This is a little bitteen of a Bill. It is a short Bill consisting of five or six lines; the first section consists of three-and-a-half lines and the second section of one-and-a-half lines. Looking at it casually one would think there could be nothing very damaging in it, but from the point of view of its presentation—I do not blame the Minister for this; I blame the system—it is a most dangerous Bill. I shall not be coming back to this House after the Dissolution and, for that reason, I want once more to protest against something against which I have consistently and persistently protested in this House and to commend my protest to the Minister as something worthy at least of investigation.
We have on the Order Paper item No. 21, Restrictive Trade Practices (Confirmation of Order) Bill, 1968. Some indication should have been given to the Members of this House as to the particular Confirmation Order involved. I have always objected to administrative law. I object to it being used in this Bill. When it is being used, however, every effort should be made to make as public as possible the intention behind such administrative law. Unless a Deputy were particularly interested in this matter he could be unaware of the fact that this Bill was about to become an Act of this House. Any member of the public who wished to keep himself or herself informed would be in a similar position. This is both wrong and undemocratic and I suggest to the Minister that in future, when Confirmation Orders are being made law, some indication should be given in the Title of the Bill as to what particular Order is sought to be confirmed.
I object, also, to the manner in which the Bill is introduced. It is a very bad thing that we should find ourselves, as the Minister tells us, in the position that we cannot amend an Order made by the Minister under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1953. That leads me to ask why legislation of this kind, passed in 1953, should have survived so long. I should like every Member of this House to be in the position in which the terms contained in an Order, which we cannot amend, should be included in a Bill in the ordinary way, that Bill to follow the ordinary parliamentary process. If that were done the information would be easily procured, readily assimilated and digested by Deputies and Deputies could suggest amendments either by way of deletion or addition. As Deputy Donegan said, we find ourselves in the position that our hands are tied.
Only two things can happen to this Bill: it can be passed or it can be thrown out. As we cannot throw it out, I suggest to the Minister that he should withdraw the Bill. He may ask why. The Minister has explained the process through which this Bill has come before the House. There was a hearing before the Fair Trade Commission. I suggest to the Minister that the recommendations of the commission may be sensible but the manner in which the commission set about investigating this matter in relation to the conditions which obtained in regard to the supply and distribution to retailers of jewellery, watches and clocks was highly irregular. It is not the first time, I am sure, that such irregularities have occurred in hearings by the Fair Trade Commission. In my opinion this arises from a misreading of section 7 (6) of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1953, which provides:
An inquiry shall be held in public save in so far as, in the opinion of the member or members holding it, private sittings may be necessary to avoid any disclosure of confidential information which might materially injure the legitimate business interests of any person.
I can well understand a private sitting so that the private business of a business man would not be published in the press. But what happened at the particular inquiry in which I am interested at the moment? We learn from the report of the inquiry, page 7, paragraph 3:
Public sittings commenced on 20th July, 1967, and ended on 3rd August, 1967. We examined on oath or affirmation 27 witnesses in the course of public sittings and evidence was taken from three witnesses in private.
Prima facie, the commission was acting within its powers in hearing three witnesses in private but, in effect, what did this mean? It meant that three witnesses went into that inquiry; it meant that nobody was allowed to hear their evidence; it meant that no note was taken of their evidence and those who opposed the viewpoints put forward by these three witnesses were not allowed to cross-examine these witnesses. This was not acting either in the intent or in the spirit of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act.
I do not believe the Fair Trade Commission is empowered—I see no other empowering section in the Act—by section 7 (6) to act in a manner which is, in my opinion, very nearly, if not completely, unconstitutional. It is certainly a denial of the ordinary principles of natural justice followed in the courts. I would ask the Minister to inquire into this and inquire from the Fair Trade Commission if it is a fact that they did what I allege because I am not speaking from first hand; I am telling the Minister what I was told by people interested in this matter.
I do not want to traverse the ground already traversed by Deputy Donegan. He has pointed out that there is certainly a case to be made for some modification of the Order, if not indeed the complete wiping out of the Order. I do not think there should be imputed to the jewellery trade an intention to operate a restrictive practice. The jewellery trade is very fully aware of the skill necessary for the proper operation of the trade. I might remind the Minister that we have passed various Acts which acknowledge publicly that certain people must have certain skills before they can operate certain trades or professions. The Opticians Act is one Act that occurs to me. The retail jewellers would like to impress upon the Minister that their trade, particularly in regard to fine jewellery, watches and clocks, is a highly skilled trade, not alone from the point of view of the selling of these articles but from the point of view of advising customers—I believe they like to call them "clients"— and also from the point of view of storing watches, clocks and other goods which must be stored under ideal conditions to maintain their best condition prior to sale. The jewellers object to the fact that under the dispensation which will be established if this Bill becomes law, one will be able to go in and buy a lollipop with one hand and, with the other hand, a very valuable 50-guinea watch from one and the same person. I think the jewellery trade has a legitimate grouse. I think their proposals to the Fair Trade Commission were legitimate. Let me quote paragraph 35, which appears at page 18 of the Report of the inquiry into the conditions which obtain in regard to the supply and distribution to retailers of jewellery, watches and clocks:
Broadly, the avowed objective of the three retail associations is that the retailing of jewellery, watches and clocks should be confined to firms which comply with standards conceived or established by the associations themselves.
