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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 17 May 1949

Vol. 115 No. 10

Committee on Finance. - Vote 29—Agriculture (Resumed).

When dealing with this matter on last Friday I read out in the House a statement which appeared in the Southern Star newspaper of the 7th May, 1949. It was a statement made by the Rev. Fr. Coyne, S.J., President of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, in connection with the taking over of certain creameries in South Cork. Fr. Coyne is reported as follows in this newspaper:—

"He said that the Minister for Agriculture had decided to wind up the Dairy Disposals Company and had given suppliers the option of taking over creameries if they formed a co-operative society, but, failing that, would divide the group and distribute the branches amongst neighbouring co-operative societies. In the event of further delay in coming to a decision the Minister would, he added, go on with the alternative arrangement."

The Minister, in reply to a question by Deputy Lynch to-day, contradicted the statement made by Fr. Coyne. I want to make it quite clear that I have not the slightest objection to co-operation. I am anxious for co-operation and I am anxious to see co-operative societies formed wherever they possibly can be formed. I want to make that clear. In the group of creameries concerned in this specific instance there is one which was very severely burned on one occasion. One of the creameries in the group was threatened at one time, not only with compulsory closing down, but also that a receiver would be put in and the farmers sold out. That was a condition of affairs that existed at one time. What I object to in this matter is the implied threat in the statement which the Minister has contradicted to-day. I think a statement of that description which appears in a local newspaper that circulates in every house in the locality should be officially contradicted without delay, or some steps should be taken to see that it is contradicted so that the farmers may not be left under the impression that they are being driven or forced by the Minister to either buy out their creameries and perhaps find themselves back in the hole in which they were previously, or that the Minister will put them out. We had a somewhat similar implied threat in the Cork City area. That is why I am so anxious about this matter.

Deputy Cogan addressed a question to the Minister to-day with regard to farm costings. I think I might say that I, personally, led the Clann na Talmhan Party into looking for these farm costings for a long number of years. We had the courage of our convictions. We handed over a group of our farmers in Cork, who are producing milk for liquid sale, to Professor Murphy of University College, Cork, to carry out an investigation into costings. Professor Murphy carried out the entire operation. His findings were sent by me to the Minister.

But under seal of confidence—not for publication.

I knew the Minister was anxious to get them and I sent him this information.

And I was very much obliged to the Deputy, but the Deputy sent them to me under seal of confidence—confidentially.

I am sure the Minister read them.

Very carefully, but he is not allowed to publish them.

What I am concerned with at the moment is the Minister's inaction with regard to them. The farmers in my district are rather perturbed about the inaction too. We had a hullabaloo down there about milk. We determined to find out for ourselves whether or not we were correct. We went the sensible way about it. Because the State would not do it we did it ourselves and we paid for it ourselves. We handed over a group of our farmers so that costings might be taken. The results are there. Will the Minister agree with me that the price of milk during the past seven months was uneconomic on those costings?

I do not, because the price for milk for liquid consumption must be taken on the basis of 12 months.

That is where the Minister and I differ, and differ very much. If a farmer who is supplying milk to Cork City is to run that supply on an economic basis, he will send his milk to Cork City for five months of the year and let the cow run dry for the remaining seven months.

On a point of order, Deputy Corry rightly says that he courteously sent me Dr. Murphy's findings. They were sent to me confidentially and are therefore not available for publication. Is it relevant to discuss the contents of these findings when both Deputy Corry and myself are mutually excluded from publishing them?

I do not know what arrangement Deputy Corry and Dr. Murphy had on the matter. It is only binding on a person's own conscience as to whether or not he will break an agreement of confidence.

I am breaking no confidence.

I cannot publish them without Deputy Corry's leave and the Deputy is under no obligation to give me that leave. But I cannot discuss them unless they are published.

Professor Murphy assures me that the Minister got another copy from University College.

Certainly I am bound not to publish them without the Deputy's leave.

Have you got another copy?

I do not know about that. Have I the Deputy's leave to publish the information?

I am dealing with the position as I find it and the position is a rather serious one for the Minister concerned.

On a point of order, I cannot discuss something the contents of which nobody is permitted to know. I do not want to press Deputy Corry in any way to give me leave to publish the figures, but I do respectfully submit that we cannot discuss in the House figures which must be withheld from the knowledge of the House because of the confidence imposed in their regard.

The only ruling the Chair can give is that the Minister is entitled to deal with whatever figures or facts Deputy Corry publicly gives.

I discussed those figures in the House two years ago. I certainly discussed them last year and the Minister contradicted my figures last year. That is the reason why I sent them up in order that he might have an opportunity of trimming his education a bit.

I submit that it is irrelevant to discuss figures which are admittedly not available to the House and which cannot be made available to the House, because deductions can be drawn from them by the Deputy, and were I to attempt a refutation it would involve reference to the very figures which are not and cannot be made available to the House.

The Chair does not know where Deputy Corry is getting his figures nor has the Chair any knowledge whatever as to the reports submitted by Dr. Murphy to a combination of farmers who apparently submitted certain figures to him for examination. The only ruling the Chair can give is that if Deputy Corry makes certain statements and submits certain figures, the Minister is quite entitled to deal with them later. The Chair has no means of ascertaining where Deputy Corry got these figures, whether they are figures taken from a report by Dr. Murphy or from any other source.

May I submit that the Deputy had figures prepared for milk supplied to the City of Cork in the summer months in one report and in the winter months in another report? The Deputy proposes to base his case on one set of figures, ignoring the other set. I submit that before a case can be made in this House on certain figures, the figures should be submitted to the House.

The Chair has no means of knowing where the Deputy got these figures.

Are they not on the records?

They are not on the records.

They were given last year.

Deputy Corry's case— and he is entitled to make it—is that even since those figures were taken, the cost of production of milk has gone up enormously. You have something like an increase of 14/6 a week on wages and something like 5/- in the £ —I think it would be 9/6 in the £ now —of an increase in the rates on top of those figures. Is it the Minister's attitude that the farmers are entitled to nothing for the capital they invest in their holdings, in stock and in machinery, or that the farmer is not entitled to a share in what he, as a taxpayer, must pay? I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to get the case of some person who would lie in the same line as the farmer under the Minister's own Estimate in order to ascertain what the salary of the farmer should be for supervising and looking after the farm and the production of that milk. I find here under F.1 that the manager of the stud farm at Chantilly, County Dublin, gets £635 a year. The salary of the superintendent of the Clonakilty Agricultural Station is £700 a year, plus a free house. The salary of the superintendent of the Munster Institute in Cork is also £700 a year and a free residence. So, if the Minister wants a line to go on as to what should be added to the costings of the farmer, he has the headline here in what his Department is paying—and our farmer is paying his share of that—to the supervisor of a similar farm run by the State.

I put up the case with every respect that the Minister is failing in his duty towards the agricultural community if he does not see, having got costings from University College, Cork, as to the cost of production of milk in that area, that those costings are brought up to date and pay the farmers in that district a price commensurate at least with the cost of production, plus some little profit for their labour. I suggest that the present price of milk fixed by the Minister for last winter and the coming winter is uneconomic, below the cost of production, and will mean supplying consumers in Cork City with milk that will not be what they should get. I am putting that case frankly and above board. The Minister need not think for one moment that I am making this case because he happens to be Minister for Agriculture, for I made this case previously in this House to two of his predecessors before I had the advantage of having the costings as made out.

I want to see fair play for the farming community. The Minister glibly informed Deputy Cogan to-day that he was preparing farm costings. Here are farm costings prepared in a way that his Department could never prepare them. I challenge him to take them side by side with farm costings for the production of milk outside in Glasnevin——

In public?

Let him produce them.

Produce what?

The costings supplied to him. The Minister got a copy of these costings from University College, Cork, with the university's compliments.

Have I the Deputy's permission to publish them?

The Deputy has no right, nor has any other Deputy any right, to give the Minister authority to publish anything. The Minister publishes any-amount of queer things without anybody's permission at all——

The Deputy then does not give me that permission?

——including the 3/- per dozen for eggs.

The Deputy does not give me that permission?

I would hesitate to have the considered and prepared costings of Professor Murphy mixed with all the balderdash published by the Minister and I certainly object to it.

Very good. The Deputy objects to my publishing them. I cannot publish them and I cannot debate them.

The Minister will have plenty of time when I have finished to do whatever he likes. He can be as complimentary as he likes as a cultured man should be. I am dealing with what plainly concerns the livelihood of a large number of farmers in my district and which gravely concerns Cork City as well.

We also had the courage of our convictions regarding those costings in beet. As farmers, we do not wish to make a claim for something that we cannot prove we are entitled to.

To finish what I was saying about milk, I say this much: If the farmers of Cork supplying milk to Cork City wish to keep going and carry on economically, they will produce milk for five months of the year and let some other fool supply Cork City for the seven more.

With regard to beet, the position is that each year certain figures were put up to the sugar company with regard to costings and they were in a number of cases fairly met by the sugar company.

On a point of order, I submit that Deputy Corry dealt at length for nearly two hours with milk and beet costings on Friday morning and merely because this is another week he should not repeat his whole speech for the benefit of the House.

If Deputy O'Higgins were in court he would make a different case to that. However, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is the judge of whether I am repeating statements or not.

In going into this matter I am making a fair comparison between our position previously and our position now.

My complaint is that it is for the third time.

Do not talk. The case I am putting up is that our 300 farmers were handed over to a joint board consisting of representatives of the sugar company and representatives of the beet growers' association to have proper costings taken under the chairmanship of Professor Murphy. The directors of the sugar company and their general manager guaranteed that as soon as those costings were finished they would pay the farmers the cost of the production of beet plus a fair profit. This Government, on that, extracted from the coffers of the sugar company the money that was there to meet that claim. I am not going to go further into that. The position now is that if those costings which will be known within the next three weeks are favourable to the sugar growers the company has no money to meet their claim owing to the action of this Government and the laziness, if you like, of the Minister for Agriculture in making no attempt to prevent the taking of that money which should go to the benefit of the beet-growers of this country. I do not wish to delay the House.

If I were to deal with all the idiotic things done by this Minister, the number of times he has eaten his words, the number of times he has plunged the unfortunate farmers of this country, induced them, coaxed them along the road to this, that or the other thing and then robbed them with a bang, I could keep this House going for the next month in fact until it was trying to adjourn for the summer holidays. That would happen if I were to deal with all the things of that description the Minister has done and that is why I do not wish to do so. I want to reserve something for another occasion. I am taking the position of the unfortunate people who have been handed over to the care of this Minister.

Are they getting poorer?

If Deputy Fagan considers that the farmer who was getting 45/-a barrel for oats and last November had to sell it for 20/- is getting rich——

They had a double crop.

If Deputy Fagan is of the opinion that the result is good for the farmers who in 1947 were selling potatoes for £16 a ton and are now selling them for £5——

They had a double crop.

If he thinks that the farmers who are selling milk to-day at the same price as in 1947 are getting rich——

They are getting £9 and £10 for their calves.

If Deputy Fagan would leave that old bullock alone for a few minutes I would deal with him. Deputy Fagan is a bullock producer. Deputy Fagan was here when I dealt with the statement of the Minister for External Affairs that for love of Mother England this Minister was giving our beef far cheaper than he could obtain on the Continent for it. When Deputy Fagan was sitting over here I heard him on many a day talking about the fortune we were getting for cattle. Is he aware that this man went over to Britain within the past month and made an agreement there and, after inducing the unfortunate small farmers and housewives of this country to collect hens, to beg, steal or borrow them and produce eggs, he sold those eggs at 38.75 less than the English farmer or poultry-keeper is getting for his? Is he aware of that? The difference is only .25 per cent. between the 40 per cent. that was on cattle during the economic war.

There is not a scintilla of truth in what the Deputy is saying.

We know that the Minister agreed that instead of 3/- the farmers would only get 2/6.

The Deputy dealt with the egg position before. I am positive of that.

I am only answering the Minister's ignorant contradiction.

He has already spoken on the egg position and Deputy Fagan should allow the Deputy to finish his statement without interruption.

I think it would be wiser. How can any bunch of farmers, facing reduced prices for oats, milk, potatoes and eggs and facing increased costings, be expected to work harder and produce more, which is the only thing the Minister for Finance puts forward in his Budget, so that the tax will be taken off the sparkling wine next year? No wonder that we, coming from rural areas and representing the agricultural community, are worried and troubled as to the condition of affairs.

The Minister told us he would have no more inspectors, that that load will be taken off the farmers' backs, but now he is going to give us an agricultural instructor for nearly every farmer, to teach him what he will have to do if he is going to live—grow three times the quantity of oats and potatoes per acre—to be as well off as he was under Fianna Fáil. He will not be even as well off, because he has now to face the increased cost of production. On that, I would like to quote, not the Irish Press but a paper which is a gallant supporter of the present Government, the Clare Champion. In the issue for May 7th, 1949, under “The Week on the Farm” there is this:—

MORE INSTRUCTORS.

"The suggestion of the Minister for Agriculture that more agricultural instructors should be appointed caused some surprise, but the number suggested—16 or 17 for the county—has relieved all apprehension by its sheer absurdity. It is about as practical as appointing a schoolteacher to go around in each district to read letters and papers for the individuals. When every other country is insisting on the supreme value of actual experience on the land rather than theory, the suggestion raises grave doubts about the sanity of the Minister's advisers."

I have expressed grave doubts from time to time as to the sanity of the Minister, but I never knew that the disease was so taking.

Is the editor a farmer?

Perhaps the Leas-Cheann Comhairle would tell us that. I do not know. In view of the extraordinary statements I read out here on the last day and to-day, in regard to the Minister's public advice issued at the expense of the taxpayer, I suggest that, if there is such a thing as a panel of doctors, the Minister should be medically examined.

The House has listened to Deputy Corry for almost three hours speaking on this Estimate last Friday and to-day. Any Deputy listening to him will appreciate that it apparently is his intention, as it was the intention of another Fianna Fáil Deputy last year, by considerable shouting in this debate, to endeavour to make points which he had not the ability or knowledge to make. From his observations here to-day, it is quite clear that the members of the Party opposite are opposing this Estimate for political purposes, to make political gain and at all times play the political game. Speaking as a Fine Gael Deputy, as a member of a Party supporting this Government and as a member of a Party to which the present Minister does not belong, I want to express my appreciation of the sterling work he has done for agriculture in the months since he went into office. He has been the subject of attacks by Deputies in the Party opposite, not only here on this Estimate but throughout the country on every possible occasion. Every opportunity has been availed of to blacken the name of the present Minister, to attack him and to prevent and obstruct his policy.

Deputies should note that newspapers should not be read in the House during the debate.

Last autumn there was a fortuitous increase in the oat crop and later in the potato crop, a circumstance for which the people should for long be thankful to the Almighty. That particular instance was availed of by the Party opposite to cause panic among small farmers. Certain Deputies opposite deliberately attempted to panic farmers, especially small farmers, in order to make political capital. At a time when it was possible to sell an increased yield of oats at a fairly reasonable price, Fianna Fáil Deputies paraded around the country from one parish to another warning the people that only half the price for oats was being got in the next parish. By such means, they panicked small farmers into selling at a loss and played into the hands of millers and big men—whom they were criticising some months later.

This debate has been approached by Deputies Smith and Corry, whose speeches I heard, in a very venomous frame of mind. The country should be reminded of these things, and reminded of Fianna Fáil's approach to agriculture generally, and particularly of their approach to the present Minister. Both Deputy Smith and Deputy Corry, for varying reasons, have evidenced their personal spleen against the present Minister in their speeches here on this Estimate. I can understand Deputy Smith, as he has lost a job, and in such a case one can always expect a certain amount of antipathy towards his successor. However, an important subject like agriculture should not be made the vehicle for ventilating personal spleen in this House. In so far as it was possible to find any sense in what was said by Deputy Corry, it could all be summed up in the simple sentence: "I hate the present Minister for Agriculture and I want to see him out of office." If any further evidence of the attitude of the Opposition towards the Minister personally and towards the policy which, as a member of this Government, he is operating, is required, it is to be found in other things said during the debate.

