I move:—
That the Dáil is of opinion that if economic collapse is to be avoided, effective steps to dispose of our agricultural surplus production must be taken forthwith.
This motion was put down for grave reasons. It is perfectly true, as the Taoiseach says, that there rests upon every public man in this country a very special responsibility to measure his language and to approach matters of vital national interest not from the Party view but from the point of view of the nation as a whole, to utter his criticisms not for the purpose of securing Party advantage, but rather for the purpose of preventing the occurrence of mistakes, and of strengthening the hands of the Executive to do what may be necessary in the national interest. To date, looking back on the months that have passed since the Taoiseach first appealed for forbear ance and support in a time of unexampled crisis, I cannot charge myself or any of my colleagues with an act or a word that has been designed to embarrass the Taoiseach or his Government in carrying on the delicate affairs of State that he has to deal with. On the contrary, it seems to me as it seems, I think, to many of our friends, that we have sacrificed a substantial part of the political vitality of our movement in the endeavour to allay, for this period, political recrimination in the country. I think we have. If we have spent that vitality or lost it, I think it has been well lost. What ever political advantage we might have gained by refusing to agree to the co-operation which the Taoiseach sought, the nation would have lost far more. But when we attempt, as parliamentarians on all sides of the House, to give effect to the spirit of such an understanding, let us bear in our minds the fate of great democratic nations which sought to impose upon their people a silence which appeared desirable to the Executive, but which ultimately proved more than the people themselves were prepared to bear. Let them remember the fate of the great Republic of France, which suffered its people to be lulled into a sense of absolute security until the very eve of the disaster that overwhelmed them, and let them ask themselves if this was not largely due to the excessive desire, albeit understandable, on the part of the Executive to silence criticism and to secure that everybody in the State should become an unquestioning "yes man". We recognise the necessity for that measure of co-operation vital to the safety of the State, but we also recognise the essential and vital necessity of reasoned criticism, and a reassurance of the public mind at reasonably frequent intervals if the safety of the State is not to perish before internal menaces that can be as great as any external threat.
When I was preparing what I had to say on the subject matter of this resolution, I could not help asking myself the question: If I were in the place of the Minister for Agriculture and if Deputy James Ryan was standing where I stand now, what sort of speech would be made: would there be forbearance and would there be an understanding of the difficulties with which I was confronted: would there be a desire to hold up my hand when it might be politically advantageous to strike it down? I doubt it.
Whatever kind of speech he might have made on that occasion, my purpose here to-day is to do nothing beyond pointing out to the Government where they have clearly gone wrong, to urge them to repair thess errors and to offer them our co-operation in any trade negotiations upon which they may be called upon to enter in the future to secure for our people the most advantageous arrangements the circumstances will permit.
I am not going to depart from the understanding which the Taoiseach invited last night and which, we understand now, he thinks it better to alter. So far as I am concerned, I am going to pursue the line I communicated to the Minister for the Co-Ordination of Defensive Measures last night. I have half an hour to reply, and many of my colleagues will have an opportunity of intervening in the debate after the Taoiseach has spoken. If the Taoiaeach chooses to lead this debate along certain lines, he mast be the judge of the expediency of that course. But if the debate is to follow along those lines, by the Taoiseach's own choosing, at this moment, the Taoiseach must not complain if every Deputy of this House speaks as honestly and as freely as he himself feels constrained to speak. I, for my part, will deal with the economic aspect of the problems that confront us and I shall deal with what the Taoiseach has to say, or thinks it expedient to say, when called upon to do so.
My first charge against this Government is that the Minister for Agriculture has abdicated his trusteeship for agriculture by betraying the interests of the people who live upon the land, at the instance of the Minister for Supplies, whenever he was called upon to do so. Again and again and again, the interests of restricted groups of industrialists have demanded that the farmer should be sacrificed ruthlessly and, in each case, the Minister for Supplies, representing the manufacturers, has overborne the Minister for Agriculture, the farmers have been robbed and the industrialists have prospered. Nor do I propose to mention that in a general way without coming down to particular cases of which I propose to give details, and to challenge the Minister for Supplies to deny one syllable of the case I make. Let me firstly deal with the case of wool. Last autumn, there was a very considerable wool clip in this country. That wool clip could have been sold in the Dutch and Spanish markets for 2/6 per lb. There were merchants anxious to buy it. There were exporters willing to ship it.
