I move amendment No. 1:
In page 3 before line 1 to insert the following:—
"(1) Every licence made under this Act shall specify—
(a) the metal or metals and
(b) the pyrometallurgical or chemical or leaching or electrolytic or other process in respect of which the licence is granted.
(2) In the case of any licence granted under this Act and not subsequently revoked, no second licence shall be granted in respect of the same or similar process of smelting the same metal or metals as specified in the said licence within a stated period of years from the commencement of smelting operations, such stated period to be specified in the said licence and not to exceed ten years."
This amendment is concerned with the guarantee which the Minister thinks it is appropriate to make to the particular firm which has undertaken a feasibility study in regard to a smelter in this country. During Committee Stage the Minister indicated that there was an agreement in principle in regard to this particular matter and that he agreed with the case I had made that this matter should, if possible, be the subject of a public enactment rather than a private agreement. The issue between us on Committee Stage was whether it was possible to enact a statutory guarantee of this type and still leave enough flexibility in the matter so that the Minister's hands would not be unduly tied. Accordingly, I have substituted for the amendment withdrawn on Committee Stage amendment No. 1 which I now propose. Subsection (1) of this amendment is the same as subsection (1) of the earlier amendment but subsection (2) has been modified in several respects.
It is difficult to draft in haste an amendment of this sort. In the original drafting of the amendment for Committee Stage, apart from certain circumstances which I mentioned on Committee Stage, I suffered under the disability that the report of the Second Stage debate was not in my hands at the time of drafting the original amendment, so that I had to depend on my recollection of what the Minister had said in regard to this guarantee. In drafting this particular amendment for Report Stage during the interval this evening I again suffered under the disability that I did not have before me the account of the Committee Stage debate. This is a severe handicap, and I am not sure that the amendment now put forward suffices in this regard.
While we are quite willing to accommodate the Minister in this, I think that it is a distinct pity that this situation should have arisen both on Report and Committee Stages in regard to a Bill which bears the announcement that it was ordered to be printed in December, 1966. This Bill, which was introduced in Dáil Éireann 15 months ago, took 15 months to go through Dáil Éireann, and the Seanad now finds itself hampered in endeavouring to reach a formula of words on a principle on which the Minister says there is general agreement because this Bill, having taken 15 months to go through Dáil Éireann, has apparently to pass through Seanad Éireann within eight days.
Nevertheless, accepting these disabilities, I do submit that this amendment in subsection (2) of amendment No. 1 is an improvement on the form of amendment which was put forward on Committee Stage and I would ask the Minister if he could not agree that it does meet many of the difficulties which he raised.
I am, of course, depending on my memory in regard to those difficulties. Of the difficulties which he mentioned one was that it might well be that the firm now undertaking a feasibility study would, even if the study were favourable, not wish to go forward, and in these circumstances he might think it desirable to ask another group to undertake something in regard to the operation of a smelter and that he would wish to give a guarantee to this second group. Such a second guarantee is perfectly feasible under this amendment because I have now omitted from the proposal the phrase "within two years", so that even after two years had elapsed even if the feasibility study went on for more than this time the Minister would be able to give this guarantee because if the original firm undertaking the feasibility study either already hold a licence or if they have been given a licence before the feasibility study is completed and then decide not to go ahead, surely it is reasonable that going ahead with the operation would have been a condition of this licence and, therefore, the Minister would have been in a position to revoke the licence when they indicated that they were not going ahead. Accordingly, we then have the case that there is no pre-existing licence granted under the Act and not revoked and so the Minister would be perfectly able to grant a licence to a second group of individuals whether they form one firm or a consortium and he would then be able to grant them a licence which would be the one standing unrevoked licence and could carry the same guarantee. I think the present wording removes any difficulty in regard to the possible granting of a second licence. If, of course, no licence has been granted before the feasibility study ends, then no difficulty arises.
A second point on which the proposal is being amended is that in the original amendment on Committee Stage it is indicated that the period of years should run from the granting of the licence and this has now been altered in accordance with what the Minister indicated was the nature of the guarantee he was prepared to give, that is that it should run from the commencement of smelting operations so that in this second respect the proposal has been substantially altered in order to fit in with what the Minister has said is the type of guarantee which he wishes to give.
The third matter in which the amendment has been altered is in regard to the period of years for which the guarantee of no second licence for the same process could hold. I certainly had the impression from reading the early Stages of the debate in another place that the guarantee was a perpetual one. However, it emerged at the end of the proceedings there and was quite specific in the Minister's Second Stage speech here that the period for which the guarantee would stand would be a period of ten years and this was the reason why the period of ten years was in the amendment put forward on Committee Stage. During the Committee Stage debate the Minister indicated that that is undesirable because he would then be held to ten years and this might, indeed, be an undesirable thing. This has been modified in the present amendment so that all that is required is a stated period not to exceed ten years. All that is required here is that at the time of the granting of the licence the Minister has to state a period. It might well be argued that this would also leave the Minister in difficulties; that he might feel that he had to grant a licence now even before the feasibility study was finished and that, therefore, he could not say now what the appropriate period of guarantee should be but actually under the terms of this Bill there is no need to grant a licence until the day before smelting commences and I think the Minister has quite some freedom in regard to that.
Therefore, in regard to the omission of the limitation of the guarantee to licences issued within the first two years, this has been modified so that the guarantee can apply to a licence issued at any time provided there is no pre-existing licence in regard to the smelting of the same ores by the same process. The second point is that a change has been made to allow the period of years to run from the commencement of smelting operations and, in addition, this period has been made more flexible in regard to ten years or less.
It is a matter for regret I think that the Report Stage amendment should of necessity have to be drafted in haste and that since the period in which this amendment was drafted—the interval of today's sitting—the Minister has hardly had time to indulge in the calm reflection which one likes to expect from a Minister between Committee Stage and the Report Stage of a Bill. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will recognise that we have here something which should be an instrument of sufficient flexibility for his purpose and that he will find it satisfactory so that he could do what he said during Committee Stage he wished to do, namely, to act by way of public enactment rather than by way of private agreement.