Well, the Northern Ireland Government certainly has not taken a different view. They continue the pork markets. The difficulty is this—one of the great dangers of bureaucracy is that the best intentioned of men look into a problem in a theoretical kind of way, anxious to do their best. They approach the problem from a different angle, from the angle of their own experience and they lay down as a definite rule that everyone must conform to that experience of theirs. If Deputy Moore will let me finish we will get somewhere. I have no doubt that the officials in our Department of Agriculture who are responsible for wiping out the pork market were convinced that they were doing the best in the interests of the farmers. But I do not believe they understood the customs and practice in Northern Ireland. No men in the South of Ireland understood that practice. No men raising pigs in Cork understand it. It is a different system altogether and unless one goes down and consults these people one cannot realise the position. One does not realise the advantages that they can plead to offset the disadvantages that the bureaucrats allege against it.
In Northern Ireland I am aware that the pork market has been retained. Now you have this astonishing situation. The pork market was abolished in the Northern counties of the Free State because it was laid down that there must be ante-mortem veterinary inspection for the protection of the consumer. But we now admit into this State Northern Ireland bacon. One can buy Belfast bacon in Sligo, Cavan. Louth, Donegal and in most counties along the Border. None of that bacon is required to be manufactured from pigs that have been inspected, ante-mortem, by veterinary inspectors. Most of that bacon is manufactured from pigs that had been slaughtered on the farm and the carcases of which have been brought in to the curer. But in Clones, where that bacon is brought in and sold, the people will not be allowed to hold a pork market. Though the Northern curers are willing to come in and buy carcases there, they will not be allowed to do so. The Clones Urban Council asked the Minister for Agriculture to reopen the pork market in Clones so that the Northern buyers who have a right to send bacon into Clones should be in a position to buy the farmers' pigs in that area, cure them and sell them to the Clones people. They were told by the Minister that he would not let them do so; that they could buy bacon manufactured out of pigs killed in Lisnaskea, but that they would not be allowed to buy bacon from pigs killed by the farmer in their own area.
Clones is surrounded on three sides by the Border. The town has been frightfully injured as a result of the establishment of the Border. Since the high tariff policy began it has been further injured and with the start of the economic war it was absolutely flattened. With the conclusion of the economic war the Clones people had some hope. But they then discovered that if a beast was to be brought into Clones for sale from its hinterland in Fermanagh that pig would have to travel a distance of nine miles in order to come in through an approved road, though over an unapproved road the distance would be only half a mile. The people would not be allowed to admit Northern buyers to come in and buy pigs in the Clones market, for conversion into bacon which was destined eventually to be sold in Clones.
I know that since the pork market has been closed farmers have brought pigs into a town in the County Monaghan to some factories there. They implored the factories to take the pigs. I know of several cases in which a man has come in with two pigs that he had every reason to believe were of the ideal weight and quality. The large ideal white pig which the Monaghan farmer finds a difficulty in fattening because it is a new type of pig is not the pig that the modern farmer looks for. He was accustomed to the Ulster pig. He has brought in his two pigs. He is told that the factory is not ready for them. He has every reason to believe that these pigs were then grade A. He has to take them home and feed them for three weeks. Then when he brings them in he is told that they are too fat. They are grade C pigs and he is cut 10/- a cwt. on each pig. Is it any wonder under these circumstances that the farmer gets nothing out of pig raising? What is the use of raising pigs if by burdening yourself with a pair of pigs you reduce yourself to the position of the landlord's tenant of the old times? With the hanging gale in those days you had to go in and pay your rent with your hat in hand, soothe the agent and the bailiffs. Now if you have a pair of pigs you have to lick the feet of the curer with far more subserviency than the tenants had to lick the feet of the landlords. I am told that this sort of thing costs the pig raiser 10/- a cwt. because when he brings the pigs back to the factory they are either screw pigs or grade C. If the farmer gives the curer any back-chat the factory will cut them down to grade C 3 pigs. Remember it is not the small farmer alone who is suffering by this. It is the country as a whole that is suffering. Our pig production in this country has fallen by 25 per cent.
