Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 4 May 1939

Vol. 75 No. 13

Committee On Finance. - Vote 52—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Dillon

Leaving aside for the moment certain details referred to by the Minister in introducing this Estimate, I want to turn for a moment to the question of the administration of the Minister's Department during the past 12 months. One of the most arresting features of the agricultural life of this country at the present time is the disappearance of the pig population. Pork and bacon were one of the most famous products that our country sold in the markets of the world. Up to 1932, to describe bacon as Irish anywhere in the world, was to set a premium upon it. Recently we have had the astonishing situation in which the British Government is asking us to sell bacon in Great Britain and we are obliged to tell them that we have no pigs or bacon to sell them. Within the last six months our Minister for Agriculture was asked by the British Ministry of Agriculture if he would accept an additional quota of 100,000 cwts. of bacon and we were obliged to admit that we had not got the bacon or the pigs to fill such a quota; that we must reject the offer and ask the British Government to buy these pigs or bacon that they wanted to buy from us from Denmark or some other one of our competitors. During the very period when we were drifting into that position the farmers of Northern Ireland doubled their pig population and more than doubled their exports of pigs and bacon to Great Britain.

Did we who come from the west of the Shannon, from Monaghan, from Cavan and from West Cork, ever dream that we would see the day when out of those areas we would not be able to get pigs to meet the profitable demand that was there for them? What shall we say of a Minister for Agriculture during whose administration that famine of profitable husbandry has descended upon our people? What has the Minister for Agriculture, whose only function is to stimulate production and protect the interests of the farmer, been doing to let that disaster come upon us? I told this House four years ago, three years ago, two years ago and 12 months ago what was happening. I told the Deputies of this House that the pig producers were being robbed and plundered by the bacon curers. I told the Deputies of this House that that involved a positive injustice which it was our duty to remedy and that it involved something even worse because, if it were allowed to continue and if the elected representatives of the people would do nothing to protect them, the people would protect themselves by going out of production when they could not make a profit in it and that, when they went out of production, not only would the individual farmer suffer but the community as a whole would suffer. We are experiencing that suffering now. The Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party sat in silence and watched that robbery go on. They clocked it, they defended it, they supported legislation to make it possible and they denied the robbery until their own commission presented them with a report which was suppressed for nine long months and which, when published, emphasised that, after the most scrupulous inquiry, they were bound to report that, with the consent of this House, which is supposed to represent the people, a small group constituting a vested interest here, led and controlled by a great Danish combine, had robbed our people for two long years and had, eventually, destroyed the entire pig industry and denuded the country of its supply of pigs.

One would imagine that, with that evidence in their hands, no time would be lost by the Government Party in remedying the wrong. What is the fact? On the 22nd April last, the price fixed for pigs was 79/- for the bonus grade; 75/- for grade A 1; 74/- for grade A 2; 74/- for grade A 3; 71/- for grade B 1; 69/- for grades B 2 and 3 and 69/- for grade C. All of us who sell pigs know that, if you have a dozen pigs, you are lucky if you get two into the bonus grade. If you are a small man, with two or four pigs, as often as not you will get none in the bonus grade. You are lucky if you get any of them into grade A 1. I am convinced that the average price paid by bacon curers in the period to which I refer was not in excess of 74/- per cwt., taking one pig with another. I believe they were paying less but I am prepared to say, for the sake of this argument, that they were paying 74/- per cwt. I have here in my hand the price lists which I receive every week from every bacon curer in Ireland. On the face of the price lists which I have been getting for the past four years, I read this robbery. These bacon curers, who are paying 74/- for pigs, ask for mild-cured long clear, with the gammons on, 129/- per cwt. The price asked for Wiltshire long side is from 121/- to 122/-. Those bacon curers are asking for their bacon nearly 50/- per cwt. more than they are paying for their pigs. There is not a single one of them who would not make a fair profit if he got 25/- a cwt. for bacon more than he paid for pigs. I now allege that every curer in this country is taking from 15/- to 20/- per cwt. excess profit on every pig he buys. That robbery is being done by licence and with the encouragement of a Government which is supposed to represent the people. Every Deputy coming into this House whose constituents produce pigs and live on the production of pigs is betraying the people who sent him here when he sits in silence and allows that robbery to go on.

The difficulty in exposing things of this kind is that every trade has its own technique. While those of us who are familiar with these trades can understand what goes on within them, it is practically impossible to explain all the by-paths and dark corners to the public at large. The vested interests are immensely powerful and immensely rich. They retain in their service the finest experts that money will employ and they can make a specious case to the public to answer which the public would have to be instructed, in the first place, in all the details of the trade. Having been so instructed, they would then be able to follow the fallacious explanation of the vested interests. Without that education, you cannot explain to the public the fallacy in the excuse vouchsafed by the vested interests. When this scandal was revealed, the answer of the bacon combine was: "We are overcharging the people only a farthing per pound and surely that will hurt nobody." It is very hard to find the truth, but I think the truth deeply involves the Minister for Agriculture himself.

My submission is that what actually happened was as follows: The baconcurers got control of the Bacon Marketing Board and the Pigs Marketing Board. They had power under the Act to fix the production quota. That meant that they could find out that so many, say, 30,000 cwts. of bacon, would be consumed in Ireland. They then arranged that the total production quota over that period would be the amount of bacon that they had license from the Minister to export, plus 30,000 cwts. to be consumed here at home. That meant that every curer in Ireland knew that before the end of that period all the bacon he cured would be sold, because the production quota ensured that no more bacon could be produced until the last side in the last curer's factory had been sold. That done, they sent around in secret a letter saying: "We have got the consumer where we want him now and it is high time we stopped competing against one another. Let us fix a fair price and we will make the consumer pay that price, because if he will not pay the price to curer No. 1, when he goes to curer No. 2 or No. 3 he will find that they will not sell below that price and he will be forced eventually into the position that unless he buys bacon from one of us he will have no bacon for his own trade."

Remember here that the factories' consumer is the shopkeeper, the retail distributor. The letter might go on in this way: "He will eventually be forced to pay one of us this price, and suppose all shopkeepers deal with curer No. 1 for the first period, when curer No. 1 has his bacon exhausted they will have to go to curers No. 2, 3 and 4 and ultimately all the curers will sell bacon in that way if they stand fast and do not compete against one another." I produced that letter —I have got a copy—in this House and I showed it to the Minister for Agriculture. The Minister remembers it. I asked him by what authority they did that and he never took any action whatever to check or restrain them.

What was the next step? The pressure of the economic war got pretty tight and the curers submitted a case to the Minister. Here is the point where I am beginning to speculate, because I cannot prove this. The curers made the case: "If you want us to ship bacon to England and pay the tariff, we will have to get 30/- a cwt. export bounty in order to make it possible to do it economically." The Minister said: "I cannot give you 30/-. I have not got it and the Minister for Finance will not give it to me to give to you. All I can afford is 15/- a cwt. export bounty." The boys took counsel and went back to the Minister and said: "Now, listen, you want the British quota filled. You will not give us the bounty to make it possible for us to fill it. Suppose we knock the difference out of the consumer in Ireland illegally, will you put the telescope to your blind eye?" The Minister said: "Yes," whereupon every curer in Ireland, through the secret price-fixing agreement, raised on his exports of bacon 15/- a cwt. by increasing the price of the home-sold bacon by that amount. The Minister had the telescope to his blind eye, for he promised to put it up.

Now, 16/- a cwt. on the home bacon might have produced the fund necessary to pay a 15/- bounty on the export bacon, but the boys said: "Now that we have got the telescope to the blind eye, why stop at 16/-? Why not slip on 18/- and we will pay ourselves 15/- in bounty and put 3/- in our own pockets?" I do not know from day to day and week to week how much they put in their own pockets, but they did put in their own pockets during the last two or three years an immense sum which they robbed, coram populo, from the people of this country, and they did it because the Minister put the telescope to his blind eye in order to enable them to do an illegal thing, to cover up the measure of the disaster that his Government had brought on our people through the economic war.

That is the history of that scabrous and scandalous transaction and now we are reaping the harvest of that disgusting business because the people, in despair, have given up the production of pigs. I knew of cases in the County Monaghan where men were going about with cart-loads of pigs trying to get them taken and they were treated like dogs. They were driven from the doors of the factories and told to take the pigs out of the place. They were told to take them to blazes out of that, that the factories would not take them, their production quota would not permit them. I know people, comfortable farmers on the basis of their profits from pigs, who were stripped of these profits and prevented from keeping pigs and they are now hard put in order to keep the wolf from the door. How Deputies could have remained silent while these things were being done to our people by this gang, astonishes me.

I know of a case where a small farmer went in with two pigs which he had fed to make grade A1 animals. There is a difference in the price per cwt. of 10/-, and that is about 14/- a pig, between a grade A1 pig and a grade C pig. I knew a farmer to bring in two grade A1 pigs and to be told by the curer: "Take them away out of that, I do not want them." I have known that man to drive his cart back four or five miles with the pigs in it. He was sent a notice that they would not take them until the following month. He fed the pigs for the remaining three weeks. Remember that a big pig eats more food than a small pig. He brought the pigs back after three weeks' feeding and he was told that they were now too fat and they were grade C3 pigs and would be 10/- a cwt. less than the man would have got three weeks before. When the cheque came to be made out he got less for the pigs after keeping them the extra three weeks than he would have got on the first day he brought them in.

That sort of thing was going on in this country and was told to Deputies here time and time again. Simply because of a powerfully rich little vested interest that wanted that to go on, the defenceless people of this country were sacrificed and they submitted to that abuse and indignity, because the Minister had not the courage to do his duty. Does not that demand that a man who can allow such a scandal to continue after he had been told of it, must retire? I do not like saying hard things about any man. I have often tried to hate my political opponents and I never will succeed, but where a man has made so ghastly a mess of a solemn responsibility, without any personal ill-will whatever towards the Minister, I think he should resign. He is not fit for the position he holds.

Some day, as sure as we are on this floor, this House will wake up to the depredation that is being done on our people by the flour millers. I say now that, gross and loathsome as is the scandal of the bacon curers' conduct, it is nothing beside what the flour millers at this hour are doing. The British milling combine in this country at the present time is robbing our people on a scale that the most iniquitous absentee landlord would never have dreamt of attempting. The English milling combine is levying on the small farmer's house in Ireland a rack rent more oppressive, more unscrupulous, and more iniquitous than Lord Leitrim or Barrymore or Clanrickarde ever dreamt of attempting. The maddest day Clanrickarde ever lived, in the wildest extravagance of the madness of his old age, he would never have thought of instructing his bailiffs or his agents to perpetrate the robbery on his tenants that the English flour milling combine is levying on them at the present time. On every cwt. of flour that a country woman brings into a small home in Ireland to-day she pays into the millers' pockets—now, remember I am leaving out of account what she pays in respect of the domestic wheat scheme—from 4/- to 5/-. I have often mentioned the figure of 8/- a cwt.

An Ceann Comhairle

Does that matter come under this Estimate or under the Estimate for Industry and Commerce?

Mr. Dillon

I think, Sir, it comes under this Estimate, inasmuch as the wheat scheme is made the excuse for it.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has stated that he was not referring to the domestic wheat scheme.

Mr. Dillon

And I fully understand that that may for the moment have misled the Chair. My submission, Sir, is that those schemes are made the excuse by the combine to line their own pockets, and then to protest that the extra charge is due to some scheme of the Government.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has already raised that issue on the Estimate for Industry and Commerce. It cannot be raised on two Estimates as it cannot be equally relevant to both.

Mr. Dillon

I shall not press it then in that form. I do not seek to avoid your ruling by saying that I fix this House with solemn warning, and each individual Deputy in it, that he is at present co-operating—actively cooperating—in the robbery of the people whom he is pledged to represent and defend in this House, and if he has any sense of public duty or of the obligations that devolve on a democratic representative of the people, it is his duty to inquire into those facts, and to call the Minister who is responsible for them to account. I understand there is to be amending legislation. This, Sir, is not the appropriate occasion upon which to discuss that, although this Estimate was taken as the occasion upon which to announce it. Without advocating legislation of any kind, I invite every individual Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party to spend the interval between now and the introduction of any legislation the Minister may have in mind in inquiring into the evils I have here exposed. All I ask them to do is to look into the question themselves; to read the record of the system that has been in operation; to learn how our people have been robbed and plundered, and to resolve that, whatever Bill may be brought in hereafter, no Bill will pass this House which does not ensure that the people who produce pigs and the people who consume bacon in this country are given a square deal. That is all I am asking for them. It is not as if I were getting up here to ask for some concession for those people. We are not asking for mercy, but for justice— simple, plain, unadorned justice. It does make one understand what a great Irishman caused to be written on his tomb when he prayed for the rest where savage indignation could no longer rend his breast. It does give rise to sæva indignatio in the heart of anyone to see simple, decent, hard-working people, the majority of whom at present are supporting the Fianna Fáil Party and trusted the Fianna Fáil Party at the last election, robbed and plundered by the most unscrupulous gang who ever formed themselves into a vested interest in this country, and deserted by those in whom they so confidently put their trust. That is the kind of thing which will destroy freedom, liberty and democracy in any country in the world. If those who held themselves out as the people's defenders under the democratic system sell out on them, then the people will turn in despair to any other system, in the hope that they will get not mercy but bare justice. They are not getting that now.

