On the last occasion that I heard Clann na Talmhan Deputies speaking to a motion in this House they were complaining very bitterly about the enormous and ever-increasing burden of national taxation. To-night they will walk into the Division Lobby to add another couple of million pounds to that enormous and ever-increasing burden for the taxpayers. I was very glad to hear a number of Deputies on this side of the House, particularly Deputies from the west, who understand the conditions of the small holders, point out to Clann na Talmhan that if this £2,000,000 is to be collected off the taxpayers instead of the farmers and if additional taxes are put on commodities like tea, sugar and tobacco, the small farmers will pay more by way of increased taxes than they are paying as rates. That cannot be denied.
It was interesting to notice that only a certain section of the Clann na Talmhan Party showed any great enthusiasm about this motion. On the last occasion on which we debated this motion for a long time only two members of the Clann na Talmhan Party were present. It is noticeable that those who come from districts in which the majority of the farmers are small farmers have not taken much part in this debate. I should like Deputy Donnellan, the next time he can take a little time off from abusing Fianna Fáil, when he goes round the country to explain to the small farmers that he addresses how it came about that his particular Party in the Dáil was proposing that they should pay more in taxation in relief of rates in order to take the burden off the larger farmers.
No one has made a case, not even Deputy Hughes, for complete derating, or for this additional £2,000,000 of derating, according to the scheme set out here in the Clann na Talmhan motion. No one has made a case for it on the basis that the farmers want it or are in need of it. Indeed, Deputy Hughes went so far as to say that farming conditions were good and Deputies Cogan and Blowick assented to that statement. Why, then, is it proposed, when farming conditions are good, to add £2,000,000 to what Clann na Talmhan called, in another motion, "the enormous and ever-increasing burden of national taxation"? I would like to see the farmers always well off and getting a reasonable income, but one of the most disastrous things that could happen the farming community is that people who claim to speak as their representatives should cry "wolf" when there is no wolf there. Deputies Hughes and Cogan know as well as I do that there is no necessity to cry "wolf" in relation to this matter and that, if there is a farmer who is not making a living at present on the land, the best thing he can do for himself and the country is to change his occupation.
Allusion was made here to the derating put in operation in England and the Six Counties. It is not true to say, as Deputy Cogan said, that the farmers either in England or the Six Counties are completely immune from rates. Deputy Blowick repeated that here to-night, but then seemed to get some doubts about it. They have still to pay rates on their houses and, in a few rural districts which I looked up in the Six Counties, I noticed that, a few years after the land was derated, the poundage went up on what was left in the houses by more than double.
Now, I do not believe, first of all, that our farmers are in such a plight at the moment that the rest of the community should come to their assistance. As has always happened in wartime, when food is short, food producers do better than when there is a surplus in times of peace. The amount of money which our farmers got for their produce has increased greatly since 1938 or 1939. The value of their produce, that is, the net produce after taking from the gross output the amount which they paid for seeds, manures, and so on, in 1938 was £41.1 millions, at 1938 prices.
In 1944, the value of the net output in current prices was £90,000,000. Now, surely we should realise that the other sections of the community have not had values or wages increased to anything like that extent, from £41,000,000 to £90,000,000? I do not think it would be fair to ask the general taxpayer, in present circumstances, to bear any increased burden, for the purpose of giving any further relief in rates to the farmers at this time. I think the farmers are ill-served by the Deputies who make such a claim on their behalf at present.
Deputy Cogan made a statement which he made here on another occasion. I corrected him then, and I have to correct him again, to see if I can get him to accept the facts. He said there has been a reduction in the volume of agricultural output in the last five or six years. The truth of the matter is that, between 1938 and 1944, there was the increase in the value of net output that I have given, from £41,000,000 to £90,000,000; and taking the volume of 1944 and valuing it at 1939 prices, there was an increase in the net volume of output of 8 per cent. It went up from £41.1 millions to £43.9 millions. During the war, notwithstanding all their difficulties, the fact that machinery and parts were hard to get and that artificial manures were short, the farmers raised the volume of output by 8 per cent. during those years.
