The Leader of our Party, Deputy Cosgrave, has paid tribute to the efforts of Córas Tráchtála in developing new markets and new fields. I feel it my duty to join with him in the tribute paid to this organisation which is doing its best and has been doing its best since its formation. It is to the credit of Córas Tráchtála that it has shown imagination and has succeeded in expanding industry. However, it is not the success I would expect it to be and to this extent I must be critical. I feel obliged to say that the personnel of many of these organisations are not the type of personnel suitable for the purpose or qualified to go out and seek markets and having got them, experienced enough to know what it is to hold them because many of them have not business training.
I say that as one who had a business training and who was engaged in the export business long before Córas Tráchtála was thought of. The family business to which I belong and in which I was trained engaged in the export business before I was born. They exported from the North Wall and various other Irish ports. As a young lad, I worked in the stores where goods were being packed and prepared for export. Long before regulations came in about high standards, we were taught by my late father, God be good to him, that nothing was too good for the customer, and the customer in that case was across the water in England and in this city as well. One need only go to the Department of Agriculture or to the Minister's own Department to find the records of those exports. People who have experience in that field may not have gone through universities; they may not be BAs, BLs or B.Comms., but because of their training and experience they are well qualified to say what is good and what is bad. That was my training right from the packaging place to the place of export, the North Wall and the other ports at Sligo, the less important port of Ballina, and Galway and Westport. Some of these ports are now closed down. The bulk of the exports was from the land of Ireland, agricultural produce of one kind or another.
I am reminded of Deputy Tully's reference to mining. Minerals were exported from Mayo through the port of Killala 80 or 90 years ago. They were exported from there in the raw, not processed. At one time—I do not want to go into detail on this matter because I could be accused of playing politics— we enjoyed certain preferences in the British market. These advantages were thrown away, a retrograde step when we consider our geographical situation, how near we are to the greatest market in the world, the British market, from the point of view of our economy. As long as I can remember, we have been throwing away very good and very valuable markets. We have been trying to convince ourselves that there was something in Germany, something in Spain and something in France that was far better than what was across the water in England. I suggest to the Minister that if he checks the facts and figures that are there available to him —not just the niggardly exports or imports that my late father and I might have engaged in but the overall position—he will learn something from them. The records are in the files of the Department and he can learn a great deal from them.
The Minister has had the experience of going to England, America and certain European countries. The thought must have struck him from time to time that in heavily industrialised cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, the potential is there for us if only we were up and doing and minding our business. When walking through the streets of London, Birmingham or Manchester, as I have done as a businessman, looking around to see if there was Irish produce in the shops there and failing to see it, he must have formed the same opinion as I have formed, that there is something terribly and damnably wrong with us and that we have a good deal for which to blame ourselves. Instead of having persons who understood what they were doing and what they were talking about at the head of affairs, frequently we had alleged experts from foreign countries, who were invited to tell us how to do things and the opinions of our own people were never really valued. You will find today, no doubt, engaged in export activity, people who came in here, not for the love of our blue eyes or the colour of our hair, but because there were grants available to them. They came from Europe and, perhaps, from the United States. I am not condemning them all. Some of them, no doubt, are decent and reputable people. Amongst them were the chancers and the Johnny-get-rich-quick type, who had their hands out for grants and, if it suited them at a later date, were ready to fold their tents and get out. That has gone on, to my knowledge.
I was not very old when I employed about 20 people and there was no need for a trade union around the place. I paid the trade union rates in a country area and provided every modern amenity. If I as a private individual were afforded the opportunities that some of these foreigners got, I would have a couple of hundred people employed now, without having the B.Comm. or any other degree, but having been trained in the hard school of experience, in a business handed down in which I was directly interested and was anxious to foster because it was a family business in which one was reared and trained and in which one was an expert.
We seem to be prepared to go to the four corners of the earth for men and women with high-sounding names and to meet them at the airport or the dockside and welcome them and, with the Irish taxpayer's money, hand out generous grants, in many cases to very doubtful and very shady individuals. I could go on and on on that subject.
