Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Jun 1935

Vol. 57 No. 8

Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) (No. 2) Bill, 1935—Second Stage.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Boland) (for Minister for Local Government and Public Health)

I move:—That the Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) (No. 2) Bill, 1935, be now read a Second Time. Last December the Minister outlined to the Dáil the provisions of a temporary Bill dealing with the agricultural grant for the financial year then current. It is now necessary to make provision for this year's grant, and the purpose of this Bill is to fix the amount of the grant for the present year, to allocate it between the local authorities entitled to participate in it and to provide for its application to the relief of rates.

The total amount of the grant this year will be £1,870,000. The actual provision to be made now in order to bring the grant to that figure is £370,000, the sum mentioned in Section 4 of the Bill. This, when added to the £900,989, the amount of the supplementary grants already included in the Estimates and the original grant of £599,011 charged on the Central Fund, makes the full total for the year. The total is £100,000 less than last year, when the final addition to the grant was £470,000.

Except that the amount of the grant has been altered, the Bill is substantially the same in its provisions as the Act dealing with last year's grant which was before the Dáil six months ago. It provides that relief shall be given by way of a primary allowance on the first £20 of the valuation of land held by each occupier or on the occupier's whole land valuation if less than £20. In addition to the primary allowance there will be, as there was last year, two other allowances, namely, an employment allowance and a supplementary allowance. The employment allowance can be claimed by occupiers whose land valuation exceeds £20 where men were at work on the holding, whether as relatives or employees during the whole of the year 1934. No allowance is to be given in respect of casual employment. For each man at work an abatement will be made at the primary allowance rate on £12 10s. 0d. valuation if the occupier has so much additional valuation above £20. The primary allowance rate will be the same as last year, that is, it will be the total rate of relief which occupiers of land not exceeding £10 in valuation enjoyed in the year 1933-34.

The rate of the allowance in each county has been set out in the Rates on Agricultural Land (Certificate) Order, 1935. These rates vary from 8s. 8d. in the £ in County Kerry to 4s. 8½d. in the £ in County Meath. As neither the primary allowance rate nor the employment allowance will be altered, it follows that the only occupiers who will be affected by the reduction of the grants will be those of holdings above £20 valuation who either have no men at work or give employment to an extent which is not sufficient to cover the full valuation of their holdings, allowing £12 10s. 0d. for each man. The part of the valuation that does not rank for employment allowance will be reckoned for a supplementary allowance and this allowance must of necessity, owing to the reduction of the grant, be at a lower rate than last year as the balance of the grant available for supplementary allowances will, it is reckoned, be about 25 per cent. less than last year in every county.

With regard to the allocation of the grant—as set out in the Second Schedule—last year's allocation has been reduced in each county by a sum equivalent to 25 per cent. approximately of the cost of the supplementary allowances last year in that county. The sums in that Schedule, together with Dublin City's share in respect of added areas, make up the full grant.

The other parts of the Bill call for little comment. There is a slight change proposed with regard to credit notes. Every county council that wishes to do so will be in a position to make all the allowances by means of an abatement shown on the demand note, and there is no obligation on any council to give relief otherwise. There was, however, a strong desire in some counties to continue the system of credit notes and a provision is included which allows each council to utilise credit notes to a limited extent. The maximum amount that can be allowed by means of a credit note is about £2, half of which will be allowed on the payment of each moiety of the rate. It will not be open to any council, as it was last year, to give the employment or supplementary allowances by means of credit notes. The first part of the credit note, if issued, will expire at the end of next October, and the second part at the end of March, 1936.

No change is proposed on the method of dealing with urban districts that are entitled to get a share of the grant from county councils. They will get what they got in 1933-34, together with whatever addition may be necessary to bring the urban rate of relief on the first £20 up to the county rate.

A promise was made last year to consider a suggestion to admit employment allowance claims in certain cases in which the employee was in occupation of land of £5 valuation or over. It was urged that in Mayo, for example, where employees are sometimes themselves small farmers holding land more than £5 valuation, the condition in the Bill prevents their employers receiving an employment allowance in respect of them. It must be remembered that under the Bill the occupiers of £20 valuation and under get the maximum rate of relief unconditionally and that there is no employment allowance in respect of holdings of £20 valuation and under. A small holder who has a relative or employee at work on his farm gets no more relief on that account.

