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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Nov 1935

Vol. 59 No. 5

Private Deputies' Business. - The Agricultural Industry—Incidence of Special Duties—Motion (resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That a select committee be set up to inquire into the incidence of the special duties collected by the British Government on Saorstát agricultural produce and to report on ways and means whereby the burden of the economic war will be equitably borne by all sections of the community;
That the committee consist of 11 members who shall be nominated by the Committee of Selection;
That the committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.
—(Deputy Belton).

I intervene only for a moment to say that I support this motion. I am not so sure that a select committee is a satisfactory method of achieving the kind of inquiry which Deputy Belton asks. I do not, in fact, believe that a committee of this House would be a suitable body to make the investigations necessary. I think that if the Government were to appoint a highly qualified commission of real experts to examine into the question, their report should be of considerable value. It seems to me beyond doubt that an unfair proportion of the evils resulting from the economic war are being borne by one section of the community, that is to say, the agricultural interest—not only the farmers but the miserably-paid agricultural labourers—and that while the economic war has injured many other sections of the community there are some who have not had to bear any of the burdens resulting from it at all. Therefore, while I do question whether a select committee of this House would elicit anything very valuable in the course of their inquiry, I support Deputy Belton's motion because on general principles I think far more effort should be made, than has been made up to the present, to distribute the burdens of the economic war fairly between the different classes of the community.

I do not want to interfere in this special subject to any great extent. When first I saw this motion on the Order Paper, I wondered if there was even in the mind of Deputy Belton, a proper realisation of the part the agriculturist plays in the life of the community. He proposes to have a committee set up to inquire into the incidence of the special duties collected by the British Government on Saorstát agricultural produce and to report on ways and means whereby the burden of the economic war will be equitably borne by all sections of the community. I should have thought that if I had made a remark to the effect that the agriculturist in this country supports the rest of the community, Deputy Belton would have concurred with me. That being the fact, and it is an undeniable fact, I do not see how it is possible to distribute more equitably the burden of the economic war. You may transfer it in a sense to certain sections but in the end the whole stress of the economic war is going to fall upon the person upon whom we all rest in the community and that is, the agriculturist.

Deputy MacDermot has said with some reason that there might be adaptations made here and there. So there might but it is very unlikely that these adaptations would be made by any committee the Government would set up. The Government have set their hands to this——

Might I interrupt the Deputy for one moment? I suggest to him to consider this: how very much more unbearable the lot of the agricultural community is made by their seeing that there are sections of the nation, even small sections, that are not suffering either at all or on anything like the same scale as they are suffering.

I think that in the end it is true to say that we shall all suffer if the agricultural community has to suffer. That is undeniable and this can also be pointed to. This year we are taxing everybody, the tenement dweller as well as everybody else, on his tea, sugar, bread and butter. That is what the Government has reduced the country to. I think it is a still more hopeless thing when it is thought that we are taxing these people and that that taxation is of no avail because if that taxation was being used with any hope of success to get a better economy in the country, then you might say: "The farmers are suffering undoubtedly but there are better times ahead."

A specially unfortunate situation in the country at the moment is this: In other countries there have been schemes for mortgaging certain assets of the community. It has been done on a vast scale in America. The country has been burdened with debt; there is present spending and future paying. There is a complete mortgaging of anything in the way of American assets and property. There are immense assets there however while the money raised by mortgage is being spent to pay a couple of hundred million pounds here and there. When that is pushed through the financial veins of the community, it does cause some flutter of life. Here we are mortgaging steadily and not merely mortgaging steadily anything we have in the way of property, but we are taxing, and taxing in a savage way. Notwithstanding that, there is no great benefit to the community from the spending power that is derived from the mortgages we are making. A vast amount of taxation is being levied and the situation at the moment in the country is this, that if it were not for a certain amount of building, particularly building of labourers' cottages—building that is not being paid for—this community would have collapsed two years ago.

There is a certain transfer of wealth going on but there is no new production. There is a huge amount of taxation imposed and a certain amount spent in an attempt to mask the situation and to prevent the clear facts obtruding. The worst of it is that even though money is being levied in enormous sums relative to the burden-bearing capacity of the people, there is nothing that can be pointed to, outside building operations that is going on in any way to the benefit of the community. We are wasting every resource we have. Supposing this committee met, I think that undoubtedly when they start to inquire as to where fall the taxes levied by the British, they must say primarily and immediately, blatantly for everybody to see, that they fall on agricultural goods. They can start downwards and try to find reactions of the first impact and they will find that everybody in the country is suffering, the town dweller as well as the country dweller.

Not in equal proportion.

There are certain people getting subsidies but they do not count. There is a certain vicious type of middleman being created, people who are making money by the transfer of licences for the export of cattle or making money out of tariffs.

And on old cows.

The people who are getting subsidies are getting a certain amount of money they do not deserve, but the impact of this whole business is firstly on the agricultural producers, on their goods. Let the committee, if that committee be set up, go a step further and look at the reactions of that. They will find it reacting adversely on the town-dweller. They will find a further reaction on the whole finances of the State, leading to further taxation and impoverishment of the community. I said I would not mind, nobody would mind—there is scope always for a policy of tightening the belt if a lean period has to be encountered—if there was some hope for the future. There is a Fianna Fáil policy, in relation to one article of produce in the country, which they describe as "getting rid of the surplus." They are not alone getting rid of the surplus in that production, but they are getting rid of the surplus money of the people. The surplus production which they had for sale with which to get in capital for the purchase of other goods is going. We started with the slaughter of calves and that is being continued by various other slaughterings. When it is not slaughtering by animals being killed, it is a worse type of slaughtering— people being crushed out of their employment.

