I stated last evening that the educational schemes of the Department cost approximately £153,000. We can all agree as to the importance of education, but the measure of our unanimity on this point is the measure of the differences that immediately manifest themselves when it comes to discussing just exactly what our educational system should be. There is one thing, however, quite certain, and it is that we must get rid of the notion that it is possible to devise a system for the Irish farmer under which he can be educated without undergoing the painful necessity of having to think. Education for the farmer resolves itself into (1) a good primary education; (2) technical education; and (3) university agricultural education. The function of primary education is to teach a boy or girl how to read, write, and calculate, and so far as primary education is concerned, that is its function whether the pupil is or is not going to get the opportunity of a technical or university education, or will afterwards become a farmer, a shopkeeper, a labourer, a professional man, or a manufacturer. Opinions differ in regard to the question as to whether agriculture should be taught in the primary school. Other things being equal, it is fairly obvious that the books in a rural primary school should have a rural bias, but the main point is to see that the primary school fulfils its proper function, that is to say, that it teaches the pupils how to read, write, and calculate. If the primary school does this, it will have done all that should be expected of it. The State can do no more in this matter than to provide good schools and efficient teachers, and to prescribe compulsory attendance.
Technical agricultural education of a secondary character is provided by the Department through their various institutions and schemes. Higher agricultural education is provided in the university colleges. Of the sum of £153,666 mentioned as the estimated cost of Educational Services, £83,844 is the cost of the former and £69,822 of the latter. As I stated already, it is difficult to group particular sub-heads of the Department which deal with education. The sum of £89,200—subheads H (1) and H (2)—being grants to County Committees, the sum of £58,696 being the cost of the work done directly by the Department analogous to that administered by the County Committees, and £125,000, being cost of Headquarters Staff, all include the cost of officers whose work is partly educational. Excluding provision for the university education, the agricultural education of the Department consists of (1) the education of boys and girls at Departmental institutes of which there are five; (2) the education and advisory work done by the instructors and overseers, of which there is a total of about 150; (3) the education and advisory work done by the inspectors of the Department; (4) winter classes conducted by the agricultural instructors; and (5) the publication and distribution of departmental leaflets, of which there are about 100 in circulation, and which are revised, re-issued, and added to, as found necessary.
The first thing to be said about technical agricultural education is that it is essential to bring it to the farmer. This is a country of small farmers. The small farmer's son cannot come to a boarding school, and it is necessary, and will be necessary for a very long time, to bring the facilities for a technical education to his door, and this fact must influence the preparation of any scheme in connection with agricultural education. You may increase the number of students who will come to institutes from two hundred to a thousand, but even if this is effected, there will still be but a very small proportion of farmers' sons getting educated in these institutes. Danish high schools have recently been referred to a good deal, and some nonsense has been talked about them. Danish high schools are not primarily, agricultural schools at all. They are concerned mainly with giving something better than a primary education—I should say about junior grade standard of secondary education—to their pupils. They teach mathematics, languages, and history, and some agriculture. If, for instance, there were some lectures on agriculture given in Ring or Ballingeary colleges, these colleges would fairly closely approximate the Danish high schools. In Denmark less than five per cent. of the farmers' sons attend high schools. Obviously, therefore, a high schools will not solve the problem of agricultural education for our farmers. If there was a high school or institute in every county, charging merely the average fees that are at present charged in our institutes (namely, about £15 per annum), it is not likely that there would be anything like five per cent. of the farmers attending, and even to effect this would cost an additional £100,000 per annum.
Agricultural education can only be brought to the farmer's son by an extension of winter classes, itinerant instructors, and by a more widespread and intensive publicity in the way of pamphlets, etc. The fact that farmers' sons do not attend agricultural classes at present as well as they should is certainly not evidence in favour of a scheme of agricultural education under which the pupil must attend a school from two or three to twenty miles from his residence and pay a considerable fee for the education he gets there. I am not to be taken as ignoring the value of giving a sound agricultural education to a limited number of farmers each year. I would like to see additional institutes where farmers' sons could get a year's or two years' course. It is not right to measure the success of these schools entirely by the number of students who attend them. It must be taken into account that when the pupils from these schools go back to their farms, their work on their farms influences and educates their neighbours. One good farmer in a district has an extraordinary influence on his neighbours.
