Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 16 Dec 1948

Vol. 113 No. 13

Adjournment Debate—Price of Oats.

Mr. Aiken

To-day I had a question to the Minister for Agriculture asking him whether, in view of his promise of a remunerative price for oats and his failure to give such a price to the farmers, he would now compensate the farmers who had sold at 21/- or 22/- a barrel. The Minister replied to that in the negative. I want to call the attention of the House to the fact that the acreage under oats this year went up by 57,000. That increase was secured by the Minister for Agriculture through advertisements promising the farmers a remunerative price and through speeches of his urging the farmers to grow oats. In the Irish Independent of the 3rd March, 1948, the Minister is quoted as follows:—

"I ask you to do all you can to increase the area in barley, oats and potatoes. For each of these three commodities there will be a certain and profitable market all next year."

The Minister went on to say:—

"The more oats the farmer grows, the greater the service to the nation. If any farmer finds himself with a surplus and communicates to the Department of Agriculture, arrangements will be made to put him in contact at once with a purchaser who will take his surplus at a satisfactory price."

In the Irish Times of March 20th, there appeared a rather peculiar advertisement. It was an official advertisement asking the farmers to sow from one to five extra acres of barley or oats, and the farmer was assured that if he did so “he will honestly help the Government and the nation.” The advertisement wound up: “Let us show them,” and it was signed, “James M. Dillon, the Minister for Agriculture.” This was public money spent to advertise an individual. Apart from that aspect of it, there is the further aspect that it asked the farmers to grow this extra 57,000 acres of oats for which they were promised a remunerative price; and, if anybody had any surplus oats, he was to communicate with the Department of Agriculture, when arrangements would be made to put him into contact at once with a purchaser who would take the surplus oats at a satisfactory price. The result of the “grow more oats” campaign was to increase the acreage of oats by 57,000 and to decrease the acreage of wheat by 63,000. We have now to import the wheat that could have been grown on that 63,000 acres, and it will cost us somewhere around $5,000,000. This country will be paying for that over the next 50 years. When the farmers who grew the oats and had a surplus, approached the Minister for Agriculture in the autumn, arrangements were not made in accordance with this promise to put them in touch at once with a buyer who would take the surplus at a satisfactory price. When they approached the Minister for Agriculture, he told them that he was not going to put a floor under the price of oats. In the Irish Independent of the 17th September, 1948, there is a report of a speech made by the Minister for Agriculture at the Waterford Show. I need not read it all, but this is the introductory paragraph:—

"Minimum prices for oats could not be enforced, declared the Minister for Agriculture at Waterford Show yesterday when, at a prize distribution, he explained why he could not fix prices for the crop."

The farmers had been promised a remunerative price, and when they grew 57,000 extra acres the Minister then told them that he could not fix a remunerative price. If any Deputy might think that was a slip of the tongue on the part of the Minister for Agriculture I quote a report of his speech at the Ballyhaise Agricultural School in Cavan on Friday, October 9th, as reported in the following day's papers. The Minister at that time was trying to give an excuse as to why he was not going to fix, the price for the farmers and this is the story he told:—

"There are certain gentlemen who are trying to have a little flutter on the commodity market. They were looking for 50,000 barrels of oats at 25/- per cwt."

—It says a cwt. here, but I take it that it was a barrel—

"but they burned their fingers. They came to him asking him to fix a floor of 25/-, but said the Minister, ‘That cock will not fight'."

That cock hopped it to America and came back here crowing and flapping his wings, boasting about all the eggs that were laid last spring.

Mr. S. Collins

Surely the Deputy has something in common with the Minister about flapping wings.

Mr. Aiken

You would think he was the father of all the hens and chickens in the country. Said the Minister:—

"‘That cock will not fight. As far as I am concerned they can go and eat oats.'

He had watched speculators for a long time and he could tell them now that he was not going to fix any price for oats up or down."

The farmers at that time—the 9th October—whose payments for conacre and in respect of land annuities were due, had no alternative but to sell the oats at any price they could get if they wanted to pay their debts and meet their commitments. The Minister for Agriculture was quite well aware of the situation because in the Irish Independent report of the 10th October he is quoted as saying:—

"In some districts last week farmers sold oats at 21/- or 22/- per barrel to corn merchants."