There is very little good in a community such as this in having folk driven out of what is the natural economic structure of the country and made go into something else which they can only go into if they can be subsidised from the State, because subsidies must be raised from the people, from the agricultural community in the end. If they are not in production, and in better production, they will not be able to pay part of these subsidies, let alone the increased volume that must be brought about if these schemes are to come to anything. You have this complete upset in the whole country at present. The natural production, the production in which people made money, has been destroyed by Government bungling. The attempt to meet that has led to worse bungling, the destruction of the surplus. No country in the world would face up to that cold-bloodedly and inaugurate Bills for the destruction of wealth and hope to get that blessed as sanity.

Deputy Belton will find that the farmer obtrudes everywhere, even in the urban areas. Although there are people in the tenements to-day who can complain that their bread, butter, sugar, tea, and everything they get in for their homes, are all bearing an extra whack of taxation, they are also finding that the money they are getting —any of them who are getting wages —has not a purchasing power of more than three-fourths of what it was about five years ago. They are supposed to bear an increased burden in their own little homes. Then those of them who are lucky enough to get work are having to pay to put on extra stamps on cards to provide, not work that was promised, but merely doles, for the people who, being unemployed, had increased to such numbers that the Government had to mask the growth of their numbers and ease the situation developing by this unemployment assistance money. In addition to that, we have a Government bringing in a piece of legislation whereby the Minister for Industry and Commerce is allowed to deem certain people to be employed at a particular part of the year, although he must know well that thousands of people whom he put off the unemployment roll at a particular time, because he deemed there was work for them, were walking around idle and hungry until the period when his gentle mind thought fit to deem them employed was passed.

There is one thing only that has developed in this country in the way of work, and that is house building. If it were not for house building, the numbers of the unemployed, that members of the Government have to apologise for in every speech which they make, would have been doubled. We are getting people into some sort of temporary occupation by a phenomenal spurt in building, and we are not paying for the building. It is another of these mortgaging devices. We have a Labourers Bill brought in so that the full effect likely to come in a year or two from the building operations of the present day will fall, not upon the people who inaugurated the schemes—the Government are not going to raise taxation to pay for these things—but upon the labourers. If agriculture perishes in this country, nobody can live. Agriculture is being killed at present by the special duties. Agriculture, in some of its production, is being killed by the direct measures of the Government to slaughter off certain types of productions. Where can the burden be shifted to? The old problem of the man lifting himself from the ground by hauling at his own boots is simple compared with the problem which is to be set to this committee.

If the burden cannot be borne by the best producers we bad, how can it be shifted to anybody else when everybody else depends upon these primary producers? I think there is considerable public agitation and annoyance at the amount of money that people who are just chancing it in certain ways in the country are getting—people, who are intervening between the producers and the subsidy granted by the Government—there is a certain growing irritation because, at times, with the connivance of the Government, middlemen are getting subsidies that were intended for producers. Even supposing you gathered all these subsidies, and skimmed off what is going to people for whom they were never intended when this House voted certain sums of money, what amount of money do you get? It is a small fraction of the amount that is being wasted by reason of the impact of these duties on agricultural products.

I suppose it will be regarded as almost playing lightly with this subject to remind Ministers of what they told us previously about the agricultural products of this country. The Minister for Finance was one of the loudest in shouting that the British would hot dare to put any tax upon agricultural goods coming out of this country; they wanted our goods so badly. The Minister for Finance was one of the men who repeated, even at a time when the folly of the remark struck every Minister except himself, that if the British did put a tax on our goods there were other Countries which would develop enthusiasm for what we produced. There were these equivalent markets, the foreign markets, that we were to get elsewhere than in Great Britain. Those two hopes, at any rate, have been falsified. Yet, those were the hopes Ministers had when they entered into this economic war. When we had delegates in London in June, 1932, and the news came through, despite all that the Minister for Finance boasted, that these penal duties were to be enforced, the Minister even then stood up in this House and said that if Great Britain did attempt this we had a weapon in our hands far more powerful than Britain had in hers, because the things we send to Great Britain, Great Britain could not do without; but the things that were of much more value, according in the Minister, that we purchased from Great Britain, Great Britain could not sell to anybody else and we could get them elsewhere. That was another of the delusions that brought about the economic war.

Great Britain hit us, and hit us knowingly, at the point where, to a certain extent, we were weakest. They struck at the roots because the roots of this country are in agriculture. One thing has been exemplified to the British Government that, up to the time the Fianna Fáil Government came into office, had been hidden from them, and that was our weakness in relation to them. That is what has been exposed, and that is what the fatuity of Deputies, like Deputy Corry, has made plain.

Were they so blind previously?

The Deputy knows, being on the inside of things, that at the time of the Sinn Féin movement here it was to a great extent a bluff. As far as it was a military effort, it was an immense bluff, and it worked. Apparently they were blind just to what were the resources here in a particular type of strength and the resources of the civilian population to hold out. At any rate, our material resources are now displayed to them. We had these catch cries of the Minister that we could get markets elsewhere; that Great Britain must buy; that we could cut off British supplies and would have Great Britain on her knees in no time. That has been going on for two or three years, and Deputy Moore must have had his eyes opened, and in a very unwelcome way, at the same time that the British eyes are opened, possibly, to things they did hot know before. Whether they knew before or not, however, we have made a demonstration to the world— I should not say "we," but the Fianna Fáil Government has made a demonstration to the world of what exactly our strength is.

Is the Deputy speaking for a large body of farmers?

The farmers do not speak; they only groan. I heard a remark made some time ago that might please Deputy Moore if he saw the Tattoo in the autumn. It was to the effect that when all of Irish military history was being displayed there was one episode missing, and that was that they might have paraded at least two dozen farmers as representing the last war in Ireland. Does Deputy Moore deny that the farmers are fighting that war? Who are fighting it? Is it not the farmers?

And delighted to be fighting it.

"And delighted to be fighting it," Deputy Moore says. Has the Deputy, in his constituency, found that delight overwhelming him? When he goes out to meet these farmers are they pressing around him with delight and thanking him for what the Minister for Finance has brought on them?

