I must say that it is a source of much gratification to me to realise, with the Minister's acceptance of the principle of my amendment to Deputy Cogan's motion, that even in the sphere of economics light is beginning to dawn where I thought Stygian darkness would for ever obtain. I looked back with somewhat exhausted amusement at the six years of hard labour that we put in to hammer some glimmer of sense into the solid heads of Fianna Fáil. These were six weary years, during which we heard "sabotage,""West Briton,""traitors to the country," and "enemies of Irish Ireland." After all the denunciations, they are trailing after us so rapidly that, if we do not put on the brake soon, they will pass us out. It is an interesting progress and, mind you, in order that we may see where they are heading now we have got to look at the course they have pursued in the past. They have buried the republic; they are all good members of the Commonwealth now on the constitutional sphere. Once they have got going in the constitutional sphere they are going so fast that we have to hold them in check. There was a time when we told them Partition was the most important consideration, and now they are making such a row about it that they have the country roused. There was a time when we told them that agriculture was the most important thing in this country, and now they have suddenly awoken to the fact that it is true. I doubt whether I should be so optimistic as to take it that Deputy Tom Kelly has awoken to that fact. If he has, the only thing about which I am terrified is that he will start growing turnips in his back yard. There is no necessity to do that. There is no necessity to rush to extremes.
I note with satisfaction and amusement that the maize-meal mixture scheme has gone up the spout. Do you remember the time when it was high treason to say in this House that it was a rotten scheme and a scheme that could only have been conceived in an imbecile's brain? That was high treason 12 months ago. That was sabotage of the historic Irish nation, and yet the Minister proclaimed over the radio a few days ago that the maize-meal mixture scheme has gone up the spout, and he regretted to say that it could not go up completely for the next nine months, and the only word of apology he had was that he could not put it up the spout quick enough. I welcome that sign of—I will not say returning sanity—I will say of coming sanity in the Fianna Fáil Party and, encouraged by the prospect of some grain of sanity, I recommend to this House that the Minister's acceptance in its principle of our amendment, should meet the matters raised in the original motion and the amendment standing in my name because, when that commission sits, it is bound, if properly constituted, to consider certain matters and, just as the Banking Commission, which was an efficient body, nominated and established by the Government Party, having heard the evidence, produced in its report substantially the policy of the United Ireland Party, so we may rest assured that, if this commission is properly constituted, it will produce in its report the policy of the United Ireland Party, because that happens to be the right policy.
In regard to derating, to which Deputy Brasier has referred, it seems perfectly clear to me that the commission must recommend that and must recommend it combined with a recommendation for an exhaustive reform of the system of local government in this country so that, at one stroke, we will be able to relieve the agricultural community of this country of a very substantial item in their overhead charges and, at the same time, by the establishment of a more efficient system of local government than at present obtains in rural Ireland, we can lighten the burden that is to be passed over to the national Exchequer.
The next and most important thing for the agricultural industry in this country is that the cost of production should be reduced. The abandonment of the maize-meal mixture scheme is going to reduce the cost of Indian meal to the farmers of this country by 2/6 a cwt. That should have been done four years ago and there is no reason why it should not be done to-morrow morning. It would be a very good bargain if the Minister for Agriculture indemnified or took over the entire cereal crops of every farmer in this country with which he regards himself as having a quasi contract and, having taken them over, put an end to the maize-meal mixture scheme, made maize-meal available to the farmers of this country at a reasonable price and disposed of the cereal grain for feeding-stuff of one kind or another and debited any loss on the transaction to the Exchequer. That would be a substantial contribution to the reduction of the costs of the agricultural industry.
The next item to which the commission must turn its mind is the cost of artificial manure. At the present time every farmer who buys a bag of artificial manure is paying a tariff or an excessive price behind the protection of a tariff on the manure he buys, with the result that a great many farmers are not buying manures at all and no farmer in this country, in my judgment, is putting out enough manure. The reduction of the price of manure is an urgent matter and I have no hesitation in saying that so essential an ingredient of our agricultural industry as superphosphate of lime should be admitted to this country duty free from the cheapest source of supply. Every bag of "super" that we keep out of this country is an injury not only to the farmers but to the State as a whole because it is an injury to the only real source of wealth that this nation has—the land.
The price of agricultural machinery is at present maintained at an altogether artificial level and ought to be brought down and any steps, up to the removal of all tariffs on agricultural machinery, should be taken so as to make available to the smallest farmer in this country the best machinery that his money can afford at the lowest price at which he can get it. It is the small farmer of this country upon whom everybody in this State ultimately depends and, unless we make available to him the most efficient methods for exploiting his land to the greatest advantage, this State cannot prosper. If we deny him the opportunity to get efficient machinery to work his land, if we deny him the opportunity to get cheap fertilisers to improve his land, if we deny him the chance to get cheap feeding stuffs to develop his live stock, we are denying him the opportunity of extracting from his holding the maximum return that he ought to be able to get and, if we do, we deny our people the opportunity of accumulating the maximum wealth that this country could yield and, in denying them that, we deny them the standard of living that the Lord Almighty intended them to have. And remember this, that if we deny these things to the farmer we injure not only the farmer but we injure every section of the community and not least the poor because, ultimately, the social services of this country depend upon the capacity of the farmer to pay for them. If you destroy his capacity to pay for them the first person to suffer will be the poor who depend upon the social services for their existence. If we are to maintain and develop these social services we have got to maintain and develop the land. If we deny the farmers who live upon the land the means of developing it we injure not only the farmers who live there but every individual and primarily the poor.
