On the last two occasions when this Vote was discussed in the Dáil I was sorry to find from the speeches I heard that I had not succeeded in making members understand what sort of a place Haulbowline is, what we are doing there, or why it costs what it does cost. I propose, therefore, to-day to make a somewhat fuller statement, and the Dáil will excuse me if I go over ground which has been gone over on former occasions. But to-day, besides touching on the history and the present position of Haulbowline, I have also to explain what we are going to do to reduce expenditure and why we have not done it before. Haulbowline is a small island—about 67 acres—partly consisting of made ground on the top of a sand bank in Cork Harbour, near Cobh. The British Government constructed a naval dockyard there and also a military station with naval and military stores. During the European war the dockyard was very fully employed and some hundreds of men found work there and also in the neighbouring privately-owned dockyards of Rushbrooke and Passage.
When the European war came to an end this work began to come to an end also and there began to be unemployment in Cobh and the neighbourhood. In order to avert or delay this misfortune the late Michael Collins on behalf of the Free State Government made an agreement with the British Government by which the British Admiralty kept the dockyard at Haulbowline at full work and the Free State Government paid the cost. This lasted for one year.
It was then decided that the British Government should evacuate Haulbowline and that the Saorstát Government should take it over. This was carried out on the 31st of March, 1923. Of course the preliminary arrangements took a good deal of time and they included a considerable reduction in the dockyard's staff of workmen. It was cut down to what it was thought might be required by the Saorstát Government which amounted to about 90 men, who were taken over. The British troops went out and the Saorstát troops went in. The Saorstát garrison varied in strength from time to time. At its strongest it was about 900 men. Besides infantry it included some special troops of the marine section. For a time the dockyard was pretty fully employed in reconditioning some trawlers which had been purchased for the Saorstát Government and converting them into patrol boats for use in the warlike operations going on at that time.
It was already clear, however, that it was not desirable to keep Haulbowline permanently working as a dockyard under Government management. The vessels owned by the Government are not sufficient to provide continuous repair work for even a small dockyard and Haulbowline is not a small yard. It was designed to deal with war ships and has a dry dock of 600 feet long, larger than those of Rushbrooke and Passage, and it has all sorts of machinery, including large sheerlegs for lifting great weights, and other powerful plant. It is the sort of place which might be useful to a big firm with a lot of miscellaneous work of repairing ships of all sizes but it would not be suitable for the very small amount of ship repairing work which the Government has to give, except at an extravagant cost. Numerous suggestions for using the place for manufacturing purposes have been made from time to time but none of them has assumed a shape which is worth serious consideration. The Government, therefore, at once made an endeavour to lease the dockyard to a private firm. It was advertised in July, 1923, and efforts were made by Messrs Crowley and Partners, who were at that time engineering agents to the Government, to bring it to the notice of any parties who might be interested. No offer of any kind resulted which is not surprising in view of the great depression then existing in the shipbuilding business. It was then specially brought to the notice of Messrs. Furness, Withy and Co., who owned Rushbrooke and Passage yards.
It is obvious that the dockyard at Haulbowline is likely to be more useful if worked in conjunction with those at Rushbrooke and Passage than separately. Messrs. Furness Withy did not make any offer. The question then was whether to shut the place down or carry on for a time at a loss. It was decided to carry on for a time. The reasons for that decision were, shortly, these: In the first place, the garrison remained on the island, though much reduced in numbers, and the chief military hospital for the Cork District remained there up to September, 1927. While they were there we could not shut down some of the expensive services, such as the steam ferry boats to Cobh, which cost at that time about £4,000 a year, and the general electricity supply. In the second place, we could not shut down the island altogether in the sense of abandoning it, because the plant and the buildings, which had cost the British Government very large sums, are too valuable to be allowed to drop into ruin, while owing to their nature and the peculiar character of the island, it would cost substantial sums merely to keep them in repair. In the third place, we had to consider the general position of the ship-repairing industry in Co. Cork and the question of unemployment. Cobh and the neighbourhood had been hard hit by the cessation of war work, but the Queenstown Dry Dock Company, owned by Messrs. Furness Withy, gave intermittent employment at Rushbrooke and Passage. The special facilities available at Haulbowline, the large dry dock, the special plant, and also the oil tanks, which I have not hitherto mentioned, were useful to the Queenstown Dry Dock Company and were from time to time used by them. This use could not have continued if Haulbowline were shut down.