They certainly do not press around me in the spirit the Deputy has been speaking about.

The Deputy says that they do not press around him. Does the Deputy even give them an opportunity to get near him? But there is the type of mind to which Deputy Belton's motion is supposed to appeal, and Deputy Moore says that the farmers are delighted with the way things are going. Was a farmer delighted at seeing an animal, produced in his area of the country, killed because he would get 10/- in his hand instead of having it grow and the 10/- increased to something else?

He is not as materialistic as that.

I see. So, it is not materialism. It is something spiritual, apparently. The Deputy's idea, then, is that the farmers of this country are gleefully bearing what the Deputy must recognise is a burden because they are not overwhelmed with materialism but are thinking of some spiritual benefit they may be able to get hereafter. There is a half-way house between bell and heaven, and it is purgatory. Perhaps the Deputy means that the farmers are there at the moment, but is there a course upward or downward? At any rate, is I was saying, I do not see that there is any use in appealing to a House that can receive comments like Deputy Moore's. I do not think there is any use in asking them to set up a committee to consider the incidence of these duties and to see how the burdens can be more equitably spread over all sections of the community, because Deputy Moore must feel—I am sure his constituents are not only spiritually inclined on the farmers' side — that there are others to bear the burden, and all he requires is to go and tell some of the others that they are not bearing enough of the burden and, probably, in a mood of high spiritual exaltation, they will then clamour to have the burden removed from the farmers to them. This kind of thing is equal to the ridiculous nonsense that we heard previously about the British not putting tariffs on our goods, and that if they did try to put tariffs on our goods we had a stronger weapon in our hands than England could wield. Whether it is material or spiritual, the fact remains that the country has been sustaining itself by these spiritual aids for three years. The people may be forgiven if they are beginning to ask when will it end and when will they get some benefit or recompense for all the sufferings they are going through. It is well to see that the mood has changed somewhat. It is well to see, even from Deputy Moore, that the mood has changed. I remember the time when, if Deputy Moore had even breathed a hint of a belief that the farming community were suffering, his colleague, Deputy Corry, would rage at him for daring to suggest such a thing. I am not sure whether or not he will even yet rage. But Deputy Moore evidently now admits that there are sufferings by the farmers.

That is so.

The Deputy admits that that is so. Well, that is to the good. Even that much is all to the good, because two or three years ago Deputy Moore would have countered that suggestion. Seeing that they are suffering, and that it is admitted, I should like to see a committee established, not so much to see how the burden can be borne, but how long it can be borne and whether or not we are at the cracking point. We may kill off calves and we are slaughtering animals, and the Minister brought in a Bill, and passed it as an Act, which gave him power to slow down pig production in the country and, apparently, he is going to slow it down. The only things we are going to produce in this country, evidently, are the things we cannot produce economically, something the community cannot pay for, and the capacity of the community for paying anything is going down.

Do not tell that story.

It is a story that is unpleasant to listen to.

Is the Deputy aware that his colleague, Deputy Hogan, prophesied at the time of the Budget in 1932 that in six months we would be bankrupt?

And who says that Deputy Hogan is not right?

If the Deputy were a farmer himself he would know all about it.

Is Deputy Moore aware that, at the same time, in reply to Deputy Hogan, the Minister for Industry and Commerce prophesied that in eight months he would have cured unemployment?

That, at any rate, is an apposite remark—that in reply to that challenge the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that he would cure unemployment in eight months. Has it been cured? The Minister used to boast that there would not be enough idle hands in this country to do the work he would get for them to do, and, at great expense, mental ingenuity and, I think, perversion of fact, he produced a pamphlet on unemployment. What is the big boast in that pamphlet? The boast—the biggest boast—is "We have not increased unemployment." That is the biggest boast.

But we have increased employment.

He has not said that. He said that there are no figures from which comparisons could be drawn of that, but he used to revel in comparisons. That is the other side of the question, but, on the question of bankruptcy, does Deputy Moore think that if bankruptcy comes it is always immediately revealed when it has occurred? Does he not know that when men are on the down grade there can be various devices for hiding it that they can get a certain spending power and can even appear to have affluence And case when they are within shouting distance of bankruptcy? Supposing there is any man who has despaired of making good and who has a little property saved from good times, and supposing, instead of using that in an effectively economic way, trying to make two or three shillings out of one and trying to make his one produce several more—supposing he gives up that effort and says: "I am for the rocks and I am going cheerfully; it cannot be helped now, so I am going to meet it cheerfully," and he decides to have a grand riotous period of five or six months, according to the resources he has, while he is spending his capital; if anybody said to Deputy Moore that that man was going into bankruptcy, Deputy Moore could say that he was not; Deputy Moore could say: "Look at what he is spending, he cannot be near bankruptcy"; but the day of bankruptcy nevertheless is near for that man.

Is that the Deputy's explanation of the present situation?

I have said that I see only one thing that has saved the bankruptcy from becoming clear, and that is the activity in housebuilding. There is no other development in this country in the last three years that has helped to find the people occupation.

Apart from farming?

I am speaking of the whole community. There is nothing that has occupied even the farmers and their sons except the building of those labourers' cottages, the hectic pursuit of which has characterised the country in the last two or three years. The unemployment figures show that three-fourths of the new employment that is claimed as having occurred in the country is in relation to housebuilding.

I do not like to interrupt again, but I would like that we should understand one another. May I remind Deputy McGilligan that in a similar debate some years ago he said, "Give us the local elections." Is that right?