Anyone who thinks that 1 or 2 per cent. increase per year is small should recall that, in the 1920's, when there was what the Americans regarded as a very big increase in industrial efficiency from 1920 to 1929, they used to boast that the industrial efficiency went up by 3 per cent. per annum. In America at that time, one need only have the money to buy anything he wanted in the line of machinery and so on, yet the American industrialist, with plenty of money and a big market for the output, with the urge to cut costs owing to high wages, only increased the industrial efficiency in those years at an average of 3 per cent.
During the war, with all the handicaps that our farmers had to contend with, they increased their volume of net output by 2 per cent. per annum. I think that that was a magnificent achievement and that they are to be congratulated upon it.
I also think that we should look at these figures from another angle. Even at present day prices, prices which are very much higher in many respects than either the English or the Six-County farmers are getting, and twice as high as the Canadian, Australian, New Zealand or American farmers are getting for many commodities, that £90,000,000 is produced from over 12,000,000 arable acres and it really represents only an output of £8 per acre. That is a figure that is disappointing. It is a figure that will have to be improved if our national income is to go up in terms of real goods and if the standard of life of our people is to be improved. We can only distribute what we have got and, if we want to distribute more agricultural goods, we shall have to produce more.
If Deputy Cogan or Deputy Hughes comes forward here with a proposition, with any sort of promise in it, designed to increase the volume of output per acre, I would welcome it, even though it might cost something to do it. But the proposition that they have put forward, and spoken in favour of here, is not designed to increase the output per acre, and would not have that effect. It has been much more valuable for our community, and for our farmers, too, that the approach of the Government in helping the farmers took the shape of encouraging them by fixed, guaranteed prices, high prices in many respects, for the goods they were prepared to produce. It was costly from a monetary point of view to produce the wheat that we produced before and during the war, but that production saved our country in time of need and I think that will be always a good policy for our people to pursue— to be in the position to say at all times that if they cannot get produce from abroad, they will be able to produce a fair quantity for themselves.
The price that we are paying for wheat, even at the moment, on the basis of wheat dried down to 14 per cent. of moisture, is £7 a ton more than we can get Canadian wheat for, landed in Dublin. The £7 a ton extra that is given to our farmers for that wheat would go far, and probably might even surpass, the figure of a couple of millions which is asked for in the motion. I think the money is much better spent in giving the farmers of this country that much extra for their wheat rather than simply doling it out to them in relief of rates. The community at least, in giving a subsidy for wheat, get value for it, and they do not pay until delivery is made. No wheat production, no money. But if they were to spend the £2,000,000 simply in relief of rates, not an ounce of wheat would be produced.
Take beet. Last year I saw an estimate somewhere that the farmers got £2,500,000 for their beet. I think it is better to give the farmers an extra price for their beet, even though we could get sugar from abroad at any particular time. Give them a price for their beet that will encourage them to grow it, so that this country will be preserved in a crisis and will not have to go begging for sugar from other countries.
If Deputy Cogan would only get rid of this habit of his of trying to get votes in 1946 on the lines of certain arguments that were put forward by Fianna Fáil 20 years ago, and would get alive in 1946 and face the problems of 1946 and put forward solutions for them, it would be better for the country and, in the long run, it would be better for his Party in getting votes. It is true that in 1931 the Fianna Fáil Party, when the farmers were very badly off, proposed that we should hold the land annuities and give half of them to farmers in relief of rates. It is true that Fianna Fáil, when it was elected as the Government, said that instead of giving the £2,000,000 to the farmers in relief of rates they would give it to them in the form of halving the land annuities.
