Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 30 Nov 1983

Vol. 346 No. 4

Export Promotion (Amendment) Bill, 1983: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".

Mr. R. Burke

When moving the adjournment of the debate yesterday evening I was making the point that this Bill gives the House the opportunity to emphasise to the Government the importance of expanding our export effort in order to tackle our national unemployment problem. It is not being too dramatic to say that the message must go to the Government and to all manufacturers that it is a question of export or die for most companies. Because of our small but very important domestic market and the recession, it is vital that companies look to foreign markets in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world and that they use the good offices of CTT to provide markets for their products not just in Ireland but worldwide.

This is an opportunity for this House to strengthen the hand of the Minister in his negotiations at Government level at the time the Estimates are being prepared. It is an opportunity for the House to help the Minister to secure from the Government funds for our export effort. Our unemployment problem must be tackled by our manufactures with the help of CTT. CTT schemes have not been operating properly since last May because they ran out of funds. We want to see the Minister getting extra funds next year to enable CTT to operate properly, getting extra money not only for existing schemes but for new ones.

It is important that CTT should look at their role and title. Instead of being known as the Irish Export Board they should broaden their scope and become an Irish trade board in amalgamation with the Irish Goods Council, using the expertise of both organisations for the benefit of Irish industry in the marketplace at home and abroad. Perhaps the Minister would comment on the importance of our agricultural exports effort. In my view there should be greater liaison between our export efforts in the industrial and agricultural sectors.

The scope for improvement in our exports to Great Britain was dealt with in the management report. It is vital to our export effort that the Government and the Department should concentrate on the recommendations of that report.

The Minister stated:

The Bill also includes a provision regarding remuneration, allowances and terms and conditions of employees of Córas Tráchtála. This is to update existing provisions in the Export Promotion Act relating to these matters and in order, at the behest of the Minister for the Public Service, to bring them into line with standard provisions being inserted, as the opportunity arises, in the legislation governing all other State-sponsored bodies.

I was a member of a Government which included similar provisions in similar types of legislation but I wonder whether we are going too far and damaging the whole principle behind the original setting up of semi-State bodies. They were established to fill a gap in our economy and they were to be engines for growth responsible to the Government, operating on the broad principles laid down by the Government but independent of the normal controls of the Civil Service. They were to provide services and in some cases to undertake commercial operations where there was a void in the existing structures.

The trend in recent years has been for the control of the semi-State sector to pass back to the Department of Finance and the Department of the Public Service, thus negativing the basic principle underlying the establishment of the semi-State bodies. It must be more than an coincidence that since the Department of Finance and the Department of the Public Service have succeeded in establishing more Government control over the operations of the semi-State bodies the performance of many of those organisations has left a lot to be desired. The dead hand of the Department of the Public Service is being laid on their operations. That was never intended and the whole idea was to get away from such controls. I am not saying that the semi-State bodies should be totally without control but there should be broad policy guidelines laid down by the Government within which the boards should control and the management should operate, leaving room for initiative.

We should be able to attract to the semi-State sector the very best people in the country. Such people will not be attracted if we impose on semi-State organisations the salary structure of the State sector under the control of the Department of the Public Service. This makes it impossible for organisations such as CTT to attract and retain the services of the people they need. Everybody in this House and in business generally knows the damage caused by the Devlin Reports in discouraging the people who have most to offer to the semi-State sector. Many of these people are refusing to apply for positions because of the ludicrous salary levels. There is no incentive for them. Because of these controls, many good people are leaving the semi-State sector, even at this time of recession, and they represent a major loss to our national effort.

Instead of including a section such as this, we should be looking in a different direction and considering the idea of giving chief executives of semi-State organisations five-year contracts which would be subject to renewal by their boards. During those five years they should be given a fairly free hand and paid salaries commensurate with their ability. There should be bonus schemes and the normal incentives which are available in the private sector. Instead of giving this kind of encouragement we are moving backwards towards the kind of situation from which our predecessors broke free. We are moving back towards direct State control of the operations of semi-State bodies. I got the impression from the wording of the Minister's speech that he was not in favour of this and I would welcome his views.

The semi-State sector has much to offer the economy but it needs encouragement. Those involved need incentives and not the dead hand of the Department of Finance and the Department of the Public Service. From a national point of view we also need a greater export effort than the one being made at the moment. I appeal to the Government to provide the funds in 1984 to allow our exporters and industrialists to take advantage of the services and expertise of Córas Tráchtála.

Mr. Kelly

I want to make two points arising out of this Bill. The first bears on a matter which I raised by way of Dáil Question a couple of weeks ago, namely, the scheme which goes back a couple of years for the subsidisation of the recruitment and initial employment of marketing executives permanently, or mainly, based abroad.

Irish industry which depends so heavily on exports is at the wrong end of the list in the European league, having the smallest number of permanently foreign based marketing executives. In other words, the number of Irish firms who sell their products through a sales operation run by a man, or more than one man, permanently or mainly based outside the country is the smallest per any standard you like to take in the entire EEC area. An incredibly tiny number of Irish firms, export dependent though most of them are, keep permanently based anywhere outside the country somebody whose only or main occupation it is to market their goods.

This lack has been pointed out frequently by the Confederation of Irish Industry and others. It was recognised by Córas Tráchtála. About two years ago, before I was in the Department of Trade, an ad hoc arrangement was made under some tripartite arrangement in the last days of the Fianna Fáil Government which went out of office in 1981, whereby some support was provided for the recruitment of marketing executives. I do not mean to draw any sort of invidious comparison; I recognise that the scheme started before we arrived. It was put on a somewhat sounder footing in my time. It was not I personally who made that possible — it was an initiative which came from Deputy Bruton as Minister for Finance — but I was very glad to take it up and make the most of it.

A lump sum of £1 million was provided for this specific object, over and above the grant-in-aid which Córas Tráchtála received. That was at a time when, as you, Sir, will remember, because we both had the honour of taking part in those back-breaking estimate-cutting exercises, economies of the most brutal kind were being made all around, and when the Government room resembled a field operating-theatre in some primitive war, with severed limbs, abandoned schemes, and so on, lying around in large heaps. Nonetheless the Minister for Finance of the day saw the importance — and I was glad to agree with him — of trying to support the marketing effort by this means. At a very difficult time for him and the Government, he made available £1 million which we were able to use in the Department of Trade in order to pay 50 per cent of the cost for the first year of keeping stationed abroad marketing executives for Irish firms which previously had no such person.