I would not be honest if I did not go on to say that I have seen nothing in the last four years which causes me to amend my view by a hair's breadth in regard to the wheat policy. I want to say explicitly, and my constituents can reject me if they want to, that beet and wheat are a "cod," and I want to warn the House that the wheat scheme is now not only an immense burden on the backs of our people but it is leading us into a desperate danger. It is being used by the Government as an excuse for not mobilising in our granaries adequate stores of wheat to meet the dangers of a European war. I do not deny, and I have never denied, that wheat can be grown by farmers in this country. I do not deny, and I have never denied, that if you fix the price high enough most men can make a profit out of it. But I do say that, as an agricultural policy for this country, it is suicidal, (1) because the cost borne by the consumers of bread, who are the poorest section of the community, is out of all proportion to the benefit conferred upon those who grow wheat, and (2) because the land on which the wheat is being grown could be used for the production of crops which would yield the community, as a whole, a profit if the Minister for Agriculture were doing his work, and (3) because the crop is one which in our time stands in such danger of failure that it introduces into our agricultural economy an element of an altogether undesirable speculative character. The great desideratum of the small or medium sized farmer is that when he plants his crop he can see in the future a certainty of cashing it. With no crop that a farmer puts into the land can he have an absolute certainty of gleaning a full return; but, of them all, those which stand in greatest danger of failing in the harvest are wheat and beet. Wheat and the attendant abuses are costing this country £2,500,000 per annum. Beet is costing this country £1,000,000 per annum. Out of that money we could finance a scheme to provide a family allowance for every family in Ireland, and, instead, we squander it on two schemes which confer benefit on practically nobody. Is there a Deputy can deny it?

Wheat was first defended here on the ground that it would provide a guarantee for us against stoppage of supplies from abroad. Nevertheless, when the threat arose, the Minister rushes to try and buy wheat. When he goes to buy wheat, he does not buy it abroad himself, but he authorises the millers to charge 1/- per sack of flour to compensate them for storing it. Then the millers will not store it, but come back and say, "We depend on the wheat crop." They depend on the wheat crop because they do not want to spend the 1/- per sack which they have been given for storing wheat. They want to keep that.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not relevant.

Mr. Dillon

They use this Minister's scheme as an excuse for not expending the money given them by another Minister to do a particular job.

An Ceann Comhairle

Another Minister is responsible.

Mr. Dillon

I fully accept your ruling in the matter, but I think I am entitled to the sympathy of the Chair in my endeavour to pursue the labyrinthine activities of some of these gentlemen. I know the Chair will not wish that the Rules of Order of this House should be availed of to avoid their Machiavellian activities being exposed in Parliament.

An Ceann Comhairle

At the appropriate time.

Mr. Dillon

It nauseates me to waste time pointing out the folly and the stupidity and the obscurantism of the Minister for Agriculture. I do not believe there is anybody in this country, in Fianna Fáil or out of it, who believes the Minister is competent for his job. That is plain talk, but it is true. I know that hundreds of supporters of Fianna Fáil, who passionately believe in the Taoiseach, shake their heads and say: "God knows, there ought to be a change in the Department of Agriculture." Though no Deputy has said it to me. I am convinced that there are many Fianna Fáil Deputies who believe the same thing. I do not believe in piling Pelion on Ossian. The Minister is already buried under his own record, and there is no use heaping the burden on him further. But he ought to get himself made Minister for Education, or even Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Local Government and Public Health. If he would do that, we would kill two birds with the one stone.

I turn from that profitless occupation, though it is my duty and the duty of every Deputy to reveal abuses where they exist, and I offer to the House now a remedy for the present situation. I make no apology for trespassing on their time sufficiently long to put before them a plan that would restore within two years the earning capacity of our people. The key to the solution of the urgent difficulties under which we at present labour is to reduce the cost of production of the agricultural industry. Our community have as their only natural resources 12,000,000 acres of arable land. We have no mines, we have no minerals, we have no oil, we have none of the natural resources that many of the other countries of the world can exploit to their advantage. We have 12,000,000 acres of arable land, and out of it the wealth of the whole community must come. Five million acres of that 12,000,000 will feed the Irish people, feed them with everything they can eat. Assuming that you will fill every stomach in Ireland with a ramrod three times a day, 365 days in the year, 5,000,000 acres will produce the wherewithal to do it. The produce of 7,000,000 acres must be exported and sold on the markets abroad. Five bitter years of experience have dissipated the promise of alternative markets. Do any Deputies on these benches remember the alternative markets?

Mr. Gorey

Indeed we do.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Friel of Donegal declared—I can still hear his voice floating down the breeze—that we would starve John Bull into submission by selling our stuff in alternative markets. We were going to have ocean liners sweeping into Glenties and bearing the burden of our stuff away to the markets of the world. But he has learned sense, and I am glad he has learned sense. Now we know that we have to sell our stuff on the British market. That being so, the profits of our farmers, and ultimately the wealth of our community, depend on the difference between the price our farmers get for their produce in England and the cost of producing it in Ireland. That is their profit. If we could raise the prices that they are getting in England, we would increase their profit. But we cannot; we do not control the prices in England. We may get slightly better prices in England through negotiation with the British Government than the ruling world prices, but we cannot of our own volition raise prices in England. Our profit is the difference between the price in England and the cost of production. But, if we cannot raise prices in England, how can we increase the profit of our farmers? The answer is by reducing the cost of production.

Does anybody in this House doubt that if we could increase our farmers' profit by passing a resolution here, the effect of which would be the raising of prices in England by 15 per cent., we would not hesitate an hour? Would we not introduce it now and pass it nemine contradicente? That is all I am asking Deputies to do. You can achieve precisely the same purpose; you can achieve precisely the same end; you can get for the farming community exactly the same profit if you will just pass a simple resolution calling on the Government to reduce the cost of production, and in ten minutes you can get for every farmer in Ireland from 10 to 15 per cent. more profit than he is earning now. You will not do it, and you will not do it because that Party is controlled and dominated by the vested interests that want to feed and fatten on the country people. Some of the people have been fooled, and others of them have been terrified, with the result that there is not a Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches who has got the courage now to get up and champion the cause of the country people as against the manufacturers and the tariff-mongers who are robbing these people of their means of existence.

All I am asking is that the Government should take from the tariff-mongers the profit to which the farmer is entitled, and to let the farmer spend it on the necessities of his own family instead of allowing the tariff-monger to spend it on what are, comparatively, luxuries, which he can well afford. I want these tariffs and taxes to be taken off the raw materials of the agricultural industry. In that context, when I use the phrase "raw materials," I mean all those things which a farmer brings on to his land for use in producing the finished product of his industry. I am not asking the Government to abandon their protection policy; I am not asking the Government to close up factories, nor am I asking them to institute free trade in this country. All I am asking is that, in the case of the biggest industry in this country— and the only industry, practically, that has a profitable export market—these taxes should be taken off the raw materials of that industry. I am speaking on behalf of the 200,000 small factories up and down this country which are operating at this moment in small farms of Ireland, employing the small farmer and his wife and children, and I am asking that that industry should be delivered from taxation on its raw materials. Is that unreasonable? Is it unreasonable that taxation should be taken off essential artificial manures such as "super"? I am quite prepared to meet the Minister half-way in this matter. If he does not want to take it off certain other things let him take the tariff off "super" alone, and let us have the advantage of the "super." The Minister gave 10/- a ton on "super," and after the bounty was paid the price of "super" here is about 10/- a ton greater than in Great Britain. Now, every farthing or every penny of that bounty went into the pockets of the shareholders, and not one farthing reached a single farmer on the land of Ireland. Is it unreasonable, therefore, to ask that the tariff should be taken off that?

For four weary years I fought in this House to get the tariff taken off Indian meal, and at the end of four weary years the Minister discovered that the maize meal mixture scheme was a "cod." I told the Minister that in 1934. Now he is going to wind up the scheme; not, however, until it is going to cost the people of this country £300,000. I am asking him now to take the tariff off "super," and, mind you, if he will do that, it will be a great help to the agricultural community and it would be taking the tariff off one of the raw materials of the compound manures, so that even if you leave the tariff on the compound manures, the reduction of the cost of that raw material on the compound manures would be passed on to the farmer for further advantage, but the direct advantage of being allowed to buy "super" at the present time at 3/- a cwt. for use on the hay crop, the grass crop and the oat crop, would more than justify the prompt removal of the tariff which is at present upon it.

I recognise that if this principle— that taxes should come off the raw materials of the agricultural industry —be accepted, certain border-line cases will arise, but I hold that with goodwill, if people are reasonable, these border-line cases can be easily disposed of. For instance, take the case of galvanised buckets. I can quite understand that a man might say that these galvanised buckets form part of the raw material of the agricultural industry. I would agree with that. I would admit that these things are part of the machinery of a farm, just as a spanner or a screw driver would be an essential factor in a factory producing cups and saucers, let us say. These things, however, can be agreed upon, and we could very easily fix the border-line cases, provided that the principle is accepted. Once the principle is accepted, I feel that no insuperable difficulty can possibly arise with regard to the application of the principle. Now, if we can get the costs of production down, we then have a situation in which we can conscientiously say that the man who produces the maximum that his land will yield is going to have the best standard of living that this country can afford him. How shall we get that? I believe that when these people are making money they will work as hard and as well as any farmers in the world, and then we can come in to help them by way of education, by way of research, by way of credit facilities, and by way of marketing facilities; but the first thing we ought to do is to help them to provide accommodation superior to that which they have at present for their live stock. For instance, thousands of calves are lost in this country every year through white scour and other diseases, for the want of proper stabling accommodation and so on. Thousands of cows get mastitis for the want of facilities for keeping sheds clean, and thousands of live stock generally are crippled, through rickets, from the want of adequate light during the earlier periods of their lives. Out-offices are expensive things, and they are not easy things to devise. Therefore, I should be glad to see the farmer prepared to build out-offices, provided that he builds the right ones, and therefore I want to show, by demonstration, what is the best kind of out-office to build, and therefore I would like to help him to build proper out-offices, by giving him financial help as well as by instruction and advice.

The next point is this—we are all familiar when we go to a fair with this thing. We see one man who has a yearling at the fair and it is a treat to look at that yearling. Another man has a yearling that was calved within a week of the first one. This second yearling is like an old ram. One would not take him if he were given away with a pound of tea. The explanation is that the first man fed his calf and knew how to feed him. The second man either did not know how to feed his calf or he did not feed him at all. If he did feed him he gave him a diet wholly unsuitable. I was presupposing that we have made the production of live stock profitable. If Deputies will have patience I will try to arrive at the point where those who have not the material to feed their cattle will have the material made available for them. In the meantime, I am suggesting that it is necessary to help those who have the stuff to feed their cattle—to teach them to give the right food. That is a matter where education is urgently needed too.

The next thing is often forgotten, and that is to be solicitous to preserve the fairs and markets in which the people habitually dispose of their live stock. Now, since the Pig Marketing Board began operations, the pig fairs have been destroyed. The result is that the vested interests have been able to rob the agricultural community. That happens when the pig fair is destroyed. If the pig fair had been there the pig jobbers would have competed against the factories, with the result that the factories could not impose their wills upon the rural community. I remember warning the House about that. I remember in Colorado, 14 years ago precisely, the same thing happened. The big packing companies got at the Government in Colorado and they persuaded them to license their livestock yards for the sale and purchase of livestock. In this way the markets were boycotted.

Deputy O'Reilly knows the circumstances of what happened there as well as I do. If one brought one's stock 40 miles into Denver one sold them at the packer's price or was told to take them home. The packer knew that by the time the farmer had paid the freight of that stock into Denver he was not in any way prepared to pay the freight back home. The packer worked out to the penny piece what the freight was and he just offered about 10 cents more for the wagon of cattle than would be got by bringing them home—paying the freight back for them. The packer fined the farmer that much because he had him where he wanted the cattle—40 miles way from home. If one did not take his price he paid the railway company double freight for bringing them home and for bringing them out again.

Now, in this country our people could walk their cattle home if they did not like the price that the factories offered. But once the fair and market are eliminated the vested interests can deliver an ultimatum to our people as the bacon people have already done. They say to the producers "you must take our price and if you do not like it you can lump it." Furthermore, there are the social considerations of the amenities that the rural towns contribute towards the life of the country. Our rural life is at present faced with the flight from the land, and if the country fairs are destroyed our rural life will be ten times worse than it is.

The next point to consider is that we must redouble our efforts in carrying out the live-stock policy of the late Mr. Hogan, Minister for Agriculture, as embodied in the Live Stock Improvement Act. That Act was the greatest boon that was ever conferred on the farmers of this country, so far as the bulls were improved. We ought to press forward on these lines and with two conditions. First, we ought to take stock as to the advantage of the black Aberdeen-Angus bull. My view is that the Aberdeen-Angus bull is one of the greatest curses that ever came into this country. There are large areas of this country where one cannot find a purebred heifer. Every heifer in the countryside has a black nose or a black tuft or she is black herself or, maybe worse than that, she is blue. If you try to breed from that heifer you can take her to any bull and she will have a calf that will not be a pleasure to look at. It is hard to get the country people to understand that. If she has a heifer as shapely as herself, and the farmer brings her to the best bull, he is astonished when he gets a calf with legs four feet long, a body like a lead pencil and two ears like an Ulster pig. Then they go out and try to sell that calf; they cannot do it. They cannot give it away. Then they say: "I always said these Department of Agriculture bulls were no good; God be with the days when Pat Roddy above there had a bull and no one knew where he came from, but the calves he got were wonderful." Everybody likes to blame his misfortunes on anybody but himself.

