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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 27 Mar 1935

Vol. 55 No. 11

Private Deputies' Business. - Export Licences and Market for Cattle—Motions.

The following motions appeared on the Order Paper.
That the Dáil expresses its dissatisfaction at the manner in which the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated the export licences for fat cattle.—(Patrick Belton, Alfred Byrne).
That the Dáil requests the Government, in order to maintain the present area under tillage and to prevent wholesale unemployment, to take immediate steps to secure a market for our 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle, and failing to do so, to purchase the said cattle from the feeders at the price ruling in the British market.—(Patrick Belton, Thomas F. O'Higgins, Sidney B. Minch, Alfred Byrne).

With regard to items Nos. 17 and 18 I understand there is some agreement to have those motions discussed together.

That is so. There is an agreement that the two motions can be discussed together, but that separate decisions will have to be taken. The ground of the two motions can be covered in the one discussion. We can then take a division on the first one, and the decision on the other would be automatic. The idea was to amalgamate the two motions, but that could not be done for some technical reasons.

We will take the first motion and have it moved and seconded.

I move the first of these motions, which is now considerably over a year old.

Rip van Winkle!

Of course, while the Fianna Fáil Government remains in power, it will be ever new. The motion is:

That the Dáil expresses its dissatisfaction at the manner in which the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated the export licences for fat cattle.

The other motion which will be discussed with it is:

That the Dáil requests the Government, in order to maintain the present area under tillage and to prevent wholesale unemployment, to take immediate steps to secure a market for our 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle, and failing to do so, to purchase the said cattle from the feeders at the price ruling in the British market.

We will, I am sure, have an interesting debate, seeing all the practical farmers who are there on the Government Benches.

Do we get up and bow now?

I do not know what you do. There is one thing you do not do —you do not farm. You are too wise for that. You keep well away from it. You talk about it, and tell other people about its potentialities.

We do not get farms as easily as the Deputy.

Anybody can get them as easily as the Deputy. If he pays his money for them he can get them. I should like to know if there is any other innuendo in the Deputy's remark.

Let us discuss the motion.

If there is, it is a damn lie.

The Deputy will have to withdraw that remark with reference to any Deputy in the House.

I withdraw that. Over a year ago—to be exact, on the 19th December, 1933—the British Government made an order that from and after 1st January, 1934, until 31st March, 1934, the numbers of fat cattle allowed into Britain and Northern Ireland from the Free State would be subject to a quota, fixed at, I think, 50 per cent. of the numbers exported in the corresponding months of the previous year. The Minister for Agriculture who, of course, like the other Ministers of the Government, had a plan, was aware of this fact on the 20th December, 1933. He had 11 or 12 days until the 1st January, 1934. In that period he apparently did nothing. He waited. He got the licences from the British Government for distribution here from the 1st January onward. Instead of about 16,000 to 20,000 fat cattle going over in January, something like 8,000 or 9,000 licences were sent to our Minister from Britain. He made no attempt, and the Department of Agriculture made no attempt, to allocate those licences to the people who should get them. The Minister simply called in a few dealers and he gave the licences to the dealers. This was in the best month of the year for selling stall-fed cattle on the British market. Just before the Scotch and English beef was coming on the British market, when the price was highest there and the demand keenest, he gave the licences to the dealers. There were somewhere about nine or ten thousand of them, representing licences to export just half the number of fat cattle that were exported in January, 1933. I should have said that the census afterwards showed that there were slightly more cattle tied up for stall-feeding in January, 1934, than there were in January, 1933, so that there were in January, 1934, at least 20,000 fat cattle available, ready and fit for shipment to Britain for slaughter. The British Government, saying: "You can only ship half of them by licence," hands those licences to our Minister for Agriculture, who hands them to the dealers, so that the dealers went out to buy nine or ten thousand fat cattle in a market where there were 20,000 cattle offering for sale. If they could not be exported there was no other market for them, because beyond and above that number was a number which filled the markets for home requirements. When the dealers went out to buy those cattle, those generous-minded fellows of course gave two prices for them. There were two cattle offering for the one vacancy, with the result that in a few days the licences jumped up to £6 and £7. The Minister knew that and he took no steps to remedy the situation. He will remember that a deputation waited on him on the 19th January, 1934. We met the Minister in the board-room of the Department of Agriculture. He quickly and frankly agreed that the ideal way of distributing those licences and allocating them was to the feeders, but he decided it could not be done. We expressed surprise that it could not be done. We said to the Minister that had we at our disposal the organisation or rather, the organisations that we had, we could get a census good enough for working purposes of all the cattle in the Free State within one week, that is to say, the cattle that were tied up and being stall-fed. He, of course, in his usual easy way said "nonsense."

