Like other speakers, I congratulate Deputy Séamus Brennan on his appointment as Minister of State with responsibility for marketing and I wish him success.
There are many welcome features in the Bill but I should like to begin by setting the proposals in context. Let me stress a few assumptions and their importance in relation to discussions on marketing and export level growth. There is an overall assumption in the suggestion that some of the main obstacles to export led growth are marketing deficiencies and an internationally competitive free market. The first qualification that must be made is that the evidence is against that. If you are serious about the economics of marketing, you have to look at facts rather than fantasies. The fact is that the structure of the internationally traded sector in commodities is dominated now more than ever by conditions of oligopoly and monopoly. They are very far away from conditions of perfect competition. Therefore, you have to take that assumption on board and it is not the case that you can simply produce high quality goods more effectively and sell them to the people waiting for commodities to be placed on stalls in a free marketplace alongside each other. What has stayed in place has been both the economic theory and the myth of the policy-makers relying on a rather stagnant economic theory. The economics of perfect competition have long outlived the realities of the marketplace of the world. This is just simple fact.
The second assumption follows logically, which is that increased market competitiveness will result in increased exports which will, in turn, not only increase, somehow or other, the productive base of the economy but it will impact on unemployment. It is significant that this word "unemployment"— the dirtiest word in the Irish economic vocabulary; very few use it now and those who do almost do so at their peril — is not used at all this evening. Let me examine that chain of assumptions for just a second. The fact is that in considering the improvement of Irish exports through marketing we would have to ask initially what are true exports and what are bogus exports.
I shall turn to that explicitly in a moment because it is very necessary to draw a distinction between, for example, companies which are producing goods, seeking to market them and exporting them on to those markets effectively and other companies which are simply using Ireland as a location and by a series of well known price trading arrangements purchasing commodities at one price in a tax favourable environment, selling them on in certain conditions and grossly inflating the actual volume of exports. I know we are a people known for our flair for myth and fantasy, but very often there is no greater example of myth and fantasy than the total volume of our exports. They have to be corrected to try to get an idea of what is, in fact, something realistic happening within the Irish economy that might conceivably turn into employment generation.
I am not arguing for a second against export led growth. I am being very careful about this and simply expressing a qualification that I believe to be a reasonable one in terms of traditional — and I emphasise that word—centrist economic theory at present. It is the further assumption that even if such exports were real they automatically trickle down with benefit to the entire community, resulting in employment. This again ignores one of the great realities of modern economic trading, that is, that exports are far more capital intensive now than they ever were. The Minister has wisely stayed off the unemployment theme for that very reason because, like a person with a decent training in economics, he understands that what can be achieved within this realm is something which will be minuscule in relation to its contribution to unemployment or job creation in Ireland. He equally would realise that not only far from acting on unemployment it certainly cannot impact on poverty.
One of our great dilemmas of the present time within the social policy — and those of us who have the honour and privilege to serve in this House must bear that in mind — is that income can no longer be simply handled by an approach towards the economics at work and neither can it be reduced simply to the notion that by increasing marketing you increase exports, reduce unemployment and reduce poverty. That is unadulterated rubbish in conventional terms. Unfortunately, people who make a living from peddling such fantasies do not have to live with the reality of unemployment and far less with the reality of poverty and thus the theory outlives its victims.
I want to turn in some detail to some of these assumptions. I welcome this Bill but I am in no doubt whatsoever as to what it can achieve. I simply wish the Minister's initiatives well. I shall turn to them in a moment. I want to correct this notion. I shall suspend my judgment for a moment about some of these assumptions and concentrate on the text of the Bill before us. One should ask on Second Stage why this legislation is necessary. First, the legislation is once again a motivational exercise. It is not taking an initiative in terms of establishing State agencies, or State trading companies, or anything like that. It is inspirational. That is the modern term used. I have described this in much less heady language very often as trying to stir the carcase of a dead cow into action. That is rather like what getting the Irish private sector to produce at all, to trade at all, to train their workers at all is like. We take from general taxation — massive levels of taxation by European standards — and expend it across a variety of agencies to stir this dead cow into life and hope that she will give milk.
