If Senator Sir John Keane wishes to make any statement on Section 1 he may do so now.
Committee and Final Stages.
Question proposed: "That Section 1 stand part of the Bill."
I shall reserve it for the Final Stage.
I would like to help the Minister. I believe he came in to talk about golf balls. I came for the purpose of asking one question about golf balls and when the debate took what I may call a high flight I did not like to intervene, but I would like to ask him whether he has any idea as to the amount of employment given by the manufacture of golf balls here. The Dunlop golf ball, of course, is a good ball. Nobody objects to having it, and I am not one of the people who object to having Irish industry at all. I was a persecution, I think, to a great many people in my youth worrying them about Irish manufacture, but is there any guarantee with regard to the price of those balls from the company who are making them and who will have practically a monopoly?
As far as price is concerned, the undertaking is that the price will be the same as now charged. There is a slight qualification to that because I gather—and this may be of information to some golfers present— that the cheaper balls give a lower profit than the dearer ones and, consequently, the price at which each individual type is sold depends upon the maintenance of the proportion of the market which each represents and, on the assumption that the same proportion of cheap balls as against dear balls will be sold here as in Great Britain, the price will be the same. I think that is just a safeguard the firm put in for their own protection.
Mr. Hayes
The difference, I presume, will be small?
In any event.
There are different classes of ball?
There are different prices.
I mean of type—I do not know.
They are all of the same size and weight and colour. There are different qualities.
I would like to ask the Minister on this question, when he says they are going to be the same price, are they going to be the same value for the money?
Quality for quality, yes.
You mean you have an undertaking to that effect because you made reference to motor tyres, and if you are talking to motorists you know what they will tell you.
A good golfer does not blame the ball.
Question put and agreed to.
Question:—"That Section 2 stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
Schedule and Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendments.
Question:—"That the Bill be received for final consideration"—put and agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the Bill be returned to the Dáil."
I am sorry I was not here to take part in the debate on the Second Reading, but I gather those who did take part gave the Minister some little annoyance. I will do my best to spare him further annoyance, but I feel so strongly about this whole question of his economic policy that I cannot accept the suggestion the Minister made that we should abstain, on the very few occasions we have an opportunity to do so, from discussing the general policy of his whole new tariff quotas and new system of regulation. Listening to the Minister, I was forcibly reminded of a measure we passed yesterday and of the necessity and the equity of a measure we passed yesterday, that is, the necessity for providing even more liberal pensions than we do for ex-Ministers, because I consider the Minister, in devoting his service to the State, has missed an opportunity of reaping a very large income in the profession of the law. I never heard such an able piece of special pleading as the Minister made in defence of his policy. To hear the Minister one would imagine there is no discontent, that all except a few disgruntled people out of touch altogether with business, are perfectly satisfied with the whole consequences of his policy and that industry is bearing no burden and that everything is proceeding smoothily and happily. This question is so big that I do not profess, or do not intend, to range over the whole field of our policy, but I just wish to give some figures which are authentic. I cannot be expected to disclose the concern to which they apply, but I wish to show the difficulties with which industry is being burdened to-day and to show that not only is industry burdened but that all the consumers are burdened. You cannot impose a burden on any industry without the necessity either of that concern going down under the burden or else the necessity for passing on the costs to the consumers. The Minister gibes, I am afraid rather light-heartedly, at the old economic doctrines. I wonder if he will gibe at this one: that the raw material of one industry is the finished product of another, or, put the other way round, the finished product of one industry is the raw material of another.
