I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Deputies are aware that the Impositions of Duties Act, 1957, provides that Orders made under the authority of that Act imposing or amending duties must be confirmed in the calendar year following that in which they were made. The purpose of this Bill is to confirm 39 Orders made under that Act during 1958. An explanatory memorandum of the various Orders has already been circulated to Deputies. I do not think it is necessary for me to go in detail through all the 39 Orders. The duties imposed by six of them afford protection to new industries which went into production last year.
Committee on Finance. - Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Orders) Bill, 1959—Second Stage.
What six?
These Orders were in relation to industries concerned with printed fabrics, electric motors, self-adhesive plastic tape, pile floor rugs, sections for beehives, and flypapers and fly-catchers. Nine of the Orders were made to protect the manufacture of additional lines undertaken by existing concerns in the course of the year. To forestall Deputy Crotty, I shall read out the commodities they are concerned with: electrical accessories, plastic tubes and pipes, dyed jute yarns and dyed or bleached jute piece goods. The latter were the subject of two Orders. The other commodities were: abrasives having a base of vulcanised fibre, waxed paper, builders' hardware, bandages and bandaging material, and oil space heaters.
A further 13 Orders increased the rates of duty to protect certain of our industries against low priced goods from Far Eastern countries, and against dumping from certain other countries. Seven others amended earlier duties which it was found were being evaded. Another Order permits the importation of unprinted paper without payment of duty when such paper is intended for use in the manufacture of corrugated paperboard, a product in which our paper mills do a considerable export trade.
The remaining three Orders refer to certain agricultural products. The first of these amended the duty on raw tomatoes and the purpose of the amendment was to give growers a measure of protection which would encourage them to cater for the early market by installing heating apparatus. The duty on dried peas was amended to provide an incentive to the pea processing firms to extend the acreage of peas grown here.
The duty on wheat is part of the arrangements made by the Government to deal with the situation arising out of the failure of the 1958 wheat crop. It was decided that portion of the savings resulting from the necessity for increased imports of wheat should be applied towards giving relief to growers and reducing the loss to An Bord Gráin on the disposal for animal food of wheat purchased from growers and unsuitable for manufacture into flour.
As I said, the explanatory memorandum circulated to Deputies indicates the general character of each Order, but I shall, of course, be willing to give any further information or answer any questions which Deputies may wish to ask about the Orders relating to industrial products.
The only comment I want to make is that, while I know it is provided for under the 1957 Act, it does seem unsatisfactory to have such a lengthy list of varied items all introduced together. It is pretty well impossible to have anything like a debate on so many different items affecting so many industries. For that reason, I should like the Minister to consider whether it might not be possible to take a Bill of this sort, in which a shorter list might be presented, at more regular intervals.
Secondly, in view of the high cost of bread and flour, why was it considered necessary in present circumstances to put a duty of £2 per ton on wheat imported after 15th November last?
It is usual to review these duties at certain intervals. I cannot understand why the duty on silk and artificial silk should be increased by 200 per cent. full and 133?rd per cent. preference on goods costing not more than 1/3 per yard. It is extraordinary that any industry here should require a protective duty of 200 per cent. at the present time. I should like the Minister to tell us how many yards were imported in 1957-58 and the cost.
With regard to dried peas, the Minister is quite right in protecting the home industry, but has the Minister gone asleep? Does the Minister not know that the pea crop failed last year and not one hundredweight of peas reached maturity in this country last year? Instead of this being a protective duty, it is now something in the nature of a tax. The Minister is asking the people to pay 6d. per lb. full and 4d. per lb. preferential on dried peas. Because of the high cost of vegetables at the moment, this penal tax should be removed immediately. I come from a pea-growing area. Many people contracted to grow peas last year and hoped to do well out of them. Through no fault of their own and through no fault of the Minister—it was an act of God that we had the weather we had—they could not even try to save the crop. The entire crop was lost. Peas are a very popular vegetable, especially with the poorer classes, and I think the Minister should remove this tax immediately.
Imagine a maximum duty of 5/7½d. and a minimum of 3/9 on little berets imported into the country. It is only right that home manufacture should be protected, but does the home industry really need protection of this nature in 1959?
The duty on waxed paper is 30 per cent. full and 20 per cent. preferential, printed. If unprinted, the duty is 25 per cent. full and 15 per cent. preferential. I know there is no necessity for that duty. The firms manufacturing this paper here were quite competitive. They were not under-cut by outside firms. The difficulty was they were not sufficiently enterprising and they were not prepared to give any facilities to those purchasing these papers. Those who wrap goods are fully appreciative of the fact that it is up to them to support Irish industry, but, if Irish industry will not give them the facilities, then I do not see why it should be protected.
