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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 2 Aug 1934

Vol. 53 No. 16

In Committee on Finance. - Financial Resolution.—Levy on Slaughtered Cattle and Sheep.

I beg to move:—

1. That there shall be charged, levied, and paid a levy, at such rates as shall be prescribed by statute or by the Minister for Agriculture under statutory authority, on all cattle and sheep slaughtered in registered premises.

2. That the levy mentioned in this Resolution shall be paid by the person who is registered as the proprietor of the premises in which the animal in respect of which the levy is payable is slaughtered.

3. That the levy mentioned in this Resolution shall commence to be chargeable as on and from such date as shall be fixed by statute or by the Minister for Agriculture under statutory authority.

4. That the levy mentioned in this Resolution shall be paid to the Minister for Agriculture at such times as he shall appoint under statutory authority and shall be paid by the said Minister into or disposed of by him for the benefit of the Exchequer in such manner as the Minister for Finance shall direct.

5. That provision shall be made by statute for the collection and enforcing payment of the levy mentioned in this Resolution.

6. That in this Resolution— the word "registered" means registered in a register maintained by the Minister for Agriculture under statutory authority for the registration of premises in which is carried on the business of slaughtering cattle or the business of slaughtering sheep or the business of slaughtering both cattle and sheep; the word "cattle" includes bulls, cows, bullocks, heifers, and calves; the word "sheep" includes rams, ewes, wethers, and lambs.

Will the Minister tell us something about it?

Under No. 101 of the Standing Orders of Dáil Eireann a Financial Resolution is necessary to authorise the charge which the Minister for Agriculture proposes to levy under Section 17 of the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Bill, 1934. The rate of the levy proposed will be £1 per head for cattle and 5/- per head for sheep. It will be payable by the registered proprietors of registered slaughtering premises in respect of cattle and sheep slaughtered on such premises. The annual amount of the levy to be thus obtained will be treated as an Appropriation in Aid of the Vote required for the purposes of the Bill. I presume, in view of the arrangement which has been arrived at as to Parliamentary time, that any discussion on this matter will be reserved for the principal discussion on the Bill.

This is a Money Resolution, and we are entitled to know at this stage what is the estimate of the amount that the Minister expects to receive out of this levy. We are also entitled to know if the whole of that sum is to be devoted towards the provision of meat for certain persons.

The levy is estimated to bring in about £305,000 per annum, and that will be, of course, devoted to defray some part of the cost of the provision and distribution of meat in the manner indicated in certain parts of the Bill, and also to assist in equalising prices under the Bill and, in general, carrying out the various provisions.

Has the Minister any estimate as to the cost of the provision of meat? How much of the £300,000 will be devoted to that purpose?

It is not possible to segregate the different items, but the actual cost of the provision of meat will be something over £400,000. The levy will be applied to the general purposes of the Bill.

What amount will be expended on salaries for the new staff that will be necessary?

That will arise on the Bill.

That means there will not be any money over after the levy has been collected and applied, and from what the Minister says apparently it will cost approximately £90,000 more than the levy.

The Bill proposes to give the Minister power to undertake a number of other schemes for the better utilisation of our surplus cattle population, including the replacement of old stock by new stock and the destruction of animals which are diseased or otherwise unsuitable.

The few remarks that have been dragged from the Minister make it imperative that before we leave the consideration of the Financial Resolution we should have a clear idea as to the amount of money involved and as to the plans before the Minister. I did not quite catch his remark about £300,000. Do I understand that the imposition of this levy will bring in £300,000?

Dr. Ryan

Yes.

This means an increase of taxation by a considerable amount. Perhaps taxation to a greater extent than that amount is going to be used in such a way as to hide the fact that it is actually taxation—that is, that it will not pass through the ordinary accounting channels. Here we will have another £300,000 imposed on the country without the Minister showing in any kind of budgetary statement that this additional taxation exists.

The Deputy has not read the Bill. It is coming into the Exchequer in the ordinary way.

The Minister will find there is not much information contained in the Bill. There is not a single word about what is going to happen with regard to this particular levy. The Minister tells us that this is going to come in as an Appropriation-in-Aid to some particular Vote. Why should not income-tax come in as an Appropriation-in-Aid to some of the Votes that are expended in the country? The Minister, however, then relates to this particular levy the expenditure of money on schemes which, the Minister tells us, the Minister for Agriculture will have authority to set up. As I understand it, from the Bill, the Minister for Agriculture may become a cattle dealer. He may become a grazier. He may become a slaughterer. He may become a victualler. He may set up an establishment for the making of tripe. He may go into the sale of tripe.

