Yes. The discrepancy between those two figures is sufficient to throw considerable doubt upon the accuracy of either of them. What we are trying to do this year for the first time is to get, if possible, some figure as a base line from which to work. However carefully it is done there will be a considerable element of inaccuracy, but the end undoubtedly will be to show that even the 1,000,000 tons which we are trying to get out of the State organisation, plus the possible 400,000 or 800,000 that may be got out of this ancillary organisation, is still only a relatively small part of the total production.
There is nothing in the outlook, as far as I am aware of it, which gives any ground for optimism in relation to the fuel situation. If we take the worst view, it means that we may in a few months reach a stage in which there may be no coal coming into the country. If we take the most optimistic view, it means that the amount of coal fuel coming into the country will be relatively small. Therefore, we are in the position that, no matter how much turf we produce, it is wanted. I raised that point because there is a very natural disturbance in the minds of men who are responsible for cutting turf, as to how long and how hard they are to go on cutting. As I tell you, the first harvest of this year is only beginning to be garnered. That will be definitely insufficient. A second harvest, starting from now, when we have cleared the drying spaces on the bog, might be cured by September. It might not be cured by September, and that is where responsible men begin to be anxious. You do not stop cutting when the weather begins to break: you normally stop so far ahead of the break in the weather that your turf can be saved. To go on past that date is to take a risk, and I am raising this point because I am advising everybody to take that risk. Turf which may be insufficiently saved in September can be saved in the clamps on the road or in the bog, and is perfectly certain and safe for March and April. There is a risk of slightly dearer turf under these conditions, but you have to choose between two risks—the risk of dearer turf and the risk of no turf; and I am advising everybody to take the risk up to the limit and to see that they do get turf, because it is badly wanted.
Therefore, as far as the first and second harvests are concerned, it is not merely a good speculative risk, it is practically a certainty. Your second harvest will be available two months before the first harvest that we can cut for you next year. Therefore, when the time comes that men fear that there is a certain risk in going on —that is the time to keep on cutting. That harvest can be saved. Now, there is a third harvest that can be garnered, but which involves somewhat more risk—turf that is in a condition in which it cannot be saved for the year in which it is cut, that is, which is cut, as it sometimes is, as late as September and October. If it has had, a few weeks of drying weather, it gets a skin on it which renders it relatively waterproof. It is still wet, but if it is clamped on the bogs in loose and open clamps, it will cure itself as far as its inner turf is concerned, during the winter, and it will cure itself, as far as its outer and covering turf is concerned, in the March and April winds.
What I am suggesting as a general practice and as a practice which, in the risky conditions of the present, it is wise and conservative statesmanship to attempt, has been in small degree a custom always. In every part of the country I am finding individual people who have saved late turf for the spring. In certain districts men tend to have a two years' supply. They cut a year ahead so that, if the harvesting or weather conditions, or anything in a particular year, turn out awkward, they do not need to neglect their ordinary husbandry occupations in order to deal with turf. They are not depending on that year's supply in any case and for that reason it can take second place. In every county—practically in every district—I have been in, I have found people who have saved turf under those conditions. The custom and the risks which individuals have taken in relation to third harvest turf I am advising our people to take now in the hope of getting their third harvest garnered in April next year before we can give you 1942 turf, which will make all the difference in the fuel position. Remember that if you know that you have something coming in April, you can use in February and March the fuel which otherwise you would not be able to use. First harvest turf is now practically saved and certain; second harvest turf is a practical certainty— it is an absolute certainty as regards the saving of it for spring; third harvest turf is a downright good risk, and one which under the present circumstances all those concerned in dealing with the turf harvest should be prepared to take in the national interest.
This question has become a practical one to certain county councils—the Cork County Council is an example. On the report of one of its county surveyors, which was that enough had been cut for the needs of the council, the question arose as to why they should go on and take any further risk in the matter. The answer is that the county councils are not cutting turf for the Government. They are cutting, first, for the needs of the people of their own counties, and there is no turf any county council can cut this year which they can afford to do without. For any turf which they cut in excess of what is actually required in the county, if it is moved out of the county, responsibility will be taken by the Government.