It may sometimes be the case that it is more profitable for a man with special skill who himself holds a fair sized farm to work for another and allow his own farm be worked by someone else. We think, if his land valuation is £5 or more, having given him relief as a rated occupier, we should not give relief to another occupier for employing him, and for that reason the suggestion made to us does not find a place in the Bill. It would, in any case, be difficult to make sure that an occupier who was employed by another did not, in fact, also work on his own farm.

This Bill, like its predecessor, is temporary, because we do not think the time has yet come to deal with more than one year ahead. Since 1930 the grant has varied every year—some years downward, some upward. The amount we are providing this year is, as I have said, less than last year's, but it is more than the year before and is more than three times the original grant.

General Mulcahy

It is very true for the Minister to say that the Ministry change every year with regard to the amount of relief that they are giving the agricultural community in respect of rates on agricultural land. The Minister truly says the amount they are providing this year is £100,000 less than last year, but he says it is greater than what was given in the preceding two years. It is very interesting to see that the amount is less by £78,022 than in 1931-32. In fact, the Government's attitude with regard to the amount this year is a very great reversal of their former attitude. It has been repeatedly pointed out here that the attitude the Fianna Fáil Party had to rates and the incidence of rates on agricultural land before they came into office and the attitude they now take up are totally different. It has been recalled already that the President, on the 24th April, 1929, told the House that, in his opinion, the pressure of rates was particularly severe on our farming community. "If we take into account," he said, "the fact that they have to compete with rivals in Great Britain and Northern Ireland who are relieved of that burden of rates, we realise what a severe handicap exists and will remain on the farming community." That was the burden. There have been various renderings of very plain statements in black and white, election promises that derating will be carried out. Different glosses have been put on those statements by various members of the Fianna Fáil Party at various times both outside and in this House.

We are now dealing with a year that on the face of it is going to be a very critical year for the local bodies, and it is very well worth while seeing how the local bodies stand with regard to their finances. The Minister, I am sure, is aware that the local bodies ended up the last financial year with £1,034,551 arrears. Some of us anticipated that that year would have ended up with considerably more arrears than that. It is interesting to see how that situation was avoided. For the three years prior to last year, the approximate amount of rates collected during the last quarter of the financial year was, on an average, £750,000. In fact, for the year 1933-34 the actual sum collected in the last quarter was £751,417; and a worse situation, so far as the arrears of rates is concerned, was avoided last March by the fact that instead of collecting £751,417 for the last quarter as was collected the year before, the amount that was squeezed out of the farmers was £421,000 more than that figure. That large sum was squeezed out of the ratepayers in the county council areas during the last quarter of the year. They had to shoulder and to face up in that quarter to a much bigger bill than ever before. The Government is now providing for that grant in relief of rates £78,022 less than was paid in 1931-32, the last year of the administration of their predecessors.

The farmers have just passed through a year, from the financial point of view, much worse than the year 1931-32 when they got a bigger grant in relief on a reduced figure as compared with this year. The total warrant that was issued against the farmers for the last financial year in respect of rates was £775,189 more than the total warrant for 1931-32. Of that sum £560,000 was made up of an increase, in the assessments. That is an increase, in the amount of money wanted for the carry ing out of the business of the local bodies, above the year 1931-32. Of this excess a sum of £215,267 was due to arrears that the councils had failed to squeeze out of the ratepayers in the six months' squeeze carried out in October, 1934. So that they have just finished the year in which they had to face a Bill of £775,000 more than they faced in the last year before Fianna Fáil came into office. Their position in the last quarter of that year was that £421,000 more was squeezed out of them in the last three months than was squeezed out of them in the last quarter of the three years before that. Winding up that year they were told that a sum of £718,000 that they expected, was going to be kept back from them because of the non-payment of land annuities in the various areas last year.

They end up with a disastrous year and the Minister cannot say, with the knowledge the Minister for Local Government and Public Health has in his Department, that the agricultural community in this country did not make Trojan efforts to face up to their responsibilities during the last financial year in respect of their rates, and he cannot say that the effort that was made during the last three months of the financial year to meet their responsibilities was not unprecedented. The Minister will have to admit that. In spite of whatever may be said with regard to complaints and plots in the community to prevent the collection of rates the Minister will have to admit that the agricultural community faced up to their responsibilities in the last 12 months. When the financial year closed the Minister turns round and tells them then: "We are going to take £718,000 more than you expected. That £718,000 will have to be got out of you in addition to what you ordinarily would have to pay in the carrying on of your business."

