Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 12 Nov 1941

Vol. 85 No. 3

Public Business. - Vote 30—Agriculture.

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

I move:

Go ndeontar suim bhreise ná raghaidh thar £484,058 chun íoctha an mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh Márta, 1942, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an Aire Talmhaidheachta agus Seirbhísí áirithe atá fé riaradh na hOifige sin maraon le hIldeontaisí-i-gCabhair.

That a supplementary sum, not exceeding £484,058, be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1942, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, and of certain Services administered by that Office, including sundry Grants-in-Aid.

The Estimate is for a net amount of £484,058. The greater part of this is required under sub-head N (1) which I can deal with first. It is for the expenses arising out of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and it is for £463,972. The main item of that sub-head is £365,000 for compensation to owners of stocklands. The Estimates for the financial year 1941-42 were prepared before the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease took place, although that occurred before the financial year commenced. There was only provision in the Estimates for £5 for compensation which is put in each year as a Token Vote in case something should arise. The total number of outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease here was 556. The last outbreak occurred in County Carlow on the 22nd September. The number of animals slaughtered was 27,895 cattle, 9,797 sheep, 3,201 pigs and 608 goats. The total amount of liability by way of compensation for these animals is approximately £451,000. £87,000 was paid during the last financial year. The balance of £363,750 will fall on this year's Vote. But as all claims have not yet been finally disposed of a small margin is required for possible adjustments and the sum of £365,000 has been put into the Estimate.

It was found possible to salvage a number of the healthy animals in contact with farms on which outbreaks had occurred. The numbers salvaged were: cattle, 3,570; sheep, 774; pigs, 455, and goats, 5. They were disposed of principally to the Dublin Emergency Meat Supply Committee, the Canning Supply Committee and Roscrea Meat Products, Limited. The net proceeds of the sale of these animals was approximately £38,960. Portion of this was received in the last financial year, but the balance received in this year is £27,515 and it is brought into this Supplementary Estimate as an Appropriation-in-Aid, so that the total cost of compensating owners of animals is reduced by these salvage receipts from £451,000 to £412,000.

The other principal items under sub-head N (1) include fees to temporary veterinary inspectors, £5,320; fees to valuer of animals slaughtered, £2,000; remuneration of temporary lay assist ants, £65,500; fees to local veterinary practitioners, £3,000; travelling expenses, £5,300, and miscellaneous expenses, £15,500. Deputies are aware, I am sure, what I mean by temporary lay assistants. They were mostly Local Security Force recruited locally to help the Gárda Síochána in keeping guard on the affected areas.

Miscellaneous expenses are made up of two principal items (1) recoupment to local authorities for services rendered and materials supplied, particularly in connection with the burying of carcases, disinfection of premises, etc., which cost about £10,000, and (2) purchase of disinfectants, rent of local office accommodation, hire of lorries, etc., which cost about £5,500.

Under sub-head B—Travelling Expenses—an additional sum of £20,000 is required, in consequence of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease also, for the travelling expenses of the regular veterinary staff, administrative officers of the Department, etc. In respect of sub-head I (1)—Special Agricultural Schemes in Congested Districts—an additional sum of £4,000 is required. Owing again to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, the number of bulls which in ordinary circumstances would have been purchased and paid for before 31st March last had to be purchased and paid for in the current financial year, with the result that the balance left out of a provision of £9,000 made in this year's Estimate will not be sufficient to buy the usual number of bulls next spring. With regard to sub-head M (1)—Miscellaneous Work—a sum of £6,500 has already been granted this year for advertising and publicity. An additional sum of £13,500 is required— £8,000 for the food production campaign, £4,000 for foot-and-mouth disease advertisements, which have already been issued, of course, and £1,500 for general advertisements.

There is a sum of £5 under sub-head O (6)—Agricultural Produce (Cereals) Acts. This is a token provision in respect of the guarantee given to seed merchants to purchase unsold stocks of home-grown wheat of spring varieties assembled for sale in the coming season. The commitment involved in giving this guarantee is estimated not to exceed £5,000. It is not expected that any expenditure will arise in this financial year. The token provision is inserted in order to bring the arrangement to the notice of the Dáil. The conditions of the agreement with the seed merchants are (1) each participating merchant is to assemble a quota of home-grown wheat of spring varieties to be determined in agreement with the Minister for Agriculture, the agreed quota not to be increased without the prior approval of the Minister and (2) the maximum price at which home-grown wheat of spring varieties may be sold to be 62/6 per barrel of 20-stone, net cash, f.o.r., bags excluded. At an agreed date after the close of the sowing season, the Minister for Agriculture is to take over from the participating merchant at 50/- per barrel of 20-stone f.o.r., bags excluded, unsold stocks of home-grown wheat of spring varieties subject to a maximum of 25 per cent. of the participating merchant's agreed quota, or the quantity actually assembled by him, whichever is the lesser.

With regard to sub-head O (8)— Acquisition of Land (Allotments) Act— the number of allotments of one-eighth of an acre let to unemployed persons for whom seeds, manures, etc., were provided this season was 21,595 and the cost is estimated at £44,000. The figures in the seasons 1939-40 were 4,846 and 8,976 respectively. A sum of £20,500 has already been granted this year and in consequence of the large increase in the number of allotments, a further sum of £23,500 is required. With regard to sub-head O 10—Flax Act—the purchase of flax seed up to a total value of approximately £27,000, which had to be imported for the 1940 sowing season, and the subsequent sale of this seed to distributors at prices fixed by the Department were financed and carried out on behalf of the Department by a cooperative society. The sum of £700 is the approximate amount which, it is estimated, will be payable to the society in respect of its services. This sum represents approximately the amount by which the total proceeds of the sales by the society of the flax seed in question to distributors at prices fixed by the Department falls below the actual expenses of the society in purchasing the flax seed and subsequently selling it to distributors at prices fixed by the Department. I should add that the expenses referred to include a commission in respect of the society's services at the rate of 3 per cent. on the purchase price of the flax seed.

The sum of £3,700 under sub-head O 13 is required for the expenses of the Cereals Distribution Committee. This committee was established under Article 14 of the Emergency Power (Cereals) Order, 1941. It comprises 12 members representative of the various interests concerned in the distribution and use of barley and oats. The functions of the committee are (1) to advise the Minister for Agriculture on matters relating to the assembling and distribution of the oats and barley crops of the harvest of 1941, and (2) to act as the Minister's agent in giving directions for the disposal of oats and barley purchased by holders of oats and barley dealers' licences. A fee of 6d. per ton, payable by the persons to whom grain is distributed, is charged in respect of the services of the committee.

The committee will pay over to the Department these fees which are estimated to amount to £3,500. Under sub-head P — Appropriations-in-Aid— there is a receipt of £5,550 in respect of the Dairy Produce Acts and Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Acts. In accordance with the Dairy Produce (Amendment) Act, 1941, an Act brought in early this year and passed in June, fees on the production of creamery butter for 1940-41 will be collected during the financial year 1941-42. In respect of sub-head O 14—Emergency Powers (Tillage) Order—there is a receipt of £1,922, representing the proceeds of the sale of crops on cultivated holdings and the expenses incidental to entry on holdings and the making of lettings in conacre. The amount in respect of cultivated crops was £1,780 and the expenses collected in respect of lettings in conacre and so on amounted to £142. Under sub-head N (1)—Diseases of Animals Acts—with which I have already dealt—there is a sum of £27,515 in respect of the salvage of carcases of animals slaughtered on account of foot-and-mouth disease.

Mr. Hughes

I intended to raise various aspects of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, and as I find that I can raise these matters on sub-head N (1), I do not propose to move my motion to reduce the Estimate by £10 in respect of sub-head B.

Mr. Broderick

I move:—

That the Estimate be reduced by £10 in respect of sub-head M (1).

It is with a certain reluctance that I put down this motion. I did so with the object of dealing with the advertising section of the various Government Departments, and particularly of the Department of Agriculture. I am hesitant to indict Government Departments for partisanship in the distribution of public patronage, but the facts disclosed in the complaints from several portions of the county I have the honour to represent leave me no alternative. My attention was first called to this matter by several farmers who desired information on Government action from Government advertisements and who were unable to find these advertisements in the papers they usually read. When I had convinced myself of the substance of those statements I then, as is my usual custom, approached the Department concerned to get their views. The reply that I got from the Department left me no alternative but to raise the question in the manner in which I have raised it. The following was the reply I received:

"I am directed by the Minister for Supplies to refer to your recent representations on behalf of the Waterford Star and to state that the Minister is not at present prepared to add to the list of provincial newspapers in which it has been decided that certain advertisements issued by this Department should be inserted. I am, however, to add that your representations have been noted for consideration in the event of a review.”

When I recall the distinct assurances that were given in this House, not alone by the Department, but by the Minister who was then Minister for Finance to our Leader, Deputy Cosgrave, that this thing would receive consideration, I am afraid that I have to accept, with a certain amount of hesitation, those assurances as being of very little use. To come to the point of the matter, the advertisements that appear in the ordinary city newspapers are of very little use to the members of the agricultural community so far as the constantly changing state of affairs in their industry is concerned, the matters that govern their various forms of production and the rates at which they can sell their produce. For information on all those matters the agricultural community have to depend on the ordinary provincial newspapers. Representations on this matter have been made time and again to Government Departments. The claim which I am now making has, I find, been pretty well substantiated. I had two questions on the Order Paper to-day dealing with this matter. In regard to the first question, I find that the Waterford Star got £57 for advertising, the Dungarvan Leader £40 and the Waterford News which, incidentally, happens to be the one representative of ministerial policy in the county, £257. Its circulation is no different from that of any other Waterford paper. They are both weekly papers. The facts which I have had reluctantly to state can leave no other interpretation on the ordinary mind but that discrimination of some kind must be there.

The Minister, in his reply a few moments ago, said that the pigs and Bacon Board were responsible for the advertisements which they issue. I have looked through the list, and I must say that it would appear that their distribution of patronage is on a more equitable basis, but yet the paper that represents Government policy received from that board an added sum of £152, making its total for the year over £400, while the paper that I raised the question about received an added sum of in or about £35. The point that strikes me about all this is that all those advertisements are paid out of public money. The money comes out of State funds, and from the taxation raised off the people. If it could be seriously contended that the overwhelming amount of State funds was subscribed by the supporters of the Government and of Government policy, then I suppose some case could be made for this, but when that is not so I think it is the clear duty of every Minister and of every Department of State to see to it that there is a fair distribution of patronage so far as public funds are concerned, and that that patronage is extended to all newspapers, irrespective of the policy they advocate. Any other form of procedure, under a democratic form of Government, would, in my opinion, be simply financial tyranny. There is no necessity, I think, to quote the figures again. The point is that one newspaper in Waterford got well over £400 last year and the other approximately £83. That conveys to any impartial mind——

Dr. Ryan

I cannot understand the Deputy's figures.

Mr. Broderick

I will give the Minister the figures concerning his own Department. In fact, I can give him the figures for the whole lot—the Department of Supplies and the others.

Dr. Ryan

Is the Deputy including the Department of Supplies?

Mr. Broderick

Certainly.

Dr. Ryan

That is all right.

Mr. Broderick

As regards the point I am making, it is a matter of indifference whether it is the Department of Agriculture, the Pigs and Bacon Board or the Department for Supplies that is concerned.

Dr. Ryan

Except that I will answer only for my own Department.

Mr. Broderick

I quite agree.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The same policy runs through all the Departments.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will appreciate that the Minister is responsible only for items in this Estimate.

Dr. Ryan

I put this to the Deputy, that if he takes the figures for the Department of Agriculture only he will find that this particular newspaper got less than the other, a thing for which I am sorry because I think it is unjust.

Mr. Broderick

In the course of my statement I quoted the figures for the Pigs and Bacon Board, whose administration in this respect appears to be reasonable and equitable.

Dr. Ryan

I am speaking of the figures for the Department of Agriculture only.

Mr. Broderick

I am taking the combined figures.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Agriculture does not ask for money in this Supplementary Estimate for advertising for the Department of Supplies. He has no responsibility for the allocation of advertisements by that Department. The Deputy must confine his remarks to matters for which the Minister for Agriculture has responsibility.

Mr. Broderick

I agree. I will finish up by saying that I claim to be expressing the universal idea with regard to the distribution of public money when I say that it is the province of the Government to demand an even distribution of that money, irrespective of what Department is concerned.

Mr. D. Morrissey

It is perhaps fortunate for the Minister that we cannot raise this very wide question on this Supplementary Estimate. Perhaps I could get from the Minister the basis upon which Government advertisements are given to provincial newspapers.

An Ceann Comhairle

Surely the Minister is not responsible for all that?

Mr. D. Morrissey

Surely the Minister can answer for the advertisements concerning his own Department, and tell us the basis upon which they are distributed to the various newspapers. That is all I expect him to do. If he could tell us how his own Department works in this matter it might give us an indication as to how the other Departments work. Take my own constituency. I suppose it is true to say that the northern end of it is, perhaps, the most intensively cultivated part of this country. Yet, the newspaper which circulates over practically the whole of that tillage area has, on numerous occasions, been left without advertisements that would be of the utmost importance to its readers.

Deputy Broderick has said that those advertisements are paid for out of public funds. Of course they are. If there is any purpose at all in putting Government advertisements in newspapers it is that they should reach the people for whom they are intended. If those advertisements do not appear in the newspapers which the people in the rural areas read, then to that extent the public money that is expended in publishing them is wasted. Unquestionably, we have had very serious trouble arising recently owing to the fact that Government Orders, having the force of law, did not reach the people for whom they were intended. The Minister knows that a great number of orders were issued during the last two or three months affecting the agricultural community. I would like to know whether the orders issued by his Department were given to all the provincial newspapers, and, if they were not, why not, because they affected the farming community in every part of the State. Unless public money expended for this purpose puts the people in possession of the information which is supposed to reach them, then the Department fail in their job. It is unfair that people should be brought to book for not complying with orders of which they were never informed. Ministers and others will have to remember that, even to-day, every family in the country has not a wireless set. In the rural parts, wireless sets are few and far between. So far as a great many families, if not the majority, in the rural areas are concerned, the daily papers do not reach them. I doubt if those who do see the daily papers read the Government advertisements in the form in which they are set up in some of them. We know from experience that the position regarding the local paper is quite different. When it arrives in the house on Friday night or Saturday morning, it is read from the front page to the back page, including the advertisements, and orders printed in them are brought to the notice of the people. We had a classic example in this connection recently. It has no relation to the Minister's Department, but I hope I shall be permitted to refer to it by way of illustration. Eighteen thousand traders went to the trouble and expense of getting themselves licensed for the sale of kerosene. For some reason or other—I can only assume that it was because the matter was not properly brought to their notice—only 3,000 of the 18,000 who went to the expense of obtaining a licence sent in a complete return of their registered customers in time. I mention that, in passing, to give the Minister an idea of the effect of not having Government Orders brought to the notice of the people. We shall all agree that the most effective way to convey information, whether contained in Government Orders or anything else, to the people of the rural districts is through the local newspapers.

We ought to have got away from the idea, which should not have been present at any time, of differentiation as between newspapers. Like Deputy Broderick, I should be very reluctant to believe—in fact, I find it almost impossible to believe—that, at this stage of our development, a newspaper would be ignored or deprived of State advertisements merely because of its political views. I hope that that is not the case and that the Minister will clear the air regarding this matter. I hope he will give us whatever information he has in his own Department as to how these advertisements are distributed, and that he will state if there is any good reason why every local paper should not get these advertisements.

Mr. Fagan

I second the motion. My chief objection is regarding the way the money is being spent on advertising. In my opinion, all the money is being spent on advertising in the metropolitan Press, the provincial Press being left entirely without these advertisements. I maintain that the provincial Press represents the people who are concerned with agriculture. The Government know of the existence of the provincial Press because I understand they send down to these papers a lot of material to be inserted as news and not by way of advertisement. They insert the advertisements in the metropolitan Press. That is the case in my county. Take the case of the Westmeath Examiner, which is the only paper circulating in the town of Mullingar and surrounding districts. Mullingar is a fairly large town and this is the local paper for the town, but it gets practically no advertisements from the Department of Agriculture. Take an important advertisement relating to the Wages Board. That was not circulated in my district. No labouring man, except he got a daily paper, knew what the rate of wages was, and no farmer in the area could regulate his wages, as the rates were not published in our district. Another instance is furnished by the Pigs and Bacon Board. No advertisements from that board were published in our district. The same applies to advertisements issued by the Department of Supplies. That Department issued an advertisement a week ago telling the people the amount they should pay for foodstuffs when they went into a shop. The people in the town of Mullingar did not see that advertisement.

My chief reason in bringing this matter to the notice of the Minister is that I believe that it is the people of the rural districts he chiefly wants to reach. A great many of the people of the rural districts do not read the daily papers. A daily paper may be got in a townland, and it may pass from one house to another. Even that does not occur every day. The local paper reaches every house, and it is, more or less, the business of the people who get it to find out what orders have been made relating to them. The Westmeath Examiner is the only paper published in Mullingar. Whether the reason is political or not, it is completely ignored by the Department of Agriculture. Even the rates fixed by the Wages Board never appear in it. I keep the copies of the Westmeath Examiner all the year round, and, if it contained the wage rates, I should have nothing to do but look up my file of the paper. Mullingar is an important town, and this paper should get the Ministry's advertisements. The area it serves is an agricultural area, and it is important that these announcements should reach the residents of it.

Dr. Ryan

I did not know what amount had been spent by the Department on the various papers in County Waterford until I had the figures presented to me for answer to Deputy Broderick's question. I was very much surprised when I found that the Waterford News did not get more than the two other papers in that city which, I am told, have not a quarter of the circulation. After all, circulation is a very important matter. If anybody wanted to make the point that we sought to victimise papers because they were not supporting us, we could have justified ourselves in giving the Waterford News twice as much as we did. We could do that without being accused of being politically favourable to that paper. We did not do that. I think we could be accused of being unfair in not giving more advertisements to the papers with the bigger circulation.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The area of circulation is of some importance as well as the circulation itself.

Dr. Ryan

Take the food campaign, as we know it, or the "grow-more-food campaign" as other people call it. What happens is, the Department asks all the advertising agents to submit a plan whereby we might spend, say, £8,000 or £10,000. In their scheme, the agents mention the papers and the amount of space which they would obtain from each paper. These plans are submitted to two or three officials of my Department appointed to go into them. They proceed to adopt the plan of one particular agent. He might be asked to alter his plan slightly. We might say that, in our opinion, more advertising should be done through the provincial Press and less through the daily Press. I myself have never yet selected the papers into which advertisements should go. I have on various occasions listened to complaints sent in by certain people that they were getting no part of the advertising. I asked the Department to consider these complaints, and very often these papers were put on the list.

To try to relate the amount given to each paper to its circulation is a difficult thing to do. These circulations are not entirely reliable. They are not certified, and a dishonest proprietor could tell us that its circulation was higher than it actually was. An honest proprietor might not do as well as a dishonest one in those circumstances. Circulation is not an altogether fair basis to go upon, and we cannot depend on the figures; but if a paper with a circulation of 10,000 is competing with a paper with a circulation of 2,000, it is only fair if it gets a little more of the advertising, because it is reaching more people.

