I am not going to take up the time of the House at any great length. I notice there has been a great deal of glorification about this tariff on oats. The members of the Fianna Fáil Party, led by Deputies Aiken and Ryan, are quite confident that the tariff is going to be the salvation of the farmers of this country. The Fianna Fáil policy is a policy of wholesale tariffs on agricultural products and wholesale tariffs on industrial products, and they tell us that that policy is going to save the farmers and to save the country as well. I am not going to apologise, nor am I going to give any explanation as to why I said in the past that a tariff on oats can, in my opinion, have ultimately very little effect on the farming industry. But I am glad for two reasons that this tariff has been imposed because in the first place it is going to be of some little advantage to the farmers even though that advantage is going to be shortlived. In the second place, and this is the most important reason to my mind, it is going to prove an education to the farmers of the country just as the tariff on butter has been an education to the farmers of the country. It is quite clear that the advantage which will accrue from this tariff is going to be a slight one.
We happened during the past couple of years to have an increase in the imports of oats. That is due probably, at least possibly, to the climatic conditions of the past two summers which have been very unfavourable to the growth of oats. The weather has been very wet and the oats did not fill out very well. The result is that there has been a definite shortage in the homegrown oats and ordinary commercial oats has had to be imported. The effect of that has been that the price of oats in this country has been fixed by the price of imported oats. Now the recommendations of the Tariff Commission in this matter of oats will, in my opinion, keep out to a very large extent this importation of oats with the consequent effect that the requirements of this country being greater than the actual amount of oats in the country, the price of oats will go up to an extent. It will to that extent help the farmers who grow oats for sale in depressed times. I am very glad of that. In so far, however, as regarding this as a permanent advantage to the farmer I have very little hopes that it will be so. Deputy Ryan and the other Fianna Fáil Deputies who are glorifying this tariff on oats to such an extent as to suggest that it is going to be the salvation of the farmer, will find after this tariff has been tried out that that cannot possibly be the case.
Paragraph 42 of the Report of the Tariff Commission on this matter clearly explains the effect of this tariff on the price of oats in this respect. The paragraph reads:
If production and the proportion thereof retained for use on farms were such that there would be an insufficient home supply to meet non-agricultural needs the price of oats on the home market would, prima facie, advance in the event of a tariff being imposed. Then if the higher price obtainable proved attractive to growers, a larger acreage would undoubtedly be placed under oats, and production would once more be increased to the point where a surplus would be available for export. This process would gradually equate the home price to the world price, and a grower, producing oats with a view to sale as a cash crop, would in the long run find himself no better off than he was before the tariff was imposed, and would not, therefore, be inclined to increase permanently the area under oats.
That paragraph makes my point perfectly clear. As soon as the amount of oats produced in this country by the farmers exceeds the home requirements of the country we will immediately have an exportable surplus, and it is an axiom of political economy that the moment you have an exportable surplus the price received for the article sold in the country must equate with the price got for that part of the product which is sent out of the country. A gap has to be filled before we have an exportable surplus, and that gap is a comparatively small one. In 1930-31 we had an excess of imports over exports of 495,875 cwts. That is the biggest gap we had. But that was a gap in a very bad season. There will be a gap again this year.
Probably the effect of this tariff will be to stimulate the farmers to grow more oats next year. As soon as the farmers grow sufficient oats to fill up that gap there will again be an exportable surplus. I see no reason to think that the farmers will not in the coming season under the stimulus of an increased price which has been brought about by the imposition of this tariff, grow sufficient oats to fill up the gap. Then we will have an exportable surplus. As soon as we begin to export our home price is regulated by the external price. The result will be that we will then be in the same position as we were before the tariff was imposed. I am not objecting at all to this tariff on oats. If I have been wrong in my forecast as to the result of this tariff on oats I will be glad to be found wrong.
I would be glad to see a tariff imposed on any agricultural product on which a tariff could effectively be imposed and the effect of which would be to increase the price that the producer will get for his article no matter how small that increase may be. I say in regard to this as in regard to any other article of agricultural production that the possibility of the imposition of tariffs being a benefit is very slight indeed. It is doubtful now whether the tariff on butter has had any definite permanent effect whatever in increasing the price the farmer gets for his butter. There was some advantage the first year. Similarly the tariff on oats clearly has increased the price this season; the price this season will be definitely higher than if a tariff had not been imposed. The effect is temporary. As soon as our production of oats exceeds the requirements of the country and as soon as we begin to send oats abroad, it is no longer any advantage.
