Yes. I want to make it quite clear that any motion to which I will agree must involve an investigation only into existing circumstances and be designed to achieve some beneficial results in the present and in the future. If Deputies desire to have an inquisition into the working of my Department in the past, they must wait until we have more time. At the present time the staff of my Department are busily engaged upon urgent public duties. The staff is insufficient to permit of the prompt discharge of these duties. That staff has been enlarged as the functions of the Department are growing and I could not agree to release staff from these urgent duties, the proper fulfilment of which is essential in the public interest, for the purpose of carrying out any such inquisition into past activities. When there is more time, if the urgency of the situation should pass, if the war should end, Deputies can have all the inquisitions they like, but at the present time there is much more urgent and much more important work to be done. In fact, I want to say that any investigation which a committee of this Dáil is going to carry out must be of such a nature that it will involve the least possible additions to the duties and the labours of the staff of my Department. If Deputies are concerned not so much with proving a case against me or my Department as with the benefits which might be conferred on the coal consumers of Dublin by an investigation of this kind, then I am prepared to meet them; I am prepared to give them an investigation into the prices now existing; I am prepared to facilitate them in such an investigation but, if they want to go back into the past, I am sorry I cannot meet them, I cannot give time to it; I cannot give staff for that purpose. And that is the sole reason why I am not prepared to facilitate such an investigation into past happenings.
I want, however, to deal with another point before leaving the question of this motion. In case the motion now before the Dáil and the next motion on the list for consideration in Private Members' time, in the name of Deputy O'Higgins, proposing the establishment of a committee of the House to investigate the allocation of petrol supplies, might lead to other motions of a similar character, I must make it clear that the Government will resist any such tendency. The motions before the Dáil might be accepted, with modifications, but the acceptance of them must not be regarded as establishing a precedent. Circumstances could arise where the acceptance of motions in similar terms might not be in the public interest, even circumstances where it would not be in the public interest to state publicly the reasons for non-acceptance. Apart from that consideration, a serious development along such lines might lead in the course of time to the functions of Government being in practice discharged by committees of the Dáil. That division of power from responsibility would be very undesirable, and I am sure that all Deputies who are interested in the preservation of the institutions of this State will agree on consideration that such a development would be undesirable.
So much for the motion. Before concluding my remarks, I want to take this opportunity of making a few general statements concerning our coal situation. The quality of the coal at present being imported into this country is bad. I do not want Deputies to tell me that. I know it is bad. There is, however, nothing which we can do about it. We have to put up with that inferior coal for the present, at least. I and the officers of my Department have been in constant touch with the Department of the British Government concerned with the issuing of licences for the export of coal to this country and, although they have recently been able to facilitate us in the matter of a few cargoes of gas coal for gas companies here, they have made it clear that there is little hope of improvement in the quality of the coal that we are receiving for the present and for some time to come in the future. It is idle, therefore, for Deputies to protest against the quality of the coal. They cannot possibly protest half as vigorously as I did, but mere protests are not going to result in an improvement. The position must be understood by the public, because I know that members of the public have the impression that they are singled out by some process to receive bad coal while other members of the public are receiving better coal. That is not the case.
The statements which are sometimes made by irresponsible people in the newspapers that a better class of coal is coming into this country and is in some way being segregated and sold only to better-off customers are entirely incorrect. The arrangements which we have made for the supply of coal to the poorer consumers of Dublin, through the establishment of the central dumps from which the bellmen now receive their supplies, involve the allocation to these dumps of a percentage of every cargo of coal that comes into the port. At least, I should say that the original intention was to ensure that only a limited percentage of every cargo would go to these dumps but, in practice, during this month the quantity of coal coming into Dublin has been so small that a very large part of it is going or has gone to these central dumps to supply the requirements of the poorer sections of the population. From the period between the 4th April and the 16th April no less than 75 per cent. of all the coal that came into the port of Dublin went to these central dumps, and from the 16th April to date 50 per cent. of all the coal that came to Dublin went into these dumps.
It is clear from the figures which I have quoted that the quantity of coal which we are at present receiving is altogether inadequate for our needs. Not merely was there a period of almost a fortnight in which three-quarters of the total imports had to be allocated to supply one class of consumer, leaving other classes of household coal users with only a minor proportion of the total imports, but when the requirements of industrial users, of transport concerns, of public institutions and of gas companies are taken into account, it will be obvious that the quantities of coal which we received during the course of the past month were utterly inadequate to provide the minimum requirements of the city.