We have two lists with our advertising agents. One list covers every paper in the State so far as we know. The other consists of a selected number of the papers with the larger circulations. They get some advertisements that the others do not. Other things also arise. For instance, at this time last year, there was a sort of movement amongst a number of the papers to put up their rates. I did not see why they should do that. I am not sure about the daily papers, but the provincial papers get more for Government advertisements than they do for ordinary commercial advertising. I do not know why they should. After all, Government advertising is good business for them. They are sure to be paid, and why they should charge more than for commercial advertising I do not know. It had been done, however, for some years, and it was, evidently, not objected to too strongly by Government Departments. Last year there was a sort of plot amongst a number of the papers to put up the rates still further. In fact, they were going to double what they were charging for commercial advertisements.

We tried to combat that and, generally speaking—one cannot make a very definite statement in respect of these matters—the papers in the provinces with the largest circulations were agreeable to come down to what they were previously charging, but papers with very small circulations stood out for the high rates. The position would have been that we would have been paying more to some of the papers with small circulations than we would to the papers with the larger circulations if we accepted the proposed rates. We did not agree to the higher rate. As the year went on, they all came down to the original rate and they all, eventually, came into the scheme.

A few papers were also put outside our advertising scheme last year and the year before because, while they took the money for the advertisements appealing to farmers to grow wheat, in their leading articles and reports they did their best to discourage the farmers from growing it. We thought that that was unfair. After all, if a commercial advertiser gives an advertisement to a paper asking the people to buy his goods and if the paper points out that these goods are terrible stuff and advises its readers not to buy them, he will very soon withdraw his advertisements.

Mr. Curran

Did many papers do this?

Dr. Ryan

I know that two did, in any event. I do not object to fair criticism. If a Deputy says that the fixed price for wheat is inadequate or if a newspaper says that, it is all right. However, the matter that was published went beyond fair criticism. The advertisements were, therefore, withdrawn but, after a little time, they were restored in these cases. I agree, to a great extent, with what some Deputies said, that most of our advertisements—it may not be the same with other Departments—should appear in the provincial rather than the daily Press. In connection with this campaign about the growing of wheat, much more money has been spent on the provincial Press than on the daily Press. Sometimes, Deputies will note that, in a statute, a Minister is bound, if he makes an order, to publish it in two daily papers. That is a sort of statutory advertisement and it is, probably, not so necessary that it should be brought to the notice of everybody by additional publication in the local papers. In that way, it may happen that sometimes advertisements will appear in the daily papers that do not appear in the provincial papers. Under the statute, however, it may be necessary to take that course. Advertising in connection with this food campaign is going practically entirely to the local Press.

Deputy Fagan raised a question about the publication of the Wages Orders. I did not get notice of that question but I can look the matter up. No Wages Order was made for over 18 months.

Mr. Fagan

No order was published in this paper in the last two years.

Dr. Ryan

Only one change was made in the rates. The Wages Board may have to publish certain announcements under the statute and they, probably, put those in the daily papers as a matter of form. If changes were being made in conditions or in wages, I quite agree with Deputy Fagan that particulars should be published in the provincial papers.

Mr. Fagan

Even the first order was not put in.

Dr. Ryan

That was wrong.

Mr. Fagan

I wrote to the secretary about it but he never even replied.

Dr. Ryan

I shall take a note of the Deputy's point and see that, if any changes are made, they will appear, I should like to assure Deputies that there is no discrimination as regards the political affiliations of those who own the papers or who write for them. The case raised by Deputy Broderick was brought to my notice some months ago and the paper in question was then included. The reason the amount is lower in that case is because it was not included for the whole year. It only came in at a later stage.

Mr. D. Morrissey

What the Minister has said is satisfactory so far as it goes. However, it did not cover one point which, to me, is the important point. He says that there are two lists of papers, one of which includes all the local papers and the other a selected number. Further, he said that certain papers were, for certain reasons, deprived of advertisements. What I am concerned with is not the newspapers but the question as to how the information contained in these advertisements reached the readers of these newspapers. What alternative means were taken to acquaint them with this information? A newspaper may have a small circulation of from 2,000 to 5,000 but it reaches that number of families. The vast number of these would be farming families and it is essential that they should get this information.

Dr. Ryan

I agree, but the Deputy will see that that contention can be brought to absurdity. If a paper got Government advertisements only, had half a page of reading matter and a circulation, say, of 12, it might be able to pay its way. One must draw the line somewhere.

Mr. D. Morrissey

I agree. The paper I had in mind covers one-third of the county and is the only newspaper in one of the most important farming areas of the country.

Dr. Ryan

That is all right.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

An Ceann Comhairle

I take it that motions 20 and 24 will be discussed on the Estimate.

Mr. Hughes

Shall we discuss the Estimate generally?

An Ceann Comhairle

I think we should take all together.

Mr. Hughes

There are some items relating to cereals, to come afterwards.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should bring them in now.

Dr. Ryan

It would be a better to bring them in now.

Mr. Hughes

I might point out that when Deputy Fagan attempted to do that——

An Ceann Comhairle

It was agreed that No. 3 is the wider one and deals with various things and that everything might be taken on No. 3. There is no use in having a debate on No. 3 and then going back to the Estimate. If there were a few items—small points—which the House would like to discuss when this is finished, they could be taken.

Mr. D. Morrissey

For the sake of clarity, I take it that the idea is that the whole matter of the foot-and-mouth disease might be discussed on this special Estimate and that this discussion will be taken as disposing of the two motions?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes. There will be a decision on No. 3, and one on the Estimate. The discussion should be on the main question.

Mr. Hughes

Will the Ceann Comhairle agree to the discussion now being on the foot-and-mouth disease only and that any question of cereals can be taken afterwards?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes—the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic only.

Mr. Hughes

There are other matters to which I wish to draw attention and I do not want to mix them all up.

An Ceann Comhairle

The discussion now will be confined to the foot-and-mouth disease.

Mr. Hughes

I move:—

That the Estimate be reduced by £10 in respect of sub-head N (1).

In considering the whole question of the foot-and-mouth disease, the cause and effect, the methods adopted by the Minister's Department in fighting the scourge, the degree of success or failure attained by those efforts, the immense financial loss to the agricultural community and to the State as a whole, the precarious financial position of many farmers who have suffered through its ravages, the reason for such a protracted period of time being taken in its eradication and the necessity for a thorough investigation into the full circumstances surrounding the outbreak in order the more effectively to safeguard the interests of those concerned, Deputies not closely associated with agriculture should bear in mind that this is a matter affecting our greatest industry, namely, our livestock industry, the industry upon which the whole structure of our national economy is based and which constitutes, our greatest source of wealth. I suggest that its preservation in a healthy condition should command the gravest consideration of this House.

Its exportable surplus ensures a fair standard of living for our people by enabling us to purchase in normal times large quantities of imported goods useful and necessary in our every-day lives. Its influence in maintaining the balance of payments between the country in which we purchase most of our import commodities and ourselves is a vital matter affecting our prosperity. Its potential value is probably in the neighbourhood of £60,000,000 or £70,000,000. Because of the great value of this major industry to our country's economy, one must appreciate that anything detrimentally affecting its welfare should immediately command the deepest concern and consideration of the Minister charged with the responsibility to look after its interests. Whether that responsibility has been discharged efficiently in the recent outbreak is a matter which we have no hesitation in questioning. We suggest that this Parliament, which is the supreme authority in the State, should, in the exercise of its duty and responsibility, cause this whole matter to be fully and publicly examined.

Last September, here in the Dáil, the Minister took exception to the fact that on a few occasions I had drawn an unfavourable comparison between the methods adopted in Great Britain for combating the disease, which have undoubtedly proved very effective, and our methods here, which were obviously a failure. I suggest that it is only by comparison that one can prove whether a method is expeditions or efficacious or otherwise, but the Minister bitterly resented any reference to British methods, defending his staff by saying that, in his opinion, our staff here was equal to and, in fact, better than similar staffs in other countries. This attitude of the Minister appeared to me to be utterly childish, because we had little or no experience of the disease in recent years, while Great Britain has experienced many epidemics and spends £15,000 a year on research, in trying to perfect their slaughter policy with a view to stamping out outbreaks at the earliest possible moment.

In order to perfect that organisation, after a serious outbreak which occurred in 1921-22, the British House of Commons set up a departmental committee to examine all the aspects of that outbreak and find where failure lay and fix the responsibility. That departmental committee had scarcely finished its work when there was a further outbreak in 1923, which originated in Cheshire. It was probably the biggest and most costly outbreak that Britain has experienced in 100 years. I might say that the cost of that outbreak to the State in compensation alone was £4,000,000 and the duration was over 12 months. Again, in 1924, a departmental committee was set up. I have gone to the trouble of reading the reports of both of those departmental committees and I have no hesitation in saying that, in the handling of the disease, which appears periodically in Britain, the recommendations and the findings of those committees have overhauled the whole organisation there, and that the whole method of fighting this most virulent disease has, in fact, reduced the incidence of the disease and its duration to a very low period, so much so that, since the 1924 outbreak in Cheshire, the average duration of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain has not reached two months.

Britain, I may say, is peculiarly susceptible to foot-and-mouth disease during war time, on account of the presence of large military camps. In the belief of veterinary experts, the disease nowadays is carried in the marrow of the bone of Argentine meat and the swill of the camp is the property of soldiers who dispose of it for pig feeding. The origin of the disease in this country obviously was in the military camps in Northern Ireland.

I might remind the House that at the beginning of the outbreak the incidence of the disease was slow over a considerable period. If the Minister had been fully alive to the danger then, eradication would have been a simple matter. Apparently he was not then, alive to the menace or to his own responsibility. No effective steps were taken to control the spread of the infection, and it was not until Dublin city and county were involved that the Minister showed any signs of alarm. Even then people who had experienced the disease were commenting on the dilatoriness of the Department. They were complaining to members of this House of the slowness of the Department's staff in directing the slaughter of infected animals. From six to eight days sometimes elapsed between the time of the confirmation of infection and the slaughter of the animals. I can supply the Minister with several examples where that long period elapsed between the time of confirmation and slaughter.

In the Dunboyne district, even at a later period, the time lag was the same. Men from that area complained bitterly to me that they had personally reported the disease when it was only in its early stages. The infected animals were allowed to wander over the land and the disease rapidly spread throughout the herd. The cattle were blowing froth all over the place and it was being carried by the wind over the fences. Slowness characterised the work of slaughter right through the epidemic. I called the Minister's attention to that fact on more than one occasion.

In County Kilkenny the epidemic was particularly virulent. I asked questions about the time lag, and I mentioned five cases in the Tullaroan district, where the men concerned were Patrick Hoyne, S. Walton (Junior), R. Fleming, P. Hogan and J. Dillon. I asked the Minister to give me the date on which the report was made, the disease confirmed and the cattle slaughtered. In all those cases fully five days elapsed before the animals were killed. In North Kildare there was the case of Thomas Flood, of New Hall, Naas. His manager was brought into court and fined for negligence in regard to notifying the disease. I find that it was a Guard passing on the road on the 14th March who first detected the disease. It was proved in court that there were 36 cattle infected on that farm and these cattle were not slaughtered until 20th March, six days after the disease was first observed.

Let me take the case of Jeremiah Clowry, of Craan, Milford. The disease was confirmed on his land on Wednesday, 23rd July, and his cattle were not slaughtered until Saturday, 26th July. Six of the cattle were infected on the Wednesday and by Saturday the bulk of the remaining cattle, 39 in all, were infected. This man was also convicted and fined. I suggest that the Minister should have been prosecuted in this case and convicted and imprisoned. Some of those men are ignorant country men, with little or no knowledge of what is happening. They have no wireless sets and perhaps the daily paper fails to reach them. If they have been declared negligent in not notifying the disease for three or four days, how much more negligent are the Minister's staff when they leave highly-infected animals at large for six or seven days?

Take the case of Noel Hughes, Ballinbarra, Carlow. Several days elapsed before his cattle were slaughtered on the 29th August. Towards the end of the epidemic there was the case of Thomas Honohan. He notified the authorities on Wednesday, 3rd September, and the infected animals were not slaughtered until 7th September.

From the information I have gathered in relation to fighting an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease, I find that the dominant consideration with the British Government is speed in the work of eradication. Experience has proved that the control of outbreaks rests on the one thing, immediate slaughter. That is the kernel of our case. The most vital matter in dealing with an epidemic of this sort is speed in having the animals killed. The outbreak has caused the country an enormous sum by way of compensation. In addition to that, the farmers were denied a market for their stock during the last ten months. The main responsibility rests on the Minister and on his Department. It has been proved beyond doubt in England that delay is fatal in the matter of control. There was no effective control of this disease here at any time. It appeared to reach a point on a few occasions when control was going to prove effective. Then, because of delay, it was allowed to spread further.

The general procedure in England is that as soon as the veterinary officer confirms the disease he makes immediate arrangements for slaughter. He does not worry about burial. The big problem is to get the animal infected with the disease and contact animals killed. Evidently the Minister's chief worry was to get the pits opened and the slaughter could not take place until the pits were open. One can appreciate the common sense underlying the methods adopted by the British. The great medium of infection is the saliva that falls from the animal's mouth. The virus of the disease is produced in millions in the saliva. If an infected animal can produce a gallon of infected saliva in a day and that animal is permitted to live for four or five days, one can understand how easy it is for the disease to spread through the herd. Take 20 or 30 animals producing 20 or 30 gallons of highly infected saliva and you will understand how easy it is for them to distribute it over the land. That is how this disease spreads. It is a very dangerous and most virulent disease.

Any living thing that comes in contact with the disease is likely to carry the infection further afield. This applies not only to vermin but to birds and human beings. If a crow alights in a field where there are diseased cattle, it picks up the infection. Then it may hop on to another man's field and deposit the infection there. Where animals are fed in the open and they are diseased they convey the disease through the food into their troughs. Going to these troughs for anything that may be left, the birds pick up the disease. They hop from that farm to adjoining farms and the infection is bound to be carried in that way. It is admitted by men who have fully examined this question that this is undoubtedly an air-borne disease. It has been proved in England that secondary outbreaks especially are air-borne. Hence the House ought to realise the tremendous importance of getting the animal manufacturing the infection killed immediately.

Veterinary experts in England do not worry about getting the animals under the sod. They feel satisfied when they have the diseased and in-contact animals slaughtered. In other words, the moment you kill the animal you kill the manufacturer of the infection and the animal can lie there until you are ready to bury it. It is swilled over with disinfectant and can lie there. We reversed the whole method here, and no matter how dangerous the infection was no effort was made to kill the animal until the pits were opened, and the method of opening the pits was obviously slow and tedious. We were relying on the Army here, but on the other side mechanical diggers are used. No attempt was made here to speed up the work and reduce the effects of human contact to the minimum. Instead of that, we landed batches of 70, 80, or 100 or more military on a farm who were not very particular as to whether they were disinfected or not when leaving the farm. Not only were they not very particular whether they were disinfected or not but they were worked in batches and for two hours at a stretch and, at the end of the two hours, the batch coming off the farm was permitted to leave that farm and go to the nearest pub. Whether their feet were properly disinfected before leaving the farm or not is very doubtful, but even assuming that they were properly disinfected that had a very bad psychological effect on the local community who were asked and expected to observe a rule of isolation. It was most demoralising.

In all cases where manual digging is done in England beer is provided on the farm, and the people engaged in the operation of digging the pits under no consideration are permitted to leave the farm. Here you had the military, wholesale, in Carlow and Kilkenny districts especially, and I think from the very inception of the infection, being permitted to leave the farm during the day and go to the nearest pub for a drink. I think that was the greatest crime I know of, and it was committed against the greatest industry in this country.

Dr. Ryan

It would be, all right.

Mr. Hughes

Does the Minister deny it?

Dr. Ryan

Absolutely.

Mr. Hughes

Does he deny that they went to the nearest pub?

Dr. Ryan

Yes.

Mr. Hughes

I can prove it.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy can prove anything.

Mr. Hughes

I can prove it. Does the Minister deny that there was delay in slaughtering?

Dr. Ryan

I deny a lot of what the Deputy is saying.

Mr. Hughes

I am sure you do, but we have the facts and can prove them.

Dr. Ryan

I know where you got them all right.

Mr. Hughes

I went to more trouble than the Minister in this matter. I do not think the Minister lost very much sleep over this. Then there is the question of having contact stopped and the question of the spread of the disease or the control of stock contiguous to an infected farm. No attempt, to my mind, was made, and no proper and effective measures were taken to ensure that the disease was not going to spread out from the infected farm to contiguous farms. Again, the British method is to have a proper police patrol around the farm to ensure that there is no contact whatever between that farm and other farms. In an article by the special correspondent of the Irish Press, who went down to Kilkenny and interviewed the chief veterinary officer there, the farmers of Carlow and Kilkenny were condemned for non-co-operation. I suggest that the co-operation that was got and that was given by the agricultural community during this epidemic was as much as any reasonable Minister could expect and that there was as much co-operation given in this country to the staffs who were dealing with this disease as would be given in any other country in the world. According to the British method, even where there is no co-operation—and that sometimes occurs in Wales because the Welsh farmer is a difficult kind of man to handle at times—there is a provision, according to the regulations, where the two-mile ring is controlled by veterinary officers. What I mean by that is that a six-inch map of the two-mile ring is got out, and that map is divided up into sections and each veterinary officer is put in charge of a section, so that the whole two-mile ring is properly covered by a veterinary officer whose responsibility it is to inspect the stock of every field and every farmstead in his area and to report back every two days as to the condition of those stocks.

You will realise that there is, therefore, a proper check-up on all the stock in that two-mile ring and that, if there is any spread of the disease, it is immediately detected by an expert and the ordinary plain people have not to be relied upon at all to detect the spread of the disease. You will realise that that policy provides that in the danger zone, that is, the two-mile or inner ring, there is a thorough inspection made of all the stock in that two-mile area for a period of a fortnight, and outside of that two-mile area any licensing for the removal of stock or the removal of hay or straw or anything like that is done by the police. If the police have any doubt about any case the licence is issued only after consultation with the local veterinary officer. So that you realise immediately that there is no waste whatever of expert men as has been the case in this country. It was obvious to every farmer in the counties that have been affected by foot-and-mouth disease that there was a tremendous waste of veterinary officers in the outer 15-mile zone. You had veterinary officers sent 14 and 15 miles away from the infected centre to a district where there was no danger at all or where, at all events, the danger was very remote, to inspect stock. Those men could be more effectively used inside the two-mile ring in the danger zone, and police officers could be used, with discretion, in the outer ring. In fact, in England, there is no licence required in the outer ring for the removal of hay or straw. All this matter of licensing was most irritating and operated against the chance of getting complete co-operation. Fancy a man, busy on a harvest day, having to go into the local office, perhaps on a bicycle, 13 and 14 miles, to get a licence to bring in his corn or his hay from the field. The idea is obsolete. That sort of a system has not been in operation in any other country for the last 30 or 40 years.

Let us go back again to this article in the Irish Press of August 29th. It deals with an interview which the special correspondent of the Irish Press had with the chief veterinary officer at Kilkenny who was in charge of the outbreak there. Speaking about the farmers' non-co-operation, he said: “They had above all sent infected milk to creameries, and on their way to the creameries had called to other farms to collect milk.” Obviously, the chief veterinary officer there suggested that it was the carelessness of the farmers in Kilkenny in bringing infected milk to the creameries that was responsible for the widespread foot-and-mouth disease in Kilkenny. It is a well-known fact, established by veterinary experts who have been dealing with this in England——

Dr. Ryan

In England, yes. They are the only experts?

