It would be a mistake for the Minister, in getting this Bill through the House, to assume that by introducing it he is making the ratepayers in the county board of health areas satisfied: that he is doing what is fair and just by them. I want to tell him that they are not satisfied. Possibly, the Minister has been told that quite frequently and he may know that it is true. Senator Honan has described the Minister as a townsman. He may feel that, being a townsman administering the country's affairs, he has to give a divided allegiance. But we know, although it is said that people do not speak up for the towns as they do for the country, that the town always comes off best. It is a fact that the rates in the country districts to-day are higher by £852,000 than they were in 1931-32. So far as the Minister's administration is concerned, there has been no corresponding increase in the amount of the grants coming to the rural community from the Central Fund. It is a fact that the policy of the Minister has been responsible, to a very great extent, for this very considerable increase in the demand made on the local ratepayers for all sorts of schemes, quite good in themselves, but very expensive. All that increase is being borne by the occupiers of land.
The Minister now wants to make this measure permanent on the lines on which it has been administered over the past four years. The total amount of the Agricultural Grant is not anything like as large as it ought to be. I hold that the local ratepayers are definitely entitled to much greater relief from the Central Fund than the Minister is making available for them, mainly because there has been such a large increase in local taxation. There is the additional fact that the capacity of the farmer to-day to carry this increased burden is not at all what it was in 1931-32. There are many reasons for that. A number of them are known to the Minister and to members of his Party. I need not go into them at any length now, but the fact is not contested, even by members of the Minister's Party, that the capacity of the farmer to bear taxation is not as good now as it was in 1931-32.
What is the position of the farmer with regard to the amount of rates which he is paying? To-day, these amount to £3,057,558 as against £2,445,269 in 1931-32. That being the position, one cannot expect the farmer to say that it is just. On the other hand, there is no use in telling us of the benefits that have accrued to the farmer as a result of the halving of the land annuities. It may be that when the farmers of this generation are dead and gone—when all they suffered during the economic war is long forgotten—a new generation, if a new generation is left, will derive some benefit from that particular process. The position, undoubtedly, at the moment is not being met by what the Minister is making available through this Bill. There are certain other considerations as well. His predecessors gave a larger grant than that which is forthcoming presently. The Minister changed the basis of the grant and started operating this scheme whereby the grant becomes available on the basis of the employment given. I do not know whether the Minister has ever thought of examining the results of this scheme, to see whether it is bearing fruit or not.
In the first place, there has obviously been no encouragement given to employment on the land through the operations of this scheme. We have actually 43,000 people fewer employed—42,187 fewer males employed in agriculture now than we had when this Act started to operate—so that, if the Minister wants an answer as to whether he is getting anywhere in the matter of employment on the land under this scheme, the obvious answer, as shown by the figures themselves, is that he is not. He thought that he was doing better by applying the grant in this way in the matter of giving employment. Any sensible man—a farmer, anyhow—if he attempted some scheme that he believed was going to be for the betterment of himself or of his industry, and found after working it for three or four years that it was not bringing the expected results, would certainly contemplate a change. The Minister is going to make this scheme permanent, instead of trying to introduce a change.
I wonder has the Minister ever thought of applying a scheme from the point of view of trying to get increased production. It seems to me that what we have got to face up to here is to try to get greater production in agriculture. Greater production is the essential thing, greater production per unit of labour employed. If the Minister is doing anything, it seems to me that this scheme is to encourage a type of labour on the land that is not the most efficient, that is costly. There is a certain encouragement to keep men working, whether the return is being obtained from them or not. Take the case of a farmer in, say, Limerick or Tipperary or North Cork, or in any of the dairying districts where to-day they have problems with regard to labour difficulties, including the difficulty of getting labour in consequence of the Agricultural Wages Act, the Hours of Employment Act, and so on, difficulties which, generally, have to be met and faced by the dairy farmer in getting his work done, getting his cows milked punctually, regularly and efficiently. Now, if a farmer placed like that decides to put in a milking machine and perhaps drops a man or two men, partly because the men are not available and perhaps, to some extent, because they are not as efficient as he would like them to be, that man actually may increase his total production. He is the best type of citizen, the best type of farmer, but in spite of his greatly increased productivity, he will, if he drops a man, actually lose in the amount of grant which would be made available to him. I do not think that is right.
The Minister ought to try to encourage in this country, so far as he can encourage work on the land at all, efficient production and greater quantities. The Minister's present scheme does not do that. It works like this. A small farmer may have two or three, or perhaps four, sons. The father of the sons will get relief in his rates, in the name of his sons, so to speak; and you will discover in fact that the sons are engaged in casual work with a neighbouring farmer. In many cases because a man is not being permanently employed he will not be taken into account. A great many of our farmers cannot afford to employ or engage as many permanent hands as they would like. There is a great deal of seasonal employment in agriculture, but the Minister gives no consideration to that at all. This seasonal employment is a very expensive type of labour, and the Minister ought to give some consideration to that point of view. This scheme gives relief neither to the best farmers, nor to the best type of farming, nor to the type which ought to be encouraged by the Minister.
There is another point. The Minister will tell us—at least he told the Deputies in the other House—that the farmers are well off, that he does not like to hear them grumbling, and, generally, that the condition of the farming community is comfortable enough, so that there is no justification for any complaints. I do not think that the farmer grumbles any more than he has justification for. The farmers' difficulties are not, I think, treated by the Minister with the sympathy which they are entitled to get from him. The Minister, for instance, is in charge of the Road Fund, yet we found in the Budget policy for this year that he was prepared to acquiesce in this fund being raided by the Minister for Finance to the extent of £150,000. The ratepayers' grouse against the Minister is that he sends down orders from his Department to local authorities, laying down just what they are to do in the matter of administration of rates and what he will do for them if they do so-and-so. If they point out their difficulties, that they are not getting in rates—the greatly increased rates which ratepayers have to pay to-day—and say to the Minister that he ought to give them some money, he will reply that the money is not available, that it is not in the Road Fund. It is not there because he has permitted the Minister for Finance to raid it. The moneys in the Road Fund are there for a definite purpose, to relieve the burdens on the local ratepayers in the matter of the maintenance and construction of roads; but the Minister is prepared to acquiesce in the policy of the Minister for Finance in taking £150,000 from that fund. As I have said before in this House, it is not the amount which the Minister has taken on this occasion that the local ratepayers are most concerned about: it is the attitude of the Government and the attitude of the Minister for Local Government himself, who does not seem to have sufficient appreciation and understanding of the position in which the local ratepayers are placed to-day, as he is permitting that policy to be established here as a practice.
The Minister ought to have done more this year towards the relief of local rates. He is charged with the responsibility, in the administration of this money, in my view, of encouraging the greatest amount of production which it is possible to get from the land. I do not believe that the way in which this scheme has been administered so far has achieved those results at all. The Minister set out, believing that he could encourage greater employment on the land by administering these moneys in this way. They are gone, and he has failed; and, in view of the situation which confronts the country now, the Minister—in my judgment—ought to examine and recast his whole scheme. In the first place, he is not giving the farmers what they ought to get nor what he ought to give them, in order that they may have what they require in the way of assistance. In the second place, he is not even doing what he hoped himself. Instead of more employment, more production, we have definitely fewer people employed. In circumstances like this, the Minister cannot say that his policy is justified, and I do not think he ought to ask this House to make permanent the situation that now exists.