That scheme was taken up eagerly by Irish industry. Córas Tráchtála, who handled the scheme for us, had a large number of applications. Something like 50 marketing executives were subsidised in their employment for the first year in firms who formerly employed no such person. That has been a great success. Córas Tráchtála did a survey after the first year, and reported that almost all the firms who had been assisted in the recruitment and employment of a marketing executive in the first year had kept that man on in the second year out of their own resources. The State element of support dropped away like a spent booster rocket.

There is a much greater potential for the expansion of a scheme like that which we were not able to satisfy with £1 million. Unfortunately the budget for this year — needless to say, I am perfectly well aware of the difficulties the Minister for Finance has — did not provide £1 million, but I think only half of that sum. It was not a separate allocation but merely a sort of earmarked or tagged portion of the general grant-in-aid. Effectively the impetus which that scheme had developed has slackened in this year, I am afraid, although there is absolute unanimity that the scheme is extremely productive. For a very small investment the State can earn a very large return both for itself and the economy generally. It was computed that each of these marketing executives on average was worth about £350,000 worth of business to the firm under whose flag they were sailing.

All Ministers are under ferocious pressures from every quarter and everybody is anxious to make a special case for his own pet scheme, but this is a case in which a strong plea should be made to the Minister. I hope it will reach him, and that he will make sure that whatever else comes or goes in the Córas Tráchtála grant-in-aid next year — obviously it will be greater in money terms than it was this year — the integrity of this scheme, the advance of the scheme and the allocation of more money to it, will be decided before anything else is decided.

I do not presume to lay down a sequence of priorities for Córas Tráchtála; they know their own business best. They appear to think very well of this scheme, as do the Confederation of Irish Industry. To me it makes sense. I remember very well the enthusiasm and the gratitude of the industries who availed of the scheme at the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982 when we were getting it going. It would be a great pity if the potential of a scheme like this were to be unsatisfied, and the State did not do what it could to support it and extend it with a relatively small amount of money.

The second point I should like to make is not quite so detailed. I should like to be allowed to speak in general terms about the exporting process in terms, no more general than those which Deputy Burke and other Deputies were allowed to use in this debate so far.

The problem is that, notwithstanding the very rapid growth in exports and the marvellous performance which the export sector has been turning in in recent years, against what might have been thought to be every possible kind of tide, we are not really export-minded. We are not really product-minded. We have not got a mercantile sense. It is not part of our racial makeup to have the anxiety and the drive to put something together, some kind of product or service, and go out and sell it.

Some nationalities are terribly good at that. The Greeks are good at it. All the Semitic people are good at it. Many people outside those categories are good at it as well. We are not good at it. Less of this is heard these days, but when I was a child we tended to pat ourselves on the back for our "spiritual empire" and our "rejection of materialism". Even as a child, I was repelled by what seemed to me the falseness of the idea that is showed any spiritual quality to be backward and poverty-stricken, hereditarily so, as it seemed at one time. Even as a child I could not share that point of view any more than I share the point of view that the Protestant ethic is one which particularly encourages or is favourable to material advancement or the greater prosperity of people in a material sense.

Our problem is partly the product of a very long period of backwardness and poverty wished or forced upon us from outside. It is partly also the product of the geographical and subsequent cultural isolation of which we could not but be the victims, however history had turned out. If one compares us with the people next door one finds that the factors which make the difference between British and Irish history in material prosperity have nothing to do with what happened in the Ice Age, as though injustices began even then with a gigantic piece of ice scraping off all our coal and leaving it down in England—that is the kind of stuff we were taught as children. I do not say that it was thought of as a form of injustice, but it was portrayed as one of these pieces of misfortune with which we had to contend or, perhaps, even resignedly accept. One of the reasons for the British doing well materially over the centuries and continuing to do so, even though with hiccups, is that they were geographically and ethnically a little luckier than we. They had a series of invasions. There is nothing racially pure about the British and any people who boast of racial purity would be a very backward people who, metaphorically speaking, still have bones through their noses.

The people in the neighbouring island endured wave after wave of invasion and were able to absorb them. I do not know who the proto-inhabitants of the country next door were, but the island was settled by Celtic peoples around the time that our island was settled by Celtic peoples. Thereafter, they had invaders who stopped short at their shores and came no further. They had Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans——

An Ceann Comhairle

The chair admits that the Deputy did put the Chair on notice. The Chair would be very interested in listening to a historic discussion which would be in order by way of passing reference, but not in an in-depth discussion on the Ice Age.

Mr. Kelly

I propose passing from that subject. I am glad to accept the Chair's admonition.

Mr. R. Burke

The Deputy is making the point of the importance of the arrival of the De Burgos on our shores.

Mr. Kelly

I want to make the point that if the British have been fortunate over the centuries in having been able to absorb large influxes of mixed people, we have had bad luck in that respect. We have not been able to absorb our invasions, not assimilated anybody properly— because of reasons on which I know the Chair would not allow me to lecture the House—since about the year 1600. We have not had the same happy contact with the outside world—and heaven knows the English, even with all those advantages, are isolated and insular enough in their own minds. We, however, are far more isolated and insular and tend, for reasons which are again historically explicable, to take our standards from the British and look no further afield. Even here we have been the victims of misfortune, although it is perhaps not seen as that. An example is the foundation of Maynooth College. I hope that I shall not be misunderstood or misrepresented, but I am so frequently misrepresented that I have almost despaired of anyone even wishing to report accurately on a point like this. The foundation of Maynooth College was in one sense a misfortune, because it deprived the Irish of a leadership in contact with the outside world.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair knows that the Constitution would not permit us to apply funds being voted under this Bill towards Maynooth College. Therefore, I do not think that is relevant.

Mr. Kelly

It meant that in the formative period of modern Irish history—in the lifetimes of our parents and grand-parents—the natural leaders of the people, parish by parish, were people who had been trained in a college funded by the English Government for the very purpose of orienting them towards English standards and keeping their eyes off the Continent, albeit only Salamanca, Rome, Louvain and whatever other centres they congregated in. But there, at least, they were able to pick up at least a whiff from behind the seminary walls of what the outside world was like. Bad luck deprived us even of that.