I was interested to hear Deputy Mrs. Rice speaking last Friday, and I am sure that Deputy Mrs. Rice spoke genuinely and bona fide what she believed and what she had been told to say by the Party of which she is a member. I heard her discussing a problem in her constituency, Monaghan, the question of flax prices, in connection with which she roundly condemned the Minister because he did not close with the Northern Ireland flax interests and accept the price which they had offered to the flax growers here. I do not know very much about flax growing or about the details of this matter, but from what I recollect and read when the negotiations were going on I know that a price was offered which the Minister did not think adequate or proper. He may have been right or he may have been wrong, but the price was not acceptable to him.

He took up the attitude—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that anybody who wanted to accept that price, or to enter into any other deal, was perfectly free to do so. In saying that, he was merely stating the fact, but he is criticised now by Deputy Mrs. Rice because he did not accept a price which he considered to be a bad price. I should like to know what speech would have been made by Deputy Mrs. Rice or Deputy Smith if the Minister had accepted that price. It is then we would hear the growls and grievances and grouses from the Party opposite. He would have been condemned for accepting it, so that, right or wrong, the Minister is always wrong, according to the Party opposite. After 15 months of concentrated political propaganda directed against the Minister, there are many farmers big and small throughout the country, supporters of Fianna Fáil in the past, who are beginning to realise now that perhaps James Dillon is not always wrong.

I recollect sitting here 12 months ago and seeing Deputy MacEntee working himself up into a state of nervous alarm because the Minister was waging a war. as he described it, against illegal dealers in bacon and against those who were getting more than their fair share of a commodity which was then in short supply. If my memory serves me right, Deputy MacEntee sneered at the Minister's efforts to ensure a more equitable distribution of bacon for the people and he referred to the campaign being waged by the Minister as being so much moonshine, with nothing behind it and with no hope of success. Deputy MacEntee was speaking with one eye on the fortunes of Fianna Fáil and the other on certain newspapers in this country, but, now that we are some eight or nine months older and the people have had a chance of seeing what has been done, I trust that Deputy MacEntee will, on some occasion, admit that the Minister was then right and that he was wrong, because, whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that bacon is now beginning to reappear in the shops of this city and each week the housewife gets her fair share. Every time she does, she appreciates, thanks to Deputy MacEntee, that the credit must go to the man whom he attacked only 12 months ago.

I do not wish to take it upon myself to answer speeches made by the Opposition in relation to this Estimate, but I did hear some remarks being made by Deputy Corry and others with regard to egg prices, and I think that in this connection there has been far too much bleating by the Party opposite, bleating which they knew to be a misrepresentation of the facts of the situation in regard to eggs and egg prices generally. They have made the case that, by reason of a reduction from 3/- to 2/6 per dozen, some terrible wrong has been done to farmers' wives and apparently the suggestion is being made that, if Fianna Fáil were in office, a price at least as high as 3/- would be maintained. Any Deputy on the opposite benches who makes that case is either incredibly ill-informed or is stating something which he knows to be untrue.

The fact is that, under the agreement made by the former Minister, the price which would obtain at the end of this year or the beginning of 1950 would be 1/5 per dozen. I do not know whether those who criticise the Minister in this connection will suggest that his proper course would have been to continue the price agreement which existed up to a short time ago, subject to its variations, and, when it came to an end, to look for another price from the British. I do not know whether that is suggested as sound business, but it would occur to me that it would be far wiser and better, when you still have something to sell which they want to buy, to negotiate as long term a price as you possibly can and so prevent the violent dislocations which occurred previously under the ill-judged agreement made by the former Minister. The Minister did the correct thing, when there was still time, when we still were expanding our egg production and still a considerable distance from any saturation point in the British market, in raising the matter again, with a view to getting a long-term price fixed, so that everybody engaged in agriculture and poultry production will know exactly where he will make his money and what money he will make for a definite stated period ahead. In my constituency, where there is considerable egg production, where practically every small farmer's wife and many labourers' wives are engaged in egg production, a long-term settlement of prices is far more welcome than fantastic prices one week and small prices in another period. It used to be said that every time hens began to lay, prices began to drop. We are getting away from that, and that is welcomed by the people of the country generally.

Having made these remarks about the tactics of the Opposition, there are two matters of a more positive and constructive nature that I should like to refer to. Reference has been made to the land reclamation programme. It is, perhaps, in order to say a word or two about it. I do not wish to discuss the merits of that particular scheme because I doubt that even in the minds of the Party opposite there would be found opposition to that scheme. I do not wish to discuss the details of it because they are not yet available to us. The introduction of this scheme raises the wider question of drainage. The question of drainage has been referred to time and time again on this and other Estimates and has always been the subject matter of speeches and agitation in this country. At present, drainage is the responsibility of some four or five various authorities. The latest addition to the list of authorities dealing with drainage is the Minister for Agriculture. The Local Government Department, the Board of Works, the Land Commission and, in certain instances, boards such as local fishery boards, and so on, are all interested in the question of drainage. It is a clear case of too many cooks spoiling the broth because, between them all, the ordinary farmer sees no clear policy to alleviate the problems arising out of drainage. I want to avail of this opportunity of reiterating the necessity for unified co-ordinated drainage activity being dealt with by a single board. Even the land reclamation programme is open to possible query as to its relation with arterial drainage. Naturally, land reclamation is a matter which should follow rather than precede arterial drainage in many cases.

It seems to me that when matters of that kind arise, as they must, from year to year, there should be one body dealing with them, one body armed with the powers at present exercised by the Board of Works in regard to arterial drainage and the powers that must be given for the purpose of the land reclamation programme and the powers which this House will give to local authorities under the Bill at present before the House. It is important that some single authority should be formed or empowered to deal with this question of drainage. If that is not done, and if drainage is left to be the forgotten child of a number of Departments and authorities, it will always be a problem child. I hope that consideration will be given to this matter by the Minister and the other authorities that are responsible for drainage.

There is one other matter that I should like to mention. It is not a direct concern of the Minister but it is a matter to which I think more consideration should be given by both the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Lands. It is the question of land division policy. It would not be in order for me to discuss land division policy as such but I respectfully suggest to the Minister that the State's policy in relation to land division must be a matter of concern to him as Minister for Agriculture in shaping agricultural policy. If we are to aim at a nation of small working farmers, as I conceive to be the policy of this Government, that policy must be carried out by the Minister for Agriculture in closest harmony with the Minister for Lands and the Land Commission. It would be quite wrong for the Minister in charge of Agriculture to pursue a particular line of policy or to adopt a particular attitude in relation to farms, holdings, and so on, while the Minister for Lands and the Land Commission were pursuing another line and another course of conduct. In that connection I see in what the Minister for Agriculture said in relation to conacre lettings a welcome sign of harmony between these two Departments. Irrespective of how the Minister's remarks about conacre lettings may have been misunderstood by Deputies opposite— and I think Deputy Mrs. Rice referred to it—it is perfectly clear that we should not by any act or omission permit a new landlordism to grow up in this country. I regret very much that that particular new type of landlordism is growing apace in certain areas.

I have the greatest admiration for the young farmer's son who makes a few pounds out of selling cattle, who has not a farm of his own, who has a love for the land and a desire to make his living out of the land and who puts that few pounds into a conacre letting of some field that is being let by a farmer who is too lazy or too ignorant to work it. For that farmer's son, for men such as he, I have the greatest possible admiration. I think that in many cases such men are responsible for better production and for better working of the land so let. I believe they should have the land and not the man who sits in a house in a nearby town, and often in the City of Dublin, and draws a rent by way of a toll on work that young lads like that do on his land. Personally, I thoroughly approve of and endorse the Minister's remarks about conacre. If we permit that type of management of the land of this country to continue we will find that, owing to the desire of the owner to get the biggest price possible in rent for his land, the regard for the land and the proper management of the land will cease and we will have a few more acres added to the millions of idle, derelict acres of land in this country to-day. I would suggest to the Minister that this question is so important that it should be pursued by himself and the Minister for Lands and that every effort should be made to give ownership or some right or interest in the land to those people who have consistently taken it in conacre.

Hear, hear!

And no sympathy good, bad or indifferent should be shown to the man who makes his living purely out of conacre lettings. I find, in my constituency—particularly since better prices became available under the present Minister—that conacre rents are now scarcity rents, rents which rise as a result of a larger demand for land than there is a supply available. As a result of high rents, many young lads in my constituency who have taken perhaps some field or some couple of acres for years back in conacre have found themselves dispossessed now by the owner who is, naturally, anxious to get as high a rent as he can from anybody who is prepared to give it to him. I commend the Minister for his statement in relation to that particular matter. I can assure him that, despite the efforts made by Deputy Mrs. Rice and others—I am sorry I have had to mention Deputy Mrs. Rice twice, but I am sure other Fianna Fáil Deputies have referred to this matter—to misinterpret what he said, he has hit the nail on the head so far as the small farmers and the young working lads of rural Ireland are concerned. His views in that connection are appreciated and the people generally trust that his statement and the views he expressed will have practical results in the coming months.

I again congratulate the Minister for the manner in which he has conducted his Deparment during the past 12 months. Progress is being made in increasing production and agricultural output in this country. The ordinary working farmers and the men who are employed by them have considerable regard for, and considerable confidence in, the present Minister despite all the concentrated propaganda of the last 12 months.

I have a considerable amount of sympathy with any Minister for Agriculture, in this or any other country, because agriculture is such a very difficult problem. Of course, that sympathy is conditional on the manner of approach of a Minister in dealing with the agricultural Estimate. The Minister is an optimist this year. I do not find fault with the Minister for being an optimist, but he was a superoptimist last year. I hope that, as time goes on, he will become a realist and that we will actually know where we are. I can hardly understand how any Minister for Agriculture, dealing with this very difficult problem, can be even an optimist, never mind a superoptimist, because of the great difference there is in conditions from one district to another. Consequently, it is very difficult to have anything like a set uniform solution or policy for agriculture and, in my opinion, a great deal of elasticity is required to meet the varying conditions.

A certain amount has been said by the last speaker regarding the censure that was passed on the Minister in connection with the oats and potato crops of last year. The Minister was responsible for all that himself because of statements he made which, seemingly, he did not take time to consider. What I wish to say is that at least it was badly managed and very badly managed. When dissatisfaction and resentment were shown all over the country, indeed, not merely by Fianna Fáil supporters but by the supporters of the Government Party, we were given an assurance in this House even at that very late stage—I think it was at the end of November or December —that agents would be appointed to take the surplus oats off the hands of the people who had them and that they would be paid a certain price for the oats. How was effect given to that assurance? By appointing one agent in every county and, in a county like mine, a very large county, the county was taken as a unit. One agent was appointed in a district where, I think, oats as a cash crop was the smallest of any and where the problem was least acute. I have no objection whatsoever to the man who was appointed. As I have stated before, he is a personal friend of mine. But there were other districts in County Galway where oats as a cash crop was a very acute problem and where it has been a traditional crop for years and years. No agent was appointed in many of those districts nor were any stores opened, and it was certainly very difficult to expect that people residing in Portumna or Ballinasloe or Gort would send their oats to Tuam. There was another snag in it too. In the towns I have mentioned there were grain merchants who had been in the business for years. The man who was appointed was only in the business for about four years. That in itself was, I think, sufficient to cause great resentment. The result of it all was, of course, that the oats were not purchased.

Sure, Deputy, anyone would have been appointed on application—anybody.

I know people who did make application and they are not of my way of thinking, but I would be prepared to recommend them at any time as fine, decent business people. They were not appointed however.

Had they accommodation?

No reason was given. I suppose the Minister will say that they had not accommodation. They always had accommodation for thousands and thousands of barrels of oats.

If there is any such case, I shall be glad to have details from the Deputy.

Take the town of Ballinasloe where there were agents in the business for years and years. These merchants not merely catered for East Galway but for South Roscommon which is a great grain-growing district.

Will the Deputy give me the name of the firm which he says ought to have been licensed and was not?

Yes, I will. The Minister states that oats should not be grown as a cash crop. I agree that up to a point that is true—that it is better to walk it off the farm. But that only applies to farmers who are in a position to do that and who have a considerable amount of good land. There are, however, a number of the smaller type of farmers who have always been growing oats as a cash crop and it will take a great deal of explanation from the Minister or anybody else to prove to them that it is not good sound policy to do so, because these small farmers very often get credit from the local shopkeepers for a certain period of time and they are also under other obligations. The oats crop comes in at a particular time of the year and they can get a lump sum in cash for it; in other words, they are growing that crop as an exchange for goods they have already received. If that were stamped out, I should like to see what could be put in its place. It is all very well to say: "Why do they not walk it off the farm?" If you take a 20 or 25 acre holding of good land and turn it completely over to live stock and ascertain the profit that can be made by feeding live stock on it, you will find that the income at the end of the year will not be very considerable; that, in fact, the only great profit will be the calves and lambs which are produced on a holding of that kind. But, if a farmer has to buy a certain number, as he has got to do in the West of Ireland, when he takes from what he has made the price that he had to pay, you will find that the net profit in a case of that kind is very small.

The Minister in his opening statements gave us a lecture on what was being done by his Department in the way of research to prevent or cure certain fatal live-stock diseases. I am glad that the efforts of the research department have met with such an amount of success. We are all familiar with the names of some of the diseases which he mentioned and the farmers have a pretty good understanding of them, such as mastitis, and contagious abortion. But when the Minister mentions aphosphorosis, the average farmer will not understand what that means. He would understand it better under the Irish name of crupach by which it has been known for centuries. If you had crupach in brackets after aphosphorosis it would mean a good deal, because when farmers see a name of that kind and when they hear of Ph. 5 and Ph. 6 and it is not given in the language which they understand they begin to doubt what is at the back of it. I should like to see the names of diseases or names representing deficiency in the soil put in language that farmers can understand and not in technical terms which they do not understand.

There is one disease in sheep which the Minister has not mentioned and it is a fatal disease. It is known, I think, in the Department as braxy. I did not hear the Minister state if any success had attended the efforts of his research department in regard to that disease. The strange thing about it is that it is generally the best sheep on the farm that contract it in the first instance, but it is a very contagious disease. Some people tell us that it is caused by a germ or an insect and others say that it comes from a poisonous weed on the land. I have not yet heard from the Department whether any preventative or cure has been found for that disease.

The Minister also said that he doubted the wisdom of subsidising butter for the outside market. Candidly, I doubt the wisdom of subsidising anything for the outside market. I suppose we shall have to subsidise certain things in order to get certain imports. But, if it is doubtful wisdom to subsidise butter for the outside market, it is also doubtful wisdom to depend entirely on the outside market for the sale of any farm produce in this country. I know very well that there is a fine live-stock trade at present and that a great deal of money is being made out of live stock. It is not the first time, however, in the history of this country that a great deal of money has been made from the export of live stock to the neighbouring country. But we should also remember that in the year 1921, after the First World War, the farmers of this country who had invested all their money, and not merely all their money but a considerable amount of borrowed money also, in live stock met with a very rude awakening when, overnight, half of their capital was cut away. I should like to know if the Minister is taking that into account, if he is looking forward to the future so as to ensure that we are not going to have, so far as he can prevent it, a repetition of the 1921 slump.

The Minister mentioned also that his Department had new types of barley for feeding purposes. That is also very welcome news. I hope it will be an outstanding success, because if we had types of barley that will grow in deep heavy soil we could look forward to a time in this country when we could produce all our feeding requirements on our own farms. There would no longer be any need for any great importation of maize. We had an admixture scheme in this country which was roundly denounced by the Minister. Perhaps it had its defects, but when we have a Department that is capable of checking and preventing various diseases, analysing soils and so forth, I believe that it would be quite possible to have an admixture scheme in this country that would be very useful and that would provide even better food at almost as cheap a cost, for the areas where they cannot grow food, as by the importation of maize. Any money that we can keep in circulation here is better kept in circulation than to have it go outside the country in order to import something which we ourselves could produce. We should benefit in that way.

