Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 28 Mar 1944

Vol. 93 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Vote 29—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Larkin

When the House adjourned on last Thursday night, I was approaching a matter which, in my opinion, will be helpful in the immediate future and will, I think, be in the best interests of the agricultural community in the not far distant future. In my remarks, I deal with certain points of view, but I want particularly to emphasise the spirit shown by certain members of the House which was expressed vocally, and which, I think, arises from a mentality created by conditions outside the country. More than 11 representatives of the agricultural community approached, very tenderly and with a sense of guardedness, the question of compulsory labour on their own farms. Some of them suggested that men were evading work and one or two said that they had seen men in their own neighbourhood carelessly cycling along the roads who, when it was suggested to them that they might be given employment, sneered and laughed. The suggestion was made that there ought to be powers to compel these men to work, in the heat of the day and the cool of the evening, and, according to the last regulation I have seen, even during the night and on Sundays.

If that is the mentality of the agricultural community, let us see what the opposite viewpoint is. If a farmer will not farm scientifically, if he works his farm on the system known in this and other countries 60 or 100 years ago, why should not the State take over his land and cultivate it for him, as we have done under Emergency Powers Orders, in cases where refractory individuals refuse to carry out the limited Orders of the Minister? If we are to have forced labour, we ought to have it under proper conditions and not on the mere submission of some individual farmer who, for his own purposes, wants to compel other men to work on conditions laid down by him or by a wages board. We ought to have the other side of the picture. The policy has been enunciated since the opening of this House, and previously in another Parliament, that the land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland only; that no individual under the sun owns that land; that the only right individuals have is to use the land. That was the ideal expressed during the land agitation by our fathers and forefathers and was generally accepted the world over as being the true and logical position. So much so that it was accepted even by the British Government and surely it must be accepted by an Irish Government. Any of these gentlemen who have 60, or 100 or 200 acres of land transferred from the ownership of other people—some of whom have left the country for the country's good—taken out of their hands because they were not rightly using that land in the best interests of the people, should be very slow to suggest that men should be compelled to labour, because if anyone dared to try to enforce that, would it not be logical and sensible that those who are forced to labour would be entitled to a share in the profits of the associated labour of the farm user and the labourer who was compelled to work?

I suggest that there is a better way. In the beginning of my speech I suggested that this was a time for adjustment, possibly for reconciliation, between two factors. Why should we not go further and suggest that these two men might get together as common inheritors of the property of the nation, instead of the farmer looking upon the labourers, as Deputy O Cleirigh said, as being too well paid? I will say that there was not a farmer Deputy, except Deputy O Cleirigh, who did not admit that the farm labourer was underpaid. All the other Deputies of all the other Parties—the Farmers' Party, the Fine Gael Party, the Fianna Fáil Party— admitted that the farm labourer was one of the most useful men in the community. Many of them spoke of him as being so closely associated with the farmer and the use of the land that he was regarded as a sort of comrade. All of them deplored that the farmers were not getting a sufficient price for their products to pay their labourer a proper wage. They honestly believed that he was not getting sufficient value for his labour and they want to give him a better return, to make his life more secure, to guarantee him continuity of work and a reasonable wage under trade union conditions.

One or two Deputies objected to a term used by Deputy Tunney when he described the farm labourer's work as slavery. Slavery is a word that can be qualified in many of its relationships. We have had all kinds of slavery in the world; it exists in many places even yet. But the most miserable and meanest form of slavery is wage slavery. The slaves in the so-called Republics of Greece and Rome were truly slaves, but they were well cared for, because they were valued. The slaves in the Southern States of America were also well cared for. They were animals according to the Christian gentlemen in the Southern States, but these gentlemen treated them in a sort of human way; they cared for them. It has been proved conclusively that, bad and all as their conditions were, the coloured slaves in the Southern States of America—and the abolition of slavery there cost the lives of millions of people and millions of money and a sea of sorrow—who were brought there to work as slaves were cared for. They got medicine when they were sick; they got comfort and shelter; and there were reservations even about the work they were to do and also with regard to the price paid for them.

There is no such thing in this Christian country as any recognition of the rights of these wage slaves. We have some protection for industrial workers by means of organisation. An employer must treat an employee in industrial life with some measure of responsibility and some sense of ethics, but that does not apply in the agricultural areas. The men in the industrial areas can elect their own representatives. They can associate together in groups by law. They can act outside the law and, possibly, through their organisation commit a tort or an offence and not be held responsible for it. The industrial worker is protected and, where he has not taken advantage of that protection, it is due to his own selfishness, his own cupidity, or lack of loyalty to his own class. That is not possible in the agricultural areas. Owing to the fact that farms are so isolated, and men have to travel such long distances, there is not that community of interest which you find in the industrial groups in this country. Compare the industrial standard of life, low as it is—and we argue that it is not a reasonable condition of life —with that of the farm labourer. I think it will be granted by any intelligent farmer that the man who has a good farm labourer has one of the most able, intelligent and highly-skilled men in the community.

A Deputy

"Hear, hear."

Mr. Larkin

I am glad I have got one man to agree with me. I have been a propagandist all my life on behalf of the farm labourers, and to-day I have got at least one man to agree with me. Take any type of workman you like. The skilled man in the building trade is highly skilled in one portion of the job. The labourer in the building trade is a skilled man. He knows his business as regards certain activities of the building trade. The same thing applies to transport workers, dock labourers, seamen, firemen, etc. But they have not the all-round knowledge and skill of the farm labourer. I am talking about the farm labourer who knows his business and sometimes knows it better than the farmer. There is no man amongst the farming class who has men of that type but appreciates that. The Minister has set up one of those forms of organisation which only gentlemen from former Italian countries, like Eritrea, Libya, North Africa, Italy itself, and countries within the Germanic Empire would dare bring into operation. This gentleman, who talks on platforms about democracy and the right to representative government, backed by his cohorts in the Fianna Fáil Party, inarticulate as many of them naturally are because the machinery of the Party will not allow them to speak, has approved of a form of representation that no worker or no intelligent human being would for a moment accept—the right of a nominated person to decide what value his services were to the community. If those wages boards which are being set up were carried out honestly and with some sense of responsibility one would not demur.

I want to direct attention to the position in County Dublin, where there are as good farm labourers as there are in any of the English-speaking portions of the earth. I say that the farm labourer in North Dublin or South Dublin cannot be equalled in any country in Western Europe in regard to adaptability and knowledge of his work. When I first went amongst these men 40 years ago, their wages, or what were called wages, were something like 12/- or 13/- a week for working every day of the week, including Sunday. Have their conditions improved? I submit that they have not. Their wages may have increased but their powers have been limited. I cannot understand farmers claiming that they work 100 hours a week when they have time to attend race meetings and dog meetings and all forms of relaxation. The farm labourer never had a fixed number of hours. They are now fixed at 54 hours a week by a board that lays it down that he must work these hours. In the dairying industry the labourer has to work the clock round because of the system employed in this country. Deputy O'Donnell explained how the system is operated. Of course, no one outside an asylum would work the dairying industry in the way it is worked by the Irish farmers. Dairying could be industrialised in the same way as any other industry and there is no reason why these long laborious hours should be worked. No one can argue these men into a condition of sanity and, therefore, they must continue to work long hours until they learn by bitter experience but, because the system is so operated, their hired servants have to submit to the conditions.

If it were a question of a contract between man and man one would not object so much because it is the essence of a contract that both parties should know the nature of the contract they enter into. But the farm labourer has no right to object to any provisions or any set of agreements. He must submit to the wage conditions and to the hours arranged by this board, appointed by the Minister, who never saw the board, I suppose, or the individuals covered by the contract. In County Dublin we have these people appointed by the Minister. It would be interesting to find out how they function. A Mr. O'Leary is chairman of the board. They have been holding meetings lately and have come to a decision in regard to the wages payable to the County Dublin farm labourers. For a 54-hour week they have granted men over 20 years of age £2 6s. a week. Two of the members of that board represent farm labourers in the County Dublin. One of them is named Grove, from Rush, County Dublin. No farm labourer, except his immediate friends in the neighbourhood, ever knew him. He was not authorised by any group of farm labourers, organised or unorganised, to speak for them but, did he attend this wages board? I submit to the Minister that he did not, that the farm labourers who were entitled to have a spokesman had no spokesman in the person of Grove for, strange to relate, Grove has not been working as a farm labourer in Ireland for close on a year. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, on the 18th November, in reply to a Deputy in this House, made the following statement:—

"The agricultural labourer is not allowed to emigrate. The Deputy must not understand the regulations which are in force. Any person who has experience in agricultural work or in turf production is not allowed to emigrate."

I say that statement is untrue. I say that Grove, who was appointed by the Minister and who was nominated to the Minister by an unseen hand in the political Party opposite, was not in this country.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is referring to a man who has no chance of replying.

Mr. Larkin

I am speaking from the official documents.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has named a man who has no chance of defending himself against what is being said under privilege.

Mr. Larkin

I would not take advantage of anybody either in this House or outside. I submit to you that Mr. Grove——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy might state that an unnamed member of the board did not attend.

Mr. Larkin

What value would that be except qualified by the statement that he was supposed to represent the farm labourers in the County Dublin. This matter is very serious. Mr. Lemass, one of the Ministers responsible for the individuals working in this country, has allowed this man, an experienced agricultural worker, to leave this country.

An Ceann Comhairle

Mr. Lemass's Estimate is not under review.

Mr. Larkin

I am only pointing out the control over agricultural workers and turf producers. The Minister who is responsible to this House is present and I would ask him, through you, did this man, who is alleged to be representing, and appointed by himself to represent, the County Dublin farm labourers, physically attend this wages board and, if he did not, to his knowledge, has this man, Grove, gone outside the country; and, if so, how did he get a permit to leave this country, being an experienced agricultural worker? My point is, if this man was not attending the board and the other man who was associated with him, representing the County Dublin farm workers, did not attend the board, who made the wages for the agricultural labourers? Was it the chairman, the other members representing the public or the lady who is a member of the board? Is that a fit and proper way to arrange wages? Is that the way to get men into a frame of mind that they will work willingly for an agreed wage? There is the biblical story about the man who asked why were the men who went into the vineyard at the eleventh hour paid the same as those who had been working in the heat of the day. The agricultural labourers go out to work the land at a rate of wages fixed by a representative of the Government and certain interested parties, while the men who have to do the work have no voice in the matter. That is the Party that talks about democracy and about representative government.

Members of the House have complained, and rightly complained, that during the last harvest men who attended tractors took advantage of the farmers. Why would not they take advantage if advantage of this kind is to be taken of them, if they are put in this false, illegal, unethical position, from the point of view of the ordinary common law of the land? Why would not they take advantage if there is no ordered machinery to direct, control and adjust these relationships? Is this a fair and proper way to carry on society as it is organised here? I do not want to labour that point, but I submit to Deputy Cosgrave that, if those farm labourers did hold up the job, they were justified if this kind of offence is committed every day not against one particular crew of a tractor or threshing machine but against every one of them, boys and men, on the farms in County Dublin. The same thing applies, I suppose, in every county in Ireland. For every county in the Twenty-Six Counties the same kind of machine is set up and the rate of wages of the farm labourer is fixed at £2 for adults. Will any man in this House tell me that that is sufficient, except Deputy Cleary, who has the audacity to say anything here although he would not say it outside? Instead of a process of adjustment to reasonable conditions of life we have this form of aggression under which men are forced through hunger to submit to unreasonable conditions or to try to get out into other fields of activity.

I did on one occasion here go into the details of the question as to why there is not sufficient highly skilled labour on the land. Farmers in all parts of the country, both small farmers and those with big acreages, agree that there is going to be a very awkward position in that respect. In every issue of the papers during the past couple of days we are told that we will have a sufficiency of grain, and we are told by the Minister, in his optimistic way, that we will have plenty of potatoes. We will have plenty of everything; the land will flow with milk and honey. We know that this country can produce sufficient grain, but there is a day of reckoning coming. In a few weeks the sowing season will be practically finished. Then we will only have to wait until an abundance of goods shoots up from the earth. Then will come the day for gathering into the barns. What are you going to do with the farm labourer then? Do you think you will get him to work under those conditions? Why not take time by the forelock and let him have proper representation through proper machinery? Why not sit down and discuss with sensible men from the farming community how far we can go to meet the needs of those labourers? No one will say that the farm labourer is unreasonable. Why not let him elect his own representatives, men in whom he has confidence, men who will have the ability to express his needs? Would not that be the proper way to approach this matter, instead of this Fascist way of doing things—this method adopted by certain gentlemen in Western Europe to compel workers to work, until the lesson has been learned? Before long, we hope that that lesson will be fruitful.

I am speaking now knowing that there will be no reasonable response from the Government; they will continue to do the stupid things they have been doing all along. For three years we have been hard at them about the condition of the turf which is being sent up to Dublin, and now they admit, through the voice of the spokesman of the nation, that everything we said was true. It is always after the trouble has arisen, after the disorder has been created, that they come to realise that men who have perhaps more interest in this country than they have were right and were speaking only in the best interests of the community.

I should like to draw the attention of the House to certain things that ought to be corrected here in County Dublin. The Government has taken power to compel farmers with, say, 30 acres of land, some of it mountainy, some of it swampy, to till 37½ per cent. of that land, and to make them put in wheat even though the return they get is not equal to the amount of seed sown. There are 200 inspectors going around. According to statements made on all sides of the House, there is a sort of arbitrary, rigid formula, and, whether the ground is fit or not, in goes the wheat. There is very little time to correct that position. In another four weeks, at the outside, we will know the result. We have very little time to correct any mistakes made, although I myself have put in potatoes in early June and grown some of the best in this county.

Farmers, large and small, have been compelled to do what some of them would have done themselves if properly approached. Deputy MacEoin pointed to two very relevant cases, one of them being that of a widow whose land had been cultivated by her neighbours without giving her any chance of explanation. I think that is an unhappy position. I hope the charges against her will not be too serious, and it may be that the land will bring her abundance.

General MacEoin

Not a hope.

Mr. Larkin

Deputy MacEoin is somewhat pessimistic about it, but I know the gracious, generous-spirited Government, and I think if the matter is put to them properly they may respond. In many ways, they do respond to pressure, moral and physical, but it is always in the interests of their friends. However, in this case, they might even consider this widow as a friend. I take it, the value of the land around the City of Dublin is greater than in any other portion of the country. Of course, it is not as valuable as that portion of Meath from which that sporting farmer came up here and got himself into trouble with some ladies in Dublin. He bought a farm in Clonee for £2,500 and let it at an annual rent of £660. That is a pretty good return on a capital sum of £2,250. This was given in sworn testimony in the courts. He got into some trouble, and some ladies relieved him of his surplus wealth. Then he admitted that he had bought a farm in Clonee—Deputy Giles may know the place well—for £2,500, and had rented it at £660 a year. That is better than digging for gold. There is no portion of the world where you can get that value out of the earth. There is no industry, not even Jamesons, which gives that return. No farmer, no matter how hard he works, could get as big a return as that. He did not even farm the land. He let it at £660 a year. Deputy O'Donnell told us the other night that he would not sell his land for £1,000,000; I am sure he would not sell that kind of land for £1,000,000. Around the County Dublin, both within the city boundary and outside it, we have a large number of acres lying idle. I have a gentleman watching me here, so I am not going to refer to one farm in North County Dublin, 470 acres of the best land in Ireland.

I wonder would the Minister call upon the city manager—we have no power over the city manager—and tell him to cultivate every acre of St. Anne's? There are 22,000 acres of land around the City of Dublin under the control of golf clubs. There are 21 golf clubs in County Dublin. Some of that land is owned by a certain authority that got money advanced to them for building to treat the sick. That money was invested in very valuable property, and was then handed over for a yearly rent to a golf club. I do not know where those people find time to play golf every day. I suggest that at least ten of those clubs might agree to give hospitality to the members of the other 11, and so we could take over the land controlled by those 11 clubs. Every acre of that ground would grow oats and potatoes. As a matter of fact, on some of them the best potatoes in the country could be grown because they have a sandy, friable soil. There is any amount of manure in the immediate vicinity and I suggest that at least 11 of these courses could be taken over.

There is a vast area also lying idle and in the possession of those people of whom my friend Deputy Larkin (Junior) spoke, who are receiving £9,000,000 per annum from the national income. I refer to the idle people around County Dublin who maintain great lawns around their houses. There is about a half a rood of land around the house of the family in which I live and we never bought a potato last year. We had also an ample supply of other vegetables and sufficient fruit to supply the house with jam for the year—and we got sugar, despite the Minister for Supplies. I suggest that every one of these people who keep these beautiful swards round their houses, in an effort to imitate the sward at Oxford, should be compelled to have these lands broken up and cultivated. It would not do the ground any harm.

These people should be called upon to contribute their quota to the national food supply. If they are not willing to cultivate the half-acre, or the two to three acres which surround their houses the Minister should tell them that they will get neither potatoes nor other vegetables from the common pool. When they were eating well, when they were going to the market and buying up whatever was on the market during the potato crisis, the poor of the city had to remain for hours in the rain and in the bitter east wind, to get four or five lbs. of potatoes. These people had the potatoes, the cabbages, the cauliflowers and the other things that go to make life worth living, carted out to their homes at that time. I would suggest to the Minister that they should now be compelled to cultivate these extensive lawns. These suggestions are not made in any spirit of criticism. I had to offend you on another occasion and I am going to offend you now again.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy please address the Chair?

Mr. Larkin

It is always through my foolishness that I offend in that way. I hope I shall not offend again. Speaking through you, Sir, I should like to refer again to an activation, under the control of the Minister which I brought under review on a former occasion—namely the cattle trade, the step-child of the agricultural industry and the second largest and most valuable section of that industry. We have been trying for some considerable time to get accommodation and to improve the facilities at the port for the export of cattle. We have been trying to get proper facilities through the Department for a market and an abattoir, which I think are very essential for the export trade, not only for cattle on foot and dressed meat but also for canned meat. Money could well be spent in providing a proper yard adjacent to the port for the marshalling of cattle, so as to preserve the value of the cattle and to obviate what has been going on from year to year, throughout my lifetime at least. The cattle are driven to a certain point in the city and the whole of the city is disturbed for two days while that is going on. They are driven later, like the wild animals that one hears of on the ranch or on the prairie, down to the port. Because of the treatment they receive in that way, these cattle depreciate by from £1 to £2 per head before they are put on the ship. Naturally they also lose value in crossing. That may be unavoidable owing to weather conditions, but why should they lose £1 or £2 per head on this side, if that loss could be avoided by providing accommodation for them in a comfortable closed market near the port?

An Ceann Comhairle

Is it the Minister or the Dublin Corporation that is responsible for providing that accommodation?

Mr. Larkin

The Minister has full control, and over and above that he is the predominant power. There can be no cattle killed in the slaughterhouse without his authority.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy state for the guidance of the Chair who has power to fix a site for an abattoir?

Mr. Larkin

The Minister has the overriding power.

Dr. Ryan

No.

Mr. Larkin

We have the right to build it, but we cannot do it without his goodwill and authority.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister states that the responsibility rests with the Dublin Corporation.