The whole question of trying to export some product to the outside world presupposes a knowledge of the tastes and standards of the outside world and the kind of products it wants and needs. It was and is futile to suppose that just because we produce something which is unique in its own way, like báinín tweed, the rest of the world will beat a path to our doors and buy and wear it. They will not. The basis of the disadvantage which I am trying to outline is that we suffer from this isolation which others have also suffered from but managed to overcome for commercial reasons.

I shall mention just three peoples in the modern world, two of them industrially very potent forces, the other not so much so, who also suffered from being a peripheral people culturally and economically. The Russians in the time of Hugh O'Neill and for 100 years after that were an incredibily backward people, industrially and in every other way. Peter the Great recognised that. He had enough gumption, basic literacy, intelligence and training to see that his country would never get anywhere industrially——

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy please keep to Córas Tráchtála Teoranta?

Mr. Kelly

It is because we do not speak out on occasions like these and do not try to examine the underlying substrata of our bad luck and bad performance that we do not really set about improving matters. The Czar of Russia went to western Europe and worked as a shipwright in the Netherlands and learned something about western technology. When he got to western Europe he was more ignorant that the humblest of Dutch citizens. He humbly recognised that fact, and threw open his country to western technology, inviting and encouraging the immigration of German and Scottish engineers. He did not worry about racial purity, or whether these immigrants were going to be able to speak the language, or anything of that nature. He threw down the walls which geography had placed around his country and, although we still think of Russia as backward and although the dreadful political system there forces upon them a society in which industry is inefficient and does not deliver to the consumers what they want, even as long ago as the outbreak of the First World War the Russian industrial economy was number six in the world league. That was no mean place in 1910 or 1914. They ranked only behind the United States, Britain, Germany and probably France and Italy. They were miles ahead of other countries which might have been thought of as more advanced industrially. That was done by a conscious policy of trying to overcome the effects of isolation.

The Japanese are a much more familiar example. They deliberately decided in the middle of the last century that they could not go on living in a medieval feudal society, and went about a process of modernisation which perhaps many now romantically regret. They deliberately copied western modes, producing initially very shoddy copies of western products. I remember as a child, and the Chair will too, that Japanese was a byword for something shoddy—a toy which would smash the first time you tried to play with it. All Japanese articles were then cheap and poor, but they were on their way. Perhaps there are Japanese who now wish that they had not come so far so fast, for reasons of environment, cultural alienation and so forth. Industrially, they have come a huge distance, by doing something which did not come naturally, which necessitated departing from age old modes of thought, dress and production, in giving the world what the world will buy.

The Turks are the third example. They are not a great industrial power, but who can tell if they are not on the way to being one? Half of the factories in western Germany are half-manned and staffed by Turks. The Turks were under the disadvantages, as their great leader, Ataturk, saw it, of being culturally and economically peripheral to Europe. He made them scrap the Arabic writing which they used for their language, he made them scrap their veils and their fezes, making them dress like western Europeans. That was, I suppose, a brutal thing to do to people.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair recognises the link, but it is too remote and too devious.

Mr. Kelly

The point that I am trying to make is that we suffer in a diminished degree, or it is not perceived as being anything but a diminished degree, because of a common language. We suffer from a comparable cultural and economic peripherality, if there is such a word, with that suffered by Russia and Japan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is disguised from us because we wear collars and ties — at least people of my generation do —and because we use the English language. But in our minds there is peripherality. Most of us do not have a clue about the standards applied and which come naturally to products, time-keeping, standards of work and methods of management in a country as near to us as Belgium or Holland. We are as cut off from the standards of Belgium and Holland as Peter the Great was from the standards of England in the time of Queen Anne. We scarcely know more about it than that.

We have a dim idea that the continentals work very hard. we can see for ourselves on our rare visits there that the traffic rush in the morning starts about an hour earlier than it does in Dublin. We can see all that in a general sort of way, but we have not really got through our heads what it is the foreigners are about, what it is the people further away from us than the British — we have a dim notion of what the English are about and their standards nowadays are not very great — are all about. We think that if we can achieve 70 per cent or 80 per cent of the British scale we are doing very well. We are not doing well enough.

I have said this in an educational debate, and I am saying this now in the notional presence of the Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism, who is not present at the moment. It would not be beneath the Minister or beneath his Department to see if they can, between themselves and the Department of Education, contrive some pattern in Irish education which will oblige the coming generations to be more conscious of the outside world, to be able to deal with them linguistically and to be at home in it in a way in which Irish people are not now. The reason I feel I can speak on this with a little authority — I do not say I have much authority — is because I spent about eight years of my life abroad, about five years in England and three or four in Germany, and I believe I know a fair bit about the standards of both countries. It is on the basis of that that I say that we are trying to export Irish industrial products when our knowledge of, acquaintance with, feeling for and capacity to be at home in the outside world is so limited. I say that naturally with regret, and with very great gratitude to the university whose scholarship allowed me to spend a good and formative part of my youth on the Continent.

I believe the advantage a young person has from that, whether he goes on a scholarship or is forced to do so by the kind of things that compel him, emigration or anything like that, is enormous. The advantage for the country is enormous also. The advantage which would be derived here by a deliberate programme run by this Department, with or without the Department of Education, to improve linguistic capacity among Irish people, to direct language teaching and training among our people with the specific purpose of providing a pool from which people can sell and push Irish products abroad would be enormous.

I have said in this House before and I want to repeat this briefly now, that I remember when I was Minister in this Department receiving a deputation of Japanese businessmen from a body called Keidanren. It is a sort of national chamber of commerce; as far as I could grasp, that is what it was about. These 20 gentlemen came to the Department and we sat about and talked about Irish and Japanese trade. My Department, as always, had briefed me very well and I naturally raised the question of difficulties Irish exporters experienced in trying to penetrate the Japanese market. The Japanese spokesman said, with the inscrutable politeness for which the people of the East are famous, "Of course, just to take one simple instance, how many of your exporting businessmen are able to speak Japanese? I know it is a very difficult language, but it is just as difficult for us to learn English. We do it because we have to do it".

