Deputy Blowick has given the following notice:—To draw the Minister for Agriculture's attention to the fact that, as emerged from the reply given by the Minister for Supplies to question No. 13 on to-day's Order Paper, persons using tractors in connection with agricultural operations cannot obtain the necessary fittings to enable them to move their equipment by road without rendering themselves liable to prosecution for damage to the roads, and to ask whether he can make a statement in so far as farming operations are thereby affected.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate: Pneumatic Tyres For Tractors.
To-day, in reply to a question, the Minister for Supplies informed the House that there are no pneumatic tyres or tubes available in this country for agricultural purposes. I want to bring to the notice of the Minister for Agriculture a position that has arisen in my county—and I suppose the same applies to practically every county. The majority of tractors in the country are fitted with steel wheels. The wheels are fitted with either cleats or spade lugs. If the owners of the tractors take them on the road they are liable to prosecution for damaging the roads, and rightly so. There have been a few prosecutions lately in County Mayo. One case is being heard to-day in Castlebar District Court. There are others to be heard on next Wednesday. Two tractor owners are being prosecuted for using on the road steel wheels, as fitted on leaving the factory, and causing alleged damage. These people cannot help themselves. Apparently the pneumatic tyres are not available. Everybody in the House, and nearly every tractor owner, fully appreciates the difficulty that the Minister for Supplies and the Minister for Agriculture have in this respect, but tractor owners find themselves in a very unenviable position, being prosecuted if they use their tractors on the road, and if they leave them idle, the Department of Supplies will cut off their fuel and oil supplies because the tractors are not being used for the purpose for which they obtained them.
This question affects four different Government Departments—the Department of Supplies, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Local Government and the Department of Justice. The situation that I have indicated, I think, shows a deplorable lack of harmony between the different Government Departments. Up to this, tractor owners did take their tractors on the road and they were not prosecuted. This year, when the weather improved, there were two prosecutions and the publicity that they received naturally will deter practically every tractor owner from taking his tractor on the road, with the exception of the five or six in the county who are fortunate enough to have tractors fitted with pneumatic tyres and tubes.
The Minister for Supplies, in reply to my question, said that steel road bands are normally supplied with steel-wheeled tractors for use when the tractors are travelling on the roads. That is quite true, but anybody who has used a tractor hauling either a binder or a threshing mill will know that, while they save the road and save the tractor owner from prosecution, they are a positive danger, even on the slightest hill. There is some chance on a second-class or third-class road that is rough-gravelled, but on a smooth, tarred surface, if you use the road bands and haul a threshing mill, you will not climb the hill. If by some miracle you do succeed in climbing the hill, there is great danger descending on the other side. I witnessed an accident where a threshing mill shoved a tractor that was fitted with smooth road bands down the hill. Therefore, that part of the Minister's reply does not meet the situation by any means.
I want the Minister to get in touch either with the Department of Local Government or the Department of Justice. I hope he will not tell me, as he did on a recent occasion, that I am asking somebody to do something illegal. I do not want that. It must be within the Minister's power to make an Emergency Powers Order to meet a situation such as this, particularly when it threatens to prevent all tractors from travelling the roads with farm machinery. That is very serious at the present moment when work has commenced. I would suggest to the Minister that, if at all possible, he should arrange with the Department of Supplies and, through them, with some of the manufacturing firms, to have the metal road band that goes over the cleats or spade lugs, as the case may be, fitted with, say, an inch thick of rubber. I am sure that is possible. The food supply of the nation at present, and until this emergency ends, must take precedence over practically everything else. I am sure the rubber supplies at present available in the country are not so short that they could not provide an inch of rubber to be fitted to these road bands. That would ease the situation.
I quite appreciate the difficulty that the Minister for Supplies has in obtaining pneumatic tyres and tubes. They were never manufactured in this country and England and the other manufacturing countries that used to supply them are using them for other purposes at the present time. I should like the Minister for Agriculture to set about easing that situation. The tractor owners are not so foolish as to take the tractors on the road and run the risk of prosecution.