This problem of miscegenation in cattle is not easily understandable by the people who are busy about the different affairs of life. Therefore, I put it to the Minister that first of all he should take some measures to increase the use of good shorthorn bulls and to stipulate that when a man is given a black premium bull he should be required to keep a good shorthorn bull as well. I say that for this reason—every farmer who is shorthanded for help knows and understands the difficulty that is being brought about. I must ask the indulgence of the House if I speak plainly because Deputies, as serious men, understand rural problems. A man wants to bring his cow to his shorthorn bull. He notices that the cow is bulling and he is just going to the 11 o'clock Mass. If he is to take the cow to the shorthorn bull he may find that it is 5¾ miles away, but there is a black Aberdeen-Angus bull within three-quarters of a mile of him. If he waits until he gets the heifer to the shorthorn bull, the bulling is gone off her, and so he takes her to the black bull. He spends the next six weeks regretting that he had not taken her to the shorthorn bull. Anyway, if he took her five miles away to the shorthorn bull she would miss three or four times, perhaps, because he would walk the cow back the five miles. He brings her to the black bull and in due course there emerges a black calf out of a good shorthorn heifer. The farmer keeps that calf until she is 18 months old. In due course her dam grows old and he sells the dam. That man's herd is founded on a blue heifer. The man is bewildered because he cannot raise decent cattle.

I have been trying to describe the kind of evil that exists. If we stipulate that the man who keeps a black bull should keep a shorthorn one as well it would be doing something to minimise that evil. If a man goes in for Aberdeen cattle—and there are such people—let him walk five miles to the black bull. In any case, men who are breeding black cattle are not breeding for milk. They are breeding for beef, so it does not very much matter whether he gets a first-cross beef or not. The important thing is that it should be sold as beef and not kept as the foundation for breeding a herd of cattle. Secondly, and no less important or devastating, was the damage done to our live-stock industry in the years 1934 and 1935, when people could not sell rough cattle at any price. The result was that they sold all their shorthorn heifers, not being able to sell the other class. Now we are desperately short in the country of shorthorn heifers. I think we ought to extend the Live Stock Improvement Acts to female cattle as well as to the bull scheme. If that could be worked out I think an adaptation of the Minister's heifer scheme would meet the situation. But it is urgent and ought to be attended to at once, because if the stock of good shorthorn cattle leaves this country it will be virtually impossible ever to get it back.

I have spoken of the necessity for instructing the farming community in the use of suitable rations for their live stock. It is equally important to bring home to the farmer the necessity for suitable rations of artificial manure for his land. I do not know if Deputies have had the same experience as I have had. I find that farmers are inclined to use an altogether undue proportion of nitrogen in their manurial operations. I find people coming into me and getting 4 cwt. of super and 2 cwt of sulphate of ammonia. The ration should be four, one and one—that is to say, four of super, one of potash and one of ammonia. They imagine that the increased yield induced by the excess of nitrogen is desirable. In fact, it is a very short-sighted policy. Again, you find people putting out potash with a lavish hand on meadow land. I think that that manure is probably wasted and potash is an expensive manure. They would probably be wiser to forego potash on meadow land I find, again, that adequate use is not made of basic slag and that a variety of simple errors are made, some of which involve the farmer in unprofitable expenditure while others not only waste his money but injure his land. All of us can learn from the experiments being made under scientific control and steps should be taken to bring the information that is discovered to the notice of the farmers.

There is another matter to which I should like to refer. Some of the more ignorant Fianna Fáil Deputies used to refer to the late Deputy Hogan as the "Minister for Grass." That title was a title of opprobium but the day will yet dawn when the title of "Minister for Grass" will be recognised as a title of far-seeing glory. What the ignoramuses of the Fianna Fáil Party did not learn and have not yet learned is that grass is as much a crop as cereals and that what is wrong in this country is that we have never treated grass as a crop, that we have let grass grow as a weed, as manna that fell from heaven and that the law of diminishing returns has been operating over every acre of meadow and pasture as a result. The time has come when we have got to glory in the grass crops of Ireland and recognise that there are thousands of acres which can be most profitably used by those who live on them and for the benefit of the community by the production of grass and that these acres will give a better yield not only to the farmer but to the community than will the production of wheat, oats, barley or any other crop that can be put into them. I shall not go into a long discourse on the scientific aspects of grass-growing but I think the Minister for Agriculture has himself learned that the cultivation of grass is as complex and as delicate a job as the cultivation of any other crop and one about which the farmer needs more instruction than he needs in any other branch of the industry in which he is operating.

Last night we agreed as regards cow-testing, and I do not propose to cover that ground again, save to say that no money the Minister spends in the development of cow-testing will be misspent. He will get treble value for the time and money devoted to that purpose, if he can get cow-testing established in the country. I have spoken of education. How is that education to be carried out. Is there any use in sending a fellow with a butter-fly collar and spats down to tell a man in Mayo or Roscommon how to run his farm? No. They will run him. They will not believe him. We have got in this country some of the finest agricultural instructors in the world. I have spoken to men who are working as agricultural instructors and it would be a privilege to sit under them in any class they conducted. They are brilliant men, not men who are floating about in the vague aurora of theory, but men who could throw off their coat and take a plough, a harrow or a spade and, not only tell you how to use it but show you how to use it. The moment you go into the company of a man like that, no matter who you are, you respect him and you listen to him. When you meet the fellow who tells you what you will find on page 43 of Armstrong's Theory of Agriculture, in the post-Pliocene age, you feel that you would sooner be looking after a sow or a bullock. I want to take full advantage of the eminent qualities of some of the incomparable instructors we have got. I know my neighbours and I know that instruction by precept alone will get us nowhere. I referred to instruction "by precept alone." Precept is an excellent thing, but it must be supported by demonstration. Suppose I proceeded to explain to a Deputy how to plant turnips or how to cut bacon or how to cut calico, he might listen to me very attentively, but if I brought him out on the ridge or put him behind a counter and asked him to do those things his mouth would open, and he would hack the side of bacon, destroy the calico, and God knows if he would ever plant the turnip. If I brought him to my shop and told him to watch me cutting calico I would make him a calico cutter in half an hour. If I took down a side of bacon, showed him how to mark out the side and to cut it, before the day was done I would have made him a competent provision assistant.

Mr. Corish

You would not have to show him how to eat it.

Mr. Dillon

That is one thing he would have learned already, but it is right to remember that if our mothers had not taught us how to eat as we ought to eat, most of us would make beasts of ourselves. It was not even by precept but by example—sometimes very emphatically enforced—that our table manners were improved. We cannot teach the farmers by precept alone. I myself want to be taught not only by precept but by example. Time and again I have read every line of every pamphlet produced by the Department of Agriculture. There are still some matters dealt with in these pamphlets which I have never been able rightly to get hold of and I have often longed for a demonstation farm to which I could go and tell the people there to show me how to do what the pamphlet says should be done. Then they could let me do it under their instruction and correct my mistakes. We all go out to the R.D.S. Show and talk to the Departmental instructors there. I get more information about potatoes from the inspector presiding over the potato stand at Ballsbridge in one half-hour's talk than I would get in 12 months by reading pamphlets. The inspector not only talks of potatoes, but he points out, for instance, the veining of the skin of the Golden Vale potato in such a way that if I ever see that potato again I cannot possibly mistake it.

Doctors are brought to the hospital wards to see diseases. Every doctor understands that he might be reading medical books throughout his life but that if he were not brought into the hospitals and shown the different pathological conditions he could never recognise the diseases. Architects are shown buildings; they are shown drawings and are brought to look at the buildings. Lawyers hold mock debates and are tutored in order to make them accustomed to the practice of their profession. I want to do the same for farming and I want it because I feel the need myself. I am not in the position of one who says that a man requiring instruction should be quite capable of getting it from books. I have tried to get it from books and I feel every day of my life when dealing with the men I have on my own land the necessity of having a demonstration to which I could go so that I could come back to them and show them the way I want the job done.

I want to make this final distinction. I do not want experimental farms in the country. Let the experiments be done in Glasnevin and, when they are proved, let them then be brought down the country and demonstrated on the farms so that the farmers will see that the conclusions arrived at by experiments can be carried out in practice under the conditions that the farmer has to work under and are profitable and worth putting into effect.

We spoke earlier of improved housing for live stock and fowl and so forth. I would like to have, not only on these demonstration farms, but at every vocational school in rural Ireland, a model pigsty, if possible a model cow byre and, if possible, a model hen-house. You go to a countryman or woman and tell them that you will give them a loan for a hen-house. The woman replies that she would like one of the right kind. You send her a drawing. That means nothing to her. She sees a tradesman, gives him the drawing, and tells him that is what he has to build. He may be able to decipher the drawing, but how much better it would be if you could say to the tradesman: "Go down the street in Ballaghaderreen and in the technical school you will find in the backyard the kind of hen-house I want. Have a look at it and buy all the timber you require; bring the bill to me and do the job." Then when the job is finished you could look at it to see if it was the same as the one in the technical school. If it was not you could stop the pay. That would be a much better system than working from drawings.

The same applies to the pigsty. I would like if the people had an opportunity of seeing a model pigsty. A man could carry away a definite picture in his mind and then when he would be building it, if he forgot some details, he could go back and refresh his memory and incorporate all the ideas in his own piggery. That is what I mean by demonstration. There is the point that the demonstration farm would provide the Minister with costings, but that is a very large question and I do not propose to go into it.

We are all very fond of talking about the farmer, but there is another person living on the land, who is as much entitled to consideration as the man who holds the land, and that is the agricultural labourer. I do not believe 27/- a week is a living wage for any man. I know—I am not asking, I am telling—that the farmers of this country cannot afford to pay more and I doubt if they can afford to pay that. There is the dilemma.

Mr. Hickey

Some of the farmers pay even less than that.

Mr. Dillon

I think that is true. I saw in the "Irish Countryman," a brilliant book, that they are depending on their unpaid sons to enable them to run their holdings. I say there is a very acute dilemma. You have a large body of people working and not getting a living wage. A large body of employers must have their help, but they cannot afford to pay them any more. A lot of us, when we speak of 27/- a week, have a kind of idea that that is only a transient thing, a passing thing. When these fellows start at 27/- a week they have a whole lifetime stretching out before them in which they are never going to get any more. It is one thing to give a man relief work to tide him over a couple of bad weeks, and give him 27/- a week for it, but it is quite another thing to say to a man: "Until you go down to your grave you will never have more than 27/- a week, and if you marry and your marriage is blessed with children, you will have to spread it out amongst them as best you can."

Take an agricultural labourer, married and with four children, who pays 3/6 a week for his house and rates. That man has 23/6 to feed and clothe himself, his wife and four children. How can that be done? I know such a man. I make no disguise that I have lain awake in bed at night, wondering how in the name of God did they live. What is peculiarly distressing to me is that they purchase their existence by starving themselves and under-feeding their children. I am talking of the general run of them. There are bad hats amongst the farm labourers, just as there are amongst every other section of the community, who neglect their children and fatten themselves. Anyone who wants to write an article about that observation is very welcome to do so. It is true. I am taking the vast body of the agricultural workers, and the way they live is by starving themselves and their wives and under-nourishing their children.

I have said before that if we are to preserve, in this country, democratic institutions we have got to prove to the people that under democratic institutions abuses which we know to exist can be remedied. There is no use in writing sob-stuff articles in the paper or making sob-stuff speeches in this House in the hope that you will get a few votes, if you are not prepared to do something to remedy it. I want votes from no one. I do not give two fiddle-de-dees if they all go and vote for Beelzebub. I do not want votes and I do not give two fiddle-de-dees whether they like what I say or do not like it. Let us be clear on that and let me say, further, that I do not believe I am one bit more anxious about the agricultural labourer than the most neglected Fianna Fáil T.D. in this House. I do not claim any preference of solicitude for them or any more ardent desire to remedy their difficulties than the most falutin' member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I hope and pray that the Fianna Fáil Party will do whatever is necessary to be done, and any votes they can pick up that way they are welcome to them, so long as this problem is disposed of.

I thought that problem over and over again and I can see no way out of it except one. A single man who elects to live on the land in rural Ireland will have to make up his mind that the land of Ireland will not yield him an income substantially in excess of 27/- a week, when sub-division is completed. It is a modest livelihood for a single man, but it is not starvation. A single man living in the country and getting along on 27/- a week will realise that it is not luxury, it is not princely, but I do not see how the land is going to yield much more. When you come to the married man, however, you have got to make up your mind that, if that is all the land can yield, then the land must be deserted. We had better leave this country, and abandon it to the condition of the Canton Island in the South Pacific, where there is nothing but one cocoanut palm and a wireless mast, because the married man cannot live and rear a family on 27/- a week. I think we can overcome that difficulty, and the only way I know in which we can do it is for the State to step in there and say: "We have an interest in raising a decent stock of people in this country, and we consider that one of the most fruitful sources of a good population in the future is the decent labouring man's family, decently brought up in a decent house. We have declared in our Constitution that the proper place for a mother is in her home. We are going to make it possible for a mother to stay in her home, and, where the work which her husband is doing does not provide an income adequate to enable her to stay in her home and rear her family decently, we propose to provide her with an allowance of 5/- per week in respect of each child born of that family, and that family allowance of 5/- per week will go towards providing the essential nourishment that those growing children should have." Let me say at once, for Deputy Hickey's edification, that I have not the slightest doubt that individuals in receipt of that allowance will grossly abuse it, and that you will find individual cases in which the money will be spent on betting tickets and cigarettes instead of on food for the children, and if anyone wants to write a leading article on that, he is very welcome to it.

Mr. Hickey

Very well.

Mr. Dillon

Abuses of that kind are impossible to avoid in any grade of society, and they do not wring my withers in the very least, nor would they deter me for a moment from advocating this reform. When those abuses arise we will devise ways and means of dealing with them, and there is no use worrying about them.

Mr. Hickey

Hear, hear!