I made that remark. The thing explains itself. If the Government spent £3,000,000 more than they are spending at the moment they might get a bigger return in Galway than they got at the recent by-election. But would the country be any nearer to economic salvation if you spend money and are careless of the future? I will talk to the Deputy on the results of the local elections any time he likes, when it is relevant. Let me assume that the results of the local elections were up to my expectations—and I do not admit it. But the Deputy must remember the dole money, the free beef, the free milk, even the 10/- for the calf skin, and all these things. That 10/- for the calf skin was money in advance that many a man was glad to get rather than to have that animal growing up and yielding him a big sum at some future date. But that man's necessity may make him glad of the 10/-. It is the same with the man on the dole, the man on the free beef, and the man on free milk. All that may have an effect when we speak of the future of the community.

If the farmers have been dissatisfied they have been given opportunities of speaking out. They have spoken with one voice in favour of the Government.

Have they? There has been a bit of a crack in the voice since.

It is clearer each time.

If Deputy Moore were at the fairs this week he would know what they were saying.

Blessington has not one unemployed man to-day.

Deputies must not interrupt.

Whether there is one unemployed man or not in Blessington to-day, there is not one man without money, but that might argue a very bad future for those men.

They are employed in building.

How many farmers' sons have got occupation in building cottages and other labourers' houses? Has it not been from these occupations that many farmers and their sons are making a living and not from farming at the moment? How many would be making their living from the new type of farming were it not for the subsidies? How long are these subsidies to be paid? Out of what are they to be paid? Is it out of taxation? Is it out of the exhaustion of the reserves of the country they are to be paid? These are the things that matter. Deputy Moore tells us there is so much occupation in this country that there is not a man unemployed in Blessington. Men are living in such a way that they have all spoken out loudly at elections, but why did the Deputy assist in taxing their butter, their tea, their sugar, their bread, and their other necessities this year? Why had that to be done? Why was it that taxation did not yield the same as before? What was the necessity for having to attack the necessities of the people? It was carefully and truly phrased in the Budget that they were to get after the things that the people must eat or drink, and thus they could not avoid paying this money to the Government.

In order to do the things for the people that the State should do.

For instance, taking so much money off the unemployed and giving it to the widows and orphans. Surely, if everybody is so much bettor off, if incomes are better and people employed who were previously unemployed, the revenue from taxation ought to be increasing instead of showing the deplorable drop that so saddened the Minister if not the Deputy. I do not know that these burdens of the economic war could more equitably be distributed. There is an old fable about putting more weight on the back of a man who is riding a very patient ass, forgetting all the while that it is not the man's strength that is being taxed in the end but the beast of burden on which he is riding. It may be that the urban population may be able to bear an increased burden, but they are all riding on the backs of the agriculturists and they are the people on whom the strain is to tell first.

You can put it on the agricultural ass.

Yes; put it on the agricultural beast of burden first.

Deputy McGilligan had him a long time and he threw him off.

He is an ass still and he is bearing all that weight. I do not see how we are to get much forwarder with a scheme like this, except that if the community likes, that committee can sit down and put their definition properly and if they get the figures paraded to them they would see that in the end the agriculturist would have to bear it and bear it always so long as there was this attack upon us by penal duties. They might justify the impact at the first blow by putting in their heads but the rebound would come to the agriculturist. They may deride him as a beast of burden and they may treat him lightly as an uncomplaining or a complaining ass; but if that beast of burden goes there will be no ride for any of us. It is not by paying subventions and subsidies—rung in the end from that very man—that you are going to make good this situation. I would vote for that committee if I thought it would inquire into this matter and if I thought by that that it could be driven into the heads of the people that in reality there is no distinction between the different sections of the community—that they are all welded together. The urban community depends completely upon the agriculturist. If that fact were driven home by the committee then that committee might do some good. The only thing you must know is that the heavy burden and the whole of the burden which is falling upon one class in the community and which is to crush that class will in the end crush all classes in the community.

This is a very old dish served up in a new way to-night. Deputy McGilligan started on the economic war and he told us how it was brought about. All I have to say to him is this: that the economic war was brought about by the weak-kneed, backboneless gentlemen over there who paid the annuities illegally to Britain for a number of years and paid them, as far as I can find out, with their secret agreement as the first price of the 18 pounders that they used against their fellow-Irishmen.

And that the Deputy is to use against the Italians now.

We will send Deputy Belton out there and he would be a good riddance.

And we will have Deputy Corry marching alongside John Bull. The Deputy would be all right; he would show up the Republic then.

Deputy McGilligan told us about the natural type of production in this country for agricultural land. That was the natural type of production that was followed here for ten years by the Party opposite when they put 100,000 acres of land of this country back into grass instead of having it in tillage. The very men working on that land were thrown out into the roadside and left unemployed. That was the only type of production in this country which in the last year of the Cumann na nGaedheal régime—1931—resulted in sending one and a half times as much agricultural produce into Great Britain as we sent in 1928 and getting £13,000,000 for it. That is the natural type of production, and apparently we were to be the asses and John Bull was to do the riding with the help of the people opposite. We were told of labourers being crushed out of employment by the growing of beet and wheat instead of the breeding of bullocks. We hear a lot of that thrash from men who know nothing about agriculture.

What about the incidence of the tariffs? Who is paying them?

I will insist on making any speech and you can follow me if you wish. I do not know exactly how many Parties we have opposite to us now; I do not know how they are fixed up. Deputy Dillon declares very solemnly that he will not grow wheat or beet—that neither should be grown; and then we have the Fine Gael statement that the wheat policy is going to be kept going.

Why? As outdoor relief—what the farmers need.

As surely as we are reducing the cattle population by the slaughter of calves, so surely did you reduce the grain growing areas in this country year after year. You forced the farmers who were paying rates on wheat growing land into the world market with their produce. Then you were carrying on a kind of tuppenny-ha'penny industry here, endeavouring to make him pay through the nose for goods of Irish production while at the same time you were denying him the real market.

But that valuation was based on 50/- a barrel for wheat.

I grew wheat and it paid me.

I suppose you gave back the subsidy?

We do not thank this country for the subsidy. The farmer is entitled to the home market for what he produces here and he is going to get it while this Government is here.

