In introducing this motion to approve the terms of the Quota Order made by the Minister, he mentioned the fact that discussions with the British Board of Trade were initiated in accordance with the provisions of Article 19 of the Free Trade Area Agreement and it was agreed that quota restrictions should be imposed on the importation of tyres from the United Kingdom. I think everybody in the House agrees that what is vitally important at the moment is that the workers in this factory should know what their position is. I said last night when Deputy Lenihan, senior, said that the Dunlop Company had three years notice of the advent of free trade and this Quota Order gave them another year in which to put themselves in a competitive position and that thereafter it would be unreasonable to ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce to meet any problems with which the company might be faced or any problem created by redundancy in the company as a result of the import of foreign tyres, that I demurred from Deputy Lenihan's view and Deputy Lenihan then began to backpedal and eventually fled out of the House and disappeared. He claimed to have a detailed knowledge which he subsequently said was a general knowledge in detail of the costings of the Dunlop factory and left me under the impression that he wished to add that, with that knowledge, he was in a position to say that it was perfectly easy for the Dunlop factory to make itself competitive and equal to any stringencies arising from a reduced tariff within the 12 months period remaining of this Quota Order.
My principal concern is to provide men who are working in this factory with some degree of certainty as to what the future holds for them. I do not think the Minister, so far, has given the kind of undertaking I think he ought to be in a position to give. In July, a statement was published. We have before us a very succinct introductory speech in which the Minister presented the Confirmation Order to the House. I have looked at Article XIX of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement to which the Minister refers. It says:
(1) If in the territory of either party—
(a) an appreciable rise in unemployment in a particular sector of industry or region is caused by a substantial decrease in internal demand for a domestic product, and
(b) this decrease in demand is due to an increase in imports from the territory of the other as a result of the reduction, modification or elimination of import duties, protective elements in fiscal charges or quantitative restrictions in accordance with Article I, IV, or VI,
the former party may, notwithstanding any other provision of this Agreement, limit those imports by means of quantitative restrictions to a rate not less than the rate of such imports during any period of twelve months which ended within twelve months of the date on which the restrictions came into force; the restrictions shall not be continued for a period longer than eighteen months, unless the other party agrees.
That is the proviso which limits the Minister's discretion in regard to this particular Quota Order. It cannot continue for more than 18 months, that is, until approximately next December, without the express consent of the President of the British Board of Trade. But the Article goes on to say:
The party applying the restrictions shall, if possible, inform the other before the restrictions come into force. The latter party may, at any time, propose measures designed to moderate any damaging effects of the restrictions or to assist the former party to overcome its difficulties.
Paragraph (2) of the Article says:
Nothwithstanding any other provision of this Agreement, if at any time after 1 July, 1966, either party considers that the application of Article I, IV or VI to any product would lead to the situation described in paragraph (1) of this article, it may propose and the parties may agree on other measures instead of, or in addition to, the restriction of imports in accordance with that paragraph, including, as may be appropriate, an alternative rate of reduction of the import duty or protective element concerned, provided that any such duty or protective element shall be eliminated not later than 1 July, 1981.
Paragraph (3) says:
The parties may agree, in the light of the review for which provision is made in paragraph (5) of Article 1, that the rate at which the remainder of the import duty or protective element shall be reduced in respect of imports of a product from the United Kingdom into Ireland shall be modified and, if necessary, that the period after which the duty or protective element is to be eliminated shall be prolonged, provided that any such duty or protective element shall be eliminated not later than 1 July, 1981.
Paragraph (4) says:
Before 1 July, 1975 the parties shall jointly consider whether the provisions of paragraphs (1) and (2) of this Article will continue to be necessary and appropriate to deal thereafter with difficulties of a temporary character and shall agree on such provisions as they may find to be necessary.
