Is it clear that there will be no limitation in the time for the Second Reading of the Bill?
Death of his Majesty King George V. - Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Order) Bill, 1936—Second Stage.
Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
How long is the Deputy going to take?
I indicated when this matter was mentioned first that I hoped we would be able to finish the discussion and take all stages of the Bill to-day. I understand that the Whips have been discussing the matter and that it has been indicated that we are prepared to allow the discussion to hold over until to-morrow if it is necessary, but, seeing that we have discussed this question so many times, it ought to be possible to dispose of it to-day.
Will the two amendments be disposed of in one vote?
The motion, "That the Bill be now read a Second Time," and the two amendments will be debated together. The question to be put is: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
Are we clear that the matter can be carried over until to-morrow if necessary?
Yes.
The purpose of this Bill is to confirm the Emergency Imposition of Duties (No. 97) Order, 1936, made by the Executive Council on the 18th February. That Order, not being an Order merely revoking wholly an Order previously made under the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act, 1932, will, in accordance with sub-section (2) of Section 1 of the Act, have statutory effect for only eight months after the date of making, unless confirmed by an Act of the Oireachtas. The effect of Order No. 97, as the House is no doubt aware, is to reduce by one half the additional Customs duties imposed by paragraph six and the Schedule to the Emergency Imposition of Duties (No. 5) Order, 1932, on certain articles of United Kingdom origin. The articles affected are, as I have already indicated, reference numbers two to seven, inclusive, of the Schedule of the Order and they may be described under the following general heads: (a) ad valorem duties of 20 per cent., which by the Order for which confirmation is now asked are reduced to 10 per cent. on cement, electrical apparatus and component parts and appliances; iron and steel articles, such as machinery, subject to certain exceptions, bedsteads, bicycles, tricycles and component parts; bars, girders, nails and screws; barbed and steel wire; and certain specific duties, principally in regard to molasses and glucose, on which the existing duty of 2/4 per cwt. is reduced to 1/2; saccharine, where the duty of 9d. has been reduced to 4½., and articles, subject to certain exceptions, made from or containing sugar or other sweetening matter, where the former duty of 1/4d. per pound, or 3d. per gallon, is reduced to one-eighth of a penny per pound or 1½d. per gallon.
As to the general question of the effect of the agreement, it is difficult to assess this in monetary terms. While in each case the respective Exchequers will lose by reason of the reduction in the import duties it is obvious that the producers in both countries will gain, and gain considerably, by reason of the extended market which is offered to them. We, on our side, for instance, feel that the new agreement, in conjunction with other measures which the Government have taken, or have in view, will solve the problem of our surplus cattle and will relieve considerably the position in regard to the other agricultural products. I have no doubt that on the other side the British Government, as the other party to the agreement, anticipate that it will have equally beneficial reactions on their coal and cement industries and for their machinery manufacturers generally.
How will the British lose?
The pact, therefore, will lead to a significant increase in the volume of trade between the two countries. On that basis, it may cost the British Exchequer about £800,000 and ours about £200,000. I mention these figures, however, with the greatest reserve, because of the many incalculable factors which enter into the Estimates. But, though the cost to the public purse on both sides admittedly will not be inconsiderable, neither, on the other hand, will be the public gain.
The agreement has been reached on either side without prejudice to the issues which have arisen between the two Governments. It is an expression, however, of the mutual desire for goodwill and friendly relationship in matters of trade and I am sure that in that aspect it will be welcomed. The Emergency Order, which it is now sought to confirm, gives effect to our side of the agreement, so far as it relates to the reduction of duties, and accordingly I recommend the Second Reading of the Bill to the House.
I move:—
To delete all words after the word "That", and substitute the words—"viewing with the gravest concern the continuing losses to the people occasioned by the dispute with the British Government, the Dáil declines to give a Second Reading to the Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Order) Bill, 1936, until the Executive Council has given the Dáil an assurance that the Executive Council will now take steps to negotiate forthwith a comprehensive settlement of the matters at issue between the Irish and British Governments."
One would have expected that in introducing a measure which implements, or which pretends to implement, the agreement that has been arrived at between the two Governments, we would have got a much more comprehensive statement on the whole question, particularly having regard to the events of the last three or four years. The basis of this agreement is a violent contradiction of the Government's policy for the last four years. The arrangement, or agreement, takes very elaborate precautions to ensure the payment to the British Government of the sums of money that were in dispute. When this conflict first began the country was told that the main purpose was to ensure, in fact to make certain, that these moneys would not be paid; that even if it were to interfere with our agricultural economy, as it had been known here for generations, even if certain people were to feel the brunt of the enormous losses that would be entailed, nevertheless, the policy of the Government was the determination to ensure a reduction in the value and quantity of our export trade to Great Britain, and the provision, as far as they anticipated—and they were optimistic in their anticipations—of an alternative market for our agricultural produce.
The question before the Dáil is, not whether or not this pact is to be accepted, but rather whether a much better pact should not be negotiated. It is idle for the Government Press to ask such a question as whether or not we are opposed to selling our cattle or exchanging our cattle for coal. That question is put in the early part of the year 1936, when the value of our exports of cattle has fallen catastrophically from what it was when the conflict began and when the imports of our coal bear in relation to cattle something like three-quarters of the total sum involved; whereas, when we began this contest our exports of cattle were in the neighbourhood of £12,000,000 per annum and our imports of coal amounted to £3,000,000. It is well, at any rate, for the country that we are coming to a better understanding of the importance of economic problems and the unimportance of political propaganda in respect of them.
We ought to approach the consideration of this problem bearing in mind what the original intentions were and how far we have departed from them. Agricultural experts, agriculturists themselves, and the vast majority of our people understood and realised the importance of the agricultural economy that there was in this country over a long period, built up with great difficulty and bringing with it a certain prosperity to our people. Some four years ago we were suddenly asked to reverse that particular agricultural economy and to indulge in another. One of the steps recommended and taken was that we should develop our tillage, that we should concentrate upon our tillage and that we should not be too careful regarding the amount of money we were prepared to spend on it. That policy has been indulged in during the last two, three, or four years. It is sometimes described by those in favour of it as a changeover policy.
And what has been the extent of the development of that policy during the period? We have had an extra 70,000 acres tilled in this country. It is quite true that those who are very much in favour of that policy occasionally tell us that we have 200,000 to 250,000 acres under wheat, that our extensions under beet amount to 40,000 acres, and people are led to understand that there has been an extension of tillage amounting to about 250,000 acres. There has been nothing of the sort. The nett increase is approximately 70,000 acres, and what is the cost? It is conceivable that the bounties, subsidies and the other means provided by the Oireachtas for the development of that new form of agriculture amount to something like £6,000,000 per annum—a colossal sum of money. But when examined in relation to the prices that are received for agricultural produce, one is shocked at the enormous fall that has taken place during the last three years. Calculations were made during the years 1911-1913 on a certain parcel of agricultural commodities and that standard had been taken at £100. When the Government took up office here in March, 1932, the equivalent parcel of agricultural produce stood at the price of £113. The average price of the very same parcel of agricultural goods for the ten months of last year, as recorded in official publications, amounts to £81 12s. 0d., a drop of close upon £19 per cent. in respect of 1911-1913. Along with that the agricultural industry has to meet heavy expenses— the enormous cost of living expenses and expenses inseparable from the calling of agriculturists. The index cost-of-living figure is now at 162 as compared with 100 pre-war.
These figures are, on the face of them, sufficient justification not alone for the favourable consideration of the amendment that has been proposed here to-day, but they are an unanswerable case for the acceptance of that motion by the Dáil. Going further into the question of the change, as it is called, one is rather shocked to find the small increase that has taken place in the number of persons engaged in agriculture. That there has been an increase nobody denies. The figures are published by the Government and they can be consulted. But any increase that has taken place that is of moment or importance at all has taken place in the families of persons who are engaged in agriculture, not in the number employed. If we exclude those who are described as temporarily employed, the increase is extremely small. Males 18 years and over employed in agriculture in 1931 were 84,497; the number of males 18 years and over employed in agriculture in 1935 was 84,916. The number of persons temporarily employed in agriculture has gone up from 56,000 in 1931 to 60,000 in 1935. But mark the difference in the wages that have been paid in the period. The average weekly wage paid in 1931 was 24/3. The average weekly wage paid in 1935 was 21/3. So that a larger number of people have had to divide amongst them a smaller amount of money. Obviously on these indisputable facts the financial condition of agriculture to-day bears no comparison with the financial condition of agriculture four or five years ago.
There was a suggestion in the beginning of this conflict that there were alternative markets, and so there were alternative markets, but they are negligible in their value, and although there are no sums in dispute between this country and Germany and although there are no sums in dispute between this country and Belgium and no sums in dispute between this country and Spain, we might as well, so far as prices are concerned, have the same dispute with those three countries as we have with Great Britain. British prices rule the market. It was only last week we were told here in respect of the export of something like £50,000 worth of eggs to Spain last year that we paid in bounties £18,000. In respect of the sale of something like £21,000 worth of eggs the previous year we paid £15,000 in bounties.
Let it be understood that it is not for the purpose of scoring political points that we mention those things. It is because of the compelling necessity of the needs of the country at the present moment, needs inseparable from a continuance of the conflict, that we urge that there should be a better agreement than the one arrived at and that there should be a more elaborate means than this of paying the British whatever sums are in dispute between the two countries.
From an examination of the official publications recording our assets abroad it is to be noted that there has been a reduction in our reserves abroad of a very large figure. There has been a fall from £88,000,000 to £74,000,000. The normal person in the country does not perhaps understand what is meant by sterling balances. Those sterling balances stood some few years ago as high as £91,000,000. I am not taking that figure. I am taking the figure of £88,000,000 and that figure was reduced by something like £1,000,000 from October down to December. The fact is that from whatever cause—and it is admitted that it is due to the low value in money that we have received for our agricultural exports—we have to call upon these reserves that we have abroad in order to offset the adverse balance that has been obtaining in this country for the past few years. A reduction from £88,000,000 to £74,000,000 probably indicates to some people that there are five years during which we can go on in the same fashion. But it has a bigger moral than that. Once those reserves are being eaten into you are not alone reducing the wealth of this country, but you are bringing about serious damage to its credit.
The situation has certainly changed during the last three or four years. This Pact is an admission on the part of the Government that they cannot do without the British trade. All the criticisms we listened to during the General Elections in 1932 and 1933 were all for popular mob consumption. We are now getting down to brass tacks. The Government have subscribed to the fact that this cannot go on and, so far as trade, industry, employment and the wealth of the people are concerned, we keep our place in that market. They have bartered the whole of our coal requirements, one-third of our cement requirements, iron, steel, electrical apparatus and other goods and our complaint is that, having been brought to a realisation of the importance and the necessity of our export trade, they do not go a step further and negotiate a settlement which will ensure for the agricultural industry a price more commensurate with its needs and requirements.
Those palliatives which have been introduced and those bounties which have been paid have, in their main incidence, affected a negligible number of agriculturists. Take the principal item, the extension of the sugar-beet growing. There are 55,000 acres utilised out of approximately 12,000,000. There are only 55,000 acres deriving the benefit of that particular extension. What is the cost? I know what the Government estimate of the cost is. It is £25 an acre. Let us remember that, having provided for the owners of the 55,000 acres the bounty of £25 an acre, there are approximately 12,000,000 other acres in respect of which it is impossible to make any such contribution. Tobacco, about which we heard so much, is a negligible industry in so far as the number of acres utilised is concerned. There are less than 1,000 acres and the cost is approximately £20 an acre.
In the course of the lessons that have to be learned in connection with this problem now facing this country, a problem the evils of which are not to be met with to-day, but which will affect the country long after this Government has passed away, we had the inauguration of a new system of disposing of our cattle. I refer to the slaughter of calves. At a time when the cattle breeds in this country had no equal in any part of the world, this Government authorised the slaughter of 660,000 calves. Anyone who considers the position must be shocked when he realises the loss to the country through the slaughter of these calves. If the slaughter of the calves had taken place at no cost to the State the position would have been bad enough, but when one learns that the slaughter actually cost the country £200,000—it cost £200,000 to commit that crime against nature—why, it seems almost unbelievable.
For some years a controversy has been going on in this country regarding our currency. Though the Government have been four years in office, they have taken no steps to disconnect our currency from sterling. We are in what is called the sterling block. There is another block called the gold block, and then there is the American dollar. By this time Ministers must have realised that the sterling block is something of importance in the normal world economy, and that any money that leaves that block does not strengthen it, financially or otherwise, unless enormous advantages are derived by its leaving; in other words, for goods that could not be procured elsewhere. The extension of our external markets during the last three or four years at the price of £10 for £1 is a weakening of that sterling block where we have parked our reserves, liquid and cash and otherwise, and where the vast savings of our people have been invested for generations. It may be a matter to smile at, but it is a matter of some importance, more especially when one realises that in respect of the sterling block which you are in and of you are trying to make a bargain and you are recommending this bargain as having been made with advantage to our people.
One is astonished in looking over the returns and seeing the enormous sums paid out from this country for the non-sterling block people and the small amount of money that comes into this country from those people. This particular pact would remind one of a reluctant patient of a dentist who, having found where the dentist lives, almost backs into him, takes the chair, opens his mouth, points out to the dentist where the tooth is that he wants extracted, and then commends his soul. That is what the Government are doing with regard to the disputed sums in connection with this pact. The whole proceedings are painful. The collection of the moneys is painful, but they are submitting to it. The pact has one particular weakness. It has very much the appearance of having been a Treasury arrangement on both sides. The Minister informed us that the British may lose £800,000 per annum in connection with this transaction. If they get within the deduction of £800,000 from £5,000,000 they are at no loss; they have collected their whole sum. They have not made and they never made provision for what is called the sinking fund of the land annuities, so that the pact, so far as they are concerned, gets the last penny. It is on the face of it quite clear that the whole scheme had in mind the one thing, getting in the money, getting it in, if you like, as easily and as inexpensively and as advantageously as it could possibly be got in respect of the sale of British goods.
There is an item in connection with the pact which does not appear in the Bill but which I propose to put in order by saying that the comprehensive settlement envisaged by my amendment would bring it within the ambit of this discussion. There has been a reduction from 40 per cent. to 20 per cent. of the duty on horses.
I have not heard a single person throughout the length and breadth of this country who does not condemn this pact in respect to its indifference to the horse breeding industry. That industry has been built up here over decades of years through the initiative, enterprise and knowledge of Irish breeders. It is in respect to that industry the greatest blow has been struck by reason of this conflict. Not alone has there been a reduction in the number of horses sold and in the price received per horse, but we have also lost some of the best stallions in the world. One of them, by reason of this conflict is dead, a loss not alone to this country, but a loss to the horse breeding industry of the world. There is, perhaps, no animal produced on a farm which gives such employment as the horse. The maintenance of a first class thoroughbred, the Minister for Agriculture was informed some 12 or 18 months ago, took three acres of tillage. Recent events indicate that it is quite likely that a number of buyers who used to come to this country to purchase horses will not do so any longer. This industry, built up over decades of years, has now got a staggering blow. It would well have paid the Ministry, in the making of the pact, to have made some arrangement as a result of which the duty on horses would have been eliminated altogether.
In conclusion, I should like to say that there is a very distinct difference between the Government point of view on government itself and that of the Opposition. My view about government in this country—and I think it is shared by my friends here—is that a contract entered into by a Government in this country binds its successors until it is altered by agreement or denounced. Any other system is bound to break down. It is bound to bring discredit on the country and bound to introduce an unsatisfying and indeterminate character to Government agreements. We say that a favourable settlement is possible, in this instance that it is not alone possible, but that it is almost mandatory upon both parties to the dispute. We say that there is an atmosphere in respect to a settlement now which did not exist previous to this Government taking office, that there are more favourable prospects of a settlement than perhaps existed at any time for the last few years. Recent events of themselves, together with the making of this pact, indicate that, on the British side at any rate, there is a different outlook in respect to the importance of exports from this country. Whether that entered into the making of this pact or not, I do not know and I am not going to venture an opinion, but I do say that it is the duty of this Government, having regard to the state of affairs existing in the agricultural industry, having regard to the fact that the livelihood of the people who are engaged in that industry is at stake, and also having regard to the possibility of an improvement or continuation of the secondary industries of this country, to bring about that settlement. If the mind of the Government has gone so far as to make this settlement, which they certainly would not have made four years ago, we say to them that it is not a satisfactory settlement, that it does not end anything, that it does not even make for a more favourable future settlement. Having regard to all the circumstances, to the importance of the problem and the fact that so many people are so vitally concerned with its proper solution, we say that it is the duty of the Government to negotiate a final and satisfactory arrangement with the British Government.
In order to have the main motion and the two amendments before the House, I shall have to call upon Deputy Belton to move the amendment standing in his name.
May I formally move it and speak on it later?
It is not allowed to the mover of a motion to do so. The seconder may.
I therefore move:—
2. To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute the words "the Dáil declines to give the Bill a Second Reading because
(a) it offers no reduction of the gross burden of the economic war which has resulted in a substantial increase in taxation and in the cost of living, and
(b) it abandons the principles for which the economic war was stated to have been embarked on, and
(c) it does not provide for a comprehensive settlement of the dispute between this country and Great Britain."
I shall not have an opportunity of answering the bluff, bluster and misrepresentation that is inevitable from over there. In moving this amendment, which is perhaps somewhat different from the amendment moved by Deputy Cosgrave, I shall take an entirely different line from that which he has adopted. I consider that the business of this House to-day is of no less importance than when the Dáil met at the end of 1921 and the beginning of 1922 to decide whether this country should accept or reject the Treaty. The same principle is here to-day. In my view it is not a matter for decision or discussion here between one brand of economic policy or another, much less a discussion between one form of agricultural policy and another. The question before the House and the country to-day is to consider the greatest betrayal in Ireland's history. A little less than four years ago a dispute arose with Great Britain. The previous Ministry were censured, calumniated and blackguarded all over the country, because it was alleged against them, that they signed a secret agreement with the British. Where is the agreement that we are called on to consider here to-day? Why is it not put before us? Who signed it, and what were the considerations for its signature? There is not a word about that. The members of this House, like a lot of infant children, are being asked to consider a pact, to accept or reject it, without the considerations and the exact terms, or without any knowledge of the persons who signed it on behalf of this country and Great Britain. Whatever is to be said about this, those who signed the Treaty stood up to it. A document was produced, and two men in particular who put their signature to that document stood up to it and gave their lives for it. Now the Government, apparently, is ashamed to produce this pact; and I am not surprised. Less than four years ago the Government claimed that the people gave them a mandate to withhold, from the British, the annual payments contracted for by a previous Government. The Government claim they got that mandate four years ago. They claim further that they got a renewal of that mandate at the 1933 election, and that they got a further renewal of the mandate in 1934, when the Government Party won the local elections. Why is that mandate not now being honoured? We are told that an agreement has been entered into and the advantages are as follows:—Cattle under six months' old, on which there is a special duty will have that duty reduced from £1 5s. to £1 per head. On cattle up to 15 months the duty is reduced from £2 10s. to £2; cattle 15 months and up to two years from £4 to £3; cattle two years and upwards, not mincers, from £6 to £4 5s.; and, two years and upwards, mincers, the duty is reduced from £3 to £2 per head.
Here we have what we are told is a pact, a solemn agreement between two countries. We have not seen the pact but we are told of it. I presume it exists. The Minister for Finance moved the Second Reading of a Bill which will give that pact the force of law in this country. In considering this pact there surely must have been some discussion when the rate of the British penal tariffs was reduced from one figure to another. I should like, when members on the Front Government Bench come to speak on this matter that some one of them would apply himself to this point for that is the whole point of the matter. Let us take one figure and that will settle all. Take the figure of £6 per head, which was the tariff on the older cattle. What was that £6 per head for? To pay the land annuities, and these land annuities were paid at that rate of £6 per head on cattle when a certain number of cattle were going over to Britain. Now more cattle are going over to Britain.
It is quite obvious if a dozen articles are paying a tax to realise, let us say, £24, the tax will be fixed at £2 per unit. If the number of articles is doubled from 12 to 24, then £1 per head will suffice to realise the £24, and to do the same thing. I challenge any member of the Government to stand up and say we have won one penny piece upon this deal. We are sending them more stuff. Britain has over and over again said, through the mouth of her Chancellor of the Exchequer, that what she wants is the amount she considers due to her and no more. We have saved nothing. The Minister for Finance, who moved the Second Reading, did not say that we were going to get a reduction in the gross amount. I am at a disadvantage in not having heard Government speakers upon this, but I hope they will deal with that point and state, in open discussion, the gross value, if any, that this, country gets out of this pact; but even if there is no monetary advantage to this country, as I say there is not, it is beside the point I want to make.
The whole point is that when the President accepted this pact, or agreed to stand behind it and vote for it here to-day, he accepted the right of the British to put this levy on our goods going into Britain in order to pay the land annuities. The President smiles at that. Now this country has been fooled long enough; it is not going to be fooled for ever, and I shall be very interested to know if the President tries on here to-day what he did in his wild, rambling interview with Reuter's representative, and published in his own private paper. The £6, and eventually all the other items produced, must have been taxes, and the President was agreeable to have them amended from £6 to £4 5s. 0d., and so on, in order to enable the British to collect the land annuities. Now when it was agreed that they should collect the land annuities in that way, the matter of principle is gone. When they agreed to that the matter of principle that the President and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party told the people, up and down the country, they would stick to when they started the economic war—the principle that we did not owe this money and that we would not pay it—is gone. If not, why did the President agree to accept the levy upon our goods of £4 5s. 0d. instead of £6? Did he ask the British what was this for? It is simply the acceptance of the principle of paying the land annuities.
The question, then, comes down to this: Which is the better way of paying annuities? Would it not be better for the Land Commission, functioning in the ordinary way, to collect these annuities and send them over by cheque or whatever arrangements might be made? What is the difference? We are accepting, in this pact, the principle of payment. You cannot get away from it because there is a reduction in the amount levied. The matter must have been discussed when you have a figure reduced from £6 to £4 5s. 0d. You have even the odd 5/-. There was no guess-work about that. That was worked out mathematically. It is a very serious matter for this country if this pact is accepted. I am not going to come down to discuss this on the plane laboured in a leader in the Irish Press a few days ago—that because the northern farmers felt they had a grievance, and that the position of their cattle in the British market might be affected by more cattle going from the Free State, this must be a good deal for the Free State. It is far above any little trade in cattle.
Then we come to coal. We are giving to Britain the whole market in coal. We have got nothing on our side of the account. Whatever little reduction there is in the amount levied is made up by the increased number of cattle that will go over. The Minister for Agriculture is aware that, I think it was at the end of 1933, the British got alarmed at the amount they were collecting, and they fixed a quota from 1st January, 1934. I am right in the month; I think I am right in the years. In any case it is immaterial; it is the principle I want to convey to the House. They instituted quotas; they reduced the number of cattle that went over, and yet they found that by the 1st March of that year they had collected about £1,000 more than they claimed was due to them. They then kept matters adjusted, and nowhere have I seen that any responsible British statesman said that they had not collected all that they claimed. On the contrary I think it has been said repeatedly by responsible British statesmen that they had gone fairly level and collected their full demand. Last year we had in operation the Coal-Cattle pact. On foot of that it was claimed that 150,000 more cattle were exported. On each one of those 150,000 cattle a levy was paid to Britain. I pressed the Minister for Finance here on Thursday last, by supplementary questions, to give us information as to the extra amount collected by Britain because of the extra number of cattle that went over last year. He did not know. It is quite clear that in this country there is no record taken of the amount the British are levying on our goods going over. It is quite evident that Britain has a surplus at the present moment, because of the amount of goods that went over from here and on which a levy was collected last year. Under this pact, when in operation, more cattle will be exported to England, if too many calves have not been slaughtered already. Of course it is only now we are beginning to feel the loss in cattle population through the slaughter of calves a couple of years ago. Assuming that we have the surplus cattle to export, a large number of cattle will go over this year, and this again will increase the surplus that Britain will collect by her special duties. Britain simply made a mathematical calculation.