Nothing stood between the farmers of this country and 2/8 per lb. for their wool except the prohibition of the Minister for Supplies on the export of the wool. Was that wool being kept here for the purpose of protecting our people against cold? Not at all. It was being kept here in pursuance of an agreement entered into by the woollea manufacturers here who were bartering it. They were to get botany yarns from England in exchange for the cross-bred wool which was to be shipped to England at England's price and turned into blankets and khaki uniforms in Great Britain. I should be glad to send Great Britain the wool. I should be glad to see Great Britain win the war. I should be glad to do anything to help her to win the war. I do not want to take up the position of casting odium on the Minister for Supplies for sending wool to England to make uniforms. It could not be used for a better purpose in the world at present. But if the Minister for Supplies wants to be patriotic, let him do so at the expense of the Exchequer and not at the expense of the unfortunate farmer who shears the sheep. Suppose Deputy Briscoe's company had found gold in Wicklow, what would he have thought if he were ordered to sell that gold at 30/- an ounce to Great Britain when the Dutch would give him 90/- per ounce? I bet he would not do it. He would claim the world price, and we would all sympathise with his claim. We would all be anxious to see this asset sold at the highest bid. What difference is there between gold from Wicklow and wool from Wicklow? Is it any more noble to dig gold than to shear wool? And if you are entitled to recover the world price for gold, why should the farmers of Wicklow be denied the world price for wool? They were denied that price because the woollen manufacturers wanted to get botany wool yarns from England. The wool control in England stipulated that if these supplies were to be granted, the manufacturers of this country who wanted the supplies would have to give them a lien on the cross-bred wool of Ireland, but they were prepared to offer only a price substantially lower than that forthcoming in Holland and Spain. In pursuance of this agreement, the export of cross-bred wool was prohibited in this country at the instance of the Minister for Supplies. Then, negotiations were opened as to price with Great Britain. When negotiations as to price for this cross-bred wool weie proceeding, Holland was overrun and Spain ceased to be a customer for wool, whereupon we found ourselves with an immense accumulation of cross-bred wool for which there was no market but the British wool control. The British wool control would not give us an economic price, with the result that a large proportion of that wool is left on our hands to-day. The only substantial sales we have made are in respect of the wool we have shipped to the U.S.A., and the price of wool has fallen proportionately in this country.
Now, I come to manure. Time and again we have represented that the land of this country was starved for manure. I told the Minister for Supplies on one occasion that I had outside the port of Sligo 25,000 tons of superphosphate of lime and that nothing prevented it coming in for distribution amongst the farmers of County Sligo and Roscommon but his prohibition—his refusal to remove the tariff or grant the subsidy available at that period to the manures manufactured in Irish plants. The Irish manure ring absolutely refused to allow our farmers to get one ounce of manure from outside this country because, if it came in, it would break thpir price ring, break their strangle-hold on the manure market, and break their power to exploit the farmers. Did the Minister for Agriculture say then: "I insist on this manure coming in"? Did he say that wherever manures could be got for relief of the Irish farmer he would get them and give them to him? Not a bit of it He said: "So long as the manure ring does not want this manure, the faimeis must do without it" and, by God, they did. This House, supposed to represent the agricultural community, is to stand silently by while the Minister for Aguculture derclares that so long as the manure ring does not want to let in manure he will not let it in—and that at a time when not half the farmers have sufficient manure to do their normal tillage operations, not to mention the extra tillage forced upon them by the Minister's Tillage Order. And the members of the Fianna Fáil Party claim to represent the agricultural community in this country!
Now we come to onions. At the urgent instance of the Minister for Agriculture, the farmers of Kerry and other parts of this country went into the onion crop. Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan raised the question a month or six weeks ago as to why these people would not be allowed to export these onions. At that time, the fanners in the Castiegregory area and the congested districts of Kerry could have got £60 a ton for onions on the English market. The land in certain areas in Kerry was yielding six tons to the statute acre, which meant that the farmer in Kerry could have got £360 per acre for his onions, and he was forbidden to take that price because the Minister for Supplies would not permit him to export them.