Now, in the White Paper circulated with this Agreement and laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in December, 1965, there is an explanatory paragraph designed for the guidance of the House and presumably agreed with the other parties to the Agreement. That explanatory paragraph appears on page 24 of the White Paper. Paragraph 68 reads:
Paragraph (1) of this Article allows, on the initiative of the country concerned, the temporary imposition of quantitative import restrictions where an increase in imports due to the removal of duties or quantitative restrictions causes an appreciable rise in unemployment in a particular sector of industry or region. Such restrictions may be imposed unilaterally for eighteen months and may be extended by agreement. Imports of the goods affected cannot be restricted to a level below that which obtained during any period of twelve months which ended within twelve months of the date on which the restrictions came into force.
The point I want to make is this. It appears to me from reading and studying this Article and the explanatory note which I have read for the House that, in fact, the Article envisages the possibility that if the difficulties such as the Dunlop Company experienced in the recent past should re-arise after the lapse of this Quota Order which we are at present considering it is open to the Minister to open discussions with the British Board of Trade to continue quota restrictions for a further period provided always that such continuation is subject to the over-riding limit that it cannot extend beyond July, 1981.
I want to suggest to Deputy Lenihan and, more especially, to the Minister, that he has a duty and the duty he has is to face the implications of the Article of this Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement and indicate to the House now what he proposes to do or what the Government propose to do if difficulties similar to those which arose in the recent past in regard to this industry should arise again. I want to say to Deputy Lenihan very categorically that I understand the responsibility on the Dunlop company to bring their company up to its maximum level of efficiency has been and is being fully discharged by the management of that company up to the limit of what it was humanly and what it is humanly possible to do. If Deputy Healy or Deputy Wyse, both experienced Deputies in this constituency, or Deputy Lenihan who says he knows the costings of the company intimately, have any information to the contrary, they ought to give it to the House. They should tell the House if they think the management of the Dunlop company failed in any particular. The House is entitled to know. My information is that they did not. They have done all that could be done. If Deputy Lenihan, who is now present, knows anything to the contrary, he has a duty to tell the House because we are being asked to determine what is to be done in respect of the Quota Order provisionally made by the Minister last July.
I want to ask the Minister if I am correct in believing, as I think I am, that the management of the Dunlop tyre factory in Cork has done all that it is physically possible to do. If I am correct in believing, as I believe I am correct in believing, that the workers in this factory are as skilled and as diligent as any industrial workers in this country, what does the Minister intend to do, under Article XIX, at the end of the currency of the present Quota Order? I ask that question on behalf of every employee, junior but more especially senior, the men with family responsibilities, the men who have been working in this firm for 20 or 25 years and who are now faced with the nightmare that they may be declared redundant in their middle age. I remember, several years ago, speaking as Leader of the Opposition, rebuking the Government on their failure to reassure workers when they were contemplating not only this Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement but the wider agreement involved in joining EEC. I remember saying to the then Taoiseach, Deputy Seán Lemass: "It is not enough shaking your gory locks at the manufacturers; the people who are really vitally concerned are the workers who went into protected industries with the approval of the Irish Government 20, 25 and 30 years ago and who are now middle-aged men with highly specialised skills for which there is not ordinarily any alternative employment." Redundancy payment for such men is no compensation for a life invested in a specialised industry at the urgent request of our own Government.
I want to renew that representation on behalf of the Dunlop factory and I want to submit to the House and to the Minister that they are entitled to hear from the Minister a categorical reply to the inquiry: "What are we going to do next September?" Now, I recognise that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is in a somewhat delicate position because the relevant Article of the Trade Agreement says that next September his power to act unilaterally ceases. After his unilateral action, which we are now discussing, ceases to operate, his action thereafter must be in consultation with and in agreement with the President of the Board of Trade in Britain. Now, if I correctly interpret the spirit in which this Agreement was entered into, I understand it to mean that the British Government accept the proposition that there are certain specialised industries that have been set up here which might be very harshly affected by the operation of the Agreement without qualification and that they were prepared to admit, I imagine, in the case of commodities like tyres, and possibly unassembled motors cars or such exceptional industries, that exceptional steps were appropriate for their maintenance and the maintenance of employment in them.
