Yes. To some extent the same applies to agricultural machinery. I do not think we could claim that agricultural machinery was being dumped here, but it was being sent in at a price that our own manufacturers claimed they could not compete with. They got tariffs which saved their business, and as a result, in the emergency we had to turn to horse-drawn machinery, mowing machines, ploughs, harrows, corn drills, and potato drills. We would not be in a position to manufacture all that machinery. We might have got some consignments of imported machinery if we had no manufacturers here. That is the point with regard to the protection for machinery, looking at the question from the agricultural point of view, and leaving aside the bigger question of protection from the point of view of employing our own people, keeping them at home, and using our own money.
These are the usual arguments in favour of a general policy of protection. To go further, with regard to the manufacture of articles, Deputy Dillon claims that farmers should be free to buy anywhere they liked; that there should be no tariffs or anything else on what comes in. With regard to the protection of the agricultural industry itself, some Deputies suggested that we were inclined to change our policy. I do not know why they say that. If they expect that there is going to be any change of policy they will be very much disappointed when policy comes to be announced regarding wheat growing or cereal crops. I suppose Deputies are aware that in many areas it was impossible to get the ordinary equipment required to go on with tillage work for the emergency. There were no ploughs, no harrows, no horses and no ploughmen. In fact, there are wide areas where a man could not be got who could plough with a pair of horses. Men can be got who are able to manage tractors. Deputy Dillon was right there. It is easier to plough with a tractor than with a pair of horses. The art of ploughing was gone, the men were gone, the horses were gone, the machinery was gone, as well as knowledge of how to grow cereals. Some farmers in such areas sent for the inspectors to advise them when wheat was ripe.
Deputies know that the trend up to 1941 was that tillage was going down and down. If we had not stepped in and offered some inducement to farmers to grow wheat, and even to go further than to induce them, or if you like, practically compelling them to do so, and inducing maize millers to purchase a certain amount of oats and barley, the position would be much worse in 1939. There would be much bigger tracts of country where there would be no knowledge of growing wheat, no horses and no implements. There would be no seed to go on with and no knowledge of tillage. I do not know if we could have succeeded in getting any production worth while going during the emergency. I do not know if Deputies who study higher politics believe that the war which has just ended is going to be the last war for all time. I do not think we should pin our faith to that.
There may be another war in 20 or 25 years' time. Keeping that in mind I do not think that this Government is likely to go back to the former policy. I am quite sure that if the Opposition Party came in they would not go back to the 1931 policy. I am quite sure that they would maintain some measure of protection for farmers and induce or compel them, as the case may be, to keep up a certain amount of tillage. That must be done. The only thing necessary to consider is— whether it is going to be inducement or compulsion, not whether we should drop this policy or not. It is a case of how it is going to be done, and how tillage is to be kept going. I do not want any Deputy to conclude that we should keep tillage at the present percentage. That may not be necessary when all danger is over.
As far as the food situation goes, we are not out of the wood yet. We will probably have to keep tillage on for a year or two longer. Surely, Deputy Dillon does not expect Deputies or the ordinary public to believe a man who said that he would be ashamed to be caught with wheat or beet on his farm; he does not expect the public or Deputies to believe he was right when he made that statement, and he does not expect the public or Deputies to believe that those who advocated wheat growing were wrong. We do not think we were wrong. We have no intention of changing. Coming to a more practical problem as to how far we should go, Deputy Dillon said one thing that we can all agree with, that so far as the economics of growing or producing our own requirements are concerned, they are a matter of degree. He said that obviously we would not grow oranges, because it would be uneconomic to do so here, but quite obviously we would produce butter or bacon. But in the Deputy's view we should not grow wheat. What is the difference? We could import wheat before the war for 15/- a barrel. We paid our farmers 30/-.
Deputy Dillon thinks we were wrong because we paid farmers double the amount for which we could bring wheat in. But the Deputy has no doubt at all that we could produce bacon and butter for export. At the present time our creameries are getting about 240/- per cwt. for butter. I am quite sure that no Deputy would have the courage to tell me that we were giving too much for butter or that we should give farmers less for their milk. Would not every Deputy, including Deputy Dillon, say: "You will have to continue giving 240/- here, although Great Britain can get butter at present for about half that price." The same applies to bacon. Our factories are selling bacon at 200/- per cwt. Deputies know what the factories are paying for pigs. No Deputy is going to tell me that the farmer should be paid less for pigs. Nobody is going to advocate that. Great Britain is getting bacon at about half the price paid here.