Mr. Larkin

I did not hear him say so. Perhaps the Minister goes into silences, and speaks to himself like Mahomet, but I am accepting your statement, Sir. The Minister has the power of inspection of the slaughterhouses and on a former occasion I suggested to him that some steps should be taken to prevent the serious waste of offal and other materials that takes place in these slaughterhouses. It was pointed out to him that, in case of a shortage of butter, we would also be short of fats in another direction and that if he could do anything to prevent the wastage of fats it was his duty to do so. Three cwt. of the bones of every beast killed for canning is wasted. That has been going on since the beginning of the emergency in 1939. The offal of these beasts is also being wasted and I suggest to the House that that is a serious matter. Hides are not being cared for as they should and, at present, the hide is one of the most valuable portions of a beast bought for killing.

In connection with canning, I should like to point out that, while it may be possible to find useful work in North Tipperary for people thrown out of employment as a result of the closing down of the canning factory in Roscrea, and while no hardship may be inflicted on the workers there, the same conditions do not obtain in Dublin. Why does the Minister close down the canning factory in Dublin? What is going to become of the skilled butchers who are going to be thrown out of work as from next Wednesday until the 1st of July? These men are to be prevented by the fiat of the Minister from continuing their work although there are considerable numbers of scrub cattle in the country fit only for canning. The Minister told me, personally, and also told the House on one occasion that one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed on this country was to rid us of scrub cattle. Yet, up to the 1st July next, no canning is to be allowed in the City of Dublin. What are these men and their families going to do meanwhile? What are the women in the factories, who will also be disemployed, going to do? There is no chance of bringing these workers down the country to work in the fields. These highly specialised workers are to be deprived of any chance of employment. Surely some arrangement could be come to whereby a certain number of the factories would be allowed to continue in operation, because in every group of cattle that comes into Dublin there is always a certain number not fit for export or for the butchers' trade at home? If, in every 2,000 or 3,000 cattle brought into the city, there are five, ten or 20 rejected as being unfit for export, why cannot arrangements be made to have these cattle killed for canning? I ask the Minister to give me an answer in the course of this debate to the question: will you pay the men who worked for your Department and the country, under conditions in which no other men could have worked, during the foot-and-mouth disease? You took to yourself £5,000 from the men you appointed——

An Ceann Comhairle

I have not received it.

Mr. Larkin

Sir, you may not have got one penny of it——

General MacEoin

Now, we are getting somewhere.

Mr. Larkin

——because I know that if you had, you would make good use of it. I would ask the Minister to pay the money which has been withheld from them by men who said they were bankrupt, and could not pay the rates demanded by the workers who worked overtime and on bank holidays. Yet, behind the backs of those workers they paid over £5,000 to the Minister. I say through you, Sir, to the Minister, that these men are legally and morally entitled to that money and I ask you to consider their claim.

I have been listening here to allegations that the best use of the machinery at our disposal has not been made. I do not think that any reasonable answer has been given to the Deputies who raised that subject during the past few months. Deputies who have a knowledge of the position, even those on the Fianna Fáil Benches, know that this machinery which should be mobile has been kept in rigid form or almost so. The suggestion was made that certain persons who had a pull got the machinery.

Many tractors were brought in and many were repaired, as well as other classes of machinery. Is it fair and proper that individuals should get control of those machines? If they are owned by the State, surely the State should control them, and would it not be wise at once to make that machinery mobile and available generally? Is there any difficulty about sending it to wherever it is required? What is the obstacle in the way of sending a properly organised crew with it, with skilled men in the case of a breakdown, to traverse a particular county and to come to the aid of the farmer who is ready for ploughing and threshing? I suggest to the Minister that that matter should be tackled in a scientific way, and that the public outside should not be allowed to retain the impression that certain individuals have got a monopoly right to the use of those machines, to leave them lying idle for weeks, and maybe months, because they had sufficient power or pull.

I do not say or suggest that the Minister would be a party to anything like that, but we are all aware of the motivations of the human mind, even in the best of us, from an ambitious point of view, but, take a county like Wexford, the best cultivated county in Ireland, and with some of the best farmers. Suppose they had a centralised organisation in control of machinery, with adequate crews to send out where they were needed, would it not be much more beneficial to the community than to have responsible men complaining that private tractor owners were holding up the industry until they got what they demanded? Surely there should be an established value on the work of these machines. Suppose it was £1, £2, or 30/- per acre, why should the farmer be called upon to pay £3 or £4 an acre? Or, if a threshing outfit is there, why should he not go in and do the work, when the man is ready, at the agreed price?

Speaking as one interested in industrial organisation all my life, I believe we should put an end to the system whereby a group of individuals can go into a garden or haggard and say: "Before we will thresh for you, you will pay us £1 or 30/- for the day." I do not think anyone will stand for that kind of brigandage. I suggest to the Minister, before concluding, that the mobilisation of all our machinery should be undertaken at once, and that it should be sent wherever it is needed to work, night and day, if necessary, paying with the ordinary night and day rates. I would ask if the Minister knows of any industry where a piece rate is not recognised, or if he knows of any industry except the farming industry, where a man is expected to work overtime at ordinary rates.

I suggest that the farm labourer who gets 7d. an hour, or in the best counties 9d. an hour, should get proportionate increases for working overtime. The farm labourer who would work for the same rate as fixed for ordinary time by the board is, in my opinion, worse than an organised enemy of the nation. Surely, if he is entitled to 9d. an hour for an ordinary day, he is entitled to increased remuneration for overtime work on Saturdays and Sundays. The law says that if you work overtime you must be paid at the rate of 1¼ or 1½ or double time for Sunday work, and that if you work at piece rate you must get 25 per cent. above the normal rate.

I conclude by saying that if I have made some remarks which are not pleasant to some people, I have done so in a desire to see that this country at the end of the harvest season will be in a position to laugh at everybody outside, and to say that every haggard is full and that every man, woman and child in the State will be assured of a full measure of life in the year that will follow this one.

A Deputy

Would Deputy Larkin support us in the suggestion of ploughing up Leinster Lawn?

General MacEoin

It is true to say that this Vote is one of the most important in the whole expenditure of the State. The speeches that have been made during the last three days show the importance Deputies attach to it and demonstrate very clearly the varying interests of the different counties and districts. We have had ample evidence of the difficulties confronting the agricultural community. Deputies have told us of the troubles which are encountered in every district, and it is quite clear that very few people realise fully the variety of difficulties facing agriculture, as a whole, throughout the State.

Having said that, I would like to approach the examination of the Vote itself. The House is asked to vote a certain sum of money, and I submit the first question we should put to ourselves is: "Are we getting the value for the money we are spending from the Department of Agriculture?" And, if we are not satisfied that we are getting value for the money: "What are we going to do about it?" Our next duty should be to scrutinise the various subheads to see where we could reduce them and where we could increase them. I submit that, on this Vote, Deputies of all Parties should pay particular attention to the various subheads. I have listened to the speeches of the farmers' representatives, and in no case did I hear them challenge any single sub-head or any item in it; but, looking over past years, we find that in the year 1929-30 the salaries, wages and allowances for the Minister for Agriculture and his staff cost this country £111,637. That was at a time when there was an export trade in almost everything—we had full and plenty of eggs, butter, oats, wheat and other goods. In 1931-32, the figure for this sub-head was £117,321, and to-day it is £216,365, or an increase of almost 100 per cent. in a few years. What have we got in return? Reductions in the production of bacon, poultry, eggs, and every item of agriculture. We have control and more control. To effect what? Reduced production. Suppose that our production was increased in respect of any of these items by 100 per cent., the Government could show that they had earned the extra money which is now being applied for; but, instead of that, we have the situation with which we are all acquainted. There is no necessity for me to deal with it.

The total Agricultural Vote for 1929-30 was £454,774. The total Vote in 1931-2 was £434-964. To-day, the total Vote is £1,267,230. For what? Increased production? The question this House has to ask itself is whether it is getting value for that money. If it is not getting value then, in fairness to itself and to the people of the country, who have to foot the bill, we should take steps to rectify the position. I could refer to the question of employment, of labour, of farm conditions, to the seizure of land, and so on, but that does no good. I should rather direct the attention of every Deputy here to the problem I have put. I think that this is one of the first occasions on which our motion to refer back has been really meant. I think that there is necessity for reconsideration of the Vote. We have had no survey of the work done for the money voted. The Minister's statement in introducing the Vote was what anybody could read out of the Book of Estimates. He did not even tell us of all the activities of the Department. He has a committee investigating post-war agriculture. That committee is in being and is being paid for under another heading. The Minister has not told us what that committee has done, whether it has made an interim report or whether it has made any headway.

Agriculture, being the premier industry of the country, should receive all the help and assistance the State can give it by way of enlightened education. If Deputies look at the provision for schools dealing with agricultural matters, they will find that they are starved of funds. Take the 16 schools of domestic economy. The expenditure from the Department on these is £10,095. The gross expenditure, including administration, is £17,748. That is less than £1,150 for each school. I want to pay a tribute to the work these schools are doing. £10,000 is provided—for what? For the radio, advertisements and posters that, taken together, are not worth twopence. If even that sum of £10,000 was added to the £17,000, it would mean that a larger number of students could be accommodated at these schools. The pupils could be told that they were being brought there not so much for the purpose of turning them into domestic economy instructresses or poultry instructresses but so that, as experts in these arts, they would return to their homes and be the spearhead from which improvement in the art of housekeeping and poultry keeping would be effected. In that way, we would get such value for our money as cannot be estimated. As regards the agricultural colleges, I submit that the money voted for them has not increased in the same proportion as the money voted in respect of other subheads. The difference of £100,000 between expenditure on the first sub-head in 1931-2 and 1944-5 would be better spent on these colleges than on the salaries and wages of increased staffs—what are now known down the country as inspectors and "expectors". The agricultural organisation of the Department is not being looked upon with the respect which it should command, dealing, as it is, with the premier industry of the country.

I find that there is a reduction in the Vote this year for cow-testing. Does that mean that we have reached saturation point as regards that activity? Does it mean that we have no more experience to gain? Why should there be a reduction in the provision for cow-testing, the idea of which is to increase the production of milk? Why reduce that provision at such a time as this, when everybody knows that the productivity of the cows, owing to lack of testing, is being brought to absolutely uneconomic levels, and when everybody knows that the time has arrived when it would be a great blessing if every uneconomic cow went to Deputy Larkin's canning factory at the earliest possible moment and gave employment in the City of Dublin? It is strange that it should be decided at this particular time to reduce that sub-head by a substantial sum.

Again, there are reductions in respect of loans and grants for various purposes. For loans and grants in respect of the erection and repair of corn mills, only nominal provision is made in the Estimate. In my county, unfortunately, there has been a loss of two or three mills and kilns and I suggest that, notwithstanding anything that may be said regarding the Drainage Act, these mills should be restored and kept in full operation during the emergency. The only way that that can be done is by increasing the Vote, and letting people know that such Votes are available, because we have had a sample of what could happen to us if vaporising oil for tractors are cut off and we are thrown back on the latent power inherent in the soil of our country.

With regard to compulsory tillage, I do not wish to speak further on that matter, but Deputy Larkin, on the one hand, and the Federation of Irish Manufacturers on the other hand, consider evidently, that the farming community are making millions of money and that there is no reason in the world why the farmer should not pay his workmen an adequate wage, except the one reason—the farmer's cupidity. That shows how misinformed both sections of these people are. We are told, on the one hand, that the farmers have huge deposits in the bank, and that that is a proof of the prosperity of the farmers, but very few people realise that farmers who have money in the bank are, generally, people with farms under 50 acres, and that the prosperity of such farms is due to the fact that the farmer, his wife, his sons and daughters, are working the farm without wages. They do not realise that these people are not working a nine-hour day, according to Deputy Larkin's statement, but from daylight to dark, and that all that the son or the daughter of such a farmer gets, by way of wages, is a half-a-crown per week to go to a dance or to buy a packet of cigarettes. They do not realise that the farmers' efforts are largely devoted towards getting a dowry for their daughters, to provide for them when they are getting married, or to provide for their families, generally.

Putting it all together, therefore, this means that the sons and daughters of these farmers are working under slave conditions, and not getting even the wages of slaves; and the reason that the agricultural labourer works at the rate of wages he is getting is that he knows that the farmer himself is not able to pay him any more. Mind you, the agricultural labourer enters into the spirit of the task that is before both the farmer and himself, and he does take less than he is entitled to get, because he knows the difficulties with which the farmer is confronted. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the agricultural labourer, or the sons or daughters of farmers, if they can get a job at, say, 30/- a week, will leave the farm there and then? Take, for instance, the case of appointments under a local authority, in which the pay is £70 a year. Will anybody look at the number and the type of applicants who will apply for that particular job? The reason is that, no matter how bad the pay is, the sons and daughters of these farmers feel that they are bound to get better conditions and more pay than they will get by working on the farm. That is all I have to say about that subject.

There is one other matter to which I should like to refer. Deputy Larkin hoped that Mrs. Maxwell would get more compensation for the work that was done on her farm by the officials of the Minister. It may be that nobody in this House has examined that particular subject, but when one comes to consider the exact amount that has been expended on compulsory tillage, by taking over the land of certain people and by paying an inspector who, mind you, can be regarded as the steward of the Minister for Agriculture and who, acting in that capacity, takes over the farm, gets it ploughed, sowed, reaped, and so on, what does one find? One finds that, on that particular Vote, the expense of taking over such land, ploughing it, sowing it, reaping it, and so on, came to £5,500, and you also have to pay the wages of the inspector who, as I have said, acts in the capacity of the steward of the Minister. Then, when you turn to the Appropriations-in-Aid, you see that all that the Department got out of the estimated amount is £3,400. Accordingly, the Minister for Agriculture, in taking over all these farms, is going to be at a net loss of over £1,000 a year, as a result of the activities of his inspectors. What hope has Mrs. Maxwell of getting anything out of that, except by going into the workhouse? The poor, unfortunate creature, with 36 acres of land, whose farm is taken over by the Minister at a loss, has no hope. What hope in the world, therefore, have we of the Minister for Agriculture taking over model or experimental farms? It would seem that if the Department were to take over these model or experimental farms, it would only prove that farms in this country are uneconomic, and that the man who would try to run one of these farms would be bankrupt inside of two years. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture is not going to take over any farm, or to run it or try to show the conditions under which they would run that farm, or to show the money that they would lose on the running of it. To make money on that they would have to become the same as farmers, their wives, sons and daughters. I never knew a civil servant who would work for 2/6 which would only take him to a dance or buy a few cigarettes.

I submit that this Vote should be reconsidered, and that the whole question of agriculture should be reviewed by an expert body. It is our fundamental industry and should be put on a sound basis, as a result of which farmers and their families and also agricultural workers would get a living wage so that their standard of living might be raised by at least 200 per cent. Think of the conditions under which farmers are living. Of course Deputy Larkin and Deputies on other benches talk about farmers who go to races here, there and everywhere. There are a few objectionable persons in every calling. Some of them may call themselves farmers. We have been told about the man on the Agricultural Wages Board who described himself as an agricultural worker but who ran away to England where he got work at £9 a week. When a question was raised about that it was decided that he was not an agriculturist. If the Government was charged, during an election, of having somebody on the Agricultural Wages Board who was not an agriculturist, they would be able to produce particulars to show that he was the best agricultural worker in Ireland. But the very minute he went to England they were able to turn up another set of credentials.

Everybody knows that the average farmer and his family live on the produce of their land. They have good healthy food but very little dressings with it. I never yet knew a farmer or a worker who came to Leinster House to be satisfied with what they got on the farms. Even Deputy Flanagan would add a little dressing. The standard of living on our farms is too low. It must be improved. Having done that, the next thing that should be done is to knock down at least 75 per cent. of farmhouses and byres and to rebuild them, because the agricultural community, through no fault of their own, are working under almost impossible conditions. In appeals that have been made to them farmers are described as the premier body, but for the last three years they have had to carry on their work on an allowance of half a gallon of paraffin oil. It would take that much to give them sufficient light to go to bed. Deputies should remember what the position is when illness occurs in families. I know one house in which there was not a drop of oil at a time when a doctor was in attendance on a maternity case. But for the fact that he had a flash-lamp anything might have happened to the patient. Yet, farmers are expected to join wholeheartedly in saving the nation in the present crisis.

In my opinion they are the best people in the country on account of the work they have done. There has been no appreciation of their efforts, nothing but sneers and jeers by townspeople and even by manufacturers, who say that farmers are always grumbling that they do not get sufficient return for their work. I never knew the same type of townspeople yet to remain long in the country. I appeal to all Parties to regard the farming community as the mainstay of this nation and to give them the chance to which they are entitled. If educational facilities are provided for them no class will make greater use of them. If the provision for agricultural schools is increased, I would agree to reduce every other sub-head in this Vote. By providing increased educational facilities for farmers and giving them decent conditions, including electricity and other amenities, farming could be put on a proper basis, and those engaged in it would be enabled to carry on their work wholeheartedly and well.

The Private Deputies' motion dealing with the price of milk is an important one. I do not go so far as to say that the dairying industry is the mainstay of agriculture, but it is certainly one of the central arches. It is hard to decide what is an economic price for milk, but it is certain that 1/- a gallon is not too much to ask. If present conditions continue that will not preclude us, if circumstances change, from saying that the amount should be increased. At one time when another motion was before the House the price of milk was 5d. per gallon, but by the time it was discussed circumstances had changed so much in the dairying industry that 5d. would be no good. The reason we asked to have the motion taken in conjunction with this Vote is so that the question could be decided at the right time. If conditions changed and there were increased costs in dairying, 1/- would not be sufficient. Is it not very strange that we think it hard to pay 1/- a gallon for milk, with which to produce butter, while Dublin consumers have to pay something like 6d. for a pint? What is the cause of that?

Is it the fault of the farmers or of people in the cities? I assert that farmers and their employees do not get 36/- a week when everything is taken into account. The Minister told us that farmers' incomes had increased by about £1 per head since 1939. I interjected then and said that that did not add much to their incomes. The average increase would be about £1 on 2/6. At present the average income of the farming community is not 36/- weekly; yet those who distribute the milk in Dublin are paid between £3 and £4 a week. I am not arguing that that amount is too much, but it is well to remember that the men who go through the hardship of producing the milk get less than half the profit of the distributors. If there were no producers there would be no distributors. It should be the other way around. Farmers who are responsible for the production of milk should, at least, get as much for their work as those who come in at the eleventh hour. I ask the House to pass the motion that the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration. I hope, too, that what I have said will encourage Deputies to go carefully through the Estimates to see how, in their opinion, the nation's money which we are now being asked to vote can best be reduced.

Mr. Larkin

We had Deputy O'Donnell saying that he would not sell his farm for £1,000,000. I asked him what his sons would think of that.

General MacEoin

That is the one exception that proves the rule.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Hughes, in moving the motion that this Estimate be referred back for reconsideration, seemed to me to throw very heavy emphasis on the necessity for planning. The more I hear of planning the more suspicious I become of it, because 20 years' experience has taught me that everybody is anxious to plan me but that nobody is anxious for me to plan them. Planning is lovely so long as you are doing the planning, but we cannot all do the planning, and planning, in so far as it has been operated in this State to date, has manifested itself on the farms of individual farmers as a horde of inspectors who come in to ask questions—very often foolish ones—to give directions generally, to make life miserable for those who are doing the work, and not infrequently materially hindering the work that has to be done.