Why not use all our domestic products and import as well?

Is it the Minister's contention that we would not be able to cater for our own requirements with our own domestic products without going outside? Is it not quite possible that we could do that?

No. We ought to push production up where we would use all our own and imported feeding stuffs.

It is all right, as mentioned by Deputy Corry, to put production up, but we want the other fellows to do something in that way. If the farmer has to push production up, if he has to work harder and be more efficient, the least we would expect is something in return from the other sections of the community in that way too.

Which other sections?

There are numerous sections in the country—every other one, if it comes to that. It is just as well not to put any tooth on it.

The Deputy is avoiding the description of the sections. He will not tell me to whom he is referring.

The general feeling through the country amongst the agricultural community is that the Minister's policy is aimed at catering for the British market to the neglect of the home market.

That is very daft.

It is certainly very daft if that is the Minister's policy. I made a statement in the House, when, I think, the Minister was not here, on the Department of Finance Vote on Account. I was told that the Minister made a statement in a certain very important place in this country before he became Minister for Agriculture. He was asked what his agricultural policy was, when he was speaking to a certain paper.

One more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough.

It is grand to hear that. However, he stated very briefly that his agricultural policy, if he ever got charge here, was 1,500,000 people in this country living in comfort and decency with a good store cattle trade with England. Then he could go over and talk turkey to John Bull.

Cross your heart and hope to die. Do you not think he was pulling your leg?

I understand the Minister said that but I should like to hear him deny it. A good deal of his present policy is certainly aiming in that direction. It is all very well to tell me about the fine British market. It is undoubtedly a worth-while market but we have had the British market at all times. It is all very well to talk about scientific and experimental farmers and so forth. The landlords of this country had the British market in their day. It was not the compulsory powers of the Estate Commission or the Congested Districts Board that got them to sell that land or compelled them to sell it as early as they did because we did not have compulsory powers at all until about 1919 to deal with one particular type of landlord. They had all the facilities and all the preferences on the British market and the British market did not enable them to continue. It was neither agitation nor compulsory powers that brought a number of them to the stage of selling out their land. It was their total dependence on the British market in using their land as grazing ranches to supply store cattle to the British market that brought them down. Wages were very low. They had labourers almost for nothing at that time and still they did not keep their land.

Is the Deputy talking about their labourers or their estates?

That dependence on the British market is a very foolish idea. Any Minister in this country who is ever going to rely on that as being the chief aim in our agricultural policy has a very mistaken idea.

When the Minister was speaking he mentioned a circular letter which he sent to the various committees of agriculture. Of course he had to have his bit of a jibe that the committees were Fianna Fáil in the majority. I was not present at the meeting of the Galway Committee of Agriculture when this question came up. I freely admit that the Galway Committee is a Fianna Fáil Committee.

You are telling me.

I do not know the politics of the chairman but I guarantee to the Minister and to the House that he was never seen on a Fianna Fáil platform. His criticism of that scheme was just as adverse and devastating as any of the Fianna Fáil members there. I want to say that I agree with the principle of this scheme because for a number of years I have been trying to get additional instructors appointed in County Galway. I hold that if you had one in every three parishes, to start with, it would be far too many. Secondly, it would be a very unequal distribution. I would support the idea of having one in each rural district.

There are not 100 acres between us then.

Perhaps not. I know that the agricultural instructors can do an immense amount for the farmer. I made myself pretty unpopular on a few occasions in the County Galway when I advocated the cutting out of subsidies for shows and instead paying agricultural instructors.

Hear, hear.

I believe that what I advocated would be of far more benefit to the farming community. I would not be against giving a subsidy to one show in the county. It could be held in alternate centres year after year. If that system was adopted, a fairly good subsidy could be given to the show, but I am not in favour of giving subsidies to shows here, there and everywhere. I believe that the money so spent would produce far better results if it were devoted to the employment of agricultural instructors. I think that the number of instructors mentioned by the Minister did deserve some comment, in any case. I certainly feel that additional instructors could be very useful and helpful. Three instructors in a huge county like Galway are not sufficient. I think we should have ten, one in each of the former union areas. I would suggest that two of them should get special training for work in places like the Gaeltacht.

Then we are in substantial agreement. The difference between us is in regard to the electoral areas.

In principle, certainly, but we are not in agreement at the moment, because I believe this should be a gradual development.

I agree.

I was saying it would be desirable that two of the instructors should get special training for their work in the Gaeltacht and the poorer areas.

I notice, in the Minister's Estimate, that there is a reduction of £63,000 in connection with the glass-house scheme. I take that to be a clear indication that there is going to be no further expansion of that scheme. I do not feel capable of going into the merits, or the demerits, of the scheme, but I have heard from a number of people that it has been a very useful one as well as profitable in its first year. If that scheme is not going to be expanded I should like to hear from the Minister what other schemes he intends to introduce into the Gaeltacht. It is essential that we should know that. I have already said in this House that land division by itself is never going to solve the congestion problem in the West. Unless the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Lands get together and devise a scheme for the people in the congested areas there can be very little hope for them. There is no use in holding out the false hopes to them that land division alone is going to be a solution to their problem. If the Minister is not going to expand the glass-house scheme, then I should like to know what other schemes he has in mind for the Gaeltacht.

What about the chicken scheme—the distribution of fowl?

It would do a certain amount of good, and is one that might help. At the same time it would not go very far because of the fact that the land there is not capable of growing enough food. In the case of fowl, it would mean that, in the main, the people would have to purchase food for them. I heard the Minister make the remark the other day that the home-produced food was the best for feeding fowl. That would be all right for those who could produce the food.

Can they not grow oats in Connemara?

They can in certain areas of it. It would be a very small amount. There are a great many areas in Connemara where one could hardly grow any oats. They have not even a garden big enough to do so.

I think that most of them do grow a bit of oats.

I do not think the Minister's land reclamation scheme is going to do very much either to help them.

If it does them no good it certainly will do them no harm.

It certainly will not do any good, because, in my opinion, it would be almost impossible to reclaim land there at all. In the first place, it would mean that the soil would have to be drawn several miles.

I should like to know if the Minister proposes to continue the field drainage scheme which was initiated last year in the Counties of Galway and Mayo and which was a very good scheme for the beneficiaries under it? I know it was a pretty costly scheme for the State. As a farmer who took advantage of it, I should like to see it continued. It was a scheme that gave very fine results.

There is then the question of mechanisation. I suppose that is desirable. There are a number of machines in the country at the present time, but my opinion is that before the people who are in charge of them were allowed out with them they should first have been trained how to use them. You have a certain amount of false pretences in the use of those machines at present. You have a number of people sitting on tractors who think they can use them. They pretend they can. In my opinion it would be much better if they were not allowed out with those tractors at all or not allowed to use them because of the type of work they do, while, on the other hand, we have people who are capable of doing thoroughly good work.

The 11-months' system was referred to. I suppose that, as far as grazing and the conacre letting of hay is concerned, the principle behind that system is not a very good one. At the same time, it must be admitted that the system is useful, particularly in the poorer districts. If the conacre system were carried out in the proper way, it would, I think, be very hard to find fault with it. If conacre, in the case of tillage, was on the basis of a three or five years' letting, with a manurial crop for two cereal crops, or two manurial crops for three cereal crops, I think it could prove to be a very useful system. There are parts of the West of Ireland where I would not like to see very much interference with it. After all, why should not the farmer have the right to use his land and set it? Why should business people be allowed to set half of their business establishments? If a businessman has a large house in which he carried on business and finds that his business is going down a bit, he is quite at liberty to set half his house to another business person in order to provide an income for himself.

Is there not control of rents?

If conacre lettings are to be controlled, and if that system is going to be applied to farmers, there is no reason why the same sort of control in regard to house rents and ground rents should not be applied to every other section of the community. I believe that the Minister should contact the small farmers and get their views on the matters that appertain to themselves. What I fear is that the Minister is not getting into contact with the smaller farmers, but that he is keeping too much on the level of the larger farmers.

In Ballaghaderreen?

I am sure he will get good advice from the large farmers. Many of them are men of experience. They have had the opportunity to travel and of other experience. But, at the same time, the large farmer very often fails to understand the circumstances of the smaller farmer.

What large farmers are there in Ballaghaderreen?

The Minister is a long way off Ballaghaderreen now. That generally happens in life—while we are in Ballaghaderreen we are at home and we do as the home people do, and we take their advice, but when we go to Rome perhaps we are inclined to do as the Romans do. That is the danger I see in all this. If he comes to our committee of agriculture, and I hope he will——

I will get a great welcome when I go to them.

I do not know what the welcome will be like; but, whether the welcome be warm or hostile, I will give the Minister this assurance, that when he goes there the heaviest weapon that will be used on him will be the tongue, and when it comes to a contest of that kind I know that he can hold his own with the champion virago in any itinerant camp in the country.

Very good; in the meantime they might have the civility to answer my letter.

There is one thing I want the Minister to assure the people on and that is that he will do his best to see that the home market is kept for the farmers and that they will be given a fair guarantee. I do not want an exorbitant guarantee, but I want them to get a reasonable guarantee of protection because it is their due. I want him also to state publicly that his policy is not total dependence on the British market.

I suppose you would also want me to state publicly that I have stopped beating my wife.

If you did, they would have their doubts.

Exactly the purpose of the Deputy's request.

The figures that the Minister gave in the course of his statement are very encouraging. They go to prove that the decline we had in agricultural production over a number of years has been halted and that we are now expanding our production once more. In the returns for creamery butter it is shown that for the first four months of 1947 we produced 35,000 cwts. odd and for the first four months of this year we produced 70,000 cwts. odd. That shows that our production in butter has doubled. The same applies to pigs. We have increased the number from the first 17 weeks of 1948, when there were 64,000, to 114,000 in 1949. These figures go to prove that the Minister's policy is sound and he is getting results. He can prove that to the House.

As regards oats, a peculiar position arose. There was a good deal of propaganda by the Opposition last autumn over oats. Actually the whole trouble was that we had a good harvest and a high yield in oats. The increase in acreage was very little over the previous year. In the previous year oats was a high price because it was a scarce commodity. Last year we had artificials available. There was a good harvest and we had a high yield in oats. There was a certain surplus which would have been used up before the next harvest and if the matter had been taken calmly the panic in the oats situation would not have arisen at all.

Some Opposition Deputies are saying our Minister for Agriculture has no policy. Others want to know what his policy is. I believe he has made it quite clear on many occasions what his policy is. He believes in a mixed farming policy, that we should produce live stock as the basis of our agricultural production. We must produce live stock; we cannot go all out on wheat or any one single branch. We should have a mixed farming policy. The Minister has gone out to procure the best possible market for our live stock and farmers should produce live stock.

It has been stated here by the Opposition that tillage has gone and that the Minister is going over to a grass policy. The part of the country from which I come is a tillage area and I believe, no matter what Minister is there, we will have tillage in that area. We have as much tillage in Carlow this year as in any year when there was compulsion. In the non-tillage areas where they got a bad return and the tillage does not suit the land, I believe it is sound policy for those people to produce whatever crop they believe is the most suitable for them. That is the way the Minister is tackling the situation and we will get the best results from that. He does not believe in compulsion or asking the farmer to produce any one crop. He leaves that to the farmer because he knows the farmer is the best judge of his own job on his own farm. Farmers all over the country thoroughly agree with that outlook.

There has been a lot of discussion about increasing the number of agricultural instructors. The Minister is proposing to appoint one for every three parishes. I agree with that. I believe the present position, as far as agricultural instructors are concerned, is very bad. In County Carlow we have only one instructor and he has not a chance of covering the county and meeting the people. If we had an instructor to every three parishes he would be in a position to meet the people. Young farmers' clubs are getting very active. There are branches formed in nearly every parish in the country. Those young farmers are very interested in modern ideas and they would give every encouragement to those instructors. They would not be opposed to them, as was, more or less, the old outlook on these men. Farmers in other years did not approve of them; they thought their ideas were wrong and that they would be of no help to the farming community, but that outlook has changed. The younger farmers are prepared to give these instructors every assistance, and they would like to see them attending club meetings, giving lectures, meeting them on the farms and starting experimental plots. In that way they would observe how modern methods can best be adapted to farms.

I would like to compliment the Minister on what he has done with regard to ground limestone. He has gone a long way in helping that situation. Last year in my constituency ground limestone was costing 32/- a ton, and this year it can be purchased for 16/-. I got it delivered and spread by mechanical spreaders on my land at 28/- a ton. The limestone cost me 32/- the previous year at the works. The Minister told us that quite a number of ground limestone works are being started, and in another year he hopes to have the whole country covered with them, so that any farmer can get his ground limestone at a reasonable price.

There has been a good deal of discussion about mechanisation. Some Deputies are opposed to mechanisation and believe that it is of no practical use. I believe in mechanisation myself. I have been interested in it for a number of years. I believe that if we want to step up production here we shall have to face mechanisation of our farms. Farms in other countries are much farther advanced in this respect than we are. It must be admitted that the large farmers, of course, are in a position to buy modern machines. The main problem lies with the small farmer. Mechanisation is going to provide him with a very big problem. I do not believe that he can afford to meet the cost of machinery. I would appeal to the Minister to give him some assistance in that respect. It has been suggested that loans or grants might be made available to him for that purpose. If the Minister could see his way to bring some scheme into operation which would help these small farmers to buy machinery I think it would have very advantageous results on our agricultural economy as a whole.

Some remarks have been passed about the Minister's statement in relation to conacre. I believe that the Minister was referring to the bigger farmers in Meath and Westmeath. In some of those big farms the owners have no intention of ever working the land. I think the Minister is perfectly justified in telling these people that they must change their system. In other parts of the country people for one reason or another might not be in a position to work their land; I do not for one moment believe that the Minister was referring to them.

I made a special exception in regard to the "widow" woman, or somebody like that, with a young boy growing up. They may have to adopt that policy until such time as the youngsters grow up, or somebody comes along to help them.

The Opposition does not seem to know whether to approve or disapprove of the land reclamation scheme. It is rather difficult to know from their speeches whether or not they do approve of it. I can assure the Minister that the farmers all over the country are looking forward to this scheme. They are sound enough judges to appreciate that this Government is going to give them £50,000,000 to help them improve their land. I believe the Minister has done a good year's work. The figures he has quoted give proof of that. Production has been stepped up. That is the real test. If the Minister continues his present policy that increase will continue.

I must confess that there are times when I feel worried about certain aspects of the policy of the Minister for Agriculture. I came in here to listen to the ex-Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, in the hope that he would give us some constructive criticism. I was very disappointed I have come to the conclusion that the Opposition have no concrete arguments to put forward against our present agricultural policy. They may hold certain views, but they do not seem able to express these views in a reasonable fashion.

I would like to congratulate the Minister on his statement with regard to conacre. It is significant that that statement was first made down in the Midlands.

In Meath.

The Minister did not go down to Mayo, or some area like that, in order to make that statement. That statement is overdue in the Midlands. I trust the Minister will not leave it at that. If the warning is not heeded he should follow up with action. I am very interested in the position of the dairying industry. I think conditions at present give cause for grave anxiety. We have to-day over 1,000,000 cows to supply a population of less than 3,000,000 people. We find that they are unable to do so and we have a resort to milk rationing. In the town of Mullingar and in other rural areas it is impossible to get fresh milk even for young children. That is a scandalous state of affairs in an agricultural country. I do not know a great deal about this matter but I have been talking to men who are interested in the dairying industry and in its preservation. The decline in milk production and the gradual turning away from it had taken many years. This is something which did not happen suddenly. The present decline has taken many years and it is going to take many years to bring milk production back again. But it will never come back unless there is some help and direction from the top.

We have a surplus.

A surplus of milk?

If we have a surplus of milk it is an extraordinary state of affairs that there is not a drop of milk to be had in many of our towns.