One of the things which is holding us back is that we have a very low absurdity threshold, we are inclined to laugh very easily at something which may be put in an amusing way but is no joke at all. I am not suggesting that there should be any sort of compulsory training in Japanese. I am not so absurd as to suggest that, but I suggest that there should be some thought given officially to enable us to turn out year after year a number — I do not say thousands — of commercially oriented young people who are able to speak that language. What is so ridiculous about it? Where is the absurdity of it? The same goes for Arabic and Russian and the same goes for the other languages of the Far East, Chinese, Malay and other languages which are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. If we are sitting at the fireside with a cap over our ear laughing toothlessly at a suggestion like that, we are absolutely doomed industrially, and no amount of talk about State job creation, or the super-levy will make any difference to that. If we think it is beneath us or beyond us to do things which we have never attempted to do before and to think in terms of force — I am speaking in the sense of force as one forces a plant and I do not mean forcing in relation to an individual's free choice — unless we can force-grow, capacities and skills of that kind we will not really make an impact, let alone do what everybody here wants to do, try to make some permanent dent in the unemployment rate.

When we look at the returns for the Department of Education we find that they show that far more children take French in the leaving certificate than take German. I believe the ratio is six or seven to one. That ratio shows the opposite of the relative importance of these two foreign economies to us. The German one is the more important to us. We have had far more industrial investment from Germany and we sell the Germans more of our goods. I do not complain about it, in fact I respect it, but we have the classical tradition of academic freedom. People can learn what they like, the human personality must be allowed to unfold in a way which is most suited to itself and that implies allowing people to take whatever subjects they feel fitted to take in school. But that is not the reason why German is behind French here. It is because of a tradition going back to the same tradition which produced French-speaking governesses in the last century. It was the polite language in the eighteen thirties, forties and fifties when secondary schools were getting going here. It was the language of diplomacy, fashion, politics and so on. Before anybody thought in terms of marketing things abroad it was the natural language to teach the children of people who were able to afford to send them to the Sisters of Mercy or the Holy Ghost Fathers here. It is no longer the natural choice except, perhaps for literary reasons, but most certainly not for economic reasons. When we find something like that happening we should be able to take that problem by the scruff of the neck and do something about it. The same goes for the non-existence of language teaching at secondary level in virtually any language outside the four or five leading European ones. Even as between the European ones there are other discrepancies I could go into.

That attitude is perfectly appropriate to an inconsiderable province of a larger economy in the central parts of which the main decisions were made about prosperity; but it is quite out of place in a country which depends for its economic life on making goods and providing services which the rest of the world want and will buy. We must think in terms of ensuring a certain number of our young people going abroad as much as possible, even for holiday jobs to which they have to hitchhike. I do not mind at what level they go, but the more we can make sure they get acquainted with the standards of work, production, punctuality, management and work practices on the Continent and elsewhere, and the more they familiarise themselves, perhaps for economic reasons, with foreign languages, particularly those that are significant to us in the modern world, the quicker we are going to make headway in this export area.

A system of education, and a general mental outlook such as I have described, is the biggest single handicap CTT have. It is like a millstone around their necks. They are trying to sell the products of a people who are not educationally, racially or spiritually disposed to understand what the big outside world is all about and to want to do business with it with their heads up, on equal terms, eye-ball to eye-ball, speaking the other man's language, going into the other man's office and talking to him across a desk in his language.

Córas Tráchtála have to deal with businessmen 95 per cent of whom are not able to do that. If they go as far as Cologne or Frankfurt they are at the mercy of whatever grasp of the English language their German business partner there has. That is a hopeless handicap. An economy which depends on exports is handicapping itself out of the race unless it recognises that.

Although it was a depressing thing to read of the Irish potato producers who went to the food fair in Cologne last month and left dejected and downcast, it was something to know that, even at this late stage, they had got to grips with what people in that gigantic and rich market will buy and are being offered by others. The potato growers returned home from that fair dejected, and said that Irish vegetable growers "had not even arrived at the fair" let alone be in a good position to sell a beast. That recognition is worth tons of Ministerial scripts.

They paid their fare out of their own pockets, but it was worth the money to travel there to see what the rest of the world is able to produce and take for granted in terms of standards, cleanliness, grading, presentation and the other things that are important in the food business. I was sorry that those grown men had been permitted by the State to reach adulthood, many of them maturity, without knowing the standards that exist abroad or the standards that are expected in the markets we are trying to reach. That is a sad reflection on us all. The Minister, present in spirit in the Chamber in the friendly but substitute embodiment of Deputies O'Brien and Barrett, would be doing the country a great service if he put his mind, if necessary in conjuction with the Minister for Education, to answering the question, how can we make sure that Irish school-leavers, instead of pitifully queueing up by the tens of thousands for clerkships or junior jobs in the public service, get into a frame of mind that will drive them out to sell something which perhaps nobody else has thought of making. That is what we need for our economy. The talk about the State investing huge sums of money in this and that can be left until later.

We must provide first the disposition, mental capacity and educational ability to do this, and then we can talk about where the funds should be put. Some weeks ago Deputy Mac Giolla spoke about Irish products, about the failure of but agree with him. He referred to our pitiful range of cheese products compared to what can be seen in countries where cheese is popular. The fault for all this lies in the fact that Irish people do not know what other people take for granted, want and will buy. Deputy Mac Giolla's prescription is different from mine. He feels the State has not put enough money into this; but the State could pour hundreds of millions into this, and if the money is controlled by people whose own standards are no more instructed than the standards of those who have been in the food business up to now, the money will be wasted. While Deputy Mac Giolla's recognition of the ills is accurate, I would not support his cure, which is a long way down the road and at present would not represent a cure at all.

I do not have any fault to find with the Bill and I should like to thank CTT for the happy months — I wish I could say years — I spent in partnership with them. I wish CTT every success in the future.

Mr. Connolly

I am glad of the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Our marketing arrangements, particularly for horticultural produce, are not successful. The arrangements have been haphazard and our farming organisations must accept some blame for this. Some citizens hold the view that the State should provide money for everything but I do not agree with that. The State could pour millions of pounds into promotion work but if the produce is not up to standard, that would represent a bad investment. Our embassies abroad could do a little more to promote Irish goods. I do not wish to criticise all embassies but some companies have informed me that they did not get much co-operation from some embassies. Many embassies are very helpful and in any dealings I have had with them I found them very co-operative but some exporters feel some could be more helpful in regard to contracts and so on. Export markets are tough today and there is no charity to be had on them. Lest anybody might think that we can export anything to such markets I should remind them that they are wrong, that we are in for a rude awakening in that respect.