Do Deputies ever realise that the pigs and bacon industry of this country was planned? We set up a special board to do the planning. When we did that the number of pigs annually cured in this country ran into seven figures, and by the time we had finished planning there were not any pigs at all. Time and time again the efficiency of that planning body was called in question in this House. The havoc which that board was wreaking on the pigs and bacon industry was explained to this House, and the extraordinary profiteering which the board was permitting the bacon curers to get away with was ventilated here. A commission was set up to inquire into the question as to whether this planning body had allowed the curers to profiteer at the expense of the consumers and producers in the country. The commission reported that the curers had been profiteering and had been allowed to profiteer. It described the sum which the curers had been allowed to rob from the producers and consumers of bacon, but, nevertheless, the planning body which permitted that to take place, the planning body which has virtually wiped out the pig population of this country, is still vigorously planning although there are now practically no pigs on which to plan. Why I am sufficiently conservative to place the onus on the one who calls for a change to demonstrate that that change is going to be an improvement on the existing situation is because we have that one outstanding example of Government planning in the sphere of agriculture in front of us, and it has been an unqualified disaster for everybody concerned in the industry. Deputy Hughes has got to reassure us that some other Government plan will not be as bad or even worse than that. Do Deputies remember when the present Minister for Agriculture first took office? He announced then that he was going to come to the aid of the dairying industry and save it. Well, the dairying industry is producing less now than it produced then.

Donnchadh O Briain

No.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy O Briain, from his coign of vantage, salutes the work that the Minister did, but I doubt if any dairy farmer feels that he is now more prosperous than he was in 1931. We have managed to spend a terrible lot of money in the meantime planning for the dairying industry. I heard the Taoiseach say in this House, after ten years of Fianna Fáil planning, that he had come to the conclusion that the creamery industry had better wind up as an exporting industry. He did not believe that it had any future, and Deputy O Briain says that is true.

Well, there is another planning job. We used to have a very large butter export in this country and we started to plan. The Government, after ten years' planning, have announced, in the immortal words of Deputy O Briain, who is their expert in dairying affairs—he is one of the representatives of a dairying constituency— that as an exporting industry dairying is done for. Well, they finished the pigs and they finished butter. Does Deputy Hughes propose to let them loose on anything else, because, if he does, the only prospect before us is to live by taking in one another's washing. I take an entirely different view. I believe, as I believe most rational economists in this country believe, that unless the agricultural industry in all its branches can export, and export profitably, not only must the agricultural community perish, but every other industry here must come crashing down. It is true, as I heard the Minister for Industry and Commerce say recently, that for a few years after the war we could afford to import raw materials and essential commodities such as oil, coal and some others if we had no exports at all. That is because we have a certain amount of money saved in the form of external assets. But when that money is spent alternative methods of payment will have to be discovered, and I know of no alternative method of payment except agricultural exports. I challenge any Deputy to suggest any alternative form of payment for the things that we must import as the raw materials of industry and as essential requirements not available in this country other than agricultural exports.

If agricultural exports are to be the only form in which we can finance these purchases, how are we to secure agricultural exports? The only way that I know of is to make it profitable for the man who lives upon the land to produce agricultural goods for export. Profit for the farmer is the difference between his costs of production and the price he gets for his goods. If he is exporting his goods the price he gets for them is the price in the foreign market. We cannot control the price in the foreign market and, therefore, we have to take the best price that we can get. The farmer's profit is the difference between that price that we get in the foreign market and his costs of production here at home. Our object is to widen the gap between these two. That will increase the farmer's profit. If we cannot raise the price in the foreign market then that is a method of increasing his profit that is not open to us, but is there not another method open to us of increasing his profit? If we cannot raise his prices, can we not bring down his costs of production, and if we do, do we not widen the gap between his costs of production and the price that he gets for his produce, thereby ensuring to him a higher margin of profit than he has hitherto enjoyed?

If that be the only method of securing the greatest margin of profit to our farmers, how are we going to put it into operation? I know of only one way, and that is to reduce the cost of the farmer's raw materials and implements. If a manufacturer in this country wants to set up an industry in a back room in Dublin he can get from the Department of Supplies and from the Department of Industry and Commerce licences to import duty-free every bit of machinery and almost all the raw materials that he requires for the production of his industrial products.

Remember, the industrialist will sell his product inside the tariff protection which hedges this country round, but the farmer who wants to produce stuff in his factory—and every farm is a factory—in the knowledge that he will not have the opportunity of selling his product inside the tariff restrictions which hedge this country round—that he must go out into the markets of the world and take the best price he can get—if he asks for the raw materials of his industry or the implements or the machinery for his industry free of tax and free of restriction, is told he will not get them; that if he wants to buy a bag of Indian meal, he must pay a levy to the Irish Indian meal millers; that if he wants to buy a bucket, he will have to pay a levy to the Irish manufacturers of buckets; that if he wants to buy an agricultural implement, a spade, or shovel or rake, he must pay a levy to the Irish manufacturer of those implements, and if he wants to buy an article of machinery such as a plough or a mowing machine, he will not be allowed to buy it unless he pays a levy to the Irish manufacturers of those articles.

I say here deliberately that, in respect of every single commodity used by the Irish farmer in the production of the finished produce of the agricultural industry, every commodity on which a tariff is levied, the cost of production has been increased to the farmer by at least 75 per cent. of the total tariff imposed. Bear in mind that in every case it is not always an increase that can be measured in price. Half the increase may be in price and half the increase in reduction of quality, but the nett result is that the farmer who has to buy these things has to pay the levy and that means that his costs of production are that much increased. Conceive a country like this where a farmer is prohibited from purchasing a bag of artificial manure except from the Irish manure ring.

Is it or is it not true that from the date upon which the tariff was put upon superphosphate of lime coming into this country the price of the super went up steadily, that it never looked back? Is it or is it not true that from the day a tariff was put upon spades, shovels, buckets and rakes, the price of all these articles—bearing in mind not only the price marked upon them, but the quality in them—went steadily up? Is it not true, then, that since tariffs and taxes and restrictions were imposed upon the raw materials of the agricultural industry, the costs of that industry have steadily risen, and all during that time the Government have been quite unable to do anything effectively to increase the price of any of the commodities the farmers have had to sell in the export markets of the world?

The planning by the Government of the agricultural industry has wrought nothing but havoc upon it. There is here an opportunity to do our own business on rational lines. All that is necessary to enable the agricultural industry to prosper is (1) to secure free entry into the British market, and (2) to take the taxes off the raw materials of the industry. Given these two things, the agricultural industry can earn a profit and, given a chance to earn a profit, it will provide a fund out of which all the other essentials which this community wishes to buy abroad can be financed. Without that opportunity none of your planning, none of your schemes, none of your subsidies or loans will prevent the farmers from sinking lower and lower into destitution.

I know that at the present moment, as a result of war conditions, farmers here are making more money than before the war. Beet is at 80/- a ton. Do Deputies remember the basis upon which the beet industry was launched by Fianna Fáil? Every one was to sell his beet at 30/- a ton. We have wheat at 50/- a barrel. Do Deputies remember the halcyon days when everyone was expected to produce wheat at a much lower figure than that and when I warned them that once the thing was established the price of wheat would steadily rise? I have no doubt that the wheat vested interests now confidently hope that at the end of the war the people can be held up to ransom. Are people such fools as to imagine that that kind of fraud will secure enduring prosperity for the agricultural industry?

I think it is beginning to dawn on more minds than mine that the growing of wheat in this country in times of peace, when the markets of the world are open to us, is suicidal insanity, and that the folly of having grown it for eight or nine years before the war has created a situation most injurious from the point of view of soil fertility. Just as it is vitally necessary to grow wheat on the land at the present time, it was mad and insane to dissipate the fertility of our soil by growing it for a subsidised price in the years before the war. I hope and pray the people have learned that lesson and have come to realise the madness it was, so that in the post-war period we will not have the same folly re-enacted to the great peril of the industry as a whole.

There is one solution and one solution only for the post-war agricultural problem, and that is to secure for the farmers a profit in the prosecution of their trade. If there is any Deputy who can tell me any other way of getting for this country an agricultural exportable surplus and a profit for the farmer who produces it than the way I have outlined, I shall be glad to hear it.

I am frequently amused in this House to hear the eloquent speeches delivered by Deputies on various sides, crying out for the cultivation of wheat. They make many speeches pointing out the advantages of growing wheat at home, but the following week they are on their feet asking Parliamentary questions of the Minister for Agriculture to know whether he will make a regulation exempting their constituencies from the obligations to grow the wheat. In peace time, when the seven oceans of the world are open to us, to grow wheat on any land in Ireland is extravagant folly. In war time, when alternative sources of supply are not available to us, every farmer with arable land should be constrained to grow wheat as a contribution to the common pool. I advocated that two or three years ago. It was only this year the Minister saw the force of my representations and put my suggestion into operation.

That brings me to the next topic. It is, of course, true that so long as any alternative crop was available to farmers, no sensible farmer would grow wheat. Therefore, I think it necessary to make it compulsory to grow it. It is the farmer's duty to grow it and his duty to the commonwealth places a greater obligation on him than his duty to himself. Mark it well, despite all the ballyhoo we have heard about the desirability of wheat as a crop, the consensus of opinion among the farmers of Ireland was that they would not grow it until they were made to grow it at 50/- a barrel, and we were told it was a gold mine for any prudent farmer at 30/- a barrel three or four years ago. I knew, when that rubbish was being talked from Fianna Fáil Benches, that it was rubbish, and I told them that they would not get the wheat until they made them grow it. They are, very sensibly, making them grow it now.

I told them, at the same time, that they would not get the necessary output of oats and oatmeal which we ought to be getting if they did not take their fantastic restrictions off the price of oats. They have taken the restrictions off the price of oats as from last year, with the result that we have now plenty of oats and a surplus of oatmeal. Is that not true? Is it not true that we have at the moment a surplus of oatmeal, and is it not true that last year, the year before, and the year before that there was no oatmeal? Is it not true that I told you last year and the year before, that if you took the control off the price of oats you would get oats and oatmeal? Is it not true that you took my advice last year and that you have now oats and oatmeal? Is it not true that I warned that you dare not do that if you did not make the growing of wheat compulsory, because, if you did not make wheat growing compulsory, everyone would grow oats and no wheat would be grown? Is it not true that last year, for the first year, you made the growing of wheat compulsory?

I want to remind you of something else I warned you about last year. The Government has refused to take the control off the price of barley. Heretofore, the alibi was that if the control was taken off, no one would grow wheat—they would all grow barley. Now the farmers are compelled to grow wheat and that objection no longer exists. Why are the farmers constrained to make a present of £1,000,000 per annum to the brewers of this country? Why are the brewers permitted to purchase malting barley at 35/- per barrel from the Irish farmer when they are paying twice that amount in Great Britain for the same, or worse, barley? It is not the brewers who are withholding the money; it is not the brewers who are fixing the price; and it is not the brewers who are refusing to pay more. The position is that the brewers are willing and anxious to pay more for the barley, that they can afford to pay more for the barley, and that they have no reluctance to pay more for it; but the Irish Government will not let them pay the extra price for the barley.

We have Clann na Talmhan in Dáil Eireann and did I hear a single word from them about the price of barley? Was there one amongst them to ask why the farmers of this country should subsidise the brewing industry to the tune of £1,000,000 sterling per annum? I have directed your attention to this for three years in succession. Arthur Guinness shares stood at 84/- when the Minister fixed the price of barley. In a month those shares went to 120/-. Why should they not? Any man who could read the Stock Exchange foresaw that if Messrs. Guinness were to get a present of £1,000,000 from the farmers of this country, their shares were worth buying—and they are. Do not interpret my remarks as an attack on Messrs. Guinness. On the contrary, I regard that great industry as one of the most valuable in the country and one which has dealt fairly, so far as I know, with workers and producers alike when permitted to do so.

It is not they who fixed the price of barley. The Government fixed the price, and I want to ask this question again—perhaps Deputy O Briain, the expert on dairying, can answer this question, too—why does the Government require the barley producers of Ireland to subsidise the brewing industry to the tune of £1,000,000 per annum? I have never yet succeeded in getting a satisfactory answer to that query. I want to warn the House that so long as that scandal continues, I shall raise it in Dáil Éireann on every available occasion, but I have yet to hear from any part of the House an adequate explanation of it. I demand for the farmers who are producing barley the fair market price which that barley is worth.

There is one detail in regard to the compulsory growing of wheat which I think ought to be examined. I think the Minister might have been better advised, when making the Order requiring everybody to put a certain percentage of his arable land under wheat, to have exempted from the compulsory Order farms of less than 15 acres. If a farmer of so small a holding as that wishes to grow wheat, a small patch of wheat, for consumption in his own home, well and good—there is nothing to prevent him doing so; he is quite free—but is it wise to impose on him an obligation to grow a rood or half a rood of wheat? If he is not the kind of person to use that wheat in his own home, if he has not near his home a mill where it can be readily converted into good wholemeal flour, my belief is that the wheat grown on his holding will be lost, and, what is even more important, the seed used on the holding will be lost.

I myself have seen a great deal of wheat seed sown in this year of exceptional scarcity which I am quite satisfied will make no satisfactory contribution to the total pool. In many places, I think it will fail, and, in those places in which it does not fail, I do not believe the wheat will be used for human food at all, but will be fed to animals in one form or another, not through any ill will on the part of those who grow it, but because they have no facilities for getting it turned into edible wholemeal for consumption by themselves. I suggest to the Minister that next year the Order should be qualified to exclude from its compulsory clauses very small holdings, leaving to each smallholder, of course, perfect freedom to grow some wheat for his own consumption, or for sale, if that course commends itself to him.

I notice recently that reference has been made in the advertisements calling for more wheat to the necessity for dressing wheat with suitable organo-mercurial dressing. I think it was a pity that the advertisements for the "Grow more wheat" campaign did not incorporate that at an earlier stage, but I am bound to say that the moment I directed the attention of the Department to that deficiency, it was promptly put to rights, and an adequate reference to the necessity for such dressing now appears in all its advertisements. Might I now make a further suggestion to the Department? In areas where wheat and corn crops of the kind have been grown for a protracted time, organo-mercurial dressings clearly connote to any farmer who reads of them what they mean, but in areas where that practice has not been long lived, many people do not really understand what an organo-mercurial dressing is.

Most of these dressings are now sold under proprietary names. Would it not be worth while requiring the manufacturers of these organo-mercurial dressings to submit them to the Department for test? If approved, they could be named, such as Ceresan, Abavit and Golden Grain and other respectable products of that character, in the wheat advertisements as suitable dressings for seed wheat. I do not think there will be any difference amongst us as to the urgent necessity for this precaution, because many of us have seen the disaster that has supervened on certain men who have tilled their soil, raised their crop, saved it and then, at threshing time, discovered they had lost the whole thing as a result of an attack of smut, which has reduced the contents of the ears to an evil-smelling brown powder instead of healthy grain.

I hear a lot of talk about the dairying industry. There were few men in the public life of this country for whose opinion I had a profounder respect than the late Mr. Patrick Hogan, our first Minister for Agriculture. I confess that I am beginning to wonder whether the dairying industry as an industry can ever be successfully established on the basis of the dual-purpose cow. I think that in the areas of this country where mixed farming is the rule the Shorthorn cow is the ideal cow. But there is no use pretending that we can hope to compete in the markets of the world with butter in the future on the basis of mixed farming. If we are to compete in the markets of the world with butter in the future, we will have to go in for dairy farming in the areas suitable for that business, and to go in for it with all that we have got, using the most efficient methods and the most efficient stock for the production of butter. My experience all over the world is that what we call the Friesian cow appears to be the best type of beast for an exclusively dairy district. It is true that in the early stages of the evolution of that breed you did get a tendency to a very low butter fat content in its milk. But I am informed now by those who know that that difficulty has been largely overcome, that you now get on an average from any well-bred beast something between 3 and 4 per cent. butter fat content.

I suggest that, if we are to maintain the dairying industry in this country, we have got deliberately to review the convictions on which we have been operating during the last 20 years, and the review I suggest to this House that ought at least to be considered—because I do not want to profess myself as yet convinced—is that the country should be zoned—I am not advocating compulsion—and that in the dairy zone the Department of Agriculture's assistance and propaganda and development schemes should be founded on the Friesian cow. Let another area of the country be zoned for beef production and in that area let the white-faced Hereford beast be the foundation of our planning. Then in another very large area of the country—the congested areas—let us realise that the mixed farming of our fathers is probably the most efficient method of farming small holdings. In those areas let us concentrate upon raising the Shorthorn breed to the highest possible standard that skill, research and breeding can achieve.

I am slowly being driven to that conclusion by discussions of this topic with many men who have been struggling valiantly against adversity in the dairying industry and by the repeated applications made to this House for the subsidisation of the price of milk. If the dairying industry is to reach any reasonable size, it is not within the reach of our Exchequer effectively to subsidise it. I believe that the reason the dairying industry stands so often in need of assistance is because we have got on our farms far too high a percentage of cattle which are not economic—the 300 and the 350-gallon cow. A lot of people fall into the error of imagining that, if you have a 1,000-gallon cow, 6d. per gallon for milk will mean the same to you as 1/- per gallon for the 500-gallon cow. That is a very serious illusion. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say, however, that 9d. per gallon is as good a price for a man whose cows are yielding 600 gallons as a 1/- would be to a man whose cows are only yielding 300 gallons; 9d. would be a better price. We have to remember that, if you have a deep-milking cow, she requires more feeding than the cow which is giving 300 or 350 gallons. But milk is more valuable than the fodder we feed to cows. If we could get and maintain a 600- to 800-gallon cow out of the Shorthorn breed, all my natural inclination is towards that breed. It is the breed that I have always bred myself. But, talking the thing over with men who I believe have made the best possible effort, through the medium of milk testing and careful selection, to eliminate from their herds low milk-yielding cows and bring into their herds cows with a reasonable milk output, I am beginning to think that we cannot overcome the recidivist tendency of the Shorthorn breed to beef.

I remember an old friend of mine who was a Deputy here, when I rebuked him for so eagerly championing the interests of the dairy farmer without placing on the dairy farmer the obligation of increasing the milk output of their average cow, saying to me: "What are you talking about? I have been trying for 30 years to have on my farm nothing but cows that will give over 500 gallons and I cannot do it. I rear the heifers and, if they do not come up to my expectations as milk yielders, I get rid of them and I try to buy heifers from herds where I am assured the average is over 600 gallons and, when they come to my farm, half of them turn out to be 200- or 300-gallon cows. I have lost money trying to get that high average which I know I ought to have before I can claim any consideration from the State. It is not for want of trying. But I have never succeeded in achieving the average standard of milk output per cow that I know I ought to have with the Shorthorn breed." Therefore I make a new suggestion which I think ought to be considered: the Fresian for the dairy area; the Hereford white-face for the beef area; and the Shorthorn for the mixed farming area of small holdings. If the Department, after due reflection—and it would require protracted reflection to change our whole policy in regard to that matter—put their shoulders into a scheme along the lines I outline, then we might have reasonable hope—pace Deputy O'Brien and the Taoiseach— that the dairying industry was not going to perish after 12 years of Fianna Fáil planning and might yet become a valuable branch of our exporting agricultural industry.

Donnchad O Briain

Does the Deputy think that the export of butter could continue at the price that is available in the export market now—if you had butter to export?