Again, on the 15th October according to the Irish Independent the Minister said to a deputation from the Grain Committee of the Beet Growers' Association:—

"The Minister confirmed his decision not to fix a minimum price for oats...."

With the knowledge that oats were fetching 21/- and 22/- a barrel and that they were a glut on the market the Minister wanted to make sure that they would be sold cheaply. So, according to the Irish Independent of the 24th October the Minister promised the Mayo County Committee of Agriculture that early in the New Year they would soon have a supply of maize at about 20/- a cwt. Naturally, in expectation of maize at 20/- a cwt. the farmers saw no purpose in holding on to oats and they tried to get rid of them. The Minister would not fix the price. He went to America. It happened that there was a by-election in the offing here and his Deputy announced in the Dáil that he was going to fix a price for oats at 28/- a barrel although his senior was “not going to fix any price for oats up or down.” The Deputy Minister for Agriculture fixed the price and we had the spectacle on the 1st Saturday of the Donegal by-election of advertisements a foot square offering the farmers 28/- a barrel. One of them was to the effect that they were instructed by Mr. James Dillon, B.L., to buy it. On the 1st Saturday there were no advertisements in County Louth although the farmers there had more oats ready to sell than the farmers in County Donegal. However, during the election the advertisement appeared a foot square all over the Donegal papers. I looked over the Derry Journal the other day and on the Friday after the election there was no advertisement for oats.

Mr. S. Collins

The leprechauns are still around Donegal.

Mr. Aiken

I would like to ask the Minister for Agriculture to keep his word to the farmers. He promised them a remunerative price. He appealed to them in every possible way. He asked them to show Fianna Fáil what they could do under his guidance. The men who followed his advice were let down and let down badly. The farmers who could have got a remunerative price for wheat and who changed on the advice of the Minister for Agriculture to oats, secured in some places, not the 42/- or 45/- per barrel that they got under Fianna Fáil——

Mr. Rooney

A scarcity price.

Mr. Aiken

——but as low as 21/- or 22/- per barrel, according to the Minister for Agriculture himself, and very much lower according to the knowledge of some of the Deputies of this House.

Mr. S. Collins

Do you remember the time when you gave them 2/- per barrel?

Mr. Aiken

The question is, can the country afford a Minister for Agriculture who leads the farmers up the garden in that way? We cannot. A farmer cannot change his crop in the middle of the spring or in the middle of the summer. When he bought dear seed last spring on the advice of the Minister for Agriculture and put it in, he had a promise of a remunerative price for everything he could sell. He had a vision of getting 42/- or 45/- per barrel. He was guaranteed 28/- per barrel during the by-election if the Government do not change their mind again. I want to know what is going to happen to the farmer who sold when the Minister for Agriculture said he was going to flood the country with maize, when he said he was not going to put a floor under the oats price, and when he said he was not going to carry out the promise that he made in the spring. What is going to happen to him?

Mr. S. Collins

Did not the Minister tell them not to sell?

Mr. Aiken

If the Minister for Agriculture wants to break his word in this respect he is going to do agriculture in this country irreparable harm. We all know that farmers next year will not be under compulsion to till. We know that the costs of agriculture to the farmers have gone up, that the rates have gone up, that they have more to pay in respect of national health, that they will have to foot costs in respect of various Acts put through this Parliament. They will have greater wages to pay and, with prices lowered for tillage crops, they will naturally tend to go out of tillage. In fact, some of them have already ploughed up their tillage land and have sowed grass. If that is going to continue and if the Minister for Agriculture is not going to live up to the promises he gave to the farmers, if he is going to let them down, then a lot of them will have no option but to go out of tillage and we will have more agricultural labourers lined up with the paper workers and the turf workers looking for jobs elsewhere. Now, that is no laughing matter. Deputy Collins may laugh about it, but all around the country at several general elections they made all sorts of promises about stopping emigration——

Mr. S. Collins

What promises did you make?

