When I announced through the Chair last evening my intention to raise the subject matter of Question No. 23 on yesterday's Order Paper I was met with the statement by the Minister for Agriculture that in doing so I was guilty of a shameless act. I must say, before I proceed to develop this case, that I made this decision following the announcement on behalf of the Minister by the Government Information Bureau of what was, at least in part, a history of the discussions which had taken place between himself and the Six-County spinners. In that statement the Minister admitted his failure to reach agreement with that organisation and advised the farmers who were previously engaged in the growing of this crop that if they were to grow the flax crop in the year 1949 they would do so at their own risk. Will the Minister give me his assurance before I proceed to develop this case that, in spite of the announcement which he has made, he will now reopen the discussions with the Northern flax spinners with a view to effecting an understanding with that body as to the conditions under which the flax crop of 1949 will be disposed of? Will he give me the assurance that he will make a reasonable effort to effect such an agreement?
Adjournment Debate. - Price of Flax.
On what terms?
If he will give me that assurance, I will not proceed to develop this case further.
On what terms?
If I do not get the assurance, I will deal with the question that is now addressed to me by the Minister. Briefly, the history of these negotiations, according to the information that has been supplied by Parliamentary questions and through the statement to which I have referred issued on behalf of the Minister by the Government Information Bureau, is this. Last June, following the decision of the British Board of Trade not to take any responsibility or part in the fixation of the price of flax for 1949, the matter became one to be handled by the Flax Spinners' Association and the Minister for Agriculture here representing the farmers. Members of that association came to Dublin to the Minister and made their offer to him. The offer was one of their willingness to take from our growers 4,000 tons at the price of 31/3. The Minister, apparently not being satisfied with that offer, parted company with these gentlemen on the understanding that the whole business was to be reconsidered by them, when, I presume, a further offer would be expected. According to the information which we have obtained in one form or another, we now find that nothing further was heard from these gentlemen who were speaking for the Six-County flax spinners until some time in December. They then informed the Minister here they had reached an agreement with the Six-County growers under which they had undertaken, not as the Minister claims in reply to a supplementary question to-day when he stated they had agreed to take unlimited quantities from Six-County growers, but to take from Six-County growers 4,000 tons of flax at 32/8½ per stone.
What is the Six-County production?
After they had reached this agreement with the Six-County growers they returned some time later with a renewed offer to the Minister which was an advance from 31/3 per stone to 32/- but with the new condition that not 4,000 tons of flax would be accepted by them but half that quantity. Apparently they were told that this would not be acceptable and the Minister has since then proceeded to make what I suggest is an effort on his part to confuse the real issue which exists as between the Northern spinners and our growers. I know enough about the flax crop to admit that it is the duty of any man charged with the responsibility of negotiating a price on behalf of the growers to do everything in his power to secure for them the most attractive conditions. I myself had the responsibility of negotiating the 1948 price and while I do not want to make any extensive reference to these discussions I can say that, as the Minister admitted here yesterday, because of the hardship which is associated with the growing and the handling of flax it is an industry in which, when you come to know it well, any man charged with this responsibility must naturally endeavour, on behalf of those who handle it, to obtain the last possible penny. The attitude which the Minister has taken up in order to justify his own failure is, I suggest, one of endeavouring to confuse the issue. The Northern growers are going to receive a price of 40/- per stone for flax grown by them of the grade that is mentioned in the agreement, 32/7½ of which will be paid by the spinners and 7/4½ by the Northern Government. I suggest that it is not fair for the Minister to confuse in the course of the discussions in this House the offer that is made by these spinners to our growers through him, with the price that is being paid to the growers in the Six Counties, which represents not only the price of 32/7½ per stone but an additional sum of 7/4½ per stone which is given in the form of a bounty by the Northern Government.
I say further that if the Minister wants to make a case—and I admit that it is his duty to make the strongest possible case on behalf of the growers —how, as I attempted to show in my supplementary questions yesterday, can he justify demanding from Northern spinners a price for our growers which would represent part of the subsidy which was paid by the Northern Government, either from the taxpayers' money in the Six Counties or Great Britain, while, on the other hand, he comes in here and in regard to other agricultural produce, such as beef and eggs, says he is not prepared to make a case for or lay a claim to any portion of the bounty paid by Great Britain on what are termed in Britain home-bred cattle? If he is not entitled to make a claim for any portion of the bounty which Great Britain pays to the farmers not only of Great Britain but of the Six Counties on cattle which are described as home-bred cattle, what case can he make for asking the spinners of the Six Counties to pay part of the bounty which the Northern Government has taken responsibility for?
