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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 12 Jun 1946

Vol. 101 No. 12

Committee on Finance. - The Adjournment—Pig, Pork and Bacon Industry.

I was prompted to put down two questions, which appeared on the Order Paper to-day, because I felt that the House would be concerned to have full and frank information when we were going to legislate on an important branch of agriculture, and in view of the fact that legislation dealing with this industry, for which the Minister was responsible, might be written down as a failure, I felt that the House would be anxious to ensure that the problem should now be constructively handled. For that reason I pressed the Minister to publish the report of the Departmental committee he set up. In view of the importance of this matter we should be clear as to what the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy stated. On page 91, paragraph 314 of their report they state:—

"The survey which we carried out in the course of our inquiry clearly indicated, however, that there are a number of important problems affecting agriculture which should be examined and reported upon. We do not believe that it would be possible for a part-time body, such as this committee, to carry out the investigations we have in mind. We consider that a small full-time body would be more suitable for the purpose, and we accordingly recommend the setting up of a body to be known as the agricultural inquiry and advisory council, consisting of a chairman and two permanent members, with powers to co-opt from time to time, subject to Ministerial sanction, other persons with technical or special knowledge of the particular subjects delegated to the council for investigation and report."

A number of subject are set out, the second one being "the processing and marketing of pigs and bacon." I do not think it could be interpreted that the intention was to have a Departmental committee whose report would not be published. I cannot understand the attitude of the Minister, when he says that the investigations made by the Committee on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy were of an informal nature. In the second minority report made by Dr. Kennedy he states: "Responsible witnesses have given it as their opinion that no scheme of reorganisation or control will be effective while the existing system of ownership is maintained." We are rather puzzled by the Minister's attitude. It will be observed from the White Paper dealing with the reorganisation of the pigs and bacon industry that, having dealt with the history of the industry in recent years, the report sets out certain objectives which should be aimed at if the future of this important industry was to be secured. On page 10, there is set out Government policy for the implementation of these objectives. If the Minister for Agriculture wants this House to be helpful in regard to legislation for a new plan for the reorganisation of the pig and bacon industry he should be frank with the House and put all the facts before it. I submit that the House is definitely entitled to that information. I do not think it is fair to the committee merely to present their recommendations and say that is Government policy, as far as the type of machinery that is necessary to achieve these objectives.

A number of commissions were set up and they concerned themselves with this problem. In 1938, there was a committee of agriculture which made definite recommendations. Then we had the Vocational Commission which also made recommendations. There was also the Second Minority Report on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy which made definite recommendations. The Minister set up a Departmental committee, ignoring completely the recommendations made by various commissions that sat in public. He bases his plans on a secret document —one that he has refused to publish or to make available to the House. I want to know if the Minister still persists in refusing to publish the report of this Departmental committee.

I take it that the report was a reasoned one, and that the members gave reasons why it was necessary to set out the objectives that appear on page 9 of the White Paper. I take it they made certain definite recommendations. When replying to my questions the Minister stated that the answer to the first part was in the affirmative, that the committee's objectives in the White Paper were correct, but that with regard to the second part such recommendations as were made in the report of the Departmental committee referred to, were in the nature of advice tendered in the course of day to day duties by officers of his Department and he did not propose to publish the terms of the committee's reports.

Why not? Why should not the House be entitled to full information about this matter? If the Minister thought that the committee was a suitable and capable one to examine the problem, particularly in the light of the history of that branch of agriculture, I am sure he realises the importance of ensuring that the plans he is going to implement by legislation are plans that will bear fruit. If we are not able to do it at this stage I am afraid there is no future for the pig industry.

When the Minister is about to bring in a Bill surely the House is entitled to know the reasons for his proposals, and on what grounds these proposals were made. The House is entitled to know whether the Minister has departed from the recommendations made by the committee, and, if so, why he has done so. Is there anything in the report of which the Minister is ashamed? Does he disagree with the committee's recommendations? Is the House expected to make decisions with regard to legislation, dealing not merely with the pig industry but with the bacon industry, and which, so far as we can gather from the White Paper, is to be very drastic, and to give drastic dictatorial powers to a particular body?