And the subsidy with it?

Yes, if the subsidy is needed to give him a fair price, just as you subsidised the booty and the waterproofs. We are told that people are driven out of employment by producing 52,000 acres of beet. The suggestion is that you would have far more employment if you were to rear bullocks instead of growing wheat or beet. I have noticed an enormous change within the last four months in the attitude of the farming population towards the Government.

For the better?

Yes, for the better. A few of them were carried away by the lunacy preached by Deputy Belton and his associates for a period.

I preached sound national economics.

There were some gentlemen who called on Deputy Kent and when he decided to foot the bill and pay up, the Blueshirts boycotted him. I am sure he will not deny that.

On a point of explanation, as regards that unfortunate incident which occurred in my house, the people who came there did not try to intimidate me not to pay my annuities. They came there solely asking for my resignation because I would not lead an organised mob into the City of Cork, lead them on to bloodshed. It was not for withholding the annuities. Deputy Corry is wrong in that.

We will not have this matter discussed any further. This incident must finish here and now. Deputy Corry ought to travel more closely to the motion.

I can assure you I am keeping far nearer to it than the Deputy who preceded me.

On a point of order. Is that an orderly observation on the part of Deputy Corry, you having pointed out to him that he is departing from the rules of order, to reply that he is keeping much closer to the motion than the speaker before him? If that be true, you allowed the man before him to be out of order.

That, of course, would be accepting the judgment of Deputy Corry.

I can assure Deputy Dillon that when I want to learn manners I will not go to him, because I would be going to a very bad school. Deputy McGilligan said we had shown our weakness to the British Government. He apparently closed his eyes to the speeches made by members of his Party at election times when they actually asked the British to put a tariff on our cattle. In case the British would forget anything, they were advised by Deputies on the opposite benches as to the penal measures they could bring into operation against the agricultural community. Apparently they were put in here for the purpose of advising Britain how she should conduct her war against us. Deputy Blythe, now Senator Blythe, was then advising Britain what she should do, that they should extract £1,500,000 from all people before they would talk of negotiations. That was suggested by Senator Blythe and Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney. I see very little use in setting up this committee, because Deputy Belton knows as well as I do, or any sane man in the country, that I can get a committee to report in favour of or against anything I like.

Not on the evidence put before them.

God bless your evidence, I know the amount of evidence you can produce. You can produce one farmer who stuck to the bullock and lost money, and I would produce another who followed Government policy and made money. That was admitted by Deputy Broderick, who comes from my constituency. Speaking on an adjournment motion, he said any farmer who followed the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy had made money.

Did the nation get the money? What is its borrowing power now?

I can produce any amount of proof if you only give me time. We had another farmer to-day, Deputy McMenamin, telling us that we had ruined the pig trade. I will bring another witness into the box on that matter—Mr. Cussen, released from Arbour Hill, having paid £60 after having done his duty as a patriot. He said, as reported in the Cork Examiner last Monday:—

"It may be taken for granted that if the Pigs Marketing Board was not functioning at the present time, the price of pigs would be several shillings lower per cwt. than it is, and farmers would suffer a cumulative loss of several thousands of pounds in the period from the 1st October, when the factors of supply and demand were far removed from each other."

That is Mr. Cussen's opinion of the Marketing Board, yet Deputy McMenamin, with his wide experience, tells us all about the price of pigs.

I would like to know the Deputy's own private opinion about that opinion he has just quoted.

I will give my opinion. We have Deputies like Deputy McGilligan and Deputy McMenamin talking about farming and shaking their heads. We have had a lot of talk about the bankruptcy of the country. Senator Jameson, speaking in the Seanad on the 6th November, said:—

"The credit of the Free State is good, and a 4 per cent loan, guaranteed by the Free State Government, ought to be a first-class security."

He went further and said:—

"Looking at the amount of money for which the Free State has pledged itself in the loans it has issued, we have not at all transgressed the bounds of what would be called our solvency. Our loans are not heavy when judged by the capacity of the people to pay interest and sinking fund."

What is Britain paying for money?

The Deputy will have his opportunity of speaking when closing the debate.

We were told that the country would be bankrupt eight months after the economic war had started. That was the statement of Deputy Hogan, ex-Minister for Agriculture. A great many months have passed since then and, according to Deputy Jameson, we are better off than when we started.

Then, again, look at the housing policy of the Government. The Government's housing policy is breaking the backs of Deputies opposite. The fact that houses are being built for the ordinary agricultural labourer is enough to bring Deputy McGilligan up on his hind legs and Deputy Mulcahy with him. They are shocked at the idea that the Fianna Fáil Party is building houses for the ordinary working people that their own Party neglected since 1922. These are the facts that are killing them as far as I can make out. I have a reply to a question which was asked by Deputy Norton on the 20th March, 1935, which shows that there was paid out for export bounties and subsidies the sum of £2,894,000 in 1934, and that in the years 1933 and 1934 the sum of £2,071,558 was paid out of levies collected under the Dairy Produce Act, 1932. Let Deputy Belton count that up and put it against the £4,000,000, and let him count in addition the value of the half annuities, and the value of the market for wheat and beet, let him count all these up and put them against the £4,000,000 and he will see that the farmers of the country are on the right side of the balance sheet at any rate. I am prepared frankly to admit that farmers for the 12 months of 1932 were hard hit; but now they have changed their farming methods. They have taken into their employment men who previously had been looking over the fence at the bullocks grazing, and they put them to the plough. I do not think there is a farmer in the County Cork who would change his position to-day for what it was in 1932. I admit there are a certain amount of old lads who have made up their minds that no good can come from the present Government. Deputy Kent knows that and I know it. We used to meet these so-called old republicans. These are the lads you can never convert no matter what you do. These old lads are there yet, and they will always be there. They are people that will never be converted. I never waste time any longer with that particular type. They are not worth wasting time on. There is another class that I do not like. I do not like Deputies coming in here moaning and groaning about the condition of the farmers and the bankruptcy of the country. When there is any attempt made to economise in any shape or form these are the very men who say you must not take even 2 per cent. off the Civil Service.

