in the course of the debate, it emerges that this Bill is primarily designed, not to implement the Emergency Imposition of Duties Orders but to cover up the tracks of the Minister for Industry in the discreditable assault he made on an individual in this State for what was a perfectly legitimate act when the act was done.
May I intervene to say that the firm mentioned by Deputy Dillon was not concerned in the matter at all?
The statement made with regard to the Emergency Imposition of Duties (No. 70) Order discloses an astounding state of affairs. Just look at the Emergency Imposition of Duties (No. 74) Order, which purports to put a customs duty at the rate of 6d. per square yard on (a) paper felt (whether saturated with bitumen, tar, or other similar substance, or not so saturated) exceeding seventy inches in width and imported in the roll, and (b) floor-coverings (whether completely or partially manufactured) which, in the opinion of the Revenue Commissioners, have a hard surface, and (c) cork carpets and cork carpeting, and (d) floor-coverings made wholly or partly of rubber, artificial rubber, an imitation of rubber, or a substance containing rubber as an ingredient.
A tax of 6d. per square yard was put upon those items. Information that was published in reply to a question asked by Deputy Peadar Doyle, on 30th October, indicates many other things with the quantity and value of the linoleum imported, in the six months March 1934-35, and showing a decline in the number of square yards, and in the value of the linoleum imported. It showed in respect of floor-covering, not elsewhere specified or included (not of wool, jute or fur) that a very substantial increase in the number of square yards and value of the import had taken place. Linoleum fell in value from £46,249 in 1934, to £41,256 in 1935. That was a very substantial fall in the value of the import in spite of the fact that so many new houses were being built under the Government housing programme the like of which was never heard in any other country. Imports of floor-covering of a cheaper form were greatly increased, and rose from 67,171 square yards in 1934 to 438,723 square yards in 1935 and in value from £4,032 in 1934 to £15,686 in 1935. The new rate of 6d. covered these items that I have mentioned.
But if, perchance, there is some other form of floor-covering not included in these four classes, and if somebody in the trade imports a large quantity of that, and the Minister finds out that he forgot to include it in these Emergency Imposition of Duties Orders, an excise duty can be produced immediately. That trader can be fined for taking action, perfectly legitimate from a law and trade point of view, and this House can never effectively discuss the matter; because the Minister can issue an Emergency Imposition of Duty Order of an Excise type, operated for a month or two or three as the case may be. Then when he has done his damnedest the thing, automatically, goes out of existence if he does not bring it before the Dáil in eight months, and gets the Dáil to deal with it.
So we have now a new weapon in order to penalise people engaged in legitimate trade held over their heads by the Government. This has been operated in exactly similar cases to the one which I suggest. It can be operated in the future having regard to the attitude of the Ministry in regard to any of their Customs Duties Orders of which they make a botch, and we have no guarantee that it will not be extended beyond that kind of thing.
I agree that it is difficult to deal satisfactorily with these particular matters upon this Bill. From the way Ministers are handling matters that come before us under these Emergency Orders Imposition of Duties, we can see how many people in the country run a kind of danger if they are engaged in trade or business in connection with floor cloth. Of course questions can be put to Ministers in respect of these Orders. One of the Orders we are asked to deal with now is an Order by way of the Emergency Imposition of Duties on such things as almonds. A crisis developed in our native land. Almonds had to be kept out except they were brought in by one particular person. It is, moryah, such an important industry that an Emergency Order had to be issued to keep out almonds generally. A duty was imposed on hollow ware, floor-covering, cotton thread, and a certain class of sports requisites—windscreens and requisites for windscreens. I think we were informed, in reply to questions, by the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that these duties were imposed for the purpose of financing industrial protection. One question was asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce as to whether he would give some information as to the number of people employed in a particular industry here. When asked questions of that kind his general line is that he does not know what the amount of the import of these articles is, and the Minister for Finance, when questioned, does not know what the Customs Duties were that were charged.