The fact of the matter is that, looking at the historic performance of the Irish private sector, to its credit it has never gone so far as to say that it wanted to create a single job in the Irish economy. It always wanted to trade at a profit. It did that on the domestic market for a while in the old days of protection, and gave us that phrase which the literary people like of "old money". Then when we were opened up to the winds of free trade, the winds blew and a great number of industries went to the wall. People were not able to trade in the new circumstances and we got involved in a whole series of incentives to the Irish sector. We also became involved in inviting foreign investment here. I am not arguing against that either, but I do object to the notion frequently put forward that such companies locate here out of some kind of international benevolence, as we would be led to believe.
The truth of the matter is that we have hopped from one economic strategy to another. We had a period in the early days of this State of moving quickly into protectionism. After protectionism, after opening up the Irish economy so-called, we began to look for foreign led investment in relation to manufacturing. At that stage our official theories were hostile to the services sector and hostile to natural resource based development. I remember listening to the most atrocious attacks on people like myself who suggested that. Then, rather late in the day, our Industrial Development Authority became converted to the idea of a natural resources development and also to internationally trading services. They are now more or less saying that internationally trading services can be the leader in providing jobs and I hope they are successful for the sake of the highly trained, highly educated young people who may take up these jobs.
What is missing from it all is any attempt to link the population projections which Dr. Brendan Walsh and others were providing in the sixties into any kind of strategy of income, of work, of industrialisation, of trading, of marketing, or of wealth creation, and so forth. That must be said because, let us be perfectly clear, I am responding to the mention in the Minister's speech of the context in which these efforts are being made.
In 1983, a Bill very similar to the present one passed through this House. The purpose of that Bill at that time was to provide £160 million for Córas Tráchtála. The purpose of this Bill, as has been pointed out by previous speakers, is to increase that figure to £260 million, but also to create the concept of licensed special trading houses which have been described by the Minister. In this regard it is rather to attract special trading houses to come into existence. Here we have a small problem. Different economists commenting on Ireland's Industrial strategy have commented on a number of things. They have commented upon the fact, as has been mentioned already, of the need to establish in the internationally trading centre significant niches in which is established excellence with which we could identify.
We have part of the embryonic technology already. We could purchase technology and direct our policy at that particular niche in the world market. They also said that in many of these identified sources of hope in relation to trading, the level of investment was higher than could be provided by the Irish private sector and it certainly was beyond the terms of credit provisions and was far beyond what the Irish banking sector would invest in. Our banking sector, modelled as it is on a conservative British banking sector, is totally at odds with the banking sector in Europe. The dogs in the street know that.
In the European money market one can borrow on the basis of inspirational technology, on the basis of patents, on the basis of any kind of export opportunites one may have. Trying to borrow here for a new venture in productive manufacturing, in servicing, in trading, in marketing, or whatever, not only would one be asked to supply impossible guarantees but the time horizon is too short, the collateral requirements are too severe and one would be asked to take the risk of bankrupting oneself and to put the roof over one's head at risk. All of this occurs in a banking environment that is enjoying high interest rates with little risk taking.
Over the past seven months I have been accumulating a list of the receipts of the Irish banking sector from local authorities, health boards, semi-State agencies and so on. They have been making a fortune on no risk activity charging a rate that is admittedly their best rate to their highest borrowing customers with little risk attached. The atmosphere of risk taking or of risk taking facilitation does not exist in Irish credit institutions, and it never has. They will hop along for a ride when the State has taken most of the risks. They will fund small borrowers willing to take risks if some major investor comes along, but they are not innovative. The point one of the ERSI's most distinguished workers, Mr. O'Malley, has made in one paper after another published by the institute is that we would probably need to concentrate on a number of very large companies and we would need to give them State funds and establish State agencies if we are ever to get off the ground in relation to achieving some impact and to capturing some employment. Reference was made to other European examples. This is exactly what took place in countries about which we are hearing so much. It is what took place in Denmark, Finland and so on. In Denmark it was a mixture of State and private purchasing strategy in relation to technology and the evidence is that it has worked in a number of ways.