I know of an instance where travellers took orders and when they went back to the firm they were told: "You do not take orders on those terms. You take them on our terms." These people are obsessed with the idea of demanding their own terms; they are not in favour of enterprise or competition. They go to the Department and they point out that in a particular year so much waxed paper was imported; they say they could have manufactured every bit of that. In 1957, for example, they would have got sale for every bit they manufactured and they could have got the import trade as well. I do not think it is fair for these firms to go to the Minister and his Department and make a case not wholly founded on fact.
I see from the reports published by these various companies—the manufacture of waxed paper is only a sideline—that they have done very well this year. There is no question of profits not being very high. What the Minister has done is to give them not so much protection as a complete monopoly. I appeal to the Minister to review the situation and to ensure that these people do not get a monopoly. If goods were being dumped, or if there was any element of unfair competition, I should be one of the first to say that the home industry should be given protection. I am not of that way of thinking in the present instance, because these people do not want to facilitate their customers.
With regard to wire netting, matting and felting, 50 per cent. full and £33 6s. 8d. preferential: that is a very heavy duty. I remember applying for sanction for a labourer's cottage and the Minister for Local Government refused sanction because the price of fencing was so high. It is hard to understand, then, why this extraordinarily high duty should be imposed.
With regard to the wheat Order, there is an imposition of £2 per ton. The case of wheat is not quite as bad as that of peas, but wheat was lost last year. Yet, there we are putting on a tax. We have all read in our papers that the production of flour by Ranks has gone down over the past year. In 1957, the production of flour went down by 30 per cent. as compared with 1955. The chairman stated that for every ten sacks of flour sold in 1955 they sold only seven sacks in 1957. One would think that as a levy of 5/9 was put on wheat this year—and the farmers have to pay that levy—they would not have to pay a tax on wheat. That is not a protective tax; it is a revenue tax and not protection for the farmers. I feel the Minister should examine this again and more especially I wish to refer again to the tax on dried peas. That is a tax on the vegetables of the poorer section of the people. I ask the Minister to review that and to give us the quantity of peas imported in the year 1957, the value and the duty paid.
Generally speaking, the principle of duties is to protect existing industries and to give an opportunity to new industries to get on their feet. I was shocked to find in this list of duties the one that refers to wheat. Imagine imposing a duty of £2 a ton on wheat importation. Surely the duty is not being imposed to give an opportunity for wheat to be, if you like, grown or manufactured during the current year to which these duties apply. Surely it is not imposed in order to give protection to the production of wheat because it does not arise, as the growing period of wheat has not yet begun this year, but here we find a duty of £2 a ton which will result in taking approximately £500,000 from the people who eat bread. Surely that £500,000 is not being taken from the consumers of bread to protect the wheat growing industry. It is purely and simply a tax on those who will use flour and bread this year manufactured from imported wheat. The imposition of that duty is unjustified. It is most improper to ask the Dáil to approve the imposition of such a duty when we consider that the wheat crop was a failure last year. The consumers should not be penalised for that failure.
In addition to this £2 a ton being taken from the consumers under this Imposition of Duties Bill, £2 6s. a ton was taken from the producers already, making a total of £4 6s. a ton on a certain quantity of homegrown and imported wheat. The Minister and the House should not approve the imposition of a duty on the importation of wheat for our ordinary bread requirements.
I see also that a duty is being imposed on milk cans which has the effect of increasing very considerably the cost of milk cans to the milk producers and dairy farmers, particularly in the creamery areas. We know that although they are required to pay the increased price for milk cans of 14 gallons capacity, the price of milk to them has been reduced during the past 12 months. In addition to having the price of milk reduced, there is also a tax rake-off from the creamery milk suppliers in order to meet the cost of subsidising butter exports. I feel that the matter of increasing the cost of milk cans by this duty should be considered in addition to abolishing immediately the duty being applied to the importation of wheat for the manufacture of flour and bread.
Deputy Cosgrave referred to the difficulty of having an effective discussion on a Bill of this kind with a very long Schedule of Orders to be confirmed. It was the practice originally that the duties imposed under the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act had to be confirmed by legislation within six months. That did not prove to be a very satisfactory arrangement either, because in practice it worked out that at the end of each session of the Dáil, it became necessary to bring in a Bill to confirm Orders that might expire during the recess. My predecessor thought up this idea of dealing with the confirmation of these Orders on an annual basis, having all the Orders made in one year confirmed by legislation in the next following year. I thought it a good idea and I proceeded with the legislation he had drafted in the Act of 1957.