When we left that meeting a couple of us from the County Dublin went up to the County Dublin Committee of Agriculture. I was then chairman of the committee. I directed the secretary to put in advertisements in the daily papers. It was, I think, on Saturday or Friday that we met the Minister. The advertisements requested stall-feeders in the County Dublin to supply the secretary of the County Committee of Agriculture, by the following Tuesday, with the numbers of cattle they were stall-feeding; when they tied them up, and when they expected to have them ready for the butcher. We requested them to have that information in by the following Tuesday, and we directed the secretary to tabulate it for us. When we met on the following Wednesday we had the information before us tabulated. It was on that information that the County Dublin was worked. We produced this census to the Minister, and we said: "We in the County Dublin could do this within a week." The Minister had a notice from the British Government from the 20th of December, 1933, to the 1st of January, 1934, yet he made no attempt to make any census of the cattle that were being stall-fed. In fact he agreed on the 19th January, 1934, that the feeders should get the licences, but that it was impossible to take a census of the cattle that were being stall-fed. But the proof that the thing was feasible and that we were right was in our taking the census. We showed that it was practicable to give the licences to the stall-feeders. The Minister got to work, and by the 1st February he was able to allocate 50 per cent. of the export licences to the feeders. By the 14th February he was allocating to them 100 per cent. of the licences. The Minister will readily admit that during the month of January, 1934, approximately 10,000 fat cattle were shipped out of this country to Great Britain under licence. These licences were given to the shippers. I think most of the licences were given to people who, under the Aliens Bill, would come under what would be called aliens. A very big chunk of these licences were given to the John Browns.

They are not aliens— what are you talking about? Did you read the Bill?

What Bill?

The Aliens Bill.

It was cattle I was talking about. Well, cattle and agriculture are now aliens in the present position of things.

Have you a licence to make that statement?

I have; I bought it in the market this morning. At least 10,000 fat cattle passed out of the country in that month, and at £6 a head that was equal to handing £60,000 as a free gift to the shippers. That money was taken out of the pockets of the producers. I would like the Minister to explain whether those licences were not sold at £6 apiece; whether 10,000 fat cattle under licence were not exported in the month of January last year; and whether that £60,000 was not taken out of the pockets of the producers and handed over to the shippers. I should say, at a rough guess, that 50 per cent. of those shippers were from Northern Ireland or Britain.

Aliens. I venture to say that Cork got some of those licences.

Deputy Belton is entitled to speak without interruption.

It was not Deputy Corry's fault if they did not. In the month of February, when a further 10,000 cattle were exported, licences in respect of 2,500 of these cattle were given to the shippers and from the middle of February up to what exact date I cannot say, they were given to the feeders and the feeders generally expressed great dissatisfaction with the manner in which they allocated. The Minister has been asked many times to explain the method of allocation. He has been asked to keep a register in his Department, somewhat similar in principle to the register of bacon curers and pork butchers which he contemplates being kept in his Department to show the people who are registered curers and registered pork butchers, and also the registered slaughterers of cattle under the Slaughter of Cattle Act. Why would he not keep a register in his Department showing to whom licences were allocated if there was not something—to put it mildly—wrong with the method of allocation?

Coming near the end of the stall-fed season, people, in desperation, had to let their cattle on the grass. The Minister told us here, speaking of the stall-feeding season of 1933-'34, that at one time it was thought that there would be a surplus of fat cattle but it turned out that there was no surplus. Of course, there was no surplus because people got rid of them at any price. When they saw no hope of getting licences and no hope of selling the cattle as beef, they let out the cattle and tried to sell them as stores, and did sell many of them as stores. The Minister said they got rid of them somehow. You can get rid of anything anyhow, provided you are prepared to bear the loss, but the Minister cannot suggest that people did not get rid of them at a terrific loss, which has its repercussions now and which, perhaps, played no small part in producing the Pounds Bill we have just put through.