We have not handled our food products very well on such markets to date. It is indeed regrettable that vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and so on have to be imported when we have an enormous tract of land on which these can be grown. The grading of our horticultural products leaves a lot to be desired. I have seen instances of producers putting the larger potatoes on the top and the smaller ones on the bottom. I should remind them that they will not get away with such practices; that is not on. If they get away with it once they will not a second time. Whether it be on the home or foreign markets I warn people that they will not get away with that kind of thing. We should implement proper grading practices. What we produce we should do well, exporting to foreign markets attractively prepared and packaged products making them attractive in turn to foreign purchasers. It should be remembered that in many foreign countries their marketing is done in a very elaborate way. I contend that many of our products are much better than theirs but that the way they prepare them, or perhaps "gloss them up" is the term to use, is superior and renders them more attractive to prospective purchasers.

Córas Tráchtála Teo. are doing a very good job but they need the back-up of our embassies. Indeed, many of our companies here are seeking markets beyond Europe. In my constituency there are steel companies with markets in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and doing very good work there. As other speakers have said, many of these companies are in need of help because of our lack of proficiency in their languages and that is precisely where we need the back-up and help of our embassies in conjunction with CTT. I am led to believe that many other countries' embassies abroad have their contact men at airports so that when their businessmen arrive — perhaps businessmen employing 200 or 300 people — they know they are arriving, they know the terrain intimately, they know what that company needs, what they hope to erect or whatever; they know what it is all about. We should be doing likewise but, in many cases, we are not. I do not want to be critical but many of our embassies take the view that theirs is merely a PRO exercise on our behalf to ensure that everything is in order. It must be clearly emphasised that our embassies, in conjunction with CTT will have to play a larger role in export promotion in the future. I am thinking here particularly of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and others where it is difficult to arrange and establish contracts. Here I must congratulate some companies in my constituency who have arranged millions of pounds worth of contracts but they must receive the necessary back-up and aid. If it has not already been brought to the notice of our embassies that they must play a more important role in the future helping us out in this important exercise it should be because undoubtedly our exports will play a most important part in our economy in the future. Products such as beef and agricultural products generally have been the mainstay of our economy for many years.

Our work practices must be the subject of some criticism because our behaviour in the worker-management relations field has not been the best of late. When we win contracts in any of these foreign countries we must be able to supply goods, erect buildings or whatever by the prescribed deadline and if we are unable to do so when it comes to a renewal of a contract there will be a question mark over such companies and they will not win a second contract. Such companies may lay the blame on whoever they like but it must be remembered that it is a combined effort, workers and management alike, everybody is involved, including the trade unions. There will have to be more cohesion amongst these groups with regard to such foreign contracts ensuring that we are able to fulfil them on target, that we are able to meet the deadline laid down and that, above all, we do and are seen to do a good job. If there happens to be a dispute taking place at home or elsewhere and we are unable to fulfil such contracts, then I warn the House there will not be a repetition of such contracts because it will be seen that we let them down, that we did not complete the job, which will operate as a major disadvantage to us. Our competitors in the sale of produce and contracts understand all this. Therefore, it must be brought home to all of us what we must do, because if we do not wake up it will be too late.

I wish to thank the CTT officials for their help to me over the years and I should like to extend qualified thanks to our embassies. However, I would be slightly critical of some of our embassy staffs. Instead of sitting in their offices in the various countries to which they are assigned, they should be at the airports to meet our company representatives to whom they should give every help possible. Many of our embassy staffs have been assigned to particular countries for some years and they should be there to meet company directors and sales people to render any necessary help so that we can secure contracts of benefit to our country.

Mr. Skelly

I welcome the Bill, which will increase the total amount of money made available to the board from £90 million to £160 million. The figures in the Minister's speech indicate the need for a support programme, considering that the total value of our exports in 1982 reached £5,688 million and that we expect further increases of from 18 per cent to 20 per cent this year.

CTT are not by any means the worst of our semi-State bodies. They have the confidence of our people, particularly the business community. It is important to note that the management of their resources can be controlled readily, because we can see details of their expenditure on promotional and advertising. Some of our State bodies have not got that kind of control.

I should like to point to some recent criticism of alleged political or Government interference in the State bodies. This criticism has received a considerable amount of publicity. Many of the semi-State bodies have complained about such interference. In the magazine Irish Business for October last an interview with the chief executive of CTT appeared. It referred to “the shadow of Government control”. The article stated that behind the £1 million contract, the international trading fairs, the trade missions, and “the jet jumping freedom associated with an export board there is a growing shadow falling over CTT”. The article referred to faceless civil servants who have been gaining steadier footholds in the working of the export board. It referred to the “campaign of sinister control” which was threatening to swallow CTT autonomy and to exchange it for sub-sector status within central Government.

This worry which semi-State bodies and the public might have from interference by politicians should be examined, for obvious reasons. I am not criticising for the sake of criticism but to clear the air so that attention will be paid to the concern expressed by those people in high positions in these bodies. They are people who have responsibility to perform to the satisfaction of the taxpayers whose money they are entrusted with.

In the article I have been referring to the CTT chief executive said he could name five or six other executives who would back up what he was saying. He said that the autonomy given to CTT when it was founded was real in the seventies, "but it has been gradually eroded by successive administrations". That is a very serious accusation. Recently, because I dared to question whether one of our semi-State bodies was being monitored sufficiently closely, I was vilified, in the past few weeks. It is coming to the stage when politicians should not dare to interfere, that is if politicians want to interfere. It is fairly evident from the Minister's speech that politicians have no intention of doing that. I was encouraged when I read in the article—this was also stated in the Sunday Independent of 2 October — the words “successive administrations” in the previous five years.

This always seems to happen when Labour-Fine Gael come into power: suddenly everybody says "Hands off, we do not want political interference". Because the two articles referred to interference over the years by successive administrations, and to civil servants, they may not have been referring to political interference but one must ask questions in this respect. I am sure the Coalition do not want to interfere, indeed they should not interfere, in the running of these bodies, and therefore the chief executives of these bodies should be very careful that they do not interfere in the political process. Apparently they do not take that into account and they should be reminded of it: they should stop telling us not to interfere. We were elected to do a certain job.