It seems to me, however, that the difficulty, if there is one, emerges from a disposition to discuss the Orders on Second Reading, whereas I think the procedure which would lend itself best to a full examination of any Order the House wished to discuss would be to have the Dáil in Committee and move amendments to bring up, for separate discussion, Orders about which Deputies may feel concerned or on which they may desire more information.
On the specific matters that were referred to, there are just a few words of explanation I should like to offer. Deputy Crotty referred to the imposition of a minimum duty per yard on fabrics of silk and artificial silk. We are not the only country in the world which has had to face this very acute problem of exceptionally low prices for textile goods imported from Far Eastern or Iron Curtain countries. The prices at which some of these fabrics are offered for sale here have no relation whatever to production costs in this part of the world and, indeed, so far as the Iron Curtain countries are concerned, it is not clear that economic considerations alone apply in the determination of their prices.
Deputies will have seen that Britain, certainly a far stronger industrial country than we are, has had to take action to restrict imports by the imposition of quantitative limitations and otherwise. We had to face up to that situation. We were not going to allow our textile factories to be put out of business by these imports at prices which would be completely impossible in this part of the world. We decided we would have to take the same protective measures as every other European country has had to take in order to maintain our own textile industry.
In the case of dried peas, I think Deputy Crotty misunderstands the position. In fact, that duty is not paid. It is a device adopted to confine the importation of dried peas to firms which have entered into contracts with farmers for the growing of peas in this country. Firms that entered into these contracts are then permitted to import free of duty, the quantity of peas which relates to the acreage for which they have contracted here. It is a device for organising the production of peas rather than a tariff.
That is very good.
In the case of waxed paper, I think I should make it clear at the start that there was no application for a duty in this case. The decision to impose a duty followed upon an examination of the position undertaken by the Department. There seemed to be no reason why waxed paper should be imported. The price at which waxed paper is sold throughout Europe has been determined by a convention made between firms concerned and certainly the price at which it was offered for sale here was no higher than the price prevailing in Britain and on the Continent.
Therefore, it would seem that there was no need for imports and yet imports were taking place and, whether that was due to some hidden subventions being given to the importers, some departure from the agreed prices of imports from certain continental firms which were not disclosed on invoices and could not be tracked down, I do not know, but there was no reason why these imports should be permitted and we, on our own initiative, imposed the duty. Prices are the same as they are in Great Britain and the undertakings we have received from the firms concerned are that prices prevailing in Britain will prevail here and, if that situation changes, I am prepared to consider taking the import duties off again.
In the case of wire webbing, netting and fencing, again the problem was one of dumping. Certain continental firms were offering these fences and wire webbing at prices which were below the cost of the wire from which they were made and clearly, in a situation of that kind, there was no alternative but to take action to restrict these dumping practices. It was obviously a case of dumping and, while we might get some advantage by allowing dumping to continue for a while, we knew it would persist only for a short period and eventually economic prices would prevail, but, in the meantime, quite important industries here would have gone out of existence. The wire is produced by one firm and the webbing and fences are produced by others, and they are important undertakings which we should not allow to be jeopardised by temporary conditions which, on the Continent, would induce certain firms to try to get rid of their stocks at any price they could obtain.
Again, in the case of milk cans, I think the Deputy slightly misunderstands the situation. There was for a very long time an import duty on milk cans which applied to cans of under 12 gallons capacity. It was found that the duty was being evaded by importation of cans of 12½ gallons and 13 gallons capacity, and the effect of the Order was merely to amend the definition of the cans to which duty applied by increasing the capacity from 12 gallons to 14 gallons.
In regard to wheat, there will be, as Deputies know, a Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Agriculture on which the whole arrangements for dealing with the special situation which developed in connection with the wheat harvest last year can be discussed. The imposition of the import duty was one of the steps taken to deal with the situation. Not one penny of the revenue from that comes to the benefit of the Exchequer. The whole of that revenue is being passed over to An Bord Gráin and is paid out by them to the farmers who were the main sufferers from the failure of the harvest and, if the duty were to be repealed, if that revenue were to be lost, the only sufferers would be the farmers for whose benefit these arrangements were made. All the arrangements can be discussed together on the Supplementary Estimate.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 3rd March, 1959.