Then, during the summer months, the Minister changed his policy. He did not give the licences to the feeders. He gave them again to the shippers and, again, these licences were hawked about by all sorts and conditions of people. People who never owned a four-footed beast in their lives were able to sell licences. Would one not expect the Minister to take very stringent measures to prevent this traffic in licences? He has taken no measures. He has acknowledged that he knows it is going on and if any hawker produces a licence for a store beast now and gets £1 for it and for a fat beast gets £4 or £5 for it, out of whose pocket is that coming? —out of the pocket of the producer of that fat beast somewhere or the store beast, as the case may be. Why does the Minister not endeavour to protect the producers? He has failed, in my opinion, to do so and it is a justification, if there was no other, for passing this Motion.

The Department of Agriculture costs us £700,000 or £800,000 a year. The numbers of cattle allowed to be exported are known to the Minister a fortnight, I think, before each exporting period of a fortnight. He knows how many cattle and the different categories of cattle which can be exported during the following fortnight. The Minister was of opinion, a year ago, anyway, that the producers of those cattle should get the export licences. I take it that he is of that opinion still. If he is not, I should like to hear him in a justification of the opposite opinion and also in justification of his change of mind, but I do not think he has changed his mind. I think that, in principle, he still holds that the producers of the animals should get the export licences. That being so, has he attempted to formulate a scheme by which those licences could be distributed, as they should be distributed, to the producers, or has he simply thrown up his hands, as he did in the first instance when the quota system was introduced in 1934, and said: "It cannot be done?" If he has, it is worthy of notice, and very serious notice, not only by this House but by the people of this country, that we have it from the Minister in charge of the Department of Agriculture, which is costing this poor little impoverished State £700,000 or £800,000 a year, that at all the big officials and experts we are told are there, with all their brains and experience and expert knowledge, are not able to formulate a scheme by which the licences for the export of cattle can be distributed by a fool-proof system to the producers of the cattle to be exported.

That is terrible condemnation of that Ministry—the very fact that the Minister acknowledges that it is a desirable thing to do but that, although the Department is costing the country £700,000 or £800,000 a year, and perhaps more, he is not able to do it. Why? It is due to this House to know why he is not able to do it. I guarantee to the Minister that, in less than a month, I would do it and that is no empty boast. I guaranteed to the Minister in his own Department on 19th January, 1934, that we could do it and we convinced the Minister within a fortnight that it could be done. The best proof of that assertion is that it was done by the Minister and I challenge contradiction upon it. Now, this can be done and why does the Minister not do it? If it is not done, and if there is no attempt to do it, the Minister and his Department and the whole Government that stands for it deserve the severest censure.

I made a suggestion here in a previous debate about those licences. The suggestion merely occurred to me at the moment and I did not see any flaw in it. The Minister said that my suggestion was not practicable. The suggestion was that all licences should be marked "non-transferable" and anybody found with a licence not issued to him should be treated precisely as a man found illegally in the possession of a cheque. In that manner you would very quickly stop the traffic in licences. The licences do not belong to the Minister, the drover, the fellow with the fish and chip shop, the fellow gathering scrap iron or the school teacher; they belong to the farmers to whom they are issued. I can produce the names and addresses of people following the callings I have mentioned who have trafficked in cattle licences. Why are no steps taken to stop that traffic? I challenge any Deputy to deny that a licence is worth £7. Permitting a practice like that robs the owner of a beast of about £7. The Minister has connived at that, has failed in his duty by not even trying to stop it. If he has tried I am sure he must not have been able to devise a scheme by which he could stop it. Whether he did not try or whether he failed in trying is immaterial. The Department and the Government are deserving of censure because of their neglect or incompetency.

The quota produced a surplus of cattle. We were told that poor Britain was shrivelling up, was not able to buy any beast, the people were turning to fish and chips and bread and tea. Yet during that period they consumed more meat in Britain than they ever consumed in a similar period throughout their history. The Minister said that the licence and quota system were introduced because the Minister of Agriculture wanted to save British agriculture because it was on its last legs, breathing its last. He did not put the true picture before this House, that the British realised, in the middle of December, 1933, and it was published in their journals, that if they allowed the importation of Irish live stock as in the previous season, they would have more money collected by the 31st March than they wanted. They wanted only a certain amount and they regulated the importation of live stock to give them that and they were only out £1,000.