We must not, however, base our scheme for agricultural education on educating five per cent. of the farming community. These schemes must help directly or indirectly the bulk of the small farmers. As I said, I see no better way of effecting that purpose than by concentrating and extending the existing schemes. Winter classes, however, cannot be extended indefinitely. The existing instructors can only deal on an average with about sixty class-meetings per annum in each county. In other words, they can only tap two or three parishes in each county. Obviously, it would take two or three times the number of instructors to reach half the parishes in each county, and this would mean, say, three or four hundred extra officials costing from sixty to a hundred thousand pounds per annum. It is obvious, therefore, that no possible extension of winter classes will meet the case. I have considered for some time that in this connection valuable work could be done by a Publicity Section in the Department of Agriculture, which would be in a position to use the daily, local, and weekly papers of the country for its purposes. This Publicity Section should also take charge of all the publicity work of the Department—re-editing the pamphlets, arranging for the compilation and distribution of new ones and finally arranging with the local newspapers for, say, an agricultural page each week. This section could, to some extent, mobilise the various technical officers of the Department for the purposes of providing material for the weekly agricultural page of the daily and local papers. The local paper goes into the house of most small farmers, no matter where they live. They get it for the local news and I think that this fact could be capitalised for educational purposes. I contemplate that these agricultural articles should be maintained steadily and should differ for different districts and in different seasons.
For instance, in the dairying districts in spring-time there would be published articles simply written, on the rearing of calves, rations, suitable green crops to be sown in the late summer or early autumn for the early calving cows the following spring, etc. In the potato-growing districts, articles suitable for these districts would appear. Costings in connection with the feeding of cattle would appear. Costings in connection with the feeding of cattle in winter, feeding of pigs, etc., could all be dealt with in their proper time and place. In addition, questions, such as the advantages of growing barley for feeding, growing more oats for the same purpose etc., could be dealt with. A little consideration will, I think, make it clear that there are considerable possibilities in such a scheme, provided it is organised in the proper way. Obviously, such a Publicity Branch is going to have a really difficult task. It is comparatively easy to write for, or to lecture to, people whose standard of education is fairly high. Any normally good man can do it. It takes very much better officers to give the same services to people whose standard of education is not high. The head of such a section is going to have a very difficult task. It would be a far more difficult and much more responsible post than, say, even the managership of a daily paper or a big business house, and people who are interested exclusively in cutting down salaries regardless of services will be pained to hear that I would do my best to persuade the Minister for Finance to attach a really good salary to the post in the hope of getting a suitable man. Such a Publicity Section when fully working would probably cost between £5,000 and £8,000 per annum. I believe it would be good value for the money. All these educational schemes, however, are based on a good primary education and without this it is impossible to make any advance. If a boy can read, write and calculate reasonably efficiently he can afterwards make use of all his opportunities, whether by way of winter classes, pamphlets, etc., which the State puts in his way.
With regard to university education it has been decided to establish two Faculties of Agriculture, one in University College, Cork, and one in University College, Dublin. The Faculty in Dublin is to be a Faculty of General Agriculture, and the Faculty in Cork is to be a Faculty of Dairy Science. It is necessary to incur some capital expenditure in connection with the setting up of these Faculties. It is estimated that the capital expenditure required for Dublin will be £7,000, of which £6,800 will be required this year, and the balance, £450, in the year 1927-28. For Cork the total will be £67,000, of which £50,000 will be required this year, and the balance, £17,000 in 1927-28. The annual expenditure for Dublin will be met by a grant of £24,984 of which £9,422 will be required for 1926-27. The annual expenditure for Cork will be £13,000 of which £3,600 will be required in the current year.
With regard to the Agricultural Faculty in University College, Dublin, it is proposed that all the technical and experimental work shall be done at the Albert Agricultural College, Glasnevin, which, with the farm attached, is to be transferred to the University College. That is to say, practically all the work after First Arts will be done there. In the nature of the case, practically all the work, including chemistry, bacteriology, botany, animal nutrition, plant breeding, animal breeding, plant pathology, forestry, horticulture, zoology, would have to be done within a convenient distance of, or actually on, the farm. Obviously, it would be inconvenient to have laboratory work, say, in plant or animal breeding, plant pathology, animal nutrition, agricultural chemistry, in the laboratories at one centre, and then be under the necessity of taking the students to another centre at a considerable distance for purposes of actual demonstration. Moreover, practically all the laboratories required are at present in the Albert College, and it will be only necessary to spend about £1,000 in making some slight structural alterations, and about £1,500 on additional equipment which does not exist at present in the College of Science or in the Albert College, and which is essential for the Faculty.