Mr. Dillon

I believe that if we had an efficient dairying industry we could turn out butter every bit as well as New Zealand or any other country that turns out butter. I was not born with the inferiority complex which penetrates the hearts of the Fianna Fáil Party, who believe that any country in the world could sell cheaper and better anything produced on the land than the Irish farmers. I was brought up to believe that the Irish farmers, given the opportunity, can produce as well as, or better than, any other farmers in the world. That is a new philosophy—that they are all ignorant clodhoppers on the land of this country and could not survive an hour in competition with Denmark, New Zealand, Holland, or any other country in the world. I believe, and I have always believed, that we can compete with and beat them, given the opportunity. The Deputy will admit that these countries have not had to carry de Valera on their backs for 12 years, and the fact that we survived that ordeal for 12 years is no small tribute to our farmers, and it fills me with hope for the future. If we could carry that, we can carry anything.

I want to pass to certain matters of detail in regard to the live-stock industry. I have always strongly advocated, and do now strongly advocate, the substitution of the pedigree wellbred bull for the scrub bull, but I think we ought to consider this plain fact. There is no use in closing our eyes to it. In certain parts of the country, you can send your cow ten times to the pedigree bull and she comes back unmoved. Send her once to the scrub bull and she has a calf nine months hence. I want to make open confession. I stood out against that heresy on my own farm until last year. I absolutely refused to allow any of my cattle to go to the scrub bull. I insisted on their going to the pedigree bull. They went to the pedigree bull until their hooves were worn. In that situation I had either to sell them and get new stock or give way to the view of the countryman who works on my land. He said: "Before we sell them, let us bring them once to the scrub bull." They went to the scrub bull and every one of them is a comfortable matron to-day.

I do not know what the explanation of that is; I can only suggest an explanation. I think it is largely due to the stipulation in connection with the Royal Dublin Society, Perthshire, and all the bull shows, that you must show a pedigree bull as fat as marrow in the show ring or you have no chance of getting a prize. If you bring a bull to Ballsbridge in an ordinary healthy condition, he will not be looked at twice by any judge in the ring. He must be brought out marrow fat. He must be groomed as if he were a race horse. His hooves must be cleaned and polished and his horns oiled—no one of which amenities is going to produce a calf for me when I bring a cow to him. On the contrary, I am going to suggest that the excessive "doing" of cattle preparatory to showing them in the show ring produces, not a state of infertility, but a state of lower fertility as compared with the beast which has been reared healthy but not overdone. I do not know whether that is right or wrong. Certain it is that there does appear to be some variant between the average fertility of the bull which was never designed for the show ring and the bull which found its way into the farmer's hand through the show ring and the Department's premium.

I should like to see every bull in this country a bull which would be entitled on its merits to the premium of the Department of Agriculture, but there is unquestionably a strong prejudice being created in the minds of the people against these bulls by the frequency with which cattle have to go to them before they can be got in calf. I have no doubt that that failure to get cattle in calf may be partially due to some condition in the cows. We are familiar with contagious abortion, with catarrhal vaginitis, which I believe is a very much commoner complaint than contagious abortion, and with other defects in cows, but there is no doubt that there is a differential between the average fertility of the highly bred, highly fed, pedigree bull and the scrub bull. When I speak of the scrub bull, I mean the non-pedigree bull. That is something which I think ought to be examined and, if it is true that this excess feeding and undue attention to external appearance is militating against the success of these bulls in the country, then I think representation should be made to the proper authorities that it would be in the best interests of all if judges at the principal shows in the country were required in future not to give as high a marking for the appearance and turnout of the cattle as they do to quality, breeding and milk or beef records.

Here is a matter which I think the Minister should examine and, if it is of substance, take measure to publicise it. One of the great difficulties in growing wheat or indeed any crop at the present time, particularly wheat, is the lack of nitrogen. That lack is going to become more intense the longer the crisis lasts. Is anything to be gained by a plan deliberately to nitrogenise intended wheat land by the growing of clover on it, or does it take too long to get a sufficient quantity of nitrogen fixed in the land through clover to make it a practical proposition? If it could be done from season to season then I think we ought, where practicable, if necessary, to grow crops of clover on land intended for wheat in the ensuing season and avail of the stores of nitrogen to get a larger yield of grain.

I see a good deal of Department publicity, much of which is very useful, but here again it seems to me the Department does not direct sufficient attention to making propaganda to fill up the shortage of artificial manures. There is with this increased output of wheat an immense quantity of indigestible straw available all over the country. I can see a great deal of this straw rotting away or being fed. I believe that wheaten straw would be better employed if it were converted into manure than given to live stock as food because it is not very nutritious; it does not make good food, unlike oaten straw, unlike even barley straw; but it can be used to make very useful manure. You have to approach it from the right point of view and treat it as a valuable raw material. Use it for bedding and, what is more important and more feasible, in many cases, where you are not running a very heavy herd of cattle, lay it deliberately in the tracks where cattle walk making their way into cow-houses and byres, and suffer it to be trodden down by cattle and very shortly you will find cattle habitually come and stand on it for a considerable part of the day, making their manure there and generally contributing towards the raw materials of a very valuable fertiliser for the coming season. I think a great deal of possible manure is not availed of simply because people do not think of the desirability of taking the stuff out of the stack and simply littering it on the ground and allowing cattle to walk on it in a restricted area whence it can be subsequently recovered when it is converted into suitable fertiliser.

I heard Deputy O'Donnell to-day, I think, put a question about veterinary research. I entirely agree with him as to the very great hardship it is on the small farmer of this country to bring a vet from a long distance and how frequently, before the vet can be got his beast is beyond remedy or cure. I think it is only fair to say that that problem has been rendered a good deal more acute by the difficulties of transport for which neither the Government nor anybody else in this country is responsible. But there is another aspect of that question to which I shall direct the Minister's attention and the attention of the House. Veterinary surgeons of this country leave the college and they go out to work. What opportunities are afforded them of doing post-graduate work to bring them up to the most modern discoveries of therapeutic science? I think very few. Over and above that, most of us know that physicians and surgeons have at their disposal a continuous stream of modern technical literature pouring in on them, not from colleges and universities, but from the manufacture of proprietary remedies, such as M. & B., 693, Penicillin, and these things which are being manufactured by firms like Burroughs and Wellcome, Bayers or Parke Davis. These firms send the literature to the physicians, directing their attention to the value of these new drugs in modern therapeutics. Would it not be possible to establish a system whereunder vets working throughout rural Ireland would be able to get from the Veterinary College or the Veterinary Research Institute in Dublin a reasonably regular bulletin directing their attention to new methods of treatment and their application in everyday practice? I instance two remedies to which the attention of many veterinary surgeons in this country may not yet have been directed. One is acaprin, for red water in cattle, and the other is sulphonamide for strangles in horses.

Mr. O'Donnell

You want the vet, to make the diagnosis.

Mr. Dillon

I want to have sent to him regularly, say every quarter, a bulletin from the Department or Veterinary College saying: "Many new drugs have come into use since our last bulletin was published. One is acaprin as a specific for red water in cattle, and, in the case of strangles in horses that do not tend to clear up, it is now discovered that they can be greatly helped by the use of sulphonamide drugs, and, where the beast is sufficiently valuable to justify that expense, recourse should be had to those drugs before shooting the animal."

Mr. O'Donnell

What about the diagnosis?

Mr. Dillon

I find it hard to get Deputy O'Donnell to understand, but, when he reads what I have said, he probably will. All I want is that our veterinary surgeons should have the most modern information provided for them at regular intervals. They are busy men, who are going around on their duties night and day, and have no time to sit down and read long periodicals. They might have to read a dozen journals every week. I want to have those scientific journals digested for them in the Veterinary College, and a bulletin sent out at regular intervals giving a synopsis of the most modern work, and the reference showing where they can look for a more exhaustive description of it if they are interested. For instance, take a drug like penicillin. I think that might be used in the treatment of one of the most horrible diseases in the dairying industry, streptococcal mastitis, but at the present stage the medicine is so dear and rare that it would not be practicable to pursue that line of inquiry on a large scale, but when penicillin does become a cheap drug I should like every veterinary surgeon in Ireland to be informed the following morning: "If you have a case of mastitis in a valuable cow, resort to penicillin treatment at once because that is the specific for the complaint."

I am glad that the Minister said in his opening remarks that he recognised the necessity for increased veterinary research and education in this country. Might I suggest to him that he should not approach that matter in a niggardly spirit. If we thought it worth our while in this country to set up an institute of higher studies in this country, liberally to endow it, and to search the world for the best brains wherewith to staff it—we brought men from abroad because they were believed to be outstanding men in their particular line of science—we should approach the question of staffing our new veterinary college along the same lines. I do not say that we will not find in this country veterinary men of the highest ability. Most Deputies know that we have here in this country one distinguished veterinary surgeon who is habitually sent for from all parts of England when really valuable live stock is in danger. Doubtless, there are others, but I should like to see the most distinguished men in each branch of veterinary science brought to our institute here, no matter whence they have to come, and I trust that the Minister will approach this scheme from the point of view of securing the best staff that money can secure, and the best premises that architectural genius and our resources will permit. I beg of him not to approach the matter in any niggardly spirit, or with the inclination to patch the existing structure. We ought to start de novo in the sphere of veterinary research and higher education; our veterinary college ought to be the best in the world, and at the present moment I am afraid it can make no such claim.

Is it not an astonishing thing that, in this country, hundreds and hundreds of boys want to go to agricultural colleges, and there are no colleges to which they can go? Is it not an amazing thing that, every year, dozens of boys come to me asking to get into Ballyhaise or Athenry, but there are no vacancies for them? Surely this is something which could be remedied with no great delay? In the diocese of Clogher, County Monaghan, which I have the honour to represent, the diocesan authorities have, with courage, themselves taken steps to remedy the situation. They have established, in conjunction with the diocesan college, an agricultural college for the boys of the diocese. Surely what the diocese of Clogher is able to do for the boys of that diocese the rest of the country should be able to do as well.

I would urge the Minister most strongly to consider whether it would not be possible to establish, at least for each diocesan area—albeit we might begin on a small scale—a college where boys of enterprising parents would be given an opportunity of learning modern methods of agriculture which they could come home and use on their fathers' holdings. As a rule, when anyone makes that suggestion, the Minister says his experience is that most of the boys who go to those colleges want jobs out of them. Of course, if you have room for only a limited number, it is the fellow who wants to thrust ahead and go out in the world who will push his way into those institutions, while the fellow who wants no more than to go home to his own holding and work it to the best advantage—he may be a much more valuable citizen—gets left in the race. He is denied the opportunity of higher education, which goes to the fellow who in fact subsequently turns out to be no better than a "job-hunter." I, therefore, suggest that the Government should set as their ideal the establishment of some form of agricultural college for boys in this country, so that a boy who has finished his education or reached a certain stage of his education in the diocesan college will be free—if he does not feel that a profession is his calling—to transfer himself to agricultural studies, so that when he comes out at 18 or 19 years of age he will be a confident and efficient farmer, able to do what Deputy O Briain thinks impossible—effectively compete with any farmer in the world.

Donnchadh O Briain

I did not say that at all.

Mr. Dillon

Effective competition with the farmers of the world requires more than brains, education and brawn. It requires equipment. I find that my own personal experience is often a very good guide. Living in Mayo, I have seen the soil turned with the loy. I have seen the people graduate to the common user of a plough drawn by a mule or a jennet and two donkeys; then to a plough drawn by one horse, and subsequently, to a plough drawn by two horses, but frankly this year is the first year that I had a personal opportunity of experiencing extensive tillage —what is for us extensive tillage; to the large farmer it might be microscopic—carried out with the assistance of tractors.

It was only then that it fully dawned on me what a hopeless handicap it is for the farmers of this country to be struggling to bring forth agricultural products, with the antediluvian equipment we have, in competition with the farmers of the rest of the world who have been using tractors for the last 25 or 30 years. It is quite beyond the capacity of the average small farmer west of the Shannon to own and operate a tractor on his own holding. I think the same is true of large areas in Cork, where the holdings are small. It is simple to surmount that difficulty. I want to suggest to the House that a very early priority in our post-war planning should be given to the provision of tractors, ploughs and harrows for every parish in this country where tillage plays any considerable part. I do not think we can expect, in the initial stages, to operate them on a profit basis. I would not be worried if they never operated on a profit basis; I should like to see them pay their way, and I believe they can be made to pay their way, but I should not be dismayed if in the early years there were some slight loss. I think it would be a mistake to object on the assumption that we would have to subsidise machinery for all time to the agricultural industry in this country. I do not think that is necessary. I should like to see established in every parish a farm machinery unit, or more than one, which would undertake the tillage of any farmer in that parish who chooses to avail of it. I am perfectly convinced that, unless that is done, agriculture designed to produce an exportable surplus will be out of the question post-war. Convinced as I am that we shall get an agricultural exportable surplus sooner or later, I believe that machinery units, parochial units, will be established sooner or later. I implore the House to establish them sooner rather than later.

Donnchadh O Briain

They are in operation already in connection with the creameries.

Mr. Dillon

That may be but there are a great many people outside these areas who will need machinery.

Donnchadh O Briain

These units are being worked by the co-operative creameries.

Mr. Dillon

Where you have co-operative creameries, I quite agree that the co-operative creameries operate them. That only goes to prove my point. Wherever there is a co-operative society, they have put my plan into operation, and what I am trying to persuade the Minister to do is to be as wise as the co-operative creameries and to adopt my plan.

Mr. O'Donnell

They have been working for the last three years.

Mr. Dillon

I am glad to observe that they took my advice. Most of the creameries in the areas represented by the two Deputies who have spoken are run by highly intelligent men, and most of them appreciate the wisdom of the words I addressed to the Government on this matter. I do not think the Minister, however, has been so receptive, and I must, therefore, be more explicit in addressing the Minister than I would be if I were addressing these co-operative creameries. The Minister is not so quick on the uptake.

Dr. Ryan

Except that I got the tractors for them.

Mr. Dillon

If the Minister has adopted my suggestion I congratulate him. Now that he has seen the light in a small measure, I shall go further and suggest that he will extend his activities to districts where he has not got creameries to hold up his hand, so as to cover every part of the country. In doing so he will receive the warm congratulation of every Deputy in this House.

Now, there is no use in asking the Minister to do what he cannot do. He cannot get all the machinery he would wish to get at present but I do hope that the scheme which I have adumbrated can be substantially put into operation in the post-war period and if we are going to put it into operation in the post-war period we have got to make up our minds to put it into operation now. We can lay the foundations now and determine whether we will do it on a parish basis, a barony basis or divide the county into other divisions. I should like to see it operated on a parish basis. To return for a moment to the point made by Deputy O Briain, I quite agree that where the co-operative societies are in existence, we may reasonably expect them to operate these schemes in the interests of the farmers of the district who are members of the society but a great deal of the machinery allocated at present must of necessity be allocated to tillage contractors. I am not blaming the Minister for that. I know that that is perfectly right; the important thing is to put machinery into the hands of men who know how to operate it but they are not always the most amenable men and, if you happen to have a quarrel with one of them, you may find it extremely difficult to get your land cultivated. I should like to see a system established whereby every farmer would be allowed to call on the parochial tillage unit and get his land attended to in turn. It may happen that in one particular area there would be more work than the parish unit could conveniently undertake whereas in an adjoining area there would not be enough work for the unit during the whole season. I think, therefore, that there should be some co-ordinating authority to enable a unit for which there was not sufficient work in the parish in which it was located to be brought into a neighbouring district.

I heard Deputy MacEoin laugh at the idea of demonstration farms. The acid test of whether modern methods of agriculture advocated by the Department are sound or not is whether they are prepared to put these methods into operation on a demonstration farm. I am not now talking of an experimental farm. An experimental farm is meant to lose money because there you try out everything. There you sift the grain from the chaff but, when you have sifted the grain from the chaff, you should bring it down from Glasnevin to Mayo, Cork or Louth and demonstrate to the farmers living in these counties that what works in Glasnevin will also work in the special conditions obtaining in the counties where the farmers are living whom you ask to put these methods into operation on their holdings. If they are good for the farmers of the district, surely they must be good on the farm operated by the technician sent down by the Department. I believe it is perfectly practicable to do that.

There are scattered all over the country derelict farms. I should like to see one of these derelict farms, on being handed over to the Land Commission, operated by the Department's instructor so as to demonstrate the best method of land reclamation. There is no use in putting into operation on a derelict farm methods of cultivation designed for a farm in good heart. It is very necessary to demonstrate in this country methods of reclamation. Secondly, after the farm has been reclaimed, the instructor could demonstrate the modern methods advocated by the Department for the usual branches of agriculture normally practised in that portion of the country. I am quite convinced that that would do more good than all the leaflets ever published or all the broadcasts ever made. I am quite convinced that it would secure a closer and better co-operation between the farmers and the Department than has ever existed before.

I want to refer to two or three minor matters affecting my own constituency. I feel a certain delicacy in dealing with one item in public, but it has nevertheless to be mentioned. In the early days of the emergency when there was a big demand for artificial manures, a very large part of the artificial manures needed for County Monaghan was smuggled across the Border, with the result that the farmers who smuggled these manures have now no quota with the retailer. I suggest to the Minister that, if at all possible, some supplementary quota of manure should be sent to Monaghan in order to enable the retailers in that district to give some quantity to those farmers who have no quota.

Mr. O'Donnell

We will all claim to be smugglers.

Mr. Dillon

I make that representation. I know it is very important——

Mr. Allen

From whom will you take it?

Mr. Dillon

I suggest that if there is a surplus of superphosphate over and above the percentage that is being given to farmers, some of that should be made available for persons who have none at all.

Mr. Allen

For smugglers.

Mr. Dillon

Yes, for smugglers. Smugglers discharged a very useful function during the lean years when no manure could be brought in from anywhere else. I know every Deputy is bound to speak for his own constituency, but Deputies who react so violently to my suggestion will at least give me the credit of believing me when I say that I do nothing more than they do, and that is to speak for my own. I heard a voice observe that I sometimes do something for others and that they never do anything, and I agree.

The other matter is a detail, but a detail which amounts to a great deal for a very respectable body of men. I refer to the pig jobbers of this country. The farmers of this country never knew what they owed to the pig jobbers until they allowed the Government to drive these men out of business. It used to be fashionable to attribute all the handicaps which the pig-rearing industry suffered to pig jobbers. I have been for 20 years meeting pig jobbers at fairs and I never met a dishonest pig jobber yet.

That is a strong thing to say. I never knew a dishonest pig jobber yet. I never met a pig jobber whose cheque I would not take or whose word I would not accept. But we have allowed the Government to drive them out of business and to destroy the pig fairs, and pig production and pig producers have suffered as a result. I am not representing the pig jobbers. They have nothing to give me, because the poor devils have nothing to give. They are out of business, and down and out, and they have nothing that I could possibly require from them. I speak as I know them. There are a few of them——

A Deputy

From Crossmaglen, the travelling men.

Mr. Dillon

—who buy pigs and sell them to the bacon factories. If the factory buys the pigs, the general insurance scheme operated by the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Commission covers any pig that dies in the wagon on the way to the factory. The factory is entitled to be recouped for any pig that dies in the wagon, but if the poor jobber sends in a wagon and there is a "dier" in it, the jobber has to stand the loss. I submit to the House that that is not just. I submit that there is a substantial profit made out of that fund, and the jobber's pig has to pay the levy to the fund as well as the factory pig. For that reason, all pigs ought to be insured against the contingency of "diers" in the wagon. I ask the Minister here and now to give special consideration to the matter and to right the wrong that is being done to the jobbers.