The Government, still making special efforts to keep the ship-repairing industry going, voted out of relief grants a certain sum in the years 1924, 1925, 1926 and 1927 to the Queenstown Dry Dock Company as a subsidy in the form of a percentage of the wages paid so as to induce the Company to keep their shipyards open. After this payment had stopped, Messrs. Furness Withy intimated that they did not see their way to keep the shipyard going, and asked for a renewal of the subsidy. This was refused, but, as a concession, the use of the dry dock and plant at Haulbowline, for which hitherto small hire charges had been made, was given free, and also the use of two of the oil tanks, for which rent, up to then, had been charged.
These concessions, although not large in themselves, involved the keeping open of Haulbowline with a competent staff to work it as a dockyard. The reduction of this staff to what is necessary for mere maintenance would in the first place have involved the discharge of 50 or 60 men from Haulbowline itself, with no particular prospect of employment, and in the second place would have made it somewhat more likely that Messrs. Furness Withy & Co. would shut down the Rushbrooke and Passage yards and thus lead to further unemployment.
The position has now changed in several respects. Shipbuilding is somewhat less depressed than it was. Messrs. Furness Withy & Co. have, we understand, disposed of the Rushbrooke and Passage yards to another large firm, Messrs. Beardmore of Glasgow. We hope now to be able to lease Haulbowline either to Messrs. Beardmore or to some other firm, but whether we lease it or not we have decided to cease carrying it on as a Government dockyard. The conditions of employment have improved somewhat in the neighbourhood of Cork City by the establishment of Ford's tractor factory there, and we think our workmen at Haulbowline should now be able to find work elsewhere. Accordingly we are about to close down. If we lease the place, of course we transfer to the lessee the obligation of maintenance. If we do not lease it, we shall retain a small staff for maintenance purposes.
The figures in the Estimates, therefore, represent a transitional period, during which we shall be closing down. Now coming to the sub-heads of the Vote: sub-head A, £9,000, as compared with £12,300 in 1928-29. The expenditure in 1928-29 and previous years was about 88 per cent. for labour and about 12 per cent. for materials; the great bulk is for the wages of the dockyard staff. That staff, as I have explained, will be cut down before the end of the financial year to small dimensions, but we could not when the Estimate was made say how soon it would be feasible to make the reduction or how quickly it can be made, and it was therefore thought desirable to make a provision of £9,000, nearly ¾ of last year's provision.
Sub-head B is a token Vote; we do not, in fact, expect to do any ship-repairing this year, but there might be an urgent case which we could not refuse. Sub-head C—Fuel and Light—is much reduced from last year; naturally when we have closed down the steam ferry, which we shall do about the end of August, and closed the dockyard so that we have no longer to pump out the dry dock, and stopped the supply of electric light, there will be very small expenditure on coal and fuel oil; so that this Estimate is for part of a year only for the full establishment.
If we do not lease the dockyard it will be an economy to purchase a smaller electric generator than that at present in use so as to carry out the necessary pumping and other maintenance work more cheaply. This expenditure will not be necessary if the dockyard is leased.
There is one other point which I think it well to mention, that is the position of the residents on the island. There are at present living on the island about 307 people, men, women and children, occupying 57 dwelling houses, which are the property of the Government. None of these people pays any rent. Some of them are our work people, some are men who formerly worked in the dockyard and who now work elsewhere, and they and their families stay on in their houses on the island because they find it convenient to do so, or because they find it hard to get accommodation elsewhere. The Government maintains their houses and supplies them with water and various small services for nothing, and they have the free use of the steam ferry boats. They also get electricity, for which they pay. When the dockyard is shut down these services will cease. We are anxious to treat these people with all consideration, and not to turn them out of their houses without notice; we are not likely, so far as we can see, to have any immediate use for the houses. But the gratuitous services which may in some cases make these houses desirable residences will shortly come to an end, and it is, therefore, to be hoped that these residents should begin to look out for other places to live in. The very peculiar conditions under which these houses are at present occupied are not such as we ourselves should ever have allowed to become established; we took them over from the British Government, and we have been anxious, as in the case of the workmen themselves, not to produce hardship by abrupt action. Perhaps we have carried our consideration too far; at all events, we cannot, in the interests of public economy, carry it much further.