These duties, we are told, are imposed for the purpose of creating new industries. When the Minister knows that a new industry is to be set up, he does not know what employment it is going to give. If we give any credit to Ministers for dealing in a bona fide way with the House, and for being prepared to give the information they have to the House—if we are prepared to believe that—the only conclusion we can come to is that some friend of theirs comes up to them and says: "We are prepared to go into this particular industry if you will put a tariff on it." And without knowing any more about the situation than that, they immediately impose one of those Emergency Imposition of Duty Orders. I do not know that we should take it for granted that Ministers treat the House fairly in a matter of information of this kind. Ministers say they do not know what the value of these imports is. Ministers say that they have given licences to persons to import what they consider the normal requirements of the country. But in most cases they refuse to tell the House the quantity of the articles in respect to which they issued licences for imports. Surely it is that information that is desirable. Surely if an Emergency Imposition of Duties Order is put into force, and the Minister knows nothing at all about previous imports, and about the prospects of employment under the Order, he ought to come to the House to change this condition of things. He ought to be able to tell the House that he has been persuaded that the normal requirements over the last three months, say, were such and such, because he issued licences for imports of these things. But there is not one single one of these things upon which the Minister gives the House any information. He comes here and tells us that he issued licences for the importation of some of these articles free of duty.
Some of these items will have to be discussed separately upon Committee Stage. I ask the Minister to tell the House the process that is gone through in examining either the position with regard to linoleum or cotton-thread or almonds or wind-screens and placing import duties upon them. What are the initial processes gone through either between persons in his own Department, or between his Department and members of the commercial community, before a decision is taken to put a duty on any of these things? If a policy is being pursued of developing industry by means of recurrent impositions of duties of this particular kind, we ought to know something of the departmental processes that are bringing about what the Minister hopes will be the creation of additional industry here. It is essential that the House should know that. There is another aspect of the matter too. Both the Minister last year came into this House at Budget time, and again this year, and stated that they anticipated they would receive a certain amount in Customs duty. Last year the figure swung very much above the estimated figure. The Minister, in fact, balanced his Budget by imposing from time to time during the year additional Customs duties that he knew were going to bring in an additional amount of revenue, which he was going to use to balance his Budget. This year he deliberately withheld from us information with regard to the cement tax, and all through the year he has been putting on those enormous imposition of duty taxes. When he is asked what is the estimated increase in revenue which he expects as a result of those taxes he says it would be most undesirable to tell us.
Might I remind the Deputy that yesterday he asked me a series of questions in relation to the duties imposed under those Emergency Orders, and to the best of my recollection my reply was that the amount of revenue derived from them would be negligible.
Very good. Then let us take a particular example; let us get back to floor-coverings again. I asked the Minister, in connection with the imposition of duty on floor-coverings, what would be the increased amount derived from Customs duties, and he told me "I do not consider it desirable that information as to the estimated yield in a financial year from the duties under a particular head of revenue should be furnished by way of Parliamentary question and reply." Does that refer—we may take it that it does—to almonds, hollow-ware, floor-coverings, cotton thread, sports requisites, leather and springs? I say that the Minister is denying this House information with regard to estimated revenue, contemplated revenue, and designed revenue, which the House is entitled to receive. The Minister is patching up his Budget by the duties imposed on those items. Will the Minister explain why discrimination is made between floor-coverings, on the one hand, where the tax is made an effective one, and hollow-ware on the other, where, according to the Minister for Finance, the tax is not made effective in respect of normal requirements? Those duties are being imposed, as far as the Minister for Finance is concerned, for the purpose of balancing his Budget by taking amounts which he is not prepared to tell the House he is taking; they are being imposed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce for goodness knows what reason. If they were for the purpose of any serious industrial development here, the Minister for Industry and Commerce would not have to tell us that he cannot give us any information as to the amount of additional employment which he hopes will be created in the country by the imposition of each one of these duties. The whole attitude of the Ministry in regard to dealing with those matters in the House is an outrage on Parliamentary procedure, but I must say it pales into insignificance in the light of the discovery made here to-day as to the way in which an Emergency Imposition of Duty Order can be operated when it is an Excise duty.