Mr. Dillon

Do not keep saying "Hear, hear!" I know there will be an article in the Labour Leader next week telling everybody that Deputy Dillon said the agricultural labourer in this country is a drunken cigarette fiend.

Mr. Hickey

There is no such paper in circulation——

Mr. Dillon

Well, if there were, it would be in it then.

Mr. Hickey

——and well the Deputy nows it.

Mr. Dillon

I do not give a fiddle-de-dee. I want to add that, while I think we would be justified in launching that scheme for the benefit of agricultural labourers. I am convinced that ultimately we would have to go the whole way, as they have done in New Zealand and Australia. We are confronted by the case of the income-tax payer who can claim a rebate of his income-tax, although he is enjoying a taxable income, in respect of each child, while there is no relief for the man who says: "My income is not big enough to pay tax at all, and if you are going to relieve the man who has a taxable surplus, how can you argue against relieving me, when I have no surplus at all." Therefore, I feel bound to warn the House; I do not want to induce the House to come up an alley and then find I have misled them. I believe, if we launch this plan in respect of the agricultural labourer, that ultimately it means we have got to redistribute the national income in such a way that the family raising children on an income, say, below 27/- a week will have 5/- in respect of every child, and that you will have to graduate that, making the family allowance lower as the family income increases up to the point where you reach the dead-ball line of the man who gets no allowance from the income-tax and no family allowance from the State. I am trying to sketch this out in the briefest outline, because I do not want to delay the House unduly.

Mr. Gorey

The Deputy is doing very well.

Mr. Dillon

I am, but I believe everything I have said has been worth saying, and I consider that this family allowance is one of the most worthwhile things of all. I am particularly anxious to get Fianna Fáil to do it, because I happened to mention it first. and I would much sooner see the Fianna Fáil Party doing it, because if they do not and I try to get it done hereafter they will say I am making political capital out of it and trying to buy votes. I invite them to buy all the votes they can now, and they can go out and make speeches about it for the next ten years, and proclaim themselves the Christian Government. If they will put this reform in hand, they are welcome to any votes they can get out of it, and they have four more years in which to do it. It may mean an increase in taxation. If it does there can be no purpose for which an increase could be more properly undertaken. But I want to emphasise this, and re-emphasise it, such a reform must be undertaken out of revenue. If people start talking about currency control, and borrowing money to do it, far from helping those people you will destroy them. Any money required to finance a reform of this kind must be raised by annual taxation, and if you spend a penny on that service that is not derived from the revenue of the financial year in which it is spent, then you are starting on a slippery slope which will wind up in complete ruin of the very poor people whom you are trying to help. Remember, it would be ruin of a kind which the rich property class could completely avoid by transferring their property abroad, but the poor who are left at home are the people who would be completely smashed by the disaster which would ensue on the unorthodox financing of such a plan as I have outlined here.

We dealt with forestry, and I do not propose to go into it now. The last subject to which I wish to refer is the subject of credit for farmers. I have thought out whether or not it was advisable to deal with the question exhaustively here, and I have come to the conclusion that it is not. Therefore, I am going to pass over it, and I will tell the House why. It is because questions of credit are questions of immense perplexity and difficulty and, much as I revere the wisdom and perspicacity of the personnel of this House, I am not sure—in view of the fact that they have delegated certain of their authority to an agricultural commission—that this House is now the best place in which to argue the merits of an extremely complex and difficult credit question. If the Agricultural Commission were not sitting, then we would have to argue it out here. I have submitted a memorandum to the Agricultural Commission expressing my qualified approval of the brain-wave—I cannot describe it as anything else—of Senator Counihan. I fully appreciate the care and circumspection with which it must be examined in every aspect in order that good may come of it instead of great evil. I could expound it here, but in all the circumstances I think it wiser not to do so. It will be investigated exhaustively by the Agricultural Commission, and if it survives that examination then I think it will solve the problem of the frozen loan and the inadequate capital resources of the farmers who live upon our land. If we can solve that great problem, and if we can get good-will in the future and a true appreciation of what profit-earning capacity in the hands of the farmers means not only for the farmers but for every section of our community, then I have hope still that, come all the world against us, this country will still stand, but if we allow the present position to go on I apprehend the development in this country of anarchy. If we drive the people of this country to despair by our incompetence, we are going to have anarchy and, after anarchy, the inevitable tyranny that anarchy always begets. When that comes, I do not give a fiddle-de-dee whether it is a tyranny which takes its inspiration from Moscow or from Berlin.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is that inspiration in the Estimate?

Mr. Dillon

Yes. God knows, that Minister sitting there would inspire it in anything in Europe.

An Ceann Comhairle

Types of possible tyranny are not relevant to the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

That is my case—that we stand in imminent danger of being precipitated by that Minister, first, into anarchy, then into Stalin's arms, and thence into Hitler's arms, believing, that bad and all as they are, they could not be worse than Dr. Ryan.

An Ceann Comhairle

Than the Minister.

Mr. Dillon

I beg your pardon, Sir— than the Minister.

Mr. Gorey

It would be inadvisable to take away a wrong impression of some of the things Deputy Dillon has referred to in regard to the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board. I think he conveyed the impression that the falling off in pig production was solely due to the curers. That would be a wrong impression. It would be wrong to put on the shoulders of the curers what was the crime of the Government. The curers may be to blame to a point, but they certainly are not to blame, except to a small degree, when we consider what the Government has done to lessen production. I have no sympathy with the curers, but I do not like to see the curers offered as a scapegoat for the crimes of the Government since 1932. The Minister told us last night that a new Bill is to be introduced to improve the position created by the present Act which gave birth to the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board. There are two sides to the curers' position. We must accept the British market as the basis of the prices paid for pigs here. We must accept the British prices as the standard by which our pig prices should be fixed. I think it will be found that during the four years' existence of the Pigs Marketing Board there was a better price paid here for pigs when we take the English price for those four years. Certainly there was a better period price and a much better average price as compared with the price obtained on the English market before those four years and the price paid to the purchasers here then. I think the price here was a better price to the producer than he had been getting in the years previous to the operation of the Pigs Marketing Board.

Whatever profits the curers made would be out of the Irish consumers. I am not going into the question of profits now. But it would be a wrong impression to convey that the reduction in the pig population and the fall in production are attributable to the Pigs Marketing Board. The real reason is that while the people who are able to feed pigs in a big way are feeding much more to-day—I know this from the business with which I am connected—than they were two, three and four years ago, and supplying more year after year than they were, the rank and file of the producers of the country have gone out of production. There can be only one explanation for that, and that is the action of the Government and the position they left the producers in. They left them without means and credit; without credit so far as the banks, the creameries and the merchants are concerned. I do not blame that on the Minister. He has borne the brunt of the agricultural depression here and one can sympathise with him in the job he was given to do. The whole blame should be placed on the Government who, with their collective responsibility, launched this whole scheme and had no sympathy with the producers during those years. Any effort to put the blame on any other shoulders, except in due proportion, would be unfair and unjust.

A few months ago I saw a report in an Irish paper as to the activities of the British Government with regard to our mutton exports. The heading was: "Britain may cut mutton imports; quota system likely," and the report went on to say:—

"Power to regulate sheep, mutton and lamb imports from all sources, including Commonwealth countries, was given to the British Government by the approval of the House of Commons of the Sheep, Mutton and Lamb Import Regulation Order."

It went on to give details and reasons. In the "Farm and Stockbreeder" I saw letters published and reports of speeches at farmers' union meetings about the plague of rabbits that was destroying the farmer's pasture and crops in England. I began to ask myself what was the explanation of the English farmers appealing to the Government for a subsidy for mutton and lamb production. Appeals were made at meetings at which it was stated that the prices they were getting for the last 1½ years—certainly up to three months ago—were so bad that they could continue no longer in production. I think I have found the explanation. The mystery to me is that the English farmers could not see the position as it appears to me.

I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce some time ago a question about the export of rabbits from this country and I found that in 1937 81,288 cwts. were exported from this country to Great Britain. The Minister was unable to tell me what the home consumption was. Each cwt. of rabbits would represent about three lambs. Taking an average up to August or September, one cwt. of rabbits would represent perhaps a little over three lambs. The total exports, therefore, would represent just 250,000 lambs. The market for rabbits here is being supplied all the year round. The exports to England stop at Christmas and again in March. We could add, perhaps, something more than an equivalent, and that would mean that this country was supporting the equivalent of 500,000 rabbits, living on the farmers' lands, eating his produce, knocking his fences, spreading disease; and, worse than that, they were going into the English market and competing on that market, with the exports of mutton, lamb and fowl.

I remember meeting Deputy Corish in Moore Street some time ago. I was making inquiries at the time with a view to getting first-hand knowledge of the position, and I saw rabbits being sold there, some of them at 6d. each, and others at 7d. each. In shops in other parts of the city they were being sold at 8d. each. It must be remembered that each of these would weigh about 2 lbs. or 2 lbs. 6 ozs. on an average, and they were being sold for 6d., 7d. and 8d. apiece. Can there be any doubt in anybody's mind what a serious competitor that would be to the farmer who is endeavouring to produce mutton, lambs, chickens and so on? And yet these rabbits are actually vermin on the farmers' land and he has to pay trappers a certain amount a week to try to do away with these vermin. For instance, I saw an appeal not so long ago from a farmer to a trapper asking him if he was going to come back and trap rabbits for him. That is the actual position. You have the corn and even the grass eaten in most cases, and in quite a number of cases these rabbits are actually a plague—fences are knocked down and diseases of various kinds, such as tuberculosis, are being spread—but the worst crime of all is that these rabbits are competing with the farmer for his own produce on the English market. I want to know what is wrong in this matter. I think I have the figures here for the Smithfield market. I am not sure of the figures, but I think that the Irish export in one week was about 70 tons, and the English product amounted to about 144 tons. Yet, the English farmer himself wants to know what is wrong with the prices for mutton and lamb. That was one week's supply, and yet the English farmer wants to know what is wrong with the prices for mutton, lamb and chicken, and the people who need mutton, lamb or chicken, find a better substitute in rabbits. It is the same type of people, and the same type of digestion, who cannot use beef and so on, who use this particular diet. That is the position. If we had in this country some foreigner coming in and supplying 250,000 lambs into our market, would we not have every official in the Department sitting around a conference table devising means to meet that very serious competition to our own production? Yet, here you have what is actually a plague in this country, created and passed on to the farmers of the country through no fault of their own whatsoever.

I suppose that this situation became really grave, in the first instance, during the period of the Great War, when the use of shot-guns was prohibited to the farmers, and that it became more acute during the Black and Tan war and afterwards during the civil war in this country. That meant, that there were no means of dealing with the rabbit pest during that period. Up to that time, the rabbits were under control to some extent, but, during that time and since, the pest has been allowed to become absolutely uncontrolled. I hold that the State has failed to deal with that plague in the manner in which it should have been dealt with. Many of the farmers have actually been almost eaten out of their holdings by the rabbit pest. I remember being in Nine-Mile-House one day not so long ago, and a man there showed me two stacks of oats that were all that was left out of a field of oats. The rest had been eaten by rabbits. He did not even have two hand-stacks left. Now, in face of all that, and with the knowledge that the Minister and his advisers had, I think that they would be doing better work in dealing with that pest instead of having the flying squads going around to these people and seizing their stock. I make the assertion that people who have suffered from that plague, through no fault of their own and through circumstances beyond their control, have a legitimate cause of action or complaint against the State, because I hold that it is a State matter.

We were discussing a Vote here the other day in connection with the dole and unemployment benefit, and I think it was shown that, in round figures, some £3,000,000 had been expended—£1,500,000 on unemployment schemes and the other £1,500,000 on the dole proper. Surely, the Minister and the Minister for Finance, between them—or the Executive Council and the whole House between them—could devise a scheme whereby those people could be called in to do useful work, such as the extermination of this pest. I do not know how many millions this plague has cost the State, but I do know that about £3,000,000 are going in another direction, and I say that it is the duty of the State to devise some means of dealing with this plague. The English farmers themselves will have to deal with that plague also. I think that the rabbit is to be condemned from every point of view. It used to be held in the old days that about four rabbits on the land were equal to one sheep. That may be so; I cannot say. Neither can I say with any certainty what the consumption by rabbits would be. All I can say is that the farmers on whose lands these rabbits feed, not alone get nothing for them, but have to pay trappers to take them away, and of course the trappers who are employed to take the rabbits away always take care not to spoil sport, and always leave enough for next year's profit. That is only natural. They always leave enough for next year so that they can get employment when they come along doing their rounds again. I have already quoted the amount of cwts., that this amounted to on the export market, but I think that all the indications are that that will grow to 100,000 cwts., and all the reports that I have had leave no doubt in my mind as to what the position will be next year.

Nothing short of a campaign of extermination by the State itself will do if this pest is to be kept down to a point where, at least, it can be kept under control. I admit that the pest had its origin in what used to be known as demesnes. That, I admit, was largely the origin. For instance, I remember, not so long ago, I was shooting some rabbits over a fence, and the gamekeeper came along and threatened to prosecute me. I asked the gamekeeper were these his rabbits, and he said "Yes," and I said: "Well, keep them in there." I doubt if there is not a ground of action by the unfortunate people whose lands are being ravaged by this pest against these gentlemen who will not keep the rabbits on what they claim to be their own property inside their own grounds. Of course. I admit that that era is past and there is no use in going back on it now, but, in view of the growth of this pest, I say that it is no wonder that the chicken population has gone down and that the English farmers themselves are complaining that the price of mutton and lamb has gone down, and that the only time when there is a proper price is in March, April and May, when the rabbit season is closed because of breeding and rabbits are not on the market. For instance, in the last month, mutton is fetching up to 10½d. a pound, and sheep have been fetching up to £4 a piece—sheep that were bought at 32/- to 35/- last October and November. That is the position all over the country. There is then the proof that the rabbits are interfering with the prices. One cannot ignore these 100 tons of rabbits per week coming on the market and competing with our legitimate produce without taking that into account.