Then, on top of all that, the Minister informs them that he is going to provide £100,000 less in relief of rates from the ordinary agricultural grant in the coming year. And he comes in the ordinary way to tell the House that the Bill is going to do this—that it is going to provide for this, that and the other. He tells us nothing at all on behalf of the community from whom these rates must be raised in the coming year. Part of the Bill is so arranged that it is going to give increased employment in the country. The grant in respect of employment is intended to encourage the employment of labour by farmers throughout the country. We got, not so very long ago, figures showing the total number of persons engaged in agriculture in 1933. When we compared that with 1931 there were about 12,000 persons missing and the Minister for Industry and Commerce in his contribution to his own Estimate here the other day as well as in a Parliamentary answer yesterday gave the information as far as the total figures for the country is concerned down to June, 1934. The one outstanding fact from these figures is that when we consider the male agricultural labourers of 18 years of age and upwards, the increase in that class between 1931 and 1934 is something like 1,600. We have that position in a country where the Minister for Agriculture has been telling us that during 1934 there has been a very considerable increase in the acreage under wheat; that there has been an increase in the acreage of beet to the extent of 56,000 acres—the amount, practically, that will be necessary to supply all the sugar requirements of the country.

The 1934 figures cover the period in which all that subsidised crop arrangement was working and covers the arrangements in which this particular machinery has been working for at least 12 months; yet the fact remains that only 1,600 additional agricultural labourers of 18 years of age and upwards are employed in the country. That is an index of the increased wealth producing machinery that there is in the country and that is what is going to support this very considerable additional burden with very much less resistance for the taxpayers than they have been having in the past, while, as I say, the Government are dipping their hands deeply into the pockets of the rate-paying community and taking £718,000 in respect of Land Commission annuities for last year out of them. It is just in keeping with the blind-eyed way in which the Fianna Fáil Government are passing through life at present—not only trying to give the blind eye to present difficulties, but being completely blind to the situation of the agricultural community.

Mr. Roddy

Section 10 provides relief of rates for farmers who own lands in certain urban areas. I do not understand on what principle these urban areas were selected, because there are other urban areas where conditions are identical which have been excluded from the terms of the Bill altogether and that notwithstanding the promise made by the Minister for Local Government to a deputation which approached him on the matter almost 12 months ago. Take the Borough of Sligo. The conditions of the farmers who own land inside of that borough are identical with the conditions of those who own land in the urban area of Ballina and the other urban areas referred to in the Schedule to this Bill. Yet I notice that the Bill makes no provision for these farmers in Sligo who own land inside the borough. A deputation of these farmers approached the Minister in September, 1934, and I am informed that he gave them a very solemn promise upon that occasion that when he was introducing the next Bill providing for the relief of rates on agricultural land he would make provision for their case as well. I do not see any provision whatever in this Bill to cover the grievances which these men placed before the Minister.

Sligo is not alone in that respect. There are other urban areas also excluded from the terms of the Bill whose exclusion, on the face of it, it is exceedingly difficult to understand. The conditions, as I say, in these areas are identical with the conditions in the areas mentioned specially in the Schedule to the Bill. I should like to know from the Minister when he is replying whether he is prepared, either on the Committee Stage or the Report Stage, to accept an amendment with the object of including areas like Sligo and urban areas similarly circumstanced throughout the country and if he is prepared to meet the case of those farmers who own land inside of these urban areas.

The Minister did not say one word in his opening statement as to the reasons why £100,000 is being taken off the agricultural grant this year. Not one word did he mention as to the reasons which inspired the Minister for Local Government to take £100,000 off the agricultural grant for the financial year 1935-36. The Minister is as well aware as I am or as any other Deputy is of the conditions, especially amongst the members of the farming community, in this country at present. He knows perfectly well that at the moment they are more in need of relief than at any other period since the Fianna Fáil Government came into office. He knows, furthermore, that the reduction of even £100,000 in the agricultural grant will impose a serious hardship on every county council in the Free State. If the Minister wants any indication as to what the actual circumstances are in the farming industry at present he has only to look at the returns provided by the various Government Departments. If he studies these returns he will find that the earning capacity of the members of the farming community has been reduced on an average by from 32½ to almost 50 per cent. in certain counties. It is in circumstances like these that the Minister proposes to reduce the agricultural grant by £100,000. I am speaking of the actual reduction which the Minister referred to in his opening statement.