If the Minister has any case to make against the Northern spinners, I suggest that that case must be reduced to the difference between either the 31/3 which they offered to take our flax at or their subsequent offer of 32/- and the price of 32/7½ which they are giving to the Six-County growers. If the Minister feels that he should get that price from the Six-County spinners, that otherwise the farmers here would not have sufficient compensation to grow the crop, he should do, I suggest, as the Northern Government have agreed to do on foot of the agreement made between the spinners of the Six Counties and the growers in the Six Counties—give a bounty which will bring the price up to the same level as that paid to the Six-County growers and, in addition, as the Six-County Government have agreed to do, that is, to take from the growers any flax grown in excess of the amount stipulated in the contract.
Pay the Northern Ireland spinners to buy our flax.
He could also resign.
There is no use quibbling about this. There are Deputies here who do not understand this crop.
They understand logic.
They do not understand it from Deputy Smith.
Here is the position. The Minister has allowed this question to hang for a very long period. The first offer was made to him in June last. He is the man who, when sitting on these Benches, lectured us on the way business matters should be dealt with by business men, the man who told us of the wonderful results which could be secured by Ministers discharging their responsibilities properly and making contacts as business men. He is the man who, on getting an offer in June last, allowed this whole situation to develop up to December when the new offer was made. What has happened in the months that have elapsed? Surely the Minister knows that, when December came, in his own constituency, in mine, and in Donegal, conacre flax ground was being taken and had been taken by people working with flax for a living, by men, in some cases, without any property whatever, but who have a knowledge of flaxgrowing and were able, year after year, to make money out of the crop.
These negotiations have been allowed to dribble on to the point when all these commitments have been made by growers and we get, at the end, the bland statement that an agreement with the Northern spinners was impossible, and warning farmers not to have anything to do with the crop, that, if they did, they did so at their own risk. What right has the Minister, what right has any Minister, and especially a Minister who claims all the rights and privileges and freedom for the farmers which we so often hear from the present occupant of the office of Minister for Agriculture, to close down on a matter of this kind and prevent farmers from growing a crop to which they have been accustomed without consultation of any kind? Was there no means by which the Minister, when he was about to admit his failure to effect an agreement, could have made some contact with these people whose living he was about to fritter away in the fashion in which it has been frittered away by this announcement? I have not got much time left.
You have had time to say plenty.
Whether that offer made in June last by the Flax Spinners' Association was regarded as satisfactory or not, I say here in the most deliberate fashion that I would regard that offer as a suitable basis on which to be able, if I had the responsibility, to reach an agreement with that association on behalf of the growers, and I charge the Minister with unjustifiable failure in that regard. I further charge him with frittering away these people's rights without any consultation and without giving them any opportunity of expressing what they thought of the position as it existed. In fact, it may be that the course the Minister should have taken, when the British Board of Trade drew out of this whole matter, was to endeavour to get representatives of the flax growers and scutchers and charge them with the responsibility of making an agreement with the Northern spinners. Since that has not been done, and since indeed the Minister has failed so lamentably in this matter which is so vital in the area from which I come, I appeal to the growers here; I appeal to the millers here and I appeal to the good sense of the flax spinners in the Six Counties to come together and arrive at some understanding that will enable our farmers, who depend so much on this crop, to be assured that they can grow the crop, get a reasonable price for it and that their crop will be taken from them when it is grown and harvested.
I am a long time in Irish public life but I have never believed that I would witness so disgusting a spectacle. I was warned in the middle of these negotiations that I must be ready to be betrayed and harassed by the Opposition if the Northern Ireland spinners tried to blackmail me into accepting for our people an inequitable arrangement and I dismissed that possibility. I said that the members of Dáil Éireann were pretty trenchant and vigorous but that there has long been an understanding here that if you are negotiating with an outside authority on behalf of our people the most trenchant politician in Dáil Éireann would not line himself up against our people with the people who are seeking to insult us.
Nonsense.
Let us be clear on this.
What about the economic war?
Is there a Deputy in this House who says that it was a just thing for the spinners of Northern Ireland to propose to me that on one and the same day as they had reduced the price of flax for the growers in Ireland by 2/6 a stone they should raise the price to the growers in Northern Ireland by 4/-?
They did not. It was the Northern Government who did it. That is misrepresentation.
If success was to bow my head and say that it was good enough for the peasants in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan to take 2/6 reduction while the dignified farmers of Northern Ireland are to have 4/- increase——
From whom?