The British people, a wealthy nation, are prepared to do without motor cars, without silk stockings, without butter, without bacon, without a variety of other commodities which we would regard as essentials, in order to secure for the community foreign exchange to add to the national wealth by the advantageous realisation of their products on the markets of, the world, but we, according to the Minister for Supplies, cannot do without onions, and we must purchase that luxury of onions, not at the expense of the community as a whole, but at the expense of a few congest farmers in County Kerry who, by their industry and skill, have produced a crop which would confer comparative wealth upon them. That we deny them, that we withheld from them because, forsooth, we cannot live without onions. Half Europe is starving, but the poor Irish cannot live without onions, and to ensure their supplies they must retain in serfdom and poverty congest farmers in County Kerry instead of purchasing those supplies at the current world price and paying for their luxuries, if they want them, or, else, let the Kerry farmers get the price available in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Now, that is not the whole story, because if these onions could have been kept and sold here, well and good, but these silly men who know as much about agriculture as my foot—I refer to the Minister for Supplies—have the idea that an onion is an onion. The Minister, who was born and bred in the city, is familiar with the Spanish onion, and he thinks that all onions partake of the qualities of the Spanish onion—a thing that looks like a handball and has the appearance of the setting sun—but that is not the kind of onions we grow in this country. I have here a letter describing the state in which one of the largest onion dealers in this city finds himself to-day. The quality of Irish onions is excellent, but their keeping capacity does not compare with that of continental onions. Spanish onions or Egyptian onions can readily be kept, under normal conditions, until March, April, or even May. Irish onions, because we have probably not yet developed as highly efficient a system of drying and saving them as is practised in countries where onions have been grown for generations, will not keep. While they are new, they are excellent, but after Christmas they begin to grow, they begin to rot in the middle and deteriorate very rapidly.
I have here a letter from a man who has 110 tons of Irish onions on his hands. For these 110 tons he could have got £6,000 before the British controlled the price in England. He now has these 110 tons of Irish onions on his hands and they are growing out through the bags. He is a man with a small capital who threw himself into this onion business. I am sure, for profit. He was not in it for philanthropy, but he as buying onions in Castlegregory and other parts of Kerry which he intended to ship to England as fast as he could and bidding the top price in Kerry in order to get the largest supply and to do the largest business. He now has 110 tons of onions growing thiough the bags and he asks the Department to send down an inspector to look at the onions and to agree with him that something must be done to dispose of them, because no matter what price he sells them at on the Irish market, the Irish market will not consume them in time to prevent them going rotten. Surely it is a crime, when we have an excellent product which will favourably compare with the product of any country in the world, if it is allowed to go on the market at the proper time, to have the good name of that product destroyed, to have the price of it ruined and the producers of it made bankrupt, simply because the Minister for Supplies has made up his mind that, whatever about the farmers in Kerry, he will not allow them to export onions.
That seems to amuse the Minister for Supplies. He has never known what it means to live in a congested area. He has spent all his life in comparative affluence in this city and he does not know what it means to go out to work in mud and dirt and raise a crop and, when you have the crop saved, to see the price snatched from you by a group of incompetent politicians in this city, and I do not suppose he will ever need to know; but those who are supposed to represent the small farmers of the country ought to know and they ought to ask the Minister for Agriculture, who is supposed to be their trustee, why he permitted the Minister for Supplies to rob these people of the price they were entitled to get and have not got solely and only because the Government prevented them from getting it.
I mention these things because I think it time we made up our mind now as to how far this Government intends to go in holding back the produce of our agricultural industry from the markets of the world at the expense of the farmers who grow that produce. I do not challenge the right of the Government to hold supplies for the benefit of the community, if the Government are prepared to finance that transaction out of the community's Exchequer, but I say that the Government has no right to withhold for the benefit of the community goods which could be profitably sold oii the markets of the world, if that Government arc not prepared to pay the fanners who produce them the price the farmers could pet if they were allowed to sell the goods.
That is the issue which has pot to be faced, and Fianna Fáil Deputies ought to get up and tell the people if they think it fair that goods should he held back from profitable markets for the benefit of the community, while the community is not prepared to compensate the farmers for the resulting loss. I say that that is not fair, and I say that ths Government has been consistently doing that, and that it ought to stop, because as certain as we are in this House, if it does not stop the farmers who have heretofore being producing stuff will stop producing, and then the situation in this country will be grave in the extreme.
We come now to the future. So far as the live stock industry is concerned, if we could get the price of Irish beef equalised with that of British beef, I do not believe the cattle industry is in a very bad way. I do not believe it is going to serve any useful purpose to represent that the farming community in every department of their life is in difficulties, when in fact it is not. So far as the big strong beast is concerned—I am talking now of store cattle—they are not selling too badly at all. So far as younger cattle are concerned, I believe that in the spring we may reasonably expect to get an economic price for them. So far as my word carries, I would advise those who have cattle at the present time—where they can afford it, and the cattle are young store cattle, that is to say from 20 to 26 months old—to carry them into the spring, when they will yield a better price than they can hope to get now. So far as the bigger store cattle are concerned, they are probably getting as good a price now as we can reasonably expect they will reach for some time to come.