Additional farm buildings and machinery will absorb the balance. The annual expenditure—£24,984—is made up of salaries of professors, lecturers, research assistants, demonstrators, annual renewals of laboratory equipment, etc., cost of conducting Albert College Institute and farms, etc. This will be a Faculty of General Agriculture. It includes professorships of general agriculture, animal nutrition, plant breeding and plant pathology, lectureships in agricultural botany and bacteriology, agricultural chemistry, forestry, farm accountancy, agricultural economics, zoology, and horticulture, etc., as well as research assistantships in technical subjects. The function of this faculty will be to give Degrees in Agriculture to the university students and to do research work on the various subjects indicated— animal nutrition, animal breeding, plant breeding, etc. Our aim in this respect is to establish, so far as we can do it, a first-class faculty, to put it, comparatively speaking, beyond financial worries, to provide all the professorships, lectureships, etc., that are required for the staffing of such a faculty, and to provide such salaries as will attract first-class men. From this faculty will come the technical officers required by the Department of Agriculture. It will provide the opportunity to farmers who wish to give their sons a first-class agricultural education, and, in addition, it ought to attract the best men in the university in physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology, to do research work that will have a bearing on agricultural problems.
The faculty at University College, Cork, will be a Faculty of Dairy Science (including research in dairying). The grant for capital expenditure, viz., £67,000, is substantial. New buildings are required, and it is contemplated that the institute itself and the creamery, plus the cost of the farm on which milk for the creamery will be produced, will bring the total to £67,000. The annual expenditure— £13,000—is mainly the salaries of the various professors, lecturers, etc. These include professors of agriculture, dairy bacteriology, dairy technology, and dairy chemistry, lecturers in dairy engineering, accountancy, assistants in bacteriology and dairy chemistry. In addition, there are butter-makers, cheese-makers, mechanics, etc. It will be noted that there is no duplication as between Cork and Dublin. This faculty, in addition to giving degrees in dairy science to farmers' sons, or pupils intending to become farmers, will provide all the technical officers required by the Department in connection with dairying, and in addition, will do research work into dairying and allied problems.
Everything that I have said in connection with the Dublin faculty applies to the Cork faculty also. Our aim is to make it first-class, so far as we can do it, and to provide the standard of salaries equipment, etc., that is required for that purpose. I consider that the State would be very poor indeed before we would decide that we could not afford these faculties. In the first instance, we must aim at seeing that our agricultural teachers, mainly the technical officers of the Department, are first-class men and, secondly, we must provide ample opportunities for research into agriculture and allied subjects, making these opportunities available, not only to the man who begins in these faculties but, in addition to the really good physicists and chemists who emerge from the physical and chemical faculties of the universities and are anxious to do research work and who would be attracted by the possibilities offered to them in agriculture. It is important to establish at the outset that the agricultural faculty ranks at least as high in the university as, say, the medical, legal, or engineering faculties, and one of the ways of doing this is to provide, so far as possible, for first-class professorships. First class professors, like everybody else, can only be had for first-class salaries. It is the staff that makes a faculty, or mars it, and our aim has been to ensure that the very best, ablest, and most ambitious students will realise that their prospects in the agricultural faculty are at least as good, if not better, than in any of the other faculties mentioned.
It is intended that the university shall carry out research and experiments in agricultural matters, but that the results of this work at the university, as well as elsewhere, shall be carried to the farmer by officers of the Department of Agriculture and the County Committees of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture will not interfere in such research work as is done by the university college, and the university shall not engage in extension or experimental work outside their own farms and laboratories. It will probably be necessary for the Department of Agriculture to have on its staff expert officers on such matters as plant breeding and dairying—possibly also on other subjects—and the functions of these officers will be to arrange that the results of research work all over the world is taken to the farmer through the Department's own agricultural stations and through the agricultural instructors in the service of the County Committees of Agriculture. Thus, for example, the function of the plant-breeder on the college staff will be to produce, by hybridising or selection, chains of cereals or other agricultural plants superior to those in general culture. There are, however, plant-breeders at work in many other countries and their apparently promising new strains must continue to be tested in this country in the same manner as the two strains of Victory Oats raised in Sweden have been tested, propagated, and distributed in Ireland, and this is work for the Department and the agricultural instructor rather than for the research staff of a university college.