The Minister said the people got rid of their cattle anyhow. At the time they did. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof—that is the principle the Minister adopted on that occasion. Did they get rid of their cattle? Did he announce that there was a surplus of cattle? Hence the Slaughter of Animals Bill, the registration and the army of officials which had to be carried on the backs of the cattle trade, the producers, who had already been robbed by the negligence of the Minister who gave licences to the exporters instead of to the producers. An army of officials was let loose; we had the registration of slaughterhouses, the registration and numbering of cattle, the examination of them as to their fitness for slaughter and so on. A price was fixed to deal with the surplus and the Minister said he would insist on that price being paid for cattle. He was told here that he could not fix that price and he knows that he could not get it. He knows that even a reduced price could not be got.

The other day a man who sold cattle in the Dublin market showed me a docket marked £11 10s. per head for cattle. The price the man actually got was £7 5s. I warned the Minister when the Bill was going through of the very thing that happened a couple of weeks ago in the Dublin market. I told him that no matter what price he fixed, if I were confronted by a butcher who offered to buy my cattle at 17/- or 19/- a cwt. and I considered it was the most I could get for them, I would be prepared to give him a receipt for 25/-. I could not very well bring home cattle that I had fattened. They would be a dead loss because they would be consuming more food. I would be prepared to take 17/- or 18/- a cwt. for them. The Minister well knew the position that made it imperative to bring in that Bill. He knew the position was that we had five cattle with an outlet for only three. He tried to camouflage that position and fix a price that he could not get. I may remind the Minister that he threatened to issue an order that cattle for export should be bought in the Dublin market at 25/- a cwt. He was beseeched by exporters not to issue that order but he did issue it, and the moment he issued that order, cattle went down 50/- a head. Why? They went down because the British let loose frozen meat on the English market—increased quantities of frozen meat—filled the demand there and consequently there was less of a demand for our cattle. When those facts are reviewed, it shows that the Minister did not present the case fairly when he said that the cattle, during the season we are discussing and the season to which this Motion applies, were got rid of somehow. They were not got rid of. They were there anyhow, because there was no way to get rid of them. They were there, and the Minister had to tackle the problem by means of the Slaughter of Animals Bill. Then, in order to prevent a recurrence of that position, he started at the baby cattle. The only solution of the cattle problem in this country was the slaughter of the innocents, and I think he accomplished the slaughter of 130,000 or 150,000 suck calves. The skins of those calves were exported at, I think, 10/6 or 9/6 apiece and there was a bounty of, I think, 10/- apiece given on them. It would be better to burn the whole of them than to have any more truck with them. That was the solution of that end of the trade.

I do not want to take this dissussion outside its proper limits. I would like to confine it. I do not want to go over the whole field of the economic war. I want to touch on the economic war, if at all, as lightly as possible. My views on the economic war are well-known and my attitude towards the Government, in the position in which it is now with regard to the economic war, is equally well-known. All this thing that I have gone over in making a case for the adoption of this Motion is due entirely to the economic dispute. I admit that the Government have a mandate for the economic war. They also have a duty to use every honourable means in their power to try to bring an end to that dispute. When I say that, I do not advise the Government to settle at any price, but the country wants them to put a face on things and make some attempt at a settlement or at least let the country know where we stand as regards the economic dispute. There is no use in trying to camouflage it by saying that we are losing nothing, that the market is gone, thank goodness, and all that sort of talk. We know that is only child's talk. Without question, it is the best market in the world. Even countries bordering on or surrounding big centres of population in Europe look upon the British market as the best market in the world. Why should it not be the best market in the world for us when it is the nearest? It is not the nearest market to Denmark, Lithuania, Esthonia, Latvia, or Sweden. They have the German and the Belgian market nearer to them, but they find the British market the best of the lot, whereas we start rambling over Europe looking for markets that do not exist.

What I am suggesting is that every effort should be made to settle the economic war and that we ought to be let know where we stand in this matter. Is it ever going to be settled? Is any attempt being made to settle it? I do not want to be told that this is whinging, that it is squealing. Nobody wants trouble in his private business. Nobody wants obstacles thrown in his way, and the people who have obstacles thrown in their way in their private business are going to suffer in their private business, and they are going to make every attempt to get those obstacles removed. This economic dispute interferes with the private business of the agricultural industry in this country which is the basis of every other economic activity in the country. Meet any man you like in this country and ask him how does this economic dispute stand. Nobody knows how it stands. Nobody knows where it was left on the last occasion on which there was anything about it. People say, "Well, Germany refused to pay, France refused to pay, and Britain refused to pay. Why should we not refuse to pay?" But that is not the position. That is not the case. That is not the cause of the economic war. I do not question the right of the Government to put up their case for the economic war. They have got a mandate from the country, but surely they also have a duty to the country, and that is to assure the country that they are not failing in their endeavours to settle that economic war. Other Parties in this House have been taunted with playing England's game in this dispute. Will the Government make a gesture to other Parties in this House for a national effort to have this economic war settled? Let the Government put their cards on the table. If they do that, then the country will be wiser and will know better where it stands.