The "associations themselves", of course, are a conglomeration of the skilled jewellery trade—people who have amassed skills as a result of working for years in the trade. Like many other trades in this country, the jewellery trade is one that in many cases passes on from father to son. The Report continues:
The principal argument advanced by the associations in support of their policy is that a high degree of knowledge and skill and a proper after-sales service are necessary for the effective conduct of the retail jewellery trade.
This is not controverted anywhere in the subsequent portion of the Fair Trade Commission's Report. It was established by the evidence brought forward at the hearing before the Fair Trade Commission. Paragraph 35 goes on further to say:
The associations apprehend that, if firms which do not possess these qualifications and facilities engage in the trade, the public will be badly served, and the jewellery trade will be brought into disrepute.
I can understand the jewellery trade being worried about its trading being brought into disrepute. However, what the Minister should be more worried about is that the public might well be very badly served under the circumstances which would arise as a result of the passing into law of this measure. The Report of the Fair Trade Commission does not controvert any of this. In fact, it nearly accepts it by implication. It continues:
The crucial question is whether these considerations justify the application by retail trade associations of drastic measures designed to ensure that jewellery, watches and clocks will be sold exclusively by those retailers who, in the judgment of the associations, are qualified to engage in the trade.
From that, I think the Minister will infer as facilely as I infer that the Fair Trade Commission accepts everything in paragraph 35 of its Report and simply goes on to say then—by the use of hyperbole, in my opinion:
The crucial question is whether these considerations justify the application by retail trade associations of drastic measures...
One would think the retail trade association were going out with guns to shoot anybody going into competition with them. Far from it. In my opinion, the retail trade are acting in a most decorous fashion. When they found out that the hairdressers down the street were selling exactly the same sort of watch as the retail jewellery trade, they simply went to the wholesalers and manufacturers and said, in effect: "If you sell to Miss Murphy down the road the same watches as you are selling to us—although we have all the skill to advise as to how to keep the watch and whether it is a good watch and although we have the skill to repair it afterwards—we shall not deal with you and we shall see that our colleagues in the jewellery trade will not deal with you either."
In a rather impudent way, first the Fair Trade Commission and then the Minister said, in effect: "You cannot do that. How dare you. Anybody who damn well likes will sell a watch under any circumstances." The small shopkeeper can hit his child on the head with a watch and sell that same watch over the counter the next day to a customer—which is something no member of the jewellery trade would do. I am apprehensive about this particular exercise because we are living in days when people who hitherto could not afford to buy these watches can now afford to do so and they might prefer to go to the more homely surroundings of the local sweetshop or tobacconist than into a jewellery shop to purchase their watches or their fine and delicate jewellery. At least 90 if not 95 per cent of the jewellery trade's customers know nothing whatsoever about what they are buying. The fact that there was a jewellery trade in this country going back many centuries with fine conditions, was a safeguard for these people and was becoming increasingly more a safeguard as the retail market for that sort of jewellery became more widespread. Only highly-skilled people who had served their time could advise and give the service which the retail trade gives. I shall not keep the House any longer on this matter because Deputy Donegan has very fully and ably stated our case.
I would remind the Minister of one thing. When discussing the Bill immediately preceding this one, the Minister, speaking of much more august bodies than the Fair Trade Commission, said that the Government were not bound to act on the Report or recommendations of NIEC or on the Buchanan Report. Equally, the Minister is not bound to act on this. The fact that the people who signed it may be senior counsel or professors or lecturers at a university should not blind us to the reality that they can do damn silly things at times. I submit that they did a damn silly thing in their Report to the Minister in this particular case. It was stupid, piffling sort of stuff such as we read in paragraph 35 where they say, in effect: "We accept what the jewellery trade says but does this justify our taking any drastic steps?" The word "drastic" was a figment of the imagination of the august gentlemen who signed this Report.
Nothing in the Report indicated that any drastic step would be taken by any retail jewellers' association. For that reason—being powerless, as Deputy Donegan pointed out, to do anything to arrest any trend suggested in any portion of the Order we are asked to pass—I would appeal to the Minister, in the light of what Deputy Donegan has said and in the light of what I have said, at least to withdraw this Bill until such time as he has fully investigated the wisdom, commonsense or even the factual basis of the Report upon which he prepared the Order which this Bill seeks to turn into an Act.