There appears to be in the minds of some of the bellmen an impression that, so far as supplies are concerned, they must be kept in at least as favourable a position as they were before the war. I want them and those whom they supply with coal to understand that that may not be possible. Unless the quantity of coal being imported should improve it will be impossible. At the present time, however, as I stated here on the previous day on which I spoke on the subject, not merely are these bellmen receiving their normal supplies but the figures suggest that they are receiving more than their normal supplies.
My information is that the normal trade done by bellmen in the City of Dublin amounted to 1,500 tons of coal per week. The figures with regard to the quantity of coal withdrawn from these central dumps by the bellmen show a daily average of between 300 and 350 tons — on one date, the 21st of this month, no less than 685 tons were withdrawn by bellmen. These figures show that the bellmen have received quantities at least equal to, if not in excess of, the quantities they received normally. It is necessary, however, to remember that if coal supplies should fall off more than they have up to the present, it may happen that supplies of coal for household purposes will cease. There is no danger of that happening in the immediate future, but there are indications that, if the conditions now prevailing should continue until next winter, there may be a danger of no household coal being available at all. It is not an easy matter to decide, when an essential commodity such as coal is scarce, to whom preference should be given in the matter of supplies. It is clear, however, that supplies to transport concerns, to public institutions such as hospitals, and to a number of essential industries, must be given priority. The curtailment of coal supplies to such industries as these would mean complete dislocation, with consequent disemployment of the people engaged in these industries, and it is desirable that we should try to prevent, as far as possible, anything that would tend to increase unemployment. Consequently, if we have to make a decision between cutting off altogether supplies of coal for household purposes and the supplying of coal to industries so as to avoid the creation of widespread unemployment, I think we will decide in favour of maintaining employment so far as we can, because we hope that in the interval, between now and the date when such a contingency may arise, the production of turf will have taken place to such an extent that the provision of some class of fuel for household purposes will be possible.
It is because we contemplated that diminution in coal imports, which may make it necessary to deprive householders of the use of coal altogether for a period, that we stressed and are still stressing the tremendous importance of expanding in every way the production of turf. It is for the same reason that we are making arrangements to have cut and stored a substantial quantity of firewood. It is, of course, necessary to consider the various problems that might arise in a city like Dublin if supplies of coal should not be available for household purposes.
The utilisation of turf or firewood for cooking purposes might be a matter of considerable difficulty, if not an utter impossibility, in some of the tenement districts in Dublin. In that connection, I understand that the Department of Local Government and Public Health are bringing to the attention of the Dublin Corporation the problems that might arise in such circumstances, with a view to having the corporation consider what action might be taken to relieve the hardship that might be caused.
I have spoken of the quantities of coal we are getting, and also of the quality of coal, and I have tried, in a brief space of time, to give the House and the country the position as it exists. Now, I want to say a word or two about prices, and, in saying what I am about to say, I do not want to prejudice in any way any investigation which may take place, but there are facts which should be made known now, not merely to the House, from the point of view of clarifying the views of Deputies on the subject, but also from the point of view of the public. In normal times—and, in fact, up to the last half of last year —coal was imported into this country from a wide variety of places in England, both from the west and the east coast, and from Scotland and Wales. Not merely was it imported from a wide variety of places, but it was imported in a wide variety of qualities. When we were negotiating with Britain as to the pit-head prices we were to pay for coal, both pre-war and post-war, the schedule of prices was as long as my arm. With such a wide variety of pit-head prices to deal with, and with such a number of ports from which the coal was being imported, there was no practicable means of dealing with control here by means of fixed prices. Fixed prices were not possible. It was only practicable to control prices by regulating the margin of profit which the importer could take, and that, I can tell you, can never be made 100 per cent. effective, because only an expert could say that a particular coal has been mined in such-and-such a place in England, or shipped from such-and-such a port, or what quality the coal was. No man could say what should be charged for the coal without knowing all the facts, and that also invalidates the calculation which Deputy Mulcahy endeavoured to sustain last week with regard to the average price of coal imported. The average price of the coal imported into Ireland is influenced, of course, by the quantities and qualities of the coal imported into different ports here, such as Cork, or ports in the West of Ireland. As Deputies from Cork know, there is a big difference in the cost of transport.