I know the foolish policy that was adopted, that we could get on without the British market, the foolish policy of starting economic and other wars and the cheap talk that went on. I know the amount of damage it did and how it prejudiced the British consumer against us.
It may surprise the Minister when I tell him that, on one occasion when Dr. Ryan was Minister for Agriculture and went to No. 10 Downing Street and the late Winston Churchill was in a room adjacent to No. 10 the very words that Winston Churchill used were: "Get as much as you can as cheap as you can from those Irish". He did not bother to meet the deputation. He knew that we had not any other market, that we were bad businessmen, that we were throwing away the markets that were there for us to foster if only we had the commonsense to do it. I do not misquote the man. I know this from the man who stood beside him at the time, who was very pro-Irish and married to an Irish girl.
We have been throwing away these markets. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge down through the years and a great deal of damage has been done. To the credit of Córas Tráchtála, many of whom are not trained business people at all, I must say that they have been trying as best they can to restore our position in some of these markets and they have found it very difficult to do so.
Traditionally, we sent the bulk of our exports to Glasgow and exported, to a smaller degree, to London and to Manchester. Many of the older people remember when millions of pounds worth of Irish goods were landed at the Nelson docks and other docks in London and Scotland. Such quantities of goods are no longer being landed at these ports today. I say, without fear of contradiction, that that is due to the fact that we are very bad business people and were not minding our business when we had the opportunity to do so. The war did not affect us adversely. We gained when the bombs were raining down on Birmingham, London and other English cities. We had the produce they needed. Unfortunately, as has often happened before—I do not like going on the record as saying this—a few disreputable people engaged in business at that time were prepared, just because the British were in need of goods at that time, to put anything into old sacks or bags and ship it across and take money for it and to destroy our reputaion.
It became necessary to have an organisation such as Córas Tráchtála, to have registration, to have some tabs on the type of exporter who engaged in business. Personally, I feel that free trade is the most desirable thing we can have. There is the businessman who is prepared to get up in the early hours of the morning, to look for markets and, having got them, is prepared to hold on to them because his very livelihood is involved, but it is necessary to establish bodies such as Córas Tráchtála in order to establish some sort of control and to maintain the highest possible standards for people who are prepared to pay a good price for a good article.
It should be borne in mind that there is no country in which we have so much goodwill among our own people as we have in England. Our own kith and kin are there, our own brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. In cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, the majority of the people one meets on the street are Irish or of Irish descent. They are prepared to buy our goods, provided we offer them an honest article and a continuous supply. There is no use in saying that there will be a thousand rugs coming from Foxford if they are not delivered on time.
Having mentioned rugs and woollen goods, I put it on the record in recent times that an industry started in Foxford a long time ago. It is publicly known that it was the old Congested Districts Board that financed a nun there to start a mill. That mill has been successful down through the years. The business has been carried on without State assistance. That business was built, first of all, on the belief of that nun in Divine Providence and, secondly, on the fundamental principle of producing a quality article and thirdly, by ensuring that the article would reach the customer in proper condition. That business has lasted down through the years and has weathered all the storms created by wars, by Hitler, Mussolini and the rest, and it continues to expand, even in spite of the British import levy. That is a business that I know well because it is a local business. I am conversant with its history.
I know that frequently it met obstacles but because they produced the right kind of article, they have not had to go to Germany looking for customers. Customers have come to them from Germany, the United States and other places. If he looked at the addresses on the parcels leaving the factory, I doubt if the Minister could read all of them because they are in diverse languages. I am not trying to belittle the Minister's educational qualifications. I have the highest opinion both of himself, of his sincerity and integrity.
It is time we realised in this country that, by and large, we have proved ourselves to be bad business people. Those firms that have made a success of their business have stood fundamentally on quality and have been able to hold customers once they got them. Successive Fianna Fáil Governments — I am not referring to the present Minister but to his predecessors—were loud in their condemnation of everything British at a time when we were searching for markets. We know the results today. There is also the question of uncertainty of transportation.