Mr. Hughes

——that, before there are visible signs of infection in a cow, her milk may be infected. If her milk is infected before she shows visible signs of infection, it is most unfair and unjust to blame the farmers for bringing infected milk to the creameries. The first creamery area that was infected with foot-and-mouth disease was the Mountgeale creamery area. The first farm that was affected in that creamery area was the farm of Mr. Patrick Hynes, at Dreelingstown. When the disease was confirmed at that farm the creamery committee met that night and decided to take no milk off that road where the infection was. Two days later there were two further outbreaks of the disease in the creamery district, and on 23rd April the creamery committee, by resolution, closed the creamery. They realised that they had no power to close the creamery except by extraordinary general meeting, which in the circumstances, obviously, they could not call. They instructed their manager to get a direction from the Department, and, if the Department thought necessary, that the Minister should by order close the creamery, to regularise their decision. On the following morning the manager of the Mountgeale creamery got in touch with the Department by telephone, and the officers of the Department, having considered all the circumstances, advised that the creamery should be reopened. The creamery was reopened on 25th April. In the next few days, infected skim milk delivered back to many farmers in the Tullaroan district, infected a large number of calves and pigs in that district. The infected skim milk going back from the creamery was the cause of widespread infection in Tullaroan. On 2nd May the Minister closed the Mountgeale, Tullaroan, Kilmanagh and Knockulty creameries, and after that all the creameries were ordered to sterilise all skim milk before it was returned to the farmers. I think it is obvious to anyone that it was nothing short of criminal neglect on the part of the Ministry that this thing should have occurred, and I think it is unfair and unjust to suggest that it was the farmers' fault that infected milk reached the creameries, when one considers that it is possible and likely that, before a cow shows any physical signs of infection, her milk is infected.

Later, when the infection came into County Carlow, and was still on the west of the River Barrow, a suggestion was made to the Minister that the River Barrow, being a very large river, should be made use of as a natural barrier; that the Department should try and hold the disease on the west side, and that the obvious way to do that was to put disinfectant staffs on the bridgeheads, that all traffic across those bridgeheads should be disinfected, that the people should be got to leave their cars there, and they should dip their boots in disinfectant baths, and be sprayed if necessary. In that way the disease could be held on the west side of the river. No attempt was made to implement that suggestion. More recently, we had indiscriminate slaughter over a wide area in County Carlow. The Department developed the idea that the proper thing to do in the case of an infected farm was to take in a big sweep of country and slaughter every animal in that area. Again, I want to point out that that has never been the practice in any other country. The ability of a veterinary staff to deal with this disease should be judged not by the number of cattle they can kill, but by the number of cattle they can save. If the proper measures had been taken, if the measures which had proved effective, and very effective, in a neighbouring country had been fully adopted here, this widespread slaughter would have been altogether unnecessary. Then we come to the method of slaughter. Our method of slaughter was altogether different from the British method.

Dr. Ryan

And, therefore, wrong?

Mr. Cosgrave

Do not be foolish.

Mr. Hughes

Do not be stupid.

Dr. Ryan

Is not the whole speech to the effect that England is right and we are wrong?

Mr. Cosgrave

Grow up.

Dr. Ryan

That Party is always talking like that. England is right and we are wrong.

Cormac Breathnach

We have been listening to that for years.

Dr. Ryan

Yes. Whatever England does is right.

Mr. Hughes

I am simply pointing out that the British have had experience of dealing with foot-and-mouth disease.

Dr. Ryan

They know everything.

Mr. Hughes

They paid dearly for their experience. The 1923 outbreak in Cheshire cost the country £4,000,000 in compensation. They got down to brass tacks about it, and set up a departmental committee to examine the whole problem. They reorganised and perfected their whole method of slaughter.

Dr. Ryan

They never got rid of it since.

Mr. Hughes

The Minister is so stupid about it that it is hardly worth while to bother replying to his interruptions. Obviously, if you have a problem in regard to which you have no experience, and your neighbour has already had a problem of the same sort and has found an effective solution of that problem, you would be a very wise man if you adopted his method of dealing with that problem, and that is what I am suggesting. It simply happens that the British are the people who have found a solution of the problem, but, of course, the word "British" is anathema to the Minister. He is such a patriotic Irishman, that the very mention of it here is objectionable to him. There is no common sense about that attitude.

Dr. Ryan

I only claim that the Irish know something.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister does not know much, judging by the way he did this job.

Dr. Ryan

I know as much as the Deputy.

Mr. Hughes

The greatest crime committed against any industry in this country has been committed by that man; he is responsible for appalling losses suffered by the agricultural community of this country. First of all, the people sustained enormous losses by the economic war. If anything, to my mind, the foot-and-mouth epidemic was a greater crime because there was a possibility of a profitable year for agriculture and it turned out to be a barren one. I charge that man, the Minister, with full responsibility for that. Did he ever lose a night's sleep over it?

Dr. Ryan

Did you?

Mr. Hughes

I did more about it than the Minister did.

Dr. Ryan

You did in your hat.

Mr. Hughes

I went to the trouble of coming up to his office on several occasions.

Dr. Ryan

You did not help us very much.

Mr. Hughes

The Minister's attitude was that because England did it, he would not touch it. That was his attitude to every suggestion. Would I be reasonable in suggesting that when this disease was particularly virulent and widespread in County Kilkenny, it was the Minister's responsibility to go down there and give it his personal attention, to stop in an hotel in Kilkenny and satisfy himself that things were being done properly?

Dr. Ryan

I had the sense to recognise that the veterinary surgeons knew more about it than I did. The Deputy has not that sense.

Mr. Hughes

The facts of these cases show what you knew about it. You made a complete hash of it.

Dr. Ryan

They knew more than you did.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I think the Deputy should be allowed to make his case.

Dr. Ryan

I cannot listen to him, anyway.

Mr. Hughes

I am making my case. I do not mind the Minister's interruptions; they do not affect me in the slightest. As to the methods adopted for slaughter, the method of taking out dumb animals, herding them into a pit, standing round them with rifles and potting at them is a most barbarous method of slaughter, a method that would not be tolerated in any country in the world worthy of the name of a Christian country. Does the Minister think that he has a licence to adopt such cruel, inhuman and barbarous methods? If they were attempted in any other country the cruelty societies would have the officers responsible for them brought before the courts.

The method adopted in England, no matter what exception the Minister may take to English methods, is far more humane. Every beast must be killed individually, apart from the rest and by a humane killer. The other animals do not see the slaughter taking place. The slaughtered animal is dragged out by a horse or tractor and put into the pit. Our method was to get them all into the pit and to have a good day's sport firing at them. The first bullet was sometimes effective, but frequently it took two, three or four bullets. If the Minister wants proof of that I have a letter here from a man by the name of Moore from Higginstown. It states:—

"An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed at Ballysallagh, on 31st May, on the farm of Mr. J. J. Bennett. The following were the facts about the handling of the outbreak. Outbreak confirmed on Saturday; Department veterinary surgeon arrived and was in charge and proceeding to examine beasts and sent a messenger to Mr. M. Brennan, neighbour, to take away cattle from the fence of the field in which the affected cattle were. The first affected beast was shot that night and left in field. Four cattle were affected the following day (Sunday) and were allowed to stand all day in a stream which ran through this field and crossed the road into Mr. Kearney's and Miss Meighan's land. Cattle shot late on Sunday afternoon and buried in field where outbreak occurred. Soldiers who dug the grave left the field on numerous occasions and brought drinking water in buckets from a well in Mrs. E. Kavanagh's land. An outbreak of disease occurred here a few days later. An outbreak occurred in Meighan's the Tuesday after Bennetts, and in Kearneys a day later. Bennett had cows grazing five fields away, only two of which were on the stream. No attempt was made to keep them from standing and frothing in the water in which they stood all day on Sunday. The facts as set out above are correct and can be proved anywhere."

Of course Mr. Moore is a liar according to the Minister. I have no hesitation in saying that it was the Minister's responsibility to go down to Kilkenny and to remain there to see that things were properly done to stamp out the disease. He has responsibility before the Dáil and before the country for the proper conduct of his Department and staff. He should have waited there for a week or longer if necessary to see how the arrangements were being carried out, but he never lost a minute's sleep about it. He never bothered about going down to Kilkenny, as a man in his position and appreciating his responsibility should. The country would think more of him if he had done that. Instead, he behaved in a particularly childish and silly way, and when criticism is being driven home to him, he objects to it. Of course, it is obvious to any sensible man that the British methods should have been adopted, having regard to their long experience and the fact that they have spent £1,500 a year on perfecting their methods of slaughter, tightening up everywhere there was a possibility of a leakage. But the Minister would not adopt these methods. We were too anti-British to do anything like that. It would be stupid for the Irish people to adopt British methods.

Coming to the question of compensation, the way some people were treated in the matter of compensation was simply criminal. The British procedure in regard to compensation is that a number of men all over the country are nominated as valuers and the owner of a slaughtered herd has a right to nominate any of these valuers to value his stock. When the valuation is made, the owner is asked to sign his consent to that valuation, in other words, to indicate that he agrees to it. The valuation is then made by agreement. Failing agreement, the man has a right to appeal to arbitration. An arbitrator is nominated by both parties—the veterinary inspector in charge and the owner—and the arbitrator finally fixes the valuation in the case of dispute. In our case there was one valuer only, a man nominated by the Minister. Up to a certain date the owner signed his consent to that valuation, although a great many people were not informed when signing that it meant that they were agreeing to the valuation. Many people were ignorant of what they were doing when they were signing. However, the valuation proceeded on that basis until a man in County Waterford, a Mr. William Kearney, appealed to arbitration, which he was entitled to do in law and the arbitrator increased the award by approximately £200. I was in the Department of Agriculture this morning to get the details of this case but I was refused information. Possibly the officer in charge was within his rights in refusing me the information, but I as a Deputy have the right of putting down a Parliamentary question and getting the information from the Minister whether he likes it or not. That is one privilege we do enjoy in this House, that the Minister must answer our questions within four days. Immediately after Mr. Kearney winning his case with the arbitrator, the following order was issued by the Minister:—

"Statutory Rules and Orders, 1941.— Order of the Minister for Agriculture. —Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Ireland) Order of 1900 (Amendment) Order, 1941.

"The Minister for Agriculture, by virtue and in exercise of the powers vested in him under the Agricultural Act, 1931 (No. 8 of 1931), the Diseases of Animals (Ireland) Acts, 1894 to 1938, and of every other power enabling him in this behalf, hereby orders as follows:—

1. This Order may be cited as the Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Ireland) Order of 1900 (Amendment) Order, 1941.

2. The Interpretation Act, 1937 (No. 38 of 1937) applies to this Order.

3. (1) Where an animal is slaughtered on account of foot-and-mouth disease by order of the Minister for Agriculture, under the Diseases of Animals Act, 1894, the value of the animal for compensation shall be ascertained by a person appointed by the said Minister for the purpose.

(2) Article 23 of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Ireland) Order of 1900 made on the 16th day of October, 1900 is hereby revoked."

I quote from Article 23 of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Ireland) Order of 1900, which reads as follows:—

"(1) Where in Ireland an animal is slaughtered on account of foot-and-mouth disease by order of the Department under the provisions of the Act of 1894, the value of the animal for compensation shall be ascertained as follows:—

(i) If within fourteen days after the receipt of notice in writing from an inspector or officer of the Department of the valuation of the animal, the owner of the animal or his agent does not give a counter-notice in writing stating in effect that he disputes the valuation made on behalf of the Department, the compensation shall be paid on that valuation.

(ii) If the owner gives such a counter-notice, then the question of the value of the animal shall by virtue of this Article stand referred to the arbitration of a single arbitrator, who shall make his award ready for delivery within seven days after he is appointed, and the provisions of the Common Law Procedure Amendment Act (Ireland), 1856, shall apply to the reference and arbitration.

(iii) An arbitrator may be appointed by an agreement in writing signed by an inspector or officer of the Department and by the owner of the animal or his agent."

Under this amending order, every owner of stock who was dissatisfied with the valuation made by a valuer nominated by the Minister was denied the right of appeal. A man in England, in similar circumstances, under the law that was in operation here up to the time of the making of that order by the Minister, and that is still in operation in England, has the right to appeal against the valuation made. Is there any equity or justice in that order? I suggest that this House should decide that this is a most unjust, unfair, and iniquitous order. The Minister is supposed to hold the scales fairly between the individual and the State. Has that been done in this case? I will prove it has not been done.

Up to the time that order was made, there was a responsibility on the Minister and the Department to notify the owner of their intention to slaughter; to secure, first of all, his consent to the valuation made, and, failing that, the man could exercise his right to apply for arbitration. Immediately that order was made, no further notice was given to any owner. A number of cattle, belonging to men in County Carlow who had grass on the 11-months system, were slaughtered, and they got no notification, good, bad or indifferent, that their cattle had been slaughtered. These cattle were not infected with the disease at all, but were slaughtered under this new method of taking in a wide sweep of country and clearing a wide area around an infected farm of cattle. In one such case where cattle were slaughtered, there was no disease on the man's land, but they were brought in under that policy, and he got no notification of the slaughter. The valuation was assessed, but the man knew nothing about it. He got no opportunity of speaking to the valuer. I need not say that that man is greatly dissatisfied over the whole thing. He was Mr. Thomas Doran, of Kilcruit, Bagenalstown. I have receipts here for cattle which he had sent to the Waterford factory. The first lot averaged £30 per head, and the second lot £27 or £28. The compensation awarded him was approximately £22 per head. Here is the note that accompanied the award:—

"You are hereby notified that the total valuation placed on the animals, your property, which the Minister for Agriculture decided to have slaughtered on account of the existence of foot-and-mouth disease, is £472. The decision of the Minister in the case of the valuation placed on animals slaughtered under the above-mentioned Acts is final, and no appeal can be entertained in the matter."

Because Mr. Kearney, in the exercise of his rights, got the award increased by £200 by the arbitrator, the Minister jumps in with this order and says: "I will stop that." Whether the cattle were infected or whether they were slaughtered on account of this new idea of taking in a big sweep of country and valued before slaughter, no notification whatever was given, and the person concerned is denied the right of appeal to arbitration. Is that equity or justice or fair play?

I have a similar case here where the man was living only half a mile from where the infection was. He was Mr. Patrick Brennan, of Newtown, Bagenalstown. His cattle were slaughtered on 9th September. He lived exactly half a mile from the field which he had taken on the 11-months system. Twenty-two cattle were slaughtered which were free from disease. One cow in another field on that farm was infected. The compensation paid was £305 10s., or £13 18s. per head. No agreement was signed. This amount was from £2 10s. to £3 per head under value. These cattle were bought last January, 15 in Kilkenny Fair at £12 10s. per head, and seven in Borris Fair at £12 15s. The cattle were well fed with hay, pulp and turnips. The 15 acres of grass cost him £75 and the compensation is less than £14 per head. These facts speak for themselves. The compensation in this case was grossly unfair and unjust.

I am sorry the Minister for Lands is leaving the House. In one of these cases, notwithstanding the promise made by the Minister for Lands that there would be no pressure exercised by his Department in regard to the payment of annuities in the case of people who suffered loss owing to foot-and-mouth disease, a six-day notice for the payment of the annuity was issued in July. The man wrote stating that he would pay when he got an opportunity to sell some cattle. Then, in October, he got a 15-day notice from the sheriff and he was forced to go in and pay the amount, with costs as well. That is only one of many cases. When you consider that in England a man similarly placed, notwithstanding the contempt the Minister has for British methods, has never been denied the right of appeal against the valuation fixed by an arbitrator nominated by himself from a panel of valuers, that he still has the right of appeal, and that here, because one man exercised that right and got the award increased by £200, the Minister jumps in with this order and prohibits any man from exercising that right of appeal, I think it is a gross injustice. I think it is a scandalous order to emanate from any Department, when we remember all the talk we have listened to from the Government front bench about Christian principles. The more I have examined this whole problem the more I am disgusted with the methods adopted by the Minister and his Department. Is it any wonder that we ask for a full public inquiry into all the circumstances surrounding this matter?

Then we come to consider how the people who were negligent were handled. I have a few examples of cases where there was a charge of negligence. I put down a Parliamentary question to the Minister which he answered the last day the House met. I asked him— and it was a reasonable request and a very fair request—to review all those cases where he had in flicted a penalty on people who were considered by his Department to have been negligent, lest in the rush and hurry of dealing with the disease an injustice might have been done in any case. I thought, now that the disease was past, the Minister might, on deliberation, be prepared to alter his decision. I think that was a very reasonable request to make to the Minister and I think it was a very wise suggestion, which he should have adopted. Instead of that, the Minister refused. I asked him on what basis he assessed the amount of compensation that was withheld and he informed me that he had no basis, that the amount varied from 10 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the value of the infected cattle. I have a case here of Mr. Thomas Flood, New Hall, Naas, where 100 per cent. of the value of the infected cattle was withheld. I do not know how the Minister can reconcile that with his reply to my question on the last day.

Dr. Ryan

What is his name?

Mr. Hughes

Mr. Thomas Flood, New Hall, Naas. I have another case of Isaac Brady, Tourtane, Clough, Castlecomer. In that case 83 per cent. was withheld. No one can dispute the fact that it is good policy to penalise those people who failed in their duty and responsibility to notify the disease at the earliest possible moment, but when one appreciates that, first of all, all those cases were brought into court and the Justice there, in exercising his discretion, fixed the penalty that, in his opinion, met the equities of the case, it appears to be very harsh treatment for the Minister to sit again in judgement on those people and inflict a further penalty. However, he is empowered by law to do that. I might again point out—I have to cite the one case which the Minister takes such strong exception to—how our neighbours deal with a situation of that sort. There is never more than 10 per cent. of the value of the infected cattle withheld in England. The departmental committee that last examined the question of foot-and-mouth disease in England in 1924-25 in one of their recommendations say, under the heading of valuation and compensation, "that a revised basis of valuation should be adopted in the case of all animals showing possible symptoms of the disease at the time of the diagnostic visit, a uniform reduction of 10 per cent. being made from the full valuation of all such animals". In that case where a man is brought to court in England and where he is penalised and fined, even to the maximum amount provided in law, of £5 per head, in no single case is a man penalised afterwards more than 10 per cent. of the value of the infected animals.

Here, on the Minister's own admission, he has penalised our people to the tune of 75 per cent. and I have cases to prove that men have been penalised to the full value of the stock and in one case 83 per cent. I have a case of Mr. Hennessy, Wolf Hill, Laoighis, who was also brought into court. The disease was notified on 25th June last. That man was fined in court, in respect of 35 animals, valued £447. That man is a small farmer living in the Wolf Hill district, a wet, mountainous, poor district. He has not got 1d. compensation yet and he is in a deplorable condition. He has not got 1/- to buy anything. Obviously, it is not a tillage district. It is wet, rushy land and everything that that man possessed is gone. He has written several letters to the Minister's Department and there is no reply and he has been notified—he got two letters—to restock. How is he going to restock if he has not been paid compensation? In deciding to withhold 100 per cent. of the value of infected cattle, has the Minister taken into account the economic effect that is going to have on the individuals concerned? Does he realise that it may paralyse some of those men for all time; that they will be unable to carry on; that it may be the means of throwing them a burden on the State; that they will be no longer a productive unit in the State; that his action may cripple them financially and economically? Of course, the Minister does not worry about that aspect of it. It does not matter to him what happens to those unfortunate people.

