If the Deputy will wait I want to deal with this point. Anybody whose income has been increased by less than 64 per cent., if we accept that figure, is suffering some hardship. There may be some who are able to avoid that hardship by calling upon past reserves, but those who have not these reserves have not got that particular kind of relief. Our policy has been, as far as we could with our resources and as far as we were able to manage it, to try and make that inevitable burden, which the war has put upon us, fall equally if we could, certainly to try to arrange it so that those with the strongest shoulders should have to bear the greatest part of the burden.
We first began with those at the level which could not afford to be further depressed. We said there was a certain level. There may be a difference of opinion between us as to the level we should try to draw. There were certain people, anyhow, at such a low level that if you depressed it any more the hardship was going to be excessive. We tried to rule these out and allowed them to negotiate with their employers, or otherwise, so that they might raise themselves up to that particular level. At a later stage we felt that the level was somewhat low, and we raised it. A certain system was arrived at by which adjustments could be made by going before a tribunal.
I need not go into the details about that. It is said that was not sufficient. I am not going to say that the increases that have been allowed compensate for the increase in prices. It does not. The only thing that we can say is that it would be impossible to relieve the whole community. However we like it, the burden has to be borne by somebody. The community as a whole, however it manages it, has to bear the burden that has been imposed. There is the question of trying to even it out. As I have said, we tried to lighten the burden on the shoulders of those not able to bear it.
The discussion, I take it, as far as the Labour members are concerned, was that the burden was going too heavily on two classes (1), the lower paid wage-earners, and (2) that section of the community, the infirm, the aged and some who have no means except what they get through unemployment assistance, old age pensions or the assistance provided by the public authorities. I do not know whether there is any suggestion—I have not heard it and it would not be true if it was made—that the members of the Government have any class leanings. If we have any class leanings they are the leanings that are indicated in the Constitution. These directive principles were put into the Constitution to be a guide for policy, to indicate the objectives which we would strive to aim at. They were put in to be a constant reminder. The Labour Party did not seem at the time to bother very much about them. I am very glad that now they begin to see that the fact that they are there as directives, as things to be appealed to—to the conscience of Parliament and to the conscience of the people—that they have a value. They could be put into the Constitution in no way except as directive principles. Have we tried to act in accordance with these principles? I say that we have, and that wherever it may appear otherwise it is due to the fact that we see certain reactions which would follow from attempting to go as quickly as the Labour members and others want us to go.
The Minister for Local Government to-day pointed out what the reactions would be if the appeals of certain people that we should have a higher income-tax were acceded to. He tried to point out that the sections in the community most likely to suffer from a too rapid progress in that direction would be the people who wanted employment.
When income is diminished people have to cut down their expenditure and, very often, one of the ways in which they have to do that is by dispensing with those who were giving service, as they can no longer afford to keep them. When considering these things we have to look at the reactions, and we very often find that if people try to go too rapidly in a certain direction, that produces results quite contrary to what they aimed to secure. There is that difference of opinion amongst us as to whether the standard we have set is too low. All I can say is that there is no consideration that has been referred to in this House in the last few days but has at some time or other been considered as far as the Government and Ministers are concerned.
We have been very anxious to see that the poorer sections of the community, particularly, should not be adversely affected by some of the steps that had to be taken. I think Deputies will all admit that rising prices have affected the poorer sections of the community very much more than the better off section. In all cases where prices have increased, and there is so-called inflation, when money is plentiful and goods in short supply, the poorer sections are undoubtedly hit harder first. That is one of the reasons why we have to be careful of the expenditure of public money in certain ways, in ways which would send up prices. Deputy Larkin stated that there was an increase of a certain amount in the currency, and a certain increase in the amount of money available and suggested that if that were done in other ways we would complain. We are complaining about it. The difference is this, that this is a thing we cannot help. It is due to the war and to outside conditions. Are we to adopt the course Deputy McGilligan suggested? When I heard Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney speaking this evening I was thinking that he could take some lessons from Deputy Flanagan. We saw the results, and saw that there was a dangerous limit in the pouring out of too much money to the community. That produces a new set of results unless you get production to move step by step with it. If you get a proper balance then you are all right. Wherever there has been an opportunity of using money for productive purposes there has never been lack of money. Whenever there is a chance to use money in such a way that you are going to get consumable goods in return, that is profitable expenditure. I do not want to be carried into that particular field now, because it is one for a long debate.