The second motion that we are discussing within the range of this discussion is:

That the Dáil requests the Government, in order to maintain the present area under tillage and to prevent wholesale unemployment, to take immediate steps to secure a market for our 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle and, failing to do so, to purchase the said cattle from the feeders at the price ruling in the British market.

Of course the Government have failed, or did fail a year ago, to find a market for that 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle. At the meeting we had with the Minister on the 19th January last year, that was the figure discussed. At that interview it was brought out that the effect of the British quota would be to leave on our hands a surplus of 58 per cent. of stall-fed cattle. It was there that I got that figure. The Minister himself discussed that figure. He did not question it. I cannot say how it was arrived at, but it was freely discussed at that meeting. I am not the author of the figure. Taking that as a basis, we had no market for the surplus, and we have no market still. I do not know how failure to provide that market last year affected the number of cattle tied up for stall-feeding this year, but I know that the operation of the quota system and the bounty system confronted the Minister with a problem a few months ago when he found that there was too high a proportion of old cattle to young cattle in the country. There was a bit of a panic and the Minister withdrew the bounty for the younger cattle, because at the eleventh hour he tumbled to the fact that disaster would occur if a position was to arise that a generation of young cattle had been sold and shipped to Great Britain because of the price offered and, that an older generation, or two generations, were being left on the people's hands.

For those who know nothing about agriculture—and that applies to practically all on the Government Benches at the moment—I have to go into some details about that. Old cattle are no use on a farm—they have to be got rid of at any price. The Minister withdrew the bounty for the younger cattle, but continued it for the older ones in order to encourage the shipment of these cattle. He did more. A "line" was got on the British Government. All that the country was told—and I suppose in the opinion of the Government it is all that the country is entitled to know—was that some message was sent to the High Commissioner in London to have a talk with somebody connected with the British Government. That talk took place and it was arranged that the policy of Dean Swift, which has been so often quoted, "burn everything English but her coal," should be reversed. Then the patriots who on one Sunday preached Dean Swift's policy, the following Sunday preached the reverse and advised their poor deluded followers to burn nothing but English coal and that England would take our cattle.

Is not that what you want?

That is what the Deputy told the people anyhow—he told them that a great bargain had been made; that £1,000,000 worth of British coal was going to be allowed into the Free State and that in exchange the British would take 150,000 of our cattle—I wonder will the Deputy deny that figure—which would represent the value of the coal we would import. I think that was the bargain, though nobody ever saw the agreement. If ever there was a secret agreement deliberately entered into between two States it was the coal-cattle pact. So secret was it that even to this day the man who signed it on behalf of this country—if it was ever signed—is ashamed to admit that he signed it.

To which of the Motions before the House is this relevant?

It is relevant to both. It is relevant to the 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle and it could be related to the allocation of licences.

It may be relevant to some extent, but surely not to the extent that it should be laboured or its terms discussed.

Were not these motions tabled before the pact was made?

That does not affect the situation.

The Deputy said all this the other night.

The Deputy has only awakened now. He has been dreaming that it is still the other night.

He has heard it so often.

Mr. Kelly

Deputy Belton is a solid reality—he is not a dream.

We are too great friends to say anything to each other. I was endeavouring to show that the market they had secured by the coal-cattle pact was only a market to give the cattle away, because the market price plainly can be computed in this way: if coal valued at £1,000,000 is to be exchanged for 150,000 cattle, the market that the Minister for Agriculture is providing for our cattle yields the magnificent sum of £7 each.

The Deputy must pass from the coal-cattle pact. All that is permissible is a passing reference to that pact.

That is the market that the Government is providing for the surplus cattle to which this motion relates.

The motion requests the Government to secure a market for the surplus cattle.

This market provides a price of £7 each for two and three-year old cattle—and fat cattle at that.

We are not discussing the coal-cattle pact.