Now, we come to the question of pigs, and it is a very queer story. We have a situation here in which we are informed by our Minister that he has done his best to increase the quota for pigs and pig products, and that he has failed, and the following morning we read in the paper that the British Government deem it expedient to reduce the bacon quota in England, and not only that but to apply the rationing system to gammons and hocks, which had not been affected by the bacon rationing up to that. Then this motion is put upon the Order Paper, and within a week of its being put there, an announcement is made by the Government that our quota for the export of live pigs to Great Britain has been increased by, I think, 60 per cent. Now we have travelled a full circle. I can remember saying in this House that the day we destroyed the pig fair in rural Ireland we would do the pig producer irreparable injury. That day came to pass when the pig fairs of Ireland were finally destroyed, and we have travelled a full circle, because the representatives of the Pigs and Bacon Commission have now to go out and do this job which the pig buyers used to do before the fairs were destroyed. Having first wiped the fairs out, with an immense loss to our people, we now re-institute them with civil servants instead of pig buyers.
What are we to do for the future? If our Minister goes to London to discuss supplies with the corresponding Minister in Great Britain, I do not believe that there is any insuperable difficulty in the way of securing from Great Britain orders for our pigs and bacon sufficient to consume the present available supplies, and I believe that that journey must be made, and made quickly, because if the reply of the Ministry of Food is adverse then vigorous measures must be taken to adapt ourselves to the situation which will arise from the disappearance of our pig and pork market. Those adjustments cannot be made overnight; they take time and they take care. Personally, I do not believe that any such adjustment will have to be made. I am convinced that prudence and reasonableness—and the British are a reasonable people on the whole. in trade matters especially—can work out an agreement in respect of pork, pigs and pig products, which will make it unnecessary for us to reduce our output in that regard at all. Mind you. I want to say this, and I want to give the Government credit for this: a very critical situation arose a fortnight or three weeks ago, and that situation is being admirably met by the circulation of the Pig Marketing inspectors, who are purchasing all the pigs from the people at the statutory prices fixed. But we ought to face this fact, that you cannot produce pigs on purchased feeding stuffs at 88/- a cwt., considering the present price of those feeding stuffs. It simply cannot be done. No matter how economical or careful you are, you lose about 5/- a pig. But it is true—some people may think it impolitic of me to say so, but I do say it, because I know it to be true; I know it from my own experience—that the small fanners, who are feeding their pigs on waste potatoes, cabbage leaf and the offal of the house, can produce pigs at a profit if they get 92/- a cwt. I do not believe the man who has to purchase feeding stuffs can profitably produce pigs at much under 100/- a cwt. considering the current price of feeding stuffs. The small man who has two or four pigs, and is feeding them on the refuse of his farm, can make a profit at 92/- a cwt., and the sooner we can get back to the 92/- price for pigs the better it will be for the poorest sections of this community as a whole.
Now we come to eggs. I asked the Minister last September 12 months if he would take vigorous measures then to stimulate the day-old chick scheme, so that we would bring into laying production last autumn the maximum number of hens. Since the beginning of autumn this year eggs are worth their weight in gold, but we have not got them to sell. Now, eggs are things that are often regarded as insignificant and trivial in our economy. Any one who comes from the west or south of Ireland, or indeed from Monaghan or Donegal, knows that eggs are the poor person's stand-by. They are the things that, to the average woman of the country house, make all the difference between a low standard of living and a good standard of living. If she can make money out of eggs she has pocket money. If she has no money out of eggs she has no pocket money at all, and, after all, for the country woman going to the market it is pocket money that makes the difference between a reasonably happy life and a life of unchanging drudgery. It was the egg money that, very largely, illuminated the lives of the country women of this country. There was an immense opportunity to take a constructive and profitable step 18 months ago, about which nothing whatever was done.
I do not believe the Minister is making any effective effort now to increase egg production in this country. I know that circulars are sent out and half-hearted letters are addressed to the inspectors of the Department, but there is no advertising campaign, there is no pressure at all put on to crsata the demand for day-old chicks which must be created now if the day-old chicks are to be available when they are wanted. There is a means not only of producing an immensely profitable export for our community, but also of contributing to the solution of the problem to which I will come shortly, that is, the problem of disposing of the oat crop. No one in this country realised how much oats the hens consumed until we killed the hens. It was then, and only then, that the farmers of this country discovered to what an extent their wives had been raiding the oat bin, and they discovered to their cost that their wives were the best economists, and that those daily raids on the oat bins paid a golden harvest in the sale of eggs for the benefit of the family as a whole. I, therefore, strongly urge on the Minister to press forward at once in the distribution of fowl, which is one of the easiest methods that he has for repairing the ravages of his past policy in this country.