The pig population of this country in 1931, before this Government came into office, was 1,227,003. It has steadily gone down and now it is somewhere over 900,000 pigs; it is, I think, 920,000 pigs. That is the effect of making pig production impossible in this country; that is the effect on the farmer. I ask the House to consider the effect on these Northern towns. Clones gave a considerable amount of employment—I am taking it as one particular case, but the same could be said of several other towns in the North. There was great employment given there every week to a large number of men. There was a very large revenue brought into the town by the pork market in relief of rates. All that has been swept away. There was a very large influx of people and a considerable quantity of money was spent in Clones. All that has been swept away. Shops have been closed down. The rateable valuation of the town is going down because premises are unoccupied. The revenues of the pork market are abolished. The number of unemployed is growing. The urban council are expected to keep the town in existence under these conditions, and the Government will do nothing to meet them or facilitate them in any way.
A great deal might be done for that town. One of the principal things would be the restoration of its pork market, and that could be done for every other town in Monaghan with great advantage, and for every town in County Cavan to their great advantage. If the Northern Ireland curer is to be permitted to sell bacon in this country—and I think it is a good thing that he is—it is unreasonable that he should not be allowed to come in and buy pork here. It is unreasonable that the only bacon that will be permitted into this country from Northern Ireland is bacon manufactured from Northern Ireland pigs. If the bacon manufactured in Northern Ireland is good enough for consumption by our people there can be no valid reason why the practice of selling pigs as pork carcases in pork markets should be prohibited here, while it is permitted on the Northern side of the Border.
While the facts which I have outlined have substantially contributed to the decline in the pig population, which is a very great menace to this country, that decline has been further contributed to by the ghastly folly of the maize-meal mixture. I understand the Minister is trying to devise some method of saving his face and getting out of the maize-meal mixture, winding up the whole cod, fraud expenditure; but not before he has done boundless damage. I dare say he will be making a speech, possibly in the Autumn, indicating that he has made his mind up to wind up the maize-meal mixture scheme, and perhaps the reason will be something to the effect that the Emperor of Siam has got a cold in his head. Anyway, I am sure he will have some peculiar reason to advance. But the real reason is because it has at last forced its way into his head that the whole thing is a cod, a fraud and a disaster. The fact is that the maize-meal mixture has increased the cost to the farmers by 2/6 per cwt. and that has been going on for the last four years.
What was it designed to do? It was designed to increase the acreage of oats and barley, to increase tillage, and to provide more employment on the land. What, in fact, did it do? It substantially reduced the acreage of both crops; it contributed to the reduction in the pig population; it practically wiped out the fowl population altogether and reduced our egg exports from £2,000,000 to £700,000. It wiped out one of the most valuable industries we had. The Minister has only awakened to that fact and, instead of abolishing the scheme the moment he realised the damage it was doing, he is now in consultation with some of the best experts in the country with the object of devising some formula which will save his face.
We were, he told us on a former occasion, going to increase the acreage of oats, and of course he was quite oblivious to the fact that if he raised the price of maize meal sufficiently the women in the country would kill their hens. Having no knowledge apparently —although I believe the man was born in rural Ireland—of the usual practice of a farmer's house, that the farmer's wife goes to the oat bin now and again when the eggs were slow on the uptake, and takes a handful of oats and gives them to the hens behind her husband's back, he proceeds gaily with his scheme. Apparently he thought the hens would not take oats at all. Anyway, he raised the price of meal as a result of his great scheme, whereupon the women in the country wrung the hens' necks, whereupon they stopped putting their hands in the oatmeal bin and the consumption of oats went down. The genius we have presiding over the Department of Agriculture visualised a wonderful future for his maize-meal mixture scheme, failed to understand how the oats were being consumed, and took it that they were being used for the purposes of the maize-meal mixture. He laid the soothing unction to his soul that this was how the oats were being consumed. The conditions, however, worked out quite differently and, when we had lost several million pounds with all this sort of codology, the Minister discovered that we had substantially reduced the consumption of oats instead of increasing it.