First of all the court fined these people for negligence and secondly, the Minister, exercising his power and authority, again severely fined them for negligence. In the case of Mr. Flood, notwithstanding the fact that the veterinary inspectors arrived there on the 15th of the month and decided that Mr. Flood was negligent and brought his case into court, those infected animals, numbering 36, were permitted to live to the 20th. They were slaughtered on 20th March. I do not think there was any deliberate cloaking of the disease there. It was proved in court that it was due to ignorance on the part of the man that was in charge. Mr. Flood was an old man, sick in bed. He employed a man who had done a course of agriculture in Clonakilty College. He was a young fellow. He gave evidence that he believed that the cattle, which were all young stock, were teething and that they were slobbering from teething. The veterinary officer who gave evidence admitted that that was quite possible, that a certain amount of saliva would come away when young stock were teething and that it was difficult to distinguish between the Saliva that would come away from young stock in that condition and that would come from cattle infected with foot-and-mouth disease.

That man was condemned by the Minister and fined to the full value of his stock and the cattle were permitted to live for five days. I think there was greater negligence on the part of the Minister than there was on the part of Mr. Flood—infinitely greater negligence. The Minister and his staff should have realised the danger, the threat, that these infected live animals were to the whole district. Yet, they were permitted to live for five days, spreading infection through the herd and producing deadly saliva which was going to infect the whole place, so that trespassers. whether human beings, vermin, bird life or anything else, were likely to spread it into other districts.

Two staggering blows, the greatest it has suffered in 100 years, have been dealt to the live-stock industry in this country by the present Government in the last decade. The first was the economic war, and the second the gross negligence, the culpable negligence— and I deliberately use the word "culpable", because several commonsense recommendations were put to the Department, but there was no attempt made to adopt them—of the Department in regard to this outbreak. I suggest that it is the duty and the responsibility of this House to make a full public investigation into all the circumstances of this unfortunate affair. That has been done on several occasions by our neighbours and has proved very useful and beneficial. It has had the effect of bringing about an overhaul of the whole machinery of organisation for dealing with foot-and-mouth disease, and I think that the facts alone which I have referred to will prove that our methods were hopelessly inadequate and inefficient for dealing with the problem and that the Department was lax and dilatory where speed was most essential. I say that it is the bounden duty of the House to have a full investigation into all the circumstances. It will prove a useful implement if we should be so unfortunate as to be struck by this disease at any time in the future. Not only that, but such a committee should be empowered to investigate this question of compensation, and report on the justice or injustice done to many individuals.

Mr. Bennett

In respect of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, we are discussing a Vote for £480,000, including £20,000 for travelling expenses, and, against that, there is an Appropriation-in-Aid for salvaged animals of £27,000 odd, so that the net cost to the taxpayer is £456,000. However, outside this sum, the actual loss to the agricultural community, due to prohibition of exports and other incidental losses, cannot readily be computed, but would be a matter of millions of pounds. There would not be a reluctance in this House to pass the sum in the Estimate, if the House and the people were satisfied that we had got full value for the expenditure of the money. It is because we believe that we have not got full value that some of us tabled the motion which appears on the Order Paper.

There are two accepted policies in relation to foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks. One is the method pursued on the Continent, of more or less allowing nature to take charge of the disease, because it may not be apparent to every individual that foot-and-mouth disease is not necessarily fatal and that animals will recover from it. For myself, I think that is an aspect which is not worth discussing, although it has been advocated in the Press and elsewhere by very many people in this country that we should treat this as a disease which can be overcome by remedies and veterinary treatment. In Great Britain, however—and I hope that no stones will be thrown at me when I mention Great Britain—they have pursued a policy of slaughter and isolation, and, I believe, very wisely so. That being so, whatever views there may have been as to the wisdom of that policy here, we were bound to accept it and to follow it, if we were not prepared to see the extinction of our export cattle trade, and I do not think there is any agriculturist here who would advocate that.

Having accepted the method of slaughter and isolation for combating this disease, it is, I think, within the province of Deputies to interrogate the Minister and the Department as to whether that policy is effectively and expeditiously put into effect. There is a general belief in the country that it is not, that slaughter was delayed in some cases beyond the period necessary, and that, as Deputy Hughes pointed out, contagion was allowed to develop and to spread because slaughter was not carried out as soon as it might have been. In regard to isolation, I am amongst the people who are sceptical as to whether proper measures were adopted in respect of the isolation of infected farms, and of persons and animals generally. One outbreak of this disease which comes to my mind occurred in 1928, in the Minister's county. An end was speedily put to that outbreak. There was a perfect system of isolation and the disease was not allowed to spread further than the isolated district, and I believe that what was done in that case could have been done in this case, if proper methods of isolation were adopted, and, I might add, proper methods of disinfection.

It is, I presume, relevant to ask the Minister if the Department has satisfied itself as to how this disease was carried from one district to another. In the first place, it came from outside the country down to Birr and Dublin, and I should like the Minister to tell us how it eventually jumped from Naas and Dublin to County Limerick, and whether there is anything in the rumour that it was carried by people from Dublin and other places to a race-meeting at Rathkeale. These are matters on which the House and the public have a right to be satisfied if they are to be asked to pass an expenditure of practically £500,000, and which, to use the Minister's words, if the sum total of the two Votes were added together, would greatly exceed £500,000.

To my mind the methods that were adopted for handling the disease, where it broke out in Dublin, were lamentable. I am borne out in that by conversations that I have had with men prominently associated with the cattle trade in the City of Dublin and its neighbourhood. There were no proper precautions taken to isolate particular premises, or the people coming in contact with those premises, where outbreaks occurred: that while the Dublin cattle market itself was closed, the yards of some prominent salesmasters were not closed, so that people who were in contact with the disease had every chance of entering those places. The consequence was that there was a very rapid spread of the disease through the City of Dublin. I will admit that it was very unfortunate for the Minister, one of the most unfortunate things that could have happened from the point of view of the Department, that the disease should have broken out in a congested and thickly populated area. But, even so, it might have been held from spreading through the country. For example, the disease has broken out in some very populous areas in England. As Deputy Hughes has pointed out, it has even broken out in places there where there was a big movement of troops, and despite that, they have succeeded there in holding it. We failed to hold the disease for some reason or another. The country has a right to know why the disease was allowed to continue for such a prolonged period, and to touch districts so far distant from one another, such as Limerick and Dublin, and Tipperary and Naas. There must have been some investigation made by the Department as to the cause for the spread of the disease from one district to another. The House is entitled to be told the results of the investigation, if there have been any, and to be given any information there is at the Minister's disposal as to how the disease spread.

Deputy Hughes talked about isolation. Was there effective isolation when the disease first broke out? On a previous occasion I suggested to the Minister that, if necessary, he should use all the forces at his disposal and that of the Government, such, as the military and police, to isolate a district where the disease broke out. We sugested that, if the measures at his disposal were not sufficient to isolate a district, that the military and the police should be called in to help. I do not believe that was done. I said before that with the machinery at the disposal of the Government it ought to have been possible for them to prevent any man, who entered a farm on which there were affected cattle, leaving it without at least being disinfected to the satisfaction of the people in authority, so that there would be no chance of his spreading the disease. Honestly, I do not believe that such precautions were taken. I do not want to rely on rumour, but if rumours adverse to the Department continued to persist there must have been some modicum of truth in them. There were rumours to the effect that, in the case of Dublin, many men in the contact with the disease were present on certain premises and left them by various methods without being subjected to any form of disinfection. If that be true, is it any wonder that the disease spread rapidly to many byres and other places in Dublin, until the position became such that the Minister himself became greatly perturbed by it at one particular time?

The suggestion was also made by some of us that, so far as an isolated district was concerned, public meetings and performances should be prohibited. We suggested that sporting meeting should not be allowed, although some of us disliked having to make that suggestion. The Minister pooh-poohed that suggestion. He said that, according to his advisers, there was no danger of the contagion being spread by people coming from a district where the disease was, to another district where a race meeting was being held. I pointed out to him at the time that in the case of one particular race meeting, the people in control of it had issued an order that people coming to the races should have their feet disinfected by walking through disinfected straw. They might as well have whistled as to think that a precaution of that kind would have any effect in stopping the spread of the disease. At any rate, soon afterwards the Minister was persuaded that there was some justice in our demand that these public assemblies should be prohibited. In my opinion the prohibition in regard to racing was adopted too late, so far as the Dublin district was concerned. Later, in other districts, where outbreaks of the disease occurred, other forms of popular assembly were not similarly prohibited.

The one place where the disease would appear to have been effectively handled was in my own county, and I think the credit for that is due more to the people concerned than to the Minister or his Department. It was effectively handled there because there were one or two, or three, very influential men in the neighbourhood who pursued a particular course and gave good example. Happily, their good example was followed so that, with co-operation in the district, we held the disease. While co-operation is a good thing, and might perhaps be the most effective method for dealing with the disease, the Minister and the Department should not rely altogether on co-operation, because you will not get effective co-operation in 99 cases out of 100 where you are putting penalties on the people. In such a case, of course, people are penalised. Their business is being interrupted, their animals slaughtered and their means of livelihood affected. In that situation you cannot expect their full co-operation, but while that is so the Department and the Minister are supposed to be able to combat the disease irrespective of co-operation. Whether or not there is full co-operation, it should be possible for the Department effectively to combat the disease and prevent it from spreading in the way in which it did in this country.

In an early speech on this subject I suggested to the Minister that, in my belief, the human carrier was the most dangerous. The Minister, at a later stage, agreed, and there was an attempt made to prevent the spread of the disease by the human carrier. I do not believe there was sufficient done in that respect. It is true, of course, that many warnings were given to the farmers through the Press, on the radio and in other ways. Deputy Hughes referred to the fact that farmers were penalised for not reporting the disease. On a former occasion I referred to the Minister's advice to farmers to speedily notify the disease, and suggested that in doing that farmers themselves were helping to spread the disease more readily than in any other way: that, for instance, where a farmer, his wife or his son went to notify an outbreak, or a suspected outbreak, of the disease, he or she in doing so might meet a neighbour and have a conversation with him, and in that way might help to spread the infection all over the area. I am glad to say that the Minister adopted a suggestion I made, that the people should be instructed to take precautions to disinfect themselves before they proceeded to carry the information and, I might add, the infection. These are things that should have been thought of in the first instance. It should not be left to some insignificant Deputy like myself to put forward the idea. I say again what I said then that it should have been possible with the forces at our disposal—a large Gárda force in a fairly peaceful country and a very large military force in a country not at war—to patrol effectively the area in which the disease occurred. It would have been very good exercise for them. It should have been possible to secure that nothing much bigger than a bird could have got in or out of the infected area.

In regard to the bird carrier or air carrier referred to by Deputy Hughes, I am not so much perturbed. If the bird or air carrier was as probable a method of spreading the disease as is suggested in some places, then we would never have got rid of it. It would have spread beyond the control of veterinary surgeons or anybody else. The principal carriers were, in the first place, the infected animals or animals in contact with them and, secondly, persons in contact with infected animals. Whether or not, in expending this £500,000 of money, we made effective use of the forces and officials at our disposal I am not quite sure, and I do not think that the country is sure. I do not think that any harm could result from the adoption by the Minister of the suggestion contained in the motion—the setting up of a public inquiry so as to satisfy the minds of Deputies. Even in the minds of the members of the Minister's own Party there are doubts that the proper methods were at times pursued. We all admit that when things became serious more drastic efforts were made to combat the disease than were made at the beginning. If the same vigorous methods had been adopted at the beginning, things might have been better than they were. In the public mind there exists a suspicion—I do not put it more strongly than that—that there was laxity in combating the disease and in putting into effect the proper remedies.

I dislike mentioning rumours, but rumours have to be met by Deputies in the course of their ordinary work. There are various rumours in the country as to what happened and did not happen. One rumour is that military in contact with the disease were not properly disinfected. How far that is true, I do not know. One evening, going from the Dáil to my home town, I came in contact with two officers who were in close touch with the disease. I am not going to give their names or to relate what they told me, but the form of disinfection they underwent might as well not have been undertaken. It has been reported to me that large bodies of military in contact with the disease proceeded without disinfection outside the boundaries of the infected areas. Deputy Hughes mentioned that, and I have the same information. Perhaps that is not true but it is my duty to mention it. If it was possible for any number of military to come in contact with even suspected cases and to leave the lands without proper disinfection—particularly if they came in contact with brother soldiers outside— it was a disaster to discipline. One thing we do know—that soldiers were allowed to go on furlough from inside the districts concerned to other areas. Much as I should like that soldiers get their proper leave, I think they might have been prevented from taking leave at that particular period. It did not create a good impression in the minds of the people that soldiers who had been slaughtering infected animals should be allowed to go into a non-infected area and meet people there.

Deputy Hughes put forward all the essentials for our argument. There remains the suspicion that everything that could be done was not done and that we did not take really effective measures for speedy slaughter and proper isolation. That view is shared by a numerous body. I should be glad if there were no grounds for it. The best method of showing that there are no grounds for it is by public investigation. No evil results could accrue from such an investigation. Deputy Hughes referred to the method of slaughter. If it is a fact that numbers of infected or suspected cattle were slaughtered in the manner described by Deputy Hughes it is a scandal to the Minister and to the Department concerned. If cattle were driven into a grave and were, while "milling" around as cattle will, shot one by one indiscriminately in that hole, it was a brutal sort of slaughter which should not have been countenanced in any civilised country. I hope that, for the sake of the country, the assertions made are not accurate.

Mr. Corry

This is a matter that interests every Deputy in rural Ireland, and if the suggestions that were put up to the Minister and the Department were in any way in line with the suggestions put up by Deputy Hughes and Deputy Bennett to-night, then all I say is that the Minister was very wise in not adopting them. The first charge made against the Minister was that he had not considered every hare-brained suggestion put to him and that the Department did not chase every steed. Then there was a grumble because the Minister did not completely adopt the British plan of dealing with the disease. What was the result of the British plan? Can any Deputy stand up here and say that England had been immune from foot-and-mouth disease at any time during the last three years? Is it not a fact that in Scotland the disease could not be stamped out during several months of the present year? Yet the policy followed there was what we were urged to adopt here. Another question asked was, why cattle were not slaughtered immediately. Against that we had the other argument that cattle should be first valued by the Department and then we were to wait until an arbitrator was brought from somewhere else, probably from England seeing that there is such predilection for everything from England. Were we to wait until a pack of rogues was brought from England before slaughtering the cattle? That was the plea we heard. Another plea was that the cattle should have been slaughtered one by one, with a humane killer, and then dumped. Deputy Bennett wanted to know why the Gárda were not called out and cordons put around farms. Where the military were brought in we heard rumours that they got away without being disinfected. Was anything more ridiculous than the arguments put forward to-night? In the end we were told that the Minister had not been strict enough; that he did not enforce the penalties and restrictions.

Deputy Hughes spent a quarter of an hour attacking the Minister because penalties were inflicted on people on whose farms the disease had been in existence for a week, and perhaps a month, whose children walked every day to school, taking the disease with them, or who sent milk to creameries which infected whole districts. Because penalties were inflicted in such cases Deputy Hughes disagrees with the Minister. He also quoted the example of England and said that not more than 10 per cent. of the affected cattle there were destroyed. In Limerick, where as Deputy Bennett said, the people cooperated with the authorities the disease was stamped out in three days, while in Kilkenny where the people did not co-operate, and where they met the inspectors with hay-forks, they cloaked the disease. Yet we have Deputies blaming the Minister for being on the one hand too lenient and on the other hand blaming him because he penalised those who had no respect for the country, for their neighbours, or for their cattle, if they could only succeed in sending milk for two more days to the creameries. Deputy Hughes stood up to demand that the Minister should remove the penalties that have been inflicted on these people. Could any more ridiculous suggestion be made? If other suggestions that were made to the Minister were of the same type, and if he is being abused for not adopting them, then I say he was right in not doing so. I have no love whatever for the Department's officials, but if Deputies consider that the policy carried out by the veterinary staff was not correct then let them put down a motion to have the whole veterinary staff sacked. That is the only logical way to deal with the question. Deputies should not be coming here saying that we were wrong in not carrying out the same policy as that adopted in Great Britain—where for the last ten years they have not succeeded in stamping out the disease—or blaming the Minister for being too lax and at the same time demanding that penalties that were imposed should be remitted. I do not know if we can have a general debate now.

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes, on anything connected with foot-and-mouth disease.

Mr. Cole

I meant to put a question to the Taoiseach about this matter in September. It is not a case of want of confidence in the Minister, because we have sufficient confidence in him to realise that he did all he could to stamp out the disease. I wanted really to relate the matter to other Departments, and to find out what was going to happen to local government if the rates or Land Commission annuities could not be met. However, the question was not put down and I am not going to raise it now. In my opinion the spread of the disease was due to this, that it was not stopped in Dublin on the first day on which the outbreak was known. Cattle were brought to Dublin market and were let out of that market after the disease was notified. Cattle went to Maynooth and it was from that district most of the disease spread. I know that cattle left Dublin market. I think the Minister denied that to-night. I made the statement and the Minister did not contradict it. The fact is that cattle left Dublin market after the disease had been notified.

Dr. Ryan

Where? Was it in Dublin?

Mr. Cole

They went to Maynooth.

Dr. Ryan

After the disease was notified?

Mr. Cole

The disease started in Dublin market. It was notified in Dublin market first and cattle left the market and went to Maynooth.

Dr. Ryan

After it was notified in Dublin?

Mr. Cole

After the Dublin market.

Dr. Ryan

That is not right.

Mr. Cole

I was told by people in Maynooth that that was correct. I was down there during the summer and the statement was borne out by some of the salesmasters in Dublin. It was they told me first. Then in Maynooth I was told that that was what happened.

Dr. Ryan

As a matter of fact the very day it was notified in Dublin all movement was stopped completely around Dublin. That was February 12th.

Mr. Cole

The Minister is in a better position to know than I am. That is what I was led to believe by Dublin salesmasters, and also by people in Maynooth, that the disease started there, and that it really never became bad until after that. I heard a great deal about the military being used to cope with the disease. I understand that the military were not really in command; that it was the Local Security Force. They were not a competent body to leave in charge of the outbreak. They had no experience of it. Military and Gárda with sufficient experience should have been in charge, so that there would not have been any nonsense carried on, and as each farm became infected a cordon would be thrown around it, and there would be no possibility of anyone entering or leaving it. As it was, reports from other parts of the country indicate that that did not happen—that is what we were led to believe—so dogs, cats and so forth could go in and out of those places. As we travelled up from the country and went home again we could see hares moving about. I think there were more hares moving about the country, that you could see from the trains this year, than for years before. When these got in, there was nothing that could carry the disease better. They are ideal carriers of the disease. We have no evidence that sufficient care was taken to see that dogs, cats, hares and rabbits were not allowed to get around. That was one of the great causes of the spread of the disease.

There was another cause. There were certain officers located in different towns and the farmers communicated with these officers. They went in to see them, to ask if they could remove cattle from one farm to another or if they would be allowed to take them across the road to another part of the land. There were other men coming in who had not been affected at all—yet they were all coming into the same room in the same hotel to make their different inquiries. That is the rumour that is going around and I would like the Minister to contradict it. There was want of isolation and want of care in not having those farms where the disease was prevalent carefully surrounded by military who would take no excuse and who would not be satisfied with any reason for these people going in and out of their places. If that had been done, as it was done—as mentioned by Deputy Bennett—in 1924, during the time of the late Minister for Agriculture, probably the disease would have been stopped on this occasion as it was stopped then. During that time it only lasted about a week or two and it was completely stopped and we heard nothing about it until now.