The position will be the same in relation to the private producer. To every private producer I again give the same advice in this matter, to live dangerously, because discretion is a greater danger than courage. For all properly-saved tuif offered at a reasonable price a market will be found. There need be no hesitation whatever about that. My advice to private producers and those who now hold turf is that they should get it on the market now. National turf is not going on the market now. National turf will first be used for the purpose of dealing with the local institutions and their necessities and the rest for the moment is being held in the possession of the county surveyors as a national pool. That turf will be distributed, first, in the interest of the locality which has produced it and, second, for the general interest outside. But it is the national and social interest that is going to be concerned in the final distribution of that turf. My advice to the ordinary person is to get his turf on to the market, get his bog cleared, and get room to cut a second harvest.
What are we to do in the matter of price? I am speaking to-night, not in any spirit of controversy or anything of that kind, but simply as a person who has to face certain problems on your behalf, taking counsel with you in relation to this in the hope that between us we may find a solution of some of the very real difficulties. It is impossible to set a price universally over the country. The cost of production, conditions of production, the nature of the bogs, difficulties of transport on and off the bog, the relative experience of the men who are cutting the turf, in some cases absolute professionals and in other cases absolute amateurs, have made a wide discrepancy, even under good organisation, in the cost of production. The people who are producing the turf are entitled to something more than they got last year. They are engaged in a very valuable and absolutely essential national service and they have responded very well to the call to do it. But it is neither in their interests nor in the interests of the community that they or anybody else should exploit the opportunity. A price which would represent 20 or 25 per cent. above the price ruling in the particular district last year would be a reasonable price and, at that price, the turf should come out on to the market and the people ought to be ready to cut another harvest for themselves and for the community.
In order to deal with this matter two emergency orders have been issued. One of them has defined and segregated the country into coal and turf areas, the turf areas being those which normally ought to be able to produce turf for their own needs. The object of that was manifest. The main principle was a fair distribusion of the local pool of fuel made up of coal and turf. It did not seem reasonable that, if there were to be a shortage in the total, we should bring coal into the turf areas or, bring turf out of the turf areas into the coal areas unnecessarily. In other words, let the turf areas use the fuel which they have and if necessary, segregate to the non-turf areas the whole of the rest of the available fuel, except where there was a very special case in which turf could not be used and coal had to be used. That was the general idea.
The second idea was to enable us to carry out the Government's assurance to all turf producers that all turf offered for sale would find a market and by that means to increase the total production of turf. The third idea was to save transport, to save that small and inadequate amount of transport fuel which we have. Another reason, which was of a more psychological character, was to prevent a very grievous disorganisation of our market price position due to a very small transference which was taking place. As Deputies know, when anything is short there are always people who are prepared to pay the price for it. When this campaign started there was practically no turf in the country except the residue of last year's supply. As a result of perfectly legitimate activities on the part of certain organisations who went down to those outlying districts and attempted to buy up that residue at practically any price, an atmosphere was produced in relation to the whole turf position which was very demoralising. It had the extraordinary effect of freezing in the possession of the turf producers practically the whole of the turf without, in fact, moving any considerable quantity of it. That was one of the chief reasons why that order was made.
Turf will only be allowed to be moved out of the turf areas into the coal areas at present under special Licence and those licences will only be given in the national interest; that is to say, it will have to be shown that it is tor the public benefit, as distinct from personal benefit, before any licence is given. The order fixing the price in Dublin, which is the first of these orders, deals with a difficult problem There is only a small amount of turf available. It is now coming in and it would be quite easy to produce famine prices on that particular quantity. An economic and efficient merchant dealing with the turf which is available can provide it at this particular price, and the price has been fixed on that basis. Regional prices may later be set for the turf areas and particular prices will probably have to be set for the boroughs, but for the moment, having regard to the supply position, we prefer to be patient and to see if the position will settle itself without action.
All the indications are that the first effect of those two orders has been favourable. There is a loosening up. The turf is beginning to come out of cold storage and it is beginning to come out at reasonable prices, and we prefer for the moment to let that position develop before further action is taken. The same obligation we have to see that the turf is produced at a reasonable price remains with us in relation to the rest of the transaction. A reasonable producer's price at the bog must be made the foundation of a reasonable consumer's price, and that is the intention, that any orders that are introduced and any calculations made of costs will be made with the object of attaining and maintaining that particular condition.