It is undoubtedly, as the Minister knows, becoming increasingly difficult to collect land annuities. That difficulty is not peculiar to one county—it is general in the 26 counties. As time goes on it will become more difficult. Even though the rates were collected last year reasonably well, and the outstanding balance at the end of the year was not as great as some of us anticipated it would be, the general opinion among secretaries of county councils, judging entirely by present indications, is that it will be much more difficult during the present financial year to collect the rates than it was during the last financial year, or even the previous financial year. That is due entirely to the fact that, as time goes on, and the country gets more and more experience of the Fianna Fáil policy, the earning capacity of the ordinary man to meet the demands upon him is lessening. As I say, the ability of the farmers to pay land annuities is diminishing year by year. The ability will be less this year than it was last year and, consequently, it will happen, when the period is reached that this agricultural grant is being distributed, that the amount coming to many county councils will be almost negligible, and in some cases it will be very doubtful if there will be any money at all coming to them.

I should like to hear from the Minister when replying (1), for what reason this £100,000 has been taken off this year; and (2) why it is that in Section 10 of the Bill he did not include the type of farmer in the urban areas I referred to at the opening of my statement. Neither last year nor this year did the Minister give any reason whatsoever for excluding farmers in certain urban areas and including farmers in a number of other urban areas.

Mr. Curran

It seems regrettable that at this period in the history of the country the Government should see fit to take £100,000 off the agricultural grant. It is clear to me that the greatest defaulters in connection with the payment of rates are the Government themselves, when they take £100,000 off the agricultural grant. What was the Fianna Fáil statement when they were on these benches? That the burdens on the farmer should be eased and that the best way to ease them was to reduce the rates. In place of that, we have a reduction of £100,000 made in the agricultural grant, plus the moneys taken in respect of the non-payment of land annuities. I think everybody, no matter on what side of the House he sits, will agree that the times have been bad for the agricultural community, and that they are getting worse. We have been told from time to time of organisations up and down the country trying to prevent rates being paid. It is idle for Government supporters to be talking in that way. Is it not plain to everybody that the amount which the local authorities have to meet, as compared with the amount a few years ago, is considerably more than would be the case, owing to the reduction made in the agricultural grant? It is very regrettable that that reduction should be made, and I put it to the farmer representatives on the Fianna Fáil Benches that it is unjust and unfair to allow that to be done.

There is another matter on which I should like some explanation from the Minister and that is the exclusion of some urban areas from the benefits of this Bill. Amongst the urban areas which are to benefit by it, I cannot see any urban area in the constituency which I represent. I know agitation has been going on probably in a small way, to have these lands, which are purely agricultural, given the benefit of the agricultural grant. In my own county I know of holdings inside the fence, so to speak, which are just as agricultural in character as those outside the fence, and yet they get no benefit. I want to know how it is that some urban areas are included and others left out. Has there been a re-examination of the whole position? In my town of Carrick-on-Suir the urban area extends three or four miles into the country. How that area has been drawn I do not know, but I know that great hardships and injustice have been put on some agricultural holdings in urban areas. I really cannot understand why a proper examination was not made, and I would like some explanation from the Minister on that head. I can only offer my protest against the deduction of the agricultural grant. In connection with the payment of rates, the Government are very often the greatest defaulters in paying up what is due.

Mr. Holohan

I would like to protest against the reduction of the agricultural grant for the year 1935-36. Taking into consideration the position, all over the country for the last year or two, and looking at the situation from the point of view of the prospects of the future, it is my conviction that the farmers will not be in a position to meet higher rates now than they were asked to pay in years gone past. I cannot see very much hope for the collection of the rates for 1935-36. I know people who have made great efforts in the past year to pay their rates. A good many then had their cattle seized for the non-payment of rates, and a great many, up to the present, are unable to pay. Besides that you have the money due in connection with the unpaid land annuities. That will mean a further sum in addition to the unpaid rates for last year. With the present reduction in the agricultural grant, I cannot possibly see how the rates are to be met for the year 1935-36.