I do not wish to make any complaints about it. We are very lucky that it did not spread northwards at all, and I hope it will be a long time before we hear anything about it again. We all know that it occurs frequently in England but, if it does, by the farmers there conscientiously working in conjunction with the Department it is stopped in a few weeks' time. We hear on the radio or read in the newspapers one night that there is an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in a certain part of England, and in a week or so we hear that, after they have had the district surrounded, it ends there and the outbreak is over. That is altogether different from here. I still maintain that, if proper military and guards with sufficient experience had been sent down there and then and the places surrounded, the disease would not have spread in the way it did.

Mr. Curran

It is my wish and, I am sure, the wish of everybody in the House and, I think, the wish of everybody in the country that it is the last occasion on which there will be necessity to debate an estimate of this kind in this country. It is over now, but we can take stock of what has happened, in the hope that, if anything happens in the future, we can profit by the experience we have had in the past. I was not listening to Deputy Hughes to-night, but, judging by Deputy Corry's speech and comment, it seems that Deputy Corry was, so to speak, blaming Deputy Hughes for criticising the Department so severely in connection with it. What I want to know, and what I think the country would like to know, is this. We had an outbreak in Donegal, which did not spread very far; we had an outbreak in Limerick that did not spread very far, and I think we have had—if I do not make a mistake—one in Tipperary and another in Kerry. I want to hear from the Minister what steps were taken in those places, particularly in Limerick and Kerry, to stamp out the disease.

I know that the Minister has stated on many occasions that lack of co-operation on the part of the farmers was the reason for the spread of the disease. I am not prepared to accept that statement. Human beings being as they are, it is necessary at times to enforce the law, to make us comply with something that is even good for us. Certainly, the Department had all the powers at their disposal to make any laws or orders they might deem necessary in combating the disease. Now, has that been done? The disease fizzled out very abruptly—we are all glad of that—in Carlow; I want also to know from the Minister if any particular steps were taken in Carlow that were not taken, let us say, in Kilkenny and Tipperary?

So far as penalties are concerned, asking the Minister to reconsider his penalties on people who were responsible for hiding the disease and thereby spreading it, I am not going to interfere in the matter. I would not ask the Minister to extend the hand of forgiveness to people who want only and knowingly kept the disease concealed, and thereby spread it to other parts of the county. I think it was a terrible offence against the country and against every farmer. However, I cannot agree that everything was done that should have been done.

I have one particular case in mind which causes in me some lack of confidence in the Minister's staff, and I wish to tell him of it. It may be a small case and it may not be such a great point in connection with the disease, nevertheless, it goes to prove to me that there was some sort of juggling or incompetency in the control of the disease. The particular case was in connection with a race meeting at the Curragh, where horses were sent from non—scheduled areas to run at the Curragh. Wires were received by the owners of the horses at about 1 o'clock on the day previous to the race meeting, stating that the horses would not be allowed to run owing to the foot-and-mouth disease. Well, that was all right; if it were necessary to take those steps nobody could grumble about it. I, for one, could not grumble at any steps taken to safeguard the cattle industry of the country. What I grumble about, however, is that about 5 o'clock on the same evening another wire was sent to the owners of the horses saying that the Department had reconsidered their decision and allowed the horses the road.

Any Department—I do not care what Department it is—or branch of a Department that makes a decision should not make it without proper consideration and having due regard to the necessity for it, and, once it was made, they should stick to it. A Department or branch of a Department that makes an order and cancels it three hours afterwards certainly does not convince me that it is doing what is right. That may seem a small thing, but it does not convince me, and never will, about the competency of the Department's staff to deal with the situation. Once there was necessity to make an order, it should be made, and then adhered to. I would think much more of the Department and of the Minister's officials if, having made an order, they adhered to it—which they did not do. I certainly think that was a sign that things were not being done as they ought to have been done.

The whole point about this outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease is lack of co-operation between the Department and the farmers. Let me draw a parallel. Does the Minister think that if he asked the farmers voluntarily to till one-fourth of their lands they would do so? He knows they would not. He has to use all the force of the law behind his orders in that connection. What was to prevent his doing the same thing in connection with the foot-and-mouth disease? I am satisfied that the regulations were not properly enforced, and there was not sufficient care taken at the beginning of the outbreak.

Reference has been made to drastic measures. I do not think, in a case of that sort, that they could be too drastic. I hope the Minister will deal with these points: What steps were taken when the disease seemed to be diminishing in County Carlow? What steps were taken in Kerry, where there was only one outbreak? What steps were taken in Limerick, where there were two outbreaks? These are the things that the country people would like to know.

We all hope there will never again be an occasion on which it will be necessary to have a debate like this. I hope that the disease will never trouble us again in this country. It has caused untold hardship, and the farmers have been very hard hit by it.

Mr. Cogan

Early this year a motion was tabled by Deputy Belton and myself dealing with the epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease. When we tabled that motion we felt that adequate steps were not being taken to deal with the epidemic. The disease ravished many parts of the country for months, but, fortunately, it has now abated. We hope that it has completely disappeared. The motion has become somewhat out of date, and I think that is a matter which the Deputies who tabled it gladly realise.

We did not put that motion down lightly. We did not lightly express the opinion that adequate steps were not being taken by the Department. We know that in the Department there are very many able and experienced officials who have studied this epidemic in a theoretical and a practical fashion over the years. We would be very slow to condemn the Department of Agriculture or the Minister unless we felt very strongly that everything humanly possible was not being done. It may be asked how can we form the opinion that everything humanly possible was not being done, when the average citizen in this country cannot have a very deep knowledge of an epidemic such as this, and cannot have any knowledge which compares with that of the officials of the Department? There are, nevertheless, certain points which to us have never been thoroughly explained.

There is, of course, the very obvious point Deputy Hughes has mentioned, of the delay in the slaughter of infected live stock. I have known cases where there was a delay of two or three days, and I have also known cases where infected animals have been allowed to travel over the farms upon which they were when the disease was discovered, and also over other farms. In a few cases this was due to the fact that the animals, when being inspected, became frightened and ran amok. I think the first duty of officials, having confirmed a case of which they had grave suspicion, would be to slaughter the animal concerned. Then they could deal more at their leisure with the other animals which did not appear to be infected. By so doing, they would possibly be preventing the infected animals from communicating the disease to other animals on the land, thereby leading inevitably to the spread of the disease.

Very urgent appeals were made to farmers to co-operate with the Department of Agriculture, and to a very great extent those appeals met with a ready response. Nobody can dispute that the overwhelming majority of farmers have always been only too willing to co-operate with the Department's officials. There were many cases where the spreading of the disease was a matter over which the farmers had no control. For instance, people may trespass upon land and thereby carry the infection elsewhere. Again, inevitably there are numbers of people who come in contact with infected stock, or get on infected land, and the farmers cannot prevent them carrying the infection.

I think the first duty of the Department's officials, after slaughtering infected animals, would have been to appoint a sufficient number of officials to keep rigid supervision over infected land and possibly infected stock. In addition to that, a sufficient number of Civic Guards should have been drafted into those infected areas, so that it would not be possible for any person to trespass upon infected land, and thereby carry the infection elsewhere. I have known cases where people went on lands which were infected, and thereby carried the infection to a considerable distance—people who would be expected to know better, but who unfortunately did not obey the regulations, and in a couple of cases which I know of these people were not farmers, so that you cannot put the blame upon the farming community as a class.

Now, it should not have been physically possible, or it should have been almost humanly impossible for such an occurrence to take place. There should have been a sufficient number of either Civic Guards or officials on those premises to ensure that there would be no trespass. Relying upon the owner of lands, which might be very extensive, to watch over all these lands and see that they would not be interfered with or trespassed upon is, naturally, expecting too much from an individual land owner. For that reason I think it was silly on the part of the Department of Agriculture to expect so much from farmers and land owners. There should have been, I say, a sufficient force to make those evasions of the restrictions impossible.

We are fortunate inasmuch as the disease has been overcome for the present at any rate, and I think we should not allow the matter to rest where it is. All the complaints which have been made—and it would take hours to specify the complaints which have been made against the various officials of the Department, the various regulations of the Department, and the various omissions—have been, from time to time, brought to the Minister's attention, and now, when we have got time and an opportunity to inquire into the whole matter, I think it is the obvious duty of this House to insist upon such an inquiry being held so that in the future we may be able to deal more effectively and, let us hope, more intelligently with any outbreak which may occur. For that reason I would support the motion which has been tabled asking for a Select Committee to be appointed to inquire into all factors and all features of the epidemic which has ravaged the country for the past year. It has been, as every member of this House realises, a disastrous year for the farming community, and under no circumstances should the agricultural industry or the nation as a whole be called upon to bear such a scourge without the fullest and most exhaustive means being utilised to get to the causes of the continued spread of the epidemic over such a long period. The worst feature, our main source of complaint, is not that there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at a number of points throughout the country but that the epidemic was allowed to continue and to spread over such a long period of time and over such an extensive area.

Mr. O'Reilly

We are indeed very fortunate that this disease has come to an end, and I think all of us are prepared to do our best to see that there is not a recurrence. A recurrence of that disease may not be impossible, and I think steps could be taken to see that, if it should recur, it can be limited in its extent. We, in Meath, unfortunately, had our share but, according to the proportions that it took at a later stage, we do not seem to have had an undue share. As far as I know, that was due to the fact that there was a good deal of intelligence amongst the people of Meath and that they gave their full co-operation to the veterinary department to try to stop that disease. Now, I believe that we have extremely highly qualified vets in this country and that we had the most highly qualified men engaged in the stopping of this disease. They undoubtedly did their utmost but it is possible, and indeed very probable, that, in some counties anyway, they did not get the co-operation from the people that they were entitled to get. I think that people, at this stage of the world's history, should realise that men trained as these vets are—and their qualifications are equal to any qualifications in Britain, and I take it are acceptable in most countries of the world—are to be relied upon, but taking into consideration that certain people in this country preferred not to rely on those vets and to cast as much slur on their professional intelligence as was possible, it is irritating, to my mind, to listen to Deputies standing up here in this House and making insinuations against the professional capacity of these men and inducing people, possibly with less intelligence than themselves, to persevere in that attitude.

I wonder is there any other profession here whose members could treat that disease, except the veterinary profession? Would it be possible to turn the medical profession on to that, or is there really and truly anybody else to depend upon but the members of that particular profession? As far as I know, they did everything possible. Furthermore, they were extremely courteous and considerate in their actions, and I think that if we were honest here we would put the blame on the proper shoulders and admit that the thing was due, in certain counties, to a very high degree of ignorance on the part of the community. I shall go a little further in justifying what I have said. It is possible that they did not get the education that they are entitled to get. Our chief industry, our main industry here is live stock.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Are the farmers in Meath better educated than the farmers in Tipperary or other counties?

Mr. O'Reilly

They appear to be, at any rate.

Mr. D. Morrissey

They appear to be! And it is all due to the ignorance of the farmers!

Mr. O'Reilly

I am trying to justify that want of intelligence by the fact that it is possible that they have never got a real opportunity of learning about disease. I believe that if any of us were to consider the losses in live stock in this country and to make any sort of calculation as to the exact amount of money lost in connection with live stock through wrong treatment, the figure would be found to be appalling. Consequently, there is some justification for these people displaying a want of intelligence through the fact that they did not get the proper education on those diseases. Now, it is not at all improbable that we may have a recurrence of those diseases, and it would be good to find out what is the cause, but instead of doing that I think that the real thing we should face up to is the devising of some means to instruct people as to how such diseases as these can be reasonably well diagnosed and how they can be limited and stopped. There are other diseases that need treatment. Some time ago I made a suggestion here that veterinary men should be sent out through the country to give lectures to farmers on the diseases of animals, because whatever may be our political differences here I think we can all agree that the losses in live stock in this country in normal times are certainly more than they should be. That must be obvious to anyone who makes an effort to calculate the losses through blackleg and other diseases of that kind. To a large extent, most of those diseases can be prevented, but steps are not taken to prevent them because the people do not properly understand them.

It is most unfair to make an attack on professional men, men drawn from the whole community, the bulk of them farmers' sons, who have displayed brilliancy in their examinations and have got the highest qualifications they could possibly get. To say that they are incapable is entirely unfair, if not extremely dangerous. It certainly is going to create disgruntlement amongst such men as those, because I am convinced that no blame whatsoever attaches to them, and that they did their utmost under the circumstances to stamp out the disease. It is an extremely difficult disease to eradicate, especially if a certain type of it gets going. As far as the veterinary officers of the Department were concerned, anybody here who speaks of the Minister and the Department knows full well that it is the Minister's job to give them facilities; they are professional men, and he is in their hands, and so are the community. If the Minister and the community are in the hands of those professional people it is unwise to criticise them unfairly. I think efforts should be made to educate the farming community here in order to try to minimise our abnormal losses in live stock. We have been taught a good lesson. Having been taught that lesson, we should endeavour to discover the cause of the disease, and see what can be done to stamp it out if such a thing arises again. Many countries have made efforts to discover the cause of this disease and how it may be prevented. Thousands of pounds have been spent on it. That should not stop us from spending a little, and giving some of our brilliant veterinary officers an opportunity of becoming famous. I believe, notwithstanding what has been said here to-day, that the veterinary men of this country are as capable and efficient as those of any other country, and it is possible that these men, if given an opportunity, could discover some means of preventing this terrible disease.

It has held up the whole cattle business of the country. Nothing more serious than that could happen. It also indicated our weak position in regard to that particular industry. We depended entirely on the shipment of cattle. Year by year we were depending more on the shipment of store cattle rather than regular fat cattle. I think that is a matter which should be considered, too, so that if there is a recurrence of this disease we could do something to keep the live-stock industry going. With proper dead meat factories, and the establishment of proper connections in Great Britain, I believe that the industry could be made a very successful one, and I believe that it would be an alternative if anything like foot-and-mouth disease occurs again. But for the tillage schemes here many farmers in Meath and other counties would not have been able to get any money at all. Even yet, the only money which many of them can get comes from their wheat, beet and other crops. We must realise that, although the ports are open and trade is normal again, there are still many feeders of cattle, especially cattle of the inferior type, who are greatly hampered. Inferior cattle are not in demand to-day, and they may not be in demand to-morrow, and it is not possible for everybody to have the very best types. Many of those cattle could go to the dead meat factories, and I think that is one of the things which should be considered as an alternative.

In my opinion if we are to have a veterinary department and veterinary officers people should display confidence in them, because there is no other profession which can deal with this matter, and we are completely in their hands. There is not a bit of use in trying to disgruntle and demoralise men who have done their utmost to stop this disease. It is most unfair to them, and it is unfair to the community, because the next time anything happens people will say: "Deputy So-and-so in the Dáil said such a thing about the `vets'; they are a lot of nonsensical people; they have no common sense." To my mind those statements which were made here were unfair to the community, and they were certainly unfair to the veterinary department which has to deal with this disease.

Mr. McGovern

I do not think anyone charged the veterinary staff of the Department with failure to do their duty except Deputy Kelly and the Minister for Agriculture. I have put down questions here relating to the Minister's discharge of his duties, and in reply I was always told that he had absolute confidence in his staff. The questions had no reference to the staff, but to the manner in which the Minister was performing his own duties. The Minister gets it into his head that he has no responsibility at all although he is at the head of the Department. That is not so. For instance, what have the veterinary staff of the Department to do with the making of orders to deal with people who are breaking the law? They have no power. If people write to the Press and start discussions about a cure for this disease, what has the veterinary department to do with that? The veterinary department cannot deny that it is curable. It has been stated again and again. It was the business of somebody to put a stop to that. No doubt, those people were actuated by good intentions in trying to get cures, but while it was the policy of the Department to stamp out the disease by slaughtering the animals, it was not right to discuss the other thing, and it should have been made illegal for anyone to recommend it. People were allowed to write letters to the Press, and the Press were allowed to publish them, and none of those parties was told by the Minister that it was not right to do it. He failed to make it illegal to do those things, so they were quite within their rights, and they believed that they were doing a good service to the community. The result was that people, having read those discussions in the Press, began to think there was some thing in it, and when an outbreak occurred they attempted to cloak the disease in order to try to cure it. That was quite a natural thing for ignorant people in the country to do; they did not understand the danger of what they were doing. It was the business of the Minister to realise that that should be guarded against when dealing with a serious disease which has cost the ratepayers of the country about £500,000, and has cost the agricultural community about £20,000,000. It would be hard to say what was the real loss to the agricultural community and to the State as a result of this outbreak. It would be impossible to compute it.

A plague so serious should have been treated as a serious matter by the Minister and, so long as it was the policy of the Department to stamp it out by the most drastic measures, regardless of expenditure, they should not have allowed people to discuss alternative methods of dealing with it or to recommend cures for the disease. I brought this to the notice of the Minister at the very start, before the disease spread. I knew what was going on because I met people at fairs and I read reports about people who recommended cures for the disease, and who condemned the Department's policy in dealing with it. So long as the Department had decided on one policy, namely to stamp out the disease at any cost, they should have insisted on people observing that policy and should not have tolerated anybody recommending any other course. Afterwards it came to the point, as Deputy Hughes has stated, when some people were fined 100 per cent. the value of their stock for cloaking the disease. I have no sympathy for people who deliberately cloaked the disease, but what worse were they than the Minister who allowed people to recommend cures for the disease, because in recommending cures, they were recommending cloaking the disease as they could not attempt to cure it without keeping it secret from the Department? That was the great mistake at the outset, that the Minister did not deal firmly with people who recommended cures. He did not make it clear at the start that they would be very severely dealt with.

This discussion will, I think, serve a very useful purpose, because while some people may say that it is a case of locking the door after the horse has gone, people who are under that impression are labouring under a very great mistake. I wish we could be only sure that the horse has gone never to return—in other words, that the disease will never reappear. It has been recurring in this country over the years, and I think that everything possible should be done to prevent its recurrence in the future. We should not be too proud to learn from our neighbours in this respect. No matter how good our vets are, they have not as much experience of dealing with this disease as people on the other side of the water, who have had outbreaks year after year and month after month for the last 20 years. Certainly they have had very considerable experience and they have proved themselves competent to deal with it. In saying that, I make no apology to the vets of our own Department.

They must admit that the disease has been dealt with very effectively in Great Britain and in the shortest possible time. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it, and the vets on the other side have proved their competence in dealing with these outbreaks. I do not say that the vets in our Department are inferior in any respect, granted that they had the same experience. I hope and trust, of course, that they never will have as much experience of this disease as the vets in Great Britain, but we should not be too proud to learn from those who have more experience than ourselves. Our vets should be no prouder than any other section of the community. We should be willing to learn from people who have experience, and anything that can be done to arrest the spread of this scourge should not be neglected. That is the reason I think this motion is a very good motion.

The more publicity this matter gets the better. If this committee is set up, it should be as representative as possible. Everything should be exposed and threshed out and our people should be educated, not only into recognising the symptoms of the disease, but also as to the danger arising to the country from allowing it to spread. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon them that this is the greatest scourge that could affect the country. Agriculture is our principal industry, and the live-stock trade is the mainstay of the whole agricultural industry. It would be impossible to make agriculture pay, or to carry it on at all, in fact, without live stock. Without any outlet for our surplus stock it could not be carried on. This is a matter so important that I do not believe any more important discussion has come before the House for a very long time. So far as co-operation is concerned, I think the Department have no reason to complain of lack of co-operation amongst the people. Everybody was anxious to co-operate because everybody felt the effects of the outbreak in every part of the country. There were individuals, of course, who failed to co-operate, but that was partly due to ignorance.