She estimated: "So many cattle and other things will come over during this coming year; we have so much surplus on hands from last year's pact, and we are quite safe in reducing the special duties on Free State cattle coming into Great Britain to the figures of £1, £2, £3, £4 5s. 0d. and £2, and those levies will give us our full demand for land annuities, local loans, and pensions." In passing, I just want to make this comment: with that unequivocal declaration by the British, repeated over and over again, what justification has our Government for collecting the annuities from the farmers of this country?
Who asked that?
I am asking it.
Who did you say asked it before that?
I did not say anybody asked it. I ask it now and I asked it before to-day. Just before I got up here, I got a message asking me if I could go out and intervene in the case of a respectable farmer in County Dublin. The bailiffs are in possession of his house for non-payment of annuities. Under the pact we are asked to pass here to-day the Government have agreed to levies on our goods going into Britain, in order to pay those annuities, while another wing of the Government puts the bailiffs in the houses of farmers who are paying, have paid, and are going to pay those annuities under this agreement.
They are too lazy to work.
Who is too lazy to work? It is well known that the interrupter does not make his living on farming. It is much easier to get commission on an insurance book than to follow a plough.
I should like to ask Deputy Corbett if the unfortunate agricultural labourers in Galway, who cannot find work, are unable or unwilling to work.
If people are willing to work there is plenty of work for them.
That will be news to the Galway people.
Let Galway remember that its representative here informs the House that the whole trouble with the farmer is that he is too lazy to work.
And the labourer too.
There may be better workers in Galway than I know of. I know that the gentlemen opposite have standardised the value of a week's work at 27/-. That is paid almost beside me. Why should I pay 35/- a week? Let Labour consider and digest that. Why should we in the Dublin County Council pay 43/- a week and pay the sheriff to collect the rates? For the last 11 years during which I have been a member of the Dublin County Council——
Is this on the Bill?
I consider this of equal importance with the Treaty of 1921. I consider it of not less importance. I should be glad if Deputies who had the privilege of being Deputies of that time would develop the matter from that angle. The same principle is at stake. What is the economic war? Have we not been told all over the country that it is the age-long struggle for Ireland to get fair play? That war was precipitated in 1932 and has been going on until now. We were looking for and expecting a settlement, and what do we get? The coal-cattle pact. That is not a trade pact. No Iunatic would sign it as a trade pact. Do you think I would sell my potatoes, oats or cabbage, and I will not leave room for an interruption by the Minister, and will say my rhubarb also, to any persons and take something from them on condition that they confiscate 30 or 40 per cent. of my goods? If the Minister for Agriculture has any friends engaged in the buying of agricultural commodities I should like to see him send them to me and ask for a trade pact on those conditions. Will he send them down to his native County of Wexford which he represents and try and do a deal with the Wexford farmers for barley or oats or anything you like on condition that the purchasers in Dublin will confiscate 30 or 40 per cent. of their goods and pay them for the rest at the Dublin men's price? That is precisely the position.
In a very slipshod way cement is chucked in here. I am sorry that Deputy Dockrell is out of the Chamber at the moment. I hope he will develop this, as he probably knows the course of the cement trade better than any other Deputy. A fair computation on a beef-cement basis would be that Great Britain should take 1 cwt. of beef from us and give us 1 cwt. of cement. Will she do that?
That is a concrete case.
It is a thick-headed case if you like. That is not a joke. If we want to make a deal for this country on equitable terms, let us do it on the basis of a fair price. Continental cement is coming in here at about——
26/5 per ton.
It is hardly coming in for that now.
That was the price in January.
It might have been the price in December. It jumped 6/- per ton on the 1st January.
It was only the retailer had to pay that—the importer had not to pay it.
I do not think that that is an exact statement of the case.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce made it.
Some Minister should have explained the background of the items in this proposed pact. The market here of about 336,000 tons of cement was arranged last year between the Belgians, Danes, Swedes and Germans. The Belgians got 60.5 per cent., the Danes 30.5 per cent., and the Germans and Swedes—the Germans to do the carrying—9 per cent. When they made that agreement they put up the price 6/- per ton on the price ruling last year. Last year Great Britain had about 14,000 tons of our trade out of a total of 336,000 tons. Now she is going to get an increase to about 100,000 tons and she will get about 40/- per ton for it. We have not been told whether there has been any consideration as regards price. If we give Great Britain one-third of our cement market, which amounts to about 112,000 tons, we must control the imports, and when we import, roughly, about 224,000 tons, in order to leave the gap for Great Britain, we cannot import any more from the Continent. Great Britain, then, has a monopoly of that 112,000 tons of cement. She can regulate the price and we must pay it or go without it. Even if we reduce our consumption of cement we are not exonerated, because this pact is to give Great Britain one-third of our entire market, whether that market increases or decreases, and we have no guarantee as to price. I put it to the Government that a fair exchange would be an equal price on a gold basis per cwt. of cement and of beef without any confiscation. That would be an equitable trade agreement and one that we could enter into.
With regard to coal, we could enter into an agreement with Great Britain for certain grades and standards of coal at, roughly, 1½ cwts. of coal for 1 cwt. of beef. Then we would see what we were doing; then we would have made a complete bargain from a trade point of view. But that has not been done nor is it proposed to be done.
I hope that the sense of this House will reject this pact, and that it will reject it as an insult to the House and to the country. You asked to be elected to settle the economic war and you have given us only this pact. If there had been no friction between the two countries one could understand the pact being made. But fancy such a pact between two countries supposed to be at war! Fancy for a moment Italy and Abyssinia going to make a trade pact now. If you make a trade pact, where is the war? What do you get? Nothing. What does the other fellow get? A monopoly for his goods here. The President stated in this House that another Government may pay this money to Britain but that his Government never will. And now he comes in with the flag lowered in this pact. He proposes to pay Britain this money and surrenders the whole case for which he has asked this country to make such terrible sacrifices in the last three and a half years. I should like if Deputies would think about it. If instead of proposing this pact the Government came here and told us what Britain would give them; if they came here and gave us the details and said: "We will not accept it; we ask for a united front in this House." If the economic conditions that produced the economic war were discussed between us and Great Britain I would be surprised if the Government would not get unanimity in this House to tackle that question in a business way. If you can sit down with Britain and discuss the rise and fall in the special duties that she has imposed on our cattle in order to collect the land annuities, and you admit her right to levy those duties, why do you not settle down to discuss this entire question of the land annuities that is between ourselves and the British? What sacrifice of principle would it be for this House if, instead of ratifying this pact, it made a gesture and it intimated that the Dáil is prepared to send a number of representatives—two, three, four, five or ten, or whatever number you like—to meet an equal number of British representatives to discuss the whole question of the economic war? What would be wrong in that? There would be no surrender there. If you were prepared to discuss the matter on level terms with the British there would be no surrender. But instead you go through officials, through the High Commissioner and through civil servants and you urge a pact which is a surrender of the principles for which you claim to be standing. Then you come here and ask this House to ratify that, and your President gives an interview to a foreign newsagency, talking tomfoolery about what the Irish nation wants and about the things it wants, while at the very same time this big flag is being hauled down and trailed in the mud by this pact. That is what is being done behind the lines.
I would appeal to the members of the Government to consider this matter very carefully. Through what is little better than mob law, the Government are collecting the land tax after allowing the British Government to get away with the annuities in this way. The Government have the backwash of that now coming home to them. Deputy Everett to-day said that home assistance cannot be paid in Wicklow because of the deductions made from the Guarantee Fund owing to default in the payment of the land annuities. But Deputy Everett voted for that double payment of land annuities. We were told the other day in the County Dublin that £9,000 was being deducted from our proportion of the Guarantee Fund. About £130,000 is due in the rates we are collecting, and we are collecting them now by the sheriff. Before the term of this pact runs out the army of Carpenters, O'Neills, Paddy Killeens, Sergeant McManuses, and Fitzpatricks, who have been picking up the good cows of Munster for a few shillings apiece for the last three and a half years and pushing them over the Border—that army will have to be augmented in order to collect all this Government loot. I ask the Government Deputies to face up to it now. It is about time they did. What happened last year in Cork, Waterford and Tipperary is now starting to be repeated in Dublin, and perhaps my friend from Galway will not feel it until this process moves West. Now is the time to face up to it. I am sorry to have to say it, when you feel you have been beaten, and I do not say that from any political prejudice or bias.
Dr. Ryan
Not at all—as a statesman.
As a statesman, if you like. But I would be sorry to be put on a level as a statesman with the Minister for Agriculture, who stated here last week that he did not bother himself about currency matters—that he had no time for that. Imagine a Minister of any Government setting no value on currency matters.
Dr. Ryan
The Deputy is misquoting me. He had better look up the Official Report.
I am giving the substance of what the Minister said.
Dr. Ryan
By no means. I said I had no time for Deputy Belton's views on currency; that is what I said.
The Minister was dealing with the profit he was making out of his trade in cattle with Germany, and I asked him how much of that profit was due to the fact that Germany was on the gold standard and that we were on a depreciated standard. It was then he made the remark that I attributed to him just now. Did those who engineered and signed this pact make any provision, or did they ask the British Government to give us any protection in the British market for our bacon, eggs, poultry and pork and other commodities in which we are competing with Denmark in the British market? I have not heard in this House or outside it, nor have I seen the Minister to say a word about the handicap that we have to suffer in the British market owing to the fact that Denmark is on a more depreciated standard than ours. The Minister knows that the exchange value of the Danish kroner was 18.159 to the £, and he should know that the present exchange value is 22.42. Our exchange value with sterling is always at par, so that the Dane has an exchange advantage over us of 25 per cent. I challenge the Minister for Agriculture to show whether by act or voice he has ever moved to rectify that handicap against which we have to compete. If he sets no value on currency, the sooner he takes cognisance of its all-important, its transcending value, the better. New Zealand has the same advantage, and the Argentine has a 60 per cent. advantage. All the while we here are fiddling about, trying to overcome obstacles such as the British penal tariffs, and survive.
Is the Deputy advocating a depreciation of the currency?
The Deputy would have no hesitation in giving his views on that if the question of depreciation or appreciation of the currency was relevant to the debate. The President and his two colleagues laugh. Will the President introduce a motion in Government time that will make that a relevant matter for discussion? If he does I will very quickly give my views on it; but the President will not give his, neither will the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Minister for Agriculture. They will shout for a Republic, but they will stay anchored to British sterling.
The Deputy has said that the matter is not relevant. I refer him to his own ruling.
The President laughed at the suggestion that it was not relevant, and I ventured a little further than I otherwise would have gone. Now that you have spoken, Sir, I will not travel on that wrong road any longer. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister for Industry and Commerce has to say on the question of lowering the duty on iron and steel. I looked for competitive prices quite recently and, in the last prices I got for iron goods, British iron goods beat Irish goods in price. They were of quite as good quality, even though there is 75 per cent. of a protective duty on the Irish goods. These are going to be reduced. If the prices were honest on both sides and the British prices could jump a tariff wall of 75 per cent., and compete with the Irish-produced article, when that tariff wall is lowered how long will the industry that has been built up within the last few years survive? I leave that to the Minister for Industry and Commerce to explain.
I am opposed to the Second Reading of this Bill because, as I have stated in my amendment, it abandons the principles for which the economic war was stated to have been embarked on. You have compromised on the principle. Now, it is only a question of amount and, when it is only a question of amount, sit down and ascertain the amount. There is no more principle involved. There is a slight difference in my amendment and the amendment moved by Deputy Cosgrave. In his amendment he states: "Until the Executive Council has given the Dáil an assurance that the Executive Council will now take steps to negotiate forthwith a comprehensive settlement of the matters at issue between the Irish and British Governments." I would not accept a promise from the Government. I would not give a Second Reading on a promise by the Government to take steps to settle the economic war. It is long overdue and the Government should submit to the House the terms on which they propose to agree to settle the economic war with Britain. In the last two or three elections they said to the electorate: "Elect us and we will settle the economic war; we will withhold the annuities." I fear that if we give a Second Reading to this Bill on the promise of the Government to negotiate a settlement, the House will be let down by the Government, just as the country has been let down by the same Government in the rash promises they made, not one of which they have kept.
When you abandon the principles for which you claim to have been fighting, then there should be no patchwork settlement considered or accepted by this House. In fact, it is an insult to this House and the country to put up a patchwork settlement. Put up, as is claimed in the two amendments, a comprehensive settlement, and then we can consider whether it is worth accepting or whether it should be rejected. But nothing else should be accepted meanwhile. That is the view I take. I can say this to the Government, that I felt sure it would come to the point we have reached to-day. There was a difficulty in rousing this country to a sense of its duty until a certain point had been reached, because in this country the Party that waves the flag highest and sounds the tin can loudest will always get the largest following. Some of the bubbles had to be pricked and the principal bubble is now being pricked, or it has now burst.
It has burst.
You have agreed to pay the annuities. A Deputy behind me says that the farmers are burst. If they are, they have only to thank themselves, because 50 per cent. of them put the Government in here on the promise that they would settle the economic war. It is the best day's work the Government ever did for this country, when they would not settle the economic war, to come out in the open and deliberately lower the flag. They are forced to do it and they are doing it in this Bill. Now, the country can see the Government for what they are and judge them by their promises and by their accomplishments. If this measure goes through, I am quite satisfied that the farmer who defended his homestead against the tyranny of evicting landlords in the past, the farmer who faced the battering-ram and the sheriff's bailiffs in the defence of his home, is not going to allow those new emergency men from around Jonesboro' and Dunleer, who are coming in to buy the seized stock of the farms, to carry on much longer. The farmers are going to move forward right now.
We shall see, when the few farmers who are opposite go down to their constituents, what explanation they will give for agreeing to paying England the land annuities through tariffs. That, in my opinion, is the principal item in this pact. The proof that it has been considered and accepted is in the revision of the tariffs. Last year, though obviously the matter was considered, we had not that proof, because the tariffs had not been revised. They are being revised this year, which shows that they must have been discussed and the new ones accepted. These tariffs are here for a purpose, and that purpose is the same as if the Land Commission transferred a sum over to the British Government, as had been done before the advent of the present Government to power. I am satisfied that the passing of this pact, and the acceptance of it by a vote in this House, will be a signal to the farmers of this country to forget their political differences. I shall be very much surprised if that will not be manifested in every county in the Free State before a month. If we are going to pay annuities, we are not going to pay them by a tariff on our cattle on the one hand and by direct payment to the Land Commission on the other hand, and suffer a reduction on the home market at the same time of £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 on our gross sales for the year. If the annuities are to be paid there will be one payment and that payment will be a direct monetary payment.
The Government said they would never pay these annuities, but they are now eating their own words. This Bill, in my view, is the death-warrant of the present Government. If they cannot produce anything better than that after four years they ought to go out of office, and the sooner they get out the better. They will find when they go down the country that they will get a very different reception from the reception which they got on the last two occasions that they sought the votes of the people. Why should they not? The intelligence of the people would have evaporated if they allowed this humbug to go on any longer. They were told that the present Government would never accept the principle of paying these moneys to the British, and here the principle is accepted in this Bill. The big thing in the Bill, I repeat, is that the Government has accepted the principle of paying the British. All the other trimmings that can be woven around that central fact are of very little importance compared with it. I shall be terribly interested to see how many of the Government spokesmen will deal with that point. I shall be very glad to see how they will wriggle out of it. It will take all the bluff, bluster, and misrepresentation that the Minister for Industry and Commerce can command to get around that. It is put up very straight to him now and let him answer it. The Minister for Finance will try to get out of it, but he cannot get out of it because it is there. I am harping on it because I do not want Ministers to evade it and run off on some other question such as whether we could grow beet or tobacco or whether we could produce snuff.
The cause of this war, in reference to which we hear so many military terms, was that we would not pay the British these moneys. Now we have agreed to pay them under the pact, and the Party which accused Deputies on this side of the House of being Imperialists, and who said that we wanted to deprive the people of their natural birthright, is the Party that puts forward this pact. They talked about confiscation, and we had all this rigmarole that we read of 40 years ago about the land of Ireland being for the people of Ireland to have and to hold. If the land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland and is held from God alone, etc., why are we paying these tariffs to England? Why are the Government that shouted "No surrender" for years and taxed the producers in this country in such a way that they can only collect rates and annuities with the aid of the sheriff—after I have finished here I have to interview a man in whose house the sheriff is at the moment——
Better hurry up; he will not wait for you.
That is a matter for laughter here.
Hurry up!
They are on the way to a man who was on the Minister's platform in the last election but he will never be such a fool as to be there again. I shall be very interested to see how that point will be tackled and how it will be answered. I have no doubt that it cannot be answered. I have no doubt, either, that the farmers of this country are going to speak in no uncertain way in the near future, particularly those farmers who were deluded and deceived by the present Government in the last few elections. These men have sought explanations of the discrepancies between the election promises and the actual facts. These men are now disillusioned. Perhaps it is a godsend, a blessing in disguise, that the accumulated stupidity of the Ministry produced this abortion, the coal-cattle pact, and that it will provide the epitaph which, on some glorious day, we shall write on the tomb over the Fianna Fáil Government—"R.I.P. Killed by the second dose of the coal-cattle pact."
I cannot cover the very comprehensive field covered by Deputy Belton in his speech. He took us to New Zealand and the Argentine.
You need not go further than Westmeath.
He discussed the value of the kroner, currency, and other things. I shall confine myself just to a few of his arguments. This is nothing but a trade pact, the same as the Government made with Germany recently, the same as the Government made with Belgium and with Spain. It is a trade pact with Britain and nothing else.
And with three to one against us.
Deputy Fagan, I dare say, stands for Deputy Belton's arguments as to the non-liability of the landholder to the State for any obligation whatever. That has been defeated here and in every country in the world. If there is no liability on the holder of land to the State for the rights and privileges he enjoys of holding land, then the State can step in and take sites for cottages or other buildings, and can give the occupiers of uneconomic holdings sufficient land to make them economic. The Opposition seems really to be concerned with the question of how much the occupier will get for the land, and that they are dealing with a free market in land. Where is the standard of morality there, and where is the logic in that? What right have such people to put a price on land if they deny their liability to the State? They talk about the action of landlords in the past but they want to be in the same position as the landlords were in the past. But the fact is that the landlords are gone and we can never again go back to that system.
On a point of order, does the Deputy wish to go back to the days of Cromwell?
That is not a point of order.
The landlords in the past never took the churns out of the dairies.
Deputies opposite are talking about an economic problem that was there for generations.
You want to get back to Cromwell, as I told you.
Their economy is the economy that came in with the famine in 1847. It had been there for generations, but you cannot send the people away to-day in the coffin ships.
They are going away every day in the week.
That may apply to Meath, which is a wilderness.
Tell us what happened in Wexford.
The lands were let go out of production in Westmeath. We heard yarns here about farmers being broke. Many of them are broke, but when did they start to get broke? They started to get broke because of the depression following the Great War. Many of them are sunk in the banks of Meath with frozen debts which they are unable to pay.
The farmers were able to pay their interest until the Fianna Fáil Government got into office.
The Deputy must not be interrupted. Deputy Fagan can make his own speech later.
I have as good a right to address this House as any other Deputy.
May I ask Deputies to listen carefully to Deputy Kennedy's speech. It is really well worth listening to.
Thank you, Deputy O'Sullivan. Deputy Cosgrave spoke about the amount of employment given on the land. When you carry out drainage schemes or repairs to bog roads, or carry out work in connection with the development of peat etc., you are of course carrying out agricultural work. This Government has found work for everybody, and they have provided them with sustenance when they had not work. Will anyone deny that?
I deny it.
The Deputy will have a right to put his own ideas before the House in due time but he ought not to interrupt Deputy Kennedy.
Deputy Cosgrave spoke about popular, mob consumption, and about certain things consumed by the mob. Of course he is above that kind of thing. But the mob are with us and must be provided for and the full resources of the State have not been harnessed yet or not nearly so to provide for the mob. A much greater mob can be provided for than the present scanty population of the Twenty-Six Counties. We could support four or five times that population. This Government has the right to do that, and it is out for it, and it is making history in that direction.
And it is making paupers too.
To the blind everything is blind. Deputy Cosgrave also spoke about outside investments that depreciated from £88,000,000 to £74,000,000. But that applies to every country in Europe. It applies to a much greater extent to America, and the question is has it been stopped yet? Has it been stopped in the States and stopped in Europe, but it is a far away argument from the main point with which we are concerned here. Deputy Cosgrave said there was an additional 55,000 acres of land in tillage. I contend that an acre of tillage gives far more return than an acre of grazing. An acre of tillage would sustain a family, or go near to sustaining a family. Will Deputy Fagan deny that? I must say I was not fully prepared for Deputy Belton. He gave such a comprehensive survey of everything that I cannot follow him through all his arguments. I was only concerned with what he said about the annuities. I finish by saying what I said in the beginning: this is only a trade pact, the same as the Government has made with Germany and Belgium and consequently it should get the full support of the House. This is the second trade agreement with Britain which is beneficial to this country as the previous one was beneficial. It is also well that we should realise that this is a free nation, bargaining with another free nation— a thing that never happened before in 700 years.
I wonder whether the Government as a whole are quite as ashamed of this pact as the manner of the Minister for Finance when introducing it would lead us to believe. I think this House has rarely heard a more shamefaced introduction of any important measure than we listened to to-day from the Minister for Finance. I could understand if, adopting the general policy of his leader, the President, he said nothing. But he did try to say something about this particular measure which he has recommended to the House. Apparently in his cold blooded opening statement it was impossible for him to work up the slightest enthusiasm for the particular pact he is recommending to the House, and no wonder.
I have no doubt that by the time he comes to reply he will have got a fair amount of fire and eloquence to come back with, but I do believe that the Government themselves know that the position they are in and the pact they are recommending to this House is not a position and is not a pact that can be stood over. One thing, however, emerged clearly from the Minister's very brief statement, and that is that at least the Government have secured that the economic war is to go on. This pact has been made, according to the Minister, without prejudice. What does that mean? The war is to go on. We have secured that. That is the final touch, so far as the Minister's speech was concerned. That is the principal message he had to give to this House and to this nation. The agreement was made without prejudice. Translated into ordinary words what does that mean? That the war is to go on.
This is a fantastic kind of war. While the war is on the two parties to the war enter into negotiations with each other, the one side consenting to the number of casualties which the other side can inflict on it. And yet the war goes on. We say to the British: "Last year you inflicted more casualties on us than you undertook to inflict; therefore, this year inflict less." But remember, that is not to bring about peace between the two countries. The war must go on. This is, as I say, one of the most fantastic wars in history that is now being waged by this Government and by the Government of Great Britain. They make a pact which, as Deputy Belton has very clearly demonstrated, practically agrees to the amount that Great Britain is to levy out of the produce, particularly the agricultural produce, which is sent from this country to Great Britain, and yet they are too proud to make peace. All that they will do, as I say, is to make an agreement as to the exact amount of casualties that will be inflicted by Great Britain on this country. That is what the pact means. It is because it means that, because it is a refusal on the part of the Government, even at this hour, to face up to the real situation, that we put down the amendment which is on the Paper. We see here in this particular pact the same callous disregard of both the interests of the people and the honour of the country. The war is to go on! We have achieved that. That is what we are particularly proud of. That, apparently, was the one thing that the Government was keen on—seeing that no matter what agreement was come to with Great Britain, as regards the trade between the two countries, the war was still to go on. The deal was made without prejudice. And yet this has been described as a business deal. It has been described by Ministers as a business deal. It is described even in this House as an ordinary pact. It is not an ordinary pact, because it is made between two countries that are professedly at war, one with the other. How can that be an ordinary pact? It is not an ordinary pact, because one of the circumstances which influenced one side to the bargain was the scaling down of the amount that the other side would pay by way of duties. There was a discussion of that. The figures must have been debated between the two parties. You may say that that is not an agreement between the two Governments, namely, that in this way the amount withheld by this country from Great Britain is to be collected. You may say that, but every person in the country knows that the realities are on the other side. What else does it amount to except that?