Only in so far as it relates to the market to be provided.

I shall allow the Deputy to make a passing reference to the pact so far as it is relevant, but I cannot allow him to go into the terms of the pact.

This motion requests the Government to maintain the area under tillage by providing a market for the surplus cattle. The Minister's reply to that is characteristic—that you can grow three or four cereal crops without any farmyard manure. To grow three cereal crops in succession or in four, five or six years' rotation is no different from the action of a highwayman who goes into a bank and robs it. In one case, money belonging to thrifty citizens is plundered; in the other case, the fertility of the soil, built up by good farming in the past, is robbed by a bad system. That system is now being "put over" on the country. It is a system which cannot be maintained without doing irreparable damage to the fertility of the soil and, ultimately, reducing the productivity of the soil to a considerable extent. It may even run the soil out. Apart from the manurial value to the soil by stall-feeding, there is another and more important side to the question—the purely commercial side. No crops that can be grown in this country are wholly and immediately convertible into human food. Sixty to 80 per cent. of the crops that can be grown here are not immediately available in their existing form as human food. They can only be converted into food by feeding them to live stock. Therefore, to make any form of agricultural economy profitable, the live-stock end must be the largest end. From 60 to 80 per cent. of the crops produced by the soil must be fed to these animals. Therefore, 60 to 80 per cent. of the productivity of the soil cannot be allowed to go at a loss. No business could survive if 80 per cent. of it was run at a loss. The remaining 20 per cent. could not show a profit on the entire business. If the live-stock end of our agricultural economy is not profitable, no other section of it can be. What are these other sections? The two crops used directly for human food are wheat and beet. It was admitted here last week by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance that sugar can be bought at one-third of our cost of production. That loss has to be made up somewhere. The wheat our farmers are raising would rank as second quality on any of the principal corn exchanges in the world.

Dr. Ryan

I am surprised that the Deputy should make that statement.

What wheat do we produce, except some rare samples of Yeoman No. 2, that can compete with Manitoba?

Dr. Ryan

I am surprised at the Deputy.

I put that to the Minister, and I shall give way to him if he wants to convince me to the contrary.

Dr. Ryan

I heard the Deputy talk differently about wheat 12 years ago.

And I support wheat-growing in a sensible way as strongly to-day as I did 12 years ago. I could deal with another aspect of wheat-growing, but it would be a bit outside the range of the motion. I do not know whether the Minister himself was warned by experts in his Department, but I know it is on record that these experts issued a warning as to the danger of growing, to any considerable extent, the strains of wheat we have been accustomed to grow in this country, because these strains are liable to certain wheat diseases, and are not the most desirable strains to grow if we want to produce all the wheat we require for our own use. Being liable to disease, these strains may impregnate the soil; and when we do get a strain of wheat that will be first-class and could be grown so as to satisfy our whole requirements, the land may be diseased and we may not be able to grow it. We may have a repetition on a larger scale of the black-scab infection of the soil in Cooley, in North Louth. The Minister knows that. That was the opinion of his experts eight years ago. Unless the experts change with the Government, that is their opinion to-day. If the experts change with the Government, may we be protected from the experts.

I was dealing with the commercial value of wheat. The wheat which we are growing, whether first-rate or not, is good enough. Let us assume that it is as good as any other wheat. The price ultimately given for it is 26/-. The Minister will agree that the exchange price of the best wheat in the world is 14/- per barrel. That difference has to be made up in some way. That crop is immediately convertible into human food. Beet is not so immediately convertible, and the best crop hardly averages 17½ per cent. of sugar content. The balance of the crop has to be fed to live stock. The other crops immediately convertible into human food are selected potatoes and a few vegetables. All the others have to be fed to animals. If those crops immediately convertible into human food are a commercial loss in our agricultural economy, and if the balance fed to live stock also shows a loss, how can our economy be sustained? I do not want to labour it too much. I should like if the Minister would apply himself to that when he is replying, or any of the good farmers on the opposite benches, like the Deputy or his colleague, Deputy T. Kelly, would do so.

Be careful that you are not caught in the Jordan.

I have been waiting to see the Deputy crossing but he has not crossed yet.

You will wait for a long time. If ever I do cross it is into the Dead Sea I will drop.

I second the motion.

Deputy Belton in moving these two resolutions took almost one hour in doing so.

Time well spent.