It is the duty of the Department of Agriculture to make it impossible for anyone to ignore the law in regard to outbreaks of this disease, and anyone who is found deliberately breaking the law, after getting due notice, should be firmly dealt with. I, personally, have very little sympathy with those who have had to pay a penalty of 100 per cent. of the value of the cattle for cloaking the disease, when I consider that the people in my own constituency in County Cavan and many other similar counties, where there has been a clean bill of health for the last 50 or 100 years, have had to pay a penalty and a very severe penalty, without committing any offence whatever. I, therefore, do not agree with Deputy Hughes who is so sympathetic with people who have really committed an offence. It is right to make such people pay a heavy penalty, but I do blame the Minister also for leading these law-breakers into thinking that it was not a serious matter to commit this offence by allowing people to recommend cures. That should have been an offence from the very start and I told the Minister so. I knew that the Minister was entirely too optimistic when the disease first made its appearance. I knew the disease was going to spread, and I told many people who were buying in cattle to take their time. I did so myself, because I knew that the disease was likely to spread. That was my opinion from the way in which the Department were dealing with the disease and the attitude they were taking at the very start.

There is no use in Deputy Kelly or the Minister saying that people who are criticising the Department are really charging the Department vets with failing to do their duty or with doing it dishonestly. I have not heard anybody making that charge. Our staff is as efficient as the staff in any other country, but considering their inexperience, they could not be expected to know as much about the disease as some other people. They could not be expected to go outside their own province to do something that the Minister, and nobody else, can do. That is with regard to making laws. The Minister has sufficient power, and so have other Ministers, to make laws and orders and they have made plenty of them. It is for them to make any necessary orders to prevent people breaking the law or doing what is wrong.

The veterinary staff of the Department have nothing to do with that. Their job is to inspect the animals, to report about the disease, and to make recommendations. Beyond that they have no power. They have no power to prevent people recommending cures. They have no right to mislead the people if the people say that it is curable. They have no right to contradict the people, because they know that these people are telling the truth— that it is curable. But the curing of it would cost the country too much. What really kept the disease in the country so long were the attempts made to cure it. That is why the Minister should have dealt firmly with the matter. There is no use in the Minister's shifting, by implication, the responsibility for his failure on to the veterinary staff, and shifting the charges made against him on to the veterinary staff. That is not fair to the veterinary staff... Nobody has accused them of failing in their duty, but I do say that the Minister failed in his duty at the outset. I brought it to his notice on two or three occasions, but his opinion at all times was that he had the disease completely under control. But he has learned more since and the country has learned it to its cost. I hope it will not occur again.

General MacEoin

I take it we are discussing items 20 and 24?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Yes.

General MacEoin

For this country of ours these two motions are very important. It is now freely admitted, I think, even by the most enthusiastic supporter of Fianna Fáil, that the cattle trade of this country is a very important part of our economic life. Of course, we all realise that in the years 1932 and 1933 cattle were only something to be killed off at the earliest possible moment. I regret very much that Deputy O'Reilly has gone out of the House, because I have a very clear recollection of his being present at a meeting in Kilcock at which a Minister of the Fianna Fáil Government, who is now a commissioner of public works— Senator Connolly as he was then—declared that it took 100 years to build up the cattle trade of this country and that Fianna Fáil was in the proud position of being able to smash it in just approximately so many hours.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Derrig)

I think the Deputy should quote exactly what was said by the Minister on that occasion. Certainly that is a misrepresentation of what was said.

General MacEoin

Does the Minister challenge it?

Mr. Derrig

I do.

General MacEoin

Then may I put it this way? I allege that a Minister of State made a statement in Kilcock. A Minister of the present Government has now challenged that and asked me to produce the quotation of what the Minister actually said. I will produce it and I will ask the permission of the Ceann Comhairle to have it put on the records of the House when I produce it. Is that in order?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not know that it will be in order because this motion is dealing with a specific matter.

General MacEoin

I made an assertion and the Minister challenged the accuracy of what I said. I do not think that I have ever knowingly told an untruth on a public matter in my life. If the Minister still insists that I must verify what I have said, I will verify it. But, if I do verify it, I ask that it be put on the records of the House when I have done so.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is a matter for the Ceann Comhairle. In any case, I would remind the Deputy that this is a Supplementary Estimate dealing with a specific matter and the discussion has ranged around the incidence of foot-and-mouth disease during the last 12 months.

General MacEoin

The point I am making is that the Government and a Fianna Fáil Deputy admit that the foot-and-mouth disease has been a scourge to the Irish farmer. There is no question about that. But I assert that the scourage to the Irish farmer was not so much the foot-and-mouth disease, but that the foot-and-mouth disease was necessarily the result of the action of the Government and the Minister in charge of agriculture. They brought it about. I made the assertion that Deputy O'Reilly was present at a meeting in Kilcock when a Minister of State stated that it took 100 years to build up the cattle trade in this country and that he was proud of being a member of the Government which was able to break it in so many hours. That being so, Deputy O'Reilly to-day appeals to the people of the country to observe the law and to keep themselves informed about all the things that the veterinary department want them to do. How in the name of goodness can they do it? You had the Deputy O'Reillys and Senator Connolly, who was then a member of the Ministry, and everybody else going out to smash the economy that Fianna Fáil now realises is essential to the well-being of the country.

Deputy O'Reilly has asked the Government to appeal to the people by radio, by advertisement, and by other propaganda methods to comply with all the laws and regulations. But that could only happen if you had a Government in office that was appealing to the people at all times to observe the law faithfully and fully. That is why we question the Government's honesty when they punish somebody for nonobservance even of an emergency regulation. People are fined hundreds of pounds for not having observed an order that, perhaps, members of the Government themselves would not know anything about. The only way you can get the law observed fully is by strict observance of it by the people who are governing. Before the Government or the Fianna Fáil Party, who put the Government into office, set out to lecture anybody, they should see to it that their own house is in order. Before they lecture anybody, they should see to it that they are immune themselves; in other words that they are like Cæsar's wife—above reproach. If they are not, they should cease lecturing and get out and let those who have a strict sense of responsibility do the work.

Mr. Maguire

The discussion this, evening is surely one of such major importance to the farming community that it deserves very special attention, not only on the part of the Minister responsible, but on the part of every Deputy, no matter on what side of the House he may be sitting. The speech made just now by Deputy MacEoin appears to me to be the very opposite to what would be regarded as a serious contribution to the subject-matter of the discussion. In my opinion it was an appalling speech. Deputy MacEoin comes from an agricultural county that suffered just as every other county in Eire suffered as a result of this disease. He is a serious person. I would expect Deputy MacEoin to have the decency to respect the constituents who put him into his position. I would expect from him serious consideration of the grave subject that he is discussing. Instead of that, he starts cut making the most outlandish statements and charges against not only the Government but against the members of Fianna Fáil as a whole.

General MacEoin

And rightly so.

Mr. Maguire

I would imagine by this time he would feel ashamed of what he said. The best explanation I can offer for him is that he got up to discuss a subject without knowing anything about it. He appeared to me throughout his statement to be anxious to finish. He did not seem to me to know what he was talking about.

Mr. Brennan

That is not his record.

Mr. Maguire

I am speaking of this occasion. I am not speaking of Deputy MacEoin's record. He makes the whole of the Government responsible. He goes back to quote a speech made many years ago in Kilcock as if a speech made in Kilcock had the effect of bringing about the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

General MacEoin

And the killing of the calves. That it was a providential visitation for the killing of calves.

Mr. Maguire

That is a new idea and an important one. I hope the veterinary department in this country will take note of it. Deputy MacEoin asserts that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in this country during the last 12 months was due to the killing of calves some years ago. I do not know to what years he is referring. Therefore, calves must not be killed. Otherwise we will have a recurrence of this dreadful foot-and-mouth disease. If Deputy MacEoin's theory solves the problem, if it eliminates the danger of foot-and-mouth disease in this country, the whole farming community in this country and all over the world will surely make a most generous contribution to Deputy MacEoin, and deservedly so. If that is really the solution, I apologise abjectly for the things I have felt about him and may have said about him. If it is a fact that the speech made by a late Minister of the Government at Kilcock in regard to the killing of calves, had the effect of bringing about foot-and-mouth disease, Deputy MacEoin is not only entitled to charge him seriously here but the whole farming community of this country is entitled to ask for some form of vengeance on that man.

General MacEoin

And they are going to ask it.

Mr. Maguire

If Deputy MacEoin is right, I would like to have this matter discussed by the veterinary people in this country, in England and in every country in the world that has to deal with similar outbreaks. I would like to have their views. If Deputy MacEoin's theory is correct, then the man who made disparaging remarks about the cattle trade in this country, and the man who advocated the killing of calves in this country are dreadful monsters and should be ostracised. But the subject is a serious one and deserves serious consideration, and when one finds that the time of the House is occupied in making speeches whose only visible object is to use the debate as a political weapon, then the whole purpose of the debate is wasted. I would like the farming community to hear the debate here this evening.

One would imagine that foot-and-mouth disease was confined solely to this country. Is not foot-and-mouth disease known as a scourge amongst cattle dealers everywhere? It occurs very frequently in practically every country. I do not know any country that is as immune from it as our own. What is the necessity for making an isolated outbreak of that disease here a charge against Minister of State? One might as well blame medical science in this country or the Government for an outbreak of flu.

General MacEoin

May I ask the Deputy a question? Deputy Maguire comes from Leitrim. Is he not aware of the fact that there is a very old saying, a very old philosophy, that wilful waste makes woeful want?

Mr. Maguire

I am aware of that. I have heard that statement made several times.

General MacEoin

Kill the calves and something else happens.

Mr. Maguire

I think we have laboured that long enough. That is a contribution from the Deputy towards medical science.

General MacEoin

It is not a question of science.

Mr. Maguire

I am not in a position to offer a judgment on it. I do say that this disease is not confined to this country. We might as well blame the Government for an outbreak of 'flu or enteric fever as blame them for an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

General MacEoin

If they did not take precautions.

Mr. Maguire

We might as well blame the Minister for Justice and say he does not do his duty because crimes are committed in the country.

General MacEoin

And we will.

Mr. Maguire

The Minister is blamed for not making known by wireless, by speeches and every other way, that this was a disease that could only be treated in the standard way, by slaughter and isolation. I was brought up amongst the farming community and of them I learned that the only way of treating foot-and-mouth disease was the method adopted here. It is nonsense to suggest that the farmers needed to be told that. They knew it perfectly well, and is there any evidence that these statements were not made by the Minister, that they were not announced on the wireless, in the Public Press? I listened to these statements on numerous occasions over the wireless. I have read them many times in the public Press. I have heard them discussed generally and criticised—criticised, of course, by people who felt that other methods of treatment might be more advisable. It is nonsense and it is not at all a truthful statement to say that these matters were neglected by the Minister or by other public functionaries. Is there any reason for suggesting that in this particular outbreak of disease a Minister alone is responsible? Where the Minister and his Department came down vigorously on offenders, on people who refused to observe the regulations, who refused to notify evidence of the disease on their farms, where fines were imposed, where the diseased animals were subsequently slaughtered and where the Government refused to pay for them, I am quite certain that many Deputies on both sides of the House went to the Minister to make appeals that these fines should not be applied or that compensation should not be entirely withheld. I have no evidence of it. I have no evidence of it in so far as, very fortunately, it did not apply to my constituency, but I am quite sure that human nature again operated in the instances I refer to, as in every other instance where trouble of that sort arose and inconvenience and possible loss is caused by the application of any rule by any Department of Government, and that representations were made that these fines should not be enforced, but that compensation, notwithstanding the failure of the owner to notify the disease, should be paid.

This discussion, if it is to be useful, must have a practical side. If we are to do anything with the knowledge at our disposal, the best way to prevent a recurrence of this disease is by being honest and outspoken, and by our saying with one voice that so far as lies within the knowledge of people with authority to speak on this subject, the only way in which it can be effectively dealt with and restrained is by the active co-operation of all the farmers and by their immediately making known any evidence of the disease amongst their stock. Let there be no two voices; let there be no turning-over of responsibility from the farmers to the Minister, whether the present Minister or a Minister of some other Party in the future. For heaven's sake, let us get rid of this hypocrisy. Let us stop putting down motions for discussion here on serious subjects and then utilising that subject, a visitation of Providence on the farming community, as a political end. That, to my mind, in itself, ought to bring down wrath and injury on the community whose spokesmen will utilise a visitation of Providence for mean political ends.

Captain Giles

No doubt this debate is most useful and important, not alone for the House but for the whole agricultural community. The public are anxious to hear the entire circumstances of this unfortunate plague debated in full. They expect a straightforward reply from the Minister, and I hope they will get it. If we had been as wise at the commencement of the outbreak as we seem to be to-day, the disease would not have spread as far as it did. I believe that a full inquiry would be most helpful, and I suggest that the Minister should grant it. The huge losses which the farmers have suffered demand that better and speedier remedies be adopted in relation to any future outbreak, and I believe that far more money should be devoted immediately to research work and to ascertaining whether some remedy can be found.

While Deputy Hughes made a strong case against the Minister and the Department with regard to the handling of the disease, I do not think they are to be blamed for everything. Lack of co-operation and public spirit had a good deal to do with the spread of the outbreak. Where all co-operated for the public good, the disease soon died out. We all know that the tendency of many Irish people is to resent the enforcement of the law. That tendency has been handed down from our days of serfdom, and it will take some time before a proper public spirit develops in the country. It is my belief that in respect of the patrolling of roads and farms during the disease, the people in whom complete control should have been vested were the military. No other people could get the law enforced, and enforced properly and speedily. As it happened, we adopted the method of picking up a number of unemployed men and of putting them to patrol the roads.

I thought at all times that that was bad. It was good to give men employment and a fair wage, but it was bad from the point of view of checking the outbreak, because most of these people, instead of being anxious to get the disease stopped, were saying to themselves: "Is it not a godsend to me to be able to get a decent week's wages?" Instead of these men, I believe the military, who are under control, who are disciplined, and who do their duty when called upon, were the people who should have been put in charge. The disease spread like wildfire through the country, and was more prevalent in some counties than others, but in my county—I am not saying that the people there were better than in others—the Guards, the military, and the Department co-operated, with the result that the disease soon died out, and we returned to normal conditions in the course of not many weeks.

We all know the farmers have suffered severely, and we hope and pray that such a calamity will not befall them again, at least in our lifetime, because it will take the best part of a lifetime to make up the great losses they have suffered. The Minister and the country owe a debt of gratitude to the farmers, because, notwithstanding all the calamities that have befallen them, they are to-day still carrying the country on their backs, and will loyally continue to do so while they are able. There is no use in our wrangling in this House and outside it as to where the disease spread, and where it could have been stopped. What we must decide is how we are to remedy the disaster which has fallen on the farmers, and how we are to make up for their losses. The first thing we must do is to forget all this bickering and try to devise a means of bringing before the whole country and before the Government the fact that on the farmer, and on the farmer alone, depends the salvation of the country. While he has been treated in niggardly fashion and badly for the last ten or 12 years, it is now up to us to realise that the salvation of the country lies in his hands, and that we must give him the proper facilities for working out not only his own salvation, but the salvation of the country. On the farmer depends the rise or fall of the country, and the country can, and will, be saved by the farmer, if the Minister and his Government co-operate. We have had a lesson, and a serious lesson, and from it let us learn that the farmer needs help immediately, and that he must get it.

Mr. Fagan

This debate is very useful, and I think the Minister should not hesitate in agreeing to appoint some committee to look into the circumstances of this outbreak, and to devise means of combating it in future. I think the Minister was somewhat indignant with Deputy Hughes when he suggested that the Department should follow the lines adopted by the British Department; but everyone should be open to learn, and, if there is anything useful to be found in doing so, the Department and its veterinary staff should be open to learn—not that I have any fault to find with them. I should, however, like to ask the Minister if he did everything the veterinary staff asked him to do during this outbreak.

Dr. Ryan

Yes.

Mr. Fagan

I accept that. I had a good deal of experience of the disease, and I think the Department did a lot of work to help to stop it, but in the beginning they were not strict enough. I myself advocated that no matter what expense was involved for people concerned, when an outbreak occurred, the entire area should be quarantined until the outbreak had been eradicated. The cattle industry is the chief industry of the country, and the people who would be inconvenienced by the quarantine regulations should not grumble. If the disease does break out again, I think the method of quarantining should be adopted, no matter what inconvenience people are put to, until the disease is wiped out in that district. I should like to know what were the steps taken in Carlow to stop the disease there. I heard first that the military were brought down, and then I heard that a squad of detectives had been put in charge. If that is the case, I am very glad to hear it, because it seems to have disappeared in the County Carlow.

There are other mysteries in connection with the disease which I think should be looked into. Deputy O'Reilly mentioned that it went out of the County Meath very quickly. So far as the County Kilkenny is concerned, I do not think the people are to blame, because it will be found, if the records of the disease are looked up, that it remains longer in milk districts than in districts devoted to the fattening of cattle. If the disease remained in some districts longer than in others, it was not altogether due to non-co-operation on the part of the people. I suggest to the Department that they should try to find means of combating the disease when it gets into a milk district. As I have said, it disappeared very quickly from the County Meath, but when it got into the milk districts as well as into the Dublin district, it was very hard to get rid of it. When it returned again to the County Carlow, which is not a dairying county, it disappeared rather quickly. Therefore, the real question to be considered is to find ways and means of getting rid of it quickly when it gets into a milk district. I know that, in the beginning, things which should have been done were not done. Towards the end the Department did them. When the outbreak was in Dublin I urged that a lot of the cattle in Prussia Street should have been killed much more quickly than they were. Towards the end, when the Department killed all the stock on surrounding farms, the disease disappeared altogether. I think it would be no harm if the Minister were to set up the committee proposed. It might succeed in getting together a lot of very valuable information. It might help, too, to clear up some of the ugly things that were said throughout the country. I know, of course, that some of the things said were not true, and that the Department did good work in trying to stamp out the disease.

There is one thing in connection with the outbreak that should be referred to, and that is, that while it lasted the farmers were robbed in that they did not get the value of the stock they had to sell. We had a licensing system in Dublin. The people who got the licences here were all right. But the position was quite different down through the country where fairs were held. We had men who were given licences to buy cattle and kill them. They robbed the farmers. Before the Government gave them licences to buy they should have insisted, no matter what the expense might be, on scales being set up in every local centre where a fair was held and on those men paying a fair price for the cattle, at the same time allowing them a fair margin of profit. What happened was that the farmers were left to the mercy of those men who had been given licences by the Government to buy cattle. That is a point of view that I have pressed on the Department from time to time, but it was never listened to. The position was that farmers were offering their cattle for sale at the local fairs because, in the conditions that prevailed, they could not get them to the Dublin market. Men attended the fairs with licences in their pockets from the Government to buy those cattle, kill them, and send them out of the country. The Government, when giving the licences to them, did not stipulate that they should pay so much for the cattle. The result was that many farmers received £6, £7, £8 and as much as £9 a head less than they should have for their stock. The remedy for that is, I suggest, that scales be put up in every town where a fair is held.