We changed our minds, told the people what we were going to do and since then we have fought I do not know what number of general elections. The people knew and were satisfied with the reasons we gave them for applying the £2,000,000 which we promised them in relief of land annuities rather than in relief of rates. If I had £2,000,000 to-morrow, if somebody gave me £2,000,000 to spend as I would like and I wanted to use it to benefit the agricultural community, I would not give it in relief of rates and I certainly would not give it under any circumstances in relief of rates on land.
Deputy Hughes and Deputy Cogan differed on whether or not it was advisable to derate farm buildings. I thought Deputy Cogan had made rather the better argument there. If we are to spend money on the relief of rates, if the farmers' conditions are bad, it would be better, from the point of view of the community, to relieve the farmer in relation to his buildings rather than in relation to his land. By increasing our agricultural buildings, I have no doubt that we would increase our agricultural output, and I hope that the farmers, as soon as material becomes available, will increase their farm buildings, their stores and sheds, in order to put themselves in a better position to increase agricultural output.
Deputy Cogan admitted that his resolution was somewhat vague as to what he meant and as to whether he meant to apply the relief of rates to agricultural buildings as well as to agricultural land. The motion is a little vague and it simply reflects Deputy Cogan's mind on this whole matter. Deputy Hughes, however, talks about rates on agricultural land being the same as a tax on raw material. That is just clap-trap.
The whole of the taxation of this country, both local and national, can be regarded as a tax on our total national income, but if we want the services which the community is providing for itself, such as roads, health services, social services and public services of all kinds, the money to be spent on them must be got somewhere, and whatever proportion of our total national output is consumed by the people to whom we make these various payments has to be subtracted from what is left for the producers. At the moment, that proportion is fairly high, and the only way in which we can increase the services demanded by the people who want better roads, better health services, better pension services and so on, without taking a bigger proportion still from the producers, is to increase out national output.
That is why I say that, while I reject this motion, I would welcome suggestions from Deputies at any time even though they do cost money, if they have a fair hope of increasing the national output of goods and services so that we may have them distributed to the community and the farmers particularly will have to set themselves to increasing this miserably low output per acre of £8. If the average farmer came up even to the second best among our farmers, that output per acre could easily be doubled.
To listen to Deputy Cogan and Deputy Hughes, one would think the Government had no interest in agriculture and had done nothing to relieve the farmers during its term of office. Apart altogether from the guaranteed prices for wheat, beet and so on, and apart altogether from the £2,000,000 which went towards halving the land annuities, the supplementary agricultural grants voted each year amount to £1,270,000. The Department of Agriculture, which is a Department whose expenses largely consist of educational and research work on behalf of the agricultural community and of schemes for the development of various agricultural projects, is costing about £1,000,000. There are, too, the agricultural produce subsidies and for dairy produce alone last year the amount estimated to be spent was £825,000. Deputies saw recently the White Paper issued by the Government showing that, for the next five years, we propose to guarantee certain prices to the farmers for milk in relation to costs. That is much more valuable work than merely giving the farmers a dole when, as Deputy Hughes and Deputy Cogan admit, they do not want it, when conditions are good.
Apart from these various schemes, there is a scheme which I regard as very valuable, that is, the farm improvements scheme, costing around £350,000 per year. I should much prefer to spend £2,000,000 in that way, in improving the land of the country, than in merely giving it in relief of rates at a time when farmers do not want it. The subsidies given in that way for farm improvements not only improve the farmer's capacity to make an income but improve the national income by increasing the farmer's capacity to produce goods for the sustenance of the people.
All through this Book of Estimates, there will be found, in most of the Estimates, sums of money which are being spent in order to educate the farmers to make better use of their land and in order to give them and their dependents relief in case of necessity. I appeal to the farmers at this time not to go about crying "wolf" when they are not in danger, but to bend themselves to the job of increasing their production, of improving their land, so that in a permanent way, they will be better off and the nation will benefit by their efforts. I will conclude now as I understand the proposer of the motion is to be allowed 20 minutes to reply.
Mr. Corry rose.