I think that is a matter of price.

I am not concerned with that. I am concerned with the scarcity of milk. If one is going to give an economic price for the milk produced by a cow the yield from which is under 400 gallons, that price is going to be ludicrously high. The solution to the problem does not lie in raising the price of milk, because if, in a case like that, the price of milk is raised the whole purpose is defeated, especially in an agricultural country like this with a dairying reputation for generations past. From what I know of our history, cows, in the beginning, were supposed to produce milk and not to masquerade as the mothers of bullocks. To my mind the solution of our problem lies in allowing the dairying industry to exist side by side with the beef industry. I know that the Minister does not agree with that. His aim is the dual purpose cow. Under no circumstances will I enter into a discussion on that. That policy has been pursued for the past 30 years and we are to-day no nearer a solution. There are various reasons given for that. However, I should like the Minister to give some further information when he is concluding on this question of the dairying industry, having regard to the fact that in rural towns there is no milk available.

The fact that the dairying industry can exist side by side with beef production to my mind indicates a solution, in other words, that a solution can be found by a system of zoning. Prior to the Government's interference in agriculture there was a natural system of zoning in this country. You had tillage areas, dairying areas, beet areas and fruit-growing areas. These areas did not spring up just overnight. They came into existence as a result of a system of trial and error over years and years. Attempts have been made frequently to impose other types of husbandry than that for which they were suited on certain areas but all those efforts met with failure. In places like Wexford, Carlow and Mayo efforts were made to start creameries but these efforts proved a failure. It was found that the system already in existence there was the most suitable and that had come about as I have said as a result of trial and error, and it was largely influenced by the soil and climatic condition of these areas over years and generations. If the Minister pursues a policy of allowing areas that are suitable for tillage or that are suitable for dairying to carry on these branches of agriculture and encourage them, he can never be accused of going back to the bullock. Speaking personally, and I may say for our Party, we would not stand for a moment for a policy of going back to the day of the rancher or the man with the dog. I do not believe that is the Minister's policy, no matter how the Opposition at the moment try to make us believe that it is. If they can produce evidence that such is the case they would get all necessary support from me to counteract any such plans on the Minister's part. I do not believe they can produce it.

Well, indeed they cannot, or they would.

There is one other point which has been brought to my attention by a number of people in my constituency to which I should like to direct the Minister's attention. I refer to the question of supply farms and hatcheries. I believe that the owners of supply farms supply eggs weekly to the hatcheries, and if an outbreak of B.W.D. takes place in a hatchery all the eggs belonging to a particular person supplying those eggs to the hatchery have to be destroyed. That means that such people lose the price of three, four or five weeks' supply. As a matter of fact, there were several people in County Roscommon who, last season, each lost between £15 and £20, the value of eggs supplied during a certain period to the hatcheries, because they received no payment for them on account of the outbreak of this disease. It is customary for a supply farm and the hatchery to reach some agreement with regard to the supply of eggs for the season, and part of that agreement stresses that no compensation will be paid by the hatchery to the supply farms where eggs from that supply farm are found to be infected with B.W.D.

I think that the Department should make some regulation or some arrangement whereby at least there would be some reduction of the losses incurred by the hatcheries and the supply farms. If the chicks supplied to a customer by the hatchery die from B.W.D. the hatchery has to replace these chicks with new chicks. The hatchery in Roscommon last year had to supply over 1,000 chicks free to customers as a result of others which they previously supplied dying from B.W.D. If the owners of supply farms were aware in sufficient time of an outbreak of disease amongst their flocks, they would try to get rid of their eggs at the commercial rate on the ordinary market. Last season there was often a delay of four weeks in finding out whether the fowl on certain farms suffered from B.W.D. or not. Subsequently all the eggs sent from these farms to the hatcheries had to be destroyed and the supply farms had no chance of getting any return for their eggs under any circumstances. I have been asked to suggest to the Minister to arrange that a mobile unit be made available if possible, say between two counties, so that the testing of eggs can be carried out much more frequently than at present.

Ten new mobile units have been put into service this season.

I would not for a moment suggest that the Minister should pay compensation for the loss of these eggs because we know perfectly well that if you give people hopes that they can get something from the Government if eggs are destroyed in this way, they would not take the same care in preventing or reporting the disease as they normally would when they have to bear the result of any neglect themselves.

I want to urge on the Minister the necessity for getting ahead with the land reclamation scheme as quickly as possible. I understand that the 1st July is the date fixed as that on which it is to come into operation. Is that correct? Of course, there are other counties to be considered, but I fail to understand why the Minister, coming, as he does, from Ballaghaderreen, did not put Roscommon high up on the priority list.

Oh, what would be said if I did!

Nothing in the world could be said to the Minister if he put that county on the priority list, especially in view of the fact that Galway and Mayo last year got the advantage of other drainage schemes and the Parliamentary Secretary promised that Roscommon would be next on the list. I see no reason in the world why the Minister should not have put Roscommon on the priority list for the land reclamation scheme. At any rate, I hope to see it coming into operation there within the next 12 months and I would like the Minister to give me some information as to how soon he expects the scheme to start in Roscommon.

Am I to take it from Deputy McQuillan that the present policy pursued by the Minister for Agriculture is a policy to which the Clann na Poblachta Party is committed? I thought that in dealing with this question of agriculture, a new and virile Party like Clann na Poblachta——

You admit that do you not?

——would express their viewpoint on this important and complex subject. Anybody who takes up the Book of Estimates issued by, or on behalf of, the Department of Agriculture will see that that Department covers a huge line of activity throughout the country and enters into almost every aspect of life within the State. I, in my opening remark, admitted that this is a complex subject, as complex almost as nature. Anybody, any Party or any Government who comes to deal with agriculture in any country, much less this one, which of its very nature is composed of such a number of varied agricultural interests, must realise that it is a very difficult problem to find a line of policy or activity that will meet with approval of everybody within the State. When the present occupant of the position of Minister for Agriculture was here on these benches he used his position in this House to criticise the line of policy of the previous administration. He told us that the Fianna Fáil Party was ramming down the throats of the people of this country a policy and a programme that was not of their making and that was not designed to benefit them. He omitted to mention during those years that this country was to all intents and purposes cut off from all outside sources of supply and was practically left on its own resources to maintain its population in health and to maintain its flocks and herds. Anyone who knows that the Government had the responsibility during those years of feeding the people of the State, of making an honest attempt to maintain in good heart its land and to secure that at the end of hostilities there would be a basic foundation from which any future Government could proceed to develop and increase our agricultural output in cereal crops, live stock and all other branches of agriculture, must come to the conclusion that the previous administration did fairly well by this State and discharged its obligations to the people in spite of hostile opposition from Deputies like, as he was then, Deputy James Dillon, who stood up in this House and outside it to criticise in spite-of the difficult problems that then faced the Department of Agriculture.

It is true, of course, that agricultural produce has increased, but there are reasons for that. It is not entirely due to the change of Government. Anybody who goes to the trouble of taking up the report issued by the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy, or a document issued under the name of the Minister for External Affairs known as the European Recovery Programme will find in both documents reasons for the reduction in agricultural production earlier and the increase in agricultural production since the war ceased. The reason for that is that our ports are now open and we are in a position to import fertilisers, Indian corn and other types of food to feed certain lines of agricultural produce that must of necessity, it appears, disappear out of the farmers" premises during a war in which the country is isolated or blockaded. Anybody except a person who has a prejudiced mind must realise by now that you cannot have a pig population up to the numbers we enjoyed prior to the war unless you are in a position to import the feeding stuffs to feed those pigs. I am not able to say to what extent the increase in the supply of milk or poultry is due to the same cause, but it is a fact that the increases I have mentioned are certainly due to the increased amount of Indian corn and other coarse grains which have been imported to enable our people to feed pigs, poultry and dairy cattle.

Fianna Fáil agricultural policy was designed and implemented to get the greatest degree of self-sufficiency possible within the State. Anybody who reads any of the public pronouncements of the leaders of the Fianna Fáil Party cannot accuse them of saying that they intended to make this State self-sufficient without any importations of any types of feeding stuffs for animals, but there are people who twisted their statements to try to make the general public believe that that was the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. It is the policy of this State— and it is a sensible policy—the policy of the previous Government just as it is the policy of this one, to enable the farmers to increase production so that they shall be in a position to meet on any market any competitor on equal terms. If the Minister for Agriculture follows that policy he will, I am sure, meet with the approval of all fair-minded persons. He will meet with mine. I am not going to accuse the Minister for Agriculture of being what he is not. It may very well be that there are people who think that because we had a change of Government, and because the Fine Gael Party dominate or control or have the greatest number of seats in this Government, this country would naturally become a cattle ranch and that all types of agricultural production would cease on the land except the one type, the production of cattle on a large scale for export.

Is that the explanation for last year's increases in potatoes, oats and eggs?

I have not finished speaking yet. The Minister may have thought when he came into office that he could proceed on a policy which would lead to a reduction in tillage land. Last year, when introducing his Estimate, he was in a more flamboyant mood, as another Deputy said, than he was this year. And last year, early in the year, he proceeded to show the other fellow how to do it. He had advertisements inserted in the daily papers asking people to grow oats and telling them it was a cash crop and if they had any difficulty in finding a buyer they should drop him a postcard, that there was no necessity to put a stamp on the postcard, and that he would find a buyer. A certain number of people, a larger number than the year previously, took his advice and grew oats. That is one of the reasons why there is an increase in the acreage and in the amount of oats produced last year. The other reason is that we had a fairly good year and that God sent us a bountiful harvest. Another reason is that we had more fertilisers to put into the land. The same thing applies to potatoes.

Those dealing with this question must realise that a surplus in agricultural production at any time causes a glut in the market and difficulty of disposing of the surplus—of housing or storing it and of selling it. No one will deny that. I have enough intelligence to know that it is very difficult to estimate when you are going to have a surplus in any single line of agricultural production. However, the burden of our complaint—and of everyone else's complaint—against the Minister for Agriculture in relation to oats is that he gave an assurance that he would find a market and that he has not done so.

Is the Deputy not aware that there were advertisements in the local papers——

Is not the Deputy as well aware as I am that 530 tons of oats—or whatever figure the Minister gave—were exported to Belgium? Here is what the Minister said this year:—

"Oats should be grown on an ever-increasing acreage by those farmers who understand what farming means and who realise that the bulk of the oats grown upon our lands must be consumed on the holding if they are to yield a profit in all circumstances. The farmer who grows them exclusively as a cash crop will confer a blessing on the community at large if he puts himself as an apprentice to a tailor or a cobbler and gives up farming altogether."

That is given in column 1081 of the Official Report for 12th May, 1949. Why did the Minister not put that note in along with his advertisements last spring and advise the people who were not in a position to feed oats or potatoes to animals on the farm to give up the idea of going into farming altogether and serve their time as apprentice to a cobbler or a tailor? That is the burden of our complaint against the present Minister.

Are there any oats left in Meath?

There is plenty of it, if you want it, at 24/- a barrel. It was purchased there last month for Belgium at 24/-.

It was the best of oats, grown on the best of land, by supporters of the present Administration, and by supporters of Fianna Fáil. Of course, there are people who think that the farmers in Meath cannot farm and know nothing about growing oats, barley, potatoes or anything but grass.

A certain institution in Dublin could not get oats at less than 35/- and had to take it at that price.

Since Deputy Rooney joined the company of lawyers, he has become a great man at cross-examination. I am here to make a speech and not to be cross-examined. I would have the greatest pleasure in the world in answering his questions, but apparently they are considered by the Chair as interruptions, and I think it would be in the best interests of the debate if Deputy Rooney would obey the rules of order in this House. The Minister, during the course of his speech, complained that the committees of agriculture to which he addressed his circular last year, where those committees were mainly composed of members of the Fianna Fáil organisation, heaped vulgar abuse on him instead of replying in a reasonable and rational way to his communication.

In regard to the county which I have the honour to represent, our county council has a slight balance in favour of Fianna Fáil and I would say that its committee of agriculture is set up in a similar way. His letter was received at their meeting and discussed in a reasonable way and a proposal was put up to his Department accepting in part the recommendations which he made in his letter. They were not in favour of the agricultural instructor in each parish, but were apparently in favour of a number of additional instructors in County Meath.

Was that the first or second meeting of the county committee?

It was discussed at a meeting of the committee and the meeting was adjourned in order to——

To circulate the Minister's letter.

I am not a member of the committee and was not present at the meeting. All I have to go on is the Press report of the meeting.

Was it not clear that the members did not understand the Minister's letter?

They did not abuse the Minister.

They showed a lamentable ignorance of what was in the Minister's communication.

I resent very much Deputy Cowan telling me that members of that county committee showed a lamentable amount of ignorance.

We will hear Deputy Hilliard now and Deputy Cowan after.

The Deputy criticises the members of the committee and tells me what he thinks about them. He says that they showed lamentable ignorance.

In their discussion of that matter.

If their acceptance of the Minister's proposals in this regard showed lamentable ignorance, I wonder if Deputy Cowan thinks that the Minister's proposals show a lamentable amount of ignorance.

I think they should have been discussed on their merits and not condemned before people understood them.

The Minister, in any case, is not responsible.

They were accepted in part. They felt that it would not be in the best interests of the scheme to have an instructor in each parish. I am in favour of having these instructors and in having the farmers instructed to as great an extent as possible in the science of agriculture.

Will the Deputy agree that is was never suggested that there should be one instructor in each parish?

Will Deputy Cowan agree to make his own speech, and cease interrupting?

The suggestion was one for every three parishes.

One for three parishes, yes, and they are not having one for every three parishes in Meath. It is not fair for the Minister to accuse the members of the Fianna Fáil organisation of using county committees of agriculture to heap personal abuse on him. That is not the case. As a matter of fact, one member of the county committee referred to the Minister as being consistent in his inconsistency. He was not a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, but of the Party to which Deputy Cowan once belonged, the Labour Party.

That is why I was surprised to see them making such a ridiculous statement.

If that is what the Deputy is driving at, it is all right with me. The Minister, speaking down in the Midlands recently, referred to another aspect of agricultural production which has not been touched upon by any Deputy. I have not the Press report of his speech before me, but he said that there was a certain amount of grassland in this country which no one but a madman would break up. He referred to the natural potentiality of this type of grassland, which, he said, existed in certain counties, including the area which I represent. It is a fact that, in order to continue successfully an agricultural policy of increased production in regard to live stock and livestock exports, it is necessary to have a certain area of land comprising farms of certain sizes, and it is, in my opinion, necessary to reserve to that particular type of production the type of land the Minister had in mind. Another Deputy who spoke in this debate asked the Minister to consult the Minister for Lands in these matters and I wonder if the Minister, since he made that statement about grassland, has been pressing his point within the Government circle to ensure that such lands are not brought within the ambit of acquisition proceedings by the Land Commission. If the previous Minister is to be considered a madman for forcing the people who owned this type of land to cultivate it during the emergency years, would the Minister, now that the emergency years have passed, consider the Land Commission and the Minister for Lands madmen also, if they acquire this land and divide it into small farms, upon which mixed farming must be carried out, because, if it is not carried out, the people living on them will not be able to get the sustenance necessary for life?

In dealing with the 11 months' system at the meeting in Navan, the Minister, so far as the published statement is concerned, left no one in doubt that it was Government policy to abolish that system of land letting. It now transpires that the Minister's statement has been misunderstood and that he was merely making a statement which was applicable to a reserved class of people who owned a particular type of land.

Does the Deputy agree with it?

I do not, but it is there, and, before there is any interference with it, I would advise the Deputy to read the report of the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy.

The majority or minority report?

The majority report, in which they make one passing reference to it, and advise that, before the matter is decided upon, it be investigated by a body competent to investigate it. This is a system which has grown out of the historical background of land tenure in this country. It is a system which, in some cases, has brought benefit to some of our own nationals and, from other points of view, it is a system which should be abolished.