The establishment of a faculty of dairy science in University College, Cork, marks an educational development, and the staff of that Faculty will be engaged on teaching duties as well as research work, for neither of which adequate provision has hitherto been made in this country and which have not, therefore, been previously done on any considerable scale by the Department of Agriculture. The Department's experts on dairying will continue to inspect creameries, etc., advise creamery managers and others, and act in an advisory capacity in connection with the administration of Acts and Orders. It is intended, however, that problems arising in connection with the work of creameries, etc., and with the administration of Acts and Orders should be referred for solution to the research officers of the Faculty in Cork. It is expected that the university and college authorities will permit the Department to consult the specialists of the College Agricultural Faculties in regard to various agricultural problems of a scientific or economic nature. This would clearly obviate duplication of staff, and the Department have kept, and will keep, this consideration in the forefront in the preliminary discussions with the university authorities. With regard to our live stock schemes, they are administered either through the county committees of agriculture or directly by the Department. There appears on the Estimates this year the sum of £27,250 for these schemes, and, in addition, the Minister for Finance has consented to the expenditure of a further £11,400 for which Supplementary Estimates are being introduced. This sum of £11,400 will constitute increases in the following sub-heads:—
Sub-head G 3 (a)—Stallions— will be increased by £1,000.
Sub-head G 3 (d)—Bulls—will be increased by £1,000.
Sub-head I (e)—Bulls, Boars, Rams and Sows—will be increased by £9,400,
making a total increase of £11,400. The total for live stock, therefore, will be £38,250, as against £13,580 spent on the same services last year.
At this stage I might also give one or two other figures. They are not connected with live stock, but Deputies may as well have them:—Subhead F (2), Warrenstown Agricultural School—which is not on the list already, being a new branch—£940; sub-head M 1 (g), Poultry Marketing Scheme, £225; sub-head M 4, Loans for Agricultural Purposes, £7,000; and sub-head O 2 (e), One Man Separating Stations, £1,750. Supplementary Estimates will, of course, be introduced to cover these items, but it is as well that Deputies should know them beforehand, so as to be able to review the whole position. I am dealing now with the Estimates for live stock, together with the increases I have mentioned, and the increases are £11,400. The total for live stock will therefore be £38,250, as against £13,580 spent on the same service last year. These live stock schemes consist of county premiums issuing out of the joint fund of the county committees of agriculture and special premiums, and special terms given directly by the Department for bulls, boars, rams and stallions. This year's Estimates provide for about 1,100 county premiums for bulls, as against 720 last year. These premiums are awarded through the county committees of agriculture and are spread all over the country. In addition there is provision for 474 special premiums and special term bulls, to be put out directly by the Department, as against 224 for last year. These latter bulls are to be put out mainly in the congested districts.
With regard to boars, there is provision for 509 county premiums this year as against 421 in 1925-26, and for 350 special premiums this year, to be placed by the Department of Agriculture, as against 44 last year, and finally there are 100 more premiums provided by the bacon curers. This is rather important for this reason: The Department recently approached the bacon curers in the Free State and represented to them the special efforts which were being made to improve the quality of pigs by raising the standard of boars. It was suggested to the curers that they might help by making contributions, based on the aggregate number of pigs killed annually in the factories. I am glad to say that the majority of the curers were quite ready to co-operate with the Department and have agreed to contribute annually an amount calculated at the rate of one halfpenny for each pig killed. The proceeds of this levy will amount to about £1,100, and will enable the Department to place out about 100 premium boars each year. There will be 950 premium boars in the Free State as against 465 last year. There is a total of 1,500 boars in the country, and under this scheme almost three-quarters of them will be premium pedigree animals, practically all large white Yorks. Last year the Department placed out 93 pedigree sows in the congested districts. This year there is provision for 400.