Camouflage it as much as you like, we are accessories to that collection, and we are trying to throw dust in the eyes of the people. The Minister for Finance, in his very brief introduction to this Bill, most characteristically, and yet in a way that throws light on the whole situation, passed over one side of the bargain altogether. He told us of a number of instances in which there would be a decrease of from 20 per cent. to 10 per cent. in the duty on British goods brought into this country. I am not aware that he dwelt on what we were getting from Great Britain in return for that concession. That modesty on the part of a Minister who generally is not slow to express his views, even in strong language, was certainly striking. No wonder he was ashamed. How could he pretend that it was anything—the very figures show it in effect if not in mere words— except an agreement with Great Britain to collect that much? It amounted to saying to the British: "That is all you say is due to you. Very good; collect it off our produce going into your country. You are collecting at the present moment more than you said you would ever try to collect. Scale it down to the amount of the moneys withheld and we will give you a concession in those other matters." Get over it by words if you like. What is that but being accessories to the collection by Great Britain of those land annuities and the other withheld payments?
Great Britain set out to collect a certain amount. She never held that the Government there was in any way liable to the bondholders for the sinking fund. The amount she set out to collect was something about £4,300,000. The fact shows that the duties she put on realised more than that. Apparently she was quite ready to keep her word that she would only collect the amount withheld. Therefore there was always there, for any Government that would merely ask for it, an obvious concession that the amount of duties on our produce going into England should be scaled down. That stood out from the very moment it became clear, as it did from the British returns, that £700,000 more than the amount which Britain wanted to collect was actually being collected. From that moment the scaling down of the duties was inevitable, and we have now let our policy be determined by the fact that Britain agrees to scale it down to the amount she said she would collect in return for the moneys withheld. To call this a mere business pact, such as that between ourselves and Spain, is simply doing what the Government always does—ignoring the essential facts of the situation. But it reveals one thing. It reveals the complete bankruptcy of the Government policy, a policy which unfortunately has nearly meant the bankruptcy of the country as well. The one thing that ought to be clear now, not merely to "Free Staters" and "Fianna Fáil-ers" but even to republicans, is that the bankruptcy of the Government policy has been demonstrated. All for what? To get in by this agreement to a market that we were told again and again was gone. The Minister for Industry and Commerce several years ago told us that we were entitled to a larger share than we had in the British market without paying anything whatever for it. We are now paying, and paying pretty dearly, even to keep our hold on a portion of the share of that market that we had before.
The head of the Government, speaking in a town in which he does not always make important speeches, namely, Ennis, in the month of August, 1933, said: "The British market would never be the same as it was in the past. The cry to restore that market was just as a child might say `give me the moon'." The children are ready to pay now for their bit of the moon. It is no longer childish; it is now statesmanship and good business. I can say for everybody on this side of the House that we should be delighted if we thought that business considerations on business matters really influenced the conduct of the Government. How can we believe anything of the kind when we see them trying to cover over the wound and leaving the wound unhealed, and probably in a more unhealthy condition in the long run than it was before?
The following day, speaking in this House, the President, as reported in Volume 49, Column 610, of the Official Reports, said: "So far as I can see, the British market is gone for ever." That is the policy that was announced and these are the considerations that were the basis of that policy when this economic war was started, and when it was already over a year in operation. "The British market was gone, and gone for ever." They are now lowering the flag that they hoisted in this House some three and a half years ago in order to keep some grip on a market that is no use, on a market that is gone for ever. As to our dependence on that market, the President was also glad to say in the same place that he thanked God that that situation is changed. Has any Party in this country demonstrated more clearly than the Government Party, and has any policy demonstrated more clearly than the Government policy, our dependence, to some extent at least, on that market? What does the pact we are discussing mean except our dependence on that market? We were promised various other alternative markets. We were told that they were to be had, and on one occasion the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture told us he had them, but he would not reveal them. That was about two and a half years ago. These alternative markets of any value are yet to be found.
As I say, this pact is a clear indication of two things: (1) of the value of the British market that should have been clear to everybody in this country from the very start; (2) of how essential that market is to the prosperity of this country. That is the significance of the wretched pact we are discussing to-day. What is this pact for in the midst of war? Is it to enable us the better to fight that war, to keep it on a little longer—the war that the Minister who introduced this Bill to-day boasted in his speech at Bantry was already won? There were several statements from the two Ministers, whom I see sitting opposite, three years ago that they thanked God that the worst was over. I do not want to weary the House with quotations from their speeches, but everything they said when this war was embarked upon has been falsified and everything they said has been gone back on now.
The Minister for Finance said:—
"Every organ of economic thought in Great Britain has stressed the fact that, whatever the temporary inconvenience caused to Irish producers may be, a tariff, whether it be 20 per cent., 40 per cent., or 100 per cent., if they choose to erect it as high as that, will be paid inevitably by the British farmers and consumers."
Has the experience of this country in the last three years borne out that statement, or has it borne out what was clearly pointed out from this side of the House, that this tariff would be paid and paid only by the Irish producer? It should have been obvious to anybody at the time who wanted to look at the facts, but that is the last thing that Ministers want to look at. As I say, the war was won as far back as 1932—the worst was over! Deputy Donnelly thinks it was won in 1932, but we are still fighting it.
It is not lost.
It was won in 1932! I know that Fianna Fáil cannot distinguish between not losing a war and winning it. It is the same thing to them. It is the same thing whether we continue waging it or not. Being at peace and at war is the same thing. On the 6th December, 1932, the Minister for Industry and Commerce said: "I think the worst is past." I am satisfied with the Minister's words. I am not commenting upon them. I shall let the country judge as to the value of them.
We did not count upon Deputy O'Sullivan's speech. That is the worst we heard yet.
The Minister is going to be more vocal in interruption than he was in introducing the measure. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said:—
"I think the worst is past. I think the effort of the British Government to force us to accept their views in the dispute by economic pressure has already defeated itself. From this on we can contemplate a continuing improvement in the position, and the necessity, if I might use that term, for an agreement with Great Britain at all is, day by day and week by week, growing less urgent."
We had a pact 12 months ago, and we have another pact to-day.
"We have already passed the worst of the position, and that fact will enable us, under present circumstances, to contemplate entering into agreements with other countries, involving the concession of special privileges in our market for the goods of these countries formerly supplied from Great Britain."
So that is the pact we are discussing to-day—the very opposite of what we were told in 1932 was to happen. Even Deputy Donnelly appreciates that. To continue the quotation:—
"——such agreement to have much longer duration than it would have been possible to contemplate last August."
But the Minister for Finance was not to be outdone so far as hope is concerned, by his colleague the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The Minister for Finance, as reported in column 1018, Volume 45, 7th December, 1932, says:—
"I should like to emphasise the statement made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce last night, that so far as the economic disturbance arising out of the land annuities dispute is concerned, the worst is over."
Hear, hear!
The bailiffs were round about the country last Monday.
We pointed out here again and again on the various debates on agriculture that even if one looked with favour on the Minister's policy of increased tillage, that meant in the long run an increase in the number of cattle. Increased tillage means the rotation of crops and more cattle. And the very man that drove that home in answer to our criticisms was the Minister himself. The Minister got up on those benches and said that was his policy and it had always been the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party— more tillage, therefore more cattle. But the exigencies of a sound agricultural policy are one thing and the exigencies of the Fianna Fáil Party are an entirely different thing. The same Minister who preached that doctrine here scoffed at his critics because they did not recognise that that had always been the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. That same Minister some months afterwards said that the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party was more tillage and less cattle. Their policy was to diminish the number of cattle by the slaughter of calves. What is his policy to-day—is it more tillage and more cattle or more tillage and less cattle? His policy has got another dinge in it. The Minister is kicked about from pillar to post. The Minister is not allowed to have a policy. One day he is preaching the slaughter of calves and another day he is trying to resurrect them. He is trying to see that more calves are produced. He says: "Produce as many calves as possible." He says to produce the best quality of calves possible for the country. For what? For slaughter. It is to admit the entry of a larger number of cattle into Great Britain. That is another confession that, so far as the main industry of this country is concerned, the Party opposite has no policy. It changes its policy from year to year. It changes, not in answer to the dictates of a sound agricultural policy, but to the mere politics of the Party. Once more one can see from this pact that cattle are to be a source of wealth. What becomes now of the policy of the slaughter of calves? What becomes of the slaughter of the future wealth of the country? If this pact means anything, it means a larger number of cattle being exported to Great Britain. That may be a relief. But consider the heavy tax on cattle. It shows one the condition to which the policy of the Government has reduced the farmers of this country. Why cannot the Government that negotiated this pact do what the amendment requires them to do—enter on a really determined and honest attempt to get at the root of the whole matter and settle the whole dispute? The Government is conniving—to put it no higher than that if you like— deliberately conniving at the collection of these annuities by the British Government. Why not face up to the whole issue and do what the farmers of the country are expecting them to do—make a decent settlement of the whole dispute?
What were the principal attractions of the original coal-cattle pact when it was first introduced into this House? The condition of the people of this country at that time was so bad, especially the condition of the farmers was so bad at that time, that any relief, even at the high tariff then existing—any relief in the way of an increased market for their cattle was distinctly valued as a benefit for them. Why? Because their position had been made practically impossible by the continuance of the Government policy. The great advantage the coal-cattle pact seemed to have in the minds of the people of this House at that time was that it gave some relief to the farmers, and that was why Deputies gave it a kind of qualified blessing. It seemed also to present some evidence that the eyes of the Government were being opened and that they were really willing to enter into business negotiations with the other party to this dispute. That was the real hope that was held out and entertained during the intervening months by many farmers in this country. And now this is what we have got. All Deputies in this House, no matter to what Party they belong, must have known of the rumours that were circulated and fostered before Christmas, rumours promoted by various members of the Government Party and by their friends through the country, that a settlement, and a good settlement, was coming. I know that we on this side of the House expect to hear that cry every three months. We expect to hear a cry about the marvellous settlement that the country is going to get. Is this the marvellous settlement that Fianna Fáil told the farmers and others through the country was to come? Is this the big settlement? Then, if so, there must be considerable cleavage of opinion in Government circles on that particular matter. I don't believe there is, and, if there is, I do not think it will amount to anything. But if there were a cleavage of opinion in the Government Party, this is just the kind of settlement that one would expect—a half measure, a postponement and a shrinking from the real issue, and a refusal to dig down to the root of the matter and to see whether the evil could not be plucked out by the root. Why must the Fianna Fáil Party always leave things unsettled? This is not even a half settlement. The Government are a Government of half measures at all times. They are half in the Commonwealth and half out of it. They are half Republicans and half Free Staters. This pact is not even a half measure. The Government must, however, always have a carrot to hold before the unthinking. They must make an effort always to placate everybody—Free Staters, the Fianna Fáilers, and Republicans. We are watching this war. We have now been watching it since the summer of 1932. After three and a half years what is the position? That the Government that have waged this war now reveals the strategic weakness of its own position. If Great Britain wanted to collect £1,000,000 a year more than she is actually collecting, she could do it merely by keeping the same duties on and increasing our quotas. Such is the condition to which the farmer here has been reduced, that he would be bound to accept that; he could do nothing else. She does not want to do that. She said she would raise so much, £4,200,000, and she is doing that, and we connive at her doing it.
The one thing you have done by these pacts of yours is to reveal the extreme nakedness of the land, so far as this side of the war is concerned. People in the country and we on this side of the House have been condemned to see the principal sources of our wealth deliberately frittered away, and now there is not even national honour or a pretence of it to be safeguarded in return for that. The agricultural industry is being played with just as the Minister for Agriculture is being played with. He is treated as a kind of shuttlecock between one Minister and another, now announcing one policy and, later, announcing a policy the direct opposite. That is the way the whole industry of agriculture has been treated, and the farmers are expected to rejoice. As a matter of fact, they are being scoffed at by the members of the Government Party when a word is said about the plight to which that Party has reduced the farming community.
So far as the interests of this country are concerned, the abiding and the lasting interests of this country, there is nothing in the pact to make it worthy of the acceptance of the Dáil. So far as national honour, if that was ever at stake—I do not believe it was; I believe it was a mere veil behind which the Party opposite could deploy their forces—is concerned, there is nothing to recommend this pact to the House. In these two respects, in safeguarding and advancing the interests of the country, the Government can at least boast of this. They stand now where they have always stood; they have not advanced one step in trying to save this country or in trying to uphold this country's honour.
If this Party had the propagandist urge that always distinguishes the other side, certainly the conduct of the Government in this matter would resound through the whole country, but not to their credit. Deputy Belton, in the course of his penetrating analysis of this pact, asked the question: Having boasted of the mandate they got to continue the economic war, why is that mandate not being honoured? This is the answer: Because the farmers were driven to the last ditch and the Government found it out and some temporary relief, at all events relief of some kind, was necessary. It was only temporary, it only affected the surface, but that temporary relief was offered by the pact of last year and is again offered by the pact of this year. It is temporary relief for the farmer, but it enables the Government still to carry on the war. It enabled the Minister for Finance, introducing this Bill, to say that this matter is agreed on without prejudice to the matters in dispute as between this Government and the British Government. In other words, the farmer finds himself, as a result of the efforts of the Government to come to some kind of agreement with Great Britain, not in a much better, if any better, position than he was before.
I am not going into the question of the withdrawal of the bounties. The farmer finds himself now in exactly the same position of despair that he was in before, with this addition, that he now knows that his despair was too well-founded, that any hopes he had that this Government was waking up to the seriousness of his situation were entirely unfounded. If he hopes for anything from them in the future, then he is indeed an optimist. The Government will be in the position to tell the farmers of this country whom they have ruined by their policy: "March bravely forward; the war is still on and, as far as this Government is concerned, it is going on."
The agreement which this Bill, if passed, proposes to confirm is, in my deliberate opinion, an improvement upon the previous position, notwithstanding anything that may have been stated to the contrary by Deputy O'Sullivan. Deputy O'Sullivan has, though not in the same words, repeated at least half a dozen of the speeches that he has made here during the past three years. This agreement is an improvement upon the previous position because it enables more of the surplus cattle to find a market in Britain and to find a better price. It is also an improvement, because I understand it will effect a saving of about £400,000 a year, which was previously paid out as bounties on live stock exported to Great Britain. Do Deputy O'Sullivan and his colleagues object to this agreement because it contains an improvement of that kind? I understand that notwithstanding the fact that the bounties will cease to be paid in future on live stock exported to Great Britain, that the price of certain cattle has improved in our markets to the extent of at least 5/- per cwt.
Where?
The Deputy can consult some of the people who make a living in the cattle trade.
The Deputy surely is talking at random.
If the Deputy does as I suggest he will probably get confirmation of that statement.
An improvement to the extent of 5/- a cwt.?
The price of store cattle in the British market has improved, according to my information, and it is reliable, to the tune of 5/- per cwt.
In the British market, but not in the Irish market.
I understood from Deputy Cosgrave that British prices rule our market here. I took a note of that statement. I think the Deputy has sufficient intelligence left, although he has lost a lot of it, to realise that fact. I would like to mention that the introduction of a measure of this kind should be accompanied, if not preceded, by a white, or if you like a green paper giving particulars of every aspect of the agreement. I strongly object to the contents of an international agreement of this kind being broadcast to the people through what is called or known as the Government Information Bureau. If an agreement of this kind is to be treated seriously and if Deputies are expected to come here to discuss it in an impartial and fair-minded manner, I think they should be supplied officially beforehand, at the expense of the Minister for Finance, with the proper type of information. I hope in future that any agreement made with Britain or any other country will be preceded or accompanied by proper official information submitted in a proper way.
I also am of opinion that an international trade agreement of this kind, even though Deputy Kennedy says it is only a trade agreement, should be conducted between the Ministers of both Governments, either in London or in Dublin, in the same way as the Minister for Industry and Commerce is now conducting, on behalf of this Government, negotiations with the German Government. This agreement and the previous agreement have serious national effects and repercussions involving the saving or spending of millions of pounds of the people's money and I do not see why the President, who is Minister for External Affairs, or the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture should not meet their British equals in London or Dublin, accompanied by their officials, for the purpose of negotiating agreements of this kind. I go further and say this— and it is no reflection upon the civil servants who are really responsible in this case—that, if the Ministers on both sides could see their way to carry out the duties which the people of both countries imposed on them, we would have a better agreement than the present one. The presence at such negotiations of the responsible Ministers of both Governments would have a certain effect, in my opinion, of political importance and significance, and I believe, if the negotiations were conducted by the responsible Ministers, we would have a better agreement than we are discussing at the present time.
Deputy Cosgrave has put down an amendment which, to me, appears to be an extraordinary one. He proposes that the House should refuse a Second Reading to the Bill. I do not think it is a proper amendment to the Bill, but that is a matter for you, Sir, and your advisers. His amendment proposes that the Dáil "declines to give a Second Reading to the Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Order) Bill, until the Executive Council has given the Dáil an assurance that the Executive Council will take steps to negotiate forthwith a comprehensive settlement of the matters at issue between the Irish and British Governments." Deputy Cosgrave in his speech said nothing whatever about any aspect of the comprehensive settlement except the issue involved in the financial dispute. Why did he not take the House and the country into his confidence as to what was in his mind when he was calling for this comprehensive settlement, and insisting that such a settlement should be effected before this Bill gets a Second Reading? Does he suggest that the financial dispute is definitely bound up with the future settlement of the boundary and with the issue whether the whole of the Irish people have a right, if they so wish to declare an Irish Republic? Does he want the financial dispute, the question of the Border, and the issue raised by an Irish Republic, all discussed at the same time? Is that what is in Deputy Cosgrave's mind when he calls for this so-called comprehensive settlement? If so, why did he not tell the House and the country what he meant and what he wished the Government to do, in carrying on these discussions with the British Government?
I hold the view very definitely, and have held the view since the dispute started, that the financial dispute has nothing to do with the political or the boundary question, and is a matter that should be settled on its own merits, irrespective of any other issue. Deputy Donnelly says "No". The Government of which Deputy Donnelly is a supporter went to the country and got a clear mandate for withholding the land annuities. Nobody knows that better than the Opposition, and if I were a member of the Opposition, and if the Government got that mandate, I would have come into the House and said "The majority of the Irish people have, rightly or wrongly, given a mandate to the Government to withhold these moneys and I am going to back the majority in their fight against an outside Government who claim the money." I believe, furthermore, that the members of the Opposition in any other country of the world would have supported their own Government on that issue against the wishes of any outside Government. If the members of the Opposition were good politicians, they would have done that in 1932, but even to-day it seems they have learned no lesson from the history of the past four years. I feel bound as a minority member of the House to back the Government in the interests of the people of this country against the Government of any outside country which is trying politically to dominate the people of this country. I say that the issue raised by the financial dispute has nothing to do with the possible future settlement of the boundary question. Much as I, in common with other Deputies would like to see that dispute settled, I am not so politically foolish as to believe that the boundary question can be settled at the same type of conference as that at which we can settle a financial dispute.
Deputy Cosgrave comes to this House and with the air of responsibility which surrounds an ex-President, says there should be a better settlement. He does not venture to tell us what is the nature of the better settlement, which he apparently believes can be secured from the British. He goes on to say that a favourable settlement is possible. Will Deputy Dillon, Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, or any Deputy who speaks from the Front Benches opposite, tell us what is in the mind of Deputy Cosgrave, when he says that a favourable settlement is possible. What information has he from British Cabinet Ministers, or any other reliable source, which would show that such a settlement is possible? I should like to believe it. Has he any information as to the conditions under which the British Government will negotiate a settlement of the financial dispute? This is a matter upon which I want an answer from him, and I also want an answer from President de Valera, or any other Minister: is it a fact that the British Government will not discuss a possible settlement of the financial dispute, until a majority of the members of this House give an assurance that we are going to continue to be a baby member of the British Commonwealth of Nations? Is there any condition attached to the opening of negotiations which will compel us to reinstate the oath in our Constitution? Would Deputy Cosgrave, if he had power from this House to go over and negotiate a settlement, which he says is there for the taking, undertake to bring about that settlement and give as a condition for that settlement, a guarantee as to the reinstatement of the oath in the Constitution?
I want to know what is the obstacle to the opening of negotiations in connection with the financial dispute. If President de Valera could tell this House that the British will not reopen negotiations for the settlement of the financial dispute, until we give an undertaking to have the oath reinserted in the Constitution, I have sufficient faith in the Irish people to believe that the Irish people are not going to cow down to political bullyism of that type. The sooner President de Valera lays the facts before the Irish people the sooner he will have the vast majority of Irishmen supporting him on that issue. Would Deputy Cosgrave, Deputy Dillon, or any other Deputy attempt to negotiate a settlement on that basis? On what basis would they undertake a mission of that kind?
To establish a workers' republic.
Deputy Cosgrave said at one time, that he could go across and negotiate a settlement in three days. He would spend one day in going across, one day in Whitehall, and one day in returning and he would get a better settlement than he got in 1923 or 1926. He would halve the annuities. He gave that promise in 1932, but even that had not the slightest repercussion on the electorate as to his point of view. I want to know now on what grounds he suggests that a favourable settlement is possible.
Does the Deputy know why it is impossible?
I leave Deputy Morrissey and his Party to answer a straight question. Perhaps the Deputy does not know what is in Deputy Cosgrave's mind.
It is quite possible.
If Deputy Cosgrave, who is a responsible leader and an ex-President of this State, makes a statement of that kind I am entitled to ask him to tell the people of the country what are the grounds he has for making that statement. And what is his answer when he suggests that this Bill should not get a Second Reading? It is that it should not get a Second Reading until there is a comprehensive settlement of the matters at issue between ourselves and the British Government. Perhaps Deputy Morrissey would enlighten us on what that means?
It would be impossible to enlighten the Deputy on anything.
It would be impossible to enlighten me upon the Deputy's policy or the so-called policy of the Blueshirt Party. It has been suggested by Deputies on the Opposition Benches, and by Opposition speakers in the country, that the members of the Labour Party here have a big responsibility in the Government's attitude on this matter. Deputy O'Higgins would say they have the main share of responsibility for encouraging the Government to carry on what they are pleased to call the economic war. The leader of the Labour Party has given evidence of his desire, on more than one occasion, to help to bring about a settlement of the dispute between this country and Great Britain.
He told us the economic war was won three years ago.
I heard Deputy O'Sullivan, in the absence of Deputy Mulcahy, quote another Deputy as being responsible for that. Deputy Mulcahy was not here at the time, and if he had been he could have challenged that remark of Deputy O'Sullivan.
Deputy Norton said it anyhow.
The positive way Deputy Mulcahy makes that assertion would not entitle me to contradict him. The position seems to the Opposition to be that we are the only nation in the world to-day that has committed a breach of some agreement, and that we are the only people whose financial integrity and stability comes into question. And that charge is made because we are withholding the annuities until such time as the British Government should prove by negotiation, arbitration or some other way, that they were entitled to them.
How are we withholding them? Is not this pact to pay them?
Will Deputy Dillon quote any country in the world to-day that is paying either its war debts or its international debts in full?
Saorstát Eireann. The coal-cattle pact is to enable it to pay its debts.
I shall leave it to the Vice-President to educate the Deputy in the proper pronunciation of Irish.
What is the £4 5s. per head on certain cattle for?
I ask is there any country in Europe to-day, that was engaged in the European War, paying in full its international debts?
The Deputy is asking us to pass an agreement whereby we are agreeing with the British Treasury to pay our debts.
I ask again: is any country in Europe——
Yes, Ireland.
——to-day paying in full its war debts? Is France paying its debts? Is Belgium paying its debts? Is Britain paying America its debts? Is any country that was involved directly or indirectly in the war, paying its international debts to-day? Notwithstanding the knowledge that Deputies opposite have of this matter, they come to this House and say that though the Irish people have authorised the Irish Government to withhold these sums until they are satisfied that they are payments which are actually due, that we are shirking our duty in doing so.
But you are not withholding the annuities from Britain.
I am willing to wait until the conversation carried on between Deputy Belton and his friend is over.