There are public amenities, housing and questions of that sort. These are useful and necessary for the community. They are things upon which you could go on spending money productively. It is the right and the proper use of money to produce such things. That is being done with due regard to a number of other factors. The whole question would be a very big one to attempt to get into at this stage. I want to say that there has been a considerable increase in social services. That matter is having the constant attention of the Government. I can only tell Deputies that we approach it as one of the most serious matters we have to deal with. In a crisis of this kind, our principal anxiety from the start was to see to the needs of our people. The primary need was food, because if there was not enough food it did not matter what was done otherwise. We could not distribute more than we had got. We had first to get enough food and to see that it was distributed. We had also to see that there was purchasing power, so that goods were actually distributed. That brings us to the question of the coming winter. We blame each other and blame the Government. If this crisis is satisfactorily gone through by this Government, I feel that it does not matter what is said afterwards. If this community gets through the crisis of this war without suffering very severe disaster, no matter what can be said of the Government, it will be there for everybody to see that the Government and the community managed to pull through. I am not concerned, therefore, with the complaints that have been made. It is very easy to say: "If you only did so-and-so, such a thing would not have happened." As has been stated in this House many times, it is very easy to be wise after the event. We were told that we had been urged to do this, that and the other thing. The reasons for not doing so are not given. They could be given, and if Deputies take up the records of the House, they will find that many people who claimed that they did so-and-so did not do so at all but, in fact, went in a contrary direction. We need not worry about that now.
What we have to look to is the future and the position that faces us. The past can look after itself as far as we are concerned. As the Minister for Supplies pointed out some time ago, we are probably facing a most critical year. Looking at the future, we are certainly going to face, I was going to say, the most critical year of the war. I do not know. The year we are going to face is certainly going to be more critical for this community than the years that have passed, and every one of us ought to approach it in that spirit. We are all here as representatives of the people. Taking it as a whole, the Dáil is the body which must, by its policy, try to safeguard the interests of the community. We are all in it. The Opposition have their constructive part to play just as much as we have. I should not say "just as much" because we have a special responsibility, but they also have a responsibility. The fact of having an Executive Government here is only due to the fact that there is no other way in which business could be properly managed. The fact is that every Deputy, whether he is a member of a Party or Independent, has a duty to the nation, to use the knowledge he has to help, to direct and co-ordinate. In view of everything, we have had in the past a time of wonderful co-operation in certain matters.
On the question of defence, I believe if there had been a different attitude and if the Dáil was not united as a body on defence, we might have had a different state of affairs to-day. We have almost as serious a time facing us. I will leave the defence question for the moment. We have to provide, first of all, food for our people. The Minister for Supplies took stock and indicated what our requirements were. The Minister for Agriculture did the same thing in a slightly different form. We want the farming community—and they are the key to this situation—to produce for us 700,000 acres of wheat. If they do not do that, we shall not have our requirements and we shall be put in the position in which we have been put, a position in which we shall have to mix barley with wheat. That would not be bad, if the mixing of the barley did not mean that we should have to kill some of our export trade and put people out of employment, but we can have barely as well as wheat. It can be done. It is not easy, I know, but we are in a war situation, and the same effort as would be made by us to save our community in war ought to be made to see that we get the food.
I appeal to the farmers, as I did last year, the year before, and the year before that, to go out and make a special effort to give us these 700,000 acres of wheat. It can be done. As to oats for human requirements and for animal stock, let us not be giving to the animals the food required for human needs. We can grow the food for the animals, too. Let us go out and do it. We want, on the basis of the average yield, 1,000,000 acres under oats; otherwise we shall be short either for man or for beast. If we are to have barley to put to the uses to which it was put in the past, we shall require 300,000 acres under barley.
Next in importance to wheat as a valuable crop from the point of view of human food and food for animals is the potato crop. In the coming year, we must have 500,000 acres under potatoes. If we want sugar to provide sugar supplies, we must have 80,000 acres under beet, as last year. If we want to have the root crops required for cattle, so that we shall be able to maintain our milk supplies, and so on, we must have 260,000 acres of mangolds and turnips; and of other crops, like vegetables, and so on, 70,000 acres. These all not up to 2,910,000 acres, and we may say that, in rough figures, we want to aim at 3,000,000 acres under tillage. Our total arable land is put at 11,000,000 odd, or nearly 12,000,000 acres, and one would imagine that if we had 25 per cent. of that acreage tilled, we would have enough, but that would not be nearly enough, of course, because there are certain exemptions, such as small plots, and so on. The Ministers working on it have worked out that we require three-eighths of the arable land on every farm tilled. There are exemptions in relation to rotation, and one-quarter is allowed for grass purposes.
It is a big programme. It will not be achieved without effort; it will not be achieved without a realisation of the fact that we are passing through a severe crisis and that if we fail to do it, then we shall inevitably have a shortage. Do not blame us for it. We cannot go in and manage every farm in the country. We cannot go in behind every farmer and say: "Go out and do it". We can get general principles and send inspectors out and so on, punishing offenders whom we find out, but the goodwill of the farmer and his realisation of what is at stake is very much more important than any question of inspectors. I ask all the farmer Deputies to forget for the moment the question of agitation for higher prices and so on. The prices they are being given are reasonable. They are getting a considerable increase on the prices they got before. We are passing through a war situation, and they are the only section in the community at present—they are here, and I say this to them, and I do not care what they say about it afterwards—whose products can show a higher rate of increase than the cost of living.