Mr. Aiken

——and about full employment for everybody. The farmers have seen this Government in operation. They can have no dependence on any future promise of the Minister for Agriculture if he does not live up to the promise clearly given last spring in regard to the oats. The same thing has happened in regard to potatoes. He said here in the Dáil that £10 13s. 0d. was a poor price, but it was not bad to have a floor of £10 13s. 0d. At the present time the farmers of the country are getting £7 15s. 0d. for a limited supply to the alcohol factories, and £5 in some cases that I know of on the normal market for human consumption, or to other farmers for use.

I would like to see the Minister for Agriculture put an advertisement in Saturday's papers, a foot square, in every part of the country, asking the farmers who sold their oats at lower than 28/- per barrel, to communicate with him, and that he would make up the difference between the price at which they sold and the price of 28/-.

Mr. Rooney

What about the farmers who had their cattle seized?

Mr. MacEntee

They paid their rates eventually.

Mr. Aiken

If the Minister for Agriculture would do that it would, at the eleventh hour, help to keep some trust in Ministers' words. It is a very necessary thing in a democratic Government that people should trust a Minister's words, and if a Minister breaks his bond as flagrantly as the Minister for Agriculture has done to the farmers up to this, it will be very bad. The Government, while they are breaking their bond to the farmers, have, as the Minister for Finance said yesterday, done more for the civil servants than they contracted to do. Are we to take it that the Government are going to do more than fulfil their bond to the civil servants and break their bond with the farmers?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must not contrast the action of the Government in respect of every other section of the community.

Mr. Aiken

Deputies opposite console themselves by interrupting across the House. They talked a lot in East Donegal, but they got their answer. If they do not live up to their promises in regard to oats and a few other things —their promises to the farmers—they will get their answer again. If the Minister for Agriculture wants to tell us why he is filling his private car with public petrol, that is all right. I ask the Minister not to ride away on the excuse that he is not going to do something for the farmers because he is not going to do something for the speculators. If he puts an advertisement into the papers asking the farmers to come forward with a statement of the amount of oats they sold, he can make up the difference. The Government have plenty of money to splash around in other ways, and it will not be so very hard for them to find the amount of money involved in this. I do not want him to pay any additional price to corn merchants—they can be excluded—but he promised farmers in the spring that if they sowed the oats they would get a satisfactory price. It is up to him to live up to that promise.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Dillon)

The brazen-faced impudence of the arch-priest of calf slaughter and oats for 4d. a stone, as I remember it, getting up in this House to bray the ráméis that I have been listening to for the last 15 or 20 minutes. is beyond praise. I reiterate here this inescapable fact, that if the Government are to guarantee annually the price of a crop of which there is a potential surplus, sooner or later that must mean the regulation of the area of tillage, the re-entry of inspectors on every farmer's farm, and the control of every acre of ground that is tilled by every farmer in this country. So long as I am Minister for Agriculture no officer of my Department will cross a farmer's fences until he is invited, and if the farmers of this country want to bring back upon their land the hordes of inspectors that I cleared off their land, they know what they can do—restore the Fianna Fáil Party and, in the words of Deputy Smith, he will line their fences with Guards and inspectors, and put them in jail if they do not do what he tells them to do. Now, that is the choice. My policy is that every farmer will run his own farm. The Fianna Fáil policy is the policy of compelling the farmers to run their farms the way Deputy Smith thinks they ought to be run. On that I will face the country any day.

Mr. Smith

On a point of order. Might I ask the Minister to quote the statement he has attributed to me?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Dillon

It is an old device to waste time.

Mr. Smith

I deny that statement. I deny that I made the statement attributed to me by the Minister. He should give the quotation or otherwise his statement should be withdrawn.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is no means by which the Chair can decide whether a Deputy makes a statement or not. The Minister says that Deputy Smith made the statement and Deputy Smith says he did not. In these circumstances, how is the Chair to decide?