Allowances given in respect of people working on the land are, to my mind, too small. A number of females working both inside and outside, on the land, are not taken into consideration in connection with the allowances. There are many people, under 18 years of age, working for whom no allowances are made. I think allowances in respect of rates should be given for those people. I cannot see how the Government can expect that high rates can be collected from the farmers under present conditions. I speak as a farmer, and I know that farmers will find it almost impossible to meet their rates next year. Many of the farmers on the Fianna Fáil Benches, living on the land in the country, if they were to state what is in their minds, would have to protest against any reduction of the agricultural grant for the year 1935-36. As I have already said, I am of opinion that it will be almost impossible to collect rates under present conditions. I am more than surprised to see any reduction made in the agricultural grant for the present year.

Mr. Bennett

We, on this side of the House, are protesting against this measure, and particularly in regard to the allocation of the grant. I am glad that Deputy Holohan made the representations he did in reference to the employment of women. I referred to that matter previously. It is not included in this Bill, but I think it ought to be. The allocation of the grant for the last two years has been very unfair to many farmers. In Limerick and contiguous counties, the farmer with a farm of average size is placed in a very difficult position owing to the arrangement of the rates. One farmer, with 30 or 40 acres, might be getting considerable relief, while his neighbour working a similar sized farm gets practically none, because of the particular method in which the relief is given. One of the hardships in dairy counties is that there is no relief given for women workers. In County Tipperary and County Limerick, in many instances—I will not say in the majority, but in a great many instances—I do not think I exaggerate when I say nearly half the farmers employ more women workers than men. Some farmers employ all woman labour in regard to the milking of cows and all that. It certainly is a hardship when one man sees his neighbour getting considerable relief while he himself is getting practically none. I think the Minister should look into this. It is very unfair to the dairy farmers of Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, Kilkenny and other dairy counties. While Deputies in other districts might not realise the unfairness of this allocation, I can assure them it exists and I hope the Minister will take this matter into consideration.

The burden on the ratepayers has risen considerably in recent years. It is now £700,000 odd higher than it was some years ago, and, to make matters worse, there is increasing disability on the part of the farmers to meet their obligations. As Deputy Holohan has said, the farmers are experiencing increasing difficulties to meet their rates alone. Arrears are accumulating in many counties and, despite the inducement in the way of credit notes—with their particularly mean way, something of the method of the collection of moneylenders' bills—farmers were almost put to it at the end of the year to beg, borrow or steal, or else lose the particular advantage offered. If it had not been for that, I believe the arrears of rates, much as the Deputy would regret it, would have been considerably more than they were.

Many farmers this year went to great lengths to borrow or get money in any way they could rather than lose the advantage of the credit notes. They will be unable to do that in succeeding years. In many instances, to my own knowledge, people had to get rid of their stock to pay rates. If you add to that the difficulties which they experienced in meeting other commitments in the shape of annuities, it is easy to visualise what the position of the farmer will be in regard to meeting future rateable charges. If there is to be any allocation out of Government funds in aid of rates it should be generously and fairly distributed. There should not, I think, be any discrimination against average-sized farmers who are working their land well. They should not be precluded from the relief which other people are getting. We all know that the smaller man is going to get a considerable amount of relief and I think that everybody will agree that the very small farmer is entitled to that relief; but then there is the case of the farmer whose farm is slightly bigger than that of the small man and whose valuation is a little higher. He employs a man or two and he is really in a worse position than the smaller man inasmuch as the smaller man does his own work with the assistance of his own family. He has not to meet the incidental expenses which the man with a slightly larger acreage has to meet.

If the question were considered as it should be, I think it would be found that the people who have suffered most severely owing to the depression have been what I might call middle-sized farmers, men who employ a fairly large amount of labour and whose valuation, particularly in some counties, is fairly high. If you take counties like Tipperary and Limerick, you will find that the valuation in some cases is more than £2 per acre. In these counties it does not mean that a man is a very big farmer if his valuation runs up to £100. I know of many famers of 50 acres whose valuation is over £100, and a man who has only 50 acres cannot certainly be called a big farmer. I do not think that anyone would make the case that a farmer of that type should not be eligible for the relief given in this measure. Such a man is precluded from getting any relief in respect of agricultural workers if he has four or five women workers, while a man who employs two "gossoons" of 18 years of age gets the full amount of relief for agricultural workers.