There is another thing—the Minister is responsible for the soil of the country and its fertility. He is the guardian of the country's fertility and the productiveness of the land and the state in which it is kept. I want to refer to the Minor Drainage schemes in addition to this rabbit business. These are things on which this £3,000,000 might be usefully spent. The damage has been gradually growing in the agricultural areas of the country in regard to the condition of the drains and waterways. It might be said, on a short-sighted view, that this was the fault of the farmers. But if one looks at the origin of the trouble one must agree that the farmers were not in any way to blame. It was the State, the then Government, that was to blame. This thing was caused by the way in which the Acts were framed and machinery set up when the Purchase Acts were passed. The State that time did not devise the proper means of control. The landlords kept control.

One can make a comparison. I know the way in which English estates are kept and the condition of the waterways. If a purchase scheme took place in England in the morning and the lands passed to the tenants, there would have to be an authority to see that the security of the State was maintained. Something like our own Land Commission here would have to be set up. We would be laughing at them and calling them the greatest fools in the world if the authority that was set up to protect the security of the State and the money advances made did not take steps to maintain their waterways. If any omission was in the Act it would be the fault of the State in not providing special machinery. In the same way here, it is not the fault of the people who are now sitting on the Government Benches. I do not want to fix the responsibility on them. They could only have provided for this thing since they came into power. The same would apply to the previous Government. It was the fault of the Government that was in power at the time when the Land Acts were passed. The responsibility anyway to end this trouble now lies with the present Government, who are their successors. Therefore, they are responsible for the minor drainage schemes. That responsibility has fallen on them. We here are the successors of the old Legislature. It is up to the Government to pass legislation to deal with this trouble. To-day it is a State job and the State should tackle it.

If the State devotes the £3,000,000 towards this matter of the minor drainage schemes and the rabbit trouble, they will be doing their part to restore the morale of the people who have never done a day's work in their lives. These are the people to whom references were made recently in Dublin, people who, we are told, never did a day's work. They never will unless they are handled by the State. There is a glaring necessity appealing to the Government for redress. In dealing with this, the Government can help the farmers of the country in these minor drainage schemes while, at the same time, providing work for people who have never worked. The responsibility is ours. It is a responsibility that we cannot avoid. It is our duty to make the lands of this country productive. I remember hearing the Minister say that we carry less live stock to-day than we did 20 years ago. The Minister did not take into consideration the millions of live stock that go out on the market competing with our legitimate produce. I refer to the vermin, the rabbits. This thing cannot be shirked. The plain issue is there. It was the fault of the State at the time and it is up to the State to remedy it now.

Mr. O'Reilly

Now that the economic war is over we can start and examine the cause of the depression and the difficulties in the agricultural industry without any great bitterness or acrimony. I could in the ordinary course of events, possibly, say that the cause of the recent depression in agricultural produce was the settlement of the economic war. Deputy Gorey having found largely the cause, I could not advance that it was not. That indicates quite clearly how delicate the market is against which we are competing and how little it takes to undo it and to unbalance it. Even with the figures that Deputy Gorey gave us this is not very clear. Some years ago there was a Game Act introduced here and I made the Minister wise of the fact that for years the shooting season in Great Britain and in this country had a detrimental effect on the prices of beef and mutton and other produce from this country. For some weeks in August and September the market was glutted with game. The market in these months was so filled up and saturated that even very small quantities of produce would upset it. We have that difficulty always to contend with.

I am quite sure, as Deputy Gorey said, that this rabbit plague has reduced the price of sheep and lambs. Lambs brought an extraordinarily poor price during last year. The price is somewhat better now. Possibly when the rabbits appear in the market again the price will fall. The British Government some months ago investigated the question of lambs. The then Minister for Agriculture stated that the control of imports was not going to mean much. Anybody who likes to look at the price figures will be surprised to find that New Zealand lambs beat English and Irish lambs in price last year. The reason given for that was that the size weight and quality of the quarter were much more suited to the needs of the consumer than the lambs bred in this country and in England.

I mention that because I am not satisfied that that is the only cause. I am satisfied that what Deputy Gorey says is the real cause of the depreciation in price but it is very necessary to mention that, especially in a debate on agriculture when, at this stage, we are, perhaps, laying down the programme for the coming year. It is necessary for some consideration to be given to the type of lamb we are producing in this country. Many of the older generation remember that the Roscommon sheep was the most popular sheep in this country. The hoggets were fattened and the weight of the sheep in those days was equal to the weight of reasonable baby beef to-day. Deputy Gorey may remember those——

Mr. Gorey

You could not get more than a cwt. anyhow.

Mr. O'Reilly

They were up to 140. They disappeared because they were entirely too large and were not needed. A smaller type of sheep and lamb was required. Lambs commenced to be sold in May, instead of in August, as had been previously the case. The result is that you have practically continuous lamb production now, but you have a lamb of smaller dimensions. I mention these points to show that the British market is extremely well supplied. They have pick and choice. If we propose to get a proper grip on the British market, we must pay a good deal more attention to the breeding and feeding of our live stock, as Deputy Dillon mentioned. One of the greatest competitors we have are the Argentinians. In the last five or six years, the live weight of their cattle has been brought down from 600 kilos to 400 kilos.

Mr. Gorey

The Deputy does not suggest that the lambs were making 240 lbs.?

Mr. O'Reilly

No.

Mr. Gorey

It was only two-year-old wethers which were making 240 lbs.

Mr. O'Reilly

They reduced these bullocks from 600 kilos. to 400 kilos. That was in order to satisfy the consumers and to give them exactly what they wanted. One of the first things we must learn in this country is to produce what the consumer wants. That question has been raised so far as pigs are concerned. Perhaps, as Deputy Gorey admitted, there was considerable depression in pigs before the advent of this Government to power.

Mr. Gorey

I did not say that. I said "before the Pigs Marketing Board."

Mr. O'Reilly

For four or five years prior to the Pigs Marketing Board, even if Deputy Gorey did not say it, there was depression and we may have forgotten the cause of that depression. The cause may have been rabbits, again, but there was depression. There is depression in the pig industry in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They have Pigs Marketing Boards in both these countries, as we have, with this difference, that ours was far superior to theirs and produced better results. There must have been a difficulty all round. I do not think we could say that it was the Cabinet in Great Britain who made a mess of whatever arrangements were made. They had some faults. I have no doubt some mistakes were made, but the blame was not attached entirely to them. Neither should the blame be attached to our Government for what happened in an abnormal period. When Deputies talk about pigs, we could have talked about what were alleged to be rackets in other matters. What about jam manufacture? Nobody would like to call it dishonest, whatever lesser word might be used. That is often said, too, about shopkeepers in the country. There are extraordinary difficulties in this whole question. What I want, so far as pigs are concerned, is a profit to the farmer of from 13/- to 15/- or whatever the sum may be. Some device should be adopted to give him £1, or whatever is necessary, to afford him a profit on his pigs.

Mr. Gorey

Give him the price of the meal first.

Mr. O'Reilly

Give him a profit, let the meal cost what it will. Something similar is being proposed in Great Britain. That brings us to the point that they are not without their difficulties either. They would not have introduced such arrangements 15 or 20 years ago. It is a sort of State interference. They are not doing that because Hitler is making statements. They are doing that because the farmers of Great Britain are in difficulties, too. What has been done here was not the cause of the economic war any more than the settlement of it was the cause of the depression. That, however, is over now and we have got to face up to the position and see how we can improve it. That must be done by all the members and there must be co-operation.

Deputy Gorey has assisted us a great deal to-day—a lot more than Deputy Dillon did in his two-hour speech. We have the rabbit pest in Meath, too, and we have a machine for dealing with it. The gases are, however, poisonous and can be used only under special conditions. I understand that it has destroyed a great many rabbits but there are innumerable rabbits all over the country still, so that one cannot keep a plot of cabbage in a field. Men are floating about the country practically the whole year with rabbits on the handle-bars of their bicycles. They must displace other commodities. On the other hand we have had deputations from fox-hunters and from people owning fowl. The fox-hunter said we should not kill the foxes and the fowl owner said that if we did not kill them we should have no fowl. If we killed the foxes, it was thought that the rabbits would increase. The men who are troubled with rabbits said that if we killed the foxes we would be eaten alive by rabbits. The rabbits are a pest and a nuisance and should be exterminated where they are doing serious injury. They have no great value so far as sport is concerned. The fox-hunters say that if we destroy the rabbits, the foxes will disappear, the price of horses will fall and nobody will want oats.

Mr. Gorey

The end of the world.

Mr. O'Reilly

The question is, undoubtedly, involved. The whole agricultural situation not only here but in other countries is extremely involved. There is a commission at present inquiring into the matter and I am sure they will come to sound conclusions. At the same time, one is entitled to express an opinion, and I believe there is some virtue in what the English farmers are now pressing on the attention of the English Government. That is, that they get an assured price. That is one of the best means of protecting them.

I admit quite candidly that in one respect the situation seems to be abnormal. A man sticks up a factory, puts a couple of big chimneys on it, and numerous windows, and starts an industry. It costs £2,000 to erect it. Next morning he can get £1,500 of an advance on it, but the man who owned the land before he sold it could not get a penny. The factory is built of concrete—they are nearly all built of concrete now—and the next day it may start to fall. The man who tells me that that is good security for money does not know what he is talking about. But that is the position, and every day it becomes more involved and the whole position becomes more difficult. We have an opportunity of solving that. There is no one here who can interfere with us except the consumer who wants a certain thing. If we give him that at the right price we have our export market. We should be in a position to knock the other fellow out. It is like the rabbits again, and there ought not to be any mystery about it.

Great Britain is a very large agricultural producer, possibly the greatest of all that group. She is no dud whatsoever in agricultural production. If we take eggs alone, the people of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland produce £37,500,000 worth for the British market. That is rather a big thing and they do not shout a lot about it. Like us, they are tightening that up. They have a new Egg and Poultry Bill before their Parliament. It is looked upon as an item of very great importance. I am glad that here we have made an effort to put better eggs on the market, but I am satisfied that it does not go far enough. Denmark supplies £10,000,000 worth of eggs and it will take a very sound, strong punch to knock her out. If we want to get anything more than £800,000 out of eggs we must knock somebody out and we cannot do that unless we are efficient. We must have efficiency and facilities.

I tried to do something along that line in order to get egg production on an organised basis, but I stumbled up against the Transport Act and I cannot stir. That has to be shifted. As producers we must have cheap, effective and efficient transport. There is no use in starting to compete with anybody until we get it. If anybody else cannot give us as good, we must have it ourselves and, if we make a mistake, then it is our fault.

There is another very important item for farmers. Beef production has nearly gone. Through the different changes that have taken place we are left here as store producers. We produce lamb and mutton, but so far as beef is concerned I believe it is now a dwindling commodity. War disturbances might change that and we might go back again on that. At the same time, there is every necessity for producing stores. I come from the County Meath. It cannot be said that we want just exactly what suits ourselves. The store is to be found all over Ireland and it is one of the things the small farmer looks to, to provide him with portion of his earnings or something to meet portion of his liabilities.

What I want to know is, after so many years, are our cattle good enough? They are better than the English cattle. The English are only waking up now. Is there enough attention paid to our cattle? Do the bulls that I see coming up to the County Meath, sometimes in the month of October, represent the type of cattle that is needed? One fellow says, by way of excuse, that they are dairy shorthorns. They are neither dairy shorthorns nor shorthorns; the standard is entirely too low. At fairs in County Meath and, unfortunately, of late, in County Cavan, you will find these cattle going in there. The calves are a loss to the man who sold them and to the man who buys them. There ought to be a higher standard. Every shorthorn bull in this country should be a pedigree bull.

What Deputy Dillon said about the black cattle is perfectly right. They are a cause of suspicion to-day and people are afraid to buy them because of the misfits that many of them turn out to be. The Minister will tell you that the committees of agriculture have full control over that and they can refuse to register these bulls. They can compel bigger registration of shorthorn bulls. The landlords had many faults. We abused them and we know they had faults; but they had some good points, and one of the good points they had was that even to this day the traces of the good cows they brought up in their districts through the judicious purchase of good bulls are still to be found. If one wanders through Longford or Galway you can still find traces of where that was done. I should like the Minister to have that matter seriously considered and insist that his inspectors will see there will be a higher standard. What we want is more bulls. There are not half enough of them to go around. Money should be provided for that purpose.

Fortunately in County Meath, when the going was good, we got things done and there are a great many labourers' cottages with five acres of land. Most of them have a cow. Many of the small farmers are short; they have not cows. It is a pity that should be the case when we have going to Britain every year some of the most magnificent heifers. I would like the Minister to put into force some form of heifer loan scheme. The last scheme was a success, but the new one should be put into operation under different conditions. Let us retain as many of the assets as we can.

Mr. Gorey

How many of them were paid for?

Mr. O'Reilly

Ninety-eight per cent., I understand.

Mr. Gorey

I doubt it.