With regard to rams, it has been for a long time the practice to place out first-class mountain rams on special terms, mainly in Donegal, Kerry and Mayo. These rams are bought for £10 and sold for £3. Last year the number placed out was 160. This year there is provision for 300.
In addition to all these schemes there is provision under sub-head G 3 (d) of £2,000 for stock bulls other than dairy bulls, and under G 2 (e) there is provision of £3,000 for dairy bulls. This provision is for high-class stock animals costing anything between £100 and £1,000 apiece. There are cow-testing associations with registered cows and also small farmers with valuable pedigree cows, either beef or dairy. Their cows are first class, but they cannot afford to purchase a bull of the same standard. Out of these funds the Department will buy 10 or 12 first-class bulls of the same standard as is purchased by the biggest breeders and lease them to cow-testing associations or to groups of small farmers. The lessee merely pays £5 a year to cover insurance and the bulls are changed around to other groups and other cow-testing associations each year.
Finally, there is an increased provision, amounting to £2,000, for the purchase and resale of stallions under sub-head G (3) (a). Pedigree stallions are bought at round about £300 to £500 and sold at from £70 to £200. Sub-head M (4) is used in the main to supplement these schemes and the Minister for Finance has agreed to an addition of £7,000 under this sub-head. This will increase the provision from £23,000 to £30,000. Of that £30,000, £10,000 is used to make advances in connection with the live stock schemes. As already stated, the special premium and special term animals are located mainly in the congested districts, and it is found necessary, in addition to giving a premium or selling an animal at a reduced price, to give a loan to the intending purchaser in order to pay the reduced price. In this way the live stock of areas like Donegal, the West Coast of Mayo, Connemara and Kerry are kept up to the standard of the live stock of the rest of the country.
These schemes, taken in conjunction with the "Control" schemes, constitute the policy of the Department in regard to live stock and live stock products. The Agricultural Produce (Eggs) Act is no more than a full year in operation, and already Irish eggs are at the top of the English market, and are going to remain there. The Dairy Produce Act is not yet fully in operation so far as its export provisions are concerned. Nevertheless, I am satisfied that by the end of this year the reputation of Irish butter on the English market will be completely restored, and that by the end of next year it will be in the same position as Irish eggs. The Live Stock Breeding Act is fully in operation. At the first inspections, which took place in the autumn of 1925, 22 per cent. of the bulls shown were rejected, and at the last inspection 27 per cent. were rejected. From the point of view of quality Irish cattle and beef are second to none. Scotland has three years' experience now of Canadian cattle, and every month that passes is making it clearer to our customers in Great Britain that from this point of view Irish cattle are superior. If we continue to increase our premium schemes on the one side, and to weed out the scrub bulls on the other hand at the rate which we are doing it, then in a very few years Irish cattle and beef will be in an unassailable position, always provided they are fed properly and marketed properly.
The position in regard to our pigs is even more satisfactory. We have now reached the point where there is practically only one breed of pigs in the country—the breed that is admittedly the best, the large white York. This result is mainly due to the foresight of the officers of the Department of Agriculture, who began to purchase them long before their merits were recognised in England, and who were able to get first-class breeding stocks at reasonable prices. This year we will have 900 odd pedigree premium boars out of a total of 1,500 in the country, and my aim is to have every boar in the country a premium boar. The cost would be very little, and would be well worth the money. So far as quality and breeding is concerned, there is no such standardisation in any other country in Europe, not even Denmark, and if the farmers would only effect the same standardisation in regard to feeding and marketing, and refrain from the practice of selling their breeding stock at a loss when prices fall, and buying at a loss when prices rise, then our pig-breeding industry would be firmly established.
It is necessary to understand clearly that our agricultural economy has been for generations, is at present, and it is safe to say will, until there is a change in world conditions, continue to be the production of live stock and live stock products. Agricultural policy cannot be intelligently discussed until this fact is realised. Our total export trade for the last complete year for which we have figures was about £43,000,000, and of that trade about £32,000,000 represents exports of agricultural produce. This figure of £32,000,000 includes more than £31,000,000 worth of live stock products and less than £1,000,000 worth of cash crops, such as flax, potatoes, oats and barley.