Let me state my case. If it was success to grant that, then God grant that I will never know success in the public life of this country. Why should the spinners of Northern Ireland gratuitously approach our people but not for the purpose of saying, "We will leave your price at what was agreed to be a fair price last year by your Minister for Agriculture and we are making certain adjustments in Northern Ireland"? There would have been a shadow of justification in that, but they say, "We are going to bring your price down and at the same time increase the price in Northern Ireland." I know the 32/- a stone is a comparatively remunerative price.
Is there any Deputy in this House who is likely to suffer more in his personal interests as a politician than I am, who represent County Monaghan, where more flax is grown than in any other county in Ireland?
A Deputy
And where there are more Unionists.
More flax growers voted for me than were in any other area except in the area of the other two Deputies in Monaghan. Would it not have been very much easier for me to make a settlement enabling these farmers to carry on their customary practice at a price which was not grossly insufficient than to face the problem of saying to my constituents: "You will have to make a very considerable adjustment or submit to the proposals, the irresponsible proposals, made by the spinners of Northern Ireland"?
The British Board of Trade which dealt with us throughout the war habitually stated their price and took whatever quantity was produced. The Northern Ireland spinners, however, come along and say to us: "We will take 2,000 tons from you and it is on your shoulders to ration that around. If you grow any more we will not buy it from you. We will buy it from our own growers in one quarter of the territory. We will buy 4,000 tons from them and if there is any surplus the Northern Ireland Government has consented to buy it at a composite price of 40/- a stone."
Is there any Deputy in this House who is so foolish as not to realise that if we accept once from the Northern Ireland spinners the principle of limited acreage while the Northern Ireland farmers can have in effect unlimited acreage——
They have not.
——next year I will be told "1,000 tons and be grateful for it" and in the following year "500 tons and be grateful for it" and I will be asking our people to submit to a process of slow strangulation?
Why did you not consult them?
Does the Deputy from Monaghan think that in any circumstances the Government of this country should accept from the flax spinners of Northern Ireland a proposal that on the self-same day as a price of 40/- was fixed for unlimited acreage for their own growers a price of 32/- should be fixed for our growers? Is it equitable that on one side of the road in Donegal a field of flax should be grown for which 32/- will be paid by the Northern Ireland authorities, while on the other side of the road in County Derry there is a field of flax for which there is a proposal to pay 40/-? If you want to get into a position where you are prepared to accept that kind of treatment which is, as I have described it, grossly and offensively inequitable on behalf of our people, you will have to get somebody else to do it.
God help the flax growers, that is all I can say.
You want to make slaves of them. You are talking through your hat.
Negotiations have been carried on with the Northern Ireland spinners continuously from the day they approached me. The basis on which I was prepared to settle was that the price should remain the same and the acreage should not be submitted to control imposed by them. I expressed my belief that our people would accept the proposition that if the price paid last year was left unaltered we would raise no demur at any bonus that they proposed to give their own people and that we would not seek artificially to unload on to them a high tonnage or artificially to increase it if that soothes their conscience. Their reply was: "You will take 32/- a stone for 2,000 tons and if you do not accept that within seven days the offer will be withdrawn."
I told them to go to blazes, but I do not want any Deputy in this House to imagine that simply for the satisfaction of telling anybody to go to blazes I acted precipitately or tried to raise the temperature of our discussion. On the contrary, every device of forbearance, argument and persuasion I could use I used, not only in the interests of the flax growers, but in the interests of avoiding this kind of offensive affront by members of our own people against members of our own people. I told them that we were ready and willing on an equitable basis to help to produce the raw material of an Irish industry as we did not regard it as a foreign industry, but that we were not prepared to revert to the position that a certain section of our people should esteem the remainder of us an inferior breed. I want to assure the House of this, that no device of persuasion, forbearance or patience I could employ, no representation of reason I could invoke, was omitted and that it was only when I was told "You will take it or leave it" I gave them the answer I described. If that is failure I am proud so to have failed. If it is failure to tell people that they may not and shall not offensively affront our people, proud or simple, then I am very glad to have failed. If it would have been success to submit to an ultimatum of that kind and gratefully acknowledge the equity and justice of paying the growers of Northern Ireland 40/- a stone on the same day as our people were to be paid 32/-, I would be ashamed of success. If Deputy Smith represents the outlook of our people that such an attitude should be adopted by a Minister on behalf of our people, then the people should get rid of me and restore Deputy Smith.
That is the truth.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, March 22, 1949.