I find it very difficult to follow Deputy Mulcahy, because I think he so overstated his case that he has made his presentation of it ridiculous. The latter part of his argument was that we were introducing those duties, not for the purpose of allowing a new industry to have a chance; but for the purpose of bolstering up the Exchequer. Does Deputy Mulcahy seriously believe that the public credit is going to be saved by a duty on blanched almonds? It seems to me that he did not intend himself to be taken seriously; otherwise he never would have addressed himself to the discussion of this matter in the way that he has done.
It is the Minister for Industry and Commerce I want to hear on almonds.
The Deputy will have an opportunity of doing that on the Committee Stage of the Bill.
I have cracked more nuts than that.
At the same time I do think that Deputy Dillon and Deputy Mulcahy have done a public service. They have directed the attention of whomsoever may be concerned in the matter to the fact that this Government is not going to permit newly-established industries to be sabotaged for private gain. Deputy Dillon, in referring to this question of the cotton trade, related a set of circumstances, and made the comment upon them which, I think, every other Deputy in the House would make— that, at first sight, the action of certain people in importing huge stocks of the commodity in question in those circumstances would appear to be an act of considered and designed sabotage. I do not think that anything which Deputy Dillon said in the course of the debate would remove that impression from the mind of any Deputy. Here was a case where, in pursuance of the Government policy to decentralise and to ruralise as much as possible Irish industrial development, the Minister for Industry and Commerce had determined that a certain new industry about to be established here would be sited in a certain town. Other people came along and suggested that a very highly urbanised district should be the site of that industry. The Minister did not accede to their request and, according to Deputy Dillon's statement, those people—during the period when they were in negotiation with the Minister —proceeded to import large quantities of the commodity which was to be manufactured by the new undertaking about to be established.
Which they had a legal right to do.
And the Minister was to allow that sort of thing to go on, without administering to those people such a salutary lesson that no other person would attempt to do it? I do not know whether or not the Deputy takes very much interest in industrial development. If he did, he might have read the speech of the chairman of a company which was recently being promoted to manufacture a certain article in this country. He pointed out that during the early portion of this company's history, after they had got into production, they were faced with very great difficulties indeed because of the fact that people—having realised that this industry was about to be established— had forestalled the initiation of the company's manufacture by importing huge stocks of the article which was about to be put on the market.
Who knew more about that than the members of the Government?
Some of the Deputy's friends knew a great deal about it, too. The Deputy and others——
Who knew more about that than the members of the Government?
The Deputy and others who, in this House, have bandied about charges in relation to the Government and its friends might consider who are associated with that undertaking. In any event, the argument I want to drive home is that the chairman of this new industry, responsible for securing from the public a large investment, had stated that they had experienced very great difficulties indeed by reason of this practice of forestalling on the part of retailers and wholesalers of the article they were about to manufacture. In the case of this cotton-thread industry, was the Minister for Industry and Commerce, or any other responsible member of the Government, with the lesson which he derived from that experience before him, to sit idly by and see the new factory at Westport sabotaged by the process which Deputy Dillon has detailed to this House? I think, as I said before, the Deputies have rendered a public service, because they will bring home to everybody this fact, that if any person attempts to nullify the policy of industrial development which the Government is pursuing, by taking action of the sort to which Deputy Dillon referred in the House to-day, the Government has a weapon in its hand which will at any rate deprive those people of what I would believe to be the illegitimate profit which they seek to secure. It is just as well that we should all understand that and, so far as I am concerned, and so far as the Minister for Industry and Commerce is concerned, there would be nothing to apologise to the House or to the country for.
The poor Attorney-General has fled in horror, and I do not blame him.
And I think that people outside who look at this problem from a practical point of view, who visualise what difficulties the Government has to contend with in trying to solve it, will take our point of view and will not try to compel us——
To obey the law.
——to be guided by the cast-iron formalism of Deputy Dillon's mind.
The cast-iron formalism of the law.
Tá.
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Corbett, Edmond.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Davin, William.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Lynch, James B.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- Pattison, James P.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Keating, John.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.