I am in favour of increasing the funding to CTT. We have no choice in relation to trying to market abroad. While I said this was a Bill which was inspirational, trying to motivate this sluggish entity, people should not be expected to believe that from me. The surveys of the Irish Management Institute, hardly a radical left wing rhetoric using organisation, showed that less than 3 per cent of companies had a marketing function at all and in the under 5 per cent league was personnel functions. Companies neither thought it important to relate to their employees nor to sell but there were lots of other kinds of courses on offer about how to feel like an executive in a decaying Irish company, or how to have pretensions in a company selling very little internationally.
I spent my life reading brochures for such courses and I spent time reading the largely conservative Irish press which day by day becomes more of a marketing organ in itself for the egos of the people who have large shareholdings in them. There is just an obscenity in all of this. There is no hard thinking. There is just sloppy thought given to the idea that an international seminar, for example, given the conditions of the Irish economy with 250,000 people unemployed, would bring Mr. McGregor and other people like him from Britain to give us lectures on how to break strikes and wreck the British industry. It is an extraordinary thing. Let us not be drawn down that road.
We should be under no illusions. Interest rates can drop here and I think they will. Equally, our exports may increase. According to an OECD report our present inflation rate is probably at its lowest in 20 years. We are having high exports, but we are not sure whether or not they are real. Interest rates are dropping but where is this investment taking place? Where investment is taking place it is taking place in speculative rather than productive ventures. The evidence there is not mine either. They are the views of Dr. Whitaker expressed again and again when he witnessed to the appearance in the seventies on the Irish Stock Exchange of the number of operators who were effectively asset strippers, who bought shell companies, looked at the balance sheets, sold the assets, displaced the employees, threw them on the waste heap and, at the same time, handed the bill for creating jobs to the Government and to the IDA. They became millionaires and stayed there to impress people with simple peasant outlooks with their ostentatious lifestyles and their lavish behaviour.
I have listed countries where such behaviour is not only anti-social but illegal. They were asset strippers who did not create jobs. I could give lists of them here, but the Chair would probably encourage me not to do so. I have many other places in which to do that, and I would not hesitate for a second. The fact is that that is the kind of person who was investing in Ireland in the seventies and who was abusing the Stock Exchange for that purpose. They went like a dose of salts through some of the older companies, keeping the name of the company, the shell of the company operating and so forth, without creating any wealth that would create a single job. At present, if they are listened to, they are lecturing us endlessly on the spirit of enterprise, the spirit of the dog kennel. These people are voracious, greedy, anti-social, anti-national people who decided they could make a vast fortune out of buying companies, throwing the workers on the scrap heap, not creating genuine new jobs and then deciding, by the sale of assets and other things that fluctuate, to invest in different things.
There are no ethics in this at all. No other country in Europe has the same relationship between investment in shares that are quoted on the Stock Exchange and newspapers. The relationship that exists in Ireland is one that is not allowed in a number of countries. It would be illegal because of the jaundiced intersection that is possible. I keep returning to this because I hope, if this Dáil lasts, to be in a position to bring legislation before the House through Labour Party private Bills which will put an end to this jaundiced intersection about which I speak.
In 1985 Irish exports reached a level of £9,743 million producing a surplus of £314.8 million over imports. I welcome those figures in relation to trade. Anyone should welcome them. I do not want to dispel the mood of optimism that is being created. I realise that there is something to this. There are times in human history when feelings take over from reason and they propel people along a certain road.
