The co-operators of this country will have to buy the phosphates themselves in the place where they are to be found. The Minister for Agriculture made a statement that we had evidence of unemployment. He said that the Minister for Industry and Commerce has said that the manure manufacturers had allowed men to go. I did not hear the Minister for Industry and Commerce making that statement himself. The Minister for Agriculture made it on his authority, and I doubt its accuracy. No matter what manufacturers may have said on the subject I doubt it. The system of inquiry into the desirability of a tariff seems to be that a statement by the manufacturer is enough. The Minister said he had an interview with the employees. They will say the same thing. But was there any evidence but word of mouth or hearsay?
Were these people put on the witness table, and were they sworn in the ordinary sense in which evidence is accepted? Not a word about that. I am down in Waterford twice every fortnight, at an important business place. Now, one of the principal branches of the Goulding factory is located in Waterford, and I have not heard a syllable about unemployment in that factory. Waterford is one of the ports where most of the phosphate is landed, and I have not heard a syllable about any unemployment in that factory.
The only thing to make the farmer the abject slave of the manure ring is to compel him to purchase manure whether he wants it or not and whether the price is right or not. What is the position with regard to the use of manures? The farmer is not a fool. He has 30 or 40 years' experience of the use of artificial manures, and he has the assistance of the analysis that our Department of Agriculture thought it wise and necessary to impose. The Department some years ago thought that a very necessary thing to impose for the protection of the users. I want to go very much further than that.
When the Department thought it necessary in the interests of the people and in order to protect the consumer to have an analysis of all manures and to have grass seeds tested in this country, I would like to know what the Dáil is to infer from that? On the basis of these analyses, on the basis of the solubility of the manure, the farmer, when coming to buy his manures in the springtime, will buy them at comparative prices in relation to their manurial value and their suitability to the particular soil. He has no preference one way or the other. He will buy Irish if he can. He is not tied to the continental manures. He does not care two pins. If there is any preference at all he will buy Irish. I always bought Irish, and paid 2/6 a ton more for it. Value for value, we will give a preference to the Irish material.
The Minister says that the price of the continental stuff is going to be raised to the extent of the tariff. Deputy Corry's figure is a joke, 18,000 tons. The facts are that the Irish manufacturer bases his price early in the year on the knowledge that the continental stuff is there to come in. He bases his price accordingly. What would he base it on if he had not the knowledge that the continental stuff was coming in? If he knew that the competition was killed, on what would he base his price?
This is meant to kill competition, and it will kill competition. It will put the foreign manufacturer absolutely out of business and hand that business over to the ring. What would the Irish manufacturer base his price on with the knowledge that the continental supplies were there and would come over? When he has issued his price list, and even when the foreign phosphates arrive at the port here, the Irish manufacturer's price is still further lowered. How much is that price list lowered because of that?
Does the Minister for Industry and Commerce know anything at all about it? The price is lowered as soon as the foreign shipments begin to arrive. The very fact that these shipments are there is responsible for that. We are told the price will be raised only to the extent of 12/- a ton or 15/-, or whatever the figure is that it may be raised by the tariff. It will be more likely to be £2 a ton when competition is killed and the foreigner is out of the business. It is no exaggeration to say that 200,000 tons of these manures are sold in the country every year, and it would be no over-statement to say that these manures will go up by at least 30/- per ton. That would work out on the present normal consumption at the enormous figure of £300,000.
The idea is to kill competition altogether. What was the necessity, first of all, to kill competition in the State? Was it not in order to enable them to charge more? What is the effect of this competition that we have now? Is it not definitely in order to raise prices? The price can be forced up to the point where the consumer will not use these phosphates. I say that that price can be very easily reached now. We have lambs being sold to-day, May lambs, at 30/- to 35/- each. That is actually being called a good price for fat lambs. Milk is being sold at 3½d. per gallon in parts of the country, and corn at a low price. Every other article of agricultural production, and store cattle, are actually unsaleable, practically speaking.
When a man is thinking of buying artificial manure he is thinking of what he is going to get out of it, of how much it will enhance the yield of his crops, how much it will improve his land, and what he is going to get for the finished article turned off his land. Even if the man has money and can afford to spend it, as a business man he would be a fool if he went farther than I have indicated. He will only use manure if it is going to pay him. The probability is that he will not use half as much as he has been using. He will use less of it in any case if the price goes up.
Last year I used 26 tons of artificial manures, and only 6 tons two years ago. The year before last I used 16 tons of artificial manure. It is a question of the value one gets for the money and the prospects one has from applying the manure. We are not all fools. I speak about this matter because I am acquainted with it, and I can speak on it with some authority. There is no justification at all for the suggestion that we are speaking here as obstructionists.
I would be inclined to say, as I see it, that whether they know it or not the Executive Council and the Government have shown themselves to have been the tools of the manufacturers in this country. That is the way I see it. The time, I think, is ripe to preach a holy war against artificial manures in this country in order to bring the Government and the manufacturers to their knees. That can be easily done, and with as much effect as this tariff can if imposed. Years ago we got responses to public appeals, and we will get them again. A thing like this is a public scandal. It is nothing short of perpetrating a scandal on the people of the country whether the Government know it or not.
I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when discussing this at first, to be very careful of what he was doing. Yet when he got up to speak here yesterday he seemed to know less about it than he did on the first day. His whole knowledge was that somebody passed through his office and spent a half an hour there. The Minister did not know whether Northern Africa was in the British Commonwealth or not. He makes a lot of the fact that 25,000 tons came in, in the first two months. 32,000 tons came in last year, and 42,000 tons the year before. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has the figures there before him. Four out of every five of the Irish consumers of phosphates use the Irish products. Of course they do—because they think it is better value for the money and because of freightage and because the attitude in particular of the local trader has a lot to do with it, and if the trader in an inland county stocks only the Irish stuff, the consumer must buy Irish stuff if he is going to use it at all. If you sap the confidence in business competition here in the consumer and the trader, and if you make it impossible for each to use artificial manures, then good-bye to Irish industries, and you will do more harm than good by your protection methods.
Why was it necessary to end competition here? Was it in order to give the manufacturers more money, more value, more dividends? Is it right for any country or State to stand for the encouragement of rings for the purpose of robbing the consumer or extracting more from him? As soon as a State starts to housekeep on these lines they are open to the accusation that they are either stupid or out for jobbery. There is no necessity for a ring here at all except to force up prices, and there is no necessity for forcing out this 32,000 tons of normal competition or 42,000 tons except to kill competition and to hand over the consumer here altogether into the hands of the manufacturer. It would not have been so serious two or three years ago as it is to-day, because the resources of the agricultural community are very much less to-day, and that goes without argument. Everyone will admit it. I do not know whether the Minister still thinks we have stood up for the purpose of obstruction pure and simple. If he still thinks so he is welcome to it. How, if this little small competition that we have from outside —if that ring is broken or if its efficiency is impaired in any way—how is it still the best investment on the market, and for how much are these people prepared to buy legislation of this sort either one way or another? We are long enough in politics to know that there has been an association going round here for the last seven or eight years looking for somebody to do their job, and they did not find them up to lately. I do not know whether they have found them now. If they have, God help the country.