The Deputy will, I hope, understand——

Deputy Keane should not interrupt.

It is a matter which should get due consideration in all its aspects before any Governmental decision is made. When he made his announcement, the Minister had not fully considered the matter and his announcement did not cover fully the question of the 11 months' system in land letting. It is a fact that there are certain classes of land in County Meath which are let and which have deteriorated and are deteriorating, but, at the same time, there are other parcels of land which are let and which are properly looked after by the owners who give a fair amount of attention to them. As I say, it is a matter that should get grave consideration before a Government decision is taken on it.

The Minister for Agriculture, in introducing the Estimate, made another statement on which I want to comment. I will quote the statement because it affects the area of County Meath. It is at column 1090, Volume 115 of the Dáil Debates:—

"The last matter I want to deal with is the question of how best to serve the dairying industry with a view to increasing its profitability. Accordingly the best that I know is to arrange in each area for an effective system of cow-testing, for an effective system of veterinary services designed to eradicate mastitis, for an effective system of service of proven bulls, and, as a remote objective, an effective assault upon tuberculosis in cattle. The model scheme, or what I perhaps had better term the pilot scheme, will be launched in the milk supply area of the City of Dublin and will probably take this shape. If the suppliers consent, and I think they will, to a levy of a ¼d. per gallon for all milk supplies the Department will match that ¼d. with another one. Out of the resulting fund it will be possible firstly, to pay a sufficient number of cow-testing supervisors to weigh the milk, record the milk and have it tested centrally once a month so as to detect any uneconomic cows which may be in the herd. Secondly, to provide free veterinary services to every subscriber to the scheme for the control of contagious abortion, and streptococcal, and staphylococcal mastitis. Thirdly, to establish in the area an artificial insemination centre which will be equipped with proven bulls, that is to say, bulls of five years of age or over the performance of whose progeny has been recorded and the capacity of whom to pass on to their progeny milking qualities has been demonstrated."

I want to inform the House that that is the type of policy that I would subscribe to and, if the Minister can make a success of that scheme. I will say, "More power to his elbow." But there are many aspects of this question that I am afraid the Minister has not taken into consideration. By what method does the Minister or the Department hope to conserve for the home milk producer the female progeny of those cattle? How does the Minister hope to have such heifer calves reared on small farms of 20, 21 or 22 acres? Many of the milk suppliers for the Dublin area produce milk on holdings of that size and are forced into taking land on the 11 months' system to enable them to carry the dairy herds that they have, never mind to rear and feed heifer calves of their own proven cows got by proven bulls. Are the heifer calves out of those cows that are tested and that show a fine milk record and got by those proven bulls to be sold off those farms at birth and fed into beef?

Is the milk potential of those animals to be lost to the State? Are these animals at one-and-a-half or two years of age to be sent over the water to produce milk for the British? These are questions that naturally follow when one is considering this type of scheme.

What about the law of averages?

The law of averages is all right, but there should be some method by which the heifer calves of high yielding cows should be known when they are being sold.

I have dealt with some of the aspects of the agricultural policy of this Government as I see it. I have made my contribution to this debate. I consider that for a lot of the criticisms that have been levelled at the Minister for Agriculture, he is himself responsible. He asked for them and he got them. I am further of opinion that, in the area that I represent, in so far as work on agricultural land is concerned, by next October it will not exist. Most of the people in County Meath have gone out of tillage.

On a point of information, would the Deputy give us any idea as to whether, in the Majority Report of the Post-Emergency Agricultural Committee, there is anything about tillage?

Would you tell me——

This is cross-examination. Deputy Keane can reserve his speech.

I think the Deputy——

Deputy Keane will allow the Chair to direct the House.

Of course, for the benefit of Deputy Keane, I do not accept as gospel everything that is in that report. I have my own opinion on that matter.

I quite understand that, Deputy.

Deputy McQuillan says that the policy of the Minister is not a policy designed to allow the bullock to supersede all and everything in this country but Deputy McQuillan should realise that, according to the European Recovery Programme, this country is committed to sending to Britain an increased number of dry cattle, fat or in store condition.

Does the Deputy not agree with increasing our trade?

I am only telling Deputy McQuillan that the Leader of his Party is committed to that. He says that he thinks the policy of this Government is moving in the opposite direction and I want to disabuse his mind on that point and to tell him that the policy of his Government is directed mainly towards that end and that the Leader of his Party, the Minister for External Affairs, has issued this document dealing with the European Recovery Programme in which it is clearly stated that that is the aim and object of this Government. In my opinion—I had better state it now— you cannot have increased numbers of live stock fed into the fat stage in this country without having fairly large sized farms to get them to that stage. There is no use in people coming to this House or to any other place with the idea in the back of their minds that there is an unlimited amount of land in County Meath or Westmeath that can be divided and cut out into 20 or 30 acre farms. Deputies should get that out of their minds, in my opinion.

In so far as the land reclamation scheme announced by the Minister is concerned, I should like to point out that I understood from him that this was a purely voluntary scheme—that it devolved on the person owning the land to enter into a commitment with the Department of Agriculture in connection with it. Persons who own land are not likely to avail of that scheme if they think that their right to the land is going to be interfered with because they are letting it on the 11-months' system or for any other reason. I am not going to compliment the Minister on his scheme. I consider it a dual purpose scheme. It was introduced so that certain people could swallow the bitter pill of unemployment in this country and it is designed to give employment as well as to reclaim land and to bring it into better heart. I agree with the underlying principle of the scheme. I think that land should be drained and that all the available land that is not now in production and that can be brought into production should be brought into production by drainage and by any other method of improvement that can be devised by the hand of man. But it is well for everyone to realise and understand—be they Labour Deputies or Deputies of any other Party—that the owner of land who thinks that his land may be taken from him at some future date will not be the first to avail of such a voluntary scheme. I think it would be as well for the Government to make up their mind on this question once and for all and to tell a person straight off the reel, when they examine his case, that they do not intend to interfere with his right to that land.

What about the Constitution?

On a point of order, I do not think the Minister for Agriculture has anything to do with the working of the Land Commission.

Deputy Hilliard has not transgressed very much—just a little.

I do not talk too often in this House and I think that when I do I talk as much to the point as any other Deputy in this House—and more so than most of them.

It was interesting in the last couple of days to listen to the speeches from the other side of the House, but there was nothing instructive or informative about them. Deputy O'Reilly, a benevolent Fianna Fáil Deputy, said last week that the Minister has a good chance now. May I respectfully suggest to Deputy O'Reilly that he should slightly change the wording and, at the next meeting of his Party, say to the Party, not that the Minister for Agriculture has a good chance now, but "for God's sake, give him a chance now." In all my experience in public life, which is now, I presume, about 45 years or more, I have never come across such a tirade of vituperative whispering from the Press and Fianna Fáil, from people coming from the church, from the pictures, at the crossroads and in public-houses about the Minister. We had some of it to-day—I think Deputy Hilliard referred to "flamboyant speeches."

I was quoting Deputy C. Lehane when I referred to "flamboyant speeches".

It would take a very strong man to stand up to that continuing and sickening vendetta of lies. The Minister is not the first of his family to make sacrifices. He is not the first of his family to display a keen sense of patriotism and to have the courage and pluck and inspiration to stand up to innuendoes and falsehoods. I now challenge any Fianna Fáil Deputy in this House or anywhere else to tell me one specific thing he has done wrong—just one. It was aired about my part of the country for the last three months that the Minister gave a definite and specific promise that he would increase the price of milk. Even my own Party wanted to push that down my throat. Has the age of truthfulness gone? I was on three deputations, composed of different Parties, to Government Buildings in regard to that matter. I will state authoritatively, without fear of contradiction, and in order to contradict the maligning and malicious campaign of those who circulated the lies under that head what he said. He listened to the arguments of the deputation. He seemed, to my mind, much impressed by the arguments put forward by the different speakers and, weighing the whole measure of the arguments submitted by the deputation, he said: "I shall submit the points that you have made to the Executive Council." That is what the Minister said—not the distorted statement made out of it to the effect that he made a definite promise to increase the price of milk and then broke his word. That is one lie nailed.

Great play was made here last week and to-day about the price of oats. Not one of the Fianna Fáil Deputies adverted to the fact that when we came into office, at a particular time that might conflict with the sale of the crop of oats, all the granaries in Dublin were packed from the floors to the ceilings with oatmeal. Subject to correction, I should say that oatmeal cost something like £150,000. It was a surprise to the Minister, to the Government and to the people. Here were 30,000 tons of oatmeal bought by Deputy Lemass lying in a rotting heap. On being examined, it was found to be unfit for human use. It had to be got rid of. If it was not pushed out at a sacrifice price, it would have walked out. That came at the psychological moment when our oats crop, owing to a beneficent Providence, was of a consummate size. They did not tell you about that; they forgot to advert to that difficulty, which was one of the problems which confronted the Minister.

The Minister, said Deputy Beegan, should preserve, develop and encourage the home market rather than the British market. The policy of selfsufficiency was, perhaps, good in its time; the policy of living in a kind of self-contained entity either within or without the comity of nations. Surely Deputy Beegan was not like Rip Van Winkle, asleep for the last ten years. He must have realised the change in world conditions. He must have realised the change in world ideologies. He must have realised that nations to-day cannot live, as they could formerly, in complete isolation. Nations are inter-dependent for their trade and commerce. Hence it is that every nation realises the importance of seeking for its surplus production markets outside so as to keep the economy at home well-balanced and well-preserved. Fianna Fáil, in their day, perfectly honestly if you like, in their efforts to cry quits with the British market, tried to create markets in other countries. The experiment was a complete failure and they had to revert to the one essential market for the well-being and security and balance of our trade.

We should look at things as they are to-day. Will they look at them honestly and realistically and not in the spirit which is operating through the country? I know of no greater effort to destroy this great Minister for Agriculture than the policy initiated, in the main by Fianna Fáil and developed to ruin him. Not since the days of the Pigott forgeries was there anything so scandalous, when a great Minister is doing his best and when they should be giving him every encouragement and constructive and co-operative help. Look at the position to-day. Let us be honest about it. What are calves making? Deputy Ó Briain coughs.

No wonder I would.

The price for dropped calves is from £5 to £6.

Is that all you got?

A Deputy

£10.

The price for yearlings is from £17 to £23; for one-and-a-half-year-old bullocks, £27 to £35; and for forward bullocks, £48 to £50. The guaranteed price for wheat is 62/6 a barrel; the guaranteed price for barley is 40/-; the guaranteed price for eggs is 2/6 a dozen until the end of 1951. I should like the Minister to be here so that I could try to encourage him to give a guaranteed price to the industry carried on by the community I represent—I am referring to the dairying industry. I ask any man honestly to look at all that and see if that is not an economic revolution which has brought in its train happiness, peace and prosperity and supplies even to Fianna Fáil farmers, a revolution which has been effected by the policy of the Minister in the last year and two months.

I want to speak now about creameries. I appreciate the difficulty of what I am going to request. I want to be fair about it. My county is one of the chief, if not the greatest, dairying counties in the State. In my county there are 44 proprietary creameries built exclusively and without any help by the dairy farmers there at an initial cost of £500,000. The incidence of labour therein is very great. According to Professor Murphy, Limerick, Cork and part of Tipperary supply about 63 per cent. of the total butter output of the whole State. We have been looking for, and the farmers believe they are entitled to, some increase in the price of milk. Why do they say that and how does the Minister expect me to defend the submission of that case to him? Within a few years, the cost of labour for working these institutions has increased by 50 per cent. Rates are increasing and reaching the point when they are practically beyond the capacity of the rural ratepayer to pay. Ten years ago the rates in my county were about 10/- in the £. They have steadily gone up until this year they are 20/- in the £. We had to make certain curtailments to bring them down to that level and we shall have to tighten up the administration if we are to meet the normal commitments under the various services which we are expected to administer in an efficient manner. The cost of replacements of machinery in the last couple of years has gone up by approximately 25 per cent. The replacement of cattle, as some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies and others said, is a recurring expense. The increasing incidence of diseases such as mastitis and abortion in cattle entails an extra cost not so much to replace losses incurred by the death of these animals as the essential cost of bringing veterinary surgeons to try and do something to save them.

I think the Minister stated recently that the price of butter in a few months has gone up by 100 per cent. Many who went out of the dairying industry in the last ten or 12 years have gone back into it. The natural outcome of such a development will be an increase in the milk supply and, consequently, an increase in butter. If supplies do increase in that manner we shall possibly find this country will have a substantial surplus next year. The obvious market for that will be Britain. We know that in England to-day they can buy butter at 17/- a cwt. cheaper than we can supply it. I think that is right.

One and twopence a lb. to the consumer.

I appreciate that would be a very serious problem for the Minister who might have to subsidise to the English producer in order to keep the milk price static. I believe the farmers have sent several deputations, and I wish to speak for them here, to represent their case for an increase in the price of milk. That is the only thing I see missing out of the excellent Estimates submitted by the Minister. I repeat what I said last year, that we ought to consider how essential it is to preserve the dairying industry which is, of course, the basis of our economy and the foundation for the continuity of the dairying stock and store cattle in the country.

I have only one other point to make. Some complaints were made which were unfair and untruthful. Accusations were made about a statement the Minister made in, I think, Meath about the 11 months' system. Is it not nauseating that decent men. Members of Parliament, would stand up, take a phrase out of its context and represent it in skeleton form for the benefit of a particular Party?

He never did it himself?

What did they say? They made a definite sweeping statement that the whole 11 months' system should be done away with. Possibly, if that did come about, it would have certain reactions on my own bank account considering what I am. However, he did not say that. I want to nail that lie. He qualified it by saying that there were certain cases that must be considered on their merits. I know that is so. I have been doing business for one woman who had a serious domestic sickness. Her husband passed away leaving the mother and two young daughters utterly unable to do anything themselves. She came to an auctioneer and said: "Look after our business until the girl reaches her majority." That is a case to be considered on its merits. I could give half a dozen others in my own area. There are cases not far from where Deputy Ó Briain and I live where there are hundreds of acres being set for the grazing of horses while the primary owner lives in another country. These are the lands that ought to be divided for the economic benefit of the individuals in the locality and for the general productivity, the progress and the prosperity of the whole motherland.

I think the Minister ought to be congratulated on the way in which he has approached this matter. He has brought a new force, new ideas and vision to it and to the Department. He has taken the long view and the proper view. I am perfectly sure—and I was slow even to grant him these compliments until I was satisfied in my mind —that his view is best. Despite the vituperation and lies that have gone abroad through my county it is gradually working in the minds of decent farmers of all Parties that the policy of Mr. Dillon is the right one. If he is only given a chance he will, with the pluck of the Dillons, carry it through and see that agriculture in this country is placed on a basis of prosperity never expected and rarely anticipated for the last quarter of a century.

Unlike Deputy Madden, I am one Deputy in this House who has occasion fairly frequently to criticise the Minister for Agriculture. In fact, I have on several issues far more fundamental disagreements with the Minister than the Party opposite. I recognise full well that the bulk of the campaign of abuse directed against the Minister by the Opposition is based not so much on any conviction that his policy is wrong as upon personal dislike and enmity. I, on the other hand, have certain views upon his policy which are in no way related to his personality but to certain sections of the people whom I represent. Since I came into this House last year I have listened to many speeches and in particular on this Estimate. I do not think I ever heard in the course of my experience at meetings in different parts of the country and in the House in one association or another, a more tortured effort to criticise the Minister's policy in relation to the proposal to have parish agents as the effort of Deputy Smith during last week. It was quite evident to us—and I am sure he must have known it—that he was simply engaged upon an attempt to discredit what is undoubtedly in my view, a very good idea. The suggestions which were made by the ex-Minister, Deputy Smith, in regard to the difficulties that would confront a parish agent going down the country were only childish and could only appeal to the mind of one who had not reached the use of reason. I believe that is a scheme which will be of immense benefit to the agricultural community when it is put into effect. I am sure that every honest man in this House feels the same about it. The proposal is to have an agent in every three parishes who will be at the disposal of the farmers to help and advise them. How could anybody, with any honesty in him, criticise that? I believe that any criticism of that particular proposal must be based upon political dishonesty, political expediency and nothing else.