Now we come to sheep. I recognise the Minister's difficulties in regard to sheep. He has not put a quota on sheep. He has not imposed the licensing system on sheep. He has got to meet the requirements imposed upon him by the British Government in that regard, but he had similar difficulties to meet in regard to the fat cattle trade, and he has met them, and met them very much more successfully than he has met them in regard to the sheep trade. I know a man in this country at the present time who has 400 or 500 lambs and cannot sell them. What happened is this: Last year some friend or somebody else came along and induced those people to sell their lambs to a neighbour or members of the local co-operative society, and they did so. When they apply this year the co-operative or the friend is not willing to buy their lambs. They go to the Minister and ask for a licence to ship them to England, and he says: "How many did you ship last year?" They say: "We did not ship any last year. We sold all our lambs to a neighbour or to the local co-operative." Then they are told that they are entitled to no licence at all. The man says: "The co-operative will not buy the lambs; the neighbour will not buy them, and you will not let me ship them; what are we to do with them? The Minister says he does not know. That is not sense. Let us understand the Minister's difficulty. The Minister says "I have got a certain number of licences. How else can I distribute them except in proportion to the way I distributed them last year?" I admit, as a general rule, that is a fairly reasonable foot-rule to go by, but it ought to be administered in consultation with persons who understand the special difficulties of individuals, so that where you have a complete impasse of the kind to which I refer, some relaxation of the-general rule is permissible to meet the peculiar case which the Minister knows as well as I do will arise no matter what general scheme of licence distribution you work out. I think—and I think it is right to say—that in regard, to this distribution of cattle licences he has got as near a reasonably practical scheme of the kind I had in mind as in all the circumstances it is possible to get.
Now we come to oats and barley, and that is a matter that is inextricably interwoven with the question of the compulsory tillage order. Let us realise the magnitude of this problem. I remember being jeered at in this House last June when I told the Minister that he was going to have a very critical situation in regard to the, oat crop if he did not take steps to dispose of the surplus of last year's production. He said that was all nonsense; there would not be any trouble at all. Now, of course, he is in hot water up to his ears and flapping about like a bewildered duck and we will, as usual, have to pull him out and help him. We are glad to do that, on one condition, that he will not get into the same kind of idiotic mess again because you cannot be pulling him out year after year in that way. Let us examine the increase in the acreage under these crops in order to realise the magnitude of the problem that confronts us. There has been an increase as between 1939 and 1940 of 139,500 acres in respect of oats. There has been an increase of 64,300 acres in respect of barley. I may get my head in a halter for some of the things I am saying. I do not believe there is going to be any trouble in disposing of barley before the end of this year. When I speak of the year I mean the year ending on the 1st September next. I believe by the 1st of next September we will be glad of all the barley in the country at the present time, but that does not alter the fact that there are thousands of individuals in this country who cannot carry the barley until the 1st of next September. The community wants that barley. Every one of those could sell that barley profitably if they were allowed to export to Great Britain and Northern Ireland now. They could call in the threshing men, thresh the barley and ship it to Northern Ireland and get paid for it within a week. The Minister says, and I think rightly so: "We will not let the barley go because if we let it go now we will find ourselves next April or May without any animal feeding stuffs at all and we will not be ble to get any." That is an understandable position, but that is no consolation to the farmer who has no storage for grain and who, if he is to keep this barley until March or April when the market begins to open up for barley, must leave it in the stack. I tell the Minister—and any farmer in this House can confirm what I say—that if you leave barley in the stack on an ordinary Irish farm from September until April, half the barley will be eaten by rats.