Is the House not to be told whether or not that is necessary, whether the scheme of amalgamation and the closing down of certain industries is necessary, to what extent redundancy has occurred, whether any examination has been made by the committee, and, if so, to what extent, and on what they base the conclusion at which they arrived? Surely if we are to do our business properly, we are entitled to all that information, and, if the Minister intends to persist in the attitude he has taken up, we are entitled to hear why he has adopted that attitude and why he has departed from the recommendation of the Committee on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy that a permanent body be set up to deal with these matters.

Reading that paragraph any reasonable man would come to the conclusion that that body would be one which would sit in public, a body before which any section of the industry could go and tender their views and a body of which the report would be available to the public, as well as the evidence submitted to it. If the House and the country are to be asked to make up their mind on such a matter as this, we are entitled to all the information available. The Minister's attitude is: "A document has been presented to me. I refuse to make that document available to the House, but I expect the House to agree with the proposals in the Bill I am submitting." That is a shocking attitude for the Minister to adopt. He argues that this is a Departmental committee. Why should it be a Departmental committee?

In the second question to-day, I asked the Minister if he was prepared to publish the names of the witnesses who gave evidence before this Committee on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy and to publish the evidence, and he says that these witnesses were not informed that their evidence would be published and that the examination was of a more or less informal nature. I do not think anybody reading Dr. Kennedy's report could come to the conclusion that it was of an informal nature. He says:—

"Responsible witnesses have given it as their opinion that no scheme of reorganisation or control will be effective while the existing system of ownership is maintained."

Why is it that the committee did not report on this important branch of agriculture? A considerable amount of evidence was submitted. Why did they pass over that branch of agriculture? Were they told not to deal with the pig industry? Why all this secrecy, if the Minister is anxious, as I presume he is, to solve this problem in respect of which he has failed three or four times already? Even before the emergency, the pig population showed a downward trend, and, during the emergency, there was a steep fall in the number of pigs. I do not blame the Minister for that, but he knows very well that, even before the emergency, the condition of the industry was not satisfactory.

If the Minister expects the House to be helpful in framing legislation which is to be useful and beneficial to the industry, he is taking up a very wrong attitude in refusing to make all the facts and all the information available to the House. I take it that, if this committee did its work properly, it submitted a reasoned report, but, in this White Paper, no reasons are given for the proposals set out on the last page. The Minister is treating the House in a very summary way and he is not being fair to the committee. I again appeal to him to change his attitude and to make available to the House and the country the full report of that committee.

The Committee on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy recommended in their final report that a small permanent body be set up to deal with certain subjects with which they had not time to deal. One of these was pigs and bacon, but I could not see how it would be possible to get a small number of competent men to deal with these subjects on a full-time basis, unless we went to the Civil Service. That explains why the personnel was chosen from the Civil Service. It was estimated that the committee should be able to deal with these subjects in two to three years, and I do not think it would be possible to get, say, a businessman to give his full time to a job like that, if he is to be told at the end of two or two and a half years that his services are no longer required. Deputy Hughes says that I ignored all the recommendations of commissions which previously sat in relation to this pigs and bacon business. That is not true, because the biggest report issued was that of the Pig Industries Tribunal in 1933.

I go back as far as 1938 only.

That was a very exhaustive report and the first Pigs and Bacon Act was based very closely on the recommendations of that tribunal. I dealt with it at length on the Estimate and I admitted that it was not altogether successful, but I said on that occasion that I had followed the report of that tribunal and had had the unanimous support of the Dáil for the Bill that was introduced. We have now to face up to the fact that it was not a success and the time has come when we should endeavour to make things right. I do not know that Deputy Hughes can make any point as to the Dáil not being in a position to deal with this new Bill, at whatever time it is introduced, because of their not having the reports before them of the various committees and so on. After all, very big measures have passed through this House dealing with matters in which no commission of inquiry ever sat at all; despite that fact, Deputies were in an admirable position to discuss the subject matters of such Bills.