There is one point in the Minister's policy on which I have expressed disagreement before. I want to refer to it again. I refer to his policy in relation to compulsory tillage. Unlike the vast majority of Deputies on all sides of the House I represent, particularly, the agricultural workers. Because of that I am keenly aware of the difficulty of developing in this House any great sympathy for them. It is recognised that, amongst all Parties, the bulk of the representation here is in respect of agricultural employment. I suppose that is naturally so, because the owners of land are in the majority, while those who work on the land for a wage are numerically in the minority. As I have said, I make the claim that I represent the men who work for a wage on the land. I have found, and am finding, that with the passing of compulsory tillage, unemployment will develop amongst agricultural labourers. I am convinced of that. The Minister is one who puts a great deal of faith in the farmers. He feels that, if mixed farming can be developed on a voluntary basis, it will make for more employment than we would have under compulsory tillage. In that particular matter he is too much of an idealist for me.

So far as my knowledge goes the inclination of the average farmer is to till as little as he can. If he can make a living by means of grazing bullocks or by the expenditure of the minimum amount of energy, he will have little regard as to the volume of employment which his land will provide, or as to its productivity. That is an unfortunate fact. It is an unsavoury fact, but, nevertheless, in my view it is a fact. I am happy to say that it is not a fact which applies particularly to my own constituency. My constituency in North and South County Dublin has within its borders men who are reckoned to be the best farmers in the country. They till their land intensively. They have always done so, as their fathers did before them. I am speaking now in respect of other areas in the country where there is not a tillage tradition, but where the reverse has been the case, where the tendency has been to till as little as possible. In such areas there was, and I believe still is, a need for some degree of compulsion so far as tillage is concerned.

There may have been a case for reducing the percentage of land that a farmer would be required to till, but, bearing in my mind the large number of men who depend for a livelihood as workers for a wage on the land, it was something of a disaster that compulsory tillage should go overnight. I expressed that view last year. I have done so on more than one occasion since and I repeat it again. That is one point in the policy of the present Minister with which I cannot reconcile my own view. I believe that a certain amount of compulsion is necessary to bring land into production, land which otherwise, I believe, will not come into production.

There has been a considerable amount of comment and discussion on the Minister's scheme of land reclamation. It can at least be said of the present Minister that he has put a stir into Irish agriculture. His scheme of land reclamation, if it works satisfactorily, will be of tremendous benefit to the nation. I have my own slant on it and it is this: Deputy Hilliard complained that it was a dual-purpose scheme, that it was not alone a scheme to improve the land but one to give employment. One of its biggest advantages, in my opinion, taking the short-term view, is that it will provide employment. I recommend to the Minister that great care should be taken to see that when moneys are being made available to provide employment under it that such employment will not be confined to the farmer and the members of his family but will extend to all the people in an area who need employment.

That is quite definitely established.

I am glad to know that because, undoubtedly, it is something which is to be commended.

There are two branches. The farmer can either do the work himself or he can have it done by the employment of labour. When we come to discuss it, I think the Deputy will agree that the weight is in favour of employing men.

I want to turn now to the very vexed question of tomatoes which has been discussed ad nauseam in this House within recent weeks. Deputy Burke, one of my fellow Deputies in the constituency I represent, has been tackling the Minister on this particular subject, not, I believe, with the interests of the tomato growers in mind at all. However, he has been tackling him, and in my view has succeeded in doing more damage to the case of the tomato growers than anything else. I would like the Minister to consider the matter calmly, if it is possible for him to do so. I know that the immediate thought which springs to his mind when he thinks of tomatoes is one related to the immense profits which were made by certain large growers during the war. I have no interest in that section of people which wants to exploit the needs of the poor in this city, or in any city or town in Ireland. I firmly believe that as regards any group of persons or any individual who tries to exploit the needs of any section of the people in relation to essential foodstuffs—and tomatoes are in the nature of essential foodstuffs now, because the country has become tomato conscious — the heel should be put on any such group or individual in no uncertain way. Here we have a situation in which a number of men, who are in a small way growing tomatoes, have invested a certain amount of capital in the business through North County Dublin and they are put in a position of near bankruptcy, I would say, or they definitely will be in that position if the importation of Dutch tomatoes is allowed to continue.

Deputy Burke stated that 50 tons of tomatoes went to rot in Rush last year. As I stated in the House shortly after he made that statement, I went to Rush and I found everybody laughing there and when I asked them what they were laughing at they said it was at the idea of 50 tons going to rot in the district last year. Anybody who knows anything about the growing of tomatoes is aware that 50 tons would represent a great proportion of the total crop produced in Rush—at least one-third of it—and to suggest that one-third of the crop rotted was regarded as the height of nonsense. In making a statement such as that, the Deputy invited the Minister, I suppose, to make a somewhat hasty reply.

But there is a definite case for some form of protection for the small tomato grower. If we are to allow Dutch tomatoes to be imported without restriction and to be sold at very low prices in the Dublin market, it is bound to affect the home trade adversely. A statement was made by the organisation set up in the interests of tomato growers in this country to the effect that Dutch tomatoes exported to this country and sold at such a low price are exported under subsidy.

If they are, I will match that subsidy penny for penny.

That is fair enough. Has the Minister taken any steps to find out whether that statement is true or not?

That allegation was made to me and I informed the person who made it that if on any occasion he would notify me, or his representative in Holland could inform me, that a higher price was being charged in Holland than was being charged in Dublin, I would take steps to confirm it by sending someone to Holland at once and in that event I was prepared to match any subsidy paid by the Dutch Government penny for penny by a countervailing duty.

I have the impression that some such investigation is proceeding.

If that statement is found to be true, I will be prepared to impose a countervailing duty.

I trust the Minister will take every step to protect the native growers. The Minister will agree that any native industry which gives employment and adds to the prosperity of the State deserves to be encouraged. I understand, from speaking to tomato growers, that if they were guaranteed a reasonable price they would be satisfied. A reasonable price would be something in the nature of 1/3 to 1/6 per lb. If the growers were guaranteed a price at that level it could not be regarded as excessive and it would enable them to carry on their little industry and look to the future with some sense of security and they would work in the knowledge that they were not just labouring in the dark. It would also give those who represent the workers in the industry an opportunity of knowing exactly where we stand.

Let me say again that I have absolutely no sympathy with the type of grower the Minister obviously has in mind, the grower who rubs it into customers when the opportunity offers. I would not say that that is entirely the fault of the grower. It is the fault of the system under which we live, the system which the Minister, I think, strongly advocates but which I do not find myself in agreement with, and that is the system whereby supply and demand determine the price and whereby all goods are produced purely with a profit motive. I think that is the trouble in so far as the high prices of tomatoes are concerned. During the war years, the years of shortage, tomatoes went to 6/- a lb. and the poor in the city could not afford to pay for them.

Does the Deputy know the price at which tomatoes are being quoted to-day?

I could not say that.

I think the Deputy would be shocked if he heard it.

I can appreciate that just now tomatoes would be a fairly high price, because they would be forced tomatoes and they would not be quite in season.

They would be grown in glasshouses.

There would be a very small supply of such tomatoes and that small supply is the determining factor so far as price is concerned.

If they get a high price now they ought not to raise such a hullabaloo if the price is not so high later on.

The high price is confined to one or two growers. The small growers in Rush bring in their tomatoes during the ordinary supply season and their wares are subject to the fluctuations which come as a result of the importation of unlimited quantities of Dutch tomatoes. I recommend a re-examination of this matter. I think the Minister does not want to kill this industry, although the Opposition wish to convey that that is his sole aim, but I feel he will kill it unless some measure of protection is introduced. If he does not establish some protective system the industry will disappear, because it cannot compete with the importation of Dutch tomatoes.

There is another matter on which I am in very grave, fundamental disagreement with the Minister. I refer to the status and the treatment of the agricultural worker within the Republic of Ireland. In December of last year the Agricultural Wages Board published a wages Order setting out the rates of wages payable to male agricultural workers as from 3rd January, 1949. Up to that date agricultural workers were required to work a 54-hour week—that was the normal working week throughout the country. Following the new Order the working hours were reduced to 50 per week and, in order to facilitate the special requirements of agriculture, provision was made so that any special work of importance could be paid for at overtime rates.

But there was no weekly contract of service provided for in the new Order—is not that so?

That is so, but in practice the new Order meant that the 50-hour regulation made it possible for the farmer to take the weekly half-holiday on Saturday and that was the general way the 50-hour week was expected to work. Under the 54-hour system, the old system, well known to Deputies here, well known to the farmers and very well known to the agricultural labourers, the farm labourer was expected to work from dawn till dark during many months of the year in order to complete the normal working week. Under the 50-hour system a farm labourer had a weekly half-day which he could apply to the cultivation of his own plot or cottage garden instead of trying to cultivate it by the light of the moon, as some of them had to do it in the early spring mornings.

I think the new Order can be approached from two directions. Firstly, you have the progressive side of it. By reducing the number of working hours to 50 per week the farm workers get a weekly half-holiday. That is something for which they have. been agitating for years. On the reverse side, which was referred to by the Minister a moment ago, by fixing the wages at so much per hour unscrupulous employers can put their workers on an hourly basis and deny them a guaranteed week. This was undoubtedly an unbalanced regulation and, as such, it was subjected to much intense criticism—so much so that the Minister, speaking in Tullamore on the 18th January, made a frontal attack on the Order which abolished the weekly contract in favour of employment exclusively on the basis of an hourly rate and which operated, he said, "to turn every agricultural worker in Ireland outside the Six Counties into a casual labourer. It was a rotten system and he hoped that the Agricultural Wages Board would reconsider this most deplorable decision soon and restore the weekly wage rate which secured the agricultural worker the security and dignity denied to the casual labourer."

So far I am with the Minister. But the amended Order was made and this amended Order did not purport to interfere with the functioning of the 50-hour week. According to the amended Order recently made by the board farmers and farm workers can still by agreement work the 50-hour week at the hourly rate. From my experience — and I think the Minister should know this from his own experience—I can safely say that there will be no such agreement in practice unless it is backed by the strength of trade union organisations. The amending Order is introduced and now, as well as the present 50-hour week, a 54-hour week or week of such lesser number of hours as may be agreed for a weekly wage comes into operation. Workers who agree to work the 54-hour week will receive a guarantee of a definite weekly wage. Those who do not agree and who want to keep a 50-hour week will not get that guarantee under the new Order of the Wages Board. Obviously, the new Order has been weighted against the worker even to the extent of wanting to keep to the present 54-hour week——

In the Dublin area they have a 50-hour week.

That is because they have established it by trade union organisation and not by virtue of any particular action on the part of the Agricultural Wages Board.

But those are not maximum Orders. They are minimum Orders.

I am very glad to hear the Minister say that because I shall have something else to say to him in connection with the rates of wages on State farms.

I want to affirm that these are minimum Orders and drafted accordingly.

I was in some doubt as to whether the Minister was aware of that. I want to refer to this particular matter of State farms where there is a differential of 5/- to the employees. Now, because the employees choose to take their half-day on Saturday, they are denied the differential.

Because the employees elected to work by the hour in one instituation they are there paid as they chose to be paid. In every farm held by the Government the employees get a weekly half-holiday and 5/- above the minimum rates prescribed in the Order.

If you will allow me to make my case I shall come to that later. It was said that the object of changing the old Order—that is, the Order made on the 3rd January—was to eliminate casualisation and to restore the idea of permanency to agricultural workers in so far as permanency can exist for agricultural workers. Agricultural workers are at all times workers at will. They are employed by the farmer as long as he wants them. In rare cases they are retained even though strictly speaking they are not required. By and large farm workers are employed so long as there is work for them and no longer. The Order purported to revert to the guaranteed work. That change was made as a result of discussions which took place at meetings of the Agricultural Wages Board before the 50-hour week came into operation. That change was not made because it was thought desirable or because of views put forward by the Board, the workers' representative, the employer's representative or some neutral person. It was done at the behest of the Department of Agriculture. I cannot see any reason why the 50-hour week should not have been guaranteed. I cannot see what advantage the Minister thinks there is in a 54-hour week as against a 50-hour week. In Great Britain the normal working week is 47 hours. Statements, springing from wells of ignorance and reaction, have been made to the effect that Irish agriculture cannot exist unless the agricultural labourer works a 54-hour week. That is the silliest and most stupid proposition ever propounded. In County Dublin and County Meath and in parts of Kildare and Wicklow by agreement between the union and the farmers a 50-hour week operates. No difficulty has been found in that. If anything, the farms are being run more efficiently because of the goodwill and satisfaction generated as between the employer and the employee. Production has increased. But here we have a situation where the Agricultural Wages Board is requested by a Department of State to revert to a system which was undesirable and for which no justification can be found. I cannot understand that. I am at a loss to discover what induced the Minister to take that line.

The Agricultural Wages Board—it is a most peculiar institution, to be sure —seems to be ill-fitted for dealing with the problems of Irish agricultural workers. I do not know of any other board, organisation, association or group wherein the chairman can be said to constitute a quorum, but in the Irish Agricultural Wages Board the chairman is a quorum and, of course, the chairman is a nominee of the Minister there.

In fact, he is the nominee of my predecessor.

Agreed, but he could easily be the nominee of the present Minister.

That is true, but the decent man was, in fact, nominated by my predecessor's predecessor.

In effect, it does mean that the Agricultural Wages Board can represent the mind of the Minister.

Nobody will accuse the present chairman of the Agricultural Wages Board of representing my mind, because he is a man of the strongest political convictions, or he certainly used to be when he was a Deputy of this House.

The Minister, speaking last year at a meeting of the South Tipperary Agricultural Committee in Clonmel, said that he was going to ask the Government's authority to introduce a Bill making it incumbent on every farmer to give his agricultural workers seven days' annual leave but he was not going to agree to make it compulsory on farmers to provide them with a weekly half-holiday because he did not believe that the people of the country believed that it was equitable or right to do so. The only person who appreciates the value of the half-holiday is the person who has not got a half-holiday, and of all sections of Irish workers this is the one section to whom this fundamental right is denied.

Again I would impress on the Minister that this is harsh treatment of agricultural workers. There is no question whatever about it. It is very necessary that the agricultural worker should have a guaranteed week but that guaranteed week should not exceed 50 hours. There is no reason why it should. With a week of 50 hours he would have an opportunity to have a half-holiday on Saturday or on some other day which the particular job in which he was working allowed, when he could carry out the ordinary duties that fall to heads of families in Irish rural areas. At present he is denied an opportunity to carry out these duties. As I say, farm workers are the only section of the community who are denied that particular right.

Is there any section of workers in this country who are, by statute, guaranteed a weekly half-holiday?

Not in so many words, but the industrial workers undoubtedly get it by the Conditions of Employment Act.

Not a half-holiday qua half-holiday. Their maximum hours of work are fixed in such a way that they have a half-holiday.

It is not stated that they must get a half-holiday except in respect of apprentices and such like but, in effect, they are statutorily guaranteed a half-holiday because their hours of work are restricted and I am asking the Minister for nothing more in respect to agricultural workers.

The Deputy is aware that agricultural workers in the employment of the Department, in fact, receive a half-holiday and work 54 hours a week?

I am aware of that and that is why I am complaining. I see no real reason why they should have to work these hours. The Minister, in the course of discussion with representatives of these workers, recently intimated that the matter is under consideration. I think it is a mean advantage to take that because they chose to work a 50-hour week, they must be deprived of the nominal differential. The Minister has pointed to the fact that the Agricultural Wages Board rate is nothing more than a minimum rate. Nevertheless, in State farms unless the men accept the dictum of the Department and work a 54-hour week, they get merely what the law compels the Department to give, and nothing more. That is not a policy, I believe, which should be pursued on any farms under the control of the Department. It is a discreditable policy to pursue.