The Deputy is a good judge of tripe.

If the Minister can turn cattle bones into anything resembling fish, he can almost become a fish and chip merchant. He can make buttons.

Dr. Ryan

I have power to do that already.

We are being told that this levy, that is now sought to be imposed under this Financial Resolution, is going to be used for the purpose of financing all those things. Is this levy going to be used for the purpose of making the loans that may be issued from the Exchequer to persons who are going to extend their victualling business or other manufacturing business that arises out of the slaughtering of cattle and sheep and the use of offals? The Minister should give us at this particular stage a complete picture of what is going to be done with this money. There is no other stage in the discussion of the measure before the House where the House can more suitably get full information with regard to the financial implications of the proposal as regards taxation, or what he is going to do with the money when he gets it, than the House can get in discussing the Financial Resolution in Committee here. I think that the House should be taken more into the confidence of the Minister and into the confidence of the Minister for Agriculture at this stage.

I think that the only point that arises is the amount of the levy and its purpose. It is to be devoted to the general purposes of the Bill. If the Deputy is anxious to hear that, I suggest that he should reserve his speech until he has heard the speech of the Minister on the Second Reading of the Bill. It has been indicated already to Deputy Cosgrave that the actual levy is estimated to produce something like £305,000, that the expenditure on that part of the Bill which will enable the Minister to supply meat to certain persons is estimated to be approximately £400,000, and, in addition to that, this Bill also gives the Minister powers to deal with surplus and diseased and old cattle.

Would the Minister say what section of the Bill?

Parts VII and VIII of the Bill. In any event, one thing is clear: that if this levy is to be described as a tax, at any rate it is a tax which is being imposed for the benefit of the cattle producers in this country. I understand that the Party opposite are very gravely concerned with the position of the cattle trade in this country. They have been calling on the Government to do something to help the cattle producers. That is the purpose of this Bill. The levy will produce very much less than will be required to put directly and indirectly into the pockets of the cattle producers an additional £500,000 a year, and so far from being a burden it is a subsidy to production and will go to assist those engaged in the cattle industry in this country.

The Minister's argument that this is a subsidy to the cattle producers makes it all the more important that at this particular stage we should hear the Minister for Agriculture on the financial implications of this Bill.

I understand that this Bill gives power for a levy by which the Minister will get £305,000. I should like to ask the Minister, whom will he get it from? Who is going to pay the levy? Is it not the farmers?

No, not at all.

Do not be talking rot.

You charge £1 a head on cattle and 5s. a head on sheep. Will not that be pushed on to the farmer? Let there be no mistake about it. To say that a Bill like this, raising in the first instance £305,000, is a benefit to the cattle producers of this country, is beyond all reason. I am concerned with the levy of £305,000. That will be paid out of every beast, and the farmer will have to pay it. Deputy Davin may smile, and everybody else may smile.

Everybody else is smiling.

Who pays the tax that is going into England? The producer pays it.

Read the Bill. Read the Resolution.

I have read the Bill, and it gives very little information, except the powers it gives to the Minister to do what he likes under the Bill.

Read the Resolution.

I have read it, but I am particularly concerned with deducting that levy from an industry that is already paralysed by Government policy in this country.

We got a bald statement from the Minister for Finance that all the cattle and sheep slaughtered in this country annually, paying a levy of £1 a head for each head of cattle, and 5s. a head for each head of sheep, produces £305,000. I should like to know from the Minister for Agriculture how many cattle are consumed in this country every year. That many cattle represents that many pounds, and does he suggest that all the cattle consumed in this country, paying £1 a head, and all the sheep consumed in this country, paying 5s. a head, will realise only £305,000? If there ever was insult added to injury, it is this, and in their supreme ignorance both Ministers and Deputies opposite laugh and smile at this proposition. Not a single man who is making his living from agriculture will smile at this, but those parasites who are drawing salaries as professional politicians and the like, living on the backs of the producers of this country, can afford to smile at this.

That is a hard saying.

It is a true saying.

You are not in the cattle trade.

Well, I am in some trade, and it is a better one than you are in.

Is the Deputy in order?

He is, if order is preserved on the benches opposite, but if they want disorder the Deputy is ready for them.

The Chair does not want it and will not have it from either side of the House.

I am sure of that, a Chinn Comhairle. That is why I am so orderly. Before the gentlemen that our friends here brought out on strike and deprived us of a daily paper——

That was hard luck on you!