The latest and, I think, almost the most unsuitable venture on which our new economic policy has embarked is that of steel manufacture. There is a very small market. The Minister told us—I propose to follow his example in carrying the war into the enemy's country—that he fully expected to level steel prices in this country down to world prices and even create an export trade. He did not say that to-day. I cannot give him the reference but I have a clear recollection that he said words to that effect in the Dáil. I can quote recent prices, within the last year and a half, for fabricated steel for the erection of buildings in connection with a certain new industry. I suggest that the buildings of an industry are that industry's raw material and the cheaper you get the buildings, naturally, the cheaper at which you can supply the products to the public. Here are actual quotations given for fabricated steel and I need hardly tell you the industry in question had to exhaust to the full the output of home manufacture before it was permitted to import under licence. Everything practically is under restriction for import from abroad. The price for one class of fabricated steel delivered at site—Belgium calculated at £12 15s. 0d. a ton. The Irish price was £25 10s. 0d. a ton. For another class of fabricated steel, Belgium quoted £16 5s. 0d. a ton. Irish price, £30 a ton. Another class—Belgium, £16. Irish, £30 6s. 0d., and in one case, on a certain building, it was calculated that if the Irish price was paid the building would cost an additional £25,000. I brought that specific illustration before you sooner than range over the whole background of this policy. It is to be expected that these variations will occur, where you start unsuitable industries, industries that have to import their raw material, into a market where the demand is very restricted and small. Of course, in this case, even that does not apply for this is merely fabricated steel. The steel would probably come from Belgium in either case. I am comparing fabrication in Belgium with fabrication of the same steel in this country. I hope the Minister will not tell me I am seeking every opportunity to besmirch Irish manufacture. It is far too serious a thing for that.
I am asking the Senator is he sure it was the same steel.
Well, it was steel that satisfied the manufacturer. The business concern was prepared to use that steel, and would have used it if they had been allowed to buy it, on the same quotation. I cannot answer the technical question as to whether it was on the same specification, but it was foreign steel in either case. The only difference was the fabrication abroad against the fabrication at home. Of course, there was no Irish steel made at that time. The difference in price was on the fabrication alone.
One more instance. I cannot mention the name but the Minister can get it himself, I understand, from the Prices Tribunal. A certain article, supplied in quantity and used in quantity on the railways, can be imported, my information goes—I am open to correction—at 10 per cent. cheaper than it can be made at home and yet carry a duty of 75 per cent.
I do not want to blame Irish manufacturers for these results. I think they are labouring under a great handicap. There is a very small market and naturally they are building up their experience and the Minister will tell the House that in course of time these differences will disappear. We can only deal with the thing as we see it and I think we all agree that it is very unfortunate that the country should have to pay these prices for the luxury of thus having such as there may be of this new economic policy.
There is only one other matter to which I want to refer. What remedy has the consumer? The Minister will, I know, say the Prices Tribunal. I can only say that that answer is, to my mind, a perfect mockery. I know that the Prices Tribunal have given some little relief, say 10 per cent., possibly where there was 100 per cent. difference in price. But the whole philosophy of the thing is wrong. You are pitting the wits of the Prices Tribunal against the wits of the manufacturers. It is a battle of wits the whole time and I have very little doubt as to who will get the best of the battle in the long run. I do not consider that the Prices Tribunal, even if it had the time to go into these matters, is any effective protection to the public. I know of one case regarding which the Minister answered a question in the Dáil where five months elapsed—a lot of correspondence, some in Irish, went meanwhile backwards and forwards—before a certain question, that is, the question of the additional price of motor cars, was considered before the Prices Tribunal. It was eminently a matter that could be investigated very quickly because the information that the motor car assemblers would have been able to supply would have told the whole story.
The Minister may say that I am taking every opportunity I can to discredit Irish manufacture. That is not my intention. I am perfectly sincere about this matter. I am convinced that intolerable burdens are being placed on Irish manufacturers by this economic policy. Such is the system of control that those who are in a position to give the full facts are very often afraid to speak. A certain amount of pressure is put upon them and they know that difficulties will be put in their way if they speak out openly. They know that it is in their interests not to speak about these things, but I feel it my duty and privilege on an occasion like this to bring these matters before the House. I am not going to deal with the remedy. I agree with the Minister that we have got to accept this Bill and I do not desire to trespass further upon the indulgence of the House, having expressed my opinion on how this policy is operated.