The Sunday Independent article stated that the politicians are elected to make the policy decisions, and the boards are appointed to implement the policy. Is it wrong to question £1,600 million of borrowing by semi-State bodies? Is there anything wrong in politicians asking if that expenditure is warranted? Is there anything wrong with examining a body that is granted £230 million in one year, asking if the money is being spent wisely and if the organisation is efficient? We were elected to be watchdogs over these organisations and I do not make any apology for asking these questions. I am putting the organisations on notice that I intend to ask more in-depth questions in the future. I do not believe in interfering with the running of these bodies but I am concerned about their performance, whether they are using their best efforts in the most efficient manner and whether the huge amount of moneys involved is being properly spent. We have had examples in this House during the last few weeks of tremendous stress, argument and discussion over trying to raise maybe as little as £1 million to try to keep an industry going which employs 200 people. If we are expending billions of pounds and handing out budgets of hundreds of millions of pounds to these bodies, we have the right to monitor them. We do not want to look over their shoulder, but we have the right to check that they are doing their job properly.

The chief executive in CTT complained that accountability for that organisation has increased considerably because they are reporting on their activities almost monthly to the Department of Trade, Commerce and Tourism. He quoted from the Act that CTT was set up "to promote, assist and develop exports in any manner the board thinks fit". Are chief executives of bodies telling us that they can do what they like with the money that is granted to them? Are they saying that we have no right to check and approve of what they do? Indeed, we do not do that very carefully in the case of Estimates which pass through this House. It is about time politicians stopped nodding through staggering amounts of £80 million and £120 million and people saying they need £60 million or £70 million for a particular venture. Aer Lingus lost £20 million on the North Atlantic route; yet they expect to be subsidised further and nobody asks what is wrong. Up to now the Estimates debate has been an irresponsible practice and the Estimates must be examined in greater detail. I believe in free enterprise, mixed economy, laissez faire and getting on with the job, but in every phase of business people have responsibilities. Managing directors have the responsibility for running their companies and if those companies do not perform properly they go out of business. These bodies should be examined in the same businesslike manner.

I should like to refer to the accessibility of business here to the CTT enterprise. In regard to other bodies, I have mentioned how difficult it is for indigenous businesses. They have tended in the past to try to attract large foreign companies to the virtual exclusion of business people here, small businesses in particular. CTT are not accessible to small businesses or to people in businesses who are not aware of the export opportunities or indeed could not afford to export. It is very easy to see why that is so. There would be very costly travelling expenses involved in going abroad in search of markets. Usually this is done on behalf of the business but I believe that the best people to sell are the people who are in the business and they should be given more opportunities to do that.

If this five-and-a-half billion pounds of exports is attributable to the success of CTT then they should be very strongly supported. It is assumed, because of rising exports, that a large amount of the credit is due to CTT. The Minister referred to CTT's ability to adjust and adapt their approach to the changing needs of exporters and to the requirements of the trading environment in which exporters operate and that that has characterised the board's approach over the years. I should like to emphasise that any semi-State body should not be afraid of scrutiny and I do not mean interference. The Minister said that the grant-in-aid provision to be made in each financial year will continue to be submitted to careful analysis and scrutiny before being included in the annual vote for his Department. I am glad he said that because I do not think he is too sensitive to hear what I have to say about it. Anybody who has witnessed the Minister's handling of his portfolio believes that that will be done and that we will get value from his Department in the expenditure of moneys.

In the last year, we have had about 2,400 companies exporting from this country, but I believe that that pool must be enlarged. Many people do not know that they have exportable products and they need help in identifying markets from a body such as CTT to introduce them to these markets and to help to get established because, for every job that is created by importing, three jobs can be created by exporting. This is an area to which CTT should give special attention. I do not think there is any substitute for visits to foreign markets by the personnel of the companies themselves. Nobody knows better how to sell a product than the person who is involved in the business. There are criticisms levelled at civil servants, who are specialists in their own jobs, by the chief executive of CTT, but CTT are using employees to do the selling and open up the markets for businessmen. The same analogy can be adopted. Their criticism of civil servants can equally be made of their employees when they do not allow or do not encourage people to make these trips themselves in the search for business. I would urge a review of the existing forms of assistance in the context of establishing the needs of Irish business. This body should have a special section whose task would be to encourage Irish businesses to export as opposed to the situation where perhaps 100 per cent of the staff concentrate on markets abroad. Just as the IDA seem to have ignored the home market, CTT appear to ignore it also.

Apart from the criticism in this article by the chief executive, there are some constructive suggestions that should be listened to. He refers to the understaffing of CTT, to the lack of international marketing expertise in Irish firms and to protectionism. He refers also to the introduction of an employment support scheme whereby 93 firms were approved in terms of going abroad and getting the best personnel available. He refers also to the attraction of the 10 per cent tax concession in terms of foreign manufacturers operating here and he expresses concern at the clawbacks by other means. These other means are taxation and the high cost of living. The result of this is that Irish businesses as well as foreign businesses operating here are suffering badly. On the one hand we are trying to create jobs while on the other hand we are taxing businesses to such an extent as to force them to close down. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot create new jobs if we continue to close down companies. In terms of the restraints on our economy now, that is a factor that cannot be ignored. It has been brought to the attention of the Government by businesses and by individuals who are crying out for help, but they are being told that nothing can be done to help them. We cannot go on squeezing the private sector to such an extent that it is not worthwhile even thinking about going into business. One would want to be almost mad to consider starting a business in this country in the present situation. Apart from being hounded in respect of taxation, a businessman is also given the unsolicited task of tax gatherer on behalf of the Government. These problems must be faced up to because they are damaging our economy.

Well-deserved credit is due to CTT for the job they have done, but let us not assume that all is well. We must be prepared to re-examine their role. We should increase the aid to this body if it can be proved that they can match extra allocations with growth in exports, because exports are the lifeblood of our economy. The budget of £13.74 million in respect of CTT is not sufficient. A prestigious and much-praised body of this kind should have sufficient moneys at their disposal to put on the right kind of show when bringing people from abroad to this country. They should have the right type of accommodation in a central part of the city. If one compares their budget to the £24 million that Bord Fáilte receive, one realises that the CTT budget needs to be re-examined.

On the attitude of "hands-off the semi-State bodies", I do not think it is the intention of this Government to interfere with these bodies. This has been demonstrated by the various Ministers in their statements and it has certainly been demonstrated by the Minister for Industry and Energy in his dealings with the semi-State companies. But we must have the right kind of people at the top in our semi-State bodies, people with drive and energy. Conversely, we must reward them adequately. Many of the people in charge of our semi-State bodies are capable of running businesses for themselves. In order to retain the best people in bodies such as CTT we need to reward them at perhaps even higher rates than they would command elsewhere. There is a good deal of poaching of the best people in CTT. This is because of their experience and because of the excellent work they have been doing. They are sought after by people in industry. We are talking of a specialised area and many of the people involved in sales and marketing with CTT are capable of earning much higher rewards in private enterprise. That is a factor to which we should pay attention.