What has this got to do with the Bill?

——before they went out on strike and when we had printing facilities in this House, we had on the Order Paper a number of resolutions dealing with the cattle trade. The President was asked, when they were put down first, to give Government time for the discussion as the matter was so pressing, but on every occasion the Minister for Agriculture got up and said:—

"We are considering it; the Government is alive to the situation and we are bringing in a Bill to relieve the pressure."

Now we have the Bill. We have first of all a financial resolution. What relief is it going to bring to the cattle trade? The relief that Deputy Curran pointed out. The relief the cattle trade that is depressed has got is to pay now a tax of £1 per head on cattle. That is the way the cattle industry is going to be relieved. What does £1 per head on cattle and 5/- per head on sheep mean to an already depressed industry? Is this the way it is going to be relieved? The suggestion is made that the butchers are going to bear it. That is the implication. Why do not some of you over there on the Government side go into the butchering trade if there is anything to be made by it? You will not go into it, because there is work in it.

Talk sense.

I am talking sense. The butchering trade of this country is not a monopoly. It is open to any man who has enterprise enough to set up a butchering store anywhere and fight his fight in the commercial competition in this country. It is open to any man who goes into the market, buys his animal according to the market price, hangs it up in his shop and proceeds to sell it.

A Deputy

For what?

What do you sell your second-hand books for?

Deputy Belton has got the wrong man; he does not sell second-hand "boots."

Is it in order for the Deputy——

It is in order. There is no order on the Government side of the House.

Is the Minister for Finance raising a point of order?

Is it in order, desirable, or in good taste for a Deputy to refer across the House to the personal occupation of another Deputy in the terms in which Deputy Belton has so referred?

It is certainly not desirable.

Is it in order to obscure the very important considerations that are before the House by systematic interruptions on the part of Government Deputies?

Mr. Kelly

I rise to say that I did not interrupt the Deputy at all. If he had pronounced the word "books" correctly I would have understood that he was referring to me. I thought the Deputy said second-hand boots.

I do not know how the Deputy knows that I had him in mind at all. But to resume, there is a beast there brought in for slaughter, and any money arising out of that transaction must come out of that beast. There is no other source but the beast that is brought in to be slaughtered from which the money can be taken. It does not stand argument to contend otherwise. This levy is a levy on the beast that is brought in to be slaughtered. That levy will be very material to the minimum price that will be fixed. Whether the butchers are getting too much now or whether they are not is beside the question. There is a levy of £1 a head on cattle and 5/- on sheep, and that levy comes off the cattle or the sheep. That is the commercial article that you have to deal with, and the £1 and the 5/- come off the cattle and sheep respectively, and that money is taken off them by the Minister for Finance. The definition of the word "cattle" in this Financial Resolution includes "bulls, cows, bullocks, heifers, calves." Will the owners of the calves who took them in to be slaughtered at 6d. apiece be called upon to pay £1 a head for them? Will that levy be made on them? Will there be a levy of £1 a head on old cows worth about 10/-? We should have some scale. I am sure it is not intended to levy £1 upon "cattle" as defined in this Resolution. What is the purpose of the levy? What need is there for that levy? The Minister has not explained the necessity for it. His promise of a Bill following this Resolution has been to help the cattle industry. This is not helping the cattle industry. It is going to be a hindrance. That promised help was presumed to be an outlet for our surplus cattle; the cattle for which we have not a market. But the Minister is going to tax these cattle. I do not want to go into a discussion on what is proper to the Bill itself. Boiled down, this Resolution is, first of all: nobody can sell cattle and sheep without a permit. Nobody can buy without a permit. The holders of permits buying cattle and sheep must pay the Government £1 a head for cattle and 5/- a head for sheep. That is the help the Minister is offering. We have not been told how the money is to be used or for what purpose. It will go back to the Exchequer. It will, and so does all taxation. That is the proper place for it. This is taxation and nothing else, camouflage it as you will. This is new taxation introduced under the guise of helping the agricultural industry. There will be more heard about it by the Government before the Bill is through.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Belton appears to think that agriculture can be helped by talk and not by action. He complains that this Resolution on the Order Paper is not discussed, that it would be better to discuss that than to bring in a Bill. That explains his outlook. As long as the Deputy is talking he thinks he is helping agriculture. He then complains that the daily papers are not there to report him. He tries to hold up legislation intended to do something for the relief of the farmers in order that he may talk for the benefit of the few people in the gallery.