The Minister says: "If you ask me to store this barley it will mean putting an added cost on the barley produced, the cost of storage." I admit that. Of course it will, but is it not better to pay something to get your barley safely stored than to let the rats eat it? I suggest that the Minister should prepare a scheme and say to the people who have barley: "Anyone who wants to avail of this scheme, here are the terms; anyone who does not want to avail of it let him keep his barley over until April or May and he will get a better, price then than if he sold it now." Let the man who finds he cannot keep it, the man who finds it more economical to pay whatever the cost of storing it may be rather than leave it to the rats, avail of the Minister's scheme, and let those who say they do not want to be paying for storage do their own storing. Then no one has any reason to complain. They are going to get a better price by keeping the barley if they hold it. If they cannot hold it then the Minister will take it off their hands at the present time at whatever is the ruling price and pay them forthwith. Now you are reaching somewhere near equity. But when you come to fix the price I ask the Government to bear in mind this fact, that you are not entitled to ask —you are not entitled to compel—the grain growers of this country to produce animal feeding stuffs at a price lower than the world price, for the benefit of their neighbour. I talk in cwts. because I come from the West of Ireland. A man from the Midlands will talk in barrels. If you are going to ask the farmers of this country to produce barley at 10/- a cwt. when they can get 14/- a cwt. in Great Britain then I think you are asking them to do something that is not fair. If you want to keep the barley here at home, and if you say the community must have the barley, if it is to survive then you ought to buy the barley from the farmers at the price which the farmers could get if you permitted them to export it. If that is not worth doing then you ought to allow them to export it but you have no right to ask an individual citizen to subsidise the community, more especially when you force the individual citizen to use his land for tillage whether he thinks it advisable to do so or not.
Therefore, I say—mind you, the price is rising for barley—if the Minister will say he will give a price which is a fair average between what we can reasonably anticipate will be the ruling price for barley next May and the ruling price to-day, and that he will take all the barley that anybody wants to sell him now at that price, and if he makes a profit on it next May the Treasury will keep the profit or that he will advise anybody who has barley in the stack or who has a barn to store it in to keep his, own, barley until April or May when they will get a much better price than he can aflord to give them now, then he has met every legitimate complaint of the barley grower save one—and that has to be remembered. Many farmers grew excellent mailing barley in this country, but they were not quite as quick off their mark as their neighbours. The neighbours got their barley sold to Guinness at 30/- a cwt. The fellows who were not quite so quick off the mark or who were not able to get threshing men to come and thresh the barley found themselves selling barley as good or better than the barley for which Guinness paid 30/-, at 20/- or less. That is a very great hardship. I am not at all sure it is a hardship about which the Minister for Agriculture can be reasonably expected to do very much. There is this danger inherent in it, that if it becomes a race to get your barley ripe and threshed you may have people planting barley in January and February when in fact it should not be set until March or April. That is a thing that has to be guarded against, and if that spreads it will be something that must be carefully watched.
I think, as compared with oats, barley is a comparatively simple problem, but oats, as I foresaw and as everybody realises now, when it is too late, is a very big problem. We carried over to this year a very large unknown quantity of oats to which the Minister contributed substantially by importing thousands of tons of Canadian oats last year, a great part of which he still has on his hands. We have increased the oats acreage by 26 per cent.—139,500 acres. The oats are stacked. The rats are eating it and there is no prospect whatever of our being able to consume it in Ireland this year. The maddening part of it is, particularly to farmers in North Monaghan and East Donegal, that the people in Morthern Ireland and Great Britain aie clamouring for it at about 4/- to 6/- a cwt. more than we are paying for it.
I think it is time the Minister faced this problem and asked himself what the is going to do about it. Bear this in mind, that if the Government think that they can simply screw the lid down and say: "We are damned if we let you sell it; we will ride the storm, whatever it is; political agitation is off for the time being and we will come through all right", they are wrong, because if there is a disastrous collapse in respect to oats this year, we will not get any oats sown next year. There is not a seed merchant or farmer in the country who will not tell you that. If you get one year in which there is a collapse, in which talk at every fireside is: What did you do with your oats?""What did anyone do or what could anyone do? We could not get rid of them; we could not sell them; we were persecuted with the rats, because the oats brought the rats about the place,"—if that is the general talk one year the following year there will be an immense reduction in the sowing of oats no matter what tillage order you may have.
I can visualise the Minister for Agriculture saying "Let them all grow wheat." That is the kind of comment that one would expect from the Minister for Supplies or the Minister for Industry and Commerce, gentlemen who would not know the difference between wheat, barley or oats if they saw them growing in a field. There are thousands of acres of land in this country that will not grow wheat, and there are thousands of acres more that will not grow wheat without very generous manurial treatment, and in this coming year we will not be able to give that land generous manurial treatment.
Remember, that oats are largely grown on land where wheat will not grow—in Donegal, in the Province of Connaught and in West Cork—and if you drive the bulk of the oat-growers into growing wheat in order to get some cash for the crop, what will happen will be that in the case of half of them the crop will fail and they will have nothing. With those who manage to get a crop off the land, it is not productive farming they will have been doing but mining. They will have teen living on their capital, because they will take out of the land, with the wheat crop, substance and nourishment far in excess of what the wheat crop will realise. You will have a general tendency to impoverish the land. You will be thrusting a part of the community on to a system based on living on capital and. God knows, they have done enough of that for the last seven years. We cannot afford to let them continue to do that unless we want to reduce them to the standard of middle-European peasants. I often wonder if we are not in grave danger of doing that by one or other of the policies that we are pursuing.