The smaller indigenous businesses, those employing from 50 to 100 people, are crying out for opportunities. There should be a section within CTT to help and encourage such concerns. I know that the IDA are involved in this area but I am thinking in terms of exports. It is in this area that CTT can play a major role in so far as making Irish people aware of what is involved in terms of exporting. People who are responsible and who are anxious to export should be encouraged in every way possible. That is why increased aid to CTT is needed. They should be in a position to help smaller business particularly to become involved at every level in so far as exports are concerned. Deputy Kelly in his contribution said that experience gained abroad is invaluable. Our business people need to have experience abroad but the small businessman cannot afford to go away on junkets.

The Minister tells us that there are indications of enormous potential for the export of service activities particularly to areas such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. CTT will have a vital role to play in this field.

How do you get to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Middle Eastern countries? How can small businesses even afford to go there? You are depending on the officials of CTT to shake up those markets for you. If you are invited out there you must pay your way and that is extraordinarily expensive. An air ticket would cost about £1,500 and you need another couple of thousand pounds for expenses. It is the business of CTT to support those who are now not exporters here but whom we want to make into exporters. A huge pool of revenue can be earned by doing that. Many successful small businesses all over the country have able people in them and if they were given the opportunity that would represent a tremendous return in jobs and revenue earned.

The fine out-turn by our exporters of this £5.6 billion in the previous year is attributed by the Minister to three things. These are (1) a growing awareness of the importance to Irish industry of developing new markets, (2) a growing and more professional marketing effort by Irish exporting firms; and (3) better support and assistance provided by CTT. Those three factors are very weak. A growing awareness in Irish industry of developing new markets supposes action which does not necessarily follow. It is not necessarily a contributing factor. I do not see anything concrete in that. The second, a growing and more professional marketing effort by Irish exporting firms, raises the question: how professional is "more professional" when we do not measure the professional in the first place? If in the past year, for example, we had used this professional marketing as a comparison with certain other countries' performance then we would have a barometer, but there is no barometer in here. These are the three main reasons given for this rise to £5.6 billion, but to me it indicates the enormous amount of work and research that need to be undertaken. In this body a tremendous amount is taken for granted. I am certain that a big contribution has been made by CTT in this £5.6 billion, but there is an assumption that they are responsible for achieving it by themselves. If they are responsible for achieving that, then they are not being supported sufficiently in their allocation. Because of the enormous number of jobs that this £5.6 billion is contributing we should increase the budget, double it, treble it, find out what we can do with it. If we can double that figure it will give us tens of thousands of jobs.

The third point mentioned is the better support and assistance provided by CTT. These are contributory factors but as provided in the Minister's speech they are: (1) advice, (2) basic market information, (3) market research, (4) incentive grants for individual exporters and (5) organisation of national stands at international fairs. On examining those five factors one finds that the first is weak. The second, market information, is a strong point for an exporter. The third, market research, is also a very strong point. The fourth, incentive grants for individual exporters, is helpful but limited, and cumbersome because it is very selective.

Therefore, I would not give it a very high mark. CTT personnel travel at ease and it is very difficult for individuals and members of businesses to get assistance for themselves from CTT to go travelling. CTT people travel freely and at ease and have a budget which enables them to do that — I am not saying that it is abused in any way — but that is a big limiting factor for anybody in business who is just ticking over or making a small profit and has not other people working for him. He may long to get to such and such a place and export his products to such and such a country but he cannot afford to pay £5,000 out of the kitty to do that. This is where CTT can contribute. The fifth point, the organisation of national stands at international fairs, is strong, but our standards have been badly shown up at international fairs and exhibitions. I have visited many of them around the world and I have found that very often we rate about tenth. Now and again we rate first, but frequently we come off very badly in our displays and presentation, which Deputy Connolly has mentioned.

I would like to add some points to show that I am being constructive. To the above I would like to add contacts, introductions. Deputy Connolly also referred to this. It is desirable that when you go to a foreign country you are met by somebody who knows people there. Earlier this year I went to Saudi Arabia and I was met by the Irish Ambassador at the airport although I had not asked him to meet me. I told him what I intended to do there and the next day his embassy had prepared information on all the places I intended to visit, the people I was going to see and the strength of their businesses, and provided the contacts and information. That is exactly what should be provided. I must say that Mr. O'Toole is an outstanding ambassador as is shown by the tremendous effort he puts into his work. I had a similar experience in Greece where the ambassador met me and did the same for me as the ambassador in Saudi Arabia. That is much more valuable than a certain amount of money spent and a PR exercise. I have 25 of these brochures from different bodies——

Mr. Connolly

They are no good.

Mr. Skelly

——that we get in here. That is to prove how good a job they claim to be doing. I have said recently about another body, the IDA, that they are responsible for their PR. They have their own huge PR programme and they can produce this stuff which says, "Look, we are doing a great job". That is not what we want. If a person goes on a trip for a week or two, well prepared about the product he is selling, with contacts lined up and possibly with the help of the ambassador or, his staff, I should be very surprised if he does not get some business as a result. That is the kind of job I should like to see CTT do. It is only in the past few years that the IDA have woken up to the fact that we have been ignoring our own people while going after the multinationals. We incur enormous expense in bringing those firms into Ireland. We set up industrial concerns, as for instance, Ferenka in Limerick and Fieldcrest in Kilkenny, where 500 or 600 people are employed. Everyone settles down in those areas, takes out a mortgage for house purchase and sends their children to school but a few years later the whole thing collapses. The people are shattered and the place is devastated. It is far better to go down the country, to take ten or 20 business people, find out what they can do and find markets for them and bring them to the markets. The vital matter is contacts with those who may be able to help such business people.

Each year the various agencies cost hundreds of millions of pounds. People have told me in the past few weeks that as a public representative I should not dare criticise the various associations and organisations. If one organisation is given £230 million per annum to spend, surely we are entitled to question whether they are doing the job in the proper way? We are the elected representatives. My colleague beside me, Deputy Mervyn Taylor, and I have been trying to save a prime industry established in our constituency. We have been fighting for two years for it and I am thankful that now it has been saved. We have been criticised for our actions.