I hope the Government will adopt my suggestion with regard to that. It is no answer for the Government to say that those men who got licences ran the risk of losing a lot of money if the meat went bad. Surely some system could be devised to guard against that. I know, of course, that those men were buying cattle during the warm weather and that there might be the risk I have referred to. Even though some of them may have lost thousands of pounds during a week or two, at the end they came out — I will not say with millions — but with a vast profit at the expense of the farmers of the country. Instead of allowing them to carry on in the way they did, could not some method be adopted for compensating them, supposing that over a week or so they did incur losses? The point that I want to impress on the Minister is that if anything of the kind should occur again, steps will be taken to ensure that farmers who have to sell their cattle at a local fair will get a proper price for them.

The setting up of the proposed committee would, I think, do no harm. So far as the veterinary staff of the Department is concerned, my experience of them has been that they are very good men and work very hard. It is true, of course, that mistakes were made, and we hope that those mistakes will not be made again should the disease ever make its appearance in the country. We hope that the lessons learned from the recent outbreak will be put into practice in the future. My last word is that I hope that never again will the farmers be allowed to be robbed by men with licences from the Government.

Mr. Belton

Deputy Fagan wound up his speech by expressing the pious hope that the farmer will not be robbed. He would be surprised, I am sure, if he were not robbed to-morrow, as well as he was robbed yesterday, through the incompetency of the Department of Agriculture and the Minister. Why do not Deputies say what the whole country is saying? Deputy Maguire objected to the comparison made by Deputy MacEoin between the foot-and-mouth epidemic, which we are discussing, and the killing of the calves. During that epidemic calves were reduced to the price they were at when they were being slaughtered by the Government some few years ago. What does it matter to the farmers of the country what reduces the economic life of the country to that low standard so long as it is, in fact, reduced to it? I cannot speak with any authority or with any knowledge. The Minister shakes his head.

Dr. Ryan

I am only agreeing with you.

Mr. Belton

I have forgotten more about farming than the Minister will ever know. If he wants to have a comparison made, let us put our two farms together. Mine is not a thistle ranch. The Minister can shake his head at that now.

Dr. Ryan

I never said it was.

Mr. Belton

And I never said the Minister's was.

Dr. Ryan

We are even so.

Mr. Belton

Shake your head now. I have not an intimate knowledge of how the disease spread to the southern counties, particularly to Tipperary and Kilkenny, but I have a knowledge of how it was mishandled in Dublin City and Dublin County. That knowledge prompted me in April last to put down the following motion which still appears on the Order Paper:—

That Dáil Eireann is of opinion that adequate steps have not been taken to deal with the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, and that the Government be requested to explain why the disease appears to be spreading and to state what new steps, if any, it proposes adopting to cope with the epidemic.

When the Order of Business was being discussed here one day in April, I asked the Taoiseach if he would give preference to the discussion of that motion as a matter of public importance. He said it would be wasting the time of the Department to discuss it as the Department had it under control last April. When the Minister is replying, I would be glad if he would tell the House and the country what the country has since lost due to the foot-and-mouth disease that we were then told was under control by the Minister and his Department. I heard Deputies asking the Minister to explain how the disease was finally disposed of. I will tell them. It was because public opinion demanded to be told why the Department had not wiped it out. A public meeting of farmers, held in College Green, made that demand last September. Is it not true that instructions were sent down to those responsible for combating the disease in southern counties, intimating that if it was not eradicated in six weeks their resignations were required. That eradicated the foot-and-mouth disease. I knew of cases in Dublin, and I raised them here, where the disease was in a yard for over a week, where unaffected animals were taken away, and affected animals left. I challenged the Minister to contradict that.

Dr. Ryan

That may be wrong. I do not know.

Mr. Belton

I say positively that that is correct. The premises were those of Mr. Charles Byrne of Crumlin. Will the Minister contradict what I say, that after it was raised three times here those cattle were not moved? The disease was known of on Saturday and the county council veterinary surgeons were on the job. The following Friday night cattle were carried through the streets of Dublin in open lorries. I say that is a correct statement and I challenge contradiction of it. I also raised a case at St. Margaret's, on a farm of 200 acres, where 70 cows were shot and buried within 20 yards of a neighbouring farm. What sort of supervision was that? The Minister stated here one evening that all cattle within a certain radius round Prussia Street had been slaughtered. A man who was here told me the same evening that there were 140 cattle in his yard. That was Gavin Low's yard in Prussia Street. I defy contradiction of that statement. I heard stories of what happened down the country. I do not know about them. They may be only hearsay. With regard to Dublin the cases are ones I personally investigated and that I can swear to. It was hardest to eradicate the disease from Dublin because thousands of cows were tied up there then. Dublin was the hub of the cattle trade. The disease was cleared out of Dublin City and County and I place the credit for its eradication on the veterinary surgeons of the Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council. In the case of Dublin County Council the veterinary surgeons were controlled by Mr. John Flynn, their whole-time veterinary surgeon. Notwithstanding several outbreaks in the county Mr. John Flynn was ignored. He was the first man that should have been acquainted about them. It was only when the matter was brought up in this House that the Minister chose to acquaint Mr. Flynn. I put it to the Minister that there was no better officer and that nobody gave better service in any county or was better known by the Department than the officer placed at its disposal by Dublin County Council, who was at first ignored.

In County Dublin we were satisfied that the curing of the disease there was mainly due to the work of Mr. Flynn and his subordinates. Then the disease went down the country. We have now an Estimate for £463,000 to deal with it. Surely that is only a fragment of what it cost the country. Who were the losers? Not those whose cattle were slaughtered. I dealt with the question of compensation being adequate or inadequate. The real losers are the people who had cattle and had to keep them. They got no compensation, because there were no outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease on their land. These are the people who were really robbed. If 50 or 60 cattle were attacked with the disease they were shot and the owners got compensation, but if they had not the disease they got nothing.

Then the Big Five were sent down to take over the cattle at any price they liked. Who were the greatest losers? Was it persons amongst whose herds the disease occurred, or those who had to retain cattle that were matured as far as they were concerned and that should have been taken away? This Estimate only represents a fragment of the national loss. I wonder if the Department and the Minister considered the importance of this question at this period of Irish history. The Minister and the Department made an order that for the coming year in order to maintain food supplies there must be another 5 per cent. of the land tilled. I wonder if they are all overgrown babies in the Department. How is there going to be increased food production unless there is food for the soil, unless there is manure? If the cattle trade is neglected will there be manure? Is there fodder here for cattle? Of course not.

Dr. Ryan

The more cattle the more manure.

Mr. Belton

That is the Minister for the farmers.

Dr. Ryan

He need not be a Minister to be a farmer.

Mr. Belton

There is not fodder for the cattle and there will be neither cattle nor manure.

Dr. Ryan

We have fodder.

Mr. Belton

Does the Minister say that there is enough fodder here for the cattle.

An Ceann Comhairle

That does not arise.

Mr. Belton

The point is this, that an increased cattle population had to be carried and these cattle ate up the normal amount of fodder available, so that there is now a shortage. We are also short of fertilisers. The neglect shown by the Minister and by the Department in handling the matter, as well as the losses sustained, and the want of confidence engendered by the way the whole thing was mismanaged leaves very little stall feeding to promote increased food production next year. As the Minister comes from a stall-feeding county he knows that statement is true. Never was it more important that the cattle trade should be protected than the present period. The disease was pretty well eradicated in Dublin, where it was worst, by the middle of May, but it was not until the middle of October that the silver lining appeared in the southern counties.

The country would like to know how the disease got to the southern counties. Did the Department and the Minister not learn anything from the manner in which its eradication was handled in Dublin? What remedies did they apply to segregate the disease or to eradicate it in Tipperary, Kilkenny or Carlow? I notice that apologies are given on all sides because farmers did not observe the rules. It is not farmers who were charged by the country with the duty of curing the disease. It was the Department and the Government. They made orders and the orders should have been observed then. They had the power to enforce them but they did not do so. It was not those who broke the orders who are to be blamed but the Government that did not see that they were carried out, especially after the experience they had that the carrying out of the orders was the only way to eradicate the disease. The farmers were blamed although the Minister had forces at his command to make them obey the orders. That is only further accusing themselves either of their incompetency or neglect in dealing with this important matter. It is no excuse to say that the farmers did not carry out the orders. It may be all very well to blame farmers or any other class of the community for not doing so. I do not know whether they carried out the orders or not. No Deputy can stand up and say that every farmer carried them out or that any farmer broke them, but they can say that the Minister and the Department had full power and adequate forces to make the orders and to see that they were carried out. If they were not carried out it is the Department is to blame. The Minister explained that point and also the general position to the House.

Many stories are going around about farmers and about the killing of cattle, about sojourns at local public houses and about scattering disease through the country. I heard stories of that kind and instances that happened in Tipperary and Kilkenny, but I have no authority to say if they are correct. I know that happened in Templeogue and in Finglas where a number of cattle and a goat were to be killed. After the cattle were killed the goat was missed so they crossed through the country and shot a goat. I am not going to believe that in a congested place like Dublin where the disease got a grip before anyone thought it was there from the 19th February until the end of April people were not on the qui vive to detect it. I am sure the Minister and the Department were on the qui vive, but if it was eradicated in two and a half months in Dublin how did it take six months to eradicate it throughout the country and especially in two or three counties? It was only eradicated when public opinion became expressive, calling for inquiries here and there as to whether the Department and the Minister were dealing with the job in the right way. It is not a laughing matter for the country.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy should not make me laugh.

Mr. Belton

It is too serious for laughter. If the Minister sees nothing but laughter in this I am not surprised that the disease lasted eight months in the country. There are not many people to laugh except those that amassed fortunes by the device of licences to buy cattle. Deputy Fagan raised that matter. If the Minister let loose people on the country to buy cattle why was not some price fixed? If a price was fixed why were not the cattle bought at so much per cwt. and classified or weighed? Why had it to be a slapping of hands to buy them if a reasonable price had been given? Why did not the Government buyers go and bid the full value of the cattle? Did they do that? Of course not. The Minister knows quite well that fortunes were made in the last few months by a few while thousands were robbed through the incompetency of the Department and the Minister who sees nothing in this but a laughing matter. I do not know when the country will be able to recover. Farmers who are carrying a larger stock of cattle than they ever carried were unpleasantly told a fortnight ago by the Taoiseach in this House that the fuel position in the City of Dublin was so serious that the trucks required to take their cattle to markets and to the ports would have to get priority for the carriage of fuel.

That was a very unpleasant statement to have to make here. I am sure the Taoiseach felt it very unpleasant to have to make it, but it was not unpleasant for the country — for this reason: I looked at every daily paper to see if it was reported, and did not see it. I wonder whether any Deputy who was listening to that statement from the Taoiseach read it in the paper. I did not read it. Why is such an important statement on such a serious position kept from the country — a statement made by the Head of the Government in this House? Why is it not published? Is it censored?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has travelled from the Taoiseach to censorship, quite away from the Estimate of the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. Belton

I was dealing with a matter that has arisen out of the subject matter we are debating. We have a surplus of cattle left, owing to the foot-and-mouth disease. This surplus cannot be got to the ports for shipment.

An Ceann Comhairle

A Deputy might refer to consequences without arguing the position.

Mr. Belton

I did not pretend to argue that position. I merely stated that that was the position — the Taoiseach referred to it — and in passing I expressed surprise that such an important statement should be kept from the country, and I wondered if the seriousness of the neglect in handling the disease was also kept from the country by the censor. Will we be kept in oblivion of the facts among which we live until these may overwhelm us, and we rise up some morning to find that everything is bankrupt and the bottom has fallen out of everything? I am sorry that Deputy Fagan, who is in close touch with the livestock trade, and Deputy Keating, are not here just now, but they know the position and the markets we are having in Dublin, and that there is no confidence in the trade. Yesterday——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy must get down to what is before the House.

Mr. Belton

I am dealing with it as far as I can.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is dealing with several things other than the Estimate. What happened yesterday is not relevant.

Mr. Belton

I submit that I am dealing with the consequences of the foot-and-mouth disease which, I hold, has been allowed to run rampant through the country for eight months owing to the incompetency of the Minister and his Department. These are the effects of it, and even when the disease is eradicated these effects will remain for a considerable time, with unsettled markets and so on, all weighing heavily on the industry that we must rely on now to carry the country through the emergency.

I would like the Minister to summarise how, in his opinion, from his point of view and that of his Department and its veterinary technicians, the disease was dealt with in and around Dublin and there eradicated in a couple of months, and to give the House their view of how it spread to Tipperary, Kilkenny and Carlow, and why, in their opinion, they were not able to bring the disease under control until about the middle of October. We here in Dublin cannot understand how it ran such a long course, and we would be interested to know that. As far as I am concerned, I am prepared to accept a reasoned statement from the Minister, if it is convincing, as to why it ran such a course.

Deputy Maguire mentioned about this being a cattle scourge. He did not come down to details, nor did he deal with the expeditious manner in which an outbreak is eradicated in Britain. Britain is far more exposed to causes of epidemics of foot-and-mouth disease than we are, as Britain imports heavily from countries all over the world where the disease is not considered in the same light as it is here, or in Britain, and therefore it is more exposed to infection than we are in this country. Britain is able to eradicate outbreaks there in a very short time, while we have had the whole trade practically held up for eight months. As far as I can gather from reading the papers, official pronouncements and pronouncements by the Minister, or any spokesman of the Government, bearing on this subject, there has been no attempt to explain the cause of the spread down to the southern counties or to explain why it baffled all the efforts of the Department for eight months.

It was a strange coincidence that, just at the time that public opinion was getting vocal and calling for inquiries as to why this disease had continued, the disease began to disappear. The disease is gone now, because the public were asking about the cause of its continuance and if it were not time that we had an inquiry into the administration of the Department responsible for dealing with it. Then as it were, overnight, by the waving of a wand, the foot-and-mouth disease disappeared, and our ports were open to deal with cattle that, according to the Taoiseach, cannot be transported from inland counties to the ports because we have an inadequate supply of railway trucks, which must be used for transporting other goods. I think this is the only country in which such a thing could happen.

Mr. M. Brennan

I think that some Deputies have handled the discussion in a rather bad way this evening. I would much prefer to see no Party spirit whatever, and I do not think there was any intention to bring a Party spirit into this debate. It was rather unfortunate that people like Deputy Maguire should get up to say that it was a kind of political ramp. It was no such thing. Every Deputy in the House knows that during the very unfortunate out break of the disease there was created the feeling in the country that it was badly handled. That is so. Although comparisons may be odious, there is no way of getting comment or criticism in a matter like this but by making comparisons. The position was very hopeless to-night, when Deputy Hughes made a comparison between the British method of dealing with a matter of that sort and our method, and the Minister became childish and churlish and lost his temper. There is no point in that. As a serious-minded person, he should not do that. He is in charge of a very serious Department and this country is really dependent on it. There is no use in people on that side of the House pretending, as the Minister and, I think, Deputy Allen did — that there are two Parties — one on this side, the British, and one on that side, the ultra-Irish. The day is gone for that kind of nonsense, for the nonsense that because the British did it it was right, and because the Irish——

Mr. Corry

Who tried that but the Party opposite?

Mr. M. Brennan

That is exactly what I mean. That comparison is odious to people who said to the House that because they are ultra-Irish they are considered wrong. If the Minister would only reflect, and if Deputy Corry had only the good sense to think it over, they would find that the veterinary surgeons on the far side are mostly Irishmen. It must be remembered that this State is quite young and that we are very inexperienced in this matter. We did not cavil — and Deputy Allen, Deputy Corry or the Minister would not cavil—at imitating Britain, Egypt, Italy or anywhere else if they could get some good medical science out of it. In Britain they have a tradition of foot-and-mouth disease, due to their conditions and circumstances, as they import so many things. We are not so exposed. The disease has become endemic in Britain; it is not so here. If they are doing anything in Britain or China that is effective in eradicating a disease, and if we get the same disease here, we should immediately, if they are successful, try the same here.

Mr. Allen

Were they successful?

Mr. M. Brennan

Absolutely. Take up any of the papers. Even though, as I say, they are so exposed there and the disease is endemic there, at the same time they do not allow it to spread now. Mind you, it did not spread in Northern Ireland — that is peculiar. Let us not be throwing dust in our own eyes. If they have something in Britain that we think is useful, let us not be afraid to get it, particularly if it is good, and let there be no nonsense from the Minister or anybody else that people who talk like that are pro-British and others are so ultra-Irish that they would not think of following their example. I believe that the staff in our Department is quite a good staff, but that staff had not the necessary experience. I firmly believe that they had not any scheme of organisation which was able to deal effectively with the situation that arose here.

An inquiry has been asked for, and I think it would be a very good thing to have a committee of inquiry set up. I do not see why the Minister, or the Department, should fear such an inquiry, unless there is something to hide—and I do not think there is. I believe that there was some lack of organisation and, if there are any steps that we could take which would be of assistance to us in the event of another outbreak, we should take them. If you do set up a committee of inquiry, let it be one that cannot be branded along Party lines. Let us have such an inquiry that those who would be appointed on it can sit down, discuss the whole situation, make comparisons with other countries and see what can be done here.

The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak has cost this country a terrible lot of money. It has cost the ratepayers something like half a million, and that is nothing to the millions it has cost the farmers. If you had an inquiry — I do not believe in a whitewashing sort of inquiry — I believe it would allay the feeling in the country that there has been neglect and incompetence. It will be difficult to get rid of that feeling. If you had an inquiry, it would be well to consider, (1) the existence of such a long period as has been referred to, (2) the cost to the State, and (3) the allegations that were made to-night and that have been made elsewhere and that can be, I am afraid, proved conclusively.

Deputy Hughes has referred to certain things. The Minister and others may believe that he was over-zealous in his presentation of the case. Perhaps he was over-zealous, but still he had the evidence, and it was no wonder he was over-zealous, especially with regard to the delays in slaughtering animals, the manner of slaughter, and the method of compensation. I am not going to plead that people who were fined should be paid compensation. When a man goes before the court, and the court decides his case, that is that; but there may be a certain element of doubt in some cases, and, if there is, the Minister ought to consider those cases more carefully. It would not be fair to beggar a man if there is any doubt involved. Of course, if a man deliberately tried to hide the disease, and was thereby the cause of spreading it further, he deserves very little consideration, but there are other cases where there was some element of doubt.

I am not going to go into the details of any case; I am dealing with the general feeling in the country that there was incompetency, and we should try to allay that feeling. It is not good for us or for the country that such a feeling should exist. The best way to allay it is to welcome the setting up of an inquiry, to give every evidence that we are not shirking that issue. The Minister, and the Department, are regarded as incompetent by a lot of people. I do not like that. It is not good for us, and, if you can get rid of that impression, you should immediately do so. Whatever we do, let us not be pretending that we are so ultra Irish that we will not do what the British are so effectively doing. Let us cut that "codology" out. The Minister ought to take care that he does not slip into that track, because it would be very unfortunate for him if he does.

Mr. Hurley

I cannot see what useful purpose this inquiry would serve, now that the foot-and-mouth disease has been eradicated. The Departmental staff, and particularly the veterinary section, have learned a lot from experience how to handle this very violent, virulent and expensive disease. From their experience in the last outbreak they will be able to handle any further outbreak which might — we all hope and pray it will not — visit this country. I cannot understand what would be the purpose of such an inquiry. Would it be to pillory the Department for not eradicating the disease more quickly? I have had some experience of dealing with the officials of the Department on matters connected with foot-and-mouth disease, and I must say that they were most helpful and very conscientious.