In Monaghan—unlike Cork—where they grow flax, they have always operated a scheme where under the flax grower gets the flax but the miller keeps the tow. That reacts most unfavourably on the flax producers of County Monaghan, because at the present time, tow is very nearly worth as much as flax itself. The Minister, I know, has made an arrangement whereby the flax grower may recover from the miller, if he wishes, the tow of his flax, but, of course, that permissive arrangement means in practice that if any farmer goes to a scutch mill and asks to get the tow back, the scutch miller says: "Certainly, we will scutch your flax— when we get time; but that may be 18 months or so ahead." So that if a man asks for his tow back, he never gets his flax scutched in time.

In Cork, I understand, everyone gets his tow back, and if he wishes he can leave it with the miller and get full value for it. In Monaghan, the miller gets the advantage of the increased price by holding on to the tow after scutching the flax. I want to suggest to the Minister that he ought to make mandatory the obligation on the miller to return the grower his tow and, if the grower wants to sell it back to the miller, let him sell it back. I suggest that the miller should not be allowed to retain the tow as part of the charge for scutching the flax; let the flax grower pay fully for the scutching and targing and let the miller buy the tow from him if he wants to.

The last thing I have got to say is this: everybody is busy planning his neighbours. I do not want to plan anybody. All I want to get for the farmers of this country is a free field. All I want for them is security against taxation for the benefit of the tariff racketeers who have sucked their blood over the last 12 years. Take the tariff leeches off the backs of the farmers of this country and the farmers will make the industry pay. To the farmers of this country I would say that the watchword of the agricultural industry should be: "Do not sell primary products. Do not produce primary products for sale off your land. Any primary products you produce on your land, retain them and convert them into finished products—live stock, pigs, sheep, poultry and eggs, barley for brewing certainly; oats, potatoes and grass for conversion into live stock and products for sale abroad. Import plenty of good Indian meal as cheap as you can get it."

I will not sit down before I recall to this House the history of Indian meal. Fianna Fáil likes to represent to the country that a tariff was put on Indian meal in this country in order to promote the growing of oats and barley. That representation is a lie. The tariff was put on Indian meal in order to put more profits into the pockets of the robber millers of this country at the expense of the farmers of this country, and it did. Five to ten shillings a ton was put on the price of Indian meal which the farmers, exporting to foreign markets, had to pay in order to provide excess profits for the robber millers of Ireland, and they have enjoyed that tribute from the agricultural community for the past 12 years. Are you going to allow them to enjoy it when the war is over? If you are, there is no hope for agriculture. That is the history of it and I ask that the system should be ended and that the farmers of this country should be free to buy Indian meal in the cheapest market, wherever it is, just as the industrialists buy their raw materials.

I do not need to tell you that a manufacturer of cotton here is not required to grow cotton in the County Meath; he is allowed to buy it as cheaply as he can in Carolina, Egypt, or the Sudan, and to bring it here by the cheapest route. Now, if a man can buy cotton in the Southern American States, why cannot a farmer buy Indian corn in the Argentine or Egypt and bring it here and convert it into pigs? I want for the farmers of this country no more than the industrialists of this country can get free. All I want for the farmers is access to the cheapest market for their raw materials, and I know they will sell at a profit to themselves without any tariff at all.

Our farmers were never afraid to compete with Chinese bacon or Greek bacon, or any other bacon, because they knew they could beat it. The farmers of this country can compete with and beat Polish, Dutch, or Danish or any other sort of eggs. Farmers can compete with and beat Danish bacon, or any other bacon, provided the farmers of this country are not required to enter into a competition bowed down by the burden of Fianna Fáil tariffs on their raw material. Take off that burden. Allow the farmers of this country access to the same raw materials as other farmers in the world and they will meet competition in any market where they have access. Do not plan them. Let the Government plan itself. All the agricultural community wants is a free field. Given that, we will get for our people on the land a decent living, and we will do more: we will carry the rest of this community on our backs.

Mr. Corry

Deputy Dillon told us about all the good advice he had given us——

Mr. Dillon

I am not going to hear you, Deputy.

Mr. Corry

You are leaving. But Deputy Dillon forgot some of his advice. He did not tell us that, nine months after the war started, on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, he offered help and co-operation on the condition that the Government blew up the sugar factories and gave up the codology of growing wheat. That was one of the advices that Deputy Dillon gave us. Look at the happy position we would be in to-day if we took his advice. But it did not work either with the Irish farmer or with his Government. Deputy Dillon spoke about free entry to the British market for our exports, and I think that Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney went on the same lines the other night. I do not know which of the two voices reflected the views of Fine Gael, or on which we were to place reliance. Deputy McGilligan complained of sending things abroad and piling up credits, and Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney wanted to have us ready to shove stuff into that market.

What are we able to export to-day after feeding our own people? Let us ask ourselves that question, in the first instance. I claim that this market of ours should be kept for the Irish farmer and the Irish people. There is no fear regarding the prosperity of the Irish farmer so long as that market is held for him. There is no fear of our people being in want of food while the Irish farmer is left in control of that market. Deputy Dillon spoke of the tariffs which we put on so that Irish industries might live and grow, so that we could find employment for our own people and so create at home a market for the produce of our farms. Deputy Dillon had a very definite objection to that. All he wants is free entry to the British market. I wonder how far we would be from Deputy Hallidon's 1/- a gallon for milk if we were selling our butter at the British-controlled price at present or at any period since 1928 or 1929. The price of butter on the English market during that period would allow the Irish farmer about 3d. or 3¼d for his milk. Of course, we would be quite happy if we had that market; the Irish farmer could live in poverty and the Irish labourer could work for 1/- a day, so that our neighbour across the water would be well fed with cheap food from Ireland.

To come down to present-day matters, what we must have regard to are the ways and means of securing that sufficient food is produced for our people. Thank God, we have come to the stage when that is being done. I, for one, congratulate the Minister on the manner in which he has done it and I think that he is entitled to congratulation. Let us wrangle as much as we like about prices, let us complain that we are getting enough or that we are getting too much or that we are not getting half enough, let townsman and countryman dispute— that is all right in its own way. But let us realise that we must face up to one obligation—that is, the provision of food for our people, to secure that our people will not go hungry.

I should be as anxious as anybody else to see the price of everything the farmer produces go up. The higher it went, the richer I would be. But there is very little use in our looking for 1/- or 1/6 or 3/- a gallon for milk; if it was economic in 1924 to produce milk at 3d. our policy in regard to Irish dairy cattle ever since has put us in such a position that 2/- would not be a good price to-day. Millions of pounds have been spent in deteriorating Irish dairy cattle under a very definite, fixed policy, so as to provide beef for the people across the water. You cannot have a dual-purpose animal. Whatever idiot thought of that idea first was mad and those in the Department who are spending money on that policy are worse still. I intend to produce as evidence here a statement which I read here on previous occasions. This statement was made by the late Deputy Hogan on the 3rd November, 1932, after he had ceased to be Minister for Agriculture. The statement is as follows:—

"If I might mention one detail in connection with their administration, it is this: I believe that the Live Stock Breeding Act improved the quality of the cattle in this country, generally, very much indeed, and by live stock I mean not only cattle, but pigs. I believe that our cattle were approaching something like perfection and our pigs very near it. The pigs are very good indeed. Just before I left office, however, I was coming to the conclusion, and my experience since then has strengthened that conclusion, that the Live Stock Breeding Act, as it is operating, is operating against the dairy cow and in favour of the beef animal. I think, if it is operated as it is being operated at present, without making some attempt to encourage milk as against beef, that in a comparatively short time you may find yourself with magnificent-looking cows, very fine cattle and pigs, but that it will be extremely hard to get a good milking dairy cow in this country. The Act is operated in this way: There are licensing shows in practically every parish twice a year—in spring and in autumn. The animals are inspected there entirely on view. That is to say, pedigree or other qualities are not taken into account and they are inspected as they would be on their appearance or, in other words, on beef. That is bound to give an advantage to the animal that is bred from beef animals, and it is undoubtedly working out in that way. While the quality of our cattle and live stock, generally, is being improved from the point of view of beef and bacon, there is no doubt that we are gradually breeding our milk. That is a very serious problem for the Department of Agriculture."

That statement was made about 14 years ago.

The policy that the late Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Hogan, pursued for seven years, has been continued; and then we wonder. We have an amount in this Estimate devoted to the improvement of dairy herds, and we also have the Live Stock Breeding Act here, contained in this Estimate to-night, in all its moods and tenses. What, in the name of Heaven, is the use of passing Bills for the improve- ment of milk production, on the one hand, and for the improvement of beef production, on the other hand? It is definite policy that any breed of animal is entitled to a Government premium in this country except the dairy animal. It would appear that the only bar that is made against the committees of agriculture in giving premiums in this country to animals is that they must not give a premium to a dairy or Friesian bull.

Deputy Hughes asked a question last week, and the result of his question was very enlightening. His question dealt with the number of animals that were approved for premiums at the Royal Dublin Society Show. Here is what we get, as a result of his question. We get a number of beef animals —non-pedigree bulls, of a mongrel type: a monstrosity bred out of a purely beef bull, brought down, registered and mated with a purely dairy cow—and the result is that the number of premiums awarded was 424 for beef bulls as against 102 for milk-producing animals. The figures are: for the beef shorthorn, 134; for the non-pedigree dairy shorthorn, 49; for the single dairy bull, 36; for the Aberdeen Angus, 92; and for the Hereford, 113: making, in all, 424 beef bulls as against 102 premiums for the double dairy shorthorn, or milk-producing animal. In other words, that is in the proportion of four for beef to one for milk, and that would appear to be the settled policy of the Department.

Yet, we wonder why butter is rationed, and we wonder why we have the position that, whereas, in 1929, the average yield of our milch cows in this country was somewhere around 450 gallons, in 1942 it only amounted to 380 gallons, after spending something like £15,000,000 on the improvement of milk production, as they call it. This is the manner in which it was improved, evidently, but we are left wondering. As a result of that policy, we have, firstly, a reduction in the average milk yield of our dairy stock. In the second place, notwithstanding a subsidy to the extent of about £15,000,000 during that period the ordinary sales to-day show, as between a three year old shorthorn in-calf heifer and a three year old Friesian heifer—the two being in every respect equal—a difference in price of £15 and £20 in favour of the ostracised animal, the Friesian, the animal that has got no subsidy at all. That has been the result of the policy pursued by the Department; and yet we wonder why milk is scarce.

I do not wish to go further into this matter, Sir. I have gone into it here on at least six occasions already, in connection with the Vote for Agriculture. Have they changed in any way? The facts are there, and they are very stubborn. Is it the fault of the Department's policy or the fault of the farming community that the yield of our dairy stock has gone down? I would say that the price is good enough for the farmers, if it is their own fault, but if it is the fault of the Department, then it is a different story, and I consider that, as the Minister himself has suggested, dairying is the keystone of our agricultural industry, and we must get down to it. We must get rid of this policy where you have a black bull to-day and a white-faced bull to-morrow, and a kind of mongrel breed produced as a result. You cannot have it both ways.

You must either produce for beef or for milk, but as things are at the moment, if you do not have the service of a certain class of bull, you will be brought before the court and fined. Let us, for Heaven's sake, have one policy or the other, so far as our agricultural industry is concerned. If we decide that the future agricultural policy of this country is to be based on dairying, then let us go in for milk-producing animals, and let us give the awards for animals that will make for the highest milk production. If we are going to go in purely for the production of beef, then let us make up our minds to do that, but we must bear in mind the needs of our own country.

In this connection, I might mention the case of a very prominent agriculturist in my own part of the country —a very prominent man in dairying circles—who came up here to Dublin. He had registered cows, milk-yielding tests, and so on, and he came up here two years ago and bought a beef bull which had got a premium from the Department of Agriculture. He brought the bull back home and mated it with his dairy cows, and the result was that in the following years he got practically a shoal of premiums for single dairy bulls, but the milk yield of his cows was very much reduced. That is what is happening in many parts of this country and I suggest that it is time that that particular policy should be done away with, and that we should get down to bed-rock and pick out what is left as a foundation stock, of one kind or another, if we are going to breed for milk. If, on the other hand, the future of this country is to rest upon the production of beef for the British market, then, in God's name, do so; if our future depends on the production of milk, butter and so on, for the needs of our own people, then let us concentrate on that; but do not try to have a fat sheep on one side and a lean sheep on the other. Do not try to breed a racehorse on the one side and a plough-horse on the other. You cannot have a cow with a good dug, with plenty of meat on it, unless we are to follow Deputy Hughes' ideas, according to what he has been saying. I warned Deputy Hughes on a few occasions not to be reading so many books.

It would appear to me as if Deputy Hughes had swallowed the whole dictionary when he comes to speak on agriculture, but this time he has apparently read some Red stuff from Russia, and now he is talking of the insemination of cows and blames Deputy Allen for going on in the old plodding way.

Let us get down to business on this matter, however. I think that if we did nothing else on this Estimate than to bring about a definite realisation of where we are doing in this country in regard to milk production, and the road we have been travelling in that regard, since 1932, then I think we would be doing good. As I have pointed out, the late Minister for Agriculture, in 1932, after he had started on that road for seven years, saw that he had spent seven years travelling along a road to perdition, but it would appear that that is the road that we are still travelling on. When he left office he advised the present Minister to change his tune in that respect. However, the policy of the past has left us with the present position. The average yield of milk is between 300 and 380 gallons per cow, but the owner of a Friesian cow would shoot it if the milk yield was not 500 gallons. In the majority of cases the yield of cows of that breed would be between 600 and 700 gallons. That is where the difference lies between 9d. or 10d. a gallon and 1/- a gallon. The difference really lies in more production, and more yield from the animal, not by breeding it in one generation for milk and in another generation for beef. The premium business has been turned into a racket. Who was brought down to judge the animals at the Minister Agricultural Society's show in Cork last year? A breeder of bulls for beef. He came down to judge the quality of dairy cows. Let that kind of thing be ended. If we are going in to supply the British market with beef, and nothing else, let us do so and be prepared to pay for our mistake. There is £800,000 of a subsidy for dairying. Let us be prepared to pay for milk and butter out of the profits on beef by way of subsidies, but let us no longer have one leg in beef and another leg in other things.

Mr. Browne

This is one of the most important Votes and, when he was introducing it, it was disappointing to hear the Minister say that we were no worse off than in pre-war years. I feel that we should be at least 100 per cent. better off in agriculture in 1944 than in 1938.

Dr. Ryan

97 per cent. is not far from 100 per cent.

Mr. Browne

Everything possible has been done to promote agriculture year after year since 1930-31 and the Estimate has increased. We find, however, that our surplus production, year after year, is lower. Cattle production has gone down, pig production has gone down, and pork and egg production has gone down. If that state of affairs continues where are we going to find bottom in the production of our main industry? I heard Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches say that when they came into power agriculture was practically finished. One Deputy elaborated that by stating that agriculture had ceased to exist because of the conditions that prevailed prior to the coming into power of the present Government. I wish these Deputies would realise the significance of the surplus production we had from 1931 to 1938. In these years, from 1931 to 1938, the decline in surplus cattle runs into £3,000,000. Although the Estimate has increased we find that the surplus production of pigs has fallen to the extent of almost £2,000,000, while the value of egg production is down by £500,000 between 1931 and 1938. If the Minister contends that we are no worse off in 1943 than we were in 1928, that does not show that the agricultural policy adopted by the present Government has been a success. It is true that this year and every year since the war started farmers have been confronted with many problems. The Minister visited Mayo three or four weeks ago and addressed the County Committee of Agriculture and a public meeting on the importance of food production. As far as this Party is concerned, I have no doubt the Minister will agree that we actively assisted him, by calling on farmers and on the people generally, for their own benefit as well as for the general benefit, to increase food production. Certainly, the Minister has been confronted with many problems just as farmers are confronted with their difficulties.

In the case of small farmers the trouble is that they have not land to till; in the case of medium size farmers, who have been tilling the arable portion of their land for years, the trouble is that the fertility of the land is greatly reduced because of want of manures, and, in the case of large farmers, the difficulty is labour. Despite these difficulties farmers lost no available opportunity of doing their best to produce food for the nation. For producing that food all that the farmer asks is a fair price. So far as he is concerned, that price on the home market is regulated by what he gets for his surplus production. If that is done, then the farmer will be getting a return for his work especially in regard to the three main heads, eggs, bacon and cattle. It is from the sale of these that he gets a return for his work on the land.

Take egg production. A speaker on the Government Benches referred to it as one of the main branches of agriculture. It is certainly that and should not be overlooked. It is in this position at present, that since 1931 production has been going down each year. In the winter of 1942 we had not sufficient eggs to meet local trade, not to speak of a surplus. We had another shortage in the winter of 1943. The only way to correct that situation is to fix a price that will encourage the producer to keep in production. Unless the price is fixed in January, February and March, you are not going to have production in the fall of the year.

I remember that in November and December, 1942, eggs were selling at about 30/- to 35/- per great hundred, or 3/6 per dozen, but in the following February and March the price fell to 20/- per great hundred, or 2/- per dozen. So sudden was the fall in price that people who ordinarily would have gone in for the production of young fowl at that period decided not to do so. The same thing happened in 1943-44. In December or the middle of January the price was 30/- and 32/- per great hundred. In February last it fell to 21/- and 22/-. People again came to the conclusion that prices would be so low next fall that it would not be wise for them to go in for the production of young fowl.

My suggestion to the Government is that they should give a guaranteed price to producers. That is the one way that production can be encouraged. The guaranteed price should not be for a month or a fortnight, varied according as we had a surplus of eggs, but should cover at least a period of three months. Have a price for December, January and February, when production is at its lowest. If you do that, people who go in for the production of fowl will know how they will stand when the fowl come into production. Have another price for a second period—March, April and May. The same thing might be done for the third period—June, July and August. At that period, food for egg production is not as plentiful as in the preceding six months. A fairly good price should be fixed for people during this period. If that is done, I believe that people will keep in production for the months of September, October and November, and especially in the winter months, November, December and January, when there is a big scarcity of eggs.

I agree that there has been an increase in the number of pigs since the regulations as regards price were revoked. I am afraid, however, that we are not going to have a very big increase in the pig population. I come from a pig-producing area, and I know that the people there are not inclined to produce pigs at the prevailing prices of £6 or £6 10s. per cwt. live weight. They say that these prices would not pay them. If the Government want an increase in the pig population they should guarantee a minimum price of at least £7 per cwt. live weight, and not fix any maximum price. If that guarantee were given, I believe, from what I know of farmers in general, that pig production would have an upward tendency. There should be something to give the producers an idea that there will be adequate protection if they go in for pig production.

I come now to another item, a very important item, and that is the cattle industry. Some people may say that we do not want that industry, but the general view is that cattle form one of the main industries in the country. If you have not the cattle you will not have manure for the land. The cattle are the main foundation for the provision of the manure which helps so much in giving better harvests. Within the past few years that industry seems to have gone wrong. As regards cattle bought last September and taken out to the fairs in January, February and March of this year, it is doubtful if they will return what they cost in September. Cattle bought in April and May of last year would not go their own money last October and November. There is no reason why the Government should not make some provision to protect the cattle trade, so that if farmers buy in a certain season they can sell at a profit later. If something like that is not done, the cattle trade, just the same as the production of eggs and bacon, will decline.

