I only want sympathetic understanding. I do not think it is right to associate industrial development in this country with high tariff protection or to persuade ourselves that high and promiscuous tariff protection and quota protection is the only method available to our people for making themselves self-sustained in industry. I think I may legitimately recall to the memory of the House that great industries existed here for which we have no reason to apologise that never knew any protection at all, that many other industries were created under the extremely moderate and controlled system of protection that obtained in this country up to 1932, and I am calling Roussa's lecture into the discussion, in the hope of persuading someone with an open mind like Deputy O'Leary rather than a convinced member of Fianna Fáil, that moderate and discriminating protection may be a very much more effective instrument in generating an enduring expansion of the economy which may provide a better livelihood for everybody—wage earner, salary earner, capitalist and farmer—than the kind of unplanned fatuous protectionism which I think has landed us in a very considerable dilemma as of the present time.
I noted with admiration the moderation and restraint of Deputy O'Leary's approach to this whole problem. I want to use rather more emphatic language. I think we are all underestimating this problem. I acknowledge that the Government have appointed the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with labour problems and I think that was a prudent, sensible and wise thing to do. I am glad it should be Deputy Flanagan. I have no doubt he will give conscientious and zealous attention to that particular assignment, so long as he is responsible for it, because I think it is a very important one. I do not anticipate this annual reduction of ten per cent in the higgledy-piggledy tariff structure we have in this country with equanimity and I make no apology at all for calling to mind again what I have said in this House not infrequently and which I was first taught by one of the most far-seeing industrial developers this country has ever known, that is, ex-Deputy Paddy McGilligan, one of the finest minds in Europe and one of the most far-seeing men ever concerned with industrial development in this country.
I well remember when we were in Government a question arising—I cannot remember precisely what it was—about some problem of redundancy and I think the late Deputy Bill Norton was taking a rather rumbustious line, as was natural—he was anxious to have this matter given the closest attention. I remember his being edified by the attitude of Deputy McGilligan, who was then, I think, Minister for Finance, who said he had learned a lesson when he put through the ESB Act. The lesson he learned was that you have no right to go to any man of middle age and give him a silver handshake and then tell him to do the best he can for himself; you have no right to go to a man who has invested the first 35 years of his life in learning a skill and giving him a year's salary and saying: "Now go out and root for yourself".
His view was that if the national interest demanded that you should go to a man of middle age and say: "Your job has become redundant", there are two courses open to you: one was to say to him: "You retain your salary and your pension rights or, if you are willing, but only if you are willing, if you recoil from the idea of a life of idleness, being paid your full wages and waiting for your pension date to come, we will put at your disposal industrial training in some other analogous branch of occupation at full wages until such time as you can take up another skilled job in some other industry".
I beg of Deputies to bear in mind that we may think it a handsome thing to go to a man of 47 or 48 years of age and give him a year's salary and say: "The national interest demands that your job should be extinguished and here is a year's salary. We think we are treating you handsomely". At first glance, it sounds handsome to give him £1,000, but, if you have two or three or four children and a wife and you are accustomed to earning £18 to £22 a week and are looking forward confidently to occupying that job until you are 65 and then getting a pension because you belong to a pension scheme, it is a desperate thing to be told when you are 47 or 48 or in your 50th year: "There is £1,000 and goodbye".
Therefore, I beg of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to take upon himself the duty of saying that the Government are resolved in the context of this Bill to instruct the Minister for Labour to accept as a guiding line the principle laid down by Mr. Paddy McGilligan, that is, that once a man has passed the age of 45, he is not to be thrown on the scrapheap, and a skilled man who has passed the age of 45 in permanent employment is thrown on the scrapheap if he is not offered the opportunity of training in another skilled occupation without the disruption of his whole family life. If that is accepted, then I think we can meet the other problems that arise, but do not let us underestimate those problems.
I remember a man coming to me, and I can give the Minister his name —I think he is in Heaven now—who ground spices. Oddly enough, the late Deputy Derrig was acting Minister for Industry and Commerce at the time. The present Taoiseach who was Minister for Industry and Commerce was in the Mater Hospital having his appendix out. I remember this man coming to me upstairs. I was not then leader of the Opposition but I was a pretty formidable critic of the Fianna Fáil Government. He told me he had never voted for me, for Cumann na nGaedheal or Fine Gael, that he had voted Fianna Fáil since the first day he had a vote. He always thought that Dev was wonderful.
"I set up a little business," he told me, "and they brought in some regulations and closed me up. I said: ‘If it is for the good of the country, very well. Dev would not do it otherwise.' I set up a second little business and it was doing nicely but I wasn't very long at it until they made more regulations and wiped me out again. I remember saying to myself: ‘If Dev did it, it must be right'.
"I started up a third business, grinding spices, and now they have published an order this morning giving Goodalls of London an exclusive right to grind spices in this country. I must go up now and nail up my doors again." I was not very apt to do this in those days but I remember going to see the Fianna Fáil Minister for Industry and Commerce. I was so shocked by the situation on this occasion that I went to the acting Minister, Deputy Derrig, as mild a man as ever cut throats or scuttled ships. He gave the usual Civil Service answer, that he would look into the matter. I remember raising it in this House afterwards because he did not know what to do, with Mr. Lemass in the Mater Hospital and he was shaking in his shoes in case he put a foot right or left and Lemass would eat him when he came back.