Until the Baldwin henchmen have made up their minds.
I understand that some of the greatest countries in the world are only carrying out their financial obligations by making token payments. Would Deputy Cosgrave settle the financial dispute between the Free State and Great Britain by making token payments to the British and leave it to some future Government to come along and negotiate a final settlement? I want to know in what way Deputy Cosgrave would have given authority to negotiate a comprehensive settlement of all the matters now at issue with the British Government. I want to know whether he would tie on the financial dispute to the boundary question, and the financial dispute and the boundary question to the question of the establishment of a republic, and whether he would allow representatives of the country to remain long enough in England until they were able to come to a final settlement on all these questions? I am prepared to give every encouragement by vote and voice to the negotiation for a final settlement of the financial question, but I am not foolish enough to think—perhaps here I am giving something against myself away to Deputy Donnelly—that we can get a settlement of the boundary question by the same type of tribunal as we would get a settlement of the financial dispute. The President suggested that the financial dispute might be settled by an international tribunal of lawyers. I have not the slightest faith, for instance, in the body of eminent lawyers who, at the request of the Opposition, made out a case in favour of the British on the question of the annuities. This Government then got six other eminent lawyers who expressed the opinion that the annuities ought to be withheld. But the British were presented with an opinion of six lawyers provided by this country to say that they should be paid. I think that was the last thing any Party in this country ought to have done, that is, to make a case against this country after the majority of the people had given a mandate to the Government of the day that the annuities should be withheld until they were proved to be due.
I have no faith that this question will be settled by a body of international lawyers. Would Deputy Cosgrave be in favour of submitting the matter to a body of Commonwealth lawyers or would he favour an international tribunal, such as this Government were ready to submit it to? I believe the matter will never be settled in that way. I believe it will only be settled by a round-table conference, and never will be settled by any tribunal of international lawyers. I am not prepared, as Deputies who sit on the Opposition side of the House apparently are, to risk the settlement of this case to either a body of lawyers selected from the British Commonwealth or outside the Commonwealth.
This so-called economic war has been carried on for four years, but even if it was only on for a week or a month, I would take the same line. I am not going to risk the possibility of defeat before a tribunal of international lawyers, before whom you may lose your case because it was badly presented. I am also intelligent enough to know that lawyers of an international character would take the risk of favouring a big country against a small one—Britain in such a matter rather than us. This whole international dispute is to me a question of bread and butter. It is a moral issue. Deputies in this House and the Government have the responsibility, in the first instance, of making provision for the proper feeding, clothing and comfortable living of the citizens in this State. I will never subscribe, as long as I am a member of this House, to any Government in this country paying over large sums of money to Britain or to any other country, while there are men and women hungry and starving and without proper clothing and shelter. That is the first duty of any Government. In taking up the attitude which I take up, I say the Government have a right to retain this money until it is proved, whether by negotiation or by some other method, that they are legally bound to pay that money over to the British Government.
What method?
From the very day on which I discovered that this financial settlement contained a large sum for the payment of pensions to R.I.C., I protested against it. The R.I.C. unfortunately consisted of a number of Irishmen who fought for the British in the R.I.C. against their own fellow-countrymen in the land war and other wars carried out in this country. They were British forces although they were Irishmen, and I say it was the duty of the British Government—in the same way as they paid the pensions of the British Army who were here in this country—to pay the R.I.C. for the dirty work they carried out on behalf of the British Government while serving the British Government in the R.I.C.
I think the speech of Deputy Davin is one of the most illogical I have ever listened to.
Naturally!
In one breath he alleges that it would be entirely wrong to leave the question of the propriety of these payments to Great Britain to be decided upon by a tribunal of any kind—an Empire tribunal or an international tribunal.
Quite true.
In the next breath he says that he will only assent to the moneys being paid when they have been proved due either by negotiation or by some other method.
I do not want the Deputy to misrepresent me. I stated quite definitely that I favoured settlement of this dispute by negotiation.
I quite agree that the Deputy said that, but he also said he would only consent to the payments being made when they had been proved due either by negotiation or by some other method. How negotiation could prove anything I do not know. It could effect a great deal, but it certainly could not prove anything. The only method of proving whether those moneys are due or not is by a tribunal of some sort. If the Deputy rules that out he rules out proof altogether.
In the course of his speech he gave voice to a doctrine which would have come much more suitably from a supporter of Hitler or Mussolini or of the Soviet Government than from anyone in a democratic country. He expressed the opinion that it was intolerable and unpatriotic for a citizen ever to oppose the Government of his own country when that Government was having a dispute of any sort with another power.
Did I use the word "ever"?
The Deputy said that in no other country in the world would citizens be found so unpatriotic as to criticise the actions of their Government if their Government was having a dispute of any sort with another Power. Does morality count for absolutely nothing? I suggest that considerations of right and wrong have a real importance for people in a democratic country; not indeed for people in a country whose citizens have got to do nothing except to assent to whatever the dictator says. But in a democratic country we have got to think. We have got to use our own judgment. We have got to bow to the dictates of our own consciences. Just as there have been found over and over again in English history English citizens brave enough and honest enough to oppose and criticise their own Government when they considered that Government was acting immorally towards another Government, so I maintain that if we here should think our Government is acting immorally we have a perfect right, and not only a perfect right but a duty, to say so. If we think a debt is due, we ought to say we think it is due, and the notion that there is something unpatriotic in asking one of our own lawyers or six of our own lawyers to pass judgment on the question as to whether the debt is due or not seems to me almost too fantastic to be worth a moment's consideration.
Would there be anything immoral in asking a lawyer to advise and not putting all the facts before him? Those lawyers had not the 1923 agreement before them.
I am not concerned to argue with the Minister about the details of what actually occurred. I am only concerned to deal with the principle which Deputy Davin was seeking to lay down, and it seems to me thoroughly immoral and unworthy of a civilised country.
What about the suggested tribunal. Was that immoral?
Deputy Davin also challenged any of us to say whether there was any country in the world paying its war debts.
In full.
In full. What is the relevance of that question? What possible relevance has it to our situation? This is not a war debt; it is a commercial debt. This money, borrowed from the British investor, was used to a good purpose. It was not used for blowing human beings into atoms, nor was the money blown away in warfare in any shape or form. It was profitably used, and it is a commercial debt. What Deputy Davin has to show, if he wants to use any argument of the kind at all, is that it has become the general practice throughout the world to repudiate commercial debts, and not war debts. Incidentally, I will have another word to say about the question of war debts later on in the course of my remarks.
Now, Sir, I support this Bill. I should support it with much more eagerness and much more joyfulness if the Government had not done a great deal to destroy the useful results that should flow from it by withdrawal of bounties on cattle and horses. The sufferings of the countryside are obvious to anyone who has got eyes to see and ears to hear. They are not invented by politicians. They have been spoken of, even within the last few days, by Bishops in their Lenten Pastorals. They are a matter of common talk and common knowledge, and I must say it amazes me that the Government should deny to the farmers and the miserably underpaid farm labourers the full relief which this agreement ought to bring them. If they could not have continued the bounties without maintaining the coal tax, then they ought to have maintained the coal tax, and they ought even now to reimpose the coal tax if there is no other way of providing the necessary money for the bounties. I represent here a rural constituency, but even looking at the matter not from the relatively narrow point of view of the representative of a rural constituency, but from the national point of view, I would still maintain that the crying economic need of the hour in this country is to relieve agriculture.
It seems clear to me that the House ought to give this Bill a Second Reading.
Why?
Deputy Cosgrave has said that the merits of this agreement are not really the question. Now, things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they must be. Why, then, should we deceive ourselves? Deputy Cosgrave's amendment is, in fact, asking us to reject this Bill.
Hear, hear!
And what we have to vote on is the question whether the Bill will get a Second Reading or not. The Opposition view with such grave concern the continuing losses of the people that they ask us to reject the Bill. It is very right that we should view with grave concern the continuing losses of the people, and that we should be deeply moved by the sufferings of the farming community, but not so deeply moved as to allow our emotions to cloud our reason. This Bill enlarges the market open to our farmers in Great Britain, and it reduces some of the obstacles which stand in the way of their getting there. It must, therefore, have a favourable effect on the farmers, and no sophistry can convince me that a suitable way of showing our sympathy with the sufferings of the farmers is to deny them any abatement of their sufferings such as is provided by this Bill.
The coal-cattle pact of last year, as Deputy Davin said, was decidedly inferior to the present agreement. Yet, the bulk of the Opposition, including the Front Bench, supported by their votes the coal-cattle pact—supported the confirmation of the Orders by which the coal-cattle pact was made operative. Why have they changed? Why should they repent? Has the coal-cattle pact been a failure? It stands to reason that the situation of the farmers would be even worse if Great Britain had not allowed in the additional cattle. The very welcome and substantial improvement in the figures of our trade balance during the past year was due, in the main, to that pact. Fianna Fáil speakers may sometimes pretend that the change was due to agreements with Spain or with Germany or with somewhere else. But the fact of the matter is that the improvement in our trade balance was caused more by last year's coal-cattle pact than by all the trade agreements with other countries put together. Therefore, it seems to me that we should be taking leave of our senses if we rejected the present Bill.
I was really amazed when I saw that the official Opposition had put down an amendment asking for its rejection. Not only have they done that, but they have, in the country, made statements more hostile to it than they have made here. In fact, Deputy Cosgrave really said very little against this agreement here this afternoon. Deputy O'Sullivan was more robust and called it a shameful measure. But, in the country, Deputy Cosgrave was less conservative about it and said harder things about it than he said here. Deputy Dillon, I think, informed the Irish Independent that the effect of this trade agreement would be to ensure that the Irish farmers and farm labourers would work harder and for longer hours in order to secure lower prices.
I ask: what good object could be served by rejecting this Bill? Is it suggested that our doing so would force the Government to make a larger agreement? I do not think it would have that effect. Indeed, its effect might easily be just the opposite. It appears to be the technique of opposition in this country to insist that each time an Irish Government makes an agreement with Great Britain it is we who are getting the worst of it. There will always be plenty of the Fianna Fáil left-wingers inclined to disparage and resent an agreement with Great Britain. If the Government have also to expect reckless criticism and hostility from Deputy Cosgrave and his friends, may they not come to the conclusion that the only safe path is the path of least resistance and abstain from making further agreements? For, if a general agreement does come, whether of the financial dispute alone, or embracing constitutional issues as well, we shall surely have to give as well as take. It will give ample opportunity to the Opposition for playing politics; or their emotions about the Irish farmer or Irish freedom might again get the better of their commonsense. I feel that the chances of such a settlement would be improved if the Opposition were careful to offer no ground for the suspicion that they are more interested in Party tactics than in the welfare of the country. I am not accusing them of being so—God alone knoweth the heart of man—but I am suggesting that they are giving some opportunity to people to suspect them of it by their attitude to this Bill.
According to Deputy Cosgrave—not Deputy Cosgrave in the House, but Deputy Cosgrave in the country—this agreement takes away our fiscal freedom. What does he mean? Is he unconscious of the fact that for the British farmer and for the Dominion farmer, no less than for the Irish farmer, the days of unregulated production are gone for ever—that in order to secure adequate and stable prices there has to be closer co-ordination of supply and demand? If it is to be regarded as a limitation of Irish independence that we should study the British market with the idea of supplying the British with what they need, and that we should adapt ourselves to the schemes of the British Department of Agriculture, then the look-out for our farmers is a very black one. The new British agricultural policy can be a boon or a curse to us just as we choose to make it. The Government have begun to realise this. They may not admit it, but their fallacies of a few years ago about the British market are completely exposed and exploded. This Bill really represents a triumph for Opposition arguments and Opposition philosophy, and it amazes me that they should be so blind as not to see that, and actually oppose the Bill. Surely the Opposition ought not, in present circumstances, to try to plunge back our economic thought into the darkness from which it is emerging.
Or is it the reduction of tariffs on English goods, or the coal monopoly, that Deputy Cosgrave regards as an infringement of our fiscal freedom? If so, the same thing could be said about the whole system of Imperial preference, or, indeed, about any trade agreement made by any Government anywhere. This agreement is not a permanent one; we can get rid of it next year if we like. It is not a one-sided one. We are getting a substantial consideration for anything we have given. It does not bar the way to the making of a larger agreement. On the contrary, it contributes to the formation of a good habit—the habit of reasonable discussion and reasonable compromise with our friends across the water. I see no excuse for opposing it and I shall certainly vote for it.
There are a couple of points arising out of the agreement to which I should like to call attention. One is, that it confirms the abandonment by the British Government of the point of view taken a few years ago that the present Government of the Irish Free State was one with whom no agreement could be made because of their repudiation of former agreements. I was not and I am not in sympathy with the line taken by the Government either on the question of the Oath or on the question of the annuities, but I recognise that their whole outlook in these questions was based on a different past and different prejudices from mine, and also that in their years of Opposition they committed themselves to many follies which with their present experience they might, perhaps, have avoided. The fact that at Geneva the President simply and frankly accepted his obligations under the Covenant of the League of Nations without dragging in the Anglo-Irish dispute and haggling about it, has, I know, enormously strengthened his position with the British Government and the British public, and will help him a great deal in whatever new attempts are pending to negotiate a settlement.
On a point of order, has this anything to do with the amendment that we are discussing, this action of the President?
I will hear the Deputy. Deputy MacDermot to continue.
The other point I wish to mention is this: that it was possible to make this agreement proves conclusively that the British cannot justly be charged with trying to crush out our economic life, as several Ministers and members of the Fianna Fáil Party are fond of putting it. If they wanted to do that they needed none of the advice which Ministers absurdly suggest they got from Deputy Cosgrave and his friends. They could have taken the obvious course of placing an embargo on all Irish goods of every description. They confined themselves to collecting by tariffs the money that rightly or wrongly—and I express no opinion on the legal question, being merely a layman—they believed to be due to them, and while the President may be annoyed with them for having done so, he cannot reasonably say that they showed any spirit of malice or revenge. Indeed, if the United States of America—and this is the reference to war debts which I promised Deputy Davin—treated Great Britain as Great Britain has treated us, and allowed in enough British goods for the tariffs on them to make good payments of war debts, I fancy that Great Britain would have been exceedingly gratified, and the world in general would have thought that America was treating her well.
Then England is treating us well?
I am not responsible for any deductions Deputy Belton makes. I shall say nothing more except that I shall be deeply disappointed if the Government fail to make a strenuous effort before the end of 1936 to settle all disputes with Great Britain, or at the worst, to settle the financial dispute with Great Britain. I believe that they can succeed in doing that if they try. Only by friendly relations with Great Britain can we lay the foundation of reunion with Northern Ireland. The President has been speaking of our rights as a mother country whose children have helped to build up Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Let us not forget that maternity has its obligations and opportunities as well as rights, and that we give little evidence of appreciating the obligations of kinship when we advocate separation, or when we seek to weaken the principle of allegiance to the King, by which the whole fabric of the Commonwealth is held together.
Deputy Davin made one effort to get this discussion back into the atmosphere of reality and, for a time, I thought Deputy MacDermot was going to co-operate in that effort. An air of unreality has again been created, and, in view of the nature of the matters to be discussed and their very practical importance, we should keep our feet as firmly on the ground as possible. There is a motion before the Dáil to be discussed, and that motion was moved by the Leader of the Opposition. It asks the Dáil to reject the trade arrangement made with Great Britain and to refuse to implement that agreement or to pass the legislation required for that purpose. That is the purpose of the motion before us. No reasons were advanced from the Opposition Benches for the adoption of that extraordinary course. I think Deputies of the Opposition were probably shocked by the speech they heard from their leader. The Opposition are probably as deeply shocked as we were astonished by his speech. We are astonished because we had expected from him a clear, concise statement of the reasons which induced his Party to table that motion for our consideration. He proposes that we should refuse to implement that agreement recently concluded. But we heard no reasons. It is true that the motion itself asks that the passage of the Bill should be prevented, so as to provide for negotiations to be held forthwith with the British Government for a comprehensive settlement of the matters at issue between them and us.
Deputy Davin asked a number of pertinent questions relating to the matters at issue between the British Government and the Government of the Saorstát. These questions should not have to be asked. One would have thought that the Leader of the Opposition would have taken the opportunity afforded him when speaking in support of this motion to have given his conception of what these issues are, and upon what lines the settlement of the dispute should be attempted. Does Deputy Cosgrave include amongst the issues in dispute between us and the British Government the question of Partition, the question of the Oath of Allegiance and the question of constitutional changes recently effected? Are negotiations to proceed forthwith for a settlement of these matters before any arrangement of any kind in relation to trade are to be made between Great Britain and ourselves? We are entitled to know the point of view of the Opposition on these questions. We should not have to ask them for their views. When the Party opposite decided to table that motion they must have known that these questions would be asked. They must have contemplated the possibility of their being asked to explain not merely the reasons why the trade pact should not be implemented but also upon what basis this immediate settlement should be attempted and on what issues should negotiations take place? I hope that some subsequent speakers from the Opposition side will attempt to answer these questions. It was the duty of the Leader of the Opposition to have dealt with these matters. His failure to do so is very surprising indeed.
In fact we heard nothing from Deputy Cosgrave that had any very definite bearing either upon the trade arrangement for the exchange of commodities with Great Britain, or on the matters dealt with in the amendment. The speech was merely a further revelation of the mentality which members of his Party bring to bear upon all questions affecting the relations of this country and Great Britain. Deputy Cosgrave told us that the British were willing to settle the issues associated with the land annuities, and right through his speech there ran the assumption, that if there was failure to effect a settlement, and if there was reluctance to have these issues brought forward with determination, the fault must lie with the Government of this country. He could not conceive the possibility that the British Government could be otherwise than fair, reasonable, and generous in their relations with us. That mentality is deep rooted amongst the members of his Party, but one would have thought that the leader of that Party would have made an attempt to justify the assumptions upon which his amendment is based and upon which his speech was framed.
He told us that this arrangement for the exchange of goods with Great Britain was an admission that we cannot do without the British market. It would not occur to him, or to any of his colleagues, that it might be taken as an indication that the British Government has realised that there is here an important market for their produce, for their coal, for their machinery, for their cement and manufactured goods. That would not occur to them. That idea was not expressed in any of the speeches made by their representatives, either in this House or outside it, or in the amendment tabled in relation to the Bill we are now discussing. Not merely had we in the speech of Deputy Cosgrave,—a speech which was merely re-echoed in more vehement terms by Deputy O'Sullivan—that revelation of the mentality of the Opposition on this matter, but it was an indication of their ability to forget, where it is convenient to forget, the origin of the economic war, and the part they played in instigating it. The imposition of duties on our cattle, and the measures restricting the movement of goods between Great Britain and ourselves were not inherent in the land annuities dispute. The land annuities dispute was a legal dispute, a matter affecting the interpretation of statutes, and was capable of determination in a legal way if there was any desire to effect such determination. When the British Government decided to avoid any attempt to effect a legal determination of that issue, and to force acceptance of their point of view on the Irish people by the application of economic pressure on this country they were acting upon suggestions made to them by Deputies opposite. Deputy MacDermot may contend, and possibly may rightly contend, that the British Government did not need these suggestions; that they would have thought of these measures for themselves. That does not lessen the guilt of those in this country who toured from one town to another during 1932 making speech after speech, telling the British Government that if these measures were adopted, and if economic pressure was applied in our country, the people would be induced to change the Government, to abandon the policy this Government stood for, and to reverse their position on the land annuities and accept British dictation.
Another Glasgow story.
What about the coal-cattle pact that we are discussing?
I will deal with that.
This is a Glasgow story.
Is Deputy Mulcahy's ability to forget so efficient that he has no recollection whatever of the speeches he made, or the speeches of Senator Blythe, Deputy O'Higgins, and of the speeches that every member of that Party made during the period? They came to the Dáil and announced after these duties were imposed, that within three months we were going to be broken, driven from the position we had taken up, that we would find it impossible to carry on unless we sought terms from the British Government. At the end of December, 1932, I said here that the economic war was won. I meant it. It was then clear that economic pressure would not intimidate our people and that they were not going to be beaten by these tactics, that they had resolved to stand firm. My contention on that point was demonstrated emphatically at the election which followed one month later. Once it had become evident that the people were not going to abandon the position we took up on the land annuities issues, or to surrender what we believed to be our rights, in consequence of the damage done to our economic organisation by tariffs applied against us, then the economic war was bound to end at some stage. Once that became clear we had won.
These tariffs upon our agricultural exports, and the measures adopted by the British Government to defeat us on the land annuities issues, had their reactions on this country, and they are very serious reactions. In the early days of the operation of the tariffs it was a matter of grave concern to the members of the Government what these reactions were going to be. We knew that they were going to have bad effects upon the national economy, upon the prosperity of our farmers, on our prospects of promoting industry and upon our plans to promote employment. We knew that, and we were not even too sure that they were not going to have such an effect that it would be impossible for us to maintain our position. But we determined to stand firm, and we have demonstrated that it is possible for us, despite these measures, to proceed with our recovery programme, to proceed with our plans for the reorganisation of agriculture, the development of industry and the promotion of employment. Perhaps we have made less rapid progress than we would have made if circumstances were different and if these particular measures had not been adopted against us by the British Government. Nevertheless, we have made progress. The fact that Trade pacts are now being made with the British may as well be due to the fact that they recognise that the advice given them by the Opposition was bad advice, that the tactics they adopted were not going to have results, as to realisation on our part that it is necessary to maintain our agricultural exports in present circumstances. The coal-cattle requirements of last year had beneficial results for this country. It is because they had beneficial results, and consequently decreased the power of the Opposition to continue their wrecking tactics, that they are now endeavouring to prevent the implementation of this agreement which continues and extends the old one. Their sole reason for opposing it is because it is going to have beneficial results for this country.
Where are the alternative markets?
It takes away the only foundation there was for the campaign they conducted in the country. They told farmers what they expected would flow from the economic war just as they told the British Government that the imposition of these duties would produce immediate surrender here. They were proved to be wrong. But they set out to achieve the same results by other means. Deputy Belton is concerned if bailiffs are evicting farmers in order to make them pay the annuities. Who campaigned around the country to prevent them paying the annuities, and organised gangs of people to intimidate those who were paying, and organised boycots to intimidate shopkeepers?
On a point of explanation. This pact is paying the annuities. That is what the Minister is advocating, but sheriffs are being sent out to collect them again. Do not talk balderdash. Get to business.
That campaign to prevent the payment of annuities and rates was initiated by the Opposition in the hope that they would destroy agriculture, and they built upon that destruction for the resurrection of the blighted hopes of their own Party. They failed, and to-day the land annuities are being paid voluntarily, now that intimidation has ended.
Come to the coal-cattle pact.
Every farmer in the country who is working his land is paying his annuities——
What is that?
The amount of arrears of annuities outstanding——
The farmers have paid their annuities four times over. I think the Minister has got a nightmare and does not know where he is.
I am sure the Deputy will be glad to hear that the amount of arrears of land annuities outstanding is negligible.
Order.
The arrears of land tax outstanding?
The amount of arrears of the land annuities outstanding is of no consequence. It is a much smaller percentage of the total to be collected than, say, the Deputy's Party is of the total membership of the House.
Where is the alternative market gone that the Minister promised the gulls of farmers who voted for him?
The principal alternative market is at home. I have frequently pointed out, and tried to get the Deputy to understand, that the principal alternative market for our farmers is here at home, and that market is being developed.
Your twopenny beef, is it?
Deputy Cosgrave says that this trade arrangement with Great Britain is not a satisfactory settlement. Of course it is not a satisfactory settlement: it is not a settlement at all. It is not being put forward as a settlement. It is an arrangement for the exchange of coal against cattle and of cement against bacon for the year 1936, an arrangement which is beneficial to us and no less beneficial to the other party to it.
They are getting the annuities due. The Minister will agree to that. He should not be hypocritical any longer, but should come to business.
I am anxious to get to understand Deputy Belton's attitude to the arrangement. He objects to the payment of £4 5s. per head on cattle over two years old going to Great Britain, and, because he objects to that, he wants to defeat the Bill so that the amount will be £6 per head.