The Deputy introduced the subject by one of his usual sneers at the composition of the Government Benches. He glanced across and saw that those who attend here regularly were in their places, and he pointed at them as "the agriculturists." I immediately looked at the signatories of the motions. The first name is that of Deputy Belton. Everybody agrees that the Deputy is an agriculturist. The other wonderful agricultural expert is Deputy Alfred Byrne. Coming to the second motion we find the same bunch of famous agriculturists, more or less. Deputy Belton at the time the motions were tabled was a member of the Opposition-Fine Gael. Another signatory is another farmer, I suppose, Deputy Thomas F. O'Higgins, who, I understood, was a doctor.

He did not hold any meetings to divide his land.

Another signatory is Deputy Sidney B. Minch, and then again comes that famous agriculturist, Deputy Alfred Byrne. Deputy Belton being the first signatory of the motions which were tabled a year ago, was then a man of standing and a man of importance. These were the grand old days when there was prosperity, when the people wanted Fine Gael, which was then making an effort to destroy this Government. Deputy Belton then spoke with authority and had not disagreed with a number of followers.

When they were looking for agriculturists on the opposite side why did they not get them, instead of, through some freak of fortune, getting as a signatory of one motion Deputy Alfred Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin. He does not represent an agricultural constituency. Neither does Deputy Belton represent an agricultural constituency. I admit that the Deputy has a knowledge of agriculture second to no one in this House, and that one is always ready to accept his advice on agriculture. But, is it not an extraordinary thing that when Deputy Belton went to an agricultural constituency he lost his deposit, and that he was oftener rejected by the people of County Dublin than elected by the farming community? That is the Deputy who sneers at these benches, who looks across and says "There are the agriculturists." Deputies on these benches went to the constituencies at the last General Election and, as I stated in the course of a recent debate, they did not get one vote under false pretences. They put forward their claims and the claims of the Government and they succeeded whether they are agriculturists or not. Deputies on this side represent agricultural constituencies and with all due respect to Deputy Belton, he would be well advised in future, when taking part in debates, in trying to raise their level to a higher standard rather than making the speech to which we have become so accustomed, and which does not reflect credit on himself nor add to the lustre of this assembly. There was a different state of things in the country when these motions were tabled. Some of the things that the Deputies complain of have been attended to in the meantime. It appears to me that the Deputy is trying more or less by these motions to clear up the mess into which the Opposition got during the last 12 months. Take the wording of the second motion:

That the Dáil requests the Government in order to maintain the present area under tillage and to prevent wholesale unemployment, to take immediate steps to secure a market for our 58 per cent. of surplus stall-fed cattle, and failing to do so, to purchase the said cattle from the feeders at the price ruling in the British market.

Then take the wording of the first one:

That the Dáil expresses its dissatisfaction at the manner in which the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated the export licences for fat cattle.

At the time these motions were tabled the system of licensing was different from what it is to-day. Many of the things that Deputy Belton then complained of have since been remedied. I did not catch whether the Deputy during the course of his speech adverted to that very important fact. There are Deputies on these benches who did not quite agree with the manner in which licences were being given. The majority of Deputies, and I am sure the Minister too, wanted feeders and producers of cattle to get the export licences. Notwithstanding the Deputy's graphic description of what took place 12 months ago, the Minister has gone a long way to remedy some of the difficulties. A number of Deputies assisted in trying to get remedied things which, in their opinion, should not have occurred, believing that feeders and producers were best entitled to the licences. Of course the Deputy introduced the subject of the economic war. Apparently no debate can take place, and no motion can be tabled without the economic war being introduced. I am glad at any rate that Deputy Belton has recognised one thing, and that he was emphatic about it, when he declared during the debate that took place on Thursday last that the Government had a mandate to carry on the economic war as best they could; and that the Government has done nothing except what it had authority to do. Like the Deputy I do not want to go into the merits and demerits of that subject now, but I am a little surprised at finding Deputy Belton taking part in a motion like the first one and switching into a diatribe condemning tillage, in a sense, by saying that wheat growing is being done in an imprudent way. I am not so sure that the Deputy really means that. If he does it does not fit in with many of his previous speeches. If the Deputy meant to convey to the House that it is imprudent to go ahead with the tillage policy and with wheat production, he is not the Deputy I know.

May I explain that I did not say that. I was only quoting what I knew to be the expert advice given by the Department seven or eight years ago.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned accordingly.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, March 28th.
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