The Minister here before expressed the point of view to me that he did not think that female labour should be encouraged. Whether it should be encouraged generally is another point, but there certainly should be some way out of the difficulty when women are doing absolutely legitimate work on a farm, work that perhaps men could not do as well. It has been the practice for as long as I can remember to employ women in dairying. It is not a question of their creeping in and taking the employment previously offered to men. They have been doing that work for a longer period than this Parliament has existed, and they will be doing it as long as the most of us will be here. I think that farmers who employ these women should get some credit for that. The absence of such a provision is to me the chief blemish in the allocation of the grant. It would not serve any useful purpose at this hour to go into the difficulties of all farmers. They have been often brought up here, and they will be brought up again on the Vote for the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. Donnelly

Indeed they will, till the Day of Judgment.

Mr. Bennett

Yes, if the Day of Judgment comes before Fianna Fáil goes out of office, but if the Judgment is deferred until after the demise of Fianna Fáil there might be some hope for us. The position is that instead of any reduction being made in the grant this year, we ought to look for an increased grant in aid of rates in the country. I do not think that any Deputy on any side of the House can derive any particular satisfaction from this measure.

Mr. McMenamin

One feels it rather difficult to understand what object the Government hopes to achieve by this measure. Recently we had a Budget introduced for the purpose of raising taxation which gave no review of the country's resources or no indication as to whether they were capable of producing that revenue. In 1933 or 1934 I drew attention to this matter on the Budget Resolutions. A Budget is produced but no stock is taken as to the country's assets or its capacity to pay. The very same principle is adopted in the case of this measure. I am at a loss to understand what the Government is aiming at or where it is travelling. There is an old Biblical saying either in one of the Gospels or in one of the Epistles—I think it is in the Gospel for Trinity Sunday—which is something to this effect: "When the blind lead the blind, they will fall into the ‘shough'." Apparently that is the policy of the Government.

Mr. Norton

Get another quotation.

Mr. McMenamin

Is that not good enough for you? There are a few more here.

Mr. Norton

That was a damp squib.

Mr. McMenamin

That is apparently what is happening in this country. Whatever you want, try to extract it from the people and have no consideration at all for the means by which you will extract it or the capacity of those from whom it is extracted to pay it. The Budget increased taxation without reference to the resources of the country, its prosperity or potential prosperity. Here is another lopsided statement: "It is lower this year than last year, but it is higher than in other years." That is a very enlightening statement. With that gloss we are asked to swallow the Bill. I should like if some other Minister were in charge of this measure. I should like if either the Minister for Lands or the Minister for Agriculture were in this House. Either of them could probably give some reason why this grant is reduced by £100,000 this year or could tell us whether there is any justification for it and, if so, what it is. The Minister knows quite as well as I do, and as every citizen outside knows, that there is absolutely no justification for the reduction of this grant by £100,000. As a matter of fact, the contrary is the truth. It would look as if I were piling it on too much if I quoted for you a few concrete cases to illustrate the condition of the people who are asked to bear this loss of £100,000. The thing is tragic. I took a cutting out of a paper some day last week—I think it was on Tuesday week—giving an account of a seizure which took place in some county, probably Cork, which makes most of the noise in this country.

Mr. Norton

Mind Deputy Broderick.

Mr. McMenamin

The going will not be easy.

Mr. Norton

The Deputy will not be in the saddle.

Mr. McMenamin

The saddle has never been my aim. It may be yours.

Mr. Norton

Put a bit of a halter around him.

