I quite understand. The difficulty is that, if certain amendments in my name are carried, the Money Resolution must make financial provision for them. The whole theory of labourers' wages and farmers' incomes is based on a pool of money. Out of that pool of money wages and profits must come. The Minister explained in detail that the pool was such-and-such a figure some years ago and we answered that it has dropped by £24,000,000 since. Our suggestion is now that if substantial justice is to be done to the agricultural community, including the agricultural labourer, that money will have to be put back into the pool before we can get out of it what will do substantial justice to all.
When we made that case to the Minister, we pointed out that the pool had been depleted in a peculiarly severe way, that in respect of cattle as much as £10,000,000 had been taken out of it, to which Deputy Corry said:
"Do not ask the Government to put money qua money into the pool because what they are doing is that they are instituting new systems of agriculture which are putting back into the pool just as much as their policy is taking out.”
He instanced wheat. I am not going to circumvent your ruling, Sir, but you see the difficulty, that it depends on the pool how much there is to go round. The Government's entire attitude has been: "If we admit, as we must admit on our own figures, that the result of our own policy has been gravely to deplete the pool in certain respects, then we plead in extenuation that we have contributed something else to the pool to make up for the deficit." Mind you, powerful propaganda is kept up to establish the truth of that contention, but when it comes to be examined you discover that the Minister has managed, by the policy of the Government to which he belongs, to take out of the pool approximately £21,000,000, and to put back into it, by the increased value of wheat and beet, about £1,000,000.