Because there was a fight for the annuities, I went out and asked the other sections of the community to stand behind the farmers for the years when they were in that fight. I said they were in the front-line trenches and we had to stand behind them. They did so magnificently and saved for this country by their stand a capital sum of close on £100,000,000. The farmers have had the benefit in their reduced annuities and in other respects, and surely we can go to the farmers and ask for their assistance now, when other sections of the community, when those in the cities, those who have been spoken about here, who are unemployed, unable to help themselves, whose wages are low and whose wages cannot be sent up to a level which would give them an opportunity of compensating for some of the increased prices, are in the front-line trenches.
Let the farmers come along and help that section. We are all one community. I appeal to the farmers, as I have appealed at meetings I had through the country, to do this. It is a patriotic duty for the nation, and I hold that they are getting a fair return for their labour. I cannot do any more.
If there is a shortage in the acreage tilled, then there will be a shortage of bread, a shortage of potatoes and a shortage of other things. If the farmers want to keep their stock—and goodness knows, I want to see them keeping their stock; I want to see that stock there as a foundation, as I realise it is the principal industry— they will have to till more. I am not unreasonable, and I do not think anybody appealing to them is unreasonable in asking them to increase their tillage from 1,500,000 acres to 3,000,000 acres, to double their tillage. We are asking them to do that.
At one period not very long ago, our tillage amounted to 1,500,000 acres, which was absurdly low. Countries on the Continent had been tilling up to 60 per cent., which is about the average for the Continent. We do not want the farmers to till 60 per cent; we want them to till three-eighths, and not even three-eighths, because it is three-eighths, less one-quarter, or three-quarters of three-eighths. Can I ask the farmer Deputies and every farmer, no matter on what side he sits, to go out to their own people and ask them to make a big national effort, so that we shall get the whole of this acreage and not a portion of it? That is our first and greatest problem—the problem of getting the food, because if we have not got it, no device of money or any other device will enable us to distribute. You cannot distribute what you have not got.
Deputy O'Higgins said that agricultural production was doubled from 1823 to 1932. I think he must have been dreaming or reading fairy-tales recently. I cannot see how that could have been and the figures for that period do not seem to indicate anything of the kind. Any of us who remember prices at that time know very well that a terrible depression began in the middle twenties and continued until about 1934. I take it that it is the value of his production which matters most to the farmer. Any figures I have seen seem to indicate a reduction from 140 to 110. I have not been able to realise on what basis the Deputy can make such a statement. Based on the 1911-1913 figures of 100, the figure was 140 in 1926-27 and went down to 110 in 1932. I do not know what it was earlier than that. But how he can talk about its having been doubled in that period, I do not know.
With regard to the agricultural industry, the position as I understand it has been this: The particular crops grown have changed, but the volume of production has remained more or less static. It is difficult to relate volumes of cereals, for instance, to volumes in connection with cattle, and so on. But, taking it as a whole, the statisticians would say that the volume of agricultural production has remained static. Crops have changed, of course. We have got on to wheat and other things which we had not before. But the value has gone up very much in recent years. I have shown what it has gone up since the war began. I have not the figures at hand, but I can assure the House from a previous study that all the statistics show that the value has gone up considerably.
As to the post-war period, it is very hard at this stage to do anything like definite planning. There are too many unknowns in the future for anything like definite planning. You can do certain things at the moment. For instance, we had an agricultural commission set up to examine into and make recommendations about improvements in agriculture. They had to stop their sittings because they were getting information which would be completely out of date and useless in four or five years afterwards, or whenever the war would end. There was no real purpose in their pursuing their inquiries. Instead of that, we have now a committee of experts. The other commission, on which there were representatives of farmers and others, stopped their sessions because the information which they were collecting would be completely out of date. Then we appointed a committee of experts. Of course, it has been suggested at times that they knew nothing about farming. I need not go into the personnel of the committee, but it is nonsense to talk about them in that way. They are experts in the particular subjects with which they were dealing, and they have a good knowledge of farming. They are either farmers' sons having expert knowledge of other things, or expert economists. They have been studying that matter with a view to seeing what suggestions they could put forward as to the best lines for our agriculture to follow when the war ends.
A lot of the work, even of the experts, consists of trying to peer into the future. With their knowledge of world affairs and movements and of the economics of other States as well as our own, they are able to make the best guess as to what is likely to be the policies of other States and their effect upon our State. They are doing their best to try to look ahead. They are getting all the available information they can about the present position of agriculture, and the position as it was before the war, and they have that as a background with a view to making recommendations the moment that some of the unknown factors come to be really known. According as each factor becomes known, they will be able to move a step further. But you cannot sit down at present and do anything like definite planning in the sense of producing a plan and saying: "We are definitely going to do so-and-so when the war is over."
One thing that is clear to everybody is that the more each farmer increases his production of the commodities he can produce the better it will be. I think it is likely to be true in the future, as in the past, that mixed farming will be the best type of farming for our people. When considering our agricultural community one wonders what is the best we can look for in the future. I ask myself this question: Suppose that we are pursuing the policy that is indicated in the Constitution of putting as many families on this land of ours as the land can economically carry, how many families can we have on this arable land of ours, the land that is available in farms for the maintenance of people? Suppose we put the average at about 30 statute acres per farm. We have roughly 12,000,000 acres of arable land.