Mr. McMenamin

I want to quote this case and to relate it to this Bill. A seizure took place and the entire stock of the farm was cleared. It was a very substantial farm, judging from the amount of stock that was seized and sold. The sheriff seized 31 sheep, 32 lambs, 7 horses and 61 cattle. Anyone who knows anything about farming can well understand that it must have been a very substantial farm off which that amount of stock was seized. What was all this stock sold for? The sum of £75. Is not that a nice state of affairs? I think the Minister is not just to himself or to the country, and certainly not just to his office, when you have a happening of that kind taking place in the country, and then coming here with a Bill to reduce the agricultural grant by £100,000. We get from time to time from the Government Bench a lot of general statements which mean nothing and indicate nothing. Where are rates going to come out of that farm this year? Who is going to bear them, and what are the prospects of the farmers for the future? The Government, apparently, are going to clear all the farms in the country as that farm has been cleared. Remember, I am not complaining about the Government enforcing the law, because I will always stand behind any Government that enforces the law to the very letter, but what I object to is doing a thing like this, which is criminally immoral. It is certainly criminally immoral to clear a valuable farm of the entire of its valuable stock, then take the stock to some town in Ireland and, instead of insisting that the full market price be paid for the stock, selling it to some fellow who comes along from some place that nobody knows for £75. I do not blame the man who got all that stock for £75. There is an old saying in the criminal law that if there were no receivers there would be no thieves. Who are the receivers in this case and who are the thieves? Why does a man who steals a valuable ring —it may be worth £20, £50, £100 or £200—go into a pawnbroker and sell it for 5/-? Does not the pawnbroker know quite well that when a man does that that there must be something wrong?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Bill before the House deals with the agricultural grant. The Deputy is entitled, of course, to refer to the need for an increased grant or to object to a reduction of the grant, and to point out in doing so the condition of the ratepayers and how they will be hit. But the matter that the Deputy is dealing with now is one that might be raised on the Vote for the Land Commission or on the Vote for the office of the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. McMenamin

I bow to your ruling, but I was simply drawing an analogy between these two things.

Mr. Norton

Quote the Fianna Fáil plan.

Mr. McMenamin

I protest against that amount of stock being handed over to any man for £75. I will make no further comment on it, because no comment that I could make would be half so eloquent as the facts I have given. Is the Department of Local Government looking ahead and paying any attention to the situation in the country in face of these facts? There is an intelligence staff in the Department, and I am sure it is as good and efficient as similar staffs in any other Government Departments. The officials in it have ability and experience and all these things must be well known to them. No explanation has been given for the reduction that has taken place in the agricultural grant. Deputies will remember all the promises that were made by the members of the Government before they got into office, and what they stated their policy was to be. It would take too long to enumerate all the promises they made, but, in brief, they said that their policy for the agricultural industry was to give it an opportunity that it had not had since 1922. They said that the rule of the sheriff and that the sheriff's bailiff would be put an end to when Fianna Fáil got into office. I certainly cannot be taken as one who patted the back of the last Administration, but I can say this that in the county I come from there were not ten seizures in it during the ten years that the last Government was in power. One cannot take up a daily newspaper now without reading reports in it of wholesale seizures. These reports do not refer to seizures to pay off the net amount of a decree—the seizure of one cow or something like that—but they record the seizures of the entire stocks of farms. The entire stock on farms throughout the country is now being swept away, and then somebody is allowed to come into the sale and bag the loot—to make an enormous profit out of the whole thing.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy seems to have returned to the point from which he was diverted a moment ago.

Mr. McMenamin

I am sorry, but these reports of seizures make very tragic reading indeed. I have referred to all the promises that were made by the Government before they got into office. I will just quote one which had not struck my eye before. One of the promises they made—it was published in the Irish Independent on January the 19th, 1933—was to develop the untapped mineral resources of Ireland. That had escaped my attention previously. I protest against the reduction in the agricultural grant. I could quote for the House many cases of real distress amongst the farmers of the country, amongst people who, if you like, were never wealthy. They could not be called prosperous, yet they were industrious and were able to live in frugal comfort. Their position to-day is that they have been reduced to a state of utter poverty. We hear a lot about the condition of the big farmers. I have no special mission to come here and plead for them, and I am not doing it. I would like to see them prosperous just as I would like to see every unit in the country prosperous. If the big farmers are not prosperous, it follows that the small farmers cannot be prosperous. I come here to plead for the small farmers of the country who have been brought to ruin by the policy of the Government. They have suffered most in this economic war, and, as I said here before and it is a remarkable thing, they are the people who complain least. In the parish in which I was born the rate collector closed his warrant on the 31st March this year. There was not one seizure for land annuities in that parish. The average valuations in it do not exceed £5. Therefore, I think I am entitled to come here and ask the Government to change its ways and get away from its blind alley policy —not to be thinking about its own high politics but to think about the people. If the Government fail to do that, then I fear the people will get out of hand —out of the control of the Government and other responsible people in the country. The Government should think of the people who are heroically bearing the burdens of this economic war. If they fail to do that, then I fear the storm will break, and when it does there will be no need for this Government or this House.