Then there is the position with regard to butter and bacon. We were told by Deputy Dillon that it is quite a sane policy to produce butter and bacon for export at about half the price that we think our farmers should expect, but that it is an insane policy to grow wheat, when it costs about double what we could import it for before the war. If to grow our own wheat costs double the price at which we could import it, surely it is more sensible to have the things that we use ourselves, rather than the things we export. As far as we can, I think we should do both. Whatever Deputy Dillon or other Deputies may argue about what I say now as to developing exports as being inconsistent with anything I said in the past, I say again that we should have a protective policy within reason to produce here what we want for ourselves, such as wheat, beet, etc., and at the same time try to develop, as far as we can, our export trade.
I may have said certain things against an export trade in the past but I never believed we should not have an export business so far as we could develop it. Deputies who were in the House in the period from 1932 to 1934 will remember that the Government went to a lot of trouble in seeking for export markets, so that it cannot be said that we did not believe in export trade. In 1932, we had to put a tariff on dressed beef coming in here because we found that we could import beef more cheaply than we were producing our own beef. That is all a matter of comparison, as Deputy Dillon said. The question is where to draw the line.
Deputy Dillon spoke about the reduction in poultry and eggs. There is no doubt there is a reduction there but, as I haye said before in this House, if we want to reverse that and to turn the decline in pigs and poultry into an increase, the first essential is to get at the truth—the real cause. Deputy Dillon is not interested in that in the slightest. If we are to discuss the real cause of the decline, we shall have to proceed without Deputy Dillon, because he is more interested in making those silly, student debating points that he learned when he was young—he has not developed beyond that—than in trying to find a solution for anything that may be wrong. Some Deputies say that we made no plans but we did. We thought that a war might come and we had plans prepared. We considered that it might even be necessary, in order to feed the population, to get out of pigs and poultry altogether. That was fairly obvious at the time. If we were bringing in 500,000 tons of wheat and 500,000 tons of feeding-stuffs and if we found ourselves completely cut off from other countries and in a desperate way, our first duty would be to grow what we wanted for human beings and, if necessary, to let both pigs and poultry go. We did not let them go. Poultry went down by about 20 per cent. and pigs by half. That was due to want of feeding-stuffs. Everybody knows that. Now, the question is to get that type of production back. Egg production has come back to a great extent. When I brought in a Bill, five or six years ago, to improve the production and marketing of eggs, I remember distinctly advancing the argument that, in the City of Dublin at the time, the great majority of the people would not eat an egg because they were so uncertain whether the egg would be good or bad. We discussed the legislation here. I think that everybody approved of the Bill and it has had a very good effect. It is estimated, not by me but by those who take the statistics, that the home consumption of eggs has increased by 50 per cent. since 1939. I believe that that is the result of the legislation we brought in to ensure that people would get a fresh egg when they bought one. In other words, the people of Dublin are not now afraid to buy an egg, because they have a fair assurance that it will be all right. We have, therefore, that increase in the production of eggs which is hidden away, because the export figure is the only one at which people look and that is not nearly as good as it was in 1939. The number of people consuming eggs and the number of eggs are going up, and we may hope to reach again our export business in eggs before long. That is one of the commodities in respect of which we have a real advantage in the British market. We are so close to the British market that we can give them fresh eggs more easily than any other country. As Deputies are aware, however, the British are making a valiant attempt to be self-sufficient in egg-production.
Deputy Heskin said tillage had given us additional food and had not reduced the number of cattle. That is only part of the truth. From 1939 to the present time, we increased our tillage by 1,000,000 acres and our cattle by 300,000. The number of cattle went up. We had the same experience in the last war. Every Deputy will, probably, have his own explanation of the fact to which I am now about to refer, but there is no apparent explanation— that, in times of increased tillage, the number of cattle does not go down but the number of sheep goes down. The number of sheep went down very considerably during the 1914-18 war, and it also went down during the last war. Deputy Beegan suggested that we should ease off tillage somewhat. We cannot, because the food situation is not any better than it was. It is the opinion of all the experts from outside the country who have been speaking of the situation in Europe that the food situation is much worse than it was. I think that there is no chance whatever that we can ease off the tillage regulations for 1946. However, that need not be decided for a few months more.
Deputy Heskin complained that the co-operative societies were getting hold of the machinery being distributed and thought that it was very unfair. He also complained of co-operative societies engaging in retail trading, buying farms and producing pigs, and so forth. I should like Deputy Heskin to know that no Government or Minister could interfere with farmers—even if they thought they should—who want to combine to produce, sell, process, or buy a thing. I do not think that the Government should interfere. It is argued that the co-operative society running a shop has a great advantage over the ordinary trader because it has not to pay income-tax. That is a debatable point, but it is not one with which we need deal at the moment.
