I mentioned that it is unrevised. It is a short quotation. Finally, he said: "The Minister should not draw me too far." I do not know which Minister he was referring to. I will say just this about it: if Deputy Fitzgerald thinks there is any evidence of impropriety, then he owes it to the House to explain it because by and large the levels of propriety in the civil service and State companies is very high and any impropriety should be pursued without pity. If he has not got any evidence, then, as the Minister for Transport and Power said last night, he is casting a slur not on any individuals but on whole institutions. I hope someone on that side will take that choice before the debate finishes.
The real issue today is based on a balance of interests. It is necessary to balance the interests of the Verolme workers in the appropriate part of the works where there are 800 employed. I want to emphasise that they are workers with a variety of skills, some of them plumbing, some of them woodworking, some of them in the furnishing and finishing of ships. It is also necessary to balance the interests of Irish Shipping which are significant employers, though, perhaps, not necessarily large enough, and earners of foreign currency for us with very little import costs except for particular purchasers. They provide a net gain for our balance of payments. I will not enter that in detail because it is for the Minister for Transport and Power.
The third thing that has to be put into balance is the demand for the use of public money in the interests of the Irish people. It is inescapable that money used for subsidies in one way is not available for subsidies elsewhere and, therefore, a choice has to be made as to the best way of locating the financial aid you have got to give.
Let us look at these three interests in order, and if I put them in order, I must put the Verolme workers first. They certainly want security of employment and I do not think there is any division anywhere in the House in regard to our commitment to safeguard that for them. They also want the full range of shipbuilding skills to be developed in that shipyard. They also want a shipyard which is viable, not the obligation of viability in the middle of recession but which is viable by ordinary common-sense criteria in the long term. This is not a place where the Government should be called on to put in money decade after decade.
I think the 1970 decision was a reasonable one, but had some of that money been put back into Cork it could have structured a growth over the present size of 1,200 workers, with 800 in shipbuilding, but you cannot have very sudden and dramatic expansion in employment in a shipyard without running the risk of much more dramatic and even traumatic contraction in other industry, especially with the way world shipbuilding is at the moment. It is not just that we want jobs now. Both sides of the House, and the workers themselves, want security in the future in a shipyard which is viable and competitive.
They are looking to the time—and OECD are in the course of setting the close date of 1978—when subsidies to shipyards in the OECD countries will be outlawed. That will not come easily but the effort is there and we must build viability for them in circumstances where, at this moment, there are two Community countries giving subsidies to shipyards, namely, the Italians and ourselves.
That is the interest of Verolme and the interest of Irish Shipping. We see two countries in Europe that are roughly comparable to ourselves with enormous amounts of revenue and employment and a great increase in their national horizon by the possession of great shipping fleets, namely, the Greeks and the Norwegians. Located as we are, it is absolutely correct for us to have that kind of perspective for Irish Shipping. It is a high source of employment and revenue and it is available for the soul of an island country to look beyond the boundary of the land and look to the ocean as we have done for millennia, but as we do not do sufficiently now.
At this moment with 500 people it is a valuable source of income and employment. Surely we are also committed to its growth and its success? Surely we know that in the world at the moment there is intense competition and that certain freight rates have fallen very steeply? Surely we know we should have a shipping line that runs according to the general economic criteria of profitability in the world? Therefore, if other things permit it—I emphasise that because all of what I am saying is based on two specific assumptions about other orders for Verolme, for Cork, which I will mention later; if those assumptions are not fulfilled my whole argument falls but at this stage I am anticipating those assumptions—it is desirable that Irish Shipping should have the ships at the lowest possible cost so that they will have the highest possible competitiveness and require the smallest possible amount of public subvention and earn the largest amount of money for the State. That is desirable from their point of view.
Let us turn to the Irish people generally. We have many calls on the available State moneys for rescue in the first place and, secondly, for industrial promotion into jobs that are stable and that will grow in the future. If we divert £2 million or £4 million or any other amount into a place we do not have to put it, then we cannot put it somewhere else. For example, if we divert £4 million at £4,000 a job it means that there are 1,000 industrial jobs we do not get. That is a harsh choice but it is the choice that faces people who have to make decisions about resource allocation.
I have discussed the three interests, all of which are relevant. The question that faces people who must make rational economic decisions is how to reconcile those different interests to the maximum advantage. How do you guarantee you do not build false economics into a shipyard or a shipping line so that they will be a continuous drain in the future? We need to reconcile interests and to optimise advantage. Those two things are easy to say but they are damn hard to do.
Firstly, I take it we would have consensus that bulk carriers are necessary, that we should allow the Irish Shipping fleet to grow beyond the needs or the requirements of strategic considerations into something greater than our national needs, ploughing the oceans of the world, earning revenue, gaining skills and giving employment to Irish people. I take it we would have consensus that if we can get very good value, as we can, without any drain on Irish capital resources and without damaging Verolme, that we should do it. I take it we would have consensus that we should do it quickly so that we get Irish seamen under Irish skippers employed on these ships earning money. I take it we are agreed that the better the value the ships are, the more chance they have of earning money and, therefore, freeing revenue for other things. If we can get very cheap ships, which we can, without any call on the State's resources, which can be employing people and making profit very quickly, then if other considerations are met we should do it.
What are the other considerations? They are that the future of Verolme is not thereby damaged. What is in those two bulk carriers? There is about one year's work. Let us say this about bulk carriers; they are very simple ships. They are floating tin boxes, usually with bought-in engines, bought-in navigational equipment, radios and so on. With regard to the parts that push the ship around, communications and so on, there is not much labour by the shipyard involved here because all that material is bought-in. There is welding and painting and, of course, the more capitalised one is for that the more cheaply it can be done. If the iron and steel manufacturers are on an immense scale—as are the Japanese, with huge economies of scale—one can get the raw material cheaply and process it very cheaply. Incidentally, it is an illusion to think the Japanese yards are cheap labour yards. That may have been so in the past but it is not the case now; they are trading on very high productivity and very high capital.
There is about a year's work in the bulk carriers. There is little more than a year's work in the car ferry. The bulk carriers are certain to be loss-making. The car ferry is highly specialised with a great deal of carpentry, plumbing and central heating, and this is where the Japanese advantage of high productivity is minimised. For a car ferry Cork is as good as anyone else but for bulk carriers, great tanks made like sardine boxes, it is not as good as anywhere else. With the facilities they have they must choose between the bulk carriers and the car ferry. The question for them is, which?
Nobody is talking about the fishery protection vessel. Certainly we want one and we can build it in Cork without any question because it is strategic to do so. I agree that after we have one we should have others, not just for fishing, but, hopefully, it will be for protecting the drilling platforms and rigs on our Continental Shelf. However, the question boils down to the following: would we rather restrict these workers, not to have work for the electricians putting lighting into the cabins, not to have work for the plumbers installing sanitary equipment, not to have work for the carpenters? Do we just want work for the welders, making a damn great tin box, or are we willing to have a diversified shipyard with high skills, without employment and not loss making? That is the choice.
