I move amendment No. 9:—
Before sub-section (2) to insert a new sub-section as follows:—
Any order made by the board fixing minimum rates of wages in respect of any wages district shall also fix for that district a minimum fair rate of wages and a minimum economic rate of wages.
Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 hang together and are designed to remove what appears to me to be a fatal flaw in the Bill introduced under existing circumstances. I freely admit that, if we were living in normal times, the amendment which I put forward here might not be necessary. I do not think that in any circumstances it could be harmful but it may not be necessary. I have submitted that no legislation of this Oireachtas can extract water from a stone or blood from a turnip. To adopt the words of the Bishop of Ross, although wages for agricultural labourers at present in many parts of the country are wretched, wretched as they are, the farmers cannot afford to pay them much less increase them. I entirely adopt that view of the situation all over the country. I am solicitous to ensure that, when the machinery of this Bill begins to operate, we shall fix for the agricultural labourers a wage which will compare favourably with that obtained by the agricultural labourers in other countries, and the first comparison that is going to be made is with the agricultural wages that are fixed in Great Britain. We ought to have the same market as the British farmer and we ought to have on our land as good a standard of living as the British farmer has. If these facts obtain, we ought to be able to get for our agricultural labourers as good a wage as is being paid in Great Britain.
Most of our agricultural labourers are either themselves temporary emigrants, or else they are familiar with neighbours and friends who go to England from time to time, and they will expect to get a wage which approximates, in any case, to the wages that are being paid under similar conditions in Great Britain. On the Second Stage, I read out certain figures for agricultural wages paid at present in Great Britain. They vary in different parts of the country from about 29/- to 32/-. It has to be borne in mind that these wages are, in some cases, for an eight-hour day and are subject to substantial increase if the agricultural labourer is doing specialised work.
In Hereford, the minimum wage is 11d. In Warwick, it is 31/- for a 50 hour week, and 8½d. or 9d. per hour for overtime. These are two typical cases. I think that the rate is a little lower in Norfolk and some of the eastern counties, but in every case the wage is for a 50 or 52 hour week, and time over and above that has to be paid for. It is merely sticking our heads in the sand to imagine that the farmers of this country can pay wages like those or anything near them, and I think it will be a deplorable thing if we start our system by fixing wages about 10/- a week lower for agricultural labourers in this country than the rate that obtains in Great Britain. The present average wage in this country is about 21/6 per week. Certain Deputies have said that that rate of wages is going to be raised by these boards and that the process of raising them is going to be financed by the Government's fixing higher prices for the agricultural produce of the farmers. Any such fallacy is folly, because the Government cannot finance increased agricultural wages by fixing higher prices for agricultural produce. The Government is not in a position to fix prices for 50 per cent. of the produce of the land. If you look at the statistics of agricultural output, published in the September number of the "Trade Journal," you will find that, of the total produce of the agricultural industry in 1929-30—one of the last normal years we had—50 per cent. was exported. The value of the total produce was £64,850,000. Of that, the agricultural community themselves consumed £21,000,000 worth, and they sold to industrial workers and provided individuals other than those living on the land with £11,790,000 worth of stuff. The only agricultural produce the price of which can be artificially raised by the Government is that represented by the sum of £11,790,000. There would be no use in raising the price of the stuff which the farmer himself eats. They cannot raise the price of the stuff that is being exported to Great Britain. The best they can do is to maintain it by giving bounties to meet the tariffs on it. But they can, by fixing the price of certain products substantially higher than the economic price, affect the value of £11,790,000 worth of produce out of a total of £64,000,000 worth.
Certain Deputies on the opposite side will say that things have changed greatly since then, that a great deal more stuff is being consumed in Saorstát Eireann by the industrial worker now than was consumed in 1929. What are the facts? In 1934-35 the consumption of agricultural produce by persons other than farmers or farm labourers had dropped from £11,790,000 to £10,060,000. When Deputy Corry says that the right solution for this dilemma is to fix the price of agricultural produce at a higher level and compel the farmer to pay a higher wage, does he realise that in 1934-5, out of a total output of £40,000,000 worth, the Government could only raise the price of £10,000,000 worth, or a quarter of the entire output? No matter what price you raise agricultural products in this country to, it is going to do nothing to help the farmer substantially to increase the wages of his labourer, however willing he may be to do so, because it is not going substantially to alter the amount of profit he makes on his enterprise. Deputies will say that that is incredible, that beet and wheat at the prices at which they at present stand—27/6 in the case of wheat and 37/6 in the case of beet—must give the farmer a fair profit. I do not think that either of them does. Assuming for the moment that they do, let us take the case of Wexford. Wexford is a county in which you had an increase of 17,112 acres of cereal crops between the years 1931 and 1935. In that county, the average of the agricultural labourer's wages fell by 3/6 over that period. The Minister for Agriculture knows Wexford well. Does he allege that his own neighbours from Wexford are sweaters? Does Deputy Corish allege that all the farmers of Wexford are sweating their men, grinding them down and withholding from them the wages to which they are entitled?