Mr. O'Reilly

Is that encouragement? These are some of the suggestions I would like to make to the Minister for the next year's policy. It is lamentable to see some of the magnificent heifers that leave this country going across to Great Britain. People will say that it is money back, but when one sees what remains behind, in the majority of cases, I think it is very unfortunate that they should be allowed to go. We have also another difficulty, and it is in regard to horse breeding. The Department thought that the Irish draught stallion would be an excellent thing for the county. Some of us remember the Irish draught stallion as a very excellent animal, not exactly the same as the animal that is called an Irish draught to-day. But the people do not want them, they want the heavier type of horse; they want Clydesdales. There is a difficulty about that, and I hope the Minister will consider the matter as far as County Meath is concerned. The Clydesdale can be sold at six months old for £10, £12, £14 or whatever it is. If they are not sold, they are still manageable; they are docile. The Irish draught does not seem to be, and it is not in demand for general purposes anyway. That is one of the requests from my county—that those Clydesdale stallions be given instead of the other stallions.

I think that is almost all I have to say as far as this Estimate is concerned, with the exception of a few references to the educational side of agriculture. We have been trying to get that going. We have set up vocational schools. I think we have three rural schools in County Meath with farms attached. We have rather good teachers. They come from the Department of Education, and permission has to be sought from the committee of agriculture to get their instructors to go in there to give a lesson. All that is a little cumbersome. Nothing is so much appreciated by the farmers as the work which is being carried out. We have those schools fairly well placed all over the county, and we have trial plots as near the public roads as we can get them, but the young children want some of them too. We have the land there, and we can build model fowlhouses, we can build model cowhouses and model pighouses, and we can put pigs into them because we have the means of feeding them. But official red tape always gets us around the legs, and we are tied up before we know where we are. I should like if the Minister would straighten that matter out. I think that most of the national schools should have attached to them some place where an agricultural instructor can go in for half-an-hour or an hour once a week at least and instil into the minds of the pupils some sort of respect for the industry in which they are going to work. I do not mean that those are all farmers' sons. There are labourers' sons there too, and the labourer's son is every day getting further away from the land. He has lost interest in it. I met a young fellow the other day who could not even sharpen a hedge slash hook. All he knew was how to use a spade. The point is that that is what those schools ought to be for. I hold that agricultural education should take precedence over all other forms of education. There is not a lawyer nor a doctor nor a clergyman who ought not to get some smattering of it when going through college. They would then appreciate the farmers much better in after-life. There is not a civil servant, no matter who he is, who should not go through a course in agriculture.

Mr. Gorey

Hear, hear! Transport them for six months to a farm.

Mr. O'Reilly

In that way agriculture will be put on the pedestal which it ought to occupy. The Minister, I am sure, is quite determined that that should be done. We have been referring to those model fowlhouses. I had a shot at that too; I asked the poultry instructress to get me a model fowlhouse, because it would be much simpler to show it to the people who want them than to show them drawings. She said: "Oh, no; I cannot do that, because the Transport Act would not allow me. I would have to pay £5 more for my insurance if I carried that in my car." I said: "Well, then, the next best thing is a magic lantern. Can you manage that?" I was told that the same thing applied; she would have to pay £5 more for her insurance in that case too. It will be seen, therefore, that transport is an extremely serious and important problem as far as farming is concerned. I hope the Minister will throw all the weight he can into this whole question, and ensure that, if there is going to be a new transport system or any other system, the farmers will have their own, and if they cannot manage it properly he will know who to blame.

The last matter to which I want to refer is the different types of land in the country. We have very many different types of land even in the County Meath. We have land which has carried reasonably good populations through all the upheavals and all the turmoil and all the strife and all the famines and all the evictions. In certain districts in County Meath—not, perhaps, along the main roads—you will see thatched houses clustered together. The people there are now pursuing the same economy as they pursued 200 years ago. In the local graveyard you will see on the headstones the names of people who died perhaps 200 years ago, and the names are the same as those of the people in the locality. Other districts are completely depopulated. There is not a man or woman within sight. It may be assumed, therefore, that those other lands must have been the most generous. There must have been better and more secure livelihoods to be got out of those lands than on the heavy clay and rich lands which are now depopulated. I just mention that fact as showing that soil has something to do with population. Perhaps the Minister might ask his Department to keep a special eye on the manner in which nature gives special facilities for special production. I would ask him to advise the Land Commission, under no conditions, to ask any district to do what it cannot do. There are districts in County Meath which cannot produce crops, while there are other districts which can and will, and have always done it. Every encouragement and every assistance should be given to the districts which can produce certain crops, and every encouragement and assistance should be given to other districts where it is possible economically to engage in some other forms of production.

I should also like to ask the Minister to look into the fruit problem. We are very large producers of fruit in County Meath, and it has now come to the point where we have over produced, I suppose as a result of expert attention and expert growing. Last year we had 100 tons of surplus raspberries, notwithstanding the fact that under the heading of "pulp" in the import list appears an item of "pulp and other juices: £170,000." It is not easy to discover what these things are. The revenue people are the only people who could tell you, and it would take one or two days to get hold of these items. At the same time, I ask the Minister specially to consider that matter. We have quite a number of families depending on the growing of raspberries in Meath. Our average production is about 300 tons a year and of these there are about 100 tons that we cannot sell. I am positive that within the figure of this Estimate there must be some little margin which would buy at an economic price that 100 tons of surplus raspberries. I am sure the Minister will consider that.

Then there is another point. We grow tomatoes in Meath to a very large extent. One of the difficulties we find is that there is a licence issued to import tomatoes and that the licence overlaps the time when our tomatoes are ready for sale. The result is that in some shops I can see imported tomatoes being sold as Irish. I should like the Minister to look into that question and to see that the importation of tomatoes is completely stopped when the home tomatoes come on the market. Otherwise the good name of our tomatoes will be damaged. I trust that in the coming year we will be able to make some headway in connection with the important question of the depression in agriculture. I will conclude by stating that I am extremely glad that Deputy Gorey anyway has found one reason for the recent depression, and it is not a political reason.

Mr. Bennett

One might almost call this agricultural week. In this House we are discussing an Estimate of over £800,000 for the Department of Agriculture. In a building not far removed from this there is another body trying to solve the problem of what is the best thing to do for agriculture. In another part of the city the Spring Show is being held. Thousands of people have seen and praised and were delighted with the exhibits at the Show in Ballsbridge. I wonder how many of these realised the exact position of the people who produce many of the products shown there and of the farmers in the country generally. With the exception of a few prize-winning animals and some premium animals, I venture to say that very few of the animals sold at the Show, and they are probably the best in the country, would pay for the cost of production. There was a very big exhibit of dairy and future dairy cattle. It is rather lamentable that, while every effort is made to improve the cattle and, possibly, production as well, no real effort is made to make dairying profitable. We can argue as much as we like about increasing production; but it is useless arguing about increasing production if production of anything is carried out at a loss, and I think that pertains to dairying.

I have here a letter from the committee of agriculture in my county in reference to the price of milk, and I think the Minister got a similar communication. They are demanding a minimum price for milk beyond what is being paid now. That is quite a reasonable demand. I should like to make a demand for a guaranteed minimum price which would enable farmers to carry on dairying at a profit. The Minister has probably been approached in that matter by numerous bodies in the country. The average price of milk last year was about 5d. per gallon. I do not know whether it was quite that, but that would not suffice to pay for the cost of production.

Some ten years ago one of the most eminent authorities on the question in this country, in trying to arrive at the cost of production, stated that a 600-gallon cow, grazing two acres, with milk at 8d. per gallon, would realise in the year £6 17s. 6d., or £3 8s. 9d. per acre. Assuming the average was 500 gallons, which the same authority said was the real average, or probably a conservative average, and milk was 7½d. a gallon, there would be no profit. That was ten years ago, when the costs of production, as everybody knows, were much less than they are to-day. That was the assessment made in this House of the position of dairying farmers when milk was 7½d. or 8d. per gallon by no less a person than the present Minister for Agriculture. That was ten years ago when, as I say, the costs of production were not at all what they are now for various reasons. Does it require any argument to convince the Minister that what he satisfied himself ten years ago was the position of agriculture in regard to milk production should not now, after ten years, be remedied? The Minister at that time, of course, was free to say many things which he could not say now. He also stated then that a prominent farmer said to him: "To make anything out of farming is as difficult as picking a Derby winner." Apparently there was still a sporting chance at that time of making something out of farming, but it was as difficult as picking a Derby winner. What would be that farmer's chance to-day? Instead of saying that it was as difficult as picking a Derby winner, perhaps he would say that it was as difficult as finding a solution to the problem of perpetual motion. If he succeeded in solving the problem of perpetual motion and applied the results to himself, his workers and his machinery, he could not at present make a profit out of farming.

It is unnecessary to go into the various costs of production, because the Minister has himself gone into them, and he realises, as well as I realise, or as well as any farmer who is interested in dairying or any other branch of agriculture realises, that various items of agricultural production cannot now be produced at anything near the selling price. Knowing that, the Minister, during the last six or seven years when he was in control of agriculture, ought to have made some decent effort to remedy that situation. Of course, the policy of the Government, of which the Minister is a member, may have affected him in his particular position as head of the Department of Agriculture. He may have been hampered by the general policy of the Government of which he is a member, but, even if he were hampered, he has to accept the responsibility. Now, while we admit that a lot of money has been spent and is being spent on agriculture, I think that very few people will say that it was spent wisely or is being spent wisely.

Somebody referred here to the huge expenditure on wheat and beet. Some people seem to think that that is expenditure in the right direction, but a number of other people think that it is expenditure in the wrong direction. I, personally, am as convinced now as I was ten years ago that this policy with regard to beet, or wheat production here is not a sound policy for this country. I think that if you take into consideration that it is costing the country, generally, something like £2,000,000 for wheat and about £1,000,000 for beet, no Deputy here will say that it has been worth it, or that £3,000,000 could not have been better spent in some other direction. I am not arguing at the moment that the Minister and the Government, having enticed thousands of farmers in this country to go in for wheat production, should now abandon that project or run away from it, but I do think that some method other than the method they have been following should be developed. There might have been some excuse for attempting to foster wheat production in this country by a direct subsidy. That was the original plan of the Government, but when it became evident that the subsidy necessary for the production of wheat was reaching large dimensions, the Government adopted a new kind of camouflage and decided to remove the direct subsidy and institute a levy on the consumer which, to my mind, is quite a wrong method of approaching the matter. Somebody said here to-day, and I think the Minister concurred, that there was to be some change in that respect—that the burden that is at present being placed on the shoulders of the community in regard to wheat will be removed to some extent and that, if it cannot be carried on under some reasonable subsidy, some other method of helping the farmers might be thought about. I was glad, at any rate, to see that Deputy O'Reilly was critically interested in agriculture here. I should like to see very many more of the Fianna Fáil Deputies getting up here and making as plain and as open a statement as Deputy O'Reilly made. It would be useful to the House and to the country. We have so recently been discussing agriculture in this House that one finds that almost everything one says has been covered, to a certain extent, already, and that when we argue on the question of wheat, beet, dairying or anything else, we are repeating, in fact, something that we have said before. We are. Everyone of us is repeating what we have said before on this question of agriculture Every Deputy here who gets up and talks about agriculture says something that he has said previously. I admit that very little new is said on that subject—there is very little new to be said on it. The only thing that we can say is that we have now had seven or eight years of government by the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fianna Fáil Government, who promised to remedy everything in connection with agriculture, anyhow. If they failed— and we believe they have failed—they ought at least have the courage to say so; to say that the question, so far as they are concerned, is insoluble, and give it up and let somebody else attempt it, or else change the policy they have been pursuing for the last six or seven years and try some other policy for the farmers of this country that would enable them to make a living for themselves and their families.

Somebody said that we cannot dissociate the question of the farmer from labour. I admit that we cannot. The whole question is just as vital for the labourer as for the farmer. On the prosperity of the farmer depends the prosperity of thousands and thousands of the workers of this country. It was a Government Deputy who stated here in this House, during a recent debate, that there was no room for any further people on the land. I do not think that can be substantiated anywhere. I do not think the Minister himself would substantiate that statement, made by a prominent member on his own side of the House. I think he knows that, if the farmers were a little more prosperous, a great deal more employment would be given than is now given, and possibly better wages, but certainly there would be a very great deal more employment given. We have close on 500,000 farmers in this country, and a great number of these, if they were a little more prosperous, would be able to employ an additional man on their farms. I do not say that all of them would be able to do so, because some of the farms would be very small and would not afford any extra employment, but I do say that a great number of them would be able to employ at least an additional man on their farms if they were a little more prosperous, and I feel sure that that would absorb a great number of those who are on the unemployed register at the present time. In my own county, for instance, I hardly know of a farmer who would not be able to employ an extra man if times were better and things were a little more prosperous. In my own case, personally, I feel sure that I could easily employ an extra labourer, or perhaps two or three more, if I were a little more prosperous, or even if I were making the costs of production.

Apart from profit altogether, if I were even making the cost of production, I think I would employ more. I think that other Deputies will bear me out when I say that formerly, in harvesting time, apart from the regular hands that were employed all the year round, several extra hands were taken on and, in my county at least, it was the usual practice to keep some of these men on long after the harvest for the cleaning of drains, making new drains, fencing—the hundred and one things that have to be done around a farm. These men would be kept on for four or five months, but there is nothing like that now, and nobody is kept on except for the absolutely essential work such as the milking of cows and so on, and the result is that the land of the country is gradually getting into a state of decay; lands, for want of proper drainage, are being overrun with flaggers and rushes, and fences that were proper fences ten years ago are now levelled to the ground. The cost of doing that work eventually will be much greater than it would have been if it had been done year by year by the farmers during the last ten years, but they have been unable to do it. There is one solution for the unemployment problem, and that is in the prosperity of agriculture, and that is the only solution there is for it.