I would ask the Minister also to make representations to the Minister for Local Government in this matter. I have travelled a good deal in my county and I have never seen a single case of damage being done to the road by a cleated or spade lugged wheel other than the leaving of the tracks in the tar. That is not serious enough damage to warrant a prosecution. As I have said, there is one case to be heard in the Castlebar district to-day. There is another listed for next week. The effect of that will be felt in the county and possibly through the country. The Minister should make representations to some Department. I will not accept as an answer that I am asking for an illegality. I am not asking for an illegality. I am just pointing out to the Minister, in time, a situation which, if not met, will endanger the food supply of the country for the coming year.
As far as I am concerned, my desire in this matter is to get as many tractors imported as might be necessary for the tillage required and, also, of course, for the operations of threshing and so on. It must be obvious that these tractors will have to appear on the road from time to time, especially in the threshing season, when they must go from place to place. That ends my function as far as tractors are concerned. I need hardly say, however, that when letters are written complaining that people have been prevented from having their tractors on the road, my Department get in touch with the other Departments concerned. The first Department with which we discussed this matter is the Department of Local Government. The Minister for Local Government pointed out to me that it is rather a difficult matter to maintain the roads owing to the fact that he has not got the materials that were available before the war, and that the roads are deteriorating—there is no doubt about that—and that he is very careful not to permit anything to happen that might make these roads worse still.
He pointed out that the maintenance of good roads is at least as important for the farming community as for any other section of the community, because the principal haulage on the roads at present is the haulage of agricultural produce, beet, grain, live stock, etc., as well as the haulage of turf. I cannot find any fault with that reasoning and I think the Minister for Local Government is perfectly correct when he says that it is important to keep the roads in good condition. I do not want to pose as an expert on the maintenance of roads, but I must say that Deputy Blowick is the first, to my knowledge, to claim that these tractors, with these cleats and lugs, etc., are harmless on the roads. It is generally maintained by road engineers that these tractors would do a great deal of harm if permitted to travel on the roads without the wheels being properly covered.
The Department of Justice, of course, hardly comes into this matter at all. It is the function of the Minister for Justice to see that the law is carried out. I do not intend to interfere with the Department of Justice in that way. I am not dismissing Deputy Blowick's plea on the ground that he is asking for the permission of an illegality. He is not, of course, because what he really is asking is that the law should be changed. If the Minister for Local Government believes that a great deal of damage would be done to the roads and that this matter can be got over in another way, then I think the Minister is right in maintaining the law as it is and that the Minister for Justice is right in seeing that the law is carried out.
The next Minister concerned is the Minister for Supplies. He told Deputy Blowick to-day, and he has confirmed it to me since, that there are steel bands available for these tractors. I have not heard anybody seriously contend that these steel bands cannot be used with safety on the roads. Last autumn I saw numbers of tractors with steel bands travelling on the roads and pulling threshing mills after them, sometimes threshing mills and elevators and, so far as I know, there was no mishap. On one occasion, when a tractor was going down a steep hill, the owner had to put a brake on the mill which he was pulling after the tractor. These things can be improvised. We have improvised a lot of things since the emergency started. The owners of tractors are quite as ingenious in these matters as any other class in the community. They have got on all right with these steel bands, which are now available. I do not think that we should take too seriously the complaint that they are dangerous. Of course, as we all know, pneumatic tyres for the tractors that are coming in now are not to be got, but the steel bands are being supplied.
I do not know if it would be possible, either from the point of supply or otherwise, to have thin bands of rubber put on these steel bands, as suggested by Deputy Blowick. I know, of course, that rubber is very scarce and that it would be difficult probably to find rubber for that purpose. Even if rubber were available, I do not know whether it would be feasible or practicable; but we can inquire about that. On the whole, I think that we should rather be thankful that we are able to get these steel bands; because at one time last year it was impossible to get these steel bands, but they came in subsequently. If the steel bands were unobtainable now, as well as rubber tyres, I do not know what we could have done. We probably would have had seriously to consider whether it would be possible to allow tractors without pneumatic tyres or steel bands to travel on the roads. I think that tractor owners should get the steel bands and use them.
The Dáil adjourned at 9.15 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 22nd February, 1945.