He has succeeded in paying the producers of oats in certain areas about a shilling a cwt. more for their oats than the world price, with this astonishing result, that the farmers of West Cork, the farmers of West Mayo, of West Donegal, North Monaghan and North-West Cavan, the smallest and the poorest farmers perhaps in Ireland, were having levied on them a shilling a cwt. on oats in order to provide a better price for the tillage farmers in the eastern counties, possibly the richest men of their type in Ireland. I have no grudge against these men, these grain producers. They are prosperous, thriving farmers. I do not believe they want to be subsidised at the expense of struggling men in North Monaghan, West Mayo or West Cork. The genius we have presiding over the Department determined that equity and fair play demanded that a tax should be levied on the smaller farmers in order to provide a bigger price to the best-off farmers for a rapidly diminishing acreage of oats. Outside of Bedlam was there ever such havoc wrought by an irresponsible man on an unoffending people?
That scheme will be ditched shortly, I believe, and the most eloquent reasons will be vouchsafed for ditching it. Possibly Deputy Allen will say that fresh ground is being cleared in order to grow Manitoba No. 1 wheat in Wexford, and everyone will believe it; the whole Fianna Fáil Party will stand up and cheer. I am trying to open their eyes so that they will not cheer as loudly as they otherwise might have done if they were not prepared for the confidence trick that is going to be tried upon them.
It is of vital and urgent importance that steps should be taken to revive the pig industry and restore the fowl industry. One of the first essentials is to abolish the idiotic and futile maize meal mixture scheme. The second thing is to tell the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board that they must either change their tune and adjust their policy to suit the requirements of the pig producers or they will be abolished. Abolished they ought to be, if they continue to do as they have been doing for the last three or four years. A much more strict eye should be kept on the administration of the hypothetical price fund. I sometimes despair of trying to get the Dáil to take action in that matter, because half the Deputies are too lazy to apply their minds to a complicated question of that kind when it does not affect themselves directly. The hypothetical price fund was started under the pigs and bacon legislation for the purpose of equating the price in Great Britain with the price in the home market in normal times, with the ultimate object of maintaining an approximately level price in this country for pigs all through the year, so that there would be approximately the same number of pigs coming forward for manufacture at all seasons of the year, instead of having a glut in autumn and a scarcity in spring, as we usually have.
What actually happened was this. A sum of about £260,000 had been levied on the pig producers of this country by the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board and put into the hypothetical price fund. The Minister for Agriculture wanted to get money to help to pay the export bounties on bacon going to Great Britain, but apparently he could not knock it out of the Treasury, and so he went to the Pigs Marketing Board and said: "Look here, if you recoup yourselves on your losses as a result of the economic war in exporting bacon to Great Britain out of the hypothetical price fund, I will put the telescope to my blind eye." I now suggest that the curers on the board replied to that, in effect: "Well, if you are prepared to do that—if you want us to do that, or, in other words, to recoup ourselves for these losses out of the hypothetical price fund, we want your assistance in wiping out the small curers, because unless they are wiped out, we cannot gouge the consumers to our satisfaction for the reason that when we are putting the screws on the producers and raising the price to the consumers, some of the small curers may come in and undercut us; for that reason we want to have the small curers controlled, or to get rid of them if they cannot be controlled." Accordingly, a Bill was brought in, the purpose of which was to wipe out the small curers of this country and hand the industry over to four or five of the big curers, and at the very time the Bill was being drafted two of those curers were actually engaged in negotiations with the object of securing complete control of the entire bacon industry in the State and dividing it up between them. While carrying on those negotiations, on the one hand, they wanted the Government to come, on the other hand, and wipe out the small curers so that when they could form a monopoly among themselves it would be an absolutely closed ring into which nobody else could get and of which they would have complete control. I exposed that matter in this House, and when it was exposed the Minister dropped it.