You have tried other methods. We have 20 times as many factories producing other commodiies as ever we had, and we have far more unemployment. At whatever cost—even if it should cost something enormous—the agricultural community must be put in a prosperous position. The money that has been spent in other directions should be used to help the people who are the greatest section in the country, the people who keep the rest of the people going. Full consideration is given to any other industry, and any person proposing to enter into business, who wants to start a small factory, for instance, has only to approach the Government and he gets assistance. Everything is gone into fully so that he will be able to work at a profit, pay his men a fair wage, and so on. In some cases the probable rate of interest he will make on his capital is estimated, while nothing at all is done for agriculture. Not alone is no attempt made to enable us to make any profit on capital invested, but no attempt is made to put us even within reasonable reach of making anything near the cost of production. Some Deputies will argue that there are small farmers—I do not think there are any big farmers nowadays in that fortunate position—who have survived the last eight or ten years without getting further into debt or without getting into debt at all. There are. There are numerous small farmers who did not get into debt in the last eight or ten years. Why? Because they were existing under conditions under which no people should be asked to exist. Their sons and daughters were working on the farms unpaid when they should have been getting a wage. That is what enabled any farmers who existed without getting into debt in the last ten years to do so and there is no other reason for it.

I want to say a few words about credit, to which Deputy O'Reilly has referred. Without credit, there is little hope for the farmer who is in difficult circumstances, and there is no credit for him. Deputy O'Reilly referred to a person owning one of these new factories, built, as he said, of concrete which falls down the next day—I am not going to say that—and who goes into a bank and, on the security of the stone and mortar—or fallen concrete, can get any reasonable sum he likes to ask. There is not a farmer who could get 2d., and that is a very small sum, on the security of the land and the buildings on the land, which ought to be the soundest security in this country. I am sorry I have to say that in a native Parliament.

Mr. T. Kelly

What about the £32,000,000 the Banking Commission found?

Mr. Bennett

The farmers did not find it.

Mr. T. Kelly

I ask the question. I am not a farmer, as the Deputy knows.

Mr. Bennett

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have a good bit of land and I would like to borrow some money on it. If Deputy Kelly will find me any institution which will lend me anything on any part of it I should be very grateful. Deputy Kelly may be better situated than we are as farmers. He may have some tangible property.

Mr. T. Kelly

Not much.

Mr. Bennett

He may have a little, some kind of shop on which a gombeen man would lend him something. In the pawnshops in the city here, if I pawn my watch, I will get something on it, but I could not pawn an acre or 100 acres of land anywhere. That is the position to which we are reduced by the Government which, ten years ago, were going to make the farmers so prosperous that not alone would they be making a profit, but every man-jack of them, down to the infant child, would be £16 annually better off. It is time they seriously put on their thinking caps. If they believe the question is not soluble, let them get out and allow somebody else to settle it.

Mr. Victory

Except for a few notes struck by the last speaker, the House generally seems to be agreed that something must be done for agriculture. There is a little difference of opinion as to methods. I heard Deputy Dillon suggesting yesterday that certain information with regard to improvements in agriculture should be sent into the homes of the farmers with the receivable orders. I do not agree with that because, from what I know of the country, if documents of that kind are sent into the farmers' homes they will be regarded as useless and, in most cases, will not be read. What I suggest—and I think there cannot be any serious objection to it considering that this country has to depend on agriculture, no matter whether it engages in industry or not— is that there should be an agricultural text-book in every primary school for the last year of every child's education, whether in regard to cattle, fowl, manuring of the land or production of vegetables. When a child has to pay part of the cost of the book, the father and mother will read it when it is brought home and when something turns up which requires attention, the book will be read again and again. That is the first suggestion I make.

We are agreed that we must try to bring about a greater output, but in endeavouring to bring about greater production—and I speak as a farmer on this point—you must be sure that you are not putting the cost of living beyond what the ordinary man in the town and city can bear. Therefore, you are driven to produce more at a lesser cost, and I believe that is possible. I believe that with proper manuring and attention, the land of this country could be made to produce half as much again as it is producing at present. Deputy Dillon told us this evening that of the 12,000,000 acres in the country, 5,000,000 acres were sufficient to feed every man, woman and child and, to use his words, if you were to use a ramrod to force it down their throats, you could not make them eat all they could produce. I do not go as far as that, but I do believe that, with proper cultivation, proper fertilisers and a knowledge how to handle them, we could produce half as much again at the same capital expenditure. That would mean a return of our export trade and, consequently, the bringing down of the adverse trade balance. It would also mean that people engaged in agriculture would get a stimulus to go in for more tillage and that would mean more employment. I am ready to admit that the agricultural labourer of the country has been as hard hit as the agricultural farmer. They are chips of the one block, and I am as anxious about one as the other. If you were able to encourage production—if the Department could see its way, in its wisdom, to put into operation a substantial and extensive lime scheme or a subsidy for superphosphate up to 50 per cent. of its cost, or take the tariff off the raw materials for the manufacture of superphosphate, one would then have the manure at a price that would encourage people to use it; and you would be producing more both in tillage and on the grass. I believe we could bring the land—even grassland in certain areas where it is marshy —into production by proper manure and proper drainage. At the moment, of course, we do not like to go too far in making suggestions, because there is an agricultural commission going into all aspects of the matter; but so long as the Minister's Estimate is before the House I think it is something we should think over for the immediate future.

With reference to the talk that there has been about the heifer schemes, I believe they were partly a success, but there was this one objection. I found from my experience that when a poor man went into a market place where an auction was going on he did not know exactly the value of the animals on offer, he asked some man for his opinion as to what a certain beast would be worth, and that man was interested either as an auctioneer or as a friend of an auctioneer and told him a price that was too high. I would suggest that the Department should buy these heifers and deal with them in the same way as the sows are being dealt with under the Bacon Board. In that way there would be a better-class heifer, more supervision and less trouble about getting money. I am glad to hear it said here that the former heifer schemes have been 98 per cent. paid for. I am one of those who believe—at the moment, anyhow—that beef for export is not a practical proposition in place of the store cattle trade, because the subsidy on the beef for England is such that you can get as much here, and sometimes more, for the forward store than for the finished beast.

Therefore, I agree with what at least two Deputies said this evening, that we should consider getting the best possible breed of cattle in the country—and particularly shorthorn. I have heard some hard things said about Polled-Angus, but most of it is due to its being crossed with the Kerry breed. In the Polled-Angus case a man is under the impression that he is getting a cross between the Polled-Angus and the shorthorn, but instead it works out to be a cross between the Kerry and the Polled-Angus.

In this debate, by what some of the Deputies have said, one would think that it was only here that the agricultural community were hard hit. But that is not so. All the world over the agricultural community is being hard hit. I believe that our opportunity at the moment is to try and develop our agriculture and all agricultural industries—eggs, butter, and so on. We should try to develop them to the utmost, and if we are able to make a success of that, by that very fact there will be a surplus for export, there will be more money here, and all the industries in all the towns and cities will have made some gain by that. In advocating this subsidy on artificial manure and lime I would say to the Minister that this is good for the nation as a whole, because the very fact of having more production, more export, and more money in circulation in the country, will mean more industry and less unemployment.

Mr. Brennan

It was refreshing to hear Deputy Victory and Deputy O'Reilly this evening. As a matter of fact, one would think that we never had an economic war. Deputy O'Reilly sailed along placidly this afternoon in a very nice, smooth speech. It was like a smooth river moving along, and he knew all the time that he was coming to the end—coming to the sea. Deputy Victory followed on the same lines. I congratulate them both. I think Deputy Victory was perfectly right—a hundred per cent. correct—in everything he said. But I would like to remind the Deputy, when he talks as I have been talking about greater production, that we must sell the greater production somewhere. I hope that when Deputy Victory and Deputy O'Reilly are talking about this that they feel as thoroughly aware as I am of the fact that we have to export.

Mr. Victory

You must remember the quotas.

Mr. Brennan

Deputy Victory mentioned that, and I quite agree with it. If there is going to be increased production and if we are going to be prevented from exporting the surplus except in accordance with a measured quota, we are on the wrong lines. We ought to be reasonable. I certainly agree 100 per cent. with Deputy Victory, and I think Deputy Victory ought to use whatever influence he has with the Minister and with the Executive Council to get them to adopt this point of view. Pressure ought to be brought to bear on the Executive Council and particularly on the Minister for Agriculture to see that we have at least some genuine, thorough attempt made at greater production in this country. What have they done for it? What have the Executive Council— which the Deputy stands behind—done for greater production? I will tell you. They have ruined shorthorn breeding in the western counties. And how have they done this? Other counties may not possibly understand the system which is followed down there with regard to special term bulls. There was a system in operation in every county with regard to premium bulls. The Department of Agriculture was taking the responsibility some years ago for providing premium shorthorn bulls in certain poor districts, but they dropped that completely because the premium bulls were costing too much, and they bought bulls which are called special term bulls, to which no man with any respect for his cow would send her. And that is what the Department has done in the West of Ireland over the past four, five or six years. Why do not the Fianna Fáil back-benchers take these matters up with the people on the front bench and make them do the right thing? I entirely agree that somebody must in this country sometime—if not now—take off their coats and follow the line of greater production and produce that which will, at least as far as we can see, find a ready market. We have not heard anything yet in this debate of growing rich on beet or wheat, on self-sufficiency, or on supplying the home market. We have been always supplying the home market. Some people in this country, a few years ago, were not able to see that. But the figures now show that, with all the propaganda we had and with all the great effort, our consumption of home products has remained static, year in, year out.

How are we going to produce greater wealth in this country? I, like Deputy Victory and Deputy O'Reilly, believe that, if this country is to get any degree of prosperity, it will have to get it from the land. The land is our mainstay, our main industry. What attempt is the Government making to get wealth out of the land? Like Deputy Victory, I entirely agree that the land of this country is not producing anything like what it is capable of producing. The fertility of the soil has been reduced. The land is starved and we have people who have been reduced to poverty by the economic war, who cashed in on everything they had for the last three or four years. They have been trying to cash in on the soil itself and they cannot set it now. It has all depreciated.

The Minister started nibbling at this thing this year with a 10/- subsidy on artificial manure. It is no use. I told him it was no use and he will find from the sales that it is no use. A 10/- subsidy per ton on artificial manure, reducing the price from £4 10s. to £4 per ton, is not an inducecent to any small farmer to put out more manure. It simply cheapens his half ton by 5/- and his ton by 10/-, but he is not induced to put out more manure by that. The extraordinary thing about it is that we can only find £40,000 for that purpose but we can find hundreds of thousands of pounds for any kind of business like alcohol factories, which are no use to anybody and for which, I am afraid, the Minister or his advisers must take some responsibility.

If we look up the trade records of this country, we will find there are certain lines which paid and certain lines which have not paid. If we are good business people, or if we have any idea of business, we will endeavour to follow the lines that paid every time. That is the thing to do, unless of course, you have reached saturation point as far as sales are concerned. We have no evidence, as far as agriculture is concerned, that we have reached saturation point in the provision of good cattle, but we have done nothing to provide good cattle, nothing to improve them. For the last six or seven years, we had people shouting from the house-tops that there was no market for cattle, and we slaughtered the calves because we could not get a market for them. Now, Fianna Fáil ought to realise their responsibility in that matter and, while we are prepared to put up all the arguments we always put up, while we are prepared to suggest anything we can suggest for the improvement of the situation, it is their job to try and bring back the things they lost to this country.

Deputy O'Reilly told us what an extremely delicate thing it was to try to hold your market, that the smallest thing unbalances it. Oh, shades of the old economic war, when we went out, with our coats off, and did not care twopence about what happened to the market. Now we find that the smallest thing unbalances it, and Deputy O'Reilly is convinced that one of the things that unbalances it is rabbits. The fact that there are too many rabbits accounts for the bad price of live stock.

Fianna Fáil ought to have some sense of responsibility for the loss which they have created in this country, and the Minister ought to endeavour to remedy the situation and, if he does not, his back benchers, who apparently realise the position, who know it as well as we know it, and as well as the Minister ought to know it, should do so. They realise that somebody must take off their coats to this thing. If the back benchers do not push the Minister to it, I am afraid we cannot do it.

My opinion about breeding cattle is —and I am at one with Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Victory, the only two I heard speak on it since I came into the House—that what we want in this country at the present time is great care and great diligence in breeding cattle; not because they are not good; they are good, but we can have them much better. The one great point about the British market is that they have always been looking for the best article, not the cheapest. That is encouragement to us. We were always able to produce the best article. We ought to continue to do so and to improve it. We will always be able to find a ready market for it.

How are we going to do it? Have we any inferior cattle in this country to-day? We have, plenty of it. And the people who have studied this question are convinced that the one great foundation for breeding good cattle is the shorthorn. How are we conserving the shorthorn breeds all over the country? This is what we are doing— and I am putting it up to the Minister because I am convinced that the scheme for the allocation of premium bulls all over the country is all wrong and is having disastrous results: Premium bulls are placed within a three mile limit, no nearer, and it does not matter whether they are a beef, or a dairy, or an ordinary beef shorthorn, there is a three mile limit. What happens then is that practically all the cows inside a certain area go to the particular bull that is there, irrespective of what breed he is, whereas there ought to be available in every district a shorthorn bull and a good shorthorn bull, the best than can be provided, because there is not any man having three or four or five cows who would not send one, two or three, to a shorthorn bull if there was one in his district. What happens is that, irrespective of whether they are suitable or unsuitable, all the cows in that district go to shorthorns and all the cows in another district go to beef bulls. That is a question that has to be tackled and it has to be tackled earnestly and thoroughly. Even if the Department has to go "all out" and schedule certain areas as shorthorn areas, it ought to be done, because the foundation stock must be preserved.