The Government are trying to create a psychological atmosphere of optimism that we will get things going. I like those phrases, and people should be encourged if they believe in them, but it is useful to do a little thinking as well.
The question about the surplus of exports over imports is good. The Minister will say there is a problem about these figures, but I am not asking him to solve that. However, there is a question about the way in which they are calculated. Perhaps of more value is the fact that there has been a sustained performance of surplus of exports over imports and there is no doubt that we should give credit to CTT for what they have contributed to achieving this surplus.
When I have met some of the leading members of Córas Tráchtála I have been very impressed with what they said about the importance of marketing. They have attempted to do something the private sector was not willing to do. There have been improvements also in the trade of food and in the trade of technological equipment of a certain kind. However, I enter a caution here in relation to chemicals, information products and technology. The figures should be adjusted. The question is whether we are more an international warehouse than a trading economy and when the rates for the warehouse change will other warehouses bid us out of existence?
The final reports of Digital Ireland — which is located in my city and which is very welcome there — refer to the fact that we have been worth nearly £1 billion to them in terms of their being able to put their products through the country to the different market locations. The argument people always come back to me with is, "Should you not be grateful they are doing it here rather than anywhere else?" Of course, like the poor peasant who went up to the landlord and said: "Would your honour like to give us a little more for our potatoes this year, sir?" I have to take my peasant's cap off as well as a citizen of this country and say: "Yes, sir, thank you very much sir, and please do not go to Costa Rica or Portugal or wherever".
Because I cannot bring myself to lie about these things, it is my regret that I have to strike such a bleak note. Having listed the successes about exports and Córas Tráchtála's role in the story, the successes and the public relations hype that is being built around these trading surpluses is distracting from the deep core problem of the Irish economy. The deep core problem of the Irish economy is unemployment and the poverty that is flowing from it. What is happening in relation to unemployment is that more and more we are moving, for example, in the inner city area of Dublin, to a third generation of unemployed people. In other parts of the country there is a second generation of unemployed people. With unemployment there comes a chain of non-participation. Because people have no basic incomes — the Social Welfare Act, 1981, is a panoply of different provisions of assistance of different kinds — they are falling down through the floor of participation in society and they are not participating more and more. We are creating a new culture around unemployment; we are creating an under-class.
The point I want to make, and I cannot make it sufficiently strongly, is that it is wrong to say that performance in the export-import ratio is a sufficient answer to those who are asking about economic performance in relation to unemployment. It is not justified by the fact that the majority of academic opinion in economics and social science, to their eternal disgrace, have neglected the unemployment problem. It has turned economics into something like a cross between predicting the racing page of a paper and soccer results. There is no point in quoting export-import figures as other than just what they are. They are trading surpluses and they might or might not mean something. In order to get their full meaning one has to tease out what is involved in the actual export, how much of it was price fixing between different locations and so forth. It has to be adjusted back so that one can get the true value of it. It does not help any more than just that. It is one indicator and it should not be used and abused as it is at present.
The figure for unemployment at present stands at over 250,000. This belies the well-used maxim of all the party leaders I hear speaking about unemployment. They are decent people but I think they believe this dangerous nonsense about economics. They say that exports create jobs, sacrifice creates jobs and low wages create jobs. This is what I hear every day. The fact is that gradually we are getting the interest rates that are more favourable — although it is a slower operation than any of us would wish — we are getting all the incentives to industry, we are getting the lowest inflation rate in 20 years, we are getting a curtailment on incomes, we are curtailing public expenditure but we are not getting the jobs.
Let us keep our heads about all of this. Export we must and export we must into niches in the world economy in which we can develop an excellence. We must do this effectively and establish agencies such as the Minister described. However the Minister is not establishing these agencies: he is making himself available to license them. The problem about that is that not only is the Minister available to license these agencies but, as the Minister said honestly, they have to have certain criteria laid down. It is correct to lay down criteria but I cannot see how you can on the one hand say that people have to have an established expertise, marketing skills, knowledge and so forth and at the same time start from scratch trying to bring in new people and new intelligence. That will be very difficult and I am not here to make it more difficult; I am simply saying that I identify a paradox within it.