Tell us about this Bill.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Belton talks about professional politicians. Deputy Belton talks, the Deputy who is there for the highest bidder in any Party that will come along. The Deputy should be the last man to talk about professional politicians.

On a point of order, a Chinn Comhairle, the Minister is not entitled to hurl insults across the House.

But Deputy Belton is.

Nobody, neither the Minister nor anybody else, could buy me at any price. The Minister is there and he followed a Party that he knew were doing wrong and he followed them in the hope of getting office. The Minister is there——

Dr. Ryan

And Deputy Belton is there where he is because we would not have him.

I am here because I would not have you.

Are you all there?

Sure, and well there.

Dr. Ryan

It is well for us, anyway, that you are there.

You will know that when we are through with you.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Belton and Deputy Curran talked about the farmer paying this levy, but these Deputies would do well to read the Bill before they make statements like that. If we fix the price the butcher cannot take it from the farmer. If we compel the butcher to pay a fixed price for the cattle, the butcher must pay that £1 or pass it on to the consumer. There is not much use in dealing with a mentality which refuses to recognise that. That is what the Bill does; it makes the butcher pay the fixed price.

On a point of order, may I point out there is nothing in the Bill to that effect.

That is not a point of order. One of the troubles in most Parliaments is that the two sides rarely agree in their interpretation of any measure. Possibly the Minister does not see eye to eye with Deputy Belton and vice versa.

How many Ministers for Agriculture have we?

One Minister for Agriculture.

I thought we had only one, but, apparently, the Deputy is another.

The Minister for timber guns.

We do not understand a word the Deputy says. He does not speak good English or bad Irish.

Dr. Ryan

There is a very definite clause in the Bill dealing with the fixed price. I think it could hardly be made more plain even to people who do follow legal language but can follow ordinary plain English. I take it that Deputy Belton and Deputy Curran can follow plain English. There is a definite clause in the Bill stating that cattle purchased for slaughter must be bought at a fixed price. If they are bought at a fixed price it is illegal and impossible for the butcher to pass the levy on to the farmer.

Who fixes the price?

Dr. Ryan

The Minister. It strikes me that what is really worrying Deputy Belton and Deputy O'Donovan is that something may be done for the cattle trade under the Bill, and their Blue-shirt meetings may be dwindling away.

You finished the cattle trade anyway.

Dr. Ryan

We finished the Blue-shirts.

Dr. Ryan

I thought that there was a certain desire to have business expedited and finished by early next week if possible. I thought we might have all this discussion on Second Reading. It is impossible to explain everything in connection with the levy without a Second Reading speech. I must go into what the Bill is doing for home consumption and free meat. If we are going to have a full discussion it will take time. There is also the part of the Bill dealing with the projected manufacture and processing of beef, whether in the form of calves or old cows or anything else, and there will be considerable expenditure. Free meat may cost £400,000 a year, and the disposal of calves and of old cows may cost £150,000; that is, £550,000 a year. So that, in all probability, this Bill will cost the Exchequer about £600,000 a year.

We are raising this levy because we think the consumers of meat who are getting it at a lower charge now than what they were getting it three or four years ago, should bear part of that cost, not as taxpayers but as consumers. The other part will be borne by the taxpayers. Somebody has said that that is mere camouflage, a queer way of getting taxation. Well, call it taxation if you like. We are raising the money and paying it into the Exchequer. There is no doubt about that. Whether you call it a levy or call it taxation, I do not in the least mind, but there is no camouflage about it. There is the question as to the difference between mature beef and calves and old cows. However, there will be one levy of £1 all round. There may be exceptional cases, but the figures of £1 and 5/- were given more for the purpose of calculation. There is nothing to prevent the Minister for Agriculture either raising or lowering the levy or doing away with it altogether They are there for the purposes of calculation, and the calculation is based on 100,000 cattle a year and 500,000 sheep.

I agree with the Minister when he says that some of the matters raised by Deputy Belton might be more usefully raised on the Second Reading Stage of the Bill. My main purpose in rising now is to ask the Minister to clarify the position more in relation to the consumer. He says that £600,000 will eventually have to be paid by the taxpayer.

Dr. Ryan

Or the consumer?

They are almost synonymous terms. Every consumer is a taxpayer, and almost every taxpayer is a consumer. We have been told by the Minister that meat for some time past has been very cheap. I accept the Minister's own words when he says that now the consumer will have to pay considerably more for his meat. I do not think that is a very cheery message to send to the people at this particular stage in our economic history, and in view of all that has taken place since the economic dispute with another country started. I would like the Minister to make it plain that under this Bill the consumers of different classes of meat—beef and mutton—will have to pay more for their beef and mutton than heretofore.