I have here before me some very interesting figures with regard to pigfeeding, which I propose to read for the information of the House. They furnish, to my mind at least, the reason why pigs are not being fed in this country to-day. Two lots of pigs, five young pigs in each lot, of the same litter and the same sex in each lot, were put on experimental feed recently in Roscommon, under first-class conditions. The experiment was carried out by a head agricultural instructor in the county. He was, in fact, testing two types of meals, one against the other. I am not concerned very much with which type of meal gave the best return. What I am concerned with is that in each of five pigs, at the finish of four months' feeding, lot I had three pigs in grade A, one in grade B and one light pig. Lot 2 had three in grade A, one in grade B and one light pig. The result was practically the same.

Here is what I am concerned with, In one of the lots after four months' feeding, under first-class conditions all the costings are given except labour. There is nothing given except feed costings, actual feeding and the initial cost of buying in. The cost of buying in was estimated at 27/- per young pig. As a matter of fact, they were not bought in; they were littered in the same place. Adding the cost of the food to the initial cost, lot I showed a profit after four months of £1 5s. 8d., or 5/- per pig. Lot 2, which was fed on dearer meal, showed a loss of £3 15s. 10d. We cannot feed pigs under conditions like that. I have here a report showing the price of bacon at the same time. The purpose of giving me these figures was to make a comparison between the price got for the pigs and the price got for bacon. I do not want to go that far, because I do not think that it should be our aim to bring the price of pigs up to the present price of bacon as the present price of bacon is prohibitive. It is out of the reach of the poor man. He cannot buy it. What we ought to aim at is lowering the cost of production. I do not know to what extent feeding costs will come down when the Minister, as he intimated yesterday, brings into operation his new Bill dealing with the maize-meal mixture, but while that stands at its present price we cannot feed pigs. If there is a price fixed which will bring the price of pigs into relation with the price of bacon at the present time, I do not think you will have done very much good, because bacon remains at a prohibitive price.

There is another matter to which I would like to refer. The Minister should be at least anxious to do something to try to get the people into remunerative production. He should be anxious to do that quickly. He should be anxious to get an immediate return if he can. If he is anxious to do that I would suggest that he should endeavour to get into the poultry line as well as into the pig line. I am a member of the Agricultural Committee in Roscommon and, as far as we can see, the Department do not appear to have any ideas on the poultry question beyond providing loans on, what I consider, most unreasonable terms, for people to build poultry houses. I do not think that it is any good at all to a woman down the country to say that she can have a loan of £20 to build a poultry house provided she pays it back at £5 per year. Where would she get £5 a year? Mind you, if she has to take £5 a year for four years out of the profits of the egg and poultry industry she has very little left.

I hold that the poultry and egg industry would do more to achieve comfort in this country, because it represented the comforts of the farmers house always, than any other line of production. It provides a quicker return than any other line. It originally provided the wherewithal for the purchase of groceries in the small farmer's house. In addition, it left a nucleus for some kind of a fund out of which the housewife could buy other necessaries for her children. The unfortunate thing about it is that while the Minister and the Government were "galavantin" with the economic war, we lost the market we had for our eggs and poultry. Now we are stranded and we are trying to get it back. How can we get it back? We can only get it back by adopting the very best and latest methods. Is anybody making any endeavour to do that? Not that I know of. We should not count the cost in trying to do the thing right. We ought to study the methods of production and marketing in operation in countries like Denmark. We ought to take off our coats and get the thing done.

At present, there is in operation in some counties—and it is not a Department suggestion either—a system under which day-old chicks are reared by a foster mother. I have seen it in operation in Roscommon this year. I am convinced that if that system is taken up generally we shall have plenty of poultry in two or three years' time. The Minister ought to consider that. He ought to make some attempt at learning all he can learn to deal with the situation that will arise when these poultry come into production. It is a very important matter; I do not think there is anything more important. I do not think there is anything that would give a greater fillip to happiness and comfort on the land or that would go further to stem what is termed the flight from the land, because mind you, if the outgoings of the farm have all to be met from the price of a few beasts, there is very little comfort in the home. I recommend that scheme to the Minister.

I should like the Minister to consider the speeches made by two Deputies behind him, Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Victory. I should like him to go even further than they suggested. They apparently appear to be quite satisfied that we would get out somewhere. They appealed, particularly Deputy O'Reilly, for a combined effort from all Deputies in the House to try to get out of the mess into which the Government have walked us. The Minister, at any rate, should bend his mind and his back to it. Let him follow the line that leaves the greatest margin of profit. Let us get out of the rut of self-sufficiency which has long ago been killed by the development of transport and communication. We have learned a lot in the last five or six years. It is a good thing that we have learned. I do not want to say, "I told you so" to anybody, but I do want to say that, if we are not fixing the responsibility, somebody in future days will fix the responsibility. It is up to the Minister's back-benchers to see that he does the right thing.

This country is in a sorry state at the present time. Everybody knows that. I have not much personal contact myself with the need for loans and for credit, but when making inquiries recently with regard to evidence that should be put before the Agriculture Commission, I was amazed to find the number of people who are really down and out. I am convinced that if this country is ever to be put on its feet again it will be done by those who do not want credit, by the people who were able to stand up to the racket that went on here in recent years. Something will have to be done for those people to whom I refer who are really in a bad way.

Mr. Davin

What can they produce?

Mr. Brennan

There is a responsibility on somebody to see that their position is put right. I do not want to be asked what is the cure to meet their case? Let those who are responsible for putting them in their present position find the cure. Credits must be found for those people who are at present down and out. Their position must be dealt with immediately. I do not know whether the Minister has any confidence in the future of this country or not. I have not heard him say that he has. So far as one can judge by his actions, I do not think that he has. If I could see the Minister going out as enthusiastically in support of some scheme that would help to restore confidence in the people as he did for his scheme for the slaughter of the calves and in his pursuit of the economic war, then I would believe him. I suggest to him that he ought to get his Department to look into the records of the trade of this country. If that is done I think he will find that whatever trade we have done internationally has been done because of agriculture and of the export of cattle, the cattle that we despised at one time. It does not matter about that now but, at all events, we ought to follow whatever pays best and leaves us the largest profit.

I will not have any faith in the Minister until I see him take off his coat and strive to restore prosperity to our agricultural industry. By his present policy he is allowing it to rot and decay and is putting the agricultural community in the position that they are not able to provide for themselves. He does not appear to bother, although the welfare of that industry is his responsibility. As I told him here on a former occasion, he ought to be the farmer's watchdog. My submission is that instead of herding the resources of this country wisely he has herded them badly. I am afraid that when he is called upon to account for his stewardship he will not be counted a good and worthy servant unless during whatever term remains to him as Minister he realises his responsibilities and faithfully acts up to them.

Mr. Hughes

This is by far the most important Vote that comes before the Dáil because the activities of the Department over which the Minister for Agriculture presides are bound up with the most important and vital industry in the State. The low income of the farmer, the cost of production to him which has now reached an artifically high level, due largely to the rash use of tariffs by the Government, constitutes a serious social problem for this House and the country because it affects our whole economy. As has so often been said, if the agricultural industry is not prosperous and on a sound basis then you cannot have prosperity in city, town or village. In view of the alarming position in which that industry is to-day, one would expect that the Minister would be examining the problems that affect it with the greatest possible concern. But what do we find? The Minister, when introducing the Vote, made no reference whatever to the distressed state of agriculture. He gave the House no indication as to what he proposes to do. I suppose when replying he will tell us that he has set up a commission But he told us last night that he expects that it will take that commission some years to complete its work. Are the people who are so hard pressed at the present time expected to last out in their present unfortunate economic position for several years?

We know that on the Supplementary Vote for the Department the Minister told the House that the agricultural position to-day was as good as it was in 1931. He said that, taking it on the whole, it was not so bad at all. In spite of that, I was glad to see this evening that several members of the Minister's Party had the courage to get up and state what they know, and what all of us know to be a fact, that all is not well with this important industry. Can it be possible that the Minister fails to realise the seriousness of the situation? Within the last few weeks we had here in this city a demonstration organised by farmers It was organised on a very small scale because the organisers were not in a position to tap very many counties The demonstration was a huge affair. It was a big thing—something that had not been seen in this town for many years. It was a demonstration that came spontaneously from the people They felt that they should avail of the opportunity given to them to demonstrate, as far as they could, that they were not going to submit any longer to the unsatisfactory conditions that prevail in this, the major industry of the State. A few days afterwards the Minister, at a meeting of his own constituency, tried to pour scorn and ridicule on that protest meeting. He said that the farmers who took part in it had wasted a fine day and would be far better engaged if they had remained at home. Let us assume that it was a day wasted. It may have been or it may not have been, but the farmers who attended it probably thought that they are obliged to waste many days at home, measured by the returns they get from their labours on their farms. They are getting very poor returns so that they can well argue to themselves that many a day is wasted at home. Yet, the Minister thought it well to comment on that.

What is the real position? In 1931 we exported animals, and foodstuffs of animal origin, value for £27,000,000 and in 1938, according to the latest figures available, they had fallen to £18,994,000. That means that the figures have fallen by over one-third. According to the Trade Journal the total agricultural output in 1930 represented £62,000,000, and these figures had fallen in 1937 to £47,000,000. I am aware that since the settlement of the economic war the figures have again gone up slightly, but I want to point out that it is a serious state of affairs to have an alarming fall in agricultural products from £62,000,000 to £47,000,000. Side by side with that situation there was an enormous increase in taxation. The total general taxation was about £30,000,000, and including local rates came approximately to £40,000,000. While there was a falling off in the value of agricultural exports from £62,000,000 to £47,000,000, general taxation increased by £10,000,000. Deputies on the opposite side of the House are beginning to realise that that is a crippling situation. The real problem in agriculture at present is the cost of production, and side by side with that is the huge burden of taxation on the people. How is the taxation being spent? We have been considering in the last few weeks different Votes under which money was provided for unemployment, £1,500,000 for the Board of Works, and a contribution of practically £400,000 from local authorities, or, taking them together, £2,000,000 to be spent directly by way of dole, and a further £1,500,000 on unemployment and relief grants. In addition, huge sums of money were spent on drainage, water, sewerage and housing schemes. I do not want to cavil at that. It is a good social work and necessary work, but I say that we are spending huge sums of money on unproductive works, that are clearly a drain on our resources, and that the country cannot stick. Somebody will have to call a halt.

People who are producing by far the greater portion of the taxation are getting no help whatever. In fact, they are being hampered by the industrial policy of the present Government. The real problem, as far as the cost of production in agriculture is concerned, is that owing to our indiscreet policy in industrial development, we have got two of our big industries into a proper jam. Our present industrial policy is cutting right across agricultural interests, and many things that are fundamentally necessary to agricultural production, raw materials, for instance, are, as a result of industrial development, costing far too much. The prices are artificially high and, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, the result is that the margin of profit has, in a great many cases, disappeared. That is the real problem. I want to know if the Minister has full realisation of the position. It is beginning to dawn on some Deputies on the opposite benches that the problem to be dealt with is serious. These Deputies from their contact with the people are beginning to realise that the country cannot stick it much longer, yet the Minister comes in and says that, on the whole, agriculture is not badly off. It is time that the Minister fearlessly and honestly admitted that there is a big problem to be solved, and that he should face up to his responsibilities. It has been commented upon by many Deputies that while little has been done for agriculture, industrial interests have been well looked after, and that huge sums of money have been provided by the Government. The subsidy given for artificial manures was a poor, niggardly and begrudging attempt to solve a big problem.

I do not know who is responsible for this state of affairs. I feel that it is the Minister. He is a very courteous Minister, but I feel that when he goes to a meeting of the Executive Council, the Minister for Industry and Commerce is too able for him, and gets all the perquisites for his people. I feel that the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture is not able to fight his battle. What I conclude is that the Minister for Industry and Commerce has the ability to get what he wants. In my opinion, he gets a great deal more than he is entitled to get, and that is done at the expense of the unfortunate agricultural people. This country has been got into a jam, and it is the responsibility of the Government and the Minister to get it out of it. Bear in mind that the situation is very serious, and that it may give rise to trouble in the near future. Now is the time to face up to it before it is too late. The country is very peaceful now, but the people will not stand the present situation too long. They have already made an attempt to indicate that to the Government, in the only way possible to them, by holding a demonstration in Dublin. I want to know if the Government is going to take any warning from that demonstration, and I want the Minister, when replying, to tell the House what he proposes to do. Is he going to wait for the Report of the Agricultural Commission? If so, he is going to wait too long.

It has been pointed out from these benches what could be done and what would be helpful. There is no doubt that for a number of years this country has been lagging in agricultural output compared with Denmark, New Zealand, Holland or other competitors. In all these countries production has been increased enormously. Denmark has quadrupled its production of bacon, hams and eggs in recent years. New Zealand has enormously increased the output of butter. Holland, which in 1931 was importing into the English market less than 1,000,000 great hundreds of eggs, is now importing 8,000,000 great hundreds, while we have been sliding back in our production. Take milk production. The average yield in some countries is 700 gallons per cow, while here it is only about 400 gallons. I saw figures recently which gave the output per man per annum in the various countries. In New Zealand the output per man is £230; in Denmark and Holland it is £210; in England it is less than £200, while in this country the output is as low as £70 per man. That must be put right. These figures alone show the House the responsibilities of the position. They show that there is something seriously wrong with our whole policy and methods of agriculture. We must get new ideas and we must get a new technique. We must get new methods and more intensity of production.

An Ceann Comhairle

Perhaps Deputy Hughes would now move to report progress.

Progress reported; the Committee to sit again when items 6 and 5 are disposed of.