The most interesting figure to look at in all of this is that as we went through the years exports increased. In 1981 exports were £4,777.6 million and imports were £6,578.4 million. At that stage the imbalance was on the side of imports over exports. That has been turned around and it is a good thing. The average industrial wage in 1981 was £112.25, output per worker was 108.4 and unemployment was 141,000. In 1982 exports were £5,691.4 million and imports were about £6,816.2 million, the average industrial wage was £126, the output per worker had grown to 110.5 and the unemployment figure was 179,000. I could go on but I do not want to be tedious. The figures were beginning to turn around and the output per worker was growing. In 1981 it was 108.4, in 1982 it was 110.5, in 1983 it was 126.4, in 1984 it was 146.8, in 1985 it was 15.6. and in 1986 it was 164.2. The output per worker was growing all the time and the incentives to produce, to trade and export were growing but, at the same time, the figures were growing inexorably. In 1981 there were 141,000 unemployed; in 1982, 179,000; in 1983, 208,000; in 1984, 225,400; in 1985, 239,900 and in 1986, when we had those good trading figures we had 250,200 unemployed. I do not want to hear again the suggestion that by simply turning the trade figures around we are impacting on unemployment. It is not happening. It is a contribution but what has to be done is that the export figures have to be adjusted, and you have to look at the employment content of them and the way in which wages are calculated. Then you will find that a different strategy is needed.
In fairness to the Minister of State he has not said that what he is proposing will solve the unemployment problem, but he is at the trading tip of a set of economic policies that are failing in relation to unemployment and will continue to fail because they are not really looking at the productive sector of the Irish economy. We would all like if there were a productive economy but there is not an investment strategy, there is not an incomes policy of some kind that would be able to ensure some kind of basic income, there is no intent to change the social policy that would create a basic income, nor is there any real concern about the chain of deprivation that exists.
Let us be careful about how Mrs. Thatcher can say that the export order books of Britain are full, fuller than they have been for many years at a time when not only have all the workers gone from the north of England manufacturing sector but there are chains on the doors of the factories and the managers have gone and left that part of Britain. They are trading very well in Britain but they are trading existing produced commodities which do not have the same knock-on effect on production as we would hope here. The figures I have quoted show that exports have doubled in five years, with a surplus of exports over imports for the past two years. Despite a disgraceful reduction in the paid workforce we have fewer people working productivity of workers has continued to grow from a base of 100 in 1980 to 164.2 in 1986. Wages, although they show a steady increase, have in fact fallen behind the real cost of living and as the productivity rates indicate workers are getting less money for an ever increasing output.
It gives me no pleasure to quote these statistics. They are stark and unpleasant reminders that exports do not necessarily mean jobs. They show that despite a rise in productivity, a growth in exports and a reduction in jobs, the Government and the business sector still come back for more. They want more. They still want to pay less. They still want to get away with having fewer workers. They still want more incentives paid for by the taxpayer. Now they want another source of inspiration. The position is even worse than that. We are now, at the stage of being lectured every day as to what we must do if we are to be competitive. The fact is that the most uncompetitive thing in European trading history has been that the very private sector who are lecturing everybody at present. What is private about them? They do not train their workers, they get depreciation on their equipment, they get writes off in relation to what is one of the lowest tax regimes in terms of production in Europe. They are assisted in every way. Their workers are educated by the State. Their export agencies are trying to sell for them. When some of the companies get into trouble, that news is never published. The first question addressed by the media usually is if there has been a strike in the company. The question that is never asked by the Irish media — it is afraid to ask it — is if there has been bad management.