Rot!
Deputy Belton has a motion on the Order Paper asking the Dáil not to pass this Bill. If it is not passed, the arrangement falls, and if it does the tax upon these cattle will be £6 per head——
Thanks to the Government.
——instead of being only £4 5s.
Does the Minister say that it should be £4 5s.?
And because the Deputy objects to it being £4 5s. he wants to make it £6. That is about as sensible a proposition as I have ever heard coming from the Deputy.
Has the Minister agreed to the imposition of this new duty?
We have not agreed to the imposition of any duty. We have agreed to this: that we will take coal and cement against cattle and bacon to a corresponding value; that we will reduce certain duties which operated against British goods to an amount corresponding to the reductions which they have effected in certain duties affecting our goods. We have agreed to nothing else.
This Bill, then, has nothing to do with the duties on cattle?
No.
So that if it is defeated the £6 duty will not go back on cattle?
Of course it will.
The Minister told Deputy Belton the opposite a moment ago.
In consequence of this arrangement we are reducing by this measure certain duties affecting British goods. If we do that, they are going to reduce certain duties which they have imposed affecting our goods.
In other words, this question of the cattle does not come into the settlement?
Of course the question of the reduction of the duties does come in.
The Minister is agreeing, then, to a duty of £4 5s. 0d.?
Nonsense.
On cattle two years old and upwards?
That is a type of the cock-eyed logic that we get from the Deputy on occasions.
But it is the truth and the Minister cannot deny it. I wish I was coming after him.
The Deputy announced two hours ago that he had an appointment to keep.
I had an appointment with a victimised farmer.
Why did the Deputy not keep it?
I kept it, and I gave him more comfort than he got from the Government during the last four years.
The effect of the pact made last year, which merely provided for an exchange of cattle against coal, without any modification of the duties and without covering any other commodities, was very beneficial. No matter what Deputies opposite may seek to contend to the the circumstances of farmers last year and of the country in general were, in consequence of it, better than in the previous year, just as in the previous year they had been better than in the year before that. The exports of cattle increased by over 150,000 head in number and by over £1,000,000 in value. Not merely was there an increase in the number of cattle exported but there was also an improvement in prices. The price of cattle improved because of the wider opportunities for trading that were afforded by the arrangement. In August, 1934, the margin of difference between the price of fat cattle in the Free State and in Great Britain was 15/- per cwt. There is always, of course, a margin of difference between the price here and the price in Great Britain, a margin which represents the cost of transport and the profits of the middlemen engaged in dealing in cattle for export from this country. That margin, as I have said, was 15/- per cwt. in August, 1934, and it came down to 9/- per cwt. in August, 1935. Yet the agreement of that year provided for no variation of the duty. There was no variation in the duty, and yet our cattle prices improved as against the prices in Great Britain. This year a further and more substantial improvement can be effected. The motion which the Deputies opposite have on the Order Paper is designed to prevent that happening, because if it does it is going to be detrimental to the interests of their Party—to destroy their chances of getting increased support in rural areas. That is the sole reason why they are opposed to the arrangement. They have given no other reason for their opposition to it. It is true that Deputy Cosgrave said that he was not anxious to make political propaganda out of a discussion on this matter, but he had the grace to leave the House when his associate, Deputy Professor O'Sullivan, was making his speech.
It all only shows how good the position would be if there were no tariffs.
Of course, the position would be good if there were no tariffs, and some day we will get to that position, but not by the path of surrender. That is the path that the Deputies opposite want us to take.
We never surrendered in the Land League days.
They profess to believe that it is only a question of going over, hat in hand, and asking for a settlement and getting it. They know well that it is nothing of the kind. They know full well that the issues involved here are of much greater significance for our people than the mere amount of the land annuities. If the British Government got it into their heads that we could be forced to abandon our rights, to give in upon any issue in dispute between us by the application of economic pressure and the imposition of tariffs on our agricultural exports, then that power would be used not merely in relation to the land annuities but on every occasion when there was a majority in the British Parliament to support the use of it. If we allow ourselves to be defeated upon this issue by these means, what hope is there that we will offer a more vigorous resistance to them on some future occasion when, perhaps, something more important may be at stake?
It is my conviction that, because of the improved conditions here and because of other circumstances that may have a bearing on our position, it will be possible to get to the position which Deputy Belton visualises, but only by the path of fair negotiation: of two equals meeting, one to give and the other to concede an equal amount. On that basis negotiations can proceed at any time. We are prepared to settle the economic war at any time on terms which, in our opinion, are favourable and fair to the Irish people.
What then is to be gained by these perpetual references to the losses sustained by our farmers in consequence of the economic war? We know that there are losses. The farmers themselves know better than anyone else what they have lost, and it was the farmers who put this Government into office, not merely once but twice. Deputies opposite will some day realise that the farmers of this country have the fire of patriotism in their veins, that they have a clearer appreciation of what is in the national interest than the time-serving politicians who profess to lead them, and that they are not going to be induced, by the crocodile tears of people whose only hope is to climb back into office on the backs of the farmers, into deserting the policy they endorsed when they put this Government into office. They took the step of putting this Government into office in 1932 under circumstances which were operating to deter them from that action. They had been told, not merely from political platforms, but from other platforms, that the installation of a Fianna Fáil Government in office was going to mean red ruin and revolution; that it would mean the destruction of trade, the destruction of confidence, the flight of capital from the country, and many other evils. Although the farmers had been told that repeatedly, and from many quarters, nevertheless they took that decision in 1932 and, having taken that decision under these circumstances, and all these prognostications having been proved to be unfounded, and all those prophets of evil having been proved to be frauds and humbugs, they are not likely to reverse their decision just now when we are moving forward from the effects of the economic war, and now that we can expect that, regularly each year, there will be an improvement on the position already attained. They are not likely to go back now merely because certain people on the benches opposite think that they are better fitted to hold office than those whom the people chose for that purpose.
Deputy Cosgrave is shocked by the fall in prices of agricultural products in the Saorstát, and that, he says, is the case for the Opposition motion. Has there been a fall in agricultural prices only in this country? Is this the only country affected? Has the fall in the prices of agricultural commodities been any more severe or greater in this country than in other countries?
They have been low enough in this country anyway.
Order. Order.
Prices in the English market rule the prices here.
In Great Britain, the agricultural price index fell by six points.
In what period?
It fell by six points from August, 1934, to August, 1935.
Go back to the years before that.
Let us keep to modern times, for the moment. During that period the agricultural price index in Great Britain fell by six points, or 5 per cent. During the same period, the agricultural price index in the Saorstát fell by one point, or 1¼ per cent. There was, relatively and absolutely, a greater fall in agricultural prices in Great Britain for that period than we had in the Saorstát.
The prices were so low here that they could not fall any lower.
As Deputy Keating will not obey the Chair and cease interrupting, I must call on him to leave the House now.
Very good, Sir. I am sorry to leave such good company.
Surely that fact, and the knowledge which can be gained from the columns of the newspapers concerning the circumstances of agriculture in all countries of the world, would have induced the people opposite to realise that we had a problem to face irrespective of the economic war, a problem which was there before the economic war started, and a problem which is still there. In 1931, the price of cattle was tumbling down. The price of butter and the price of bacon were falling at that period. When even the free-trade Minister for Agriculture of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government deserted every principle he had advocated in the previous ten years and came to this House with motions for the imposition of protective duties on these commodities, surely they realised then that there was a fundamental weakness in our whole economy, and that these duties had to be advocated and protection given if we were to secure prosperity for our people, irrespective of world conditions. That weakness was there, and that weakness will always be there so long as we are depending for all our prosperity, and for the maintenance of our whole economic organisation, upon the sale in one market of a limited range of products. There is a possibility of giving security to our farmers, and it is based on the market here at home. It is true that we will always have, for many long years to come, a surplus of agricultural products, but so long as we have needs which we cannot supply ourselves, and in so far as we will always have to import from other countries goods that are necessary and goods that might be classed as luxuries, and are in a position to offer a market for these goods here in this country, then so long will we be able to find an outlet for our agricultural surplus. Upon the basis of exchange; upon the basis of giving our cattle in return for coal, our bacon in return for cement, our eggs in return for oranges, or on any other basis you like—that is the sound basis on which to conduct international trade. We are getting on to that basis, and it will be merely a necessary enlargement of our economic activities, the greater part of which will be centred upon the home market. We can organise agriculture sufficiently to secure that irrespective of world conditions, fluctuations of prices in the world market, or the alarums or excursions of foreign politics, our farmers, nevertheless, will be able to maintain themselves by supplying our own requirements; and, at the same time, we can increase the market for these requirements by the development of our industries and the opening up of our resources of one kind or the other so as to employ our own people in the production of the other goods we need. We can only have security on the basis of a self-contained economy —not 100 per cent. self-sufficient or self-contained, but so far as we can make it capable of carrying on, even if circumstances outside our control should shut off outside markets or outside sources of supply.
Deputy Cosgrave told us that the agricultural economy which existed in this country previous to the economic war was built up over a long period of years and with great difficulty, and that it brought prosperity to our people. That agricultural economy, of which he is talking, collapsed in 1931, and it is the agricultural economy which, in the previous decade, sent 250,000 of our people out to America hoping to find in the United States the opportunity to earn a livelihood which they could not find at home. That is the economy that is being destroyed, and not merely by our action. We would have had to destroy it any way, perhaps, but we certainly would have had to reorganise it on the lines I have suggested. That does not mean that we will not export cattle or that we will not export bacon or eggs or other agricultural products. It does mean, however, that the kernel of the whole system, the firm foundation upon which the structure will be founded, will be the market here at home, and that it will not depend on trading in Great Britain. But, so long as the British Government require to import cattle or to export coal; so long as they require to import bacon or other agricultural products and to export machinery or steel; so long will it be possible, irrespective of other considerations, to effect trade deals of the kind the Dáil is now being asked to approve. These trade deals in no way detract from our political or fiscal freedom. They are the type of bargains which any country in our circumstances would seek to effect.
In our circumstances! The Minister is quite right.
And if we get into new circumstances in which we may want no coal, new circumstances in which we may want no machinery or any other of the products which the British might want to sell us, then we will have to try to adapt our organisation and economy to these circumstances. Let me assure Deputies that the price of cattle is going up. It is going to go up because of this agreement, and yet there are Deputies here who are going to vote against it, and for the rest of this year they will be going to their constituencies and explaining to their constituents that they did nothing of the kind, and if they did, it was a mistake on their part. The price of cattle is going to go up; it is going up and it is going to go up more.
The English markets will rule the prices here in spite of you and President de Valera. You will have to go by the English prices in spite of all your up-in-the-air talk.
The price of fat cattle will go up by more than the amount of duty remitted.
It is about time the farmers got some of their own back. You let them in for plenty of trouble.
We did not put on the duty—you did. The people opposite were the originators of that plan. They devised it. It was in their office it was thought out. They were the first to speak about it in public. If the British Government acted on their advice it was merely due to this fact, that the British Government did not know them as well as we do.
That's all moonshine.
Deputy Cosgrave, in the course of his rambling remarks, told us that agricultural employment had undoubtedly increased. Nobody denies it, he said. It is the first time that anybody in his Party has admitted it. In the past when I produced figures to show that agricultural employment was increasing there were Deputies opposite alleging that the figures were cooked; they would not believe it. They did not conceive it possible that under a Fianna Fáil administration there should be more people employed in agriculture, whether for wages or as members of a farmer's family, than there were at any other time, even in the period when the Deputy was President of the Executive Council and Deputy Hogan was Minister for Agriculture. The fact is that there are more employed now, and the number is steadily increasing.
It has been falling since last year.
On one occasion Deputy Cosgrave read the trade and shipping statistics of this country through a mirror. He read them in such a way that he put the exports on the import side and the imports on the export side, and then he said that we had a favourable balance of some £20,000,000. He is doing the same still.
Can the Minister give the exact figure?
I think it was £20,000,000 he said, or perhaps it was £17,000,000.
The Minister apparently does not know what to think.
Anyway, the Deputy was only £30,000,000 out. He is doing the very same still.
Perhaps it is better to be out on paper than to be out in pocket.
Deputy Cosgrave talked about a reduction in the number of horses sold. He must have been looking at the import figures again. If he will only look up the export figures in the excellent returns which my Department makes available for all Deputies, he will find that the number of horses sold, exported, is increasing quite substantially.
And the price?
The number of cattle we are exporting is increasing.
What about the price?
He does not hear that.
The Deputy did not refer to the price. He merely mentioned that the number decreased. He is wrong; it did not decrease, but it increased. In fact there is a greater volume of agricultural production now than in any year.
And more grass.
There is a greater volume now than in any year, even in the years when the Deputies opposite were in control.
How many agricultural labourers have you employed?
There are more agricultural labourers employed now than in 1931.
There are 680 more permanent labourers.
Deputies opposite were telling us that every farm labourer was being dismissed.
And you employed them at 12/6 a week?
And there is going to be an increase this year in the numbers employed.
Live horse and you will get grass—that is the Fianna Fáil plan.
The value of the horses exported in 1935 was £1,049,000 as against £932,000 in the previous year. The Deputy is wrong both ways.
Dr. Ryan
He is accustomed to that.
It is quite true that prices are down. If the Deputy were here a little earlier I would have pointed out to him that in the 12 months prior to August, 1935 the agricultural prices index figure in this country fell by one point and in the same period the British index figure fell by six points, representing 1¼ per cent. here as against 5 per cent. in Britain. I pointed out that there was a universal decline in agricultural prices and that the decline was not confined to this country but rather was it due to circumstances which are universal. They are not circumstances which would be remedied by the adoption of the Deputy's motion. I propose to conclude by asking Deputy Cosgrave—he will not be allowed to speak a second time and perhaps, for the sake of his Party, that is all the better—to get some other one of the leaders of that Party, some responsible Deputy—I bar Deputy Dillon—to tell us, in relation to his motion, why he thinks that it is possible to effect this favourable settlement that he refers to. He said that a favourable settlement can be achieved. On what ground does he base that belief and on what ground does he think we should seek the favourable settlement? You cannot effect a favourable settlement without making concessions as against the advantages to be secured. What concession would Deputy Cosgrave authorise a delegation going over to get this favourable settlement that he tells us is available, to make? If the Deputy is not prepared to tell us that, will he at least do this, answer the questions put to him by Deputy Davin —to state what are the matters at issue and the grounds upon which a settlement must be effected before he is prepared to pass this Bill?
Will the Minister state what he has been asked for in the way of concessions?
Will the Deputy tell us what he meant when he put down the motion? I think that is not unreasonable. What are the matters in dispute arising out of which he thinks we could get a final settlement?
The whole lot.
Partition included?
You can include partition.
That is the policy of the Party opposite?
Yes.
Since when?
Will the Minister say what he has been asked for in the nature of concessions? The Minister made some reference to figures in relation to agricultural employment. He said the figures have gone up. Since 1931 there are 400 additional persons in permanent agricultural employment getting 3/- a week less wages; in fact, less money is being distributed in wages all over the country.
Deputies on the opposite benches declared that the number had gone down.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce referred to Deputy Cosgrave's speech as being a rambling statement. I think everybody in this House, irrespective of Party, will agree that if Deputy Cosgrave's speech was a rambling statement then the Minister has brought us on a world tour. At the point where he sat down I was hoping that he was going to begin to discuss the settlement or pact that was arrived at between this country and Great Britain. Instead of that he treated us in a rather violent way to his more or less characteristic mass of exaggerations, inaccuracies and evasions. Then in a most light-hearted manner he gave the debating lie to the case that was made by himself and his colleagues just three months ago in this House. What was the case made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and by the Minister for Finance when the Guarantee Fund Bill was introduced here to neutralise and violate a case before the Irish courts? Was it not that this, that and the other thing would have to be taxed, that the money in arrears by way of land annuities could not be spared or could not be collected without imposing the most intense and unjust hardship on the very poorest people in the country? To-day he comes in, and in his usual Coué style, in order to get round an awkward moment in a debate he tells us that the total arrears of annuities in this country are negligible.
Which way is it? When are we going to get a little bit of the truth? When are we going to get a little bit of consistency? When is this practice going to cease, of making statements from the Government benches to the House and to the public that will be contradicted by the same people the following day? It is that instability in the Government over there that has caused instability right down through the country. We have troubles with Great Britain, but our biggest trouble is the trouble created by the reckless disregard of truth that is becoming characteristic of the Government Front Bench. As far as any discussion, or attempt to discuss either the Bill or the motion is concerned, what does this amount to? A series of questions shot out at us as to what are the issues between this country and Great Britain. Under Providence, is there anybody who knows the Presidential mind, or is there anybody who knows the difficulties the President is capable of producing, tomorrow, next week or next month? The greatest factory in this country is the factory over there for the creation of difficulties and obstacles. Originally the country was led to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the economic war arose out of the intention of the Irish Government to retain the annuities, and the case was made that they had a clear mandate from the people for that. Are we to take it from the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the breach has been considerably broadened since, that there are a number of insuperable obstacles in the path of peace since then? Why not say so then, rather than ask us what these obstacles are? Are we not entitled to know who placed these obstacles in the path of peace? Why, when and by what authority were they created, and, further, what are the obstacles?
We are asked do we propose a settlement or a removal of the boundary, an attempt to remove partition, and we answer "most certainly." We are asked for suggestions. The path that you have been treading for the past three years, for the past 13 years, is a path leading directly away from any hope of ending partition. Your speeches in Ennis and elsewhere for the past six months, in my opinion, have done irreparable harm to any hope of ever, in your time, removing partition. If there is to be any hope of removing partition by friendly negotiations between this country and Great Britain, it would be brought appreciably nearer if there was a firm statement from the Government of their intention to adhere to the clauses of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which defined our relations with Canada, Australia, South Africa and Great Britain. We talk about a mother country, and we pursue a policy that is harmful, not only here in our own home but that would have the result of cutting the connection between the mother and her children in other countries of the association of nations to which we belong—not only that, but of lopping off a limb from the mother country herself.
We were told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce three years ago, on the return from Ottawa and in an interview given by the Vice-President, when the air was thick with rumours of a settlement, and when friends of the Fianna Fáil Party were buying cattle by the score, that if a settlement had not been actually reached, at least they had prepared the way for an early settlement. I believe those people were not uttering falsehoods. I believe they faced up to their job in Ottawa, and that if they did not actually bring a settlement, they prepared the way for an immediate settlement. Who blasted the bridge? Who robbed the Irish people of the fruits and the benefits of the settlement that was made there in Ottawa? Instead of putting questions to us, as to things at issue at the moment, and how to surmount them, will the Government Bench let us know what were the terms and the outlines of that provisional settlement? Time and again there have been negotiations. Time and again there have been speeches made by members of the British Government. Time and again they have indicated, not only the desire to settle but that they were prepared to make very considerable financial concessions, if it were not for the political difficulties. What are those political difficulties? When did you get a mandate to obstruct a settlement on the ground of political issues? Four years after the start of this insane wrangle, are we not entitled to ask and to hear either from this side or the other side of the water what are the best terms on offer? No junta or group has the right to refuse, in secret, terms of benefit to this country. What is the maximum offer? Are we going to hear them from the President? What was the maximum offer that led the Vice-President, the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Industry and Commerce to come back from Ottawa and state that they had made a settlement? What were the terms offered them?
May I ask the Deputy when was that statement made?
In a public interview, published in the Irish papers, and not denied until the President found it politically convenient to deny it here six months ago.
Will the Deputy give the date? This is the first time we have got near something tangible.
The Deputy quoted it here for the President six months ago.
If the Deputy quotes it again I shall deal with it.
The President has a staff to read through the debates; I have not.
I have not seen that quotation before.
It is a figment of his imagination.
The one bogey before the Presidential mind is a settlement. That is the one thing he dreads, that is the skeleton in the cupboard, because if there were a settlement between this country and Great Britain, all the maudlin prating by which he upholsters every platform on which he stands would have to be discarded, and he would have to settle down to serious common-sense work, a thing he is utterly unsuited for.
Is the Deputy going to provide that quotation or not?
It was the Minister for Local Government provided it.
That is all right. I say I saw nothing about it.
The President's memory is conveniently short or obscure, when it suits him.
Dr. Ryan
No such statement was ever made.
What about the comprehensive settlement you were talking about?
No. 2 is waking up now to say "Ditto" as usual. Will you even speak for yourselves?
Dr. Ryan
I said there was no such statement made.
I repeat that the interview was published.
Can we not get it?
Of course we can get it. Go out now and look at the Press of the week of the return of our delegates from Ottawa.
As the Deputy is responsible for the statement, it is up to him to prove that it was made.
The Deputy made that statement several times, and will not be put off his stride by the whole front bench opposite. The President does not like me to ask, or to say, that the people of Ireland are entitled to know what is the maximum offer. We have been three years suffering under this foolish political war. The people have suffered heavy losses, and they are entitled to know whether the maximum offer is sufficient compensation for the damage done and for the losses suffered. We have been three years engaged in this economic war, and after three years of political debauchery, when homes have been ruined and people sent to their graves and evictions in every county in the country, we have at least in this particular pact an indication that at last there is a realisation of the gravity of the situation and of the hardships and injustices suffered by our people.
All the high principle, initiated with his tongue in his cheek by the President and with patent insincerity about never paying one farthing to Great Britain, has been suddenly discarded and thrown overboard. All the cheap claptrap about retirement from public life rather than approve of the payment of as much as 1/- to Great Britain has been forgotten, and we have in this pact something that brings us up against realities. No Minister or Deputy who has spoken so far in this debate has shown he was sufficiently brave to tell the House the two sides of the pact and exactly what it means.
We are asked to sanction a particular pact between two countries at the height of what was termed an acute state of war, and provide a monopoly, for an alleged enemy, of the whole of the coal trade of Ireland, to provide for an alleged enemy a monopoly of one-third of the cement trade of the country, and to reduce by 50 per cent. the tariff or tax upon all electrical apparatus that comes into Ireland, and to sell at a disadvantage sugar, saccharine and a number of other commodities. That is one side. That is what the British get here and over there. By this agreement we are arranging to pay, by way of land annuities, £2 on every beast between six and 15 months old; £3 on every beast between 15 months and two years old; and £4 5s. on every Irish animal exported over two years of age. It could be argued, prior to this particular arrangement, that Britain was collecting the annuities in virtue of her might and our poverty; that they were bleeding the people in this country white when they were imposing what you might call "Jimmy Thomas tariffs." But from the day that this Government made their pact the £4 5s., fixed to the horns of every animal going over there, is as much a de Valera tax as a J.H. Thomas tax.
This is the first time since the economic war squabble was started that you have a financial pact and arrangement under which you agree to pay 100 per cent. of the sum alleged to be in dispute. Britain gets our coal monopoly, she gets one-third of our cement trade, she gets definite concessions over every other country with regard to our steel, iron and sugar imports and, on the other side, she gets an absolute guarantee of the payment of the land annuities. The Irish farmer pays these taxes, and the Irish farmer also pays half the annuities at home, and in addition he suffers a loss in the home market in the price of his cattle equivalent to the tax on the exported cattle.
I am one of those who never expected either a national outlook or a common-sense outlook from the present Government. I did expect a mathematical outlook, but the type of mathematics displayed in connection with this particular pact would be frowned on if produced by imbeciles in an imbecile war. If you are going to pay the annuities in full why not pay them without all this economic war business? Payment in full would relieve the tariff and allow remission under other heads and would produce an elevation in the price of cattle sold in the home fairs equivalent to the price of beasts sold abroad. This pact is not national, business like or mathematically sound. It is the production and the work of a group of fanatical politicians who consider their own political theories and their own absurd utterances as of more importance to the people of this country than the trade and welfare and even lives of those who have to live in it. We have gone through three years of political recklessness; we have thrown valuable cattle away; we have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of calves; we have erected factories for the destruction of cattle and for turning them into everything—pig meal, sausages, boots and table ornaments. We have discovered that under Fianna Fáil Administration we can make everything and anything out of cattle except money. But those who produce cattle and rear cattle and till the land to feed cattle are interested only in making money out of the stock they breed and feed.