A sum of £67 million was spent on advance factories last year but they are empty. A sum of £78 million was spent the year before and those factories are also empty. We were looking for a paltry £1,500,000 to employ 500 people and keep an entire town going. The various organisations and agencies should adopt a business-like approach. We do not want to interfere but we must be sure that the organisations are run properly. They want us to be like a quiet, submissive wife. We cannot stand by when things are not done in a business-like way. The politicians must know how the semi-State bodies perform. They must make sure that those bodies do not go down the tube, or take the country down the tube.

That is the answer we must give to the chief executive in this case, in the case of the IDA, NET, CIE and the rest of them. If we could take £500 million from the billions of pounds given to the semi-State bodies it would help our budget arrangements considerably. Enormous sums of money have been spent on semi-State bodies and this matter will have to be examined. I should like those organisations to remember that.

I referred to three factors: first, the growing awareness of the importance of Irish industry and the development of new markets; second, a growing and more professional marketing effort by Irish exporting firms and, third, better support and assistance on the part of CTT. We live in an open economy but we have many restrictions. We have crippling taxation and business is being squeezed. Business firms are tax gatherers. They did not ask for the job but if they do not do it efficiently they are crucified. We have a begrudging attitude and, most of all, we lack the work ethic. Let us encourage and support each other. Let us cheer success and even reward it. Success has been a dirty word in the past and we have not rewarded it. Who will strive for success if we do not reward it? Perhaps it is better for us all to sit at the fireside, as Deputy Kelly said, with our cap on, no teeth and with a pipe in our mouth.

Incentive, reward and satisfaction are necessary if we are to help our economy. We also need a certain sense of pride and there is opportunity here for the semi-State bodies to give that pride to Irish people. We have a young educated population who need encouragement. During the 1970s senior politicians bragged that we had the youngest population in Europe and that our greatest asset was our youth. However, they did not prepare for them in the 1980s. Nowadays we hear nothing about our young people being our biggest asset. The way we have handled the situation they are now our biggest liability. We have not tackled the problem.

Yesterday we had in this House the National Youth Council of Ireland. They told us they represented 350,000 young people. Those voluntary organisations are doing the job for us. We are not tackling the problem seriously enough. Let us redress the balance between the public and the private sectors. The private sector is crushed while the public sector is protected. Let us tackle the problem of youth unemployment and the lack of opportunities for them. Let us hear answers and not hope for a solution. Otherwise, the next Bill before this House will be the Youth Export Promotion Bill and CTT will be given grants to help emigration.

Mr. Taylor

Córas Tráchtála have done an excellent job promoting exports and reference was made in the Minister's opening statement to the fact that our exports have risen to £5.68 billion over 1982. However, before we get too euphoric about that figure there are two things we must consider. First of all, we must consider the level of unemployment which is running at 200,000. The fact that our export figure may be high does not help to remedy the one crushing problem facing us at the moment where unemployment is concerned. That unemployment figure increases apace. Many of the unemployed are young people who find themselves in a situation in which they have no prospects, no future, no likelihood of employment in our present economic situation. It is of no value to them that our exports have increased to £5.6 billion with the possibility of rising again next year. That does them no good. It is of no assistance to them. It does not help them one iota. None of that money will go towards helping them. That is the first point we must consider before we become too euphoric. We live in the cold chill of 200,000 unemployed, the figure increasing apace and no prospect of any slowing down.

The second point is that one wonders exactly how much of that £5.68 million remains in the country at the end of the day. How is that figure disposed? Is it not a fact that a very large proportion of it represents the profits made by the big foreign combines which have come in here with the aid of massive grants from the IDA, massive tax consessions from the Department of Finance and the profits they make as a result of those grants, loans and tax concessions exported back to the owners of the multinational corporations which take advantage of what we have to offer so long as it suits them and then take out the profits made while the going is good?

It would be be a mistake to think when one sees an astronomic figure for our exports that the country is benefiting. I wish it did. The truth is that a very substantial proportion of that money is just passing through the tax free profit mechanisms of the multinationals, out the backdoor to headquarters elsewhere, to be disposed of and dealt with elsewhere.

Now that is not to say I am necessarily criticising the particular method of operation. Obviously the IDA have an important role to play but the emphasis in the past in bringing in foreign multinational firms at enormous cost to the taxpayer to finance them, plus money borrowed abroad for the same purpose, resulted in the setting up for the most part of capital intensive industries which require a great deal of capital to establish themselves but not much in the way of employment to service them. The emphasis there has gone wrong. We need an urgent change of direction. The objective of Córas Tráchtála is to promote exports. They do valiant work in that connection. They organise exhibitions of Irish goods abroad and so on. That is all very important and most essential; but all the CTT promotions in the world, all the exhibitions and all the literature will avail nothing if the products being promoted are not competitive. I have a strange feeling that if goods are competitive one will sell them abroad, promotion or no promotion. If they are not competitive no promotion will sell them. If the man next door produces the same goods and makes them available at a lower price not all the glossy magazines in the world will sell the dearer product.

This Government must implement a policy designed to ensure that conditions are such that Irish manufactures with a high labour content will sell successfully in foreign markets. Indigenous Irish manufacturers should be encouraged and facilitated in the production of goods which will be competitive abroad. The Government must direct their economic activity to the end that they do nothing to penalise, complicate, make difficult and more expensive the production of manufactured goods. We rely on manufacturing industry to provide employment and so manufacturing industry should be facilitated and encouraged to provide employment, producing goods at a competitive rate to bring money into the country, money that will be retained here and used for reinvestment here to create more jobs.

Looking at Government policy, not only the policy of this Government but that of previous Governments as well, one asks oneself have they directed themselves towards bending over backwards to ensure that Irish manufactured products will be competitive. I am afraid not. The thrust has been altogether in the opposite direction. The thrust has been to make things more difficult, more expensive and the goods produced more expensive than they ought to be thereby helping our manufactures to price themselves out of the market, thereby ensuring that additional employment will not be created while, at the same time, week in and week out existing employment is put at peril.

Reference has been made here and elsewhere to various factors the Government control. Reference has been made to the unnecessarily high cost of postal and telecommunications services and so on. Most important of all is the cost of energy. The cost of energy here is the highest in Europe. That single factor is in my view responsible for the massive measure of our economic ills. That single factor contributes to our unemployment figure of 200,000 unemployed, which is still rising and if something is not done, that figure with go on rising.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended at 1.30 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.