I should like to see the history of Fóir Teoranta produced before this House because it would show one long agonising litany of the incompetence, laziness, bad training, bad orientation towards business and so forth which closed down the work prospects of thousands of workers. We must ask, too, whether rises in productivity have meant greater rewards for workers. They have not meant a rise in living standards that go beyond income. As there is a higher productivity per worker, as there was in 1980, of about 64 per cent, the ordinary worker leaving the workplace is witnessing a cutback in State activity in a whole range of areas, in education, in services provided by local authorities, health and so on. This is an incredible situation and I am availing of this opportunity to raise the matter because it is very important.
Our export policy was funded from the Exchequer in 1983 to the extent of £160 million. The present Bill could conceivably raise this figure within four years to £260 million. I hope the trade figures will continue to go right but I must ask to what extent it will impact on the kind of problems to which I have referred. I am not, unfortunately, as enthusiastically optimistic as the Minister of State and his colleagues. I want to refer to the difficulty the Minister has in setting up a State initiative to try to lure the Irish private sector to get itself together to start trading and marketing. At paragraph 6.6 of the White Paper on Industrial Policy it is stated:
Financial institutions generally are not geared to the provision of finance where no asset backing is available as collateral. Nor are they geared to the accommodation of a repayment pattern entirely related to the results on an investment such as that associated with the new export project. To overcome these financial constraints it is proposed that the risk attaching to such investment be shared by the state; the financial institutions and the exporters. CTT will accordingly introduce a market entry and development finance scheme on a pilot basis.
People do not have to believe my views about the economy. That is what the White Paper had to say about the financial institutions. It rather reminds one of the greedy undertaker waiting for the people to die all around him. The Irish financial institutions fit well into that image. I have not seen — and I read their annual reports — where they have enthusiastically taken a new patent, a new technology or a group of scientists and said to them "the bank has money to set you up". Deputy Yates wanted to go to the German market. One would not get very far except to the poor house with the philosophies the banks have in relation to collateral. It is antiquated, it is wrong in terms of time horizon, it is too short and it is completely wrong in relation to the strength of the collateral they are asking. They are a perfect reflection of a decaying economy rather than an economy of growth. I am not sure how this can be changed around. I may have some ideas about it. It is unlikely that I will have in the short term an opportunity of bringing about change in this area but there are things which could be done in relation to credit policy. I am sure the Minister of State experiences the same kind of frustration as I experience in relation to the conservative banking policy under which Irish exporters suffer.
What the spirit of the White Paper suggests is that it is rather like children deciding who will put their toe out, and saying, "let us all put our toes out together". The attitude in the White Paper was that the State should put its toes out. It could put its big toe out as it always does and gradually the last people to put their toe out would be the financial institutions. Before we knew where we were we might have a whole foot outside in the cold. That is the interpretation in the White Paper. What we do not have is any suggestion that should our little toes be covered with gold, we should have a share in the rewards when we had drawn it back. There is no suggestion about sharing profits but rather that the unemployment burden be borne disproportionately by those whose colleagues have produced higher productivity, and who have watched their colleagues disappear from the workplace.
I welcome the improvement in the export position but this improvement is in the interests of the financial sector. The community in general have not been the beneficiaries. Despite the criteria laid down by Córas Tráchtála and the spelling out of clear priorities for industry in Ireland business has taken what suits its needs and left what it does not require at this time. I am a little weary of listening to spokespersons for the Confederation of Irish Industry talking about the great octopus of the State when they themselves are beneficiaries of a whole raft of State agencies. What they are saying is that it would be nice to freeze the State so that it would enhance productivity and we could continue to take from the sections we have been taking from for some time.
In relation to the theory adduced in the Minister's speech — he is correct in some parts at least about the identification of markets — the export market has grown. If you take it separate from the figure as to the growth in exports a good question to ask might be, and perhaps the Minister might address this, which markets are we performing in? Are they markets we have lost, which markets are we penetrating for the first time? This is a much more interesting question for a number of reasons. We still have an over emphasis on the British and North American trade. Equally, and I heard a great deal about this, we have the benefits of trading within the large block which constitutes the European Community which is left somewhat unexploited. There are a number of reasons for this. It is not as simple as Deputy Yates suggested. He was going to storm the German market with his products: may it work for him but the fact is that it is not simple as that. He is right in adducing an element of a more general problem that there are many aspects of the European market which we have left unexploited.