My main objection to this partial settlement is because it is a definite national retreat and because it lowers entirely the prestige of this nation of ours by the very manner in which it was conceived and carried out, the shame-faced manner in which it was presented to the Dáil, the way it was put through with no Minister big enough to go over and do his job, and stand over it when it was done. It was a hole-and-corner secret arrangement by the Government that spoke and shouted about secret agreements. What constitutes a secret agreement? Is it because it is negotiated without the knowledge of the people? If so, what knowledge had the people of Ireland or the Irish Parliament of the negotiations which led up to this particular pact? If it is that which constitutes secrecy, there was never any agreement or pact or treaty negotiated and put through in such a secret way as this. If it is not that, is it the particular date on which it is submitted to the Dáil for advocation or endorsement? It is an accident that we are considering it to-day. If we are considering it, it is no thanks to the Government; it is because of the energy and the efforts and the challenge of the Opposition in this House. Only for that, it would never come before us.
I hold very strongly that the one thing which constitutes secrecy in international agreements is that those agreements are negotiated wholly and entirely by people who cannot claim and never did claim to be representatives of the people. The much-abused and libelled and slandered Civil Service of this country was held up at every cross-roads by Deputies opposite as an organisation in the grip of the Masons, with no national outlook, with nothing in common with the people of Ireland, but I thank Providence that when we reached a phase in our history when Government Ministers funked their responsibility and shirked their obligations we had civil servants of the type and class and manhood to do not only their own job, but to shoulder the responsibilities shirked by Ministers and go abroad to negotiate a trade agreement in a time of difficulty. But that is not their job. They are not and never were representative of the people of this country. They have no authority to negotiate on behalf of the people of this country. There were eight or ten men elected and there are eight or ten men paid for facing such responsibilities, taking such risks, and representing their people in times of stress and difficulty and delicacy. How was it that there was none of them to do it? How was it that full-time civil servants, representing nobody, had got to go over and pull the chestnuts out of the fire? That is my main objection to the whole manner and method in which this particular piece of business was carried out. Another objection is that you are making yourself, by the act of an Irish Government, and, if this goes through, by the act of an Irish Parliament, responsible for paying 100 per cent. of the annuities, and getting no compensation for the losses and the hardship and the trouble of the last three years. Further, if you are going, through a vote of the Dáil, to make yourselves responsible for paying the annuities in full, then it is better to pay them direct from one Department to another, and you would not have to give trade monopolies and all kinds of concessions to the nation and the people that you are fond of describing as our ancient enemy. There is an amendment down here demanding that a Second Reading should not be given to this Bill until there is an effort made to arrive at a comprehensive settlement of the whole question. As I said earlier, there is no matter of principle now involved.
Hear, hear!
Once you can settle 25 per cent. of our trouble no principle arrives into it. The only principle in existence at the moment is the amount of principal and interest you are paying Great Britain. Principle is laid at one side. You have discarded that stand. You have evacuated that front. The only case made here to-night was that this partial settlement was one of business, one of pounds, shillings and pence; as Deputy Davin said, a bread-and-butter agreement. If it is boiled down to that point, if there is merely a difference about money matters, if there is no principle involved, if civil servants, with no representative authority, with no right to speak for or on behalf of the people of this country, could negotiate a settlement which drew down all the exaggerated phrases used by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and others opposite, how much bigger, how much more far-reaching, how much more beneficial a settlement could be obtained if the President or his Ministers would follow the path blazed by the Irish civil servants and go over themselves to undertake their responsibilities? Is it that they do not know their jobs? Is it that they consider they would be bested around a table? Is it that they look on their ability as being inferior to that of the civil servants? Is it that they lack courage or that they want capacity? We are entitled to an answer. We are entitled to an answer from the Party that secured the votes of the majority of the people of this country by saying: "Put us back to dictate the terms of peace." Is that dictation? It is nationally humiliating and it is degrading that having gone into a war—no matter how unwisely, foolishly, fanatically and recklessly— we should have our tails between our legs so early, and should hoist, through civil servants, the flag of surrender, and even then an ignoble and unmanly type of surrender.
Each one of us has got to stand up in his own shoe leather. This kind of hollow activity through proxies is over-abused in this country. We have a President wearing a silk hat by proxy at Westminster, and strutting round Clare in a caubeen. You can sin by proxy, by authorised proxy just as gravely as you can sin directly, and all this hollow humbug and putting proxies up to do the work that we are either afraid or ashamed to do ourselves is only earning for the President and the Government of this State, from the lips of everyone, the term "Proxy President" and "Proxy Government."
You were elected to do certain work, to grapple with certain difficulties, to face certain responsibilities, not the least of them being to negotiate on behalf of the country every time and everywhere that difficulties arose between this country and any other country. Accept the motion. Do away with this cowardly system of acting through proxies. Face up to your own job. Make a courageous effort on your own, as representatives of the Irish people and as members of the Irish Government. If you make an effort, openly, bravely, boldly, and if you fail, then you will at least have gained the respect of people over here as well as of others—the respect which is due to a body of men constituting a Government that faced up to their responsibilities, even though and even when it meant taking a grave political risk.
I approve of the Bill before the House mainly because it establishes for the first time in the relationship between this country and England what the real trade position is between the two countries. For a long number of years various people at various times have indicated that association with England was absolutely essential in order that our trade should continue at the normal rate which made it possible for this country to continue to exist. The argument advanced during all these years was that even close association with England was essential for the very existence of this country. It has been and is the argument to-day of those who continue to assert that the interests of this country could best be served by association some way within the Empire. That argument has been very largely over-exaggerated. It is true, of course, that the English market is, and for all purposes, as far as we can see, will continue to be a very essential thing to the life and industry of this country. But the assertion that the market is one that we have available only under given conditions which involve humiliation on the part of the people of this country by accepting a status subordinate to that which is the wish of the people, namely, the independence of the country, has been very largely blown away by the pact we are now discussing.
This business arrangement clearly puts before us that the business arrangements between these two countries are for the first time established on that basis upon which all sound business should be established, that is, that there is an advantage to both parties in the contract. England has entered into this contract with no gratuitous intention towards the farmers or Government of this country. I do not think any of the Opposition will deny that England has entered into the contract because her industry has improved and there are possibilities of improvement in her industries as a result of it. We, on our part, have entered into the contract for similar reasons. We have thereby established a bargain which we assert and are sure will be in the best interests of the community here. England, on her side, has made a contract which she feels will be of equal value to her people, thereby establishing again, I assert, for the first time, a real business arrangement as regards the exchange of commodities between these two countries. It can no longer be asserted that the English buy our goods out of consideration for us. No longer can it be asserted that were it not for the good-will of England this country's whole market possibilities would cease. It is a good contract; it is a business contract.
A good deal of the opposition has been directed against it because Deputies say that some way or other there is a principle involved, and that that principle has been sold; that in entering into these negotiations with England the principle of the land annuities debt, which forms the greater part of the moneys in dispute between this country and England has been admitted by the Government. Of course, that is absurd. As a matter of fact, you cannot destroy a principle if a principle is not involved, and there is no principle involved here. This is simply a trading transaction between two peoples who enter into negotiation to see how far both their interests can be served. Both come within the contract. They were at liberty to go into it, and, when they went into it, come out of it, if it did not suit them. There is an ordinary business deal, and no more. There is no principle in the penal tariffs against our cattle and farm produce going into England. There is only the unprincipled action of England, in the first instance, in applying such tariffs. As to the land annuities, the Government were well and strongly advised that we had a legal claim to retain them. That was the case which we made.
It has been asserted that we should face up to the situation and negotiate direct with England on the question. We have done that. Our Government wrote to the English Ministers and told them that these sums of money were not legally due and that we would refuse to pay them until some court, fairly set up, would decide that they were due. Negotiations were then opened. The British Government replied and said that "within a prescribed area you may have that court which you desire." We, of course, refused to accept the prescribed area and said we should have the right to select it from the widest range we considered advisable. Without considering our right, other than within the prescribed area which England determined, she applied penal tariffs. There was no principle involved there. It was a question of England, with all her might, declaring these penal tariffs against us for no other purpose than to steam-roll us into submission. It was an unprincipled act, not made anything less unprincipled by the fact that the Opposition had directed such a course three years previously. It was an unprincipled course to adopt.
We made this contract with England, but remember that we did not give away this principle. We did not say that England had a right to collect the annuities. We did not call off the economic war. We did not take off the tariffs which we had applied against British goods coming into this country, only to the extent that we found necessary in order to make an equitable contract for the exchange of goods. We have completed that contract. But we have not for a moment admitted that the application of the penal tariffs by England was justified in the smallest degree. We have not admitted that the land annuities and the other sums in dispute are legally due by this country. It is still our contention that they belong to this country and we will continue to hold them, as we are in honour bound to hold them, until the matter is satisfactorily settled by some form of court in a position to arbitrate upon them.
I am very much surprised at the high moral rectitude of the Opposition on this question of bargaining. If they pointed out in what degree this bargain was wrong, if they showed wherein the imports which we have agreed to accept from England and the tariffs which we have agreed to reduce on the import of these commodities from England showed anything more than what would be a reasonable set-off for the tariffs which England has agreed to withdraw from our produce going into England, I could see some justification for the opposition. Such a form of criticism coming from the Opposition would really be useful. But there was not one word of argument to justify the action. There was merely opposition, and that, translated, means that the Deputies opposite prefer to have £6 per head charged against the cattle leaving this country rather than £4 5s. 0d.
It has been urged by Deputy O'Higgins and Deputy Belton that a better form of arrangement would be to collect the annuities as heretofore and transfer them to England. That is really magnificent advice at this stage. Is not that the sort of mentality that has made the economic war necessary? I think it was Deputy O'Higgins who stated that a declaration on this question by the President would go a long way to solve the matter and ease the situation and clear the path for the elimination of this dispute. I am confident that what would even now go a long way to end the dispute between this country and England would be if the Opposition would make a clear, definite statement that, if they come back to office, they will never again agree to pay these disputed sums of money to Great Britain unless the conditions asked for by this Government are complied with. If there was a clear, definite statement from the Opposition Benches on that question a great advance would be made towards clearing the road to a complete and satisfactory settlement of the matters in dispute between this country and England. I suggest that point for consideration to the Opposition. Some day or other I should like to hear a pronouncement from some of the Opposition leaders on that question and how they propose to deal with it. Our bargain is a commercial bargain. We have sold no principle. It does not require any vivid language to describe it beyond saying that as a trade bargain it is a good bargain.
A good joke.
Mr. Maguire
Our Ministers have not directly taken part in these negotiations. Ordinarily, trade negotiations are conducted by civil servants. We have gained in these negotiations and have got back so much by way of benefit leaving other negotiations to come on. If we have not succeeded in bringing about a full and complete settlement of all matters in dispute, we can say this that in all the negotiations and settlements that the Government have brought about up to the present, at least they never sold a principle, they never bartered for sale a county, they never gave up the cattle of Ireland or the right of Ireland to a settlement of the moneys in dispute. We retained that right for determination by the court which alone has the right to settle it. We have never betrayed the claim of this country to its national independence, and if bullocks and even farmers themselves have suffered, they are content to suffer in order to retain at least the dignity of this country in their negotiations with England so far as essential principles are to be maintained. If our bargains are not all that could be desired, they are at least open, commercial dealings between two peoples.
This pact is the Government's act of renunciation. Almost everything that the Ministers, from the President down to the Parliamentary Secretary, said four years ago is now renounced by this pact. When the economic war was started we were told by several Ministers—particularly the Minister for Finance—that there were certain things that the British could not do. One was that they could not collect annuities off our cattle. The Minister for Finance was excessively precise on that point. He said it did not matter—I think he said—a button whether it was 10 per cent., 20 per cent., 40 per cent. or even 100 per cent. that the British put on our cattle, because everybody knew that the British would have to pay this tax themselves. The economic war was not long in progress when even the Minister for Finance was disillusioned, and he and the other Ministers realised that the British would and could collect the annuities.
This has been called a war and accepted as a war for four long weary years. When the Government started the war they made the farmers the shock troops. They were not, mind you, volunteers. They were conscripts and against their will they were shoved by the Government into the forefront of the fight. All sorts of persuasions were held out to the farmers to keep them fighting, to keep them from breaking ranks. We had bounties of all kinds and other inducements offered to the farmers to hold out. Some of these inducements did not really reach the farmers at all. There were attempts made to fix prices—attempts that failed. There were other manipulations from all of which the Ministers one by one ran away. They substituted new plans. We had calf slaughter and, I regret to say, manslaughter as a consequence of this unfortunate economic war. The farmers are still in the front-line trenches. I think on the whole it will probably be admitted that they held out longer than any shock troops in history.
I do not assume that very much will be gained by going into all the particulars of this economic war. The facts are there and they are known to everybody except, perhaps, the Ministry who ought to be the first to realise the consequences of their actions. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, in the course of his speech, made one extraordinary pronouncement. First, he lectured us and taunted us with having four years ago told the people what might happen as a consequence of the action of the Government. The Minister spoke about the unnational record of this Party and said that we persuaded the British to take certain action. He said that we were culprits because we told the people what was obvious to any man of average intellect. We told the people what the British would do in certain circumstances. That was what they did subsequently. The Minister characterised us as traitors because we foresaw that. The Ministry claim they are themselves patriots. Their patriotism is revealed in the statements of the Minister for Industry and Commerce who a few moments ago said that the Government were aware of what would happen four years ago. They did not mention it but they were aware of it. He said they knew there would be certain reactions because of their policy. "We knew that but we did not say it," he said. Yes, it would be unnational to say it. Here surely is a remarkable statement. He said: "We were not even sure that these reactions would not be such as would make it impossible to maintain our position." They were not even sure when they started this economic war that they could maintain the fight. Yet, they are nationalists and we were traitors. The men who induced the unfortunate people of this country to engage in a war that they themselves believed was so chancy that at times before they entered into it they were not sure they could maintain their position.
I have already said that they ran away from the contention that the British Government could not collect these annuities. We next had them setting out to say that the British market was gone whether we engaged in this economic war or not, that in the year 1932 the British market for our agricultural produce was dead and gone. It has now been proved that the British market is really not dead and gone. The farmers of this country will need a new baptism to be absolved from the Government's original—I was going to say sin, but I will say— indiscretion. We were told that there were to be alternative markets. The alternative markets, it seems, if not stillborn, are at any rate finding the fight for existence exceedingly difficult. They are so delicate that they are not of much use to anyone. We have a curious phenomenon in this particular war or fight; we have two pacts. The first pact was made 15 or 16 months ago, when the Government gave a little more away than they gave in the second pact. They swopped good cattle for bad coal. They were lectured because they gave away good cattle without any relation to the other terms of the pact. After 12 months they came to their senses a little and renewed the pact, with additions. The Minister for Finance, when opening the debate, said that the Executives both here and on the other side had suffered loss. That is quite true as far as our Executive is concerned. It is scarcely true as far as the British are concerned. I admit that on comparing the latest pact with the original one the British have suffered a monetary loss.
The Government here did not take the precautions in the original pact that should have been taken. If the British accepted 160,000 or 180,000 extra cattle, knowing that they wanted to collect only a certain amount of money, it was obvious that an arrangement could be made to reduce the head tax on the revised total of cattle which they took. That was not done. Owing to the criticism of this Party the Government has done in the recent pact what they failed to do in the original one. To that extent the British have lost what ought to have been conceded in the first pact. In lieu of that, we have now given the British other concessions by way of a reduction of certain tariffs on imported goods. Perhaps some Minister could make a fair guess as to the exact sum represented by these concessions. We have no facts upon which to base an estimate. The Government must have some figures, but they have not given them so far. They may come out later in the debate.
I do not see where this pact offers any particular benefit to the agricultural community. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that prices in England had risen in a few months last year. There were perhaps the usual seasonal changes in prices in Great Britain, but the prices that the British gave us for our goods last year or this year will not depend on this pact. Prices will depend on the demand for our cattle that exists in England. I am glad to say that the demand for our cattle still exists in England, notwithstanding anything the Minister said, then ran away from, but now admits. The mere fact that the British Government were able to deal with 160,000 or 180,000 more cattle last year than during the previous year, without reducing prices, was proof that there was room in the British market for our agricultural stock. The hope expressed by the Minister, that there would be larger exports of cattle than in previous years, is in itself an admission that the British market, instead of being dead, is flourishing. We have had two pacts in the middle of a war. It is time we had a real armistice. If the Government entered into an armistice with their chief enemy they would have everyone in this House behind them and there would be a breathing space, a dropping of weapons on both sides for a few months, in an attempt to hammer out a decent and final pact. Perhaps the Minister for Finance would not agree to that.
I want to mention one point about this pact of which there has been very little mention. This was a trade agreement, but it was a trade agreement of good cattle for bad coal. That is what it means as far as coal imports are concerned. We gave the British a monopoly in coal and they are taking advantage of it. From every part of the country there are complaints about the quality of the coal that is now being sent here. Unfortunately every housewife knows all about it. Perhaps householders in Dublin get better coal, but in the country many people find it exceedingly difficult to cook meals in ranges because of the bad quality of the coal. The Government might have put a clause into the agreement providing that if we send first-quality cattle to Great Britain, in return they should send us first-quality goods, and not the tail-end of their produce at enhanced prices.
Now, when four years ago we ventured to tell the people what was likely to happen, because of the action the Government were taking we were called traitors. That was the term applied to us because we did our duty to the people, clearly demonstrating to them what, in our view, would be the consequences of certain action then taken. At the risk of having the same epithet hurled at me now, I would like to call the attention of the Ministry to perhaps another serious consequence that may eventually result if this unfortunate war is indefinitely prolonged. It is common knowledge that, when a particular action is permitted to continue indefinitely, it has a tendency to become permanent. The British farmers, having been accustomed for four years to the imposition of a duty on our agricultural produce: in other words to a restriction on their competitors, may, if this war is indefinitely prolonged, become so accustomed to this particular form of tariff as to deem it right to ask their Government for its continuance. Our Government in this pact, by admitting the principle of the collection of this tax, have gone a long way to provide support and argument for those who, henceforward, may demand its continuance in Britain. That is a danger which, I think, Deputies should advert to: that what we have suffered by way of tax on our agricultural produce during the last four years may eventually become a permanent thing. For that reason we are entitled to ask the President and members of the Government to take every precaution to see that this war is not indefinitely prolonged, to act on the terms set out in the amendment, and to ease the conflict by getting down to a real settlement with the British. This, I think, is a favourable time for a settlement—to do something to put the country back to the position it was in in 1931.
I think the Opposition have made a rather studied attempt to avoid the terms of this pact in the hope that the people of the country may not see that there is any benefit in it for them. I do not want to exaggerate its benefits in any way, but I would like the House to understand what exactly are the benefits that might be expected by agriculturists from the agreement. There has been a great deal of talk about cattle. Cattle, of course, are the most important agricultural export dealt with under the agreement. Listening to the speeches from the Opposition, one would imagine that there is some very big restriction on the export and output of cattle from the country at the moment. If any Deputy cares to study the question for himself he will find that from the year 1926 to 1932 there was an average annual export of 724,904 cattle in those years. Take the year 1935 as compared to those years. In 1935 we had exports to Great Britain of 670,000 cattle; to other countries, 20,000. We had a larger consumption at home of 40,000. We had cattle dealt with in the factories which, for some reason or other, the Opposition think is an inhuman way of dealing with them. They seem to think it is more inhuman to kill cattle in a factory than on the premises of a butcher. At any rate there were 50,000 dealt with in that way. These figures give a total of 780,000 which is well above the yearly average disposed of during the ten years when there were unrestricted exports from this country. In addition, if we import the amount of coal that it is estimated we may import during the year, there will be an even larger export of cattle this year than last year to Great Britain.
Will the Minister give the average prices?
Dr. Ryan
I have not got the average prices.
I have.
Dr. Ryan
I am sure the Deputy will give them then, but not now.
I was thinking that the Minister would not wish to hear them.
Dr. Ryan
I am talking about the possibility of getting rid of all our cattle.
Burying them is one way.
Dr. Ryan
Without burying them, we have an opportunity, I say, of getting rid of more cattle and are getting rid of more cattle now than during the ten years when we had unrestricted exports. We have, at any rate, a larger market, which will create a better demand for cattle, and will, therefore, mean a better price. The reduction of the duty less bounty will mean on the average of all cattle an increase in price of £1 per head. Therefore, there should be, as a result of this pact, an increase of at least £1 per head on cattle. It is likely to be more, because there will be a larger market for exports and killings at home. Deputy Belton in his speech said that he would be inclined to make a direct barter arrangement rather than the arrangement we have made. In other words, he said that he would be inclined to give one cwt. of cement or 1½ cwt. of coal for a cwt. of beef. That would be a most extraordinary bargain, in my opinion. What I felt at the time was that the Deputy had made some mistake, but later in his speech he came back to it again and gave the same figures, so that under the Deputy's arrangement he would exchange 15 cwt. of coal, worth about 15/- for a ten cwt. beast.
Is it greyhounds the Minister is thinking of?
Dr. Ryan
I am telling the House what Deputy Belton's arrangement would lead to. In addition to the benefit resulting from the increased price for cattle which may be expected under this arrangement, there will also be an increase in the price of sheep of 5/- per head. We export on the average about 300,000 sheep per year, and we consume at home about 600,000 sheep. Everyone in the House agrees that it is the export price that rules the price for the sheep killed at home. Accordingly, there will be an all-round increase on 900,000 sheep, which will amount to about £250,000 a year.
Will the farmers get it?
Dr. Ryan
I do not see why they should not.
What about the bounty?
Dr. Ryan
There is no bounty in this case. It is a case of 5/- tariff less, and, undoubtedly, there should be that much benefit to the farmers unless there is something very wrong about the economic laws either on this side or the other side. There should be at least that benefit to the sheep-breeders of this country. There will also be a slight advantage to dog-breeders. That has not been mentioned and is, perhaps, of no great consequence, but at least it is something. I am taking into account the new bounties as well as the new duties, and I say that, as far as the farmer goes, he gets those advantages. Then take the case of the Minister for Finance. As a result of the removal of those bounties on cattle and horses the Minister saves somewhere from £450,000 to £500,000, but part of this will be paid in bounties to other agricultural produce. We will be able to give better bounties to other agricultural products than otherwise we would have been able to give, and that will mean an increased price for these commodities also. The trouble is, of course, that we do not get these things without giving something in return. The Deputies who have spoken against this pact appear to have a very big grievance because we have promised to take all our coal and one-third of our cement from Great Britain. If one did not know much about the history of this country when a Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in power, one would imagine that we had coal-boats coming to this country from all over the world at that time. As a matter of fact, however, for the whole time that Cumann na nGaedheal were in power, up to the year 1932, no coal was imported into this country except British coal, with the exception of one year—1926, I think—when there was a strike or something of that nature in Great Britain. During all that period when the Cumann na nGaedheal people were in office we took nothing but British coal, but now we are told that we are getting bad coal. What is the difference between the coal coming in now and the Cumann na nGaedheal coal? Surely the coalfields have not changed. Surely the coalfields are the same as they were when the people opposite were in power. It only gives one an idea of the ridiculous arguments used by the people opposite when they want to pick holes in anything whatsoever.