I just want briefly to say a word or two to express my resentment of the Minister's attitude towards the point of view which I have already expressed on this Bill. I am not going either in this House or outside it to permit the Minister, or any of the sheep behind him, to put me in the category of those who stand against the progress and development of Irish industry. Perhaps I have spent as much of the money that has come my way in buying the products of Irish industry as either the Minister or anybody in his Party. As long as I can remember, the development of Irish industry has been a policy which I have been sponsoring and standing for. I am sure it is a very long time ago since I put on the first pair of Irish-made boots. I think the Minister is standing in his own light, and doing his industrial policy a grave disservice, when he tries to brow-beat either myself or others who have sufficient moral courage to say what they know the facts to be. I could say quite a number of other things which I know are true, but which I know would not be in the least helpful in getting our people to buy the products of Irish industries. I want the Minister to understand that my one desire is to see Irish industries built up on the right lines. Equally I want him to understand that I have none of the slave mind and that I am not easily intimidated.
The Minister described Senator Johnston's policy as archaic. He evidently believes that his own policy is something new and modern. One would think that the Minister's policy, if it is so irreproachable, would have shown some indication of progress to-day but what are the facts? Has his policy stopped emigration, raised the standard of living or reduced the price of the commodities we have got to buy? I do not know by what standard you are going to measure progress, but the new industries have done nothing whatever to increase the population. The facts are that there has been a definite decline in population right along from the commencement of this more intensified industrial policy. These are the facts and, measuring them by the results, I do not know that the Minister can feel very satisfied. I am not satisfied either. That is the truth and no matter whether the Minister likes it or not the truth must be stated.
The Minister has not been planning. He has been imposing tariffs indiscriminately and thoughtlessly. As Senator Keane has pointed out, he has imposed new tariffs and brought new industries into existence, but these industries can only flourish and thrive if they are provided with raw materials at an economic price. Other industries have been brought into existence with the object of providing these raw materials and immediately a heavy tariff was placed on these raw materials, so that existing industries which require these raw materials were seriously handicapped. The Minister does not like us to say that but that is the fact. Whatever applause he may be able to stir up amongst people here who pretend to stand for Irish industry—some of them probably will go out later and buy whatever they think is the best value for their money —this is not a policy that is going to get real industrial development and progress here. I have expressed my views on this Bill because I believe I have a perfect right to do so. We are here to talk of things as we find them. It should be our desire to get the collective wisdom and experience of every member of the Oireachtas directed on all these problems. If we are just to be scouted out of the House and sat upon every time we attempt to express our views, we cannot obtain that cohesion and organisation that are necessary for succesful consideration of these problems.
I should like to ask the Minister a question. Recently a statement has been made that gas masks are regarded as wearing apparel and that a duty of 60 per cent. was charged upon them. I am told that a very large consignment was arriving here during the crisis and that the people who were importing them were told that they would have to pay a duty of 60 per cent. on them. One would think, after listening to some speeches in this House, that they should be allowed in free of duty. Is the Minister taking any steps to initiate the manufacture of them in this country? I think, after all we have heard here, we should realise the necessity for them. The statement to which I refer has been made by a very representative man in business and I should like to know if there is any foundation for it. If there is, it is Customs gone mad.
May I say that I enjoyed thoroughly listening to the Minister replying, especially when he got really hot and bothered in the effort to deal with my rather academic effort. It has been said that when you know you have a bad case it is a good idea to abuse the other side. I greatly enjoyed the abuse which the Minister levelled at me for, I daresay, I am right in thinking that when he referred to my professorial and academic status he meant that as a term of abuse. On the point that the giving of protection as a means of stimulating industry is effective only in proportion as it is used sparingly and discriminatingly, I would remind the House that there is a tariff of 30 per cent. on finished collars which are made in Eire. Well, that is very nice for the people concerned, but the fact that they pay a 40 per cent. duty on the material which they must use for manufacture of those collars greatly diminishes the advantage to them of the tariff which they enjoy on their finished products. In other words, the more tariffs you have the less advantage any particular tariff is to any particular industry. That is the whole point of my remarks to-day.
