I do not intend to speak for very long on this Estimate on account of the circumstances of the day —the House being about to adjourn. Were the circumstances different a good deal would require to be said on the general agricultural position, and on the general economic position. When this country finds itself in the position that it is not paying its way, one would expect—agriculture being the pillar of the State and the condition of agriculture being of paramount importance to everybody in the country—the time of the introduction of either a main or Supplementary Estimate for Agriculture is the time to point out the condition of agriculture. As I have just said, the country is not paying its way. We had an adverse trade balance of £18,000,000 last year— an increase of £3,000,000 on the previous year. Although agriculture has to meet all the demands and keep the country going, it has not to-day a single line which by itself would pay its way. Our principal item of agricultural income was the cattle trade, and the best section of that trade, nationally, although it may not be the most remunerative side, was the finishing of the agricultural product, be that beef or be it butter. It is not good, nationally, for a country to continue exporting raw material such as store cattle, although it is a more profitable line than the others.
In introducing the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Bill which went through yesterday, and for which the principal portion of this Estimate is required, the Minister told us that what necessitated the Bill and what prompted him to introduce it was to find a market for our surplus cattle. There is not a single section in the Bill which provides for that. He fixes a price, but that is for the home-consumed cattle. It provides a lot of machinery which I am not going to refer to as it has been sufficiently dealt with in the last few days, but it does not include a scrap of machinery to provide a market for the surplus cattle. Yet the Minister comes here, and as far as I can make out he wants for this purpose an Estimate of £273,000. Appropriations-in-Aid amount to £128,000, and the balance is what the taxpayer will have to put up. In Section 28 and Section 39 of the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Bill the Minister claims to be making provision for the surplus cattle, but while he fixes, with numerous pains and penalties, the price of cattle purchased by people in the country, he does not fix any minimum or maximum price for cattle purchased for export. He also defended the position which he took up during the summer as the only possible position for him to take up under the circumstances, namely that while he agreed in principle that during all seasons the producers should get the export licences, and brought into practice during half of February, all of March and, I think, the greater portion of April, the giving of those licences to the producers, he changed that in May or June, because he could not take a census of the cattle on the grass. Even though this Bill will provide him with machinery to discover on any day the number of cattle ready for slaughter, and the date on which every beast on the register for slaughter will be slaughtered, and before which it cannot be slaughtered, yet he will not give licences to the producers. That, as he knows, will take an income of anywhere from £4 to £6 per beast which rightly belongs to the producers, and give the dealer that profit above and beyond the ordinary profit.
The Minister said, apropos of that, that there is no need to fix the price at which the exporter must buy. If the Minister would agree to fix the minimum price which the home consumer or butcher has to pay—and his fixed price will be based on the export price; that is the formula which the Minister gave us—then the man who is exporting should not be allowed to buy below that price. If that price is fixed then it is immaterial who gets the licence, but it is very material if the price it not fixed. Why? I will explain that in the next step.
The Minister stated that because exporters will have to compete with home buyers, and as the home buyers will have to pay a minimum price, then the exporters will have to pay at least that minimum price in order to get the cattle. That would be true—and I do not want to labour the point—if supply and demand were balanced. But when the Minister is now issuing licences to the extent of 42 per cent. of the cattle shipped in the corresponding period of last year, there is a very large surplus, with nobody to compete for it, and in that condition of the glutted fat stock market these exporters, who are in the privileged position of having licences, can buy without any restriction, say ten cattle, or if you like 10,000 cattle, in a market where there are twenty or 20,000 cattle for sale, as the case might be. For the cattle they leave after them there is no outlet, because home requirements are provided for already, and as to the 20,000 cattle or 1,000 as the case may be, for which exporters have licences to export only 50 per cent. of those offered for sale, they can obviously offer any price they like No restriction is put on them by the Minister. He says that he has power when issuing licences to make orders. I put it to the Minister that he has no power to fix a price for any cattle, unless the power that the Bill gives, to fix the price of cattle bought for slaughter in Saorstát Eireann. It does not give him power to fix a price for cattle bought outside Saorstát Eireann. It does not give him power to fix a price for cattle for any purpose other than for slaughter in Saorstát Eireann. Therefore, he is not dealing fairly with the producers. That will threaten agricultural tillage.
He is making no provision for the surplus fat stock we have, the purpose for which the Bill was introduced, so that it is quite obvious it is a failure before its birth. Even in fixing the price for horse slaughtered cattle he is fixing it at a level which is recognised as being about two thirds of what would normally be the price of these beasts. He contemplates a consumption of 240,000 cattle at a loss owing to the British tariffs of £4 10s. 0d. a head. That £4 10s. 0d. is there for a certain purpose, that certain purpose being to collect the land annuities here. The Minister is recognising in this Bill that these land annuities will continue to be paid to the British by this channel while, at the same time, no restraint is going to be exercised by the Government on the scenes that are enacted in every county in the Free State to-day, in the case of people who lost hundreds of pounds—some of them thousands of pounds—on fat stock last year, owing to the incompetence and want of foresight of the Minister and the Department of Agriculture. The property of these people is now being seized by the sheriffs for what is alleged to be 50 per cent. of the annuities that the Minister in this Bill is making provision for the British to collect from fat stock farmers. That is the position. The Minister will reply: "We were returned to office." I accept that reply, but if the Minister's Party was returned by 99.9 of an electorate that electorate was fooled, because they believed that a certain thing was the issue, when it was not the issue.