When the Minister was in Mayo he heard complaints from the farmers who attended his meeting. One complaint is very common in the greater part of Mayo, and that is the condition of by-roads in agricultural areas. The position was put fully before the Minister and he was asked to make representations to have these roads repaired. Repairs are very necessary and unless some steps are taken in that connection very serious results will follow. There are areas where the people are working very hard, where the farmers are doing their duty to the nation, but there is no way of entering from the main road into the land where the food is being produced. The by-roads there have been neglected for years. The relief schemes in those areas have had the effect of preventing the minor roads being repaired. These by-roads could not be attended to by reason of the fact that in these areas there was not a sufficient number of registered unemployed. The result is that the roads have been neglected for years.

I feel that it is the duty of the Department of Agriculture to take this question up and to insist on the carrying out of repairs to these by-roads before the crop is ready to be taken off the lands next September and October. I know some of those roads, and their condition is such that it would be impossible to take out any crop. If an inspection is carried out in certain areas of north and south Mayo it will be found that what I am saying is perfectly correct. I strongly recommend the Department to have a survey made in order to ascertain the true condition of those roads.

A somewhat similar state of affairs exists in regard to drainage. Drainage schemes have not been carried out and many areas have suffered very considerably. However, drainage is only a secondary consideration to the roads from the point of view of securing food for the nation. The food is on the land adjacent to the main roads, but it cannot be removed until the by-roads are put into a proper condition.

The greater part of Mayo, the county from which I come, touches the sea. There is a very big number of farmers who occupy small holdings and they have very little arable land. Then we have farmers with holdings of medium size and they have practically every acre of arable land tilled. I should like the Minister to make a very special effort to give the Mayo farmers supplies of potato manure, or potato compound. I trust he will see that Mayo gets its fair share. This potato compound gave a very good account of its qualities last year. I can assure him that Mayo is one of the counties that will give a fair return for any allowance that is made to it. It will give a good return in bacon and eggs.

The dairying industry has been given a lot of consideration here for years back. We have heard a lot about the dairy farmers. It is true they have got an increased price for milk, year after year; it has increased from 4d. to 5d. and 10 1/2d. a gallon. Everybody seems to think that the milk producers are entitled to 1/- a gallon. I think it is better to give the dairy farmers the 1/- a gallon and then we may be able to have more butter. Milk is becoming difficult to procure. Take the ordinary dairyman living in a town like Ballina, with 5,000 or 6,000 of a population. These men have their own problems as regards the supply of milk. They have to buy cows to meet the demand; they have to take into consideration the number of customers and the quantity of milk available for delivery. They complain this year that they are compelled to put portion of the land they had for dairying under tillage. I do not say that these people should not be asked to till portion of their land, but I believe that in areas where land is not available near a town, something should be done to help these dairymen to continue in dairying and to continue supplying milk to the town. Unless the land is available, the milk supply will not be available. I have had a number of complaints from people in my county in that respect.

There is the further point that many dairymen who were supplying milk to the board of health, to various relief schemes and to towns, were badly treated during the winter. An allowance of paraffin is made to dairymen in areas in my county. Some of these dairymen who have three, four, five and, in some cases, six cows made application for a supplementary allowance of paraffin in order to enable them to do their work after 5 o'clock in the evening and before 9 o'clock in the morning. It seems that the regulations governing the granting of supplementary allowances prescribed a minimum of six milch cows. The man with six cows got a ration, but the man with four or five cows got no ration, although it might happen that the man with four or five cows is in his own way a bigger supplier of milk than the man with six cows. It was not a question of the quantity of milk but of the number of milch cows. I may be going outside the Estimate in speaking of this matter, as paraffin oil is under the control of the Department of Supplies, but I would ask the Department of Agriculture to make representations——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has admitted that the matter is outside the Estimate. It is not permissible on an Estimate to ask one Minister to make representations to another.

Mr. Browne

I felt that as two Departments were connected with the matter——

An Ceann Comhairle

It had an agricultural bearing. The Deputy might leave it now.

Mr. Browne

I feel these regulations should have the consideration of the Department of Agriculture next year. I know that the position created hardship last winter and I am sure it will create hardship next winter. If even a small allowance could be made to these suppliers of milk in rural towns and in areas where the people have no other lighting facilities, it would be very helpful.

Mr. Blowick

Food production is the great need of the moment, but the farmers have always done their duty by this country. They have filled the gap any time the nation called and I think that a good deal of the urging and the driving, so to speak, is absolutely unnecessary. The farmers have manned the front-line trenches before this and any time there was a national call they contributed the lion's share.

With regard to wheat, winter wheat, in my part of the country, has been a failure to a great extent. There have no doubt been record crops, but they came about more by chance than anything else. My own experience is that the climate in our county is rather too wet for winter wheat. It is common knowledge that wheat will not germinate in a temperature lower than 45 degrees Fahrenheit. We used to sow winter wheat when the potatoes and other root crops were cleared from the land, from 1st November to the end of February, which is the latest time for sowing winter wheat with safety. The soil during that period, on account of the constant rainfall, scarcely ever reached the required temperature for proper germination, and, as a matter of fact, tests have shown that wheat will germinate successfully only between a very narrow range of temperatures, from 45 degrees to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The hatred amongst farmers of wheat in general is due to the fact that they have failed to grow winter wheat successfully, and they always wondered why spring wheat on the same land gave a good crop and a good yield. In that respect, I think the Department has failed very lamentably. It might be possible in certain areas, say, east of the Shannon, to get the correct temperature to give a crop a start during the winter—once it starts, wheat is a vigorous, hardy crop which will survive the hardest of black frosts and the severest weather—but in my county, speaking from experience, winter wheat is a failure because that fact was not properly put before the farmers by the agricultural instructors and by the Department generally. That has contributed to the failure of winter wheat, but it has also resulted in something bigger, that is, hatred amongst farmers of the wheat crop in general. They have done their best to grow wheat successfully and to contribute to the nation's resources of wheat, but they could never understand why it was winter wheat failed very often.

It was only lately that I learned my lesson through bitter experience. I sowed seed on several occasions which, from the germination point of view, was 100 per cent. sound, but the result was a very thin crop. It often happened that the seed was two, three and four weeks in the ground waiting for the correct temperature, with the result that the finest of seed became blue-moulded. Eventually, a few of the more vigorous seeds started, but the rest failed, and it was a common thing to see a crop of winter wheat ploughed into the ground in March and over-sown with oats, barley, or other cereal crop.

There is great dissatisfaction amongst farmers in the west who grow small areas of wheat because they are not entitled to the bonus of 2/6 per barrel that those who grow wheat on a big scale can get when they turn it into the miller or the seed assembler. I do not see why the small farmer in the west is not entitled to his bonus as well as his bigger brother. He cannot grow wheat on a big scale; he cannot grow much more than is necessary for his own needs. But the rood, or half acre, or acre, as the case may be, of the small farmer in Mayo is just as important to fill a gap in the nation's needs as the wheat of the man who can grow 10, 15, 20 or even 100 acres. I believe that the small farmer is penalised in this respect, and I think some arrangement should be made by which the Department would give the small farmer his bonus of 2/6 per barrel, say on the average yield shown by the agricultural statistics returned each month of June. I think he should get his 2/6 bonus on that, even although he does not turn it into the millar or the seed assembler. He is doing his bit by the nation when he provides enough wheat for himself and his family. He is doing just as much as his bigger brother who can grow 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 acres. He is producing for the nation's supply of flour, and I ask the Minister to bear that in mind. There is great dissatisfaction in my county about it. It has been brought to my notice by several groups of farmers who do not see why they should not get that 2/6. It may be argued that it would not be possible to allot it, as these farmers do not sell their wheat. But I think that the average yield should be taken into account and that the bonus should be paid direct to these farmers by the Department of Finance, or whatever Department pays it. I think they should be paid on the average yield shown by the returns given to the Civic Guards when they call for the agricultural statistics each month of June.

In connection with this matter of wheat, there is one great abuse that exists and I can give the Minister a case that has been brought to my notice. The controlled price of seed wheat delivered to the merchant is 68/6 per barrel, or 3/5 to 1/10 per stone. He must retail that at 70/6, or 3/6 to 3/10 per stone, leaving a profit of 1-1/5d. per stone, or less than 1¼d. per stone. Two shillings per barrel, I suppose, is a reasonable profit—at least I do not hear any grumbling about it—for the merchant who sells seed wheat by the to, or at least in big quantities, to farmers. But down in my part of the country seed wheat is not purchased in big quantities. Very few farmers will buy a single barrel of wheat for seed; they usually buy it by the stone. The trouble is that the shopkeeper has to weigh out single stones and everybody knows that the most exact weighing apparatus will not produce 20 stones out of a barrel of wheat. There is bound to be a certain amount of wastage. The merchant will always be inclined to give good weight rather than underweight, with the result that 19 stones out of a barrel of wheat would be nearer the mark than 20 stones. That is where the abuse comes in.

The ordinary honest shopkeeper, who wishes to maintain his name for selling good seed, will keep certified seed wheat with the certified percentage of germination, etc., and will sell it, but there is no doubt that he is selling it at a loss. But that is not the case with another type of merchant who will buy two qualities of seed wheat, including certified seed wheat. He will expose one of these in the shop for sale and, when the ordinary farmer comes in and asks for certified seed wheat, the merchant will say: "There it is there; I have any amount of that; I can give you plenty of that." But, when the farmer comes to take the seed wheat, it is wheat taken from a store in the backyard or somewhere else that is given to him.

The wheat that is handed out to the farmer is not proper wheat. It is wheat that probably has been bought in the local market at anything from 15/- to £1 per cwt. and probably has been threshed early in September, October or November when it has a high moisture content and stored in sacks or on the floor, with the result that it is mouldy and 60 per cent. of the grain will not sprout. Something should be done about that. It must be in the power of the Department to remedy that state of affairs. From what I am told, it would appear that the small margin of profit is the cause of the trouble, because one dishonest man will sell wheat half of which will not grow, while the honest man, who wishes to preserve his good name and who keeps good seed wheat, has to sell it at a loss.

Deputy Hughes made a very interesting statement with regard to lime. His account of it shows that he must have burned his fingers badly with acid land. There should be far more attention given by the Department to the distribution of lime and to making arrangements for a bigger output of lime and also to the distribution of information to farmers as to the beneficial results from the use of lime on wet or acid soils. A long number of years ago lime was the only fertiliser that was known of, with the result that it was overused at that time. There is scarcely a field or farm in my part of the country without a disused lime-kiln. They went to such an extreme in the use of lime at that time that it left the land infertile, so that, in some cases, it used to be said that the land refused even to grow weeds. We have gone from that extreme to the other, so that we are using scarcely any lime, or at any rate not using enough, particularly now when basic slag cannot be procured. Lime was always regarded as a good substitute for slag and, in my opinion, better results for the outlay could be got from it. I think that the judicious use of lime should be encouraged and that the beneficial results from it should be made known to farmers more than has been done in the past.

A short time ago I asked the Minister for Agriculture a question on the subject of "Louping Ill" vaccine being produced in the laboratory at Thorndale. I mention this particular disease—"Louping Ill"—because, according to accounts I have received, it is spreading rapidly in County Mayo, particularly from the western seaboard and the mountainous districts into the upland areas of the county. That vaccine can be produced here at home in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of veterinary surgeons for vaccination against this particular disease. I am told that the vaccine prepared in the past carried the virus of a disease with it, and that it was dangerous to use it. It is now possible completely to eliminate these disease when it is prepared on chick embryo, instead of by the old method; it does not carry the virus of any other disease. I think that there is only a sum of £7,064 provided in this Estimate for veterinary research. Any money spent in that particular way would be well spent, and there should not be any clipping done there. A case has been brought to my notice where a man lost 33 out of 95 lambs owing to this disease last year, and 1,000 lambs were lost last year in the Glenmask valley of the Tourmakeady district alone. Contrary to what the Minister believes, the Moredun Institute in Glasgow is quite willing to allow certain small quantities of doses of the vaccine prepared by them to come into this country, provided they have not to sign forms and go through all the red tape that is usual in connection with the entry of small packages into this country. Contrary to what he tells me, that they would only allow it in for experimental purposes, they are quite prepared to let in a few thousand doses provided the restrictions on it coming in are removed.

The price of beet this year is a question on which there is a good deal of controversy. There is no doubt that a large acreage has been contracted for already. At the same time, £4 per ton would certainly not be an economic price, and I wonder how many of the contracts for beet that have been signed for will not be cancelled.

Owing to lack of potash and other fertilisers and the decreasing fertility of the soil, as a result of constant and extra tillage, the sugar content is greatly decreased, at least in my county. I should like to know the average yield in the County Mayo. It was stated here that the average of the whole country was very close to 17½ per cent. That may be true but in respect of County Mayo the average is much lower. I know that in respect of my own crop it was nothing like 17 per cent. and I claim that I cared it as well as any farmer cared his crop. I claim that the sugar content should be lowered to 15½ per cent. even at the price of £4 per ton. The usual argument against increasing the price of beet or lowering the percentage, which would be equivalent to increasing the price, is that the Sugar Company could not afford it. The price of beet was increased last year by 10/- a ton and the Sugar Company did not go bankrupt nor did the price of sugar increase appreciably. I do not know if there was any increase in price. I should not agree with that argument. When the Minister wanted sugar last year, when the acreage under beet had gone down as a result of the previous price, he gave a reasonable price and he got a record acreage, the highest acreage since beet growing was introduced in this country. As a beet grower, I can vouch for the fact that no man would become a millionaire by beet growing, even at £4 per ton for beet of 17½ per cent. sugar content.

A great deal has been said in the House on the subject of the wages of agricultural workers. I think it was Deputy Tunney who said that he would like the agricultural workers to be paid on the basis of 50 per cent. of the farmer's profits, or something to that effect. Personally, I would welcome that, but I do not know that the agricultural labourer would welcome it because I am afraid he would get very little wages at the end of the year if the profits of the average farmer had to be taken into account. Deputy Tunney, in my opinion, made one of the best speeches from the Labour Benches in this debate. At least, his speech showed that he was a working farmer and had a very intimate knowledge of the men on the land. In my opinion there is only one way to secure a fair and just wage for agricultural workers.

Some Deputies have suggested that there is a certain amount of antagonism between the agricultural worker and the farmer. Personally, that has not been my experience. I have always found the greatest harmony to exist between the agricultural worker and the farmer, principally because the farmer in his young days had to work for some other farmer, and got his schooling from another farmer, in the same way as the man that he is now employing receives his schooling from him. For that reason, I say there is absolute harmony in most cases, at least in my county, between the agricultural worker and the farmer. There is not a shadow of doubt about it that the agricultural worker is not getting a just wage, but then it is not in the farmer's power to pay him a just wage. As a matter of fact, most farmers would tell you that they cannot pay the meagre wage they are paying to agricultural workers out of the profits of their farms.

Treating the farmer in a niggardly fashion in regard to the price he is paid for his produce, and slashing at his income at every twist and turn, can only result in a nation of paupers. All that the farmer asks is a reasonable price for his produce, a price that will show a reasonable margin of profit as a reward for his sweat and toil on the land. That is not an unjust demand.

Taking the record of the Minister for Agriculture as a whole, down through his 12 years of office, it has been, in my opinion, a succession of disasters, from the farmers' point of view. There has been one blunder after another. He stands up here and gives an account of the working of his Department such as a bookkeeper would give an employer. He does not tell us if he has any future policy or what the future of agriculture will be in his opinion. Surely one would expect more from the Minister than a clipped and stereotyped account of his stewardship, such as he gave the House the other night. We demand more than that from him. He was very careful not to mention that since 1931 pigs have decreased by over 750,000, that sheep have decreased by 1,014,977, and that poultry have decreased by well over 5,500,000. He did not give us an explanation for that. He did not tell us why it is that in this country, which is predominantly agricultural, where the population is not sufficient to consume all the food that can be produced by the farming community, such commodities as bacon, butter, etc., have become luxuries and have reached such a price that they can only be purchased by those who can afford to buy them, and that several of us have to go without them.

It seems that every branch of agriculture that the Minister has touched during his period of office has come well-nigh to vanishing from the country altogether. He fixed the price of pigs some time ago and the next thing that happened was that the pig population which had been flourishing, went down by 750,000. He turned his attention to butter production and now we have to be content with a weekly ration of six ounces. A short time ago, another member of the Government turned his attention to the wool trade. Any honest farmer in the country will tell you at the present time that he looks with horror, the moment the present Government turn their attention towards any particular branch of the agricultural industry. Deputy O Cleirigh the other night made the most audacious remark that I heard in this House for quite a while, that farmers have told him that the fixed price of 2/6 for top grade wool is a good and sound price. No doubt whatever, Deputy O Cleirigh will get farmers to tell him that is a good price for wool. I do not deny the fact that in every walk of life and among every section of the community there are Judases. Any man in this country—I do not care where he comes from—who says that 2/6 at the present time for top grade wool is a fine price, is not a farmer.

Mr. O Cléirigh

The majority of farmers sold it for less last year, in Mayo.

Mr. Blowick

Certainly, different grades of wool.

Mr. O Cléirigh

And the dealers, like Deputy Blowick, made the profit.

Mr. Blowick

Farmers got 3/9 for top grade wool.

Mr. O Cléirigh

Top grade is one thing.

Mr. Blowick

I have one name for the so-called farmer who told the Deputy that. He is not a farmer; he is a Judas. If the Minister for Justice made a compulsory Order reducing legal fees in the same proportion as the price of wool is being cut, I wonder what would Deputy O Cléirigh think of any of his colleagues who said: "It is a very fine thing?"

Dr. Ryan

They would be just honest men.

Mr. Blowick

The country is teeming with honest men.

Mr. Davin

They are all in the legal profession.

Mr. O Cléirigh

It is a good first-class price.

Mr. Blowick

We know that plenty of men go into the professions from the land, men whose parents were good honest farmers, and I have often wondered why those men leave the land if, as Deputy O Cléirigh has said, it is a gentleman's life. I live on the land; I love the land, I would prefer to be poor and hungry on the land than in any profession. But it is a different thing to say it is a lordly life. The present Government has reduced the farmer to the level of a beggar. Deputy O Cléirigh must know that, coming from a constituency where the great majority are making a living directly or indirectly from the land. He has no business coming into this House and bluffing the Minister. He is deliberately leading the Minister astray. Because the farmers are not going to the banks to borrow money, Deputy O Cléirigh tells us that the farmers are doing well. Deputy O Cléirigh must know quite well that there is not a bank in this country that will lend £1 on the security of the land.

Mr. O Cléirigh

That is not true.

Mr. Davin

It is true, and the Deputy knows it is true.

Mr. Blowick

That has been my experience.

Mr. O Cléirigh

The Deputy does not know what he is talking about.

Mr. Blowick

I know quite well what I am talking about. The Deputy must know that a farmer in Ballyhaunis will not get £1 credit on the security of his holding.

Mr. O Cléirigh

Money is advanced wholesale by the banks on the security of the land alone.

Mr. Davin

What bank? Give us the name of the bank.

Mr. O Cléirigh

Banks.

Mr. Davin

Name one.

Mr. Tunney

The Central Bank.

Mr. Davin

The Deputy must be well in.

Mr. O Cléirigh

I am.

Mr. Blowick

I should like if the Minister, in closing the debate, would give us an idea as to what is the future of agriculture—that is, if he knows it, or if he has any plan. Personally—I think the same applies to lots of farmers—I simply tremble with fear when the Minister lays down a plan, or when he turns his eyes towards any particular branch of agriculture.