Reference has been made during the debate to county committees of agriculture. The present Minister consulted county committees of agriculture in respect to the desirability or otherwise of allowing farm workers a half holiday. Of course, the result is well known. I think only two of them had the courtesy to reply on the subject at all—possibly one favourably. Again is it any wonder that that should be so? How many farm workers are represented on the county committees of agriculture up and down the country? You could count on the fingers of your hand the number of people on the county committees who represent farm workers as such.

This particular matter should not be decided on the basis of the weight of opinion one way or the other. It should be decided as a matter of pure and simple justice. If we are going to wait until it is decided by a majority vote of this country, either through the instrumentality of the House or by some other means, I am afraid we shall never see it decided to the benefit of farm workers because, as I have said, farmers undoubtedly are in a majority in the nation. We are a peasant nation but, in justice to wage workers and to their families, the Minister should take steps to remedy the present position and to give these workers a fair chance, which they do not get now, to live a civilised existence. A 54-hour week working on a farm can be a brutal affair and I submit in the majority of cases is a brutal affair.

We all know that there are farmers throughout the country who treat their men well, who treat them on an equal basis with themselves and their families but advantage is taken of men in very many cases and they are frequently very much ill-used. It is in order to prevent that, in order to establish certain minimum conditions which will raise the general standards of this most ill-treated section of our people that I am putting these proposals before the Minister and pressing them upon him as I pressed them upon him last year and as I will press them upon him until eventually they are finally accepted.

I hope the Deputy will not leave that topic without commenting on the fact that the minimum agricultural wage went up by 10/- within the last 12 months. At least give the devil his due.

I am glad the Minister reminded me of that fact, because it affords me an opportunity of telling the House that the increase was due to the trade unionists amongst agricultural workers and the pressure of organised trade unionists who are agricultural workers. That can be easily proven because the history of agricultural wage increases can be examined. Before 1944 increases were negligible but in that year the late James Larkin founded an organisation for agricultural workers and since then wages have gone up progressively and will continue to go up progressively, please God, until we see the same standard of living and the same standard of wages for men who work on the land as for men who work in far less important occupations in cities and towns. That is my contribution to the debate.

The Minister has been able to point to very welcome increases in agricultural production and export which Deputies from every side of the House will appreciate. I think that perhaps those figures place the situation in a relatively more favourable light when the production figures for 1949 are placed in juxtaposition with the figures for 1947 because, of course, 1947 was a very exceptional year. It was not alone the fact that for a good many years during the war period the compulsory tillage programme had enforced upon farmers a production of wheat estimated at 150 per cent., even in 1947, of the pre-war acreage and coarse grains in general at about 40 per cent. above the pre-war figure, but fertilisers were not obtainable, yields went down and added to that we had exceptionally bad climatic conditions. The result was according to the Government White Paper on the European Recovery Programme that owing to the circumstances of the prolonged emergency conditions, the absence of feeding stuffs and fertilisers which were available on a comparatively generous scale even in the first great war and above all the difficult conditions in that particular year, sheep and lamb output in 1947 was 36 per cent. below the 1938-39 level. Egg output was down about 27 per cent., milk production was down by about 11 per cent. and the number of cattle under one year was down 17 per cent. The reduction in pig output as compared with pre-war was about 54 per cent. Therefore in estimating increases over and above either production or export for 1947 we are taking a very low basic figure.

I remember when I was Minister for Education we were able to point to an enormous increase, measured by percentages which I think went into several hundred per cent., in the number of students in secondary schools studying German, but that was because the basic number was only a handful and it was doubtful if even the final figure went up to more than a few hundred if it reached that figure. If a basic figure is very small, of course it is very easy to show an increase. If you look at it from the point of view of percentage increases from one year to another it is possible to give the impression that the present figure is much better than it is. I think the Budget statement which gave us a very lucid and valuable account of our general position, in so far as it went, to a certain extent enables us to correct our view of the agricultural output situation if we were to regard it entirely on the basis of the figures the Minister supplies in his opening statement because according to the Minister for Finance agricultural output is still about 7 per cent. below the 1938-39 level. He points out that this is a slight recovery as compared with 1947 which was a year of unfavourable weather when the gross output figure on the same basis of valuation as in 1948 when it was £50,000,000 was £49.2 million so that there was an increase between 1947 and 1948 of £.8 millions. The Minister for Finance then went on to refer to the need for a much greater improvement especially in the production of cattle, sheep and pigs. Crop yields per acre, he pointed out, were much better than in 1947 although still considerably short of the 1948 level. This improvement, he said, was due to good weather and more fertilisers. The output of cattle and calves in 1948 was, however, 22 per cent. below 1938-39. Sheep and lamb output last year was 40.1 per cent. and pig output 57.6 per cent. under this rather low pre-war standard. He then refers to the improvements expected in respect of pigs and says that in the case of cattle and sheep recovery will be more slow.

492 on the 4th of May.

I have since been able to give the Deputy the figures for 1949.

I do not know whether we have the complete figures or not. In entering into the European Recovery Programme we laid before ourselves certain targets to be achieved and these targets comparing with what seems to be actually accomplished last year cannot be said to be very extravagant, although every allowance should be made for the difficulties our agriculture has certainly had due to war conditions, and the time that will naturally elapse before reaching even pre-war standards. Having regard, however, to the very large imports of feeding stuffs and fertilisers which the Government has been expecting, it does not look as though the figures they had set before themselves for increased output and exports by 1952-53 are excessive.

Take the case of beef and mutton where there is the difficulty undoubtedly of replacing the live stock; measured in metric tons the increase is to be only 7 per cent. in 1952/53 over 1948/49. In the case of other commodities it is better. Bacon is expected during the next four years to increase by 98 per cent. and eggs by 109 per cent. and butter by 20 per cent. It states in this White Paper:

"...the 1952/53 export projection, allowing for only a slight increase in the present level of home consumption, will entail a volume of agricultural output 11 per cent. over 1929/30 and 22 per cent. over 1947."

It is mentioned that the volume of exports which it is hoped to achieve in 1952/3 will be twice those of 1947. Then in the next sentence it says that even this programme means that in terms of volume we shall be exporting actually less, 14 per cent. less, than in 1929. All these figures simply go to show that the figure of 1947 is an extremely favourable one from the Government's point of view, if they want to plead that there has been an improvement since. No one can deny it. The only point is whether we are likely to reach the targets that we have set before ourselves for 1952/53 and if possible exceed them. I think it could be argued that they are not by any means extravagant. The White Paper also says:

"The various anticipated increases in production will involve an increase in total output of live stock and live-stock products of 34 per cent. as compared with 1947 and of 13 per cent. as compared with 1938-39."

With regard to milk, the White Paper says:—

"Total milk production is expected to reach 530,000,000 gallons as compared with 431,000,000 in 1947."

I calculate that to be an increase of over 20 per cent. during the next four years. There is estimated to take place an increase of 20 per cent. more in the milk output, but if you compare that with the pre-war figure the addition would scarcely seem to keep pace. I have not the figures by me, but I recollect that, as mentioned in the White Paper, we not alone had a very large increase in milk production during the war years but we have had even a considerable increase in milk consumption. If we compare the estimated figure for 1952/53 of 530,000,000 gallons with the average annual production of 493,000,000 gallons in the years 1934 to 1938, we find it is merely an increase of 37 over 493, which seems to me to be only about 7½ per cent.

In connection with this matter of milk production, there is a good deal of complaint and dissatisfaction among farmers that they have the greatest difficulty in maintaining their herds. Undoubtedly, the difficulty of getting suitable labour, and particularly of getting workers who will milk the cows on Sundays, has been the complaint not alone for the past few years but for many years past. It is a situation that has been developing. As against the statement of the Minister that milk production so far as Dublin is concerned is increasing, I think that Deputies who visit the creamery areas will agree with me that it is almost impossible to visit them without meeting farmers who say they have got rid of some of their cows, cut their herd in half, or perhaps, owing to not having sufficient family labour to help them out, have to get rid of cows altogether. This latter course would seem to them to be advantageous at the present time, when beef is fetching such a fancy price. We can all realise that there is that difficulty, which any Government must have, that the competition of beef is so serious and farmers regard, more than perhaps they should, the actual income in cash. Very often they fail, until they begin to expend the money, to realise that what they can get for it makes it not nearly so valuable as they thought it was, as their views may have been based on pre-war figures. Perhaps they also are unduly optimistic, since money is so plentiful in the country and such large sums are in circulation.

I am beginning to blush.

The Minister need not blush, as a great deal of his colleagues' complaints were that we are not doing anything to syphon it off. It was coming in in various ways, even through foreign visitors. When members of the Government were on this side of the House, they complained that all this tourist expenditure was bad for the country. Not only was it inflating the currency but it was enabling visitors to come in here and use up food which we badly required for our own needs.

A Daniel come to judgment.

Now we are told that we are partly dependent, according to the Minister for Finance, on this £35,000,000, which is an estimated figure that we might earn at present in respect of tourist traffic. There were, of course, the emigrants, remittances, in addition to the prices for beef, on which I am sure the Minister compliments himself.

Hear, hear!

But that has its disadvantages in other ways. One disadvantage is that, until farmers feel that the remuneration from cows is put on a basis comparable both to beef and to urban standards of remuneration, they are not inclined to expend the necessary energy on the production of milk. Everyone knows that it is a job that needs constant attention. It requires heavy capital expenditure. It cannot be dealt with to any great extent, as far as I know, by mechanical means, except perhaps in regard to milking machines. A great many of those who have gone into the dairying industry in other countries and who have held themselves up as experts have had to admit that, after a little experience, they found that the building of a dairy herd from foundation was one of the most difficult undertakings possible. To deal with disease, to deal with the consumer, the overheads and the rise in costs the dairy farmers must contend with at present —all these things make them feel that the greatest possible encouragement from the Government would be necessary to enable them to carry on.

I wonder whether it is in respect to the consumer or in respect to the producer that the Minister for Agriculture is viewing dairying at the present time. No doubt, the remainder of the Government will have due regard to the consumers' interest, but the farmers expect the Minister to have particular regard to the producers' end. If they have not his good offices and his influence to get them a proper return for their labour, they can scarcely expect much consideration from Ministers who are not directly concerned with them.

As I have said, there has been an increase in various items—even since the price of milk was last fixed in 1947 —in respect of wages, rates, feeding stuffs and fertilisers.

And in respect of calves.

Farmers are in a small way of business. Out of the 380,000 farms that we have in this country, only about one-fifth of them are over 50 acres. Therefore, the farmer has to have regard—and it is a complaint against him that he has some regard— to the price the cow is going to yield at the end of her milking period rather than the amount of money he could make by having the best possible animal and getting the most out of her during her lactation period. But is not the difficulty that the small farmer has not the means, the capital at his disposal to put his dairy farm on that basis? People talk of New Zealand, where the average milk production is about 700 gallons. It was stated, in the report of the Commission on Agriculture some years ago, that our average here was something under 400 gallons, but, as against that, even in October, they can apparently get up to 20 hours of sunshine in New Zealand and you could scarcely get a few hours in this country.

Twenty hours a day?

Twenty-two hours, I have read, during October in New Zealand.

Surely the Deputy is thinking of the South Pole.

I am not—22 hours of sunshine in New Zealand. I think it was the Minister's expert who gave that information.

When I was there in September, we saw no 22 hours of sunshine per day.

You brought a cloud down over the country.

It requires big capital to get a modern dairy herd and if the farmer is to equip his farm on the lines which Mr. Holmes would recommend as having been practised in New Zealand, I do not know what the total cost would be. There is the question of the provision of water, for example, and the provision of out-offices, and, in that connection, if dairying was to make progress, we will have to have both water supply and proper out-offices prepared. Even the limited target of 7 per cent. which we have set before ourselves under the Marshall Plan will scarcely be reached, I believe, in spite of the optimistic view the Minister has taken. He has told us that he is very hopeful about the butter ration. Can the Minister definitely say that he is hopeful that the butter ration can be continued right over the winter period?

Not only that, but I have raised it to eight ozs., as from 21st of this month.

But the point is: why have any ration at all? Is it worth the expense of administration? Is it worth the trouble the consumers have?

I admit that if the consumption of butter is still going up, as no doubt it is, it may make a difference to the Minister's calculations, but I think the real test of the improvement in the butter situation is whether we can abolish, or practically abolish, butter rationing.

We could do that tomorrow, but it would all go across the Border, and I want to keep a bit for our own people.

I have been told that the present production would scarcely be more than 600,000 cwts., and I think it used to be about 600,000 or 650,000 cwts. in reasonably good times. It would be interesting to know whether that figure would cover the total butter needs of the population.

Plus all the farmers' butter.

If, in fact, it would not and if home consumption has increased more than production has increased, it would mean that the export surplus we hope to achieve some time is very far away.

Oh, no, it is not; it is painfully close at hand.

I hope that is the position, but some of those in the industry have not got the same optimistic view about it as the Minister. He, however, should be in a position to give us the more authoritative figures.

I hope the Deputy will encourage everyone to buy farmers' butter, because it is very hard to find a market for it. I hope he will encourage hotels here in Dublin to buy it.

I do not go to the Dublin hotels.

Such places as restaurants and catering establishments.

I have to deal mainly with creamery suppliers and the producers of creamery butter. Until the standard of farmers' butter is made reasonably adequate for public needs and until housewives are reasonably satisfied that a certain standard is being maintained the public will not be prepared to buy it. The Minister knows very well that it is only in exceptional cases, in cases where the farmer's wife has gone to a great deal of trouble to produce an excellent article, that she can get a market for it. We were told before we left office that she could afford to sell a lb. of butter in Meath or some other county and buy two lbs. of creamery butter in exchange for it.

I hope that will be the case this year.

It can be done, if they are prepared to devote the necessary attention to the matter. Farmers complain of the high cost of fertilisers. Whatever steps have been taken to reduce prices and whatever improvement there may have been in the international market, the fact is that they are still regarded as being altogether too high in price and I regret that the Minister has removed completely the fertiliser subsidy. He may say that the money was not spent, but the money was provided, like the £1,500,000 provided for the wheat bounty, which I do not think has been completely expended yet. The present prices of fertilisers being altogether beyond what farmers were accustomed to, instead of following the official advice of purchasing the maximum amount and putting it on their land, the high prices have the effect of reducing the farmer's demand to what he considers to be his minimum requirements and to what he thinks he may get by on. The majority report of the Commission on Agriculture recommended that subsidies should be given to reduce the cost of artificial fertilisers and lime should take the form of a subsidy of 25 per cent. of the cost of phosphatic fertilisers and one-third of the cost of ground or burned limestone delivered to the nearest railway station to be payable only in respect of land certified as likely to benefit by the application of lime.

The Minister on an occasion in this House reminded us that we cannot subsidise the farmers for everything they do, but I was glad to see recently that he at least made the point that, in subsidising butter, it is the producer as much as the consumer who is being subsidised. I think he was of opinion that it was the consumer entirely and that it should be called a subsidy to the consumer rather than to the producer. I notice, however, that the Minister did not maintain that optimistic frame of mind when discussing milk prices with the farmers of County Limerick. While farmers have a strong organisation in respect of beet and barley, and while trade unions also have a strong organisation to look after their interests and have their spokesmen in this House, it does not look as if the dairy farmers have on organisation, or if they have, that it is effective in making the difficulties of the industry known to the Minister and in forcing him to take steps to remedy these difficulties and to give more encouragement to the industry. Deputy Madden informed us that the Minister had given no undertaking of an increase in price. Whether Deputy Madden himself, in some unguarded moment, was responsible, or not, the farmers in some of the more important dairying districts got the impression that they were to get an increase of at least 2d. per gallon. Instead of having their expectations fulfilled, lo and behold, they were told by the Minister that he would not consider increasing prices under present circumstances.

Does the Deputy think I ought to?