It is wholly wrong, however, in your desire to stimulate further endeavour on the part of the management, to apply the screw to the management by threatening that they may find themselves out in the cold in 12 months time, because, to put it quite crudely, it does not matter a damn to the management. The management are all highly geared men of great experience and ability who can find alternative employment in other big industries. I am thinking of the man of 50 years of age with a family now at secondary school, who is mobilising his own domestic resources to see if he can put them through university and today, yesterday or tomorrow night, after the children have gone to bed, sits by the fire discussing with his wife: "What in the name of God are we going to do if 12 months from today the situation recurs such as existed last July? I may be out of a job and there may be no question of my son and my daughter going to university and completing their education as we had planned for them. If this is so, ought we to leave them in the secondary school or switch them to the technical school to try to get them trained to earn their living."
I have said in this House time and time again that we get so involved in such broad generalities talking about the terms of trade agreements and the future prospects of free trade and the winds of change blowing in the world, that we are liable to forget the individual whose whole future, and the whole future of whose family, depends on what we say and do in this House. Now, if one were a member of the Federal Government of the United States and came from the State of Maine, one could be forgiven if one were not familiar with the problems of people in Alabama. Similarly, if one were a member of the British House of Commons, a member of Parliament coming from Sussex, one would not understand the problems of the Orkney Islands, but we in Ireland are not so divorced from one another that a member from Dublin or Monaghan or anywhere else cannot feel sympathy with the feelings of a parent in Cork. Our problems are all very much the same. There is not 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 80 per cent of the Deputies here of 50 years of age who have not got precisely the same problems: how are we going to be able to provide for the children now that the expensive time has come of finishing their education?
As far as I can understand the terms of the Agreement, the Minister has power to initiate discussions with the British Board of Trade to take such measures as may be requisite to maintain employment at its present or a higher level in the Dunlop factory certainly until 1st July, 1981. If I am right in that, I am asking the Minister to say categorically to the House, and especially to the workers of Dunlop's who have family responsibilities: "As Minister for Industry and Commerce, I am going to bring all the pressure I can on the management of Dunlop's to maintain a course of development and improvement in their methods and equipment. I am going to urge on the trade union representatives of the employees to give 100 per cent co-operation in raising the standards of efficiency in the production of tyres in Cork, but I am going to say to the workers: ‘There is no need to abandon your plans. If we all work together there are means available to us to say with virtual certainty nobody is going to lose his job as a result of redundancy in Cork this side of 1981.'"
Now, I see the danger of saying that. I see the danger of that being misinterpreted as a general licence to lie back, to take things easy and to go slow. I say this for the Minister for Industry and Commerce, he is not one of the persons in respect of whom a credibility gap has begun to open in this country. I would be prepared to say, and I have no sympathy with his general political views, that if he said: "I want to make this proposition clear and simple. I will do my part and I have authority on behalf of the Government to keep this company viable to 1981, provided the other two parties play their part", that is, the management and workers in the Dunlop factory in Cork, but he is bound, in his own defence and to maintain his reputation for credibility, to say at the same time: "But I want to make this perfectly clear. If the management and workers are not going to do their part, they cannot look to me to create a situation in which they are certain of the maintenance of the industry which primarily depends on them."
I may be wrong, but I do not think I am. I think the management and the men in Dunlop's have been doing their part. I have not heard a single Deputy suggest that they have not. If they continue to do so, I invite the Minister, Deputy Lenihan notwithstanding, to discharge his obligation by giving that carefully measured reassurance which I bespeak from him, and say to Deputy Lenihan, either publicly or in private: "Do not open your mouth so wide about matters which you claim to know all about but in fact do not know so much as you think you do." Such a declaration would be of incalculable value to our neighbours who are working in Cork. I would like to think we are still a close enough knit society to feel for them, to understand their problems and to be resolute to assist them in their anxiety, whether we come from Cork, Mavo or Monaghan.