Mr. Flanagan

I have not very much to contribute to this debate, because, like a good many other speakers in this House who have dealt with the question of agriculture for the past few days, I must admit openly that I have no experience of agriculture, and I know nothing about it, thanks be to God. But there is one thing I can definitely say, and that is that I know as much about it as several speakers who have dealt with the matter. Deputy Childers told us that he had studied 75 per cent. of the Department's leaflets. If that is where Deputy Childers got his information about agriculture, God help his constituents.

Before I deal with the few points to which I wish to draw the Minister's attention, I should like to deal with the speech made here by Deputy Cole during the past week. Deputy Cole delivered an address which I was delighted to hear from a farmer, and I only wish that in the midlands all our farmers were in as happy a position as Deputy Cole. He said that he provides his employees with milk, with cabbage from the garden plot and with potatoes from the garden. He also provides houses for them, and on wet days he says to them: "Come in; there is enough work for you inside", and does not deduct anything from their wages. I only wish we had farmers like Deputy Cole in the midlands. It is a credit to the people of Cavan that they returned such a representative to this House. If he acts up to what he said here. I must definitely say that he treats his workers very well.

A great deal has been said about production. The Minister for Agriculture himself was down in my constituency making his first appeal for food production. He came to the courthouse in Tullamore and appealed to the farmers of Offaly to produce more food in the present grave emergency. He said that the farmers of Offaly were always in the front-line trenches to defend the country against starvation, and rightly so. He advised them to go out and plough and sow and reap. He said: "I do not care how you do it so long as it is done." That is the appeal which was made by the Minister for Agriculture during his visit to my constituency. I think a senior officer of his Department was down in Laoighis, and he paid a tribute to the work of the farmers of Laoighis during the emergency. He also made an appeal to them to carry on with the good work. He said the farmers of Laoighis answered very well to the call for further food production since the outbreak of the war. He said that they did good work last year; that they did excellent work; but he asked them for God's sake to do a little better this year. Going through the streets of Dublin this very morning, I saw a great elaborate poster issued by the Red Cross, which says: "Farmers: grow an extra rood of potatoes for starving Europe." There is nothing at all about starving Dublin, or starving Cork, or starving Limerick, or even about places in my constituency where there are people starving at the present time. I think charity begins at home. The first thing we ought to do is to produce enough food for ourselves. When we have enough for ourselves, then we can extend our charity towards India or China or any other place.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not like to interrupt the Deputy, but I want to point out that those posters are issued by the Red Cross Society, and I understand that they only want an extra rood where the people have already provided for themselves. I think it is not fair to draw that red herring across the trail. I do not like to interrupt the Deputy, but I think I am justified in doing so.

Mr. Flanagan

I fully appreciate the statement you have made, but I am not satisfied that an appeal should be made for food for people abroad until our own hungry people have first been satisfied. Several Deputies have referred to the question of the agricultural labourer, and complained about the wages that are being paid. If the Minister for Agriculture remembers his visit to Tullamore, he will recall the question that we raised about agricultural wages. He told us quite clearly that he had appointed the Agricultural Wages Board; that he had power to dissolve them in the morning if he liked, but he could not make them function—he could not make them pay the wages he would like to see paid. Is it not very strange that the Minister brought a body into being, and that he can put it out of being, but while it is in being he can do nothing with it? That is something I call balderdash, bunkum and codology. I am not satisfied at all that the Minister should not have some say in the matter. Deputy Larkin told us that, as far as the agricultural workers of County Dublin were concerned, he feared their views were not very ably expressed on this Agricultural Wages Board. Who has the Minister appointed on this wages board? He has appointed a number of gentlemen. What are their qualifications? Are they agricultural workers? One section, I learned, is supposed to represent the worker and the other the employer.

I know that one of the representatives from my part of the country is the chairman of the Fianna Fáil Comhairle Ceanntair. I definitely say that the Minister in appointing the Agricultural Wages Board should have appointed independent farmers, men who were not tied to any political Party. I suppose the Minister had a certain idea in appointing such individuals, but I must definitely say from my experience of the wages that agricultural workers get, that they have got no encouragement whatever to remain on the land. We have been told that workers come up to the city from all parts of Ireland and that they secure jobs for a while. Then, after some time, they register at the employment exchange and qualify to go abroad to England. What has been done by the Minister or by the Government to encourage those young people to remain on the land?

A few moments ago we heard some exchanges between Deputy Blowick and Deputy Ó Cléirigh about the banks. I heard Deputy Ó Cléirigh the other night and heard what he has had to say just now, but I can definitely say that the robber, the burglar or the thief is more welcome in the banks to-day than any Irish farmer. Does the Minister know that the vast majority of the farmers are in debt, no matter what members of the House may say? What has the Minister done to take them out of debt? Does the Minister realise that the farmer is working from sunrise to nightfall? He is working from the early hours of the morning, and even after it becomes too dark to work on the land, he is knocking around his farmyard doing some odd jobs, some hours after the rest of the community have retired. He is tilling, sowing and producing day after day for his harvest cheque. He is not satisfied until his fields are completely golden with the harvest. Then he has to face the work of cutting it down, saving it, drawing it into the haggard and getting the mill to come along to thresh it. When it is threshed, and the harvest festival is over, he can take his corn to the mill, where he will receive his cheque. He will perhaps look at the cheque and say: "I have you, but I wonder for how long will I have you." The moment he takes that cheque home he will find that his wife, or whoever may be in charge of the purse, will have his accounts made up. She will tell him that he has to pay rates and taxes, that he has to pay a big bill for groceries and that he has to meet drapers' bills for clothes for himself and his family. He has also to pay his blacksmith, and the blacksmiths' charges have gone up by leaps and bounds because, they say, there is neither coal nor iron.

Within three months after the threshing, the farmer is just as poor as he was nine months before when he put his seed into the ground and he has to face the same weary round of labour for the coming year. His life is a life of hard work and slavery. I cannot see what this Government has done to improve the farmers' conditions generally. I have to admit to the House that I am not a farmer myself but I am dealing every day with farmers and listening to their complaints. I am quite convinced that the conditions of farmers could be considerably improved, because after all the real wealth of any nation is derived from what is produced on the land. It is very strange that we are told that at one time we could maintain 8,000,000 people in this country. Probably Deputy Childers, that great economist, will tell us that the produce of an acre of land is sufficient to maintain one individual for a year. We have 12,500,000 acres of arable land in this country but we have only 2,500,000 of a population at present. How is it then that so many people are under-nourished and ill-fed? I say that there is something radically wrong somewhere if an acre of land can produce sufficient to maintain one person. I am quite satisfied that we can produce more than we are producing though the farmers at the present time are definitely doing their part. In my part of the country it is nothing unusual to see a tractor working at 12 o'clock at night with lights on it. The Minister may be very pleased to hear that. That is going on every night in the country. On last Sunday evening I saw a farm convenient to the town of Daingean on which a farmer had erected a hut so as to save him the trouble of going home at night. That shows that the farmers are in earnest in their efforts to produce food for man and beast in the present emergency. Every one of them realises that he has a duty in this matter but it is the duty of the Government to put them in the way of doing it. If I might make some suggestions to the Minister, I would urge him to take the necessary steps to see that the agricultural worker is given some encouragement to remain on the land. The best encouragement of all is to ensure that he is adequately paid for his labour. We know that at the present time £2 has the value of only 18/- in 1939 and 1940. Some Deputies in this House may say that the farmers are the best-off section of the community to-day and that they are making money, but we must not forget that the £1 which the farmer is getting to-day has the purchasing power of exactly 9/- in 1939 or 1940.

If he is getting big money, he has a big way of getting shut of it. I think that this question of agricultural wages will have to be tackled by the Government, and the workers given a wage that will enable them to live on the land. A married agricultural labourer in receipt of £2 per week—he may have a wife and two young children to provide for—finds it impossible to exist on the present rate of wages. The Minister and the Government should take some steps to see that his lot is improved, and that the worker will in accordance with Christian teaching receive a living wage to enable him to bring up his family in decency.

I am quite satisfied that the agricultural workers who have gone overseas had no alternative but to go. If they stayed at home, they were faced with the prospect of living in misery, in want, in debt, and semi-starvation; so they had to take the emigrant ship to help in the manufacture of weapons of war in another country. They were given no encouragement to stay at home. I happen to come from an agricultural part of the country, and I remember one occasion when a British agent came to the town to recruit men. I saw agricultural labourers standing in queues in the town of Mountmellick to be interviewed by this agent. They went over to England, and yet the Government tells us that there was a shortage of labour. Before these men went away, why did they not make an effort to keep them at home by offering them proper wages? I cannot see what occasion the men would have to go away, because all a worker wants in this country is food, clothing and shelter, and if he gets the necessities of life he will be satisfied to remain. Where the necessities of life are denied to a worker, he must shoulder the obligations to his wife and to the family placed in his charge by Almighty God. At the present time, in this country, if he has to carry out his obligations and do his duty to his family, he must take the emigrant ship.

Why would there not be a labour shortage? No steps were taken to keep the men at home—no encouragement was given to them to stay at home. I would strongly urge the Minister to pluck up his courage and pay the men to help in the production of the crops he is appealing to the farmers of Ireland to produce. I do not think that it is any compliment at all to pay those men properly for their labour.

I admit that I am only a new Deputy, and that I have a lot to learn yet, but I would like to ask the Minister, when he is replying, to give us some information about the Agricultural Wages Board. He could give us a little more information as to how he appoints the members and what qualifications are necessary for membership. I would be delighted if he could let this board know that he is the Minister for Agriculture and that he intends to see that the workers he wants are paid. It is very strange that if he created this Agricultural Wages Board, he cannot put it out of creation—or abolish it—and cannot make it do what he wants done.

Before I sit down, I would like to draw the attention of the Minister to the charges farmers are asked to pay for ploughing. I know of cases where £3 5/- and £3 10/- an acre, and higher has been charged for the hire of tractors for ploughing. After all, no farmer can afford that, especially the small farmer, and I would be very glad if the Minister, when replying, could indicate to the House if he proposes to fix a charge for the hire of such tractors. Some steps will have to be taken in that direction.

I would also like to be given some information about the price of eggs. No later than three weeks ago, when I was driving through the village of Cloneygowan in Offaly, in a pony and trap, I saw a little child walking along the road in the direction of the village. It had two eggs wrapped in a piece of paper. I asked what the child had paid for the eggs. The answer was 4d. each —that is 8d. for two eggs, in the village of Cloneygowan, or 4/- a dozen. I am told that there are farmers quite convenient to Birr who sold eggs for 1/10d. a dozen the same day as they were 4/- in Cloneygowan. The Minister should look into that matter and have fixed prices on those eggs because, after all, the labouring man or the ordinary workingman cannot afford to pay at the rate of 4/- a dozen if he wants to eat a couple of eggs every day.

Deputy Blowick has told us about the good effect of lime on tillage soil. I do not know what steps the Department has taken to finance the owners of the lime kilns, but, in my own native parish, there was no lime to be secured this year. One lime kiln at Drummin supplies a part of Offaly and the northern portion of Leix, and there is none to spare. Mountmellick would be an ideal centre to supply the best part of the county and an estimate was prepared by the county engineer. He said it would take between £350 and £400 to erect a lime kiln. I think I made some representations to the Minister in the matter, but the lime kiln is not being erected, simply because sufficient assistance was not given by the Department. I feel that the Department should look seriously into the question of the production of lime and give every assistance possible to those anxious to promote its production.

One of the greatest drawbacks of the small farmer is the lack of capital. When a farmer applies to the Agricultural Credit Corporation for a loan, he will be asked to fill in the usual form. One of those questions the Agricultural Corporation asks is: "How much cash have you in the Bank?" Imagine asking a farmer who is looking for a loan how much he has in the bank. Surely, if he had money in the bank he would not want a loan at all——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is not the Agricultural Credit Corporation an independent body outside the control of the Minister?

Mr. Flanagan

Definitely, sir—I quite agree.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Then, if you agree, it is not relevant on this Estimate.

Mr. Flanagan

It hardly is. I am quite convinced, Sir, that the Government have taken no steps to finance farmers or people who need capital to run or work their land. In one voice we are told that workers should be paid £2 a week, which is right and fair, but I say that in order that the worker should be paid properly, and before you compel the farmer to pay, you must first put him in a position to pay. The old reason that you cannot get blood out of a stone holds in this case and I am satisfied that you cannot get money out of a farmer's pocket unless you put it in first. What steps are being taken to put money into the farmers' pockets? None, so far as I can see. I am convinced that the Government will have to introduce some scheme for financing farmers who are suffering from lack of capital. I do not refer solely to small farmers, because some of the big farmers are merely big in name. When it comes to a question of what they are worth, it is a different matter. The Agricultural Credit Corporation may be an asset to some farmers but, in the majority of cases which have come under my notice, the reply the applicants got was that the Board was sorry it could not see its way to grant the loan. In several cases where the applicants were prepared to pledge their holdings as security, the applications were turned down.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Can the Deputy show how the Minister for Agriculture has any function in that matter?

Mr. Flanagan

No, but I am pointing out why he should have some function.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is a different matter.

Mr. Flanagan

If the Minister is Minister for Agriculture, he ought to know that the farmers are looking for loans. There is not a day I get a post but I have a letter from some farmers looking for financial assistance—not from me but from the Agricultural Credit Corporation. I am satisfied that some steps will have to be taken to provide for farmers who are suffering from lack of capital. Unless they have the money, they cannot stock their land and they cannot till it.

Another matter to which I should like to refer is that of oil supplies for farmers. In remote parts of the country, it is necessary that farmers should have some supplies of oil. They need it to provide light when stock take ill. Besides that, they work late hours and, in winter, they are up at very early hours. The Minister should see that the farmers are not neglected in this respect. The vast majority of the people in the towns have electric light but, in remote parts of the country, no light is available. Furthermore, sufficient supplies of oil should be made available for the use of tractors.

Mr. O'Donnell

You alluded to £3 15s. as an overcharge for a tractor. How much was ploughed or what time was occupied? That requires to be clarified.

Mr. Flanagan

The charge was £3 15s. per acre.

Mr. O'Donnell

Robbery.

Mr. Flanagan

The Minister should take steps to see that oil is provided for agricultural purposes. It is very necessary and I should be glad if he would refer to the matter when replying. I think it was Deputy Larkin who referred to the number of golf links which we have. These golf clubs are in the nature of a limited company. In the City of Dublin, where we have unemployment and poverty at its highest, it does not speak well for the Government that there should be 25 golf links. The Department of Agriculture is neglecting its duty if it does not see that production is put before golf.

Mr. O'Donnell

Change the golf sticks for hay forks.

Mr. Flanagan

There are acres and acres of the finest land in my own constituency which are used only by five or six "nobs" playing golf on a Sunday morning. A bad impression is given to the hard-working, honest farmer who may be out about his business close to the golf links. He has to work his land, but these other gents have 20 or 30 or 40 acres under them. The Minister knows where these golf links are. I will not accuse him of having recourse to the golf links himself, but if he would make inquiries at Garryhinch, convenient to Portarlington, he would find that there is a large portion of land waiting for these golfers to come along, while in the same area smallholders and landless men who are prepared to work land cannot get it.

Can the Minister give us some information when replying as to whether or not he is expecting any agricultural machinery? In reply to a Parliamentary Question by me, he said that he is always expecting it. I suppose he is expecting it still, but I should like to know if he has any hopes of its coming in. There is a great demand for agricultural machinery in the Midlands, and I should be glad if he would give us some idea of how this machinery is allocated—what qualifications are required to secure it. Deputy O'Leary suggested that certain influence was used. I do not know whether that is so or not. I cannot accuse the Minister of that yet, but Deputy O'Leary seemed to have some good ground for the statement he made here on a Parliamentary Question. There is another matter to which I should like to make allusion. There are many farmers' sons and agricultural workers in the Army. It would be no harm if the Minister would use his good offices with the Minister for Defence to secure that, as soon as these men apply for agricultural leave, they will be released.

Donnchadh O Briain

What are they in the Army for?

Mr. Flanagan

How is it that the Deputy is always making ignorant interruptions, and that he has not the pluck to get up and make a speech? I ask the Minister to see that these men are given agricultural leave from the Army when they apply for it.

I must say that the Minister for Defence, at all times, has given sympathetic consideration to soldiers who are the sons of farmers, and I can say that, in any cases with which I personally have been concerned, the Minister has shown that sympathetic consideration; but I do hold that, in general, where there is a shortage of labour on the land, soldiers who are the sons of farmers should be given leave in order to enable them to work on the land.

In the few remarks that I have to make now, I should like to deal with what Deputy Dillon, after his absence from this House for some time, has said. He tells us that in his constituency and in parts of County Roscommon young men are coming to him and asking if they can get into the agricultural colleges. That shows, according to Deputy Dillon, that there are not enough agricultural colleges in the country. Now, in that connection, Deputy Davin, myself, and Deputy O'Higgins interviewed a certain Minister some time ago, and asked that Minister to take the necessary steps to keep one of the finest mansions, in this country to-day, from being demolished, but the answer of that Minister was that his hands were tied. That mansion, if it were taken over, would have been ideal for use as an agricultural college in Laoighis. I do not know how many acres would be concerned there, but perhaps Deputy Davin could tell us.

Mr. Davin

Perhaps Davy Frame could tell you.

Mr. Flanagan

Perhaps. At any rate, the Minister for Agriculture is aware of this, because a year ago he was present on that estate, looking on at a ploughing championship match; and I say that it is a shame, when we have the Minister telling us that there is a shortage of agricultural colleges and when so many of our young people are anxious to get agricultural education, that such estates should not be taken over. We are told that we have not enough facilities to give a proper education in agriculture to our young people, but here we have an ideal spot for an agricultural college, and yet it is not taken over. I suppose, we will have to deal with the friend of that Minister, Davy Frame, in order to get that done. In connection with this matter of food production, I would be glad if the Minister would look into this question with a view to seeing whether it would be possible to take over some of these mansions or estates for the purpose of establishing an agricultural college, because, in the counties of Leix and Offaly, and I am sure, in County Westmeath and other counties, the establishment of such a college by the Department would be a great success.

Now, I must definitely say that I agree, 100 per cent., with the Government's programme on the compulsory growing of wheat, and I think that every Deputy in this House, of all Parties, should agree with that policy. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, at the opening of the debate, made some reference to wheat-growing, but I would ask Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney: where would we be to-day if his Government had been in existence since the beginning of this war? They said, in effect, that nothing could be grown in this country, and that we must depend for everything on imports from abroad. Now, we must give credit where credit is due, and I am quite satisfied that compulsory tillage was necessary. The reason I supported the Government in that policy was because compulsory tillage would not affect the ordinary farmer at all, because he always tilled his land, but it did affect the rancher, and the rancher is one of the greatest enemies that we have in this country. I am very glad to say that the Minister has taken sufficient courage to deal with the rancher.

Deputies on all sides of this House have complaints to make, quite naturally, but so far as the rancher is concerned, it is my opinion that enough has not been done yet. I know of the case of a man who has four very large farms. He is tilling two of those farms and leaving the other two farms under grass; and yet, the very man to whom I am referring came along last week and bought a farm, for the division of which local people have been agitating, and now that farm is also under that man's control. I say that Government policy should be directed more towards land division.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Agriculture is not responsible for land division.