I put it to the Minister that he must make a computation of the quantity of oats available in the country and he must make the best guess he can of our consumption between now and the next harvest. He has then got to aim at retaining that quantity of oats, plus 10 per cent., reconciling himself clearly to the necessity of purchasing any small surplus that that policy may leave on the hands of the community, at the expense of the State, and then allow the community to export the balance at the most advantageous price they can get. That is the prudent course to pursue. Storage of oats beyond the end of the present cereal year would be madness and will tend to destroy the oat productivity of our land. We can get out of our land in a cereal year far more oats than we can consume. What we want to keep alive and vigorous is the will to grow, and the only way to do that is to preserve in the minds of the people the idea that if they produce good oats there will be a ready market for them, let it be through the medium of fowl, eggs or direct purchase, or through the rearing of calves; but, once you convince the people that the oats may be allowed to remain until the rats will turn the stack into a stack of chaff, you will never get oats grown here again.
With regard to compulsory tillage, I should like to ask is it fair to go down to a man with a farm and say: "You will have to plough that field whether you think it right or wrong And, when that is done, we do not care what happens to you"? Would you think it reasonable if one of the Ministers was authorised to go into a factory aad say: "You have to work that machine there night and day for the next three weeks" and, if the factory manager says that the result of attempting to do that would be that the machine would run itself to pieces in tour days and then they would have no machine at all, the Minister declares: "You have to do it and we do not care what the results are, because we claim the right to force you to do it"? Would that not be very unreasonable?
Is that not the very thing the Minister is asking farmers to do? He is claiming the right to do a similarly unreasonable thing with the farmers. I should add that the manufacturer might plead that if he ran the machine continuously the amount he would produce would be far in excess of the possible markets. If the Minister says: "We do not give a damn; you have to produce that stuff and we do not eave what you do with it", every reasonable man would say that that was a ridiculous request to make of any industrial concern. You go to the farmer and you say: "You have to work the field in a particular way and, having done that, we do not care what happens to you; it is your funeral what you do with the products." No civilised country has ever done that.
In Great Britain there is a compulsory tillage scheme. The Ministry say: "We will give you £2 an acre to help you to till that field and, if there is any loss, we will contribute to it so that it may be shared between the community and the owner of the land." There is an alternative. The Minister might say: "There is the land and, if you grow barley on it, you will get such and such a price; if you grow oats, you will get such and such a price; or, if you grow potatoes, you will get such and such a price." That is reasonable, but it is not reasonable to ask or to compel farmers to produce crops when these farmers have not the faintest notion whether they will be able to sell at a profit or not. So far as the production of oats is concerned, it will be impossible to sell them if the Minister for Supplies maintains his attitude that not one grain will be exported to the markets of the world.
The last matter is, perhaps, the most difficult of all. I am informed it is a matter that seems to have consumed an undue proportion of the Minister's time. I do not deny for a second the urgent importance of the dairying industry to this country, but we ought to get the dairying industry into its true perspective. The total available exportable surplus of butter in this country is approximately 400,000 cwts., taking one year with another. That represents about two and a half week's supply of the British market. We send to Great Britain in 12 months enough butter to keep her going for two and a half weeks and she has to get from the rest of the world the butter she requires for the remaining 50 weeks. If she can get the balance of that butter at a price substantially less than that at which it is economically possible for our farmers to produce butter, why in the name of goodness do we go on walloping, walloping, day after day, trying to make a trade agreement with Great Britain to secure a higher price for two weeks of supply of butter, when she knows that she will have to pay the same price for the other 50 weeks' supply taken from other parts of the world? What is the use of battering our heads against a stone wall in that fashion?