I have been accused of bringing out certain hoary economic doctrines. They are old, if, indeed, commonsense is old, but they are not so old, as I said by way of interruption when the Minister was speaking, as some of the heresies which are stalking abroad not only in Ireland but in the whole world to-day. The heresies in question were well known in the 18th century, and were referred to at that time as the mercantilist doctrines. The whole of the French economy was affected by those mercantilist ideas, with the result that industrial development in France was strangled by over-regulation, and agriculture, too, was penalised by the general tendency of the State to discourage agriculture in order to favour industry. We seem to be repeating the same errors and heresies that brought ruin to that great State, and were among one of the primary causes of the French Revolution. But, of course, the tragedy is that history is written in vain for those who make history, because those who make history, like the Minister, never seem to be able to learn from history.
One final point I would like to emphasise, and it is that you can have no wise economic policy for any particular industry unless you have an economic policy which is wise from the point of view of the nation as a whole. Now, the Minister has not one economic policy. He has as many economic policies as there are industries whose problems are submitted to him by the people concerned therewith. My whole criticism of him is, that he has no general conspectus of the economic life of the nation as a whole, and especially of the terriffic importance of the relationship between agriculture as a whole and industry as a whole. It must never be forgotten that agriculture is our major export industry. Normally, half our agricultural produce is exported. Industrially speaking, we import far more by way of industrial raw materials than we export by way of industrial finished goods. It follows from that situation that, since we must depend on foreign sources for our industrial raw materials, we can only hope to continue to pay for those imported industrial raw materials if we can continue to export agricultural products. In other words, we depend for even the possibility of maintaining industry for home consumption here on our ability to continue exporting agricultural goods.
That point was emphasised, and was one of the most important points so emphasised, in the report of the Banking Commission. It was pointed out that our strong creditor position and the tremendous solvency of our present international financial position are really the result of the large-scale agricultural exports which we made in the years of high war prices. One of the members of the Banking Commission told me that we were the only country in the world whose farmers had the sense to keep their war profits, but the profits which they made in the Great War have been dissipated largely by the consequences of the economic policies pursued in the last six years. The fact that even our industry depends for its ability to buy those raw materials on the prosperity of our agriculture is a fact which I would like to brand into the mind of the Minister, and with that final remark I sit down.
Tá an chainnt uilig ar an cheist seo ag dream beag baoideach san Tigh seo agus ní dóigh liom gur ceart é sin. Tá an clamhsán uilig ag Seanadóir Baxter agus Seanadóir Mac Eoin agus daoine mar iad agus is i mBeurla a labhrann siad. Is é mo thuairim gur mithid úsáid a bhaint as an Ghaedhilg agus an taobh eile den sgéal a innsint. Isé atá uainn ná an tír seo a chur arís ar a bonnaibh agus chun é sin a dhéanamh is gá na hearraí a bhí ag teacht isteach chugainn ó thíortha eile do dhéanamh dúinn féin.
Deir Seanadóir Mac Eoin go bhfuil barraidheacht bídh againn san tír seo. Ní dóigh liom gur fíor sin ach, más fíor é, ba cheart nach mbeadh ocras ná cruadhtan ar mhuinntir na tíre seo. Má táimíd i ndon go leor bídh a thógáil ba chóir do na daoine a bheith i ndon ábhar maireachtana a fhághail. Na rudaí eile atá de dhith orainn, ba cheart dúinn a bheith ábalta iad do dhéanamh ar ár son féin. Dá bhrígh sin, molaim go hárd saothar an Aire chun ár ndéantúisí a athbheodhú agus déantúisí nua a chur ar bun, i dtreo go mbeidh teacht i dtír maith againn ar ár saothar féin.
Dubhradh nach rabhamar i ndon na hearraí atá de dhíth orainn a dhéanamh chó maith agus a deintear i agus i dtíortha iasachta eile iad. Bhal, ní raibh mórán seans againn go fóill. Cuireadh cosc le n-ár ndéantúisí san am atá thart agus nílimid anois ach ag tosuighe arís. Isé mo thuairim go bhfuil an oiread stuama agus nirt againn a thiubhras an iarracht seo chun críche agus an tír seo a chur ar a bonnaibh arís. Isé sin an teagasc a bhí ag náisiúntí san tír seo ar feadh céad bhliain no nios mó ná sin agus is ceart an teagasc sin a chur i bhfeidhm.