Then take the case of cement. We are blamed for giving part of our cement quota to the British. From the year 1924 until 1931 we imported from two-thirds to three-fourths of our cement each year from Great Britain. That was under Cumann na nGaedheal, but now the people opposite are absolutely dissatisfied to take any cement whatsoever from Great Britain. The reason, of course, is because it is embodied in this agreement. Is it not a strange thing that the Opposition approved of a pact last year, a pact which was made for coal and cattle, and that they should now disapprove of an advance on that pact? If I remember rightly, their leaders at that time—Deputy MacDermot was with them then, and perhaps he had some good influence on them, and I think Mr. O'Duffy was with them also—made speeches, without exception, throughout the country agreeing with the pact that was made at that particular time. This particular pact is an advance on that. In fact, I think that what has been said here already is the truth: that the advance is likely to lead to benefits for this country, that agricultural prices are rising, and that it may not be so easy for the Opposition in future to get the farmers to complain. The adverse balance is going down. The hope of bankruptcy—that dismal prophecy that we heard here every three months in the last four years, that within the next three months we would be bankrupt—is disappearing and is becoming more or less of a joke. Accordingly, with this advance that has been made, with prices improving, and with the adverse balance going down, the Opposition are beginning to think that they have no great chance of getting back, and therefore they have objected to this agreement. That bankruptcy bogey was always three months ahead, and now we have the same idea introduced into Deputy Cosgrave's speech. Deputy Cosgrave, when talking here to-day about the dire consequences of this particular pact, said that the evils of this dispute would affect the country long after the present Government has disappeared. In other words, he is asking the people again to look forward to the evils that are to come because he is not able to make a sufficient case out of the evils of the present—just like the bankruptcy bogey of the last three or four years. Then Deputy Cosgrave, having drawn this gruesome picture for the Irish people, went on to talk of his two favourite subjects, finance and horse-breeding. He gave us a lecture about sterling blocks and non-sterling blocks, about dollar blocks and gold blocks and so on.
And blockheads.
No, he left that out.
Yes, he left it out. He did not notice the Minister on the Front Bench.
Dr. Ryan
I think that Deputy Cosgrave is not really in touch with the situation when he talks about sterling blocks, and tries to give us an impression that the dollar and the franc, and so on, are widely divorced. I suggest that he should get some advice on this matter before he attempts to instruct Deputies on finance again. Then he went on to his second favourite, horse-breeding, and said that the horse-breeders of this country have been ignored and that we have been indifferent to their interest, and so on. That, of course, is absolutely untrue, because, as a matter of fact, in this agreement that is being made there was no reduction as big as the reduction in the tariff on horses going into Great Britain. That was the biggest reduction made in any item. Deputy Cosgrave, in his speech, even tells us that this economic war has been responsible for crimes against nature, and he quoted two crimes against nature. The first crime was that we are slaughtering calves. I have often mentioned that here before. I do not know where the crime stops in that connection. Nobody on the opposite side can tell me, evidently, where the crime stops. If you slaughter a calf of three weeks old, that is a crime. I imagine it is a crime to slaughter a calf six weeks old, but a line must be drawn somewhere. For instance, the slaughter of a calf eight months old is only an ordinary butchering business, and would be no crime. Perhaps some theologian on the opposite bench can tell us where exactly the crime stops, so that we may be able to do something to meet that situation.
The second crime against nature, that was mentioned by Deputy Cosgrave, was that a blood horse was sent away from this country and died on the other side. That was another crime against nature, according to Deputy Cosgrave. He then goes on and tells us that he believes that this Government should fulfil its international obligations, and he laid down as a principle that a Government should honour the undertaking of its predecessor. In other words, we should honour the undertaking that our predecessors gave to pay over the land annuities and the R.I.C. pensions, which Deputy MacDermot does not think is a war debt—that it is a commercial debt—and that we should honour all these agreements made by our predecessors and pay over these moneys. Then, when he had laid down that principle, Deputy Cosgrave said we should settle. It would be easy, of course, to settle on that basis. There would be no difficulty whatsoever if we paid over the land annuities and so on, and honoured the agreements made by our predecessors to pay over that money. Of course, it would be an easy thing to settle on that basis. Nobody denies it; we could settle on that basis at any time.
Are you not paying it at the present moment?
Not at all.
What is the £4 5s. a head for?
Dr. Ryan
Deputies might permit me to proceed, and not try to interrupt when a question is put to them for which they have no answer. I am surprised at Deputy Belton helping them out. I do not think he means to do so, but he is doing it.
I am trying to help out the Minister, but it is very difficult.
Dr. Ryan
Deputy Cosgrave, the leader of a Party and probably the most able man in it, says that we should honour our obligations and that we should honour the agreements made by our predecessors. In other words, we should pay over all the land annuities, all the R.I.C. pensions, and all other sums, and having said that, he says that is a favourable time to settle. It is the easiest thing at all to settle on that basis. I am surprised at a man of the intelligence which the leader of an Opposition Party ought to have, making such a statement.
Deputy Cosgrave says that there is no increase in paid agricultural labour. At any rate, we have prevented a decrease in these times, when, in the big countries, or, at least, in England, in the last year, they had a decrease of 60,000. The numbers went down there from 577,000 to 517,000, while there was a slight increase here. That is something to our credit. I am asked about alternative markets. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that the principal alternative market was the home market. That is true, and I will give one instance, although there are many other instances which could be given. In 1931, under the late Cumann na nGaedheal Government, we exported 311,000 cwts. of bacon and hams. Last year, we exported 501,000 cwts.—almost 200,000 more. In 1931, we imported 450,000 cwts. of bacon and last year we imported none. So that we had a bigger export than we had in 1931, and, at the same time, we supplied our own market to the extent of 500,000 cwts. imported in 1931. That is a considerable market as an alternative.
Do those figures include exports of pigs?
Dr. Ryan
No. If pigs and pork, and all other classes into which pigs can be put for export, are taken, it will reduce that 1,000,000 as against 311,000 by less than 200,000 cwts., so that the 311,000 export in 1931 has been increased, between the home and export market, to about 800,000 cwts. in 1935. Deputy Belton says that if we export more cattle and paid a lower tariff on them, the British will get the same amount of duties. I think that is a sum—is it practice you call it? It is true, though.
Is there a reduction in the total amount to be collected by Britain on foot of the alleged default?
No.
Dr. Ryan
There is.
Tell us what it is.
Dr. Ryan
I do not know how much it will be.
You do not know what it is. Is that practice now?
Dr. Ryan
That is sharp practice.
Practise it a little while and you will believe it.
Dr. Ryan
I was only going to compliment the Deputy on saying something that was true during his speech. I was going on to something else.
Explain the £4 5s. and you will do a lot.
Dr. Ryan
I want to give the Deputy full credit for anything he said that was true. That was one thing he said that was true.
And the £4 5s. represents the land annuities.
Dr. Ryan
That is not so. The Deputy said that in 1934 they collected the amount due. I will go back to Deputy Cosgrave because he puts it more clearly than Deputy Belton. Deputy Belton made exactly the same point, but I have it in print from Deputy Cosgrave. It is a most interesting statement which he made on the night this agreement was published, but it looks like the statement of a man who was not altogether satisfied with himself. He says that the British were certain of getting their full amount and they were so certain that they reduced the imports of cattle in 1934. What is more, he says that the British Government had stated publicly that they would not collect one penny more than was due. Remember those two statements. They were so certain of getting the full amount that they reduced the number of cattle in 1934.
I did not tie myself to the year.
Dr. Ryan
In the next paragraph, he goes on to say that the coal-cattle pact of 1935 was to give them the full amount. Is not that a grand statement from the leader of the Opposition?
Who said that?
Dr. Ryan
Deputy Cosgrave. I will read his full words. He said:
"The annuities were sent over to the British on the horns of the cattle——"
the same words were used by Deputy O'Higgins this evening and also words which Deputy Cosgrave used later on in this statement
"——an expensive and wasteful method of payment. The new arrangement may well be called a plan to make further and better provision for the payment of the annuities and to remove doubts as to the willingness of our Government to facilitate the British in their collection."
In 1934, they were so sure that they reduced the numbers of cattle but, in 1935, we made an agreement with them to make sure that they would get it.
Deputies
Hear, hear!
And you are making doubly sure by this.
Dr. Ryan
I am glad you all agree with Deputy Cosgrave. Listen to it again. So certain were the British of getting the money that, in 1934, they reduced the imports of fat and store cattle from the Free State. They got it in 1934 after reducing the numbers and then, in 1935, we had to send more cattle to enable them to get it.
Yes.
Dr. Ryan
They all agree with that logic. It just shows the hopeless——
The reduced tariff.
There was no reduced tariff in 1935.
Will the Minister deny that the British got more than they required last year?
Dr. Ryan
Will the Deputy wait until I deal with Deputy Cosgrave? I will deal then with his wild statements. Deputy Cosgrave says that, in 1934, they were so certain of getting the money that they were able to reduce the number of cattle, but, in 1935, with the same tariffs, we had to give 150,000 more cattle to produce the full amount. Is that not very like the sum he did in Carlow four years ago when he reversed the import and export figures? In this particular case I presume he had the central committee to help him in making the statement. They did not give him very much help. It is a pity not to go on with the statement because there are some good points in it. In the next paragraph he says that this particular agreement is to give them the full amount, with more cattle still, and that it is a way of easing the Exchequer here of the payment of bounties. I should like any Deputy opposite to show me one statement any of them ever made, either here or in public, in which he gave it as his opinion that the bounties went back to the farmer.
Deputy Bennett denied it.
Dr. Ryan
It was always said that they did not get the bounty. It was always held that the farmers did not get the bounty. Now, when the bounty is taken away, we are told that it was of great benefit to the farmer. Deputy Cosgrave says we send across the duties on the horns of the cattle. I do not blame Deputy Cosgrave because we have to remember his dilemma. He had to please the farmers by not rejecting this agreement, and he had to carry out his duties as Leader of an Opposition whose function, we were told here on one occasion, is to oppose. I think it was Deputy Dillon who made the statement that the duty of an Opposition is to oppose.
That is quite apocryphal.
He was not first to make that statement. What was the practice of Fianna Fáil?
Dr. Ryan
Listen to the next statement from the responsible leader of a large Party:
"Any spare time an Irish farmer may have at his disposal he can employ speculating whether it is better to rear and feed calves which will be subject to the new duties or save himself the bother by collecting the Saorstát bounty on the skins of slaughtered calves."
A comedian should not try to be tragic. We all enjoy Deputy Cosgrave here but, when he tries to be tragic, we see through it. He goes on to say "the Government has bartered our coal requirements." Is there any sin in barter? Deputy Belton approved of barter. He was going to barter a cwt. of beef for a cwt. of cement.
Yes.
Dr. Ryan
1/6 for a cwt. of beef.
On a point of correction, I am glad the Minister drew my attention to that statement. I did say a cwt. but I meant a ton.
A ton of beef.
A ton of cement for a cwt. of beef.
Dr. Ryan
I knew a mistake was made. The point I am making is that the barter in itself is no crime. The point is as to what you barter. We bartered our coal requirements for one year. That is no crime. If we had bartered six counties for all time, that would be a crime and a serious crime. Bartering our coal requirements for a year is no crime because we get value for it and it is not irreparable.
Where were you when the Six Counties were bartered?
Dr. Ryan
If we had been here, they would not have been bartered.
You were not here and you would not be here now but for me. Were you not above at the Shelbourne? You had too high principles to come in. Now, you have sold them in this coal-cattle pact. It is not the first time and it will not be the last.
Dr. Ryan
If the Deputy had to stick to us afterwards, he would be all right.
I would want to be an eel to follow you.
Dr. Ryan
We bartered a third of our cement requirements and Deputy Cosgrave goes on to say that, in addition, we bartered portion of our requirements of iron and steel, electrical apparatus, sugar and sugar preparations. "For what" he asks. He did not even read the agreement. We did not barter any of our electrical requirements or our requirements in iron, steel or sugar. Again, you have the leader of what is supposed to be a responsible Party making statements which are not true and which, therefore, need not be taken seriously. He says that this is done to allow our Government to pay the land annuities—which the British could collect in 1934, with a big restriction on our cattle, which they could collect in 1935 with 160,000 more cattle. And, now, with more cattle, pigs and bacon, we are allowing the British to collect the duties. Coming to the end of the statement, Deputy Cosgrave said "The agreement proves that it is possible to negotiate with the British." Is not that a wise statement? I shall not make any other comment on it. He goes on to say "It makes it clear that there is a big problem to be solved"—here he becomes almost coherent in his argument—"and what prevents Ministers from attempting to solve that problem?" His whole statement was leading up to this poser—"What prevents Ministers from attempting to solve that problem?" The answer is "Nothing". Any Minister or any Deputy could attempt to solve it. But attempting to solve it is not of much use. To settle is the trouble. Were he to ask what prevents us from settling the problem satisfactorily, I should say "The other Party."
Blame the other fellow. That is a great excuse.
Dr. Ryan
Is it not a good one?
Good enough.
Dr. Ryan
Deputy O'Higgins made a typical speech. When I saw the Deputy get up I wrote down the words "insincerity", "want of courage", "be men and face your responsibilities", "do not delegate your authority". I can always take up these notes and learn what Deputy O'Higgins has said. He always delivers that sort of speech. That was all that was in his speech to-night save that he said we had lowered our prestige— another quotation from Deputy Cosgrave's statement. I do not know why that statement is made. The Deputy talks about this being a secret agreement. He refers to it in that manner notwithstanding that the part of it which we have to implement is brought before the Dáil. Before it was brought before the Dáil, it was published and it was shown that certain duties would be reduced on this side and certain duties on the other side, and that certain quotas would be altered. The whole thing was given in public statements on both sides. Yet, this is a secret agreement. What we would mean by a secret agreement would be an agreement made in 1923, which was not even shown by the last Government to their own lawyers when making their case in respect of the land annuities and which had to be dug up when Mr. Thomas revealed that there was such an agreement. According to Deputy O'Higgins, we should know what went on at the negotiations. The Press should be present. When our delegates met the British delegates, the Press should be there to take notes of what was said backward and forward. In that way, you would have no secret agreement—and probably no agreement at all. He objects because the Minister did not go over—I do not know why—and he said that there was a statement issued by the Vice-President of the Executive Council on his way home from Ottawa to the effect that there was a settlement discussed or made between the British delegates and the Irish delegates in Ottawa, which is absolutely untrue.
I have got it here and I will read it for you.
Dr. Ryan
That is what we ask for.
You will get it.
Dr. Ryan
I say that the statement is absolutely untrue.
Why was it not contradicted, then?
Dr. Ryan
Perhaps it was.
Then the coal-cattle pact is the best settlement you can make?
Dr. Ryan
I would not say it is the best. Deputy Bennett says the bounties did not reach the farmers. That is at least some consolation to me when we are taking the bounties off—that is all I can say. I never wanted these bounties to go to dealers; I was always anxious that they should go to the producers and, taking everything into consideration, statements made here previously and the statement made by Deputy Bennett to-day, I think it is as well that these bounties should come off.
Why did you give the licences to people who had no right to have them?
Dr. Ryan
I was not giving out licences at all.
They were given to people who had no right to them, and you know it.
Dr. Ryan
The county committees are giving them out now. Deputy Bennett asked why not have a full armistice. I suppose he means to drop all Acts, and so on, on both sides—that the duties should be dropped on both sides. I presume he means that there should be no duties collected on the British side or on our side. We are quite agreeable at any time to do that, but on what terms does Deputy Bennett look for the armistice? I suppose he is not going to let his leader, Deputy Cosgrave, down. He is surely not going to let his leader down. His leader said that we should recognise and fulfil the obligations— that we are bound to fulfil them—as a result of agreements made by our predecessors. One of the agreements made by them was to pay over the land annuities, the R.I.C. pensions and local loans to Great Britain, amounting to £5,000,000 annually. If we pay over those we can have the armistice.
And are they not being paid?
Dr. Ryan
No.
Is not England collecting them?
Dr. Ryan
Not at all.
What are the British tariffs for?
Dr. Ryan
We are told that if we pay these over to England we can have an armistice or a settlement any time we like.
That is why you got the coal cattle pact—because you agreed to pay them. That is the position.
The Minister must be allowed to speak. He has been subjected to a fire of interruptions for the last 15 minutes.
Dr. Ryan
I merely want to conclude with a question to Deputy Dillon. Deputy Dillon is, I understand, the vice-leader of the Party opposite. He comes next to Deputy Cosgrave, and perhaps he could answer this question. On what terms would they be prepared to support us in making a settlement? Is it that we should pay over that money in full, because if it is anything less than that we would like very much to hear about it? That is, I understand, Deputy Cosgrave's proposal—that we should pay it over in full, honour our obligations.
President de Valers is a very versatile man. We are accustomed to him here as the passionate defender of Cathleen Ní Houlihan's honour; we are accustomed to him as an object of injured innocence; we are accustomed to him as the amazed victim of misrepresentation, and, finally, we are accustomed to him as the sceptical discoverer of a mare's nest, making his discovery more in sorrow than in anger, sad to have to expose an unscrupulous opponent. He thought he had Deputy O'Higgins on the hop this evening. Deputy O'Higgins said, when all the challenges and questions were being asked by a body of Ministers who were supposed to be recommending a treaty to this House, that he, Deputy O'Higgins, felt entitled to ask at least one question of the persons who were concerned to render an account of their stewardship, and that question was: Why was it that the bridge towards a settlement that had been built by the Vice-President of the Executive Council in Ottawa had been blasted when the Vice-President came home, and who was it that blasted that bridge to settlement away?
The President asked what did Deputy O'Higgins refer to, and he said he referred to an interview given by the Vice-President on his return from Ottawa, in which he said substantial progress had been made towards a settlement, and he thought the foundations for a peaceful understanding had been laid. The President asked for a reference. Deputy O'Higgins, very naturally, was at the moment unable to provide it, although it has been provided in this House on divers occasions in the past. The President was more in sorrow than in anger. He began to suspect something was being put over on the House. He was the watch-dog of our rights, determined that the Irish people would not be deceived, loyal to his colleague who was not to be traduced in silence. Having made soundings, he determined to take the plunge. He began to think: "This fellow has not got the reference.""These words were never spoken," said the President. I must give him credit that he was extremely circumspect before he made the plunge. Not so the Minister for Agriculture. He came blundering down the steps and declared he had heard the Deputy telling a bare-faced lie, or words to that effect.
Dr. Ryan
Words to that effect—that is better.
Now, may I refer the President and his loyal and docile colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, to the Irish Independent of August 20th, 1932? Mr. O'Kelly, the Vice President of the Executive Council, gave an exclusive interview to the special correspondent of the Irish Independent:“We have, of course, no agreement with the United Kingdom, but the path towards a settlement of the dispute with Britain has been smoothed.” Deputy O'Higgins urged, inasmuch as the Vice-President said a path had been smoothed, that a bridge had been built.
Deputy O'Higgins said more than that.
There is plenty more in it, but I thought the Minister might leap into that trap. "Would it be correct to say that the presence of the Irish Delegation at Ottawa helped to pave the way towards a settlement or bring it nearer?" inquired the special correspondent. The Vice-President was in a benevolent mood. "I think I can safely say that is so," replied Mr. O'Kelly, and, encouraged by the smile on the countenance of the special correspondent, he went a little further. "We have had very friendly and pleasant contacts, and undoubtedly we have made progress," said the Vice-President. "We have, I believe, reached a basis of settlement. It is impossible yet to fix the date on which agreement will be arrived at, but it is measurably close." Was Deputy O'Higgins a traducer of the truth when he asked the President who had ruffled the path that the Vice-President had smoothed, who blasted the basis the Vice-President had laid, who made immeasurable the measurable closeness which the Vice-President had attained?
You can measure any distance.
I invite the President to measure that when he intervenes in the debate, and let him remember that it is not always safe to take a leap in the dark——
I am delighted at last to have some idea of what was being talked about.
——because sometimes the reference can be got before the debate closes.
Deputy O'Higgins did not refer to it in those terms at all.
The House will judge whether Deputy O'Higgins was engaged in misleading it or his colleagues when he paraphrased the dulcet words of the Vice-President on his return from Ottawa. I think it still behoves the President to explain to us why these approaches were destroyed. To listen to the Minister for Industry and Commerce is a most astonishing experience. I have said before in this House that there is nothing conceivable to the mind of man which the Minister for Industry and Commerce would not say. He rose quite blandly this evening and proceeded to talk about the agricultural prices index figure in Great Britain and in Saorstát Eireann and he had the vast effrontery to say in this House that the agricultural prices index figure in Great Britain had fallen point for point with that for Saorstát Eireann and that there was now only one point between them.
I said nothing of the kind.
The Official Report will reveal what the Minister said. He said that there was a matter of a couple of points or so between the agricultural prices index figures in Great Britain and in Saorstát Eireann.
I said nothing of the kind; I did not say that.
It was more subtle than that.
Very well; perhaps the Minister will tell us what he did say?
I said that in the 12 months from August, 1934, to August 1935, the agricultural prices index figure in Great Britain fell by six points and in the Saorstát in the same period fell by only one point.
That is my recollection of what the Minister said.
And mine too.
They could fall no further.
Whatever the Minister said I do not want to deny. What he meant is just what he has told the House. I shall take him on that. That is what is important; not actually what he did say.
A Deputy
That is what he did say.
It is astonishing that figures and statistics can be so unscrupulously twisted for the purpose of deceiving the public. The Minister for Industry and Commerce takes a year during which prices have fallen to a hopelessly uneconomic level, to a level which would involve the complete cessation of production if they fell any lower and he compares that with the corresponding figure in Great Britain. "Observe," he says, "there was a fall of something in Saorstát Eireann and something in Great Britain." But he does not go on to tell us what the indexes are. What are the indexes of agricultural prices in this country? Let me read them for the period since the Government came into office. The basis price for 1911-13 is taken as 100.
What index is this?
This index is taken from the report of the Currency Commission. When President de Valera took office the index price was 133.7 and on the 1st January, 1935, it was 83.6, showing a fall of 50 points.
Does the Deputy say he got this figure from the Report of the Currency Commission?
Yes. The Minister will find that in January, 1932, the agricultural prices index figure in Saorstát Eireann was 133.7.
No, 113.7. I shall send the Deputy across the returns.
Very well, I shall take it as 113. I copied it from the document which is in the Minister's hands but perhaps I made a mistake. We can take the Minister's figure of 113.7 as being the agricultural prices index figure in 1932.
No. 3 Merrion Square is wrong this time.
I find from the records that the Minister is perfectly right, but even on these figures there has been a drop from January, 1932, from 113.7 to 83.6, a drop of 30 points. In Great Britain on the relevant date in 1932 the index figure was 122. I quote from the monthly index numbers of agricultural prices, the corresponding figure for 1911-13 being 100. On the relevant date, the English index price figure was 122 and in 1935 the English index price figure was 117. As between the two dates, there has been a fall on the English price figure of five points while, since President de Valera came into office, there has been a fall in the Irish figure of 30 points. Yet these figures are held up to suggest that, in fact, there has been a steady approximation between the prices obtaining in the Saorstát and in Great Britain.
I want, since we are on these figures, to point out that while the index figures of agricultural prices have fallen by 30 points for the last three years in this country, the cost of living based on July, 1914, figure, has remained practically stable. It was 157 in January, 1932, and it is now 156, with the result that the burden which the increasing collapse of cattle prices and other prices in this country has placed upon the farmer is becoming worse and worse. The Minister for Agriculture proceeded to give us some figures and he explained to us in a series of years what the sales of cattle were. In 1931, he said, we exported 770,000 cattle and then he proceeded to show that in the ensuing years our exports plus home consumption in the way of killing and factory canning were substantially the same. I ventured to ask him if he was in a position to tell us, in addition to the number of cattle handled and distributed by Irish exporters, what the prices were. He said he had not got the figures by him, but I shall be glad to give them to him. In 1931 we exported 765,952 cattle of all kinds for which we received £12,660,506—an average price of £16 11s. per beast. In 1935 we exported 669,022 head of cattle and received for them £5,374,080, an average of approximately £8 per head. It is quite easy to keep up our production and sales if we keep the price low enough. But might I suggest to the Minister that, if you reduce the price of cattle low enough, then, instead of making a profit on the increased sales, you will reach the stage of the greater the sale the greater the loss. My submission, which was found fault with, was that one of the consequences of this Bill is that the people of this country will now have the privilege of exporting the land annuities attached to horns of their cattle, in greater numbers than ever before, and that, in fact, if the prices are to remain approximately as they were in 1935—and I see no reason for their advance—the result will be that the people will be working very much harder to lose more money.
The Deputy did not make that proviso.
What proviso?