The Minister tried to make a point that because he gets power under the Bill that will enable him to fix the price for beef and mutton, he can fix it at a figure which will take this burden of the levy off the producers, and compel the butcher to buy at that fixed price. From beginning to end of this Bill there is no power sought to make anybody buy any beef at any price. But there is power to fix the minimum price, and the butcher can go out of business or find it at that price. There is a level above which he cannot charge. If you go above that level, and you will have to go above it, you put it on the consumer; if you go below it, you put it on the producer. This £1 comes out of the value of beef, and the 5s. out of the value of sheep; and this is a Bill for the agricultural industry and for the cattle trade. The Minister is not so pure in his past as to be able to taunt anyone in this House with selling himself to the highest bidder. The price I was to be given by the Party opposite I would not take, but the Minister came along and took it.

Dr. Ryan

I was worth it.

Are we discussing the price of Deputies or the price of cattle?

I think the Minister rather expected this Resolution to go through the House without any discussion whatever. I do not know why he should expect that. There is a new procedure adopted with regard to this Bill never adopted with regard to any other Bill I know of. We did have a levy in the Butter Bill, but in the Bill itself we had a definite detailed explanation of how the levy was to be used and for what it was to be used. The House has a perfect right, in discussing this Financial Resolution, to ask that some Minister should get up and give the House definite information as to the particular way in which the levy is to be expended. We are entitled to full details of how it is to be expended. Deputy Mulcahy referred to various ways in which it might be expended, and why. I do not know that the Minister will use it in any of these particular ways but we are entitled, as I say, to full information as to how he intends to expend it. The Minister did not say that he intended to make buttons but I think he said that he had power already to do so if he wished. He might wish to make horns, musical horns, to blow his own horn, if you like.

Dr. Ryan

There is no necessity to do that.

I do protest against the Resolution being passed before we are given full detailed information of how the levy will be expended. There are other matters in regard to expenditure to which the Minister alluded a moment ago which can be dealt with on the Bill itself, but the House has a right to know how this £305,000 will be expended. My own opinion is that when this Bill becomes law, if it ever does become law, there will be no fat cattle left. By the time the sheriff and the bailiffs have finished belting them hither and thither there will be no fat cattle for anybody to consume.

He will have finished by the time the agitation against the payment of rates and annuities is finished.

Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 57; Níl, 34.

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Boland, Patrick.
  • Bourke, Daniel.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Carty, Frank.
  • Cleary, Mícheál.
  • Concannon, Helena.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Corkery, Daniel.
  • Corry, Martin John.
  • Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
  • Crowley, Timothy.
  • Daly, Denis.
  • Davin, William.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Doherty, Hugh.
  • Donnelly, Eamon.
  • Dowdall, Thomas P.
  • Flinn, Hugo. V.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Gibbons, Seán.
  • Goulding, John.
  • Hales, Thomas.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
  • Keely, Séamus P.
  • Kehoe, Patrick.
  • Kelly, Thomas.
  • Keyes, Michael.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, Michael.
  • Kissane, Eamonn.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick John.
  • Lynch, James B.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
  • O'Briain, Donnchadha.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Ceallaigh, Seán T.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Pearse, Margaret Mary.
  • Rice, Edward.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Martin.
  • Ryan, Robert.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Walsh, Richard.

Níl

  • Anthony, Richard.
  • Belton, Patrick.
  • Bennett, George Cecil.
  • Bourke, Séamus.
  • Broderick, William Joseph.
  • Burke, James Michael.
  • Byrne, Alfred.
  • Cosgrave, William T.
  • Costello, John Aloysius.
  • Curran, Richard.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, James Edward.
  • Nally, Martin.
  • O'Connor, Batt.
  • O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Leary, Daniel.
  • Davis, Michael.
  • Desmond, William.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Fitzgerald, Desmond.
  • Good, John.
  • Haslett, Alexander.
  • Keating, John.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McGovern, Patrick.
  • O'Neill, Eamonn.
  • O'Reilly, John Joseph.
  • Redmond, Bridget Mary.
  • Reidy, James.
  • Rice, Vincent.
  • Rogers, Patrick James.
  • Rowlette, Robert James.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Moylan; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Resolution reported and agreed to.
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