Deputy Giles put a question about pedigree seed-wheat. We hope to have 40,000 barrels of high-class pedigree seed-wheat after the coming harvest. If all of it is properly saved and distributed, it should be sufficient to sow about half our acreage this year. After that, we shall have a large amount of seed of a, more or less, pedigree character, but the foundation pedigree seed will continue to be produced. All our seed-barley might be regarded as pedigree seed. We are making arrangements for oats on the same lines. We may have a stock of 4,000 or 5,000 barrels after the coming harvest. That we shall increase rapidly and, in the course of a few years, we should have a substantial supply of very good seed-oats.
Deputy Beegan made a point which seemed to be resented by members of Clann na Talmhan. He said that we should not look upon the farmer as a man in poor circumstances or as a mendicant, but that we should look upon his occupation as the most dignified and most independent of all. Now, I think that Deputy Beegan has a perfect right to say that. Nobody in this House has a monopoly of the right to talk about the farmers, and I do not see why Deputy Beegan should not have the right to say that. I agree with him that the farmers are the most independent and dignified of the members of this community. They have proved that all through the centuries. They have always taken a leading part in every movement for independence, including independence movements in our own time.
There is another matter about which we should be clear. There is no use in any Deputy saying that he advocated water, electricity, and so on, being brought into the farmers' houses, and claiming credit when that is being accomplished. It is not a question of who first advocated such schemes. I am sure that we all agree that the farmers should have the same amenities as the townsmen, and it does not matter who first asked for these amenities. We are aiming at the provision of water for the farms, but the first step towards that is rural electrification. When electricity is brought to every farmer's house, then the water will follow because, where a farmer has not got water at present, he will then have the electric power to bring the water to his farm, and after that, naturally, will follow proper sanitation. At the same time, I do not see why we should not try to do something about putting in proper stoves, cooking facilities, and so on, in farmers' houses. We should aim —and I am sure that every Deputy of any Party in this House will agree—at having the country house just as well equipped as the city house, so that the farmers will have proper lighting, heating, hot and cold water, proper sanitation, and so on, so that if a girl has to make a choice between marrying a farmer and settling down in the country or settling down in the city, she shall at least have the same amenities in the country as in the town or city. Naturally, it will take a long time to achieve that, but I think we should be able to reach that point.
Deputy Beegan said that so far as the men were concerned they have no such drudgery now on the farms as they had in the past, but that the women are still under the same conditions of drudgery. I think that the men on the farms are also suffering under conditions of drudgery. I think I mentioned here the setting up of an inquiry into such matters, and I have been informed that the members of that committee will report on farm buildings. Now, I am very anxious to provide the same amenities for the woman in the farmer's house as her sister in the city or town enjoys, but I am also anxious to see that the farmer and his sons should have as decent living conditions as possible on the farm. We should do everything possible when we get this report, to see that the farmer is provided with proper housing, well-paved and concreted yards, and so on, so that work in the winter time will be as pleasant as possible, and then we should do everything that we can do to enable him to purchase machinery. I think that every Party is agreed on that, and the question is how to get these things done in as reasonable a way as possible. Naturally, nobody expects the State to pay for everything. The farmer will have to contribute his share, but at any rate we should try, as soon as we can, to get these things going.
Deputy Donnellan quoted two Ministers who, he said, contradicted one another. He quoted the Minister for Supplies talking about the matter of financial credit for the farmers, and the Minister for Finance claiming that the farmers were rolling in wealth, and had money in the bank. I do not know whether the statements were made in exactly that way, or whether they were properly interpreted by Deputy Donnellan, or if they were incompatible, but even if they are incompatible, does the Deputy think that all Ministers must agree on a particular matter? Deputy Donnellan has stood on the same platform with other Deputies, but do they always agree on every item? Certainly not. The same applies to Ministers. One might be of opinion that the farmers are well off, and the other might be of the opinion that they are not well off. I think that that is quite natural, and it will get us nowhere to be talking of two Ministers opposing one another in that way.
I think it was Deputy Blowick who raised the question of the restoration of soil fertility. Now, that is a very important matter. I think it was about three years ago that we brought in a scheme for giving a credit docket to every farmer for every barrel of wheat delivered either to a miller or a seed assembler. The reason we gave it in the case of wheat was that wheat is sold off the land. After all, if a man grows oats, it is generally sown back to the land again, and, therefore, the fertility of the soil is not removed, but wheat is sold off the land, and, therefore, a farmer who has been growing a lot of wheat during the emergency will need more fertilisers than a farmer who has not been growing wheat. These dockets are there, and they will be converted into cash for the farmer as soon as fertilisers are available in fair quantities, and I need hardly say that everything possible will be done to import fertilisers as rapidly and as cheaply as possible to help the farmer to restore the fertility of his soil.
