To ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will take steps to check the importation of cardboard boxes and paper bags by Irish manufacturers, in view of the amount of unemployment existing in the trade in this country?

replying for Minister for Industry and Commerce:— The depression in the cardboard box and paper bag industry is due partly to the general industrial depression and partly to the fact that cross-channel competitors are able to put their products on the Irish market at prices considerably lower than Irish manufacturers. Until the latter have put themselves in a position, by improved methods of production and in other ways, to reduce their prices, restrictions on the importation of cardboard boxes and paper bags would unduly handicap Irish consumers of these products. Some firms have already installed new machinery, but the depression in trade has made it difficult up to the present to judge of the results. If the interested parties wished me to receive a deputation on the matter I would be glad to do so.