I was asked as to why it was not possible for this emergency committee to deal with pigs and bacon. All I know is that the entire personnel of that committee interviewed me in that connection. Up to that time the chairman presented the various interim reports himself; but on the last occasion, when the report on tillage, feeding stuffs and so on was being presented, the entire committee came and handed me the report. At the same time they asked me to read a particular paragraph in the report. I do not remember at the moment what the exact paragraph was, but in that they said that they felt they could no longer devote themselves to these various subjects and they recommended that a small full-time committee should be set up to deal with the matters left over. That was their own decision.

I do not agree with Deputy Hughes's suggestion that the pig industry was declining before the emergency. As a matter of fact there were in this country in 1940-41 as many pigs as there had been in prior years to that; 1931 was an extremely high year and it would not be fair to make a comparison with that, but there were as many pigs as there were in at least half the years between 1923-31.

The important issue in this is whether the reports of a Departmental committee, or a report issued by officials of a Department, should be published or not. Now I hold very strongly that such reports should not be published.

I do not think the Minister is entitled to call it a Departmental committee, or treat it as such.

We will say a report issued by officials of a Department. I shall give my reasons now as to why I think a report should not be published. A Minister is answerable to the Dáil and officials of a Department are not. A Minister is advised by the permanent officials of his Department; sometimes, perhaps, he may reject their advice, but not very often. It must be admitted by everybody I think that the officials we have in the various Departments are very able men and very painstaking in their work. In practically all cases, therefore, they give very excellent and very sound advice. At the same time the Minister will sometimes differ from his officials and, while grateful for their advice, he will say that he does not accept it because he thinks otherwise. Now I have found from experience—and I am sure anyone who knows anything about our Departments will agree with me in this—that the really good official is the man who will argue very strongly even though he knows that in the long run you are not going to agree with him; and the bad official is the man who tries to find out in advance what your opinions are and then tenders the advice which he thinks you would like to get. Now he is no good. The good official is the man who holds to his own opinion and argues strongly in favour of it and endeavours to convince the Minister that he is right; of course, when his advice is turned down, like a good official he carries out his Minister's orders.

What then would be the position if the Minister were to publish the advice he receives from his officials? If he agrees that such advice should be published, if you like, to avoid embarrassment, and if that advice is carried out to its utmost limits that means then bureaucracy pure and simple because the Minister is no longer responsible to the Dáil. The officials are then responsible for the policy and the Minister is merely there to defend the officials after they have made a decision. Or, let us take the other side of the picture: suppose, that the report is published and the Minister then says he does not agree with it. That could lead to a very serious position in my opinion because if the Minister disagrees he must state his reasons for doing so and, however meticulous he may be in stating his reasons, the officials may feel that their point of view has not been put with sufficient force. After all, the officials are human like everybody else and they may feel that they are placed in a false position because they have given certain advice which was not substantiated or properly supported by argument in public and they may think they will be labelled "duds" by the general public. If that position should arise you would be then faced with the position where all the officials would descend to the level of what I have already described as the bad official; that is, they would try to find out in advance what the Minister's opinion is and, having found it out, they would then tender advice in accordance with that. When matters reach that stage the higher official is no longer of any use.

As Deputies realise, higher officials have two functions. Their first function is that of administration; that in itself is not a very difficult matter because the Acts and the Orders are there and they merely administer them. That is done without reference to the Minister except perhaps now and again when some new point arises where a direction is necessary or where a case comes in where some slight variation is required because it does not happen to be on all-fours with prior cases of a somewhat similar nature. Once the direction is given the officials then carry out the administration side of it.

But the really important function of the higher officials is to give advice, if the Minister wants it; or if he comes along with some new policy the officials invariably can put forward ideas with regard to that policy. That advice may be that because of their experience and so on they do not believe that it is workable; or, again from their experience, they might even advise the Minister that he should go farther than he proposes. The position is, then, that if a Minister wants his officials to advise him, without fear or favour, that advice must not be published. If such advice is published in the present case that would inevitably lead to a demand for publication in every subsequent case. The officials would naturally become more and more careful about the advice they tendered. To a great extent I think any such attempt at publication on our part would destroy the effectiveness to a very great extent of the higher officials.

Just one question—I asked the Minister had he departed from the recommendations of the committee?

I do not think I should answer that.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, June 13th.

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