I think it is time that we came to reconsider our position in regard to this whole question. I know that we have got to maintain our dairy herds in the south west of Ireland, because they are an essential pan of the general economy of this country. They are the foundation of the store cattle industry, and the skim milk that comes from these dairy herds contributes substantially to the pig industry. If we are going to keep them going, we have got to provide a market for their milk and their butter. I suggest, that we approach a solution of the problem along both these lines. So far as increasing the consumption of butter in this country is concerned, we are not going to get very far, because, at present, we consume more butter per head of the population than any other country in the world. It is calculated by statisticians that we consume 26 lbs. per head of the population in the urban areas, and 30 lbs. per head of the farming population. That is infinitely in excess of the consumption in New Zealand, and certainly of any other country in the world. However, it is possible that we may be able to increase the consumption at home to some extent. We all know that there are people in the Cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick who do not use butter as often as they might use it. We ought to try to devise plans, therefore, to increase the consumption of this commodity as much as possible at home. Remember we are now paying annually £350,000 of a subsidy on butter going to Britain. I should like to see that £350,000 spent in making butter and milk products more readily available to those sections of the community who are at present unable to get them. Assuming that we are not going to get very far along that road, we have got to face the problem of increasing the consumption of milk. I think if you secure for every child in this country under 14 years of age three pints of milk per day—although that may be regarded by some people as an excessive consumption—you would thereby absorb the entire milk output of this country—that is to say, the entire milk output at present devoted to the manufacture of butter. That is an interesting figure, because, mind you, if you could keep that goal in front of us, it is not an impossible achievement. There is no dietary reform more essential than an increased milk consumption by the poor, but you have got to bear in mind that the moment you embark upon that, you are going to come up against a formidable vested interest, the legitimate vested interest, of the people who we at present making their living by supplying milk to the urban population of the country. If we could combine the social reform of increasing the consumption of milk by the poor with the attempt to secure a more ready disposal of our dairy products, I think it would be well worth while compensating the vested interests. We could compensate them for whatever losses would arise from a more liberal consumption of milk arising from its free distribution amongst the necessitous people of the country.
A further means of disposing of our dairy products is provided by a new industry which is growing up and which the Minister for Industry and Commerce might very well examine in the time to come. That is the production of casein for the manufacture of plastics in this country. I can see that developed to such a point, if we deal with this matter intelligently, that we might in the long run, come to regard butter as a by-product of casein instead of looking upon casein as a by-product of butter. Remember you can afford to sell butter, if you treat it as a by-product of casein, at a price which is far more economic to producer and purchaser than if you sell casein as a by-product of butter. Casein and plastics undoubtedly have an immense future before them. We have a huge industrial country beside us which, if it ever comes to use plastics on the same scale as they are used in the United States at present, would consume far more casein than we could ever produce. Why, therefore, do we not, try to develop a market for casein instead of storming the British market with butter which they will not take and on which we pay nearly £500,000 a year in order to induce them to take-it?
I admit the whole dairying problem is one that abounds in difficulties. Probably my remains in regard to it will be distorted, but I do not give a hoot. I have no doubt that it will be said that I suggested we ought to abolish all the co-operative creameries and slaughter all the dairy herds. I would, of course, rather see the dairying industry kept as near normalcy as possible but I do not believe it is any use pretending to the dairying industry that we can go ahead on the same lines as we have proceeded for the last ten years. I remember that when the present Minister for Agriculture came into office it was said he was going to do the world and all for the industry. Every dairy farmer was to be put in a position to buy a Ford car to chase the cows round the meadows. Millions have been sent down the drain since but we have got just precisely nowhere. We have got to face the fact also, and it is well to emphasise it, that if the farmers want the dairying industry to be revived, they have got to do their part, too. Let the farmer who imagines that he can make dairying pay on the basis of a 400 or a 500 gallon cow—and I think there is a very large number of our dairy cows which do not exceed that yield—know now that he never will succeed except, perhaps, during short periods of European famine. It is just impossible to make dairying pay on any basis below that of the 800 gallon cow and God knows we ought to be able to aim at the 1,000 gallon cow. If we want to go, into the dairying business, we have got to make up our mind to that effect. We have closed our eyes to it over the years but the ever-increasing and keener competition from the ends of the world forces us to face it now and it might be well that everybody should tell the farmers that bluntly and plainly.
I think the points I have made provide the Minister with ample ground to cover when he comes to reply. The problems outlined by me if courageously tackled can be overcome, but if left to look after themselves they might bring us within measurable distance of the economic collapse to which the motion refers. I am an optimist in these matters. I believe that by combined effort we can avert economic collapse and can save our people from the very real danger to our independence that such a collapse would involve. As far as I am aware, all sections of the community are prepared to lend a hand if a constructive, courageous proposal is put before them, but if we are to be told when we communicate a problem to the Government in these circumstances, that it is merely political badinage, I suggest that this country will go to blazes. The Government has been approached in a reasonable manner the Opposition in the past. These matters have been dealt with by myself with a moderation which astonishes me to-day. However, I have deliberately preserved that care ful understatement of every problem which I have envisaged in the knowledge that there are 30 minutes in hand which I shall use more drastically if the situation requires it.