I think that milk is just as important or more important than beer. From the point of view of national nutrition it stands on a very special footing, as the experience of the British people during the war showed. It was very largely owing to the fact that the British were able to give their children milk in fairly generous supply that the health of the young population was maintained. We in this country are so accustomed to looking after ourselves well that we do not seem to be grateful for the mercy that we have had plenty of milk at our disposal. Those in close touch with the industry believe that that situation will not continue, that there will cerainly be a falling-off, that, in view of the fact that the difficulties with which dairy farmers have to contend are so great, it is not worth their while. That is not any kind of Party or political propaganda.

It is a position that has been going on for a long time and that seems to get worse as it proceeds. The extraordinary thing about the Minister who is looking for increased production and who wants to get the farmers' cooperation, which is undoubtedly necessary for the accomplishment of his aims, is that, apparently, he would be prepared to consider the demands of the farmers for increased prices if they had a better social outlook and if they came around more to the point of view that the last speaker has been pressing upon him. Having dealt with the price of calves and the price of skimmed milk, and having tried to persuade dairy farmers that they were doing very much better, he went on to say: "When you are paying £4 a week as a minimum wage to the agricultural workers, you can talk to me about 1/6 per gallon for your milk."

That is out of context. Is that not an answer to Mr. Canty, who spoke of a dream?

I do not know. This is the Press report.

Is not it in reply to Mr. Canty?

I do not see Mr. Canty's name here.

If you look further down, you will find it. He went dreaming.

"You have not yet paid your workers £3 a week, but you will."

If the Minister made these statements, I suggest that he did not show any understanding of the mentality of the farmers.

What is the Deputy reading?

It is an extract from the Irish Press.

My decent old warrior.

Of the 1st November last.

It could not tell the truth at all.

That is the living truth.

The Minister may correct it if they misrepresent him. That is not the only case. Does the Minister question the report of his speech in the Seanad when he was dealing with arguments similar to those to which Deputy Dunne has just treated the House?

If the Irish Press presses were asked to print the truth, I believe they would break down out of sheer shock.

The Minister for Agriculture said that if he were going to legislate he would ask that the farm labourers would get a weekly half-holiday and seven days' annual leave; that it was just and practicable, if they went about it the right way, to make available for the agricultural worker the same amenities as are available to the industrialist and the industrial worker. He asked:

"Does any rational man or woman in this country believe that we can long maintain a situation in which a highly skilled worker gets 55/- a week for a 54-hour week, without a holiday or half-day, while his brother, doing common labouring work, gets £4 a week, annual holidays and a half-day?"

Until that could be changed, his advice to the agricultural labourer would be to get off the land, that they could earn more money with the gifts or ability they displayed in almost any other walk of life. Who is to milk the cows when they get off the land? That is the question asked by farmers who have enough difficulty trying to hold their workers, having regard to the attractions elsewhere. Sometimes one wonders whether the Minister is performing the function that I have already referred to of upholding the claims of farmer producers against other classes and other interests in so far as is fair and reasonable.

He is Minister for farm labourers as well as for farmers, remember.

Yes, but in the same debate he said that the Labour Senators thought he was going to improve the agricultural worker's condition in any event and they wanted to be in a position to say that they made him do it, that if they thought that he was not going to do it they would be as quiet as mice because they sat in the same Cabinet with him. Whether this is a question of the advanced social views of the Minister in regard to labour conditions in Irish agriculture——

He is hard pressed.

——or whether it is a question of bidding between recalcitrant members of this House and of the Government who want the agricultural labourer to get first and prior consideration and that the Minister is in the position that he is perforce driven to acknowledge that view, it is certainly a view, as one of the Deputies of his own Back Bench reminded him, that, at least, would be considered injudicious by, I think, the great majority of dairy farmers. I think they resent the implication that they are not prepared to treat their workers well and that, in order that their conditions should be improved and that they should get fair remuneration for their own labour, they must increase agricultural wages still further, in spite of the fact that during recent times they have had costs under practically every heading increased upon them. I think it would indicate a certain lack of understanding of the difficulties with which they have to contend if the Minister were to pursue this particular line.

He said on another occasion, when he was addressing Young Farmers' Clubs in Clonmel as reported in the Irish Press of 3rd August:—

"It irritates me sometimes when I hear lamentations about people leaving the land. I felt and thought that if the best that Irish agriculture had to offer me was 55/- a week, I would leave the land like a scalded cat. I would not stay on it. Could you imagine any industrial worker in this country or any member of a trade union gratefully accepting 55/- a week and pledging himself to remain his whole life long in that job? He would insist on getting £4 or £5 a week."

Nobody is insisting on people remaining. They are entirely free agents. Not alone can they leave the dairying industry, they can leave agriculture and leave the country for that matter and better themselves elsewhere. If the Minister really believes that agricultural workers can be placed on a level comparable with industrial workers in respect of conditions and remuneration, I think, in the first place, that that aim can only be achieved gradually. It cannot be reached overnight.

Secondly, if it is going to be achieved at any time that we can foresee in the near future it can only be done by having regard to the fact that agriculture is not in the same position as industry. It cannot pay the same wages. It has not the same turnover nor the same profits. An industrial proprietor can close his factory and go about his business and give his workers a holiday with pay, perhaps, during the interval until he reopens. A farmer has to contend with the vicissitudes of climate, disease and other difficulties. His general circumstances cannot, I think, in respect of the type of farming we have in this country, worked to a large degree by family labour and under 50 acres in extent in the vast majority of cases, be compared with factory conditions at all. If the Minister and the Government are sincere in this viewpoint they must be prepared to take steps in regard to the very big overheads farmers have, having regard to the size of their holdings and the extent of their output.

They must take steps to reduce these overheads by every means in their power and, at the same time, they must endeavour to see that over a period of years farmers in respect of dairy products, and the same is true of other agricultural products, will be guaranteed a price that will ensure to them that their costs will be covered and that they will have a reasonable margin—having allowed for the members of their own family the same conditions, wages and improvements as the Minister expects they shall provide for their employees. The fact is that we have fewer employed workers on the land now than we had when the Government came into office. According to official figures of agricultural employment, last June there were 10,000 fewer persons employed either in family labour or employed by the farmer in permanent employment on the land and I am quite sure that that process has gone a pace since last year.

Whether the increase in unemployment or, if you will put it, the reduction in employment on the land is due to dissatisfaction with conditions or the introduction of mechanisation or the fact that farmers will not, as is alleged here, take the steps necessary to improve conditions when they can do so and satisfy their workers, the fact is that employment on the land is being greatly reduced. Farmers remember the time when they had the condition of affairs that the labourer and his family were regarded as having a special nexus with them, not solely on a cash basis. The moment things had to be dealt with on a cash nexus strictly and on a trade union basis the farmer began to feel, in the first, that if he were going to provide additional financial reward he would have to withdraw some of the requisites which he was accustomed to give.

I have heard of a case in my constituency of a very substantial employer of labour—he might be described as a landed proprietor—who, when he had to give the recognised wage which was agreed on by the Wages Board, made reductions in respect of requisites which were supplied so that it was freely stated in the area—I had no opportunity of checking the statement but I have no reason to doubt it—that the workers were no better off after the increase and that, in fact, they were probably worse off. Added to that, when I see farmers mounting these large machines at the Dublin Spring Show for beet harvesting or cultivation or ploughing I think that they must surely, in a good many cases, have at the back of their mind the thought that by installing machinery they are going to avoid the difficulties and troubles they would be faced with if they had to face strong organisations that want to impose upon them certain responsibilities which they feel their circumstances do not enable them to support. Undoubtedly, the farmer with family labour, the farmer who has young men at home to mount the tractor and the other machines, will feel that he is going to be more independent in the future and more self-contained—even if he has to provide large sums for capital equipment—than when he had to deal entirely with matters by means of the machinery that we were accustomed to.

I have heard the observation made that one of the reasons why the system of farming is undergoing such a great change in England and that mechanisation has made such headway there and is bound, eventually, to become the rule and that we are to have a new system of farming comparable to the change that was brought about towards the end of the 18th century when the four-course rotation was introduced—farming having gone on for hundreds of years in the way it had gone until that time—is that, in an endeavour to keep up the fertility of the land this mechanisation has been rendered necessary by virtue of the fact that it was found that with the labour which the farmer could procure at an economic price and at a price that suited him (having regard to the price that farmers received for their produce, particularly those farmers who followed arable farming) they could no longer restore fertility to the land by following the old system and they were driven completely on to mechanisation. I think that in this country we are very limited because our farms are so small and because we have regard to other conditions. We have regard to the fact that the family unit is recognised as the basis of our society in this country in a very particular way. We want to keep as many of these family units as possible on the land.

It is laid down in our Constitution that we should try to increase the number of family units on the land as well as increasing their standard of living and enabling them to keep on the land in spite of difficulties. The position now is that agriculture is faced with reasonably bright prospects; the trend of world trade seems to have turned and is likely to continue for some time to go in favour of the food producer, and the farmer in this country is not threatened, like other owners of property, with nationalisation. He can call his farm his own and know that it is going to continue to be his own. He is in the happy position that his annuity is going to be paid off, and if he could only pay the annuity to the Electricity Supply Board and show more interest in regard to rural electrification than he seems to be doing I, for one, would be very pleased because I believe that, in respect of improvement on the farm, you have to depend a great deal on the farmer's wife and on the farmer's daughter. If you can give the farmer's wife and the farmer's daughter the things they require in the way of lighting and heating and water and transport and make them feel that they have amenities comparable to those in the towns and cities and that their standard of living in respect of these conveniences— which they all, I think, will now recognise, certainly all the younger generation, to be necessary to a satisfactory standard of living, and to the maintenance even of proper hygienic conditions —is as high as that available in the towns and cities you will be doing a great deal to encourage people to stay on the land.

One of the great needs of the time is that farmers should be provided with a water supply. During the period of dry weather that we have had I know that many of them have had the greatest difficulty in looking after their cattle and that there is a constant complaint that it is impossible to get water even for household purposes without going long distances. If, as well as a soil survey, we were to have a survey of the farmhouses where modern equipment in the items I have mentioned and modern buildings are necessary, I think it would certainly be an advantage. If we could bring it home to the farmer that the expenditure entailed at present, if it does not bring a return in actual £.s.d. is going to bring in a measurable return in respect of better living conditions, more comfortable homes, a strengthening of the family unit in rural Ireland and a strengthening of the rural community generally, it will more than repay itself not alone from the national but from the agricultural point of view.

The Minister has increased the subhead for veterinary services and, when he is concluding, I should like if he could give some more information as to this scheme which he states he intends to bring in. Although the increase is welcome, we hear so much about the improvements that have been made in respect of the treatment of animal diseases that it seems a continuing loss every day if we are not taking the greatest possible and the most urgent steps to bring the necessary information to the farmer.

The question of agricultural instructors is a very interesting one. If the Minister is prepared to pay the salaries of the instructors, as I think he has promised, committees are not likely to express such opposition to this gesture as they might if they were faced with paying them themselves. It is a well-known fact that there is not a sufficient number of agricultural instructors. I think their success in rural areas was largely due to the fact that we had enthusiastic young agricultural graduates teaching rural science who were farmers' sons themselves in most cases, though I do not think it should be compulsory upon an agricultural graduate to prove that his father was a farmer. Nevertheless, it was proved, and Deputies brought it to my notice when I was Minister for Education that some of these young graduates, not alone in the vocational schools but in the service of the Department of Agriculture, in the farm improvements scheme or even in the compulsory tillage scheme, were able to approach farmers because they showed they had first-hand acquaintance with farming conditions and problems and the farmers had the advantage of having a trained man who had done a scientific course in agriculture there on the spot to give advice and they valued that advice.

What is wrong generally, I think, is that farmers are shy about attending classes, asking questions or writing or doing any of these things which we did not object to when we were at school but which, when we become adults, we are not so much interested in. We prefer education by discussion and debate and by demonstration, and the young farmers' clubs are interested in having the demonstration type of education extended.

For that reason instructors should be provided who have the scientific training that is connoted by a degree in agricultural science, and, in addition to that, they should have a mechanical training that would enable them to give farmers advice about machinery, because one of the complaints made about farmers, not alone here but in Great Britain, is that they keep their machinery outside. They say they have not accommodation for it. If they are going to provide accommodation for live stock, they have not accommodation for all their equipment and the machinery very often suffers by being left in the open. I think that to the extent that mechanisation has been introduced in this country, it is of the greatest importance that farmers should have explained to them how their machines should be maintained in good order and condition and not simply put away at the end of the harvesting or spring period not to be looked at again until they are required in the following season.

The Minister referred to bulk purchases in connection with requirements for agriculture and I think also to the business of bulk sales. If the system of bulk buying by Ministries of Food continues, and if, as I hope will not occur, there is a reduction in agricultural prices, it is obvious that this question of bulk purchases is going to be very serious for the farmers of this country. In connection with the creamery industry, we were not very long in office when we were told that a new national co-operative marketing organisation was to be set up which would market all the farmers' butter.

Of course, if farmers had their own co-operative organisations, that would be the best way in which their produce could be conveyed to the market. About five-sixths of Danish bacon and, I suppose, about 90 per cent. or more of Danish butter is sold through co-operative organisations. It would be an improvement upon any system of agricultural instruction that I know of if we had co-operative organisations working on the basis that Mr. Holmes described as being the procedure in New Zealand. Mr. Holmes was employed by an agency company in New Zealand as a grass expert. As I understand it, these agency companies are joint stock companies which undertake all kinds of arrangements with farmers. They provide them with machinery and equipment, seeds and fertilisers. They arrange for the marketing of their produce. They tell them what lines they should pursue and the best way to go about the efficient production of whatever lines are recommended to them. These companies have experts in their employment like Mr. Holmes who spent eight or nine years in recommending grass seeds of various kinds to the New Zealand farmers. He therefore knows, I suppose, even more about grass seeds than the most expert rancher in this country.

The interest I found in his account was the existence of these companies which do everything for the farmer that he is not able to do for himself in the way of recommending what he should produce, how best to produce it, what machinery and equipment to get, and so on. It would be an advantage if the Irish co-operative organisations could have an organisation of that kind, if they could have a manager-agent type who would go to the farmer and say: "If you produce so much butter or bacon, or poultry or eggs or whatever it may be, I am going to see that it is taken from you. It will be collected in this way. The cost of collection will be so much and you will have nothing to do except to have your produce ready to be collected when we send for it." We do not seem to have reached that stage in our Irish co-operative organisations. It is a great pity, because it would be much better if the urge to improve marketing methods came from the farmers themselves. A suggestion was made in Great Britain by an important body which reported upon agriculture over there, that there should be producers' marketing boards. I think in regard to bacon that is the line that has been followed.

The Minister should bear in mind with regard to fertilisers that it is a well known fact that milk production has a more wearing and exhausting effect upon the land than almost anything else. If the Minister desires that the utmost possible use should be made of the facilities for the maintenance of fertility which are now at the disposal of the farmers through the Marshall Plan and otherwise he should endeavour to see that fertilisers are sold to them at the lowest possible price.

We were all delighted to see that the Minister recently made a remarkable conversion. The extraordinary thing about this conversion is that it seemed to be a very fundamental one. It went right down to the base of the Minister's whole conception of peasant proprietorships and farmers' rights. When he was in opposition the Minister prided himself on being the last private owner, and in particular the farmer, against the inroads of the State and the modern tendency to hand everything over to the state. Even after he came into office he treated the country to numerous speeches in which he suggested—if he did not say so explicitly, they were certainly implicit in his remarks— that the time had now come when farmers were to be freed from the tyrannical bondage and slavery in which the Fianna Fáil administration had kept them. They were to be liberated. It was not the case of St. George and the Dragon but St. James and the Dragon. He was to go out and destroy this Fianna Fáil monster that had been breathing fire and fury and had reduced Irish agriculture to a terrible pitch. In fulfilment of this great exploit which he had undertaken to rescue the fair damsels of