Mr. Boland

We heard from Deputy Mulcahy about the great relief that was given the ratepayers during the last year that his Party were in office, that being the year before the General Election. No attempt was made from 1925 to give increased relief until that year, when £750,000 was given. In the two years since we came into office, there was more given than in that year, £250,000 was given in addition to what they gave that year during our first year and, last year, £22,000 more was given than on the previous occasion. The Deputy conveniently forgot that the land annuities have been halved and that that has given relief to the agricultural community. He also forgot that the Unemployment Assistance Act has relieved the rates in several parts of the country. Of course, it is not for him to say these things.

The burden of all the speeches was that things were getting worse and worse, and that things would be so bad that, next year, we would scarcely get in any rates at all. The fact is we got more rates in last year than Deputy Mulcahy anticipated. He says that we got these rates through squeezing. I say that we got them because the campaign in which his Party had been engaged has broken down. He complains that the moneys stopped and paid into the Guarantee Fund must be spread over the counties and the rates mulcted accordingly. That will not be so serious an item in the future either, because the campaign in that respect is also breaking down. We are not going to stand for people paying their rates and refusing to pay their annuities. We are going to get what we are entitled to from those who can pay. We know very well that the campaign is being carried on largely by people who can well afford to pay—people who led others who, perhaps, could not pay and who might have got consideration, into trouble. As was stated in this House, when these people were tackled, they paid—when the sheriff arrived. That game is over now, and I can assure Deputy Mulcahy and his colleagues that they are quite wrong in thinking that the rate position is going to be worse in the future. It is going to be better, so they can cheer up.

Deputy Roddy raised a question about rating in urban areas. I understand that when the Minister met this deputation he completely turned down the proposal that there should be extra relief given to certain ratepayers in urban areas. The only areas which get that relief are those which were rural areas in 1898. I should like to remind Deputy Roddy that a member of his Party has a motion on the Order Paper asking the Government to tax land values in these areas. I do not know what the policy of the Party opposite is. One member of it wants us to tax land-values, while another tells us that we should relieve the rates in these areas. Those urban areas which are getting this remission are areas which had it in 1898. The question about women workers was discussed last year. The Minister is satisfied that it is fair to give relief only in respect of whole-time adult male workers. I agree with him that that is the most desirable thing. Even if we were inclined to include women, it would be very difficult, because, as everybody knows, their work on a farm is not whole-time. Their time is divided between the home and the land, and it could not be said that they were employed whole-time on agricultural work. Deputy Curran also referred to the urban areas. I thought that Deputy Curran was purely a farmer Deputy. There is a certain amount of relief given the farmers and, if that were extended to the towns, the portion thus given would come off the farmers. The Deputy says that the towns should get the same relief that is now given to the farmers.

Mr. Curran

I mentioned agricultural holdings within urban areas.

Mr. Boland

These urban areas have increased in value, as everybody knows.

Mr. Curran

I doubt it. I know some which have not.

Mr. Boland

One of the Deputy's colleagues has put down a motion to have land-values taxed in these areas.

Mr. McMenamin

To what motion is the Minister referring?

Mr. Boland

I have not the Order Paper before me.

Mr. McMenamin

The only motion of that nature on the Order Paper refers to ground rents, which are quite a different thing.

Mr. Boland

The value of the land is so great that Deputies opposite want it taxed. The grant in relief of agricultural rates is £100,000 less than last year, but it is greater than the former Government ever thought of giving, and is as much as, in the circumstances, we can afford to allocate. Other things are being done for the agricultural community, and the position is not nearly so hopeless as Deputies opposite want to pretend. This £100,000 will not be taken off the small farmers or from farmers of the type mentioned by Deputy Bennett— farmers who employ a number of men. There is relief of an extra £12 10s. in respect of every male worker employed, and the man with 50 acres who employs the requisite number of men will get full relief. It is the people who give little or no employment who will have to pay the £100,000.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage fixed for Thursday, 4th July.