That represents the position as far as this year is concerned. We had to start operations without much notice and with an organisation which was inexperienced. The turf is being produced under all sorts of conditions, by all manner of men. It is being produced on time wages, on piece rates and on contracts; it is being produced on a couple of systems which lie halfway between. All of them, under good men and good organisation, are producing good results. Which of them will produce the best result, and which of them will produce a standard to which next year we would try to attain we do not yet know.
From the point of mere production per man employed, there is no question at all which is producing the best results. Piece rates will produce a larger amount of turf per man than apparently any other system. The contract system has, in the past, produced a good deal and, in my opinion, will in this year, in the two counties in which it is operating, produce a very considerable quantity in excess. In the figures which I have given the House of the total production, I have not included the amount which we hope to get later from contract-produced turf. Under good organisation, time rates are producing some very satisfactory and economic returns.
What we propose to do at the end of the year when we have got all the data, when we have got the results of 26 engineers' costing organisations operating over a whole season, is to try to formulate something in the nature of an orderly and consistent plan which, with necessary variations, can be applied to the different districts in the country.
The production problem, so far as this year is concerned, is merely one of stimulation along the present lines, but the transport and distribution problems—what is going to happen to the roads and how they are going to be maintained, and what we are going to do, in view of the inadequate petrol and other supplies, in order to try to carry out our programme in the allotted time—represent more serious difficulties. But those problems are being faced as fully and carefully as we can face them, and we believe we will manage to find a solution.
The labour problem is probably the most serious of all, having regard to the fact that the amount of production that we are getting, whatever it may be, is going to be very small relative to the amount of production which we must have this year. In the early stages the position was that no petrol was available for private or any other transport. No petrol was available to transport men to the bogs, nor was there petrol available to transport the turf from the bogs. For that reason the large-scale experiments which we would have attempted to make in the early stages, and the training of urban labour transported within the distance of a petrol transport, had to be put off. But certain experiments, half-a-dozen, are in process of being made in trying our urban labour under these circumstances and next year it is perfectly evident that 10,000 or more urban workers will have to be removed or given the opportunity of removal from their homes to accommodation on the bogs if the results which we hope to attain are to be attained.
I think I told the House before that making bricks without straw was not a very easy occupation, and building houses, temporary or otherwise, on the bogs was not by any means a promising prospect. We have investigated all possible ways of doing something with nothing, and I am beginning to think that there is emerging from a combination of the cutting of scrub timber, and the handling of that, down to the firewood stage, a supply which will enable us to do something practical in that matter. A lot of that timber is coming out. If it is envisaged from the beginning as stuff which can be used for relatively imperfect accommodation, because that is all that can be given, a good deal of it can be saved for that purpose, and in the cutting up of it it might be possible, out of 100,000 tons of wood, to reach such a proportion of good and usable material as to enable us to tackle the problem.
For next year we have to face a very much larger problem. To cut 100,000 tons of turf, even assuming you could go back to the same bog face every week, means somewhere about 600 miles of bog. We have to face the prospect for next year of extemporising at least another 1,000 miles of bog face for the purpose of cutting the amount of turf which will be required, and probably considerably more than that. At the same time we have to face this fact, that we will have to repair roads which we have damaged, that we will have to put in new roads, and new drains, and the result is that we are going to have this position develop, that as the production season begins to die the preparation season will commence, except to the extent that these two have to overlap in order that we can get the first harvest out. As the turf preparation season of this winter fades away then we ought to be in a position to put into the bogs at the end of March or the beginning of April of next year three or four times the number of men we had a month ago, or later. If all these preparations are coordinated, and fortunately we are in the position of having the main production and the maintenance of roads in the same hands, I am hopeful that we will produce in the next year an amount of turf considerably greater than the very best hopes I had when I envisaged the problem at the beginning. It is a production problem, & transport problem, and a preparation problem. It is above all an extemporising and transport of labour problem in order that we may produce in 1942 an amount of home-made fuel which will leave us happy and safe at any rate in the matter of fuel in that year.
I have spoken to the House not in a very regular way, and not in the sense of an ordered speech, but I tried to tell frankly what is behind our minds and our work in this campaign. It was in response to an appeal in the House that Deputies might be put in touch with what is going on, and the appeal I am making is that the House itself, in the debate which follows, should make suggestions of any kind which from knowledge and experience will enable the preparations that are now being made for next year to be more perfect.