Mr. Smith

I understand that where a statement is denied the person who makes it is obliged to produce that statement or withdraw it. I do not profess to be an authority on procedure but I have been a sufficiently long time in the House to understand that when a charge is made by one Deputy against another and the truth of that charge is denied, the Deputy making the charge is obliged to withdraw it. The statement is attributed to me that I would line the farmers' fences with Guards and inspectors. That is a statement I never made. I deny having made it, and unless the Minister can produce the report of that speech I ask for a withdrawal of his statement.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Smith has stated that he did not make that statement. If he did not make it, then the Minister should withdraw the statement he has made.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Blowick)

Let me intervene at this stage. I want to point out that, while the Minister for Agriculture may not be using the exact words that Deputy Smith used when he was replying for the first time to the Estimate for his Department, I remember the spirit of the words he then used, and the Minister has not misrepresented it. He may not have given the exact words. Does the Deputy deny that he mentioned something of that kind?

Mr. Dillon

If the Chair directs me in the circumstances to withdraw, I, of course, withdraw, but I invite Deputies of this House to read the speech of the ex-Minister for Agriculture answering on his own Estimate on the first occasion, and they can then judge between us as to the precision of our respective memories.

Mr. Smith

I never ran away from anything I did, like you.

Mr. Dillon

I submit to the House that the advice given by me in the past, and the advice given by me now, to the farmers of this country, has been to grow more and more, to feed it to live stock and to sell off their land the finished products of skilled farmers. I intend, and hope to see, production on our land steadily increased with the passage of every year. Our farmers need never fear that, having produced all the agricultural produce that they can produce, there will be any difficulty in selling it at a remunerative price.

I am going to give a further demonstration to the House of the truth of certain statements made by Deputies opposite. Deputy Aiken said that we had to import wheat and that we shall be paying for it for 50 years. The Deputy knows that that is not true. He knows that for every dollar of Marshall aid money we bespeak, a corresponding amount of sterling is put into the Central Bank and can be withdrawn at a moment's notice to discharge the debt.

Mr. Aiken

It is a debt.

Mr. Dillon

The money is there in the bank and it is a monstrous libel on this country to say that this debt will be a-paying for 50 years when our currency is deposited in the Central Bank to pay the debt whenever the person to whom it is due is ready to take it.

Let me go on to say that the result of the policy of our Government is that the wheat yield this year, instead of creating a deficit, as Deputy Aiken states, has resulted in the mills in Ireland receiving to date 2,450,000 barrels of wheat where last year they received only 1,284,000 barrels. There is more to it than that. One thing certain is that whatever wheat we buy will not be bought at 8 o'clock at night at £50 a ton, when wheat is readily available at £32. Wheat will not be bought at £50 a ton in Buenos Aires as it was after having been refused when offered to us for £10 less a fortnight earlier. One of the things that we shall be in debt for to the tune of £1,500,000 is the wheat that Deputy Lemass bought the night before he went out of office and paid £50 a ton for it when the current price was £30. That is the wheat we shall be paying for for the next 50 years.

Deputies

Oats, oats!

Mr. Dillon

Some day perhaps he will tell us why and how it was bought. A deliberate campaign was instituted by the Fianna Fáil Party to create anxiety and malaise amongst the people who had oats in their stores. I want you to note this interesting fact, that that campaign was not started until a certain Fianna Fáil T.D. I know had crept in and sold his own oats for 30/- a barrel. As soon as he had safely got the cheque for his own oats, he was out on the hustings to warn all and sundry——

Mr. Gilbride

More slanders.

Mr. Dillon

There are plenty of witnesses for that. He told me that himself in the presence of four witnesses in my own room.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I must ask the Minister to conclude as the time is now up.

Mr. Moran

What about the oats?

Mr. Dillon

May I say one word? This is part of a dirty scheme to concentrate all the venom and hatred against this Government on my person, but it will not work. My colleagues are not that kind of colleagues. They are not intimidated by it and the more you attack me, the closer they will gather around me. Do not judge us by the criterion you fixed for yourselves. Do not think that you can break this Government by attacking the members individually. You cannot break it; you are down and out and you will never come back.

The Dáil adjourned at 8 p.m. until Wednesday, 16th February, 1949, at 3 p.m.