The proviso "if the prices are to remain as they were." He predicted that, as the result of this agreement, the harder the farmers worked the more they would lose.
Yes; and without attempting to make a sharp answer to Deputy MacDermot, may I say he might have made his observation much clearer and more easy to understand if he was depending on a profit on 20 head of cattle to provide his next meal. Anyone producing cattle would know very well from their past experience what the price was in the last few years, and that the only effect was to increase the number of cattle we sold. There can be no reasonable hope of making a profit on increased export at such a price. I also pointed out, in that connection—and it was in that connection I was speaking —that, taking the year 1933 as perhaps as bad a time as we had in this whole trouble, and as good a time as well, the Government fixed the bounty of 35/- per head on cattle over two years, and £2 on cattle over six months and up to two years of age. Since that time the Government have slowly eliminated these bounties. And now we find that they have finally wiped out all the bounties. The man with a beast up to six months to dispose of is 5/- per head better off than since the economic war began. A man with a beast of six months but under 15 months is 10/- worse off than he was in November, 1933.
Is that the market price?
So far as the Government of Saorstát Eireann can effect it.
Are you quoting market prices?
I am quoting bounties given by the Irish Government as compared with the duty levied by the British Government. In November, 1933, I say that a man exporting a beast between the ages of six months and 15 months was 10/- better off than under the clause of the coal-cattle pact of 1936.
You mean because of the bounty given to the producer?
That must remain a matter of doubt. It is purely a matter of speculation as to whether the relief in the tariffs will go to the producer now any more than in the past. But it is certain, so far as the Government is concerned, that in 1933 they gave 20/-, while under the pact of 1936 they give such a man nothing. Deputy MacDermot feels this is true and that this man is going to do better than he has ever done before—I mean during the economic war. My thesis is that the Government is actually worsening his position if it was possible for them to do so, because in 1933 they were giving him a price that could be got, in face of the British tariff, and a bounty of 20/-. In 1936 they give him no bounty, but they are telling him that, the tariff imposed by Great Britain having been reduced by 10/-, he must take pot luck. That means that that farmer is 10/- worse off than ever before.
Give us the market price on the different dates.
In the case of a man who had a 15 months old and under two years beast the position is the same vis-a-vis the coal-cattle agreement 1935 and 1936. So far as a man with a beast of two years and over is concerned, he is in the same position as he was approximately before the pact of 1936. A man with mincers for sale is about £1 a head better off. It is impossible to forecast what the market prices are to be in the import areas. All I can do is to tell the Deputy what the market prices were at the end of 1931, when they amounted to £16 11s. per head, and in 1935, the last year for which we have available figures, when the price was approximately £8 per head; less than one-half of what cattle were fetching when this Government came into office.
Therefore, I say in face of these figures this coal-cattle pact means that our farmers are going to work harder for the same or for less money than ever, and in fact the more they produce in the way of live stock the greater will be their loss. I assert, at the present moment, they are working at a loss; they are living on their capital and they are spending their savings. Indeed, if you accelerate the rate of export at figures that do not cover the cost of production, you are accelerating the machinery which will make these people paupers, and a charge upon the public purse.
Will the Deputy give a figure which is relevant, that is, the price immediately before the coal-cattle pact of last year, and compare that with the price now? What the Deputy was purporting to do in his interview with the Irish Independent was to describe the net result of the arrangements of 1935 and 1936, and that is relevant to our debate to-night.
Are you the Ceann Comhairle?
The Deputy is of an inquiring turn of mind, and I welcome what I have no doubt is a well-meaning interruption. The best figures I can give him are those furnished by the Minister for Industry and Commerce to Deputy Fagan on 20th February, 1936. As reported at column 965 of the Official Debates, Deputy Fagan was informed that the price ruling for fat cattle at the Dublin market on 15th February, 1934, that is, nearly a year before the coal-cattle pact of 1935, was 25/9 per cwt. Then we come to the coal-cattle pact of 1935. On February 14th of that year the price for fat cattle in the Dublin market is 3/- lower— 22/9.
The coal-cattle pact only began in February.
The Deputy must be of good heart. Fortunately I have later figures. We come to 13th February, 1936, and the price is still 22/9. What the price will be on 13th February, 1937, I do not profess to know, but I do suggest that it will show little, if any, improvement on the figures I have just qucted. Those are the factors relevant to those two agreements, but when we come to discuss the amendment standing in our name other factors of much wider character arise, because if we demur from endorsing this coal-cattle arrangement we do so because we say that it is time the Government did what they ought to do, did what they promised to do all through the General Election of 1933, and that was to settle the whole dispute. When I ask them to do that I ask them to do it because I know the British market to be there available to us, just as they themselves know it is there available to us as a profitable market if we go to look for it. The President used to delight in going down to Ennis and there thanking God that the British market was gone for ever.
When? Get the quotation and it might help things a little bit. I want that quotation. Get it.
Without in the least intending to give the President a short answer, if the President wants to get the quotation he has plenty of people to go and get it for him.
I do want to get it —very badly. We will then get some other things down to earth.
The President has a very dashing lieutenant in the person of Senator Connolly.
I am supposed to have made a statement in Ennis.
The President has a very dashing lieutenant——
Might I ask the Deputy did he not say that I made a statement in Ennis? I am asking for that quotation.
And my reply to the President is, if he wants the quotation, let him get somebody to get it for him. I have no desire to give the President a short answer or to appear discourteous. He is entitled, by his position, to every courtesy in this House, but he is certainly not entitled to try any rough stuff on any Deputy of this House. He has a staff at his disposal to go and get him any reference he wants.
It would be very hard to ask a staff to get something which I believe is not in existence.
Professor O'Sullivan gave the quotation to-night and the President will find it in the Official Reports next week.
He made a statement, but he did not give the quotation.
I am simply asking that I might have the basis on which statements are being made. One statement is cleared up now and we know where we are.
It is not cleared up.
If Deputy Dillon purported to quote the exact words which the President used he should give the reference to that quotation. If Deputy Dillon, on the other hand, merely gave his impression or a paraphrase of what he thought the President said, I cannot press the Deputy for the reference.
Nobody, Sir, suggests that I attempted to quote the exact words used by the President. Everybody knows that those words have been repeatedly quoted in this House in the President's presence.
And on every occasion I have tried to correct those things, with the same result as I am getting to-night.
The President is at present in his aggrieved and outraged mood. He is anxious to hold himself out as the injured and misrepresented party. There is no question of misrepresentation—
The difficulty here is that this speech is not an agricultural price index, and we cannot check it.
——but it is impossible for me to get a quotation at 10 o'clock at night and the President knows it. This market is there, and it is a market in which the price of livestock is apparently steadily improving. Far from being a market which is dwindling or a market into which we should cease to have any hope of sending our stuff, it is one of the utmost value, and one which may be described as indispensable to Irish agriculture. I was referring to the President's dashing lieutenant, Senator Connolly. Senator Connolly attended two meetings in the midlands of the country, at which he rejoiced to think that the cattle trade, which took over 100 years to build up, might be pulled down in as many days. It is extremely difficult to follow the line of policy that the Government is pursuing when you find one group of Ministers negotiating with the British Government to secure increased exports of cattle to the British market, while the President of the Executive Council is giving it as his considered judgment that the British market is gone for ever, and his lieutenant, Senator Connolly, is rejoicing that the cattle market, which took 100 years to build up, can be destroyed in as many days. Surely if the President of the Executive Council on 9th August, 1933, thought the British market had gone for ever, and said so with a full sense of his responsibility, it does not seem reasonable that his Ministers should be negotiating in January, 1935, and again in January, 1936, to get into that very market which in his considered judgment was gone for ever two years before. But that is the situation with which we are confronted at the present time.
We urge this House to withhold from the Government confirmation of this agreement unless and until the Government will enter into negotiations with the British Government to ascertain whether it is or is not possible to settle the whole land annuities dispute. Now the President has himself said in this House that although he has withheld the land annuities, he admits the British Government is getting them. At that time he said that the British Government were getting them in spite of him—that he could not stop them. Now that situation has changed, and, by virtue of the terms of the agreement into which he himself has entered, the numbers of cattle are fixed at such a figure as will guarantee to the British Government on the face of the new rates of duty that they will get the sums in dispute every year. Surely when we reach that idiotic position, at least the time has come for the President to examine the question whether we can settle all outstanding matters with the British Government, or to leave political questions on one side if he cannot bring himself to face them and settle the purely economic questions outstanding. It is very difficult for anyone living in the country to explain to people who spend their lives in the City of Dublin what this economic war means to the people. It is very difficult to bring home to anybody who makes his livelihood in the city—where there is comparative prosperity, where there is brisk circulation of money, where there is a population almost exclusively wage-earners— the atmosphere obtaining in a rural area, where 90 per cent. of the people are producers of primary products, the prices which are affected by the war that is proceeding between this country and Great Britain. I remember before this business began, the market days and the fair days in the country were days to look forward to. They were part of the pleasant side of country life. You brought out your stock on a fair day expecting to get an economic price, and you got it. You sometimes got a little more than you expected, and sometimes a little less. With the proceeds you discharged your liabilities, whatever they were; you probably bought fresh stock, and you provided some amusement for yourself and your family, who might have accompained you on the fair day. Taking the whole of that together, the fair day was a pleasant day. It came once a month; you met your neighbours, and there was a general atmosphere of good-feeling, freeness of money and temporary prosperity.
What is a fair day now? It is a standing nightmare to every person in the country. What was in the past a monthly occasion upon which they got a bit of fun out of life has now become a monthly horror in which people drive cattle into the fair, stand in the usual unpleasant circumstances on a fair green on a wet day, are never asked where they were going, or else bid a price which they know is less than it cost to produce the cattle. They go down from the fair green feeling poorer men than they went into it. They cannot pay their shop debts, or buy stock to replace what they sold. They are quarrelling with their own families. They are depriving their wives and children of things they want to give them, and are doing that because they have not got the money to give them. If Deputies could only understand what it means to take out of the life of the farmer all the pleasant qualities of the fair and market day, if they could only understand what that means in rural life, I believe the significance of this economic war would sink into them a bit deeper.
So long as the pretence is kept up that we are keeping these moneys at home, and that they are going to be used for the benefit of the people, one could understand the mentality behind maintaining this economic war. So long as the war spirit obtained you can understand men saying: "I have worked up enthusiasm; I have driven people into war with Great Britain, but it is very difficult to get people out. There is a great deal of wild enthusiasm in the country now for carrying on the war, and it will take some time to damp that down." That has all gone. It is idle and absurd to talk of fighting a war with somebody when you are actually in negotiation to ensure that they will secure a certain indemnity at stated intervals during the campaign. It is ridiculous to talk of fighting a war when you are in, not annual, but daily negotiation about the everyday affairs of commerce between us. It is absurd to talk of fighting a war and at the same time to establish a warble fly Order to convenience the British Ministry of Agriculture. The war is over. It is now becoming a question of accountancy. The whole war is stopped. There is the closest co-operation and consultation and the freest agreement between the two parties to the dispute. It has now come to this question: how are the annuities going to be paid? Will they be sent over through the cattle, which the President says is an inconvenient and possibly more expensive way of doing the job, or will it be done in another way? You have to go one way. There is a way out of this.
Of course, it is not for the Opposition to tell the Government how to conduct negotiations of this kind. The Government know that it is impossible either for them or anybody else to anticipate the details of any arrangement that might be arrived at. But there is a way out that will save the Government's face, not to talk of any legitimate pride, because there ought not to be any illegitimate pride in connection with this transaction. There is such a thing in this country as face, and unfortunately the Government seem to have an undue amount of that commodity, and it requires a lot of saving from time to time.
Is that a suggestion that the Opposition have all the cheek?
No. The plain meaning of my words is that for silly conceit commend me to the Fianna Fáil leaders. That conceit has to be in some way pandered to if further staggering losses are not to be suffered by our people. Surely it is possible to go to Great Britain and say: "Very well, you hold that Saorstát Eireann owes you this money; we hold it does not. There are two courses open to us, as there are open to every pair of litigants in the world. One is the way of compromise and the other the way of litigation." These can be the only two ends. You can choose litigation, which is the civilised method of resolving differences, or choose war, but they both belong to the same category. You can try the matter out by competition of mental skill or by competition of economic resources, but it is all a struggle of one kind or another. On the other hand, you can compromise. Surely it is possible for the Government now to say to Great Britain: "We do not claim the right to ram down your throat our interpretation of our liabilities, any more than we admit your claim to ram down our throat your interpretation of your rights." But, admitting that the British believe themselves to be honourably and conscientiously entitled to every penny they claim, and admitting, as I think the British will freely admit, that President de Valera believes that there is no liability on the Irish Government to pay the moneys, can we not agree upon one fundamental fact, and that is, that whoever pays the money, somebody must eventually pay the bondholders. England says Ireland must pay them, and Ireland says, "Let England pay them." In the meantime they are not getting paid—not in respect of the sinking fund.
I am afraid that the Deputy does not know that the land stock is a perpetual stock and, as far as the National Debt Commissioners are concerned, they have never made provision for a sinking fund.
There is not any provision for a sinking fund. I know the interest is being paid regularly as guaranteed by the British Government that it would be. It was originally a loan raised by the British Government. Let us not drag into the thing a minor debating point of that kind because the principal matter is——
It is a pity the Deputy should go chasing Deputy Cosgrave's wild hares.
Whether we are wrong or not is a matter of no consequence. The important thing is that the question is asked from the other side: "What would you do to settle the thing if you were in our shoes?" This is what I would do. I would go to the British and say, "Admitting your right to hold your view—and we are freely agreed that neither you nor Deputy Cosgrave were ever a party to any dishonourable or fraudulent transaction, both of you, we fully recognise, were acting in good faith—we hold, and have persuaded the majority of the people to hold, that there is no statutory obligation upon us or any Treaty obligation upon us to pay this money to Great Britain. That is our view. We fully recognise your view and that all the time in regard to this matter you acted in good faith. Can we not arrive at a compromise and share the burden?" Then point out to Great Britain that what might be an equitable share for each side of the dispute must be arrived at in the light of existing conditions and the respective capacities of the two countries. Over and above that the same argument can be made to-day.
The contention has been frequently advanced from these benches that it is not in the interests of the British to make hard bargains. No hard bargain was ever a good bargain. The British are too long at the job to make bad bargains, and making a hard bargain is making a bad bargain. Hard bargains never pay, and it is the greatest illusion in the world to imagine that you do well by getting the last farthing out of the man with whom you make a bargain. The British are too wise to try making such a bargain. Besides, we know from the statements made in public by Cabinet Ministers of successive British Governments that they have no desire at all to make a hard bargain. The President knows that as well as we do.
I doubt very much if the President wants to settle this question. I venture to say that he does not want to settle the economic war unless and until he can draw into the discussion a series of political problems which he will say must be settled contemporaneously. I believe that is at the root of this whole trouble and what was originally a purely economic dispute between two countries is being steadily converted by the President and his Government into a political dispute. If the President wants to open political negotiations with the British Government, then so far as we are concerned he is quite welcome to do so. In our opinion, every constitutional development is desired for this country, including national unity, and these can be steadily achieved in the same way as other developments have been achieved and in the same way as this country has been progressing constitutionally during the past 12 years. On the economic side boundless hardship has been inflicted on our people during the last four years as a result of this dispute. I say there is a very great obligation on the President and his Government to go to Great Britain and ask them to settle and to see if by adjustment the thing cannot be achieved. I believe it can be done.
Deputy MacDermot is surprised because he says the Opposition not only voted for the coal-cattle pact of 1935 but welcomed it. Why then, he asks, have we this volte face over the coal-cattle pact of 1936? There has been no volte face. I very well remember speaking on the coal-cattle pact of 1935 and the attitude of my colleagues and of every Deputy on this side of the House towards it, has not changed in any way. My attitude towards the present proposal has not changed from my attitude on that of the pact of 1935. My attitude was that on its merits that pact was a joke, but it was the first move made since this crazy business was embarked upon. It was the first move made towards a settlement between the British and the Saorstát. This pact is the first admission on the part of our Government that there is no war as our people understand the word “war.” There is a fictitious war being waged in order to deceive the people. In the course of that war just imagine that it is possible for President de Valera to sit down and make a trade agreement with the British Government. I remember on the occasion of the 1935 coal-cattle pact that we deliberately held back and we made it clear to the country that we did not want to embarrass the Government by commenting on the heads of that arrangement. That was because we felt that that agreement was only a prelude to another and more comprehensive understanding. We did not want to hold it up by making comments on its merits or demerits. However, nothing more came of it for 12 months and in the meantime the Minister for Agriculture and other Ministers made it very clear that although any other trade agreements did not materialise during the following months that it was highly likely when the coal-cattle pact came up to be reviewed in January, 1936, a wider scope would be covered. The general tone was that there was no use in making comments or criticism on the situation until we saw the coal-cattle pact of 1936. So it was that the people waited.
Does any Deputy of any experience of the cattle trade in this country believe that the pact we have got now is going to give any material relief to the producers of cattle throughout the country? I do not believe it will. It is possible that you may get an increase of 10/- or a £1 as a result of increased quotas. There has virtually been no quota on store cattle for the last six or nine months. Licences for these can be had for the asking and you could not sell these licences. Deputies will remember that the average price of cattle has been £8 0s. 8d. That price has been below the cost of production and it stands to reason that the more cattle you sell below the cost of production the more money you lose. If that be true and unless there is a substantial improvement in that price, I say that this new pact is not going to secure any benefit for our people at all. This pact has an additional quality inherent in it that the other pact had not. The first pact led everyone in this country to believe that it was to be the first of many and that the cumulative effect of it would be to eliminate the economic war altogether from the life of the country. This pact seems to be built on the foundation that the economic war is going to go on for ever and that that is the normal position to which we should look in the future of the cattle trade—founded on an average price per head of £8 0s. 8d. I tell you that not only does that mean the ruin of the cattle trade but it also means the collapse of agriculture. The Minister for Agriculture has made that matter perfectly clear himself. The Minister has repeatedly said, "More tillage means more cattle." But if it means more cattle it should mean more profit on the cattle. More tillage cannot mean more cattle on which you lose more money. That is a hopeless future for the farmer. Deputies know that unless you have more cattle that are going to yield a profit nobody is going to go on producing them. If cattle are not produced there is no use on the part of the Government in preaching a policy of tillage and rotation of crops. If you have no means of using the crops that are produced, then agriculture stops.
The Government will say as they always do, "These men have been crying panic from the very beginning. They have been crying havoc and nothing has happened." Are we to be blamed for crying havoc in face of what we see? We see this problem from the two points of view, one of which never engages the attention of the Ministers. We see it from the point of view of the man in the country. We see it also from another point of view—the official figures. Anyone living amongst the people in the country can see it from their point of view. We see the changed way, the changed condition, in which the people of the country are living as compared with a few years back. Look at the figures for 1931, the year previous to that in which the President took office. In that year the total trade of this country, combined imports and exports amounted to £86,500,000 and the adverse trade balance to £14,190,000. The total cost of government in that year was £24,000,000. I cannot vouch for the last figures. That is what they were approximately. In 1935 our total trade was £57,000,000, and our adverse trade balance £17,000,000. In 1934 our total trade was £57,000,000, and our adverse trade balance £21,000,000. In that year our total exports were £17,900,000, and the adverse trade balance £21,000,000. In the year 1935 our exports amounted to £19,900,000 and our adverse trade balance to £17,407,000, while the expenses of government were £31,204,000. Is it any wonder that Deputies on this side of the House begin to look with alarm on the condition of our agricultural industry and the Exchequer, when they discover that it takes nearly two years' exports to pay for one year's government expenditure; and when they discover that we are importing twice as much as we are exporting? These figures are calculated to alarm any man.
I ask Deputies from rural Ireland if they do not see what I see, a steady decline in the standard of living, and in the congested areas amongst producers of live stock a steady decline in the amenities to which they can attain. I see it. I see the children getting into poorer clothes. I see children who previously looked well nourished and well fed looking poorer and thinner, and more miserable than they ever looked. I believe that the reason for that is that the people are getting progressively poorer. There is only one method to remedy that situation and that is the recovery for the people of the British market. On previous occasions when I asked the Government to do what was necessary to get that market back, the reply was: "Do you ask us to lower the flag in the face of the enemy?" On every occasion they made the case that they were willing to settle but that they could not settle; that the British did not want to settle. To-night the flag is lowered, inasmuch as the Government are now in conspiracy with the British Government to see that the annuities, and no less than the annuities, go over. To-night there is ample evidence that the Government is prepared to segregate this question from the political question. If they feel incompetent to deal with the political question they could settle the economic question on its own, and we could return to normalcy, reserving the more complex political issues for consideration. Is it that the President does not want to separate the two questions, but wants to keep one alive while the other is burning? Was it for that reason he blasted the previous appeal by the Vice-President? Is it for that reason he forbids a complete settlement, or is it that having taken up a stand Ministers are not to attempt it, as he is prepared to go down shouting to the end: "Either Great Britain must lick my boots or we will never settle"? No one asked President de Valera to lick the boots of Great Britain, and no rational man would ask Great Britain to lick his boots. There is a via media for men of good-will, if they wish to find it. The people on the other side indicated their willingness to settle this business. Every consideration of importance that could affect the judgment of Irish statesmen demands that it should be disposed of.
It is in the light of that fact, and because we believe a decent standard of life, material happiness and reasonable prosperity are available to our people by having the British market, that I would say to the President: "Leave partial arrangements aside until you can make up your mind to settle the whole question." Tell us in the course of the debate what you are going to tell the British, that you want to open up negotiations for a settlement and the Opposition will withdraw the amendment without hesitation. If this agreement of 1936 is merely to prepare the people for a fuller examination by both sides, in order to solve the difficulties, then we are quite prepared to let our amendment go. But if this is meant to be an introduction of the Irish people to a new dispensation of the economic war as a permanent fixture in the economic life of this country, then this Bill should never pass, because its economic life in no department can hope to continue if the economic war is to be a chronic element in it. Ministers know that our amendment is justified in this particular. Every responsible Deputy should realise that far from alleviating the position of the farmers, except the settlement is final, any such recurrence in the economic life of this country would doom the farmers to ruin, and probably not only the farmers—because if you ruin them you will ruin everyone else—but would doom this country to industrial, agricultural and economic destruction.
It would doom it to the same fate that overtook Newfoundland, with this difference, that Newfoundland had a mother country to turn to to get it out of the mess. We are a mother country but we have no one to turn to to clean up the messes we make ourselves. We have to sink or swim according to our own exertions, and the spectre that haunts me, and that haunts everyone whose people and whose property are indissolubly wedded to this country, is that it will be brought down, and that we will be all brought down with it. The reason we are so anxious about and want a settlement is because we cannot get out of the country. Personally, if I could get out I would have got out long ago. Deputies know that most of the members on the front benches of this Party could not leave this country, because they would not be happy leaving it. They belong to it, and they have to sink or swim here. It is legitimate and right that we should want to see our country and our people happy, and for that reason we want them provided with the wherewithal to meet their obligations and to stand on their own feet. That cannot be done if the economic war is not ended. Let Fianna Fáil face that fact. I assure the President that we will give him our support if he undertakes to dispose of this matter once and for all. The President knows that if he settles the business no word will be spoken on this side and no action taken to prevent a settlement and a reconciliation between himself and the British Government.
I move the adjournment.
I move the adjournment.
The President has moved it.
So long as it is quite clear that the President is not establishing a right to get in to-morrow——
There was an arrangement made that the debate would last one day.
The Minister was not here to-day.
Put on the gag.
As I have only a minute to go I think it is hardly worth while beginning now.
The President has not been called upon to conclude.
I wanted to be clear upon that.
I would like very much that this debate would run on lines in which there was going to be some real understanding of the problems that we have to deal with, and of the difficulties that lie in a solution of these problems. I am afraid the Opposition have not helped very much to have the debate on these lines, and I would like, in the few remarks I have to make, to try and bring the House to consider these matters in an atmosphere of reality. I move the adjournment.
Debate adjourned until to-morrow.