In the end I raised it in the House and the exclusive licence to Goodalls was qualified in favour of those who were already engaged in spice grinding in this country. God be good to the man for whom I did this. When the war broke out, he rang me up and said that I could have any spices I wanted for my shop in Ballaghaderreen. I am a long time in public life and have heard much about gratitude but I have never come across a more concrete way of showing gratitude. To my misfortune, I was not in the wholesale spice business and I did not avail of his offer, but at least he was prepared to do something practical to show his gratitude.
The point I want to make is: Let us not only concentrate on the problem involved for the redundant worker. Machinery can easily be devised to meet his case if it is done now. It will not be easy machinery to operate but we can devise it and we can ensure that no unjust hardship is involved. But when you come to the man with his own little business, the man grinding spices, employing 15 or 20 people, living comfortably with a nice house at Glasnevin or Drumcondra and a couple of children at school and a certain standard of living who suddenly finds that the business he was encouraged to go into by the Fianna Fáil Government, by the kind of specious promise to which Deputy O'Leary referred, is now no longer favoured.
He bustles off to the Department and asks: "What am I to do? It is not only my money I have invested; it is my life. I started this little business when I was 25. I am rising 60 now and you tell me I am not wanted in it." What do you say to him? Let Deputy Corry not restrain himself unduly or he will burst. I do not think the Deputy need worry about me. I took the precaution of getting a State pension, just as the Deputy did. He and I have made ample provision for ourselves. We shall each get £1,000 a year when we retire but I am anxious to ensure that the people for whom he and I are legislating will do as well for themselves as we have done for ourselves.
I am talking about the small business man who is wiped out and I know the Minister is sympathetic in this respect. I am not suggesting he would be reckless or ruthless in this matter but many of these things can be done practically and effectively if we face them in time and do not try to improvise frantically when they come upon us. What are we going to say to the man whose business is folding up and whose business, as may be the case in many instances, is largely made of processing, for example, the man grinding spices? A great part of his life is invested in his business, in his stock and so is the bulk of his earnings.
The market for what he is selling is destroyed. He suddenly finds his entire substance gone because the value of his stock has depreciated in the face of competition from incoming goods and the skill by which he lives is no longer usable because nobody wants it.
What I am begging the House to do is to face facts. While it may be good economics to say you cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs, it is not good sociology and I do not think Deputies should stand idly by while a middle-aged workman is effectively thrown on the scrapheap, or a skilled man of 50 years of age is dispossesed of his business or a small business man is utterly ruined so that some economic plan is prosecuted for what the Government of the day think is the common good.
There are one or two specific questions I want to ask the Minister. I compliment him on his courtesy in giving us a copy of his opening observations, albeit they were brief. I agree their complexity required the circulation of this document he was civil enough to send us. It makes it much easier to examine this Bill when we have this draft before us in black and white. I take it that in pursuance of our policy of co-operation with Northern Ireland we are not to expect any concession from the Government of Northern Ireland in exchange for this tariff concession we are making to them, and that this is just a gesture of goodwill. I am all for making gestures of goodwill. Casting our bread upon the water is a useful thing to do. As another Minister said in another context, not by bread alone do we live.
I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that in introducing this Bill he said that under the present Irish rule manufactured goods imported from Great Britain are regarded as being of British origin if they are manufactured there or if a specified percentage of the cost of production was the result of work done in Britain or in Ireland. The specific percentage is 25 for most goods. In some cases, it is 50 or 75 per cent. How does that chime with the section in the Finance Act we have just passed?
Under the scheme, originally initiated by the late Deputy William Norton, it was provided that there could be a remission of income tax and corporation profits tax on exports from this country, provided a certain amount of the work on the goods exported was done in Ireland and a minimum was set in that regard. We were not entitled to bring in watches from Japan and to ship them out again to Great Britain. You had to satisfy the Treasury and the Department of Industry and Commerce that certain work would be done upon them in Ireland if they were to qualify for this benefit. I think—on this I cannot be certain—that, bearing in mind the terms of the Trade Agreement then existing, now superseded by the recent Trade Agreement, there was some obligation upon us not to give concessions except in respect of goods of Irish manufacture which were deemed to be of Irish manufacture if more than 25 per cent of the added value represented processing in Ireland.
Does this proviso here in regard to goods of British origin coincide with the corresponding provision in the other direction? If not, is it liable to give rise to query? Is our test of British origin any more rigorous than their test of Irish origin? I think these two things must be kept in step. I should be glad to hear from the Minister, at his convenience, whether he is satisfied that, in fact, that is being done. I should have thought 25 per cent, as he says, for most goods approximates to the true situation. Suppose we raise the content of certain goods to 50 or 75 per cent, does this give rise to the possibility of repercussions from the other side? Take our sewing machines. If we bring in parts, screw them together and export to Great Britain——