Mr. Brennan

I entirely agree with that.

Mr. Hurley

Therefore, I do not think that any purpose will be served by having an inquiry, now that the disease has been got under control. I think such an inquiry would do more harm than good. If the House is satisfied that there has been any neglect on the part of the Department, and that it would be helpful to have an inquiry, then I am sure the Minister, and the Government, would not fail to set one up. But I do not think that anybody has made a definite charge against the veterinary section of the Department. It is unfortunate that the disease spread so rapidly and extensively, but I understand that that is inherent in foot-and-mouth disease. I think we really should congratulate the Department on the way in which they have controlled the disease. I would not be in favour of a motion to set up an inquiry at this stage.

Colonel Ryan

I feel that the Department and the Minister have a certain amount of responsibility in this matter. I feel that when the disease was in its early stages, the Department did not take adequate steps to check it. On a number of occasions I rang up their local headquarters, and I found, when the disease was jumping from Donegal to Leix and Offaly, and on to Clare, that there was only one officer from the Department available. After waiting for hours, all I could get from this officer was: "For God's sake, leave me alone; I have just travelled 100 miles to-day." That was at Birr, and on that day this officer was the only one available in Birr, and the whole of North Tipperary, regardless of boundaries, was put completely within the scheduled area. That was done regardless of the inconvenience caused to the community—there was no notice taken of that.

That passed off, but the disease got more virulent and it came to Kilkenny, and they had to wait in Kilkenny for some weeks before there was any kind of staff put there to deal with the matter. No ordinary member of the public, whether a T.D. or anybody else, knew where to go or had any idea of what to do, and each officer you rung up told you that he was so busy that he could not go, that he could not give any assistance because he was rushing from one case to another. Now, the Department is not to blame for that. I do not want to blame them, but I do want to have the thing remedied. Later on the disease became very virulent in Kilkenny and around the Tipperary border, where it gained to a very considerable extent. I think I spent two days ringing up the Department, from this House here and from different places in Dublin at the instance of a number of creamery managers and other people, begging the Department to draw a cordon across a certain line of country, and I was told by the head of the veterinary department that the Constitution would not allow it. I think that was a terrible state of affairs. I went to a meeting, at which some members of the Party opposite were present, and I saw people going away in disgust, creamery managers who had made fools of themselves in putting up tanks, and so on, and who found that the Department could do nothing for them except to advise people, through their offices, through the radio and through the newspapers, to stay at home, because the Minister says that it is better to advise them to stay at home than to keep them at home.

In the midst of all this we had turmoil. We had people coming from those scheduled areas into the nonscheduled areas, people coming to attend dances and coming 20 miles from the borders of the Limerick area into the Ballingarry area, and all we did was to say: "We will rely on the public spirit of the people and we will rely on members of the Local Security Force and give them 7/6 per day to prosecute their neighbours." Is not that really what was done? I do not want to throw blame on anybody, but what I cannot understand, what this country cannot understand, and what even the most intelligent man in the country cannot understand, is why the disease continued in this country, why it jumped from one place to another 50 or 100 miles away, and why it kept jumping about until it fell into some particular area. There never seemed to be any systematic idea of finding where the disease started. There never seemed to be a systematic idea of finding why it jumped 50 miles at one time, nor did there seem to be any interest taken in the matter at all until such time as the disease became so virulent that the country was shouting about it. Then, of course, we had hosts of veterinary surgeons, as I say, thrown in, who all did their best, and we had the Local Security Force employed at 7/6 a day to prosecute their neighbours. Even before it began it was never taken into account that we should try to hurt the least possible number of people.

As I said, when the disease appeared in Birr they cordoned off the whole of North Tipperary instead of taking a 30-mile radius and drawing a line along some electoral boundary or some police register. At that time you would not be listened to in the Department. This is what I am annoyed about. It was a matter of being told: "We are doing our duty", and you would not be listened to at all. The same thing occurred in other places. They took a line of country stretching for 20 miles, through villages and towns, and the Department said: "That road is the boundary, and on one side of that road a man can sell his bonhams, take his cow to the bull, or do anything in the world that he wants to do, but on the other side of the road a man cannot move a single thing." I know of cases of people in Tipperary where the greatest hardships have been imposed through the Department not using ordinary common sense — I do not want to say negligence. If I take a road from here to Kildare, surely to goodness, if there is no danger on one side of the road there should not be danger on the other side of it. We should not destroy the pig population on one side of the road, or prevent a man from bringing his cow to the bull, and allow the man on the other side of the road freedom to do what he likes. That caused jealousy amongst neighbours and you had each of them blaming the other, and they fell back on blaming the Civic Guards. If that disease should ever occur in this country again I am sure the Department can hardly blame the Constitution because I think it is admitted that you could lock up this House here if you wanted to.

I think they should try to devise some kind of a ring, and let it be enforced by military and Guards, men who are bound to do their duty, instead of having it on a voluntary basis. Do not have it on a voluntary basis and do not pay 7/6 to men to prosecute their neighbours. Doctor Ryan, time after time in this House, stated that it was the people's fault, and then at other times he said it was not. At any rate, it can be said that very few prosecutions were brought and, in most cases, these prosecutions should not have been brought at all.

Mr. Hughes

Before the Minister replies, there is one matter that I omitted to refer to and that is the question of compensation. Towards the end of the epidemic there was a tendency to scale down the valuation, and I think that that is very unfair because the Minister will realise that the people who got compensation towards the initial stages of the disease could re-stock out of a restricted market whereas those people who got compensation at the very end when there was a tendency to scale down, will now have to re-stock out of a keen, competitive open market, and they will not be able to re-stock at all out of the compensation that has been awarded. That is a matter I should like to bring to the Minister's notice.

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

Deputy Hughes, in his opening statement, started off practically by saying that the methods adopted in Great Britain had undoubtedly proved effective, and I think that as he went on in his speech he did not conceal the fact that he thought that the methods adopted here had proved very ineffective. I am quite prepared to say that there are as good veterinary surgeons in England as there are here, but I am not prepared to say that they are better.

Mr. Hughes

I did not question that.

Dr. Ryan

They are certainly as good here.

Mr. Hughes

It was the type of organisation that I questioned.

Dr. Ryan

I do not mind the words the Deputy used. If he had said that perhaps we had not done one, or two, or even three things as well as they do in England, I would not mind, but the Deputy went through a speech for an hour and a half and during practically every minute of that hour and a half he gave instances where we were behind England. In every single one of the instances that he gave he said that we were behind England. I do not know where he got his information.

Mr. Hughes

I thought you said you did.

Dr. Ryan

I do not know where he got some of it, but I also know where he got some of it.

Mr. Hughes

I wonder how much more pilfering the Minister will do.

Dr. Ryan

I am not doing any pilfering at all. If there is a person who has some grievance against the Department, and he gives Deputy Hughes some information against the Department, I am just as likely to hear what is going on as anyone else, and I do hear those things without going to look for them. One of the proofs that Deputy Hughes gave about the British knowing more about this than we do is that they are more experienced. That is a very queer proof in a case like this. Let us leave foot-and-mouth disease aside for the moment, because we may not be able to see the thing properly through being too close to it. Take the public health authorities in this country; if I say that the public health authorities are good in this country because they have prevented smallpox from coming in, nobody will deny it, but if I were to say that they are not nearly as good as the authorities in, say, some district in the Balkans who have it every day in the week, I would be laughed at. Because they have it there, they know all about it, and, therefore, they are better than we are when we keep it out. In England, where they have foot-and-mouth disease all the year round, they are better than the people here who have kept it out?

Mr. Hughes

Do not talk nonsense. Talk common sense.

Dr. Ryan

If I were talking nonsense I would be in the fashion here, after Deputy Hughes, but I am not talking nonsense as it happens. Deputy Hughes knows very well that the man who can prevent disease is better than the man who can cure it, and that is what we have done here in the last 20 years; we have prevented it; we have kept it out. When it did come, we dealt with it.

Mr. Hughes

And one visitation took you ten months to deal with.

Dr. Ryan

I do not pry very much into what they do in England, but I read the Farmers' Gazette, and by chance I came across an answer from the Minister of Agriculture there only the week before last. He was asked what was the compensation paid for foot-and-mouth disease since the war commenced, and the figure he gave was £650,000. Here we have Deputies opposite talking about this colossal bill of £450,000 for compensation.

Mr. Hughes

£600,000.

Dr. Ryan

It was £650,000 in England in the last two years.

Mr. Hughes

What is your bill?

Dr. Ryan

I am dealing with what was paid in compensation.

Colonel Ryan

Are not those isolated cases of foot-and-mouth disease in England, which were stopped there and then?

Dr. Ryan

We had a lot of isolated cases here, too. I do not agree with the defence put up for the English side over there. I do not at all mean by that that they are all pro-British over there and all ultra-Irish over here. What I am trying to infer is this, that we should have a little more respect for our own technical men here, and say that they are as good as they are in England, but not better if you like. We are able to look after things like this just as well as they did in England. One would imagine from the speeches opposite that foot-and-mouth disease appeared there once or twice in the year, and that then they got rid of it. They paid £650,000 in compensation in two years.

Mr. Hughes

Would the Minister permit me to ask him a question?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to proceed without interruption.

Dr. Ryan

They paid £650,000 compensation in two years. They may be successful in dealing with it in England. They may be; but we are successful in dealing with it here, too. We paid £450,000 in compensation; they paid £650,000. They are just as good as we are, but not better.

Mr. Hughes

Would the Minister permit me to ask him a question?

Dr. Ryan

I have a quarter of an hour in which to speak; the Deputy had an hour and a half. He is not satisfied yet. He never will be. Deputy Hughes talked about seven or eight days' delay in burying the cattle. It may have occurred in some cases.

Mr. Hughes

Undoubtedly.

Dr. Ryan

I am quite sure that, if I had time to go over, I would find the same thing in England. They are often seven or eight days there too without being buried. There is one thing which I will state definitely now, and that is that there was not a single case of infection in this country from an infected farm after the case had been notified, so that if there were cattle seven or eight days without being buried it was not in any way responsible for the spread of the disease.

Mr. Hughes

How do you know?

Dr. Ryan

I know through our veterinary surgeons.

Mr. Hughes

Bosh.

Dr. Ryan

Of course. I was just saying, while the Deputy was speaking, that we are spending I do not know how much on 50 veterinary surgeons in the Department, but Deputy Hughes knows more than all of them put together. We would save a lot of money by putting them out and putting Deputy Hughes in. He knows more than all of them put together.

Mr. Hughes

I know a lot more than the Minister anyway.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to conclude without interruption.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Hughes talked about animals frothing over the fences, and said that it was an air-borne disease. It is not an air-borne disease. I will tell Deputy Hughes that, even though he does know more than I do. It is not an air-borne disease, and there is not a veterinary officer in the country who will say it is.

Mr. Hughes

I will prove it to the Minister.

Dr. Ryan

That it is an air-borne disease?

Mr. Hughes

I will prove to the Minister that veterinary surgeons have stated that.

Dr. Ryan

No. No responsible man will say that. I am quite definite on that.

Mr. Hughes

I will prove it to the Minister on another occasion.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Hughes quoted five or six cases in Kilkenny where the cattle were five or six days without being buried. Deputy Hughes raised those cases already here in the Dáil, and when I replied I told him that out of something like 50 or 60 cases in Kilkenny there were five cases in which they were five days without being buried, and I gave the circumstances which prevented it in each case. In some cases rocks had to be blasted out of the graves, but I said that the average in Kilkenny at that time was one and a half days. If Deputy Hughes is honest about this thing, and if he is really anxious to get some solution of this problem, why does he come along again now and take those five cases in Kilkenny? Why is he not honest enough to say that the average in Kilkenny was one and a half days? But that would not do for his propaganda speech; he would not give those figures.

The dominant consideration in Britain, he says, is speed. They are not a bit more speedy than we are. He says that in Britain they slaughter the animals, and do not hurry about burying them. That is not right. In Britain, they do exactly as we did here, with this exception. In the beginning of the outbreak we did the same as Britain had done. I have no objection, nor has my staff any objection, to copying Britain when the thing is right. What they do in Britain is what we did here in the beginning. We brought the animals into an enclosure beside a pit, shot them, pushed them into the pit and buried them. Subsequently, we gave up making an enclosure; we drove them down into the pit and shot them there. The British have continued the practice of shooting them beside the pit and burying them immediately. There is no such thing as Deputy Hughes talked about—that they shoot the animals first and then do not hurry about burying them; they wait until the pits are made. Deputy Hughes said that we wasted time by having veterinary surgeons going around the 15-mile radius while they could be better employed inside the two-mile radius. That is a point which struck me, and I said to the veterinary staff in the Department: "Could we not economise on veterinary surgeons' time by putting ordinary administrative officers out there to deal with those matters in the 15-mile radius?" They said "No"; they would not take responsibility for having administrative officers, or non-technical men if you like, dealing with matters in the 15-mile radius; they wanted veterinary surgeons there. I said: "If you will not take responsibility, I cannot ask them to do it." Of course Deputy Hughes would take the responsibility, because he knows better. With regard to the question as to whether we do things better here, I may say that a senior veterinary surgeon came over here from the British Department while this thing was on in Kilkenny. He was over here on other business, and he was not prejudiced against the Irish Department. He went down to Kilkenny to see how things were done there, and when he came back he said that in his opinion things could not be done better. That is a man out of the British Department, a senior veterinary surgeon, but, as I said, he had no crow to pluck with my Department, so he gave an honest opinion.

Deputy Hughes said that I blamed the farmers for sending infected milk to creameries, and he said that in Great Britain it is well known that the milk may be affected before the animal is physically affected. That is true, I believe, and I want to say that I did not blame the farmers entirely. I have said over and over again in this House that an extremely small percentage of the farmers were to blame; that the great majority of farmers—I do not know what percentage; perhaps 99 per cent. —did everything possible to co-operate, but some farmers—in more than one case—sent their milk to the creamery and within an hour notified my Department that they thought their cattle had foot-and-mouth disease, and so they had. It was pretty visible at the time. I thought that was neglectful.

I do not know whether compensation was inadequate. It is a frightfully hard thing to decide, but I must say that in most cases, where we tried to make independent inquiries, we were told that the parties were satisfied with the compensation they received. We know that some people will never be satisfied and it is no use trying to satisfy them. The right of appeal is, I think, ridiculous—it is a matter that will come up here later—because when the valuer goes along and values the cattle, the cattle are ready for slaughter and are slaughtered immediately. The appeal then comes along in a week's time. How can any arbitrator or umpire do anything when the cattle are in the grave?

Mr. Curran

Are there many cases of appeal?

Dr. Ryan

I thought that was a defect in the Act and I intend to put proposals before the Dáil to amend the Diseases of Animals Act. That will be one of the amendments which I will propose, that the right of appeal must go.

Colonel Ryan

What I complained about was that one valuer valued at one price and another valuer at a totally different price.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is out of order.

Dr. Ryan

I was asked to review these cases in which compensation was withheld. I can assure Deputies that all these cases were very carefully examined. Each individual case was discussed with me by the higher officers of the Department before a decision was taken. I might have misled Deputy Hughes in this, that in answering a question in the Dáil this day fortnight with regard to the amount withheld, I think I said that in no case was 100 per cent. of the value of the total number of diseased animals withheld. I should have said that in no case was 100 per cent. of the value of the total number of animals involved——

Mr. Hughes

No. The Minister said that the amount withheld ranged from 10 to 75 per cent. of the value of the diseased animals.

Dr. Ryan

That was wrong. It was not 100 per cent. of the value of the diseased animals but it was very near it, but the total did not exceed 62 per cent. of the value of the total number of animals in any case. Deputy Hughes asked why I did not go to Kilkenny. I was asked that question when the foot-and-mouth disease was on and I said to myself: "I do not know as much as the veterinary surgeons that are down there." The chief of the veterinary department saw me daily, I suppose, during the time the foot-and-mouth disease was on. He could tell me what he wanted, he could discuss the whole question with me and I could not improve matters by going down there and I was afraid, if I had gone down, I would have been accused of——

A Deputy

Of spreading it.

Dr. Ryan

Perhaps of spreading the disease. I did not want to do that and in any case I could not improve matters by going down. Deputy Bennett says that I did not stop races when first I was asked to do so, but that afterwards I did so. That is true, but I say still—I have already said it in the Dáil and in the Seanad—there was never any necessity to stop horse races or dog races so far as the disease was concerned. The only reason I did stop them was because there was an agitation, because, perhaps, some farmers might think there was danger, and perhaps some farmers might feel that they were suffering, owing to the restrictions, while we were allowing other people to enjoy themselves. I do not think it is fair, on the whole, to stop people enjoying themselves if it is not going to do any good.

Colonel Ryan

You stopped hurling matches.

Dr. Ryan

Football matches also were stopped, but there was no danger arising from those assemblies according to the veterinary view expressed here. I do not know whether I should have given in or not to that demand. It is a fact, as Deputy Bennett said, that we got rid of the disease in Limerick very quickly, but he would not give the credit for that to the Department. He said it was due to the local people. I absolutely agree it was due to the co-operation of the local people, but other speakers said that, whether we got co-operation or did not get it, it was our business to stamp out the disease. Limerick was a case in point where we did get co-operation and where we stamped out the disease very quickly. Deputy Bennett also mentioned that he made a suggestion here on one occasion that the person who notified the disease might possibly spread it and that accordingly we should make sure that that person was disinfected. He said that I adopted that suggestion and I believe he was right in that. I think the Deputy was the first to draw my attention to that danger, but now apparently he blames me for adopting his suggestion.

Mr. Bennett

Oh, no.

Dr. Ryan

Rather the Deputy blames me for not thinking of it myself. I quite admit that I should have thought of it. Deputy Hughes blames me for not adopting suggestions which he believed to be sensible but which I believed not to be so sensible. The fact is that nearly every Deputy has expressed the idea that I was too lax in one way or another. Some say I was too lax in dealing with the outbreak. The accusation is that we did not deal with it as promptly, as effectively and as expeditiously as it should have been dealt with. I am blamed for not being as prompt or as strict as I should be. Individual Deputies, on the other hand, think I have been too severe in some way or another in cases in which they are interested. Even Deputy Hughes talks about severity in certain cases. Other Deputies think that we have too rigid an idea about certain regulations. There are no two Deputies opposite who would agree as to whether I should be more strict or more lax but it happens that, with the advice I am getting in the Department, I might have appeared too severe to certain Deputies in certain directions and too lax to others in other directions. No two Deputies could agree on matters like that.

There is just one other matter to which I wish to refer before moving the adjournment. Both Deputy Bennett and Deputy Curran made the point that the disease was stamped out in County Wexford in 1928 much more expeditiously than on this occasion. I do not know what point Deputies wanted to make about that. I cannot say that I ever discussed this matter with my predecessor, the late Mr. Hogan, but I am quite sure my predecessor took the advice of the veterinary staff in the Department and did what they asked him to do. I did exactly the same thing. It is practically the same veterinary staff and the most that can be made out of that is that he was lucky and I was unlucky. I do not know that it is right that Deputies should try to make the point that he was more effective in dealing with the disease than I was. I am quite sure that if Mr. Hogan were here himself he would be fair enough to admit that the two of us, he and I, adopted the same methods and these were the methods advised by the veterinary staff which is the same, or practically the same, now as it was in 1928.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported.

The Committee to sit again tomorrow.

The Dáil adjourned at 9.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 13th November.