Would you be in favour of that now?

I will give Deputy Kent his chance. If Deputies here examine the Bills brought before them and study them they could see where here and there the loyal fraternity of the country are getting slices out of them. Let them examine Section 50 of the Courts of Justice Bill and there they will see some pensions that are to be increased. They will be far better engaged in that study than bringing in motions for the appointment of committees that will do no good. Let them study these things and pay a little attention to them. Honestly I say the attitude of some Deputies here is irritating. I honestly feel irritated when I see lawyers standing up talking about the farmers, and when I see farmers' representatives closing their eyes and voting for Bills for the benefit of these particular lawyers themselves. These are the boys that will skim the milk off. I am going to vote against this motion because honestly I can see no good in it. My opinion is that it is brought in here to give an opportunity of talking about the economic war. It was brought in for nothing else in the world but for that reason alone. Deputy Kent was probably walked into it with my friend Deputy Belton, who was then a member of the Party over there.

I never mentioned the economic war in proposing the motion.

You would not, of course. You leave that to Deputy McGilligan. You made the shots and he fired them.

I will fire at you now.

You are heartily welcome. I assure Deputy Belton there is nothing I enjoy so much as listening to him. That is the position, so far as I can see, with regard to all this. I can see that the speech made here by Deputy McGilligan was a speech about everything except that particular committee. He did not want to bother with that committee at all. From my experience —speaking as a farmer and as a working farmer—of the position of affairs in my constituency, I would say that the farmers are a hang sight better off than they were when they were depending on the British market, and did not know what they were going to get for anything. On the day on which they set their crops now they know the price they are going to get for them. It is for us to see, as far as we can, that that price is high enough. That is the view-point which I hold, and that is the experience which I have got from speaking to my neighbours, who are farmers also. I could produce accounts kept by several farmers in my district over a period of a year. They would amaze some Deputies. I do not want to produce them, because I do not want the Minister for Finance getting down on top of them. I do not think there is anything to be gained by spinning this kind of yarn here about the position of the farmers when they were growing bullocks for John Bull, and did not know what they would get for them, and the position of the farmers growing food to-day for the Irish people, which, of course, Deputy McGilligan says they should not do. He would be ably seconded by Deputy Dillon, I am sure, on that particular point. I think the position of the farmers is far more secure to-day than when they were growing beef for a market that did not want it, and growing agricultural produce for a market that did not want it. That has been the experience of the farmers in my constituency all through the years from 1927 onwards.

There was an adjournment motion brought in here by a Cumann na nGaedheal Deputy from my constituency in 1929 calling on the Minister for Agriculture at that time not to collect the annuities in East Cork because the farmers could not pay them owing to the bad price they were getting for agricultural produce in that famous English market across the water. That was the position then. That resolution was brought in by a Government Deputy at that time, complaining of the agricultural policy of that particular Government in leaving the farmers of my constituency depending on that English market, in which they were not able to make enough to pay their annuities. I read the resolution here. I think you will all remember it, and if not you will find it in the official reports. That was the position of the farmers then. What is their position now? I cannot get a better author than Deputy Broderick. I would advise you to look up that same adjournment debate, and get Deputy Broderick's statement, where he said that the farmers who followed the agricultural policy of Fianna Fáil were all right and were making money. Compare the two—the position of the farmers under Cumann na nGaedheal, as outlined by Deputy Carey when he was a member of this House, and the position of the farmers under the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy, as described by Deputy Broderick. Compare the two. I, at any rate, speaking for my constituency, say that as regards the farmers of my constituency the less talk there is about them the better they are pleased.

Does Deputy Belton still think that any committee will convince that gentleman?

Another excuse for voting against him!

Does Deputy Belton still imagine that there is a head on those benches with sufficient grey matter in it to absorb any intelligent argument that may be put before them in regard to Irish agriculture? If he does, he is an optimistic man. I have no use at all for committees which are to serve as cloaks for the futility, ineptitude, and incompetence of the collection of Deputies who desecrate those benches where a Government is supposed to sit. The people of this country know very well, from their, own experience, who is being hit by the incidence of special duties. The direct impact of those duties must be on the agricultural community. They do not manufacture cows in Hammond Lane. Deputy Lemass does not issue licences for the laying of eggs. Those things do not come within the purview of the Department of Industry and Commerce. The tragedy of this situation is that what a good deal of people do not recognise, and what this committee will not bring home to them, that although the impact of those special duties is directly upon the agricultural community, sooner or later it is going to recoil upon every section of the community. We are providing social services in this country—social services which it is a very great pleasure to provide, but which it is a very great shame to provide in the certain knowledge that the political policy of Fianna Fáil is going to dissipate the resources of the nation, as a result of which those social services must collapse, and will collapse if the present policy continues, because the source of the entire national income is agricultural prosperity and if that is sufficiently destroyed for a sufficiently long time then every public service in this country will collapse one after another.

A Deputy

Another prophet!