I have nothing to say on the question asked by Senator Foran about gas-masks. Perhaps his information is correct, and perhaps it is not. If he wishes I can make some inquiries into the matter. In any case, he may be sure that the difficulty in connection with the definition of wearing apparel is one that has often arisen before. That difficulty can be removed by the use of the powers given in the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act, 1932, without immediate reference to the Oireachtas. So far as Senator Baxter is concerned, I would like to say this to him: that if at any time in his life he has seen an Irishman working hard, I would like him to say so; that if at any time he has purchased an Irish product and found it to be as good as any made abroad, that he would say so; that if he has ever seen an Irish farmer wearing Irish-made boots without getting rheumatism, he would say so—in general that, now and again, he would give the old country a boost. We do not object to getting kicks; what we do object to is getting nothing but kicks.
Senator Johnston accused me of putting into practice principles which, he said, had brought not only ruin on French industries but was among the causes of the French Revolution. I am not a betting man, but if I were I would not be afraid to lay six to four against anything of the kind happening here. However, I do not think that any of us are going to live to see if his prophecies are likely to prove to be strictly accurate or inaccurate. Of course, it is obvious that we must continue to export our agricultural produce in order to pay for the raw materials we import. The Senator has fallen into the fallacy, which others before him have fallen into, namely, that there is necessarily some conflict between the prosperity of our agriculture and the development of our industries. That conflict does not exist, and I think that, in so far as factors have appeared which would seem to indicate the existence of such a conflict, they were due to temporary causes, defective planning or other remediable causes.
I do not think Senator Sir John Keane is the maker of propaganda against our industries; I think he is the victim of that propaganda. That is obvious from his remarks. He started by reminding us that the finished products of one industry are often the raw material of another and proceeded to talk very much about the price of fabricated steel. In present circumstances, the steel fabricators have to buy the unfinished product from firms competing with them for fabricated work. Very frequently they are unable to purchase the raw steel at a price which will enable them to compete under fair terms with the foreign firms. That is due to the fact that the steel trade is tightly controlled by an international cartel which has received governmental recognition in most European countries and which is, in fact, able to dictate prices and allocate markets, etc., and if the Belgians were able to sell fabricated steel at a price which our steel manufacturers could not compete with, that was due to the fact that the cartel had decided that our steel manufacturers would not get the steel and that the Belgians would be facilitated in cutting prices. That is a form of control over industrial activities and prices much more effective perhaps than our Prices Commission and much less obtrusive, and about which Senators should concern themselves a little more.
I should like to say that when I spoke about the new steel plant that is being erected in Cork I said that there is no reason, in my opinion, why steel could not be produced here as cheaply as it is being sold in Great Britain. I think we could do it cheaper. In saying that, I recognise that the British price is a cartel price. It probably contains a number of uneconomic elements. But, if the plant erected in Cork is properly equipped and efficiently managed, it will be able to get its raw materials, its coal and labour, as cheap as any similar plant in Great Britain and will be able to work better because, from all the documents I have read on the subject, the British plants are, on the whole, extremely inefficient. It is undoubtedly true that, on occasion, for specialised classes of goods like the goods required for a railway, to which the Senator referred, Irish firms cannot compete at anything like the price at which English firms, which turn out these goods in millions against the thousands required here, are able to supply, particularly if the foreign firm is anxious to retain a position in the market here. But, when Senators seek to compare the price quoted for an English product against an Irish product, there are so many factors which they must take into account before they can be satisfied that there is a fair basis of comparison that it is almost impossible to do so. One must be satisfied that each price is yielding a profit to the person selling the goods, that there are not other factors, such as I referred to in the case of fabricated steel, operating, and that in every way the price quoted by a foreign firm is capable of comparison with the price quoted here. That investigation can only be carried out by such a body as the Prices Commission, and they found considerable difficulty in getting some foreign firms who quoted low prices to show that these prices were in fact economic.
Question put and agreed to.