At question time to-day I had on the Order Paper the following Question:—
To ask the Minister for Agriculture if he will give the reason for the refusal of his Department to issue an export licence to the purchaser of cattle at a sale at Kilfinane, Co. Limerick, on 24th July, by the county registrar for arrears of land purchase annuities.
The Minister in his reply said that an application for export licences was received from a person who stated that he had bought cattle at the sale referred to, and the licence was refused because the purchaser was not recorded as having shipped cattle in 1933. As a supplementary question I asked the Minister if he was not aware that other purchasers at similar sales all over the country were granted export licences. He replied that permits were issued to buyers at similar sales, but that they were genuine purchasers. I further asked him did he insinuate that the purchaser at the Kilfinane sale was not a genuine purchaser, and the Minister did not answer.
The sale at Kilfinane was a registrar's or sheriff's sale for cattle seized on a warrant issued by the Land Commission for arrears of land purchase annuities. Ten cattle were seized in this instance and put up for sale in Kilfinane pound. The original owner of the cattle was not a buyer, owing to inability to pay the money; and a buyer, not a native of County Limerick, but from somewhere else, bid for the cattle and another purchaser, who happened to be myself, entered into competition with this buyer to obtain possession of those cattle. This buyer evidently was a good buyer. The Minister himself has referred to him before now, or to similar buyers, as public spirited gentlemen, who were entitled to get licences. This particular gentleman was a particularly good bidder because he did not cease bidding when the amount of the sheriff's warrant and all the other costs were realised, but continued to bid above and beyond that amount. I outbid him, as I had a perfect right to do, and my bid was the last bid and the cattle were knocked down to me. I then turned around to the Superintendent in charge of the Guards and stated that I intended to apply for a licence to export the cattle and that, in the meantime, seeing that some of the cattle were not in good condition for removal—one of them is still in a bad condition from the treatment it received in the pound—that I would retain them in a field adjacent to Kilfinane until such time as I could arrange for their removal.
Subsequently I wrote two letters, one to the Minister, asking for a licence to export, and the other to the Superintendent, stating that the cattle were at a certain place and that I expected protection for them. They did get protection of a kind. A few days later I got a letter from the Superintendent saying that he could not protect them indefinitely and suggesting that I should get a herd. I neither asked nor desired any treatment better or worse than is meted out to other people. This public spirited gentleman, in competion with me, would, if he had been the final bidder, have got a licence from the Minister to export those cattle and, in addition, police protection, or even police conveyance, as far as I know, to carry those cattle to the farthest point in this State where he could ship them, and he would have got all the resources of the State to help him to carry them; but I am apparently, as the Minister insinuated to-day, a faker and not entitled to the same consideration as those buyers who come from the North of Ireland or from Mountjoy or from anywhere else—nobody knows where they come from.
There are cases, unfortunately, in this State of unfortunate farmers who allowed their cattle to be seized because they cannot pay those annuities. Some of them are keeping them by mortgaging their creamery cheques for the next five or six months. Some of them are unable even to do that. We had an instance at that same sale of another man whose ten dairy cows were seized. This man's son was in bed sick and his wife dying, and when he asked the sheriff's representative to leave him one cow, in God's name, to get milk for his sick boy and his dying wife, he was refused. When I go forward to assist in getting for the other farmer who could not buy those cattle something like a decent price, in competition with another buyer who gets all those facilities from the State, I am called a faker. The cattle are there still, and I am hoping to sell them, and I will sell them to the Minister now if he will make a fair bid. The Minister still insinuates that it was not a regular sale.
We had another Bill yesterday during the course of the discussion on which the Minister was taunted with discrimination in the question of the issue of licences. He said that there is no favouritism in the matter of licences as between one individual and another—none whatever. Yet here we have a case of palpable discrimination. A gentleman from the North of Ireland or from Mountjoy or from Timbuctoo is to get licences to export cattle, but an ordinary member of the community, a Deputy of this House, who bids for those same cattle, and who outbids this public-spirited gentleman, is called a faker by the Minister, and refused a licence. The Minister says that he is open to a charge of collusion. My particular desire, as I said, in this particular sale, was to see that the farmer who unfortunately had to sell those cattle, got a fair price for them, and that they were not confiscated. My desire was to get the best price that could be got for them—the Minister's desire should be the same as mine— and if I wished to bid against this public-spirited buyer, I am logically entitled to obtain a licence, and to obtain the protection of the law just as much as the other buyer is. The Minister is not entitled to get up here and say that I am not a genuine buyer, and to insinuate that I am a faker.
I am afraid, unfortunately, that there will be similar sales to this—many of them—and that other citizens of this State will possibly bid for the cattle seized. It may be that many of them will outbid the John Browns and the Edmund O'Neills and the other gentlemen.
If the John Browns and the O'Neills are to get export licences and police protection for cattle purchased in such a manner, and if they are to get these privileges at the expense of this State, then the ordinary individual, who outbids the John Browns and the O'Neills, is entitled to the same consideration. I want the Minister when he is replying to state definitely whether it is his considered policy or not that at these sales certain privileges are going to be extended to one individual and that people who enter into competition with this individual are to be debarred by the Minister from receiving any similar privileges or any help whatever from the Ministerial Departments. If there is to be no genuine competition at these sales, then the cattle of the unfortunate farmer will, to all intents and purposes, be confiscated; because this particular buyer—John Brown or O'Neill—will give the lowest price possible for them.
I am willing to admit to the House that the price that I paid for these cattle, even though I outbid this public-spirited gentleman, was so small a price that it was not a reasonable price to give this unfortunate farmer. That is why I am anxious that the privilege of receiving an export licence should be extended to any other buyer at these sales. In that way the buyer will know what he may expect in the sale of the beast and thus he may be prepared to give a better price. As a result the unfortunate farmer whose cattle are seized will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the cattle will make something commensurate with their value. Seizures are being made at almost every second farmer's door in my county and in other counties, too.