I see another ray of light finding its way into the Minister's brain. I hear the Pigs Act is to be amended. Do you remember when it was sabotage and treason to the State to suggest that the Pigs Act was an instrument in the hands of the pig curers for the purpose of plundering the consumer and producer in this country? Would it surprise the Deputies in this House to know that I invested £200 in a pig factory five years ago? I got £900 for my £200 last week. We took it out of your hide and I told you we were taking it out of your hide and I asked you to stop us and you said it was high treason to ask you to do that, and that it was all nonsense, that everything was high, wide and handsome, and that the pig consumers and producers were getting a square deal. Every time you are prepared to pay me £4 10s. Od. for every pound I put in a factory I will be glad to take it. If you are such fools as to allow yourselves to be plundered and trampled on, you deserve nothing better. But, remember this, that you were warned from these benches that that was being done. You were asked from these benches to stop it while it was being done, and you had not the intelligence to do it. But, now that the horse is gone, now that you have been well soaked, you are going to try to close the door. They do not give two fiddle-dee-dees now. You may close the door: they have got away with the swag and all you can hope to do now that they are well fattened with your blood is to try to prevent them from bursting by consuming your bones as well. You are going to amend the Pigs Act. More power to your elbow! It is nearly time you woke up to it. It took us six long years to teach them the very little that they now know, but it was worth it. They were a public danger in their ignorant condition. They are now at least harmless, if they are not much good.
I put this suggestion, not to the Minister for Lands, because it is not his responsibility, but to the Minister for whom he is deputising now, that, seeing that the maize meal mixture scheme has been very properly sent up the spout, immediate and urgent measures should be taken to promote propaganda in the barley-growing areas for the introduction of an adequate pig population to consume the grain that will be available. Barley is one of the most suitable foods for pigs and there is no reason why a large proportion of the barley produced in this country which is unsuitable for malting or in excess of the maltsters' requirements should not be used on the farms where it is grown for conversion into pigs and bacon.
There is a market in Great Britain for far more bacon than we ever will or can produce and, with the dawning sanity that is beginning to manifest itself, we may hope that the Government, the inefficient Government that we have got, will get us a greater share of that bacon market than we have had. This much is certain, that we cannot produce too many pigs in this country and the more pigs we produce and feed on home-grown grain, if it is efficiently and sensibly grown as the farmers of the Midlands can grow it, the more profit we will make; but now is the time to impress upon the farmers who have been traditional barley-growers for generations, that the best way of disposing of barley in the future will be to feed it to pigs on their own holdings. Steps should be taken to organise that regime without delay.
One of the great obstacles to the agricultural recovery which we must get in the course of the next few years is the inability of the farmers to get credit. Hundreds of farms were stripped of their live stock during the five years' insanity that obtained up to the time of the recent agreement with Great Britain. We have got to get the live stock back on to these lands if the lands are to be made up, and the only way to do it is to provide the farmers with money to purchase live stock. There are some antediluvian creatures who will immediately answer: "What is the use of giving one farmer money to buy another farmer's stock? It is only transferring stock from one farm to another." That is pure balderdash. There are going out of the country to Great Britain hundreds of cattle and these are to be reared on English farms. I want a percentage of these cattle to be purchased and retained on Irish farms. I want the British purchasers coming to our market to experience the competition of Irish farmers out to buy the cattle against them.
It may raise the price of cattle a little. Part of that raised price will be paid by those men who are purchasing to restock their lands and part by the English buyers; but in the meantime we will be getting back on to the lands of farmers, who have nothing now wherewith to use the land, heifers on which to build the stock of the country in the future. We have got a great chance if we go the right way about it and the method of financing that is a matter which this commission must take into consideration. I am satisfied that there is a method of financing it which will avoid making loans to the type of person to whom Deputy Brasier has referred, which would be bad debts, and at the same time making sufficient money available to the really honest farmer who only wants an opportunity of earning his living, getting on his feet and repaying any money he borrows.
This country has been notoriously and deplorably backward in veterinary research. Any Deputy with an experience of rural Ireland knows that the losses that annually accrue to our people through sterility in cattle and mastitis in cattle are immense. There are thousands of cows which have a calf only every two or two-and-a-half years, because there is abroad in this country a sterility not only of the kind due to contagious abortion, but of another kind, the exact nature of which has not been identified. I believe that considerable progress has been made in Denmark, and it is high time that something was done here. I have no doubt we could save millions to the farmers if we could provide against the recurrence of sterility in cattle. All of us know that mastitis is a disease only too common in our herds, and it attacks the best, the heaviest milkers we have got. I am informed that that disease is due to a special type of bovine streptococcus.
All of us know that very striking advances have been made in the last two years in the treatment of streptococcal infection in human beings. It is also well known to those who take an interest in these matters that the two germs are not identical. One of them is of the bovine and the other of the human type, and the methods of treating such an infection in the human being cannot be identical with the treatment of such an infection in a cow. But the knowledge of such progress in the sphere of human therapeutics should stimulate veterinary research so as eventually to save the best cows in our herds that are afflicted with that type of infection. Anyone who lives in the country knows how great a source of loss it is to the farmers, and along these lines work can and should be done at once in order to increase the productivity of the agricultural industry by saving it from the losses that are at present unhappily a normal occurrence. Let it be remembered that in the five years' insanity, in that period of Irish history which will be known as the five years' madness, we were skipping around the world trying to sell cows in Algiers and chickens in Persia.