As Deputy McGilligan aptly pointed out, if a profligate son inherits a considerable fortune from a thrifty father he cannot, to do his best, get into the bankruptcy court without the lapse of some time. Deputy Corry may have relieved some of his lighter moments recently by attending a film in this city entitled "Brewster's Millions." He may have even whiled away a prosperous evening in East Cork by reading the book entitled, "Brewster's Millions." He may remember that Mr. Brewster was set the task of dissipating £500,000 within a given time, and the reward for that enterprise was £6,000,000. It nearly broke his heart and drove him into the lunatic asylum to spend it. Let me congratulate the Fianna Fáil Government on being able to undertake the task which so embarrassed Mr. Brewster, without making any visible change in their mental equipment. They are going exactly the same way to-day as Mr. Brewster and they are going quite nonchalantly. Yet I believe that the Minister for Finance has the intelligence and the Minister for Industry and Commerce has the intelligence to recognise that the logical result of what is happening in this country at the present time is national bankruptcy. Both those gentlemen may be bereft of principle; they may be bereft of political honesty; they may be bereft of many virtues, but I think both of them have a certain limited measure of intelligence, and that is all that is necessary in order to recognise what is happening in this country. We heard Deputy Corry wax eloquent to-night on the subject of wheat. He remarked:

"Deputy Dillon says that he will never grow an acre of wheat, but his leader says it is the policy of Fine Gael to promote the growth of wheat."

Let me repeat here and now that I will never grow an acre of wheat on my land so long as it is to be grown and paid for by taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor people of this country.

You cannot grow it in the Mediterranean anyway.

It is costing £750,000 a year to grow the measure of wheat which we are at present producing. According to the statistics I have before me, the growing of wheat in this country has increased tillage by about 30,000 acres. Each acre of that increased tillage has cost our community £20 and that £20 is not being levied upon the general tax-paying community. It is being levied exclusively on the bread caters of this country, and there is not a single Deputy in this House but knows that the bread caters of this country are the poor of this country. That tax is being levied upon them in the belief that, they being largely simple people, will not recognise its incidence in the price of bread.

That is the kind of intelligence that thrives and prospers on the Fianna Fáil Benches. That type of political chicanery has admirable exponents upon the Fianna Fáil Benches and I regard it as one of the most shameful and disgraceful things ever done by this Oireachtas that we saddled the poor of this country with a bread tax when they were already put to the pin of their collars to carry on; that we went through the form of handing these people out the dole of public assistance and unemployment assistance; and that of that miserable dole we took back from them every week a substantial part in order to finance Deputy Corry and a few more of his prosperous neighbours in East Cork. I wish him luck with his money and I invite him, when he counts it and rattles it in his pocket, to remember that he took it out of the mouths of the poor.

I will not take it to the Mediterranean to spend it.

I am glad and proud to think that my leader has that sense of responsibility to recognise that, though we may see the folly of Fianna Fáil schemes, we are not prepared to make the people of this country suffer for it. If Deputy Corry and his colleagues have succeeded in deluding a number of our people into the belief that wheat is an economic crop in this country, if the Minister for Industry and Commerce and President de Valera have succeeded in precipitating a situation in this country in which men must grow wheat in order to get the Government dole if they are to live, when we come into office, we are not going to attempt a revolution such as has been attempted, and drive a number of these people to destitution by withdrawing the bounty which Fianna Fáil has placed on wheat. To do it would make everyone of these farmers who have been forced into growing wheat paupers in the morning. It would upset their whole agricultural economy and destroy their whole system of husbandry, and I say, and I thoroughly endorse what Deputy Cosgrave says, that if and when we come into office, we have got to carry on the schemes which Fianna Fáil have set in motion in this country until we replace them with better schemes and until the people of this country recognise that the methods which we propose to them, and the schemes which we propose for their acceptance, are better and more profitable and willingly reject the futilities of Fianna Fáil. We are bound to maintain these follies intact, lest in making an end of them, we do far greater injury to the community than we would do by saving whatever money must be wasted in their maintenance for the time being.

The Deputy still regards them as follies?

I do. Most emphatically, I regard the wheat scheme in this country as a wicked folly.

And the beet scheme?

And the beet scheme is a wicked folly. The Minister was once a humble Deputy with the perspicacity which I do attribute to him because I regard him as one of the moderately intelligent members of his Party. I venture to say that he and the Minister sitting beside him have about all the intelligence there is on that bench, save, perhaps, that we must admit the President has some— he is a very astute Machiavellian politician. These two Ministers have some understanding of the situation, and when they were Deputies and free to speak their minds, not dancing to the tune which is punctuated by President de Valera's whip, the present Minister for Finance described the Carlow Beet Sugar Factory as a white elephant, and said it was one of the afflictions which Fianna Fáil had inherited, or was about to inherit, from the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. To do justice to Deputy Hogan, who was the Minister responsible for its introduction, I must say that his answer to the Minister for Finance was "Hear, hear"; I quite agree. We set it up as an experimental station to find out how the thing would work, and, having had it working under the most favourable conditions for seven or eight years, we made up our minds that it was hopelessly uneconomic and placing an unjust burden on the people and we determined to go no further with it.

Does the Minister for Finance maintain his consistency in this matter? Not at all. He is told that in this matter some passing political advantage might be derived, and, accordingly, as I have often said before, the white elephant calved, we had three more, and now we have a family of four to maintain. Does any rational Deputy in this House suggest that because I believed them to be uneconomic and imprudent in their inception, if we were returned to office in the morning, we should close all the factories and tell the farmers who had arranged their economy to grow wheat: "You can take it out and burn it; we will not take it from you?" Not unless we were the irresponsible lunatics who have constituted the Fianna Fáil since its founding.

But, having given the farmers due notice of the view you had in regard to this industry, would you then proceed to close the factory?

I propose to answer that question, but I suggest to the Minister that he should intervene when I have finished speaking and make his own speech. I shall not submit him to any cross-examination, and if I try, he will get extremely angry. Having provided that the farmers can continue to supply beet to the factories, I propose that a close examination should be made of the economic value of this to the community. If I am satisfied that the agricultural community can be adequately catered for without a continuation of the manufacture of beet sugar in these factories, and if I am satisfied that the economic burden placed on the community is out of all proportion to the community advantage derived from the wages paid to the persons employed in them, I will level the factories without the slightest hesitation.

I thought the Deputy had made up his mind.

Fine Gael policy is not under review.

What is? Not the motion surely?

