Vol. 13 No. 1
I beg to propose:—
That, in view of the fact that the Ports and Harbours Tribunal has not yet reported, the Second Stage of the Cork Harbour Bill, 1927, be further postponed until the 10th day of April, 1930, or, if the Seanad be not sitting on that day, until the next day thereafter on which the Seanad shall sit.
I second.
I rise to open this question about an adjournment. The vacancies in our harbours are more important than the vacancy in the Seanad, so that I trust the House will bear with me in making a few remarks before the election. I do not know what Committee or Commission is meeting for whose findings this Private Bill is being delayed, but I know that I would be out of order if I discussed the Bill on its merits.
Quite.
But I may say this, that it is the usual thing when traffic falls off to double freights; in other words, to double the cost to meet falling traffic. We have that in every form of transport in this country. As far as the naturally supreme position that this country holds in the Atlantic in its relations with America goes we might as well be a mud bank in the Mersey. The Cork Harbour Bill is held up for a Commission whose findings will probably not deal with our harbours from a national standpoint, and I very much wish to emphasise the fact that no Commission and no body in this country seems to realise the urgent and paramount importance of opening our ports. A country is fed by its ports, and a country is starved by a tax on its ports. There is not a single Irish shipping company that brings enough into one of the Irish ports to pay its harbour dues. There are certain proposals to make Dublin a free port in order to evade the competition which the opening of ports on the western seaboard would bring about. These are questions that I trust this Commission will consider if it is a national Commission.
There is one thing that is not in this Cork Harbour Bill, and as it is not there I suppose I can discuss it without discussing the merits of the Bill. It is the matter of the air. A certain external air service was approached by the Cork Corporation to link up Cork with the Continent, but that air service, not being British, was warned off Cork. Now that is the position. We are marooned on the high seas and we are curtailed in the air, and it is not an external Power that is doing this. There is no body of men so interested in Ireland that they will starve Ireland, because they know there are men in Ireland with so little vision that they will allow Ireland to starve. Until we come out into the Atlantic we are no better than a mud bank in the Mersey. That is a matter I want to work up about this Bill. I have nothing to say against the Bill. I wish Cork were a free port. It is pre-eminently situated for one, and it is already half of one through Ford's enterprise. But I do not wish Bills like this to be postponed until the 10th of next April, while the urgent position of the whole country's services and the revenue of the Government is at stake through the non-development of our ports. In the old days we thought that the British deliberately failed to develop a decent harbour by having no railway to it. There are some of the greatest harbours in Europe without any railways—Blacksod, Galway, and Foynes, or any other estuary you like to mention. That was a condition of affairs that could be remedied. It has not been remedied now that the British have gone, and it will not be remedied by footy little Bills like this and vague postponements. I do not believe much in commissions, but until there is a national recognition of the fact that we have a supreme position in the Atlantic, that everybody in this country is dependent on the cheapness of food and for employment on these harbour dues, that you can be cut off from the world through harbours, there will be no improvement. We do not own a single harbour in this country as regards development.
The harbour at Dún Laoghaire is a national harbour in so far as the British Government in its foresight thought fit to build that harbour and hand it over to one railway—the London North Western. The British Government handed it over to one of their own independent railways because it connected up this country with England, and they gave a monopoly of traffic to that British railway. We with our harbours have not yet provided any opening to foreign shipping, and as I have already told you, in spite of the enterprise of Cork men, a firm of Continental air lines was warned off. Our position in the seas is useless, and our position in the air is beginning to be curtailed.
I think the object of the motion is quite clearly set out in the motion itself. It says that: "In view of the fact that the Ports and Harbours Tribunal has not yet reported, the Second Stage of the Cork Harbour Bill, 1927, be further postponed." That ought to be a sufficient reason for the postponement of the Bill until next April, because the Ports and Harbours Tribunal has spent a great deal of time in going round to all the ports. Cork included, and taking evidence as to what changes should be made.
Has this Commission sat at all?
Oh, yes, the Report was due long ago.
You cannot force the promoters to go on, Senator Gogarty.
There is no motion before the House against what is proposed.
No.