There are two other sources of markets we have neglected totally. One is the Latin American market which, for reasons of our own, we have expressed very little interest in. Despite the growth in population in the world and the increase in the need for food, the easiest contract for the supply of many of our products is in fact in that part of the world where there is a favourable orientation towards us but we have been unwilling to explore or to penetrate that market. This is reflected equally in references made to this by our attitude in diplotmatic terms towards that continent. We have one representative in the entire continent of Latin America, our diplomatic representative in Buenos Aires. You then travel across the whole continent to Washington to get the next person who is accredited to the whole Latin American or Central American continent. We are not interested. On the other hand we have the obscenity of having invited the South Koreans to open an embassy in Dublin. Let me not stray off on that because I would be quickly reminded to stick to the terms of the Bill. We have neglected the Latin American market.
We have also neglected a whole series of markets, including the African markets where we had marvellous opportunities for taking diplomatic initiatives. Several African countries have indicated to me while I was visiting that they were anxious to trade with Ireland as opposed to other countries because of our history and so forth. But our history has been rewritten. We are no longer the decolonised country anxious to sell abroad to countries such as Latin America and the struggling African countries and so forth. We are the neo-colonised country that has an obsession about the British and American markets. That is why we neglect markets which we think might upset our United States trading partners or would upset a trans-national or multinational company. Equally we open diplomatic relations with these countries. We will pay a terrible price for that kind of exclusivity as probably the greatest crash in economic terms of this century is not unlikely — I will be cautious — to happen in the United States economy. It is staring everybody in the face that this is likely to happen in the next ten years and our dependance on that kind of trading relationship makes us all the more vulnerable.
One of the points I made — I could only find the 1985 report from Córas Tráchtála which was the latest available to me when preparing my remarks on the Bill — is that half of the exports from Irish owned companies in both the manufacturing and primary sectors went to the United Kingdom, as compared with a quarter of the exports from foreign owned companies. On the other hand, the European market, other than the UK, accounted for one-eighth of exports from indigenous firms and close to half of the exports from foreign owned companies which were established in Ireland since our membership of the European Communities with the explicit purpose of supplying continental Europe.
My point is that the Irish indigenous firms, faced with a vast European market, only export one-eighth to that market while at the same time the companies who have come and located here are selling half of what they are selling into that market. We have to examine that and stop evading the question of the pricing policy of these companies and its implication for the true export figures. The annual report of Córas Tráchtála also makes the point that the diversification of Ireland's export market has not, therefore, been evenly spread between Irish and foreign owned companies. The importance of the United Kingdom market for our indigenous industries should not be underestimated but, while exports to the UK are increasing, we are simultaneously losing market share in a number of sectors of particular importance to indigenous industries. Córas Tráchtála make the point that at least we should be able to hold our own in the market close to our capital base.
I find Deputy Yates's suggestion — who I never realised was a romantic — that we should tell small exporters to concentrate on Britain and tell people over a particular size to go for markets other than Britain a truly extraordinary one. There should be some assistance to try to keep what we have in the UK market and see whether we can change our product content of sections of that market. What we gather from the statistics and my interpretation of them is that the pattern of Irish export growth gives one the picture of a self-propelled market, responding to the daily needs of consumers and not projecting itself or providing leadership, and certainly not exhibiting any policy acceptance of what has been suggested by some of the best economic opinion, that is, that previous choices had been exercised in relation to niches in the international market and decisions on levels of excellence established. This is not a criticism of Córas Tráchtála. It is a criticism of the policy makers who are responsible for the productive side of the Irish economy.