I do not maintain that the advocates of a tariff on oats or butter or bacon, or any other article of agricultural production, are consciously dishonest in their demands for a tariff on these products. I will accept it that they are honest, that they believe that, at least to some extent, it would benefit the producers. But they are dishonest from this other point of view. They are dishonest in that they are endeavouring to cover up their whole policy of wholesale tariffs by pretending that the salvation of the farmers lies almost exclusively in tariffs on agricultural products, and that equal advantages will accrue to the farmers' industry as will accrue to the owners of industrial concerns by the imposition of tariffs on industrial products.
With the possible exception of the demand for a tariff on bacon, behind which there are some real farmers, in so far as there has been a demand for tariffs on agricultural products, to my own knowledge spread over a period of many years, that demand has been helped on by, financed, and the propaganda has come to a very large extent from, those who are interested not in the agricultural industry, not in increasing the prices of agricultural products, but in getting tariffs for industrial products. That is the danger in a demand of this kind; that is the danger of a policy such as is advocated by Fianna Fáil when they state that this is going to be of immense benefit to farmers. Doubtless if we had a general election within the next two months the farmers could be told, and some of them might be foolish enough to believe, that a definite material permanent benefit would accrue from this tariff, but by this time twelve months their eyes will be opened and they will realise that the tariff was to a large extent a passing advantage and that the advantage will almost have passed away.
My attitude with regard to tariffs on agricultural products, taking this particular tariff as an illustration of the general policy of tariffs on agricultural products, is that if on examination by the Tariff Commission—and I believe that applications for all tariffs should be examined by the Tariff Commission —it can be shown that a tariff will at least do no harm to the community, it ought to be imposed. It can be stated definitely that this tariff cannot do any harm to the agricultural community. It will temporarily stimulate production and to that extent it is an advantage.
Unlike Deputy Ryan and other Fianna Fáil Deputies, who say that they stand for agriculture, I am not infallible. I have learned certain things from the Tariff Commission. I have learned that certain things were not quite as I thought they were. That in itself is an advantage. I have learned, for instance, that there is no great opposition from racehorse owners and trainers to the imposition of a tariff; that in an ordinary dry year Irish oats is as good as imported oats for racehorses. I am glad to learn that, and to have the point cleared up. In expressing an opinion on these things I was expressing the opinion conveyed to me by people who should be in a position to know. Apparently they were wrong. Apparently they were not prepared to carry that opinion before the Tariff Commission. In so far as the point is cleared up it is an advantage to know that there is no particular reason why foreign oats should come in to feed Irish racehorses.
I am particularly pleased to find that it is not necessary to import foreign oats for seed purposes. A great many practical farmers were uneducated and uninformed on that point. I was uninformed. I thought it was necessary to introduce foreign seed oats, that there was a tendency for oats grown over and over again in this country to get run down and unsuitable, and that we had to refresh our stock occasionally by the importation of foreign oats. That is an opinion commonly held and expressed by practical farmers. We now find it is not necessary, that we have pure lines of seed which can effectively meet our demands. In so far as that may help to create a new branch of the farming industry, it may be helpful.
There are certain disadvantages attaching to this, but I think they are of a temporary nature and that the people who are suffering from these disadvantages will be prepared to put them against the general benefit. There is the disadvantage that in certain parts of the country farmers do not grow sufficient oats to meet their feeding requirements. I think that a little education will be helpful to those farmers in that respect. They will find that they can fully substitute maize on a cheaper basis as a feeding stuff for oats, and that oats will meet their requirements. Again I say that I am glad that this tariff has been found to be of some use. It is undoubtedly going to be of a temporary advantage to the farmers, and I welcome it to that extent. The idea, however, that it is going to be of permanent advantage is unsound and based on unsound reasons. I would suggest to farmers that they should accept this for what it is worth, but I do not think there is anything, beyond an advantage of one or two years until we produce all the oats we require in this country, that will accrue to the farmers.