I have no doubt whatever that prior to the institution of these factories it was reckless to embark on them. I have every reason to consider the proposal with due deliberation in the situation in which this country will find itself when the Brewsters of Fianna Fáil are finished with it, and a very different situation may obtain then. They were relief works when they first started; they are relief works now; and it is necessary to maintain them as relief works for many years after Fianna Fáil goes out of office.

Now we are told by Deputy Corry that Fianna Fáil agricultural policy has redeemed the farming community of this country, and that if the farming community will only adopt their policy, universal prosperity will abound. What are the facts? There are 12,000,000 acres of arable land in this country. Four millions will produce all the wheat, all the beet, all the meat and all the grain to feed the live stock that the people of Ireland can consume. I will throw in a 1,000,000 acres for good measure and make it 5,000,000 acres. If you grow all the wheat we can consume and all the other foodstuffs the stomachs of our people will contain, what are you going to do with the other 7,000,000 acres?

Plant them with trees.

Practise Fianna Fáil economics on them? Has Deputy Corry ever applied his mighty intellect to that problem? Has it ever dawned on Deputy Corry that those 7,000,000 acres are to us what the coal mines and iron ores of England are to her, what oil is to America, and what gold is to South Africa? Can Deputy Corry imagine John Bull, for whom he has such a terrible contempt, announcing that he is going to get along without the markets that buy his iron? Can he imagine Mr. Baldwin going down to Cheshire and calling on the populace to thank God that the foreign market for iron was gone and gone for ever? Can he imagine Mr. Hertzog, of South Africa, praying high heaven that gold will become as dirt in the world, and that no one will want to thank God that the day has gone when gold will be transported to the despised money market of London? Does Deputy Corry not realise that all this is identical with all that President de Valera said when he went down to Ennis, when he thanked God that the British market was gone? The source of the wealth which is going to provide a high standard of living for our people is the produce of that 7,000,000 acres of arable land, and, in order to make that wealth available to our people through legitimate trade and through social services, that wealth has got to be realised and converted into money. We have got to convert it into money in some external market if we are going to buy the raw materials for the industries which the Minister for Industry and Commerce says he desires to set up in this country. If we are going to convert it into cash in a foreign market we will, unless we are madmen, do that in the most profitable foreign market we can find. We will not stake our economic future on the Spanish market where you have got not only to sell your goods but to intercede with the Government to let the money come out to pay for them.

I suggest to Deputy Belton that the only section of the community that is not going to suffer the incidence of those special tariffs are the tens of thousands of men whom the Minister for Industry and Commerce was going to bring back to man the new Irish industries, but who never came. They will not suffer because they have learned the truth of the old adage that distant hills are green, and that so far as they are concerned they are going to stay green. They are not coming home to have a look at them with a pair of spectacles prepared for them by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Every blow that is struck against the Irish community as a whole is going to react eventually on the agricultural community of this country. Every element in our community depends for its existence on the agricultural community. I deplore the prospect that lies before the enterprising men who have established industries in this country, the men who have established industries in this country and who have undertaken the manufacture of boots, readymade clothing and the other commodities that are manufactured for consumption by our people, because so surely as we are assembled in this House everyone of those industries is fated for destruction if agriculture is destroyed. I deplore that because it is something of value to the Irish nation that those industries should continue. It will be a great disaster to the Irish nation if they should fail and collapse in the first decade of our independence. But what is to me a much more pressing nightmare is the danger that threatens the social services of this country. Deputy Norton himself knows that at the present time our social services stand very high, considering the natural conditions that obtain in this country.

They stand higher since the Deputy went over to that side of the House. The old age pensions have not been cut yet.

Only by £250,000 this year and unemployment assistance by £200,000.

The Deputy's memory I think must be getting bad.

What was the amount of the economies that the Minister effected in the case of old age pensions this year?

Administrative economies are quite a different thing from cutting pensions. Those who are entitled to the old age pensions are getting them in full.

One man has the honesty to go out and tell the people what he is going to do and to take the consequences. The other man takes a slice off the old age pensioners and does it behind their backs. I think Mr. Blythe was wrong in taking the 1/- off, but I respect him. He went before the people and stood all the abuse for doing that. He stood all the abuse that came from the Labour Benches, and from these benches when the Party opposite were sitting here. I despise the man who takes it off behind the people's backs with oily phrases about administrative alterations. The Minister reduced the Estimate for unemployment assistance by £200,000, and what astonishes me about that is that the Labour Party sat silent through it all.

We voted against it.

We have heard very little about it since from the Deputy.

I am afraid the Deputy must be getting deaf.

Let me not be drawn from what I desire to remind Deputy Norton of.

That is what the Deputy wants to avoid. He wants to avoid being drawn.

I am speaking frankly and do not care to say anything hurtful to the Minister but the immediate danger is that the social services of this country, which stand at a fairly high level considering the natural conditions that obtain here, are in peril, and they are in peril because the source of our national wealth is being steadily destroyed. The reduction in the old age pensions and in unemployment assistance are two danger signals. The Government has cast about rooting for sources of taxation. Having cast about and made every economy that physically it was possible to make in other directions, they are now beginning to nibble at the social services that the State set up. They are doing that not because they are men who have a high sense of duty—they are men who have consistently bought political popularity with public money — but because they have got to keep the ship floating or it will sink.

Since I resumed the Chair the Deputy has discussed the agricultural policy, to a certain extent the economic policy and the social policy. He has now gone into the general policy of the Government. The question before the House is a proposal to establish a select committee to consider the equitable distribution of the burden of the economic war. On that I have heard nothing from the Deputy.

Except this, that I chided Deputy Belton on the hope of any such committee ever driving any sense into the head of any member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I went on to elaborate that by pointing out their exceeding folly and ventured to follow in the footsteps of those who had gone before me. If you consider, Sir, that I have strayed from the paths of relevancy, I shall be pleased to return thereto. I now move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned until Friday, 15th November.
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