Mr. Flanagan

I realise that, Sir, but in the present emergency we need all the food that we can grow, and all I want is that the Government should take every step to see that that food is produced. Some Deputy referred here to the question of food production meetings down the country—I forget what Deputy it was—but from my experience I can say that both the Minister for Agriculture and the Secretary of his Department have been down in my constituency every year since the emergency started, speaking at food production meetings, and all I can say is that their presence was not responsible for the tilling of one extra acre. After all, an ounce of action is worth a ton of talk. Of course, we will all join in the Minister's appeal when he comes down to us in the country, but what good is that unless we give the Minister a hand in the doing of the work? We must help the Government. It is all right for the Minister or other members of the Government to come down to the various constituencies and tell the people how vital it is for them to produce more, and to threaten them with all kinds of pains and penalties if they do not do so. The Government are well able to make those threats and to put a fearful complexion on them, but I think it would be better if these Ministers would stop at home here in Dublin, and not be using petrol in flying up and down the country to those food production meetings. My experience is that these food production meetings only amount to a bottle of smoke, because the ordinary practical farmer, if he does attend these meetings, goes home and has a huge laugh at the whole thing.

Apart from that, the average practical farmer does not attend these meetings at all. It is only blokes like myself who attend them. Every Deputy in this House, the moment a Minister goes down to his constituency to make an appeal for more food production, will make it his business to be present at the meeting. Why? Because that is what we are paid for, and it will make a big headline in the papers the next morning, but the practical farmer will be at home on his farm, ploughing or sowing his land, and he will not be listening to Dr. Ryan telling him what he has to do. There are a lot of farmers in this country whom you cannot "cod." I think that the majority of them have been "codded" for the last 20 years, and if they allowed themselves to be "codded," then, I suppose, it was good enough for them, but it appears to me that in recent years they are getting to be a little more intelligent than they were in that regard. As I was saying a few moments ago, I have no belief or faith in those food production meetings, and I think it would be much better if certain Orders were made by the Government which would enable the farmer to carry on his work. We have all classes of inspectors visiting farmers and telling them to do this, that and the other thing. The farmers are paying the whole of them. Of course some inspectors are necessary, but a great many of them are unnecessary. The Minister might make some promise that matters raised in this debate will receive consideration. Deputy Hughes is a practical farmer and spoke from experience. From what I heard of his speech I considered it to be sound commonsense. I know nothing about tillage and I am sure that Deputy Childers and Deputy O Cléirigh know less.

Mr. O Cléirigh

I till quite a lot.

Mr. Flanagan

At the same time, as Deputies, we have obligations to the people. It is our duty to express the views of those who elected us. The only conclusion I have come to is that farmers generally were born in debt, they live in debt, and they die in debt. They will leave behind them debts as legacies. Some steps will have to be taken to improve the position of farmers. We had views expressed by members of the Farmers' Party, the Labour Party, and the Fine Gael Party on farming. Did we hear any constructive policy suggested for agriculture? I do not believe we did. As far as the Government is concerned, the Minister did not make any references in that respect. We have a habit of talking about what was done in the past, and of finding fault with action that has been taken by the Minister. Instead of going back on the past, we should be wise and think of the future. Let us forget about the past and think of what is going to happen in 1945 or 1948. I know very little about the past, but I am concerned about the years to come. That is what the Minister for Agriculture should be thinking of. Agriculture is of the greatest importance here, because it is the source of the nation's wealth, and farmers are the backbone of the industry. Even if we had as much money as would fill this House, we would not be better off unless we had production. Real wealth comes from the land, and it is through the land all our economic ills can be solved. Agricultural policy will have to be reviewed, and certain steps will have to be taken by the Minister to put farmers in a way of working. The only way to do that is to finance agriculture.

The farm improvement scheme has definitely made thousands of acres of land available for tillage. It was a good scheme, one of the best that was ever sponsored by the Government. If we had more schemes of that kind, they would be of great benefit. I have no hope for the future of agriculture here under the present system. The only way that agriculture can be carried on satisfactorily is to have every man who is available for agricultural work getting a decent wage. When he is replying, I hope the Minister will give some information on the question of providing credit and finance for farmers. The majority of our farmers are suffering from lack of capital. If they had money they would be able to get on with useful work. I hope the Minister will give the matter sympathetic consideration so that farmers who are now bankrupt will be in a position to get to work.

My experience is that farmers are anxious to till land and to help in the production of food, but are prevented doing so by lack of capital. I am satisfied that farmers cannot be criticised for their attitude during the present emergency. They are definitely doing more than their share. The Government should now come to their aid. During the coming year I am satisfied that we will be able to meet our own requirements. We may have to take steps to plan post-war agricultural policy. I should like the Minister to deal with the fixing of a price for eggs. I gave an example where eggs in one place were 4/- per dozen, and 30 miles away on the same day they were sold for 1/10 a dozen. The people concerned consider that some steps should be taken to deal with that question.

Mr. Davin

It is not my desire to prolong this discussion unnecessarily, but I am influenced to intervene in this debate by the rather remarkable pronouncement—I call it remarkable if it can be confirmed by the Minister— made by Deputy O Cléirigh, that it is possible at last for land owners to secure loans from banks solely on the security of their land. If that statement can be confirmed by the Minister, then we have arrived at a stage in the affairs of this State when things are looking a bit brighter.

Mr. O Cléirigh

It has been my experience that a number of farmers, for whom I acted in my legal capacity, got advances solely on the credit of their holdings.

Mr. Davin

If that is so, and if it is possible for land owners, solely on the security of their land, to get whatever credit facilities they need at a reasonable cost to themselves, then the future looks a good deal brighter from my point of view than did the past. If the Deputy cannot give me the information publicly, I should like to have from him, privately, the name of the bank that is now willing to give credit facilities to the farmers, on the basis that he mentions.

Mr. O Cléirigh

If Deputy Davin acquires a farm in my county, I guarantee that he will get the money.

Mr. Davin

During the 21 years that I have been a member of the House I have, on innumerable occasions, received representations from farmers in my constituency asking me if anything could be done for them in that direction. This is the first time that I have heard that such a thing is possible. I do not know whether it is Deputy O Cléirigh, the Minister for Agriculture or the Standing Committee of the Joint Stock Banks that is to be congratulated upon that change of policy as far as the banks are concerned.

Mr. O Cléirigh

The honest farmers of the County Mayo who pay are.

Mr. Davin

The failure of so many working farmers to respond, in the manner that they would like, to the requests of the Government to produce more food is, in my opinion, due solely —I have said so here on many previous occasions—to their inability to secure the necessary credit facilities. Those men are suffering from a shortage of working capital. That has been my experience in my part of the country where the farmers were tilling the necessary acreage of their arable land even before the outbreak of the war. I would ask the Minister, when concluding, to confirm the remarkable pronouncement made by Deputy O Clérigh. When the Minister is dealing with the question of credit facilities will he tell the farmers, and particularly Deputies in the country generally, why it is that our banks are willing— they have already given evidence of this themselves—to lend money to a foreign Power to fight a war on the Continent of Europe at 2 per cent. and yet will not give the necessary credit facilities to our farmers at less than 4 per cent.? The experience of farmers in my constituency has been that if they are not able to get credit facilities merely by giving the bank a charge on their land they have, in addition, to bring in two neighbouring farmers who have deposits in the bank from which they are seeking the accommodation as securities, and having done that they consider themselves lucky if they are able to get credit facilities at 5 per cent. or 6 per cent.

This country cannot survive in the post-war period if those who are engaged in the production of the primary commodities of life have to pay that price for money. We had Deputy Dillon giving his suggestions to the Minister as to the best policy to be pursued by the farming community in the future. Quite another suggestion, completely in conflict with the policy and programme outlined by Deputy Dillon, was given by Deputy Corry from the other side of the House. Deputy Dillon's suggestion, in effect, was that the prosperity of the farming community in the post-war period will depend altogether upon the extent to which they can get a market for their agricultural exportable surplus in a foreign country, at the same time admitting that we have no power to fix the price of the commodities that our farmers may be agreeable to sell in that foreign market. How, I ask, can you talk about the prosperity of our farmers in the future if it is to depend on the sale of their agricultural exportable surplus in a foreign market at a price that we cannot control?

I am prepared to agree with Deputy Corry's suggestion provided he is prepared to go far enough with it, and provided that the Minister has the power to put it into operation. Deputy Corry says that the prosperity of the farming community in the future and that of the agricultural labourer will depend altogether on the development of the home market. How can you have a home market capable of giving the farmer a good price for all his agricultural produce when we have such a high percentage of our population registered at the labour exchanges? If the future of the farming community, and their ability to get good prices for all that they produce are to depend altogether on the home market, then the Minister for Agriculture and his colleagues in the Government will have to see to it that a programme of full employment is provided for all our able-bodied citizens. What percentage of those sections of the community which have to depend upon unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance, poor law relief, national health insurance benefits or the other benefits that are given through the social services, can buy bacon, eggs or butter at present day prices?

Mr. Allen

This is not a Central Fund Bill.

Mr. Davin

I can tell the Deputy that one-fourth of the cost of the services set out in the Book of Estimates for this year is to be raised by taxation as a direct result of the unemployment that exists in the country. How can any of those people who are dependent on these miserable allowances buy in the home market the commodities which the farmers produce either now or during the post-war period? There is only one way of ensuring to the farmers in the future a good home market for all they produce and that is by adopting a programme of full employment for all able-bodied citizens at decent trade union rates of wages.

Mr. Allen

Is this an unemployment debate?

Mr. Davin

It is not. Deputy Flanagan referred to the question of the rates of wages paid to agricultural labourers. The Minister for Agriculture is responsible for the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board and for the appointment of its full-time chairman. I assume that, as a result of the power he possesses, he could give a policy direction to the chairman of that board. I take it that if the Minister believed that the agricultural labourers were entitled to a minimum wage of £3 a week he could direct the chairman of the National Agricultural Wages Board to see that such wage was paid to them, and that if the chairman refused to carry out the Minister's policy he could dismiss him and put some other person in his place who would carry out Ministerial policy on that matter. The Minister certainly has that responsibility, and I urge him to face up to it.

Mr. Allen

Has he that power under the Act?

Mr. Davin

Deputy Allen knows all this——

Mr. Allen

I am asking a question.

Mr. Davin

There is no need for me to educate Deputy Allen as to the powers of the Minister for Agriculture or those of the Chairman of the Agricultural Wages Board. Will the Minister, when he is replying, say whether it is a fact that most of the area boards held their meetings at the end of last year and made a recommendation to increase the rate of wages for agricultural labourers: that the National Agricultural Wages Board met subsequently and confirmed some of these recommendations, but that instead of allowing the recommendations to operate immediately, or to have retrospective effect, the Chairman of the Agricultural Wages Board, through the power given him by the Minister, made an Order that the recommendations which were submitted before the end of 1943 and were sanctioned by him before the end of that year, would not come into operation until the 7th February, 1944? Is that correct?

Dr. Ryan

That is the time it came into operation.

Mr. Davin

But the cost of living meanwhile goes up. The cost of living does not just go up or down as a result of the Chairman of the Agricultural Wages Board naming the date for the coming into operation of the increased rate.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy may not know it, but the board exceeds the amount recommended in many cases.

Mr. Davin

That may be true, and I am prepared to accept the Minister's assurance, but I know of no other wages tribunal, or any other means of negotiation, whereby, as a result of an arbitration or an agreement, the date of the coming into operation of increased rates of wages is extended in the same manner as was done by the Agricultural Wages Board, with the approval of the Minister.

Dr. Ryan

It has always been done like that.

Mr. Davin

If it has been done in a wrong manner for so many years, is it not time the Minister acted in a proper manner and adopted the method that is adopted by the Department of Industry and Commerce in connection with the coming into operation of the awards of the wages tribunal set up by that Department?

Dr. Ryan

There is a very good reason for it.

Mr. Davin

I should like to hear that reason.

Mr. Harris

Like some other Deputies who have spoken this evening, I am interested in the conditions of the farmer, but more particularly of the agricultural worker. Most of the Deputies who have spoken have referred to the low wage paid to the agricultural workers—that is, the wage of £2 a week—and they have described it as a starvation wage and stated that it is not sufficient for a man to support a wife and family. Most of the speakers on the Labour Benches, and also Deputy Flanagan, have referred to that and the Minister was called upon to increase that wage.

It is very easy to suggest that the wages of the agricultural workers should be increased. I do not see how the Minister for Agriculture could increase the wages. It would seem, listening to the speeches made by some Deputies, that the Minister could provide some fund and that it was the duty of the Minister to pay the workers. As I understand the position, the Agricultural Wages Board was set up by the Government and representatives of the farmers are appointed by the Minister on that board, together with representatives of the agricultural workers. The agricultural workers in this country are an unorganised body.

Mr. Larkin

They are not.

Dr. Ryan

Yes, they are, and the Deputy's Party never objected to that system when the Bill was going through, because they knew there was no other way of doing it.

Mr. Larkin

Rubbish.

Dr. Ryan

Rubbish you; you do not know what you are talking about.

Mr. Harris

I know the agricultural workers much better, perhaps, than the Deputy. The agricultural workers are an unorganised body and I think I can claim that the Fianna Fáil Party is more representative of those workers than the Labour Party. I have as much right to say that as Deputy Larkin has to say that the Labour Party represents the workers.

Mr. Larkin

Is it not true?

Mr. Harris

I have as much right to claim that Fianna Fáil is more representative of the agricultural workers. I say that so far as being organised on trade union lines is concerned, the agricultural workers are unorganised, and to a very great extent that applies also to the farmers. The majority of the farmers have no proper farmers' organisation either, and the Minister could do no better than to select the best men he could get, the men he thought would honestly represent the farmers and the agricultural workers on that board. The Agricultural Wages Board fixes the wages to be paid, and the practice that has grown up here in past years has been for the Sugar Company to fix the price of beet and the Government to fix the price of wheat for the year and also the price of milk and of butter.

With regard to farm produce, in so far as the Government can fix the price they do so. The Agricultural Wages Board is there to see that the money that goes to agriculture for the production of agricultural commodities is divided as equitably as possible between both classes of workers—the farmer is a worker just as well as the agricultural labourer. They endeavour to see also that the farmer gets a reasonable profit. I do not agree always that the farmer's profit is such a very generous one, or that the worker gets as fair a wage as possible, but I do not know what better can be done.

I would like to see the standard of the agricultural workers raised to the same level as that of industrial workers. We have industries in our towns—in Kildare, for example—and the hours of work for those engaged in those industries are not as long as the hours the agricultural worker has to work and their work is not by any means more important. I do not believe it is more skilled work, either. But those industrial workers are protected by the Conditions of Employment Act, the benefits of which the agricultural worker has not got. I feel that there is an injustice there; I feel there is a hardship there that the agricultural worker has to put up with.

I know the conditions of the working farmer. It is all very fine to despise £2 a week and describe it as a wage on which a man cannot support a wife and family. Take a working farmer with 40 or 50 acres. He has to work hard from early morning until late at night. I am not referring to the big man to whom Deputy Larkin referred, the man who can attend race meetings. I am talking of the farmer with 50 or 60 acres, or maybe only 30 acres of poor land, who has to till and work hard and whose wife has to do the same. It is no easy matter for him to provide £2 every Saturday night for the labour of one man. That would amount to about £100 a year. We must remember that that farmer has to wait until October, when he reaps the harvest, to get a refund of the wages he pays to his workman and to get his own profit. He has to contend with seasonal risks. He may have a bad harvest and his crop may fail. In many respects his position is not as secure as that of the agricultural worker.

It is all very fine and easy to talk about the low standard of the agricultural worker. I notice that trade unionists and industrial workers, whenever the agricultural worker receives an increase in wages, always use that as an argument to move other organised workers up a step. If the conditions of the working farmer and the agricultural labourer are to be improved, the community as a whole have to provide those improvements for them. If we are to give them a higher standard, the rest of the community must pay for it, which means that the prices of agricultural produce must be increased.

Mr. Larkin

And why not?

Mr. Harris

If the prices of agricultural produce are increased, the position will be that the rest of the community will ask for an improvement in their standards, and the state of affairs will be the same as before. We shall have a spiral of demands by one section after the other.

Mr. Larkin

The phrase is "a vicious spiral".

Mr. Harris

The only way I can see in which the conditions of the agricultural workers and the farmer can be improved is by better production, if that is possible. The agricultural community are greatly handicapped at present by the shortage of artificial manures and the difficulty of getting modern farm machinery. We have to put up with that position at present— there does not seem to be any remedy for it. I want to disabuse the minds of people who know nothing about agriculture of the belief that there is a wave of prosperity passing over agriculture at present. That is not really the case. I know that the position of the farmer is much improved compared with what it was a few years ago. The price he is getting for wheat and other produce is better, but when we take into account the reduction in the fertility of the soil arising from taking crops, without a proper rotation, out of the land under the compulsory tillage scheme, it will be realised that the farmer's position is not so greatly improved.

We are drawing on the fertility of the soil at present, and the farmers are encroaching on their capital by tilling their land and taking corn crops off it. We do not disagree with that. In this emergency period, it is necessary; but this is not a time at which we can afford to spend lavishly, as if our agriculture were in a real sound economic condition. It is not possible to put agriculture in that sound economic condition in present circumstances. I hope that the land will be able to withstand the strain which may be imposed on it during the years of war that may lie ahead; but I suggest to the Minister that every effort should be made to assist the farmer in settling down to a sound rotational system, and in getting away from the system of corn crop after corn crop.

I am very glad—it was a step in the right direction—that it has been decided to consider first year's seeds as part of the tillage crop for this year. I believe that in present circumstances the Minister is doing all he possibly can to assist the farming community, but if it were possible to give better conditions to the agricultural worker, I should like to see them given to him. I believe, and I always advocated, that the agricultural worker and the people on the land should get a higher standard of living than workers in the towns. We talk about this problem of men running from the land into the towns, but while there are men in industrial employment drawing higher wages than men working on the land, that condition of things will prevail. The only way in which we can reverse the position is by giving a higher standard to the man who works on the land.

Mr. Larkin

A Daniel; yea, a Daniel.

Captain Giles

This has been a very important debate, but it was, at the same time, a very mixed debate, and unfortunately for the back benchers, they have had to listen for a long time to long-winded speeches, much of which was nonsense. Any ordinary practical Deputy should be able to say as much as he wants to say in 20 minutes. We were kept too long and it was too boring for many of us who had to sit waiting to take part in the debate. I should like some of these long-winded front benchers on all sides to take note of the position which the back benchers have to put up with.

The debate has gone to two extremes. We had people saying that the farmers were making fortunes and wallowing in wealth, while others said that the farmers were down and out. Neither of these statements is correct. The centre course is the proper line to take. The farmers are doing reasonably well. They are slowly but surely getting on their feet again, but no thanks to the Minister for that.

It is the war which has put them on their feet, and while we do not like to see the war going on for ever, at the back of the farmer's mind, I expect, there is the idea that he would like to see it lasting a little longer. There are men in this country who say that the farmer's position is very bad, but if the farmer is not doing reasonably well, what has carried on the country for the last 20 or 30 years? It is the farmer who has carried the country, and there are too many men at present who say that the farmer is down and out.

The people who argue on these lines. I find, are always people who never worked land properly and who would not work for anybody else. There are too many of these gentlemen who suggest, from a political point of view, that the farmer is down and out. As a farmer, I know that the farmers of my county who work are always able to hold their heads up. We shall have to have a crusade to stop this whining. The most noble position in this country is that occupied by the Irish farmer on an economic holding. He is one of the finest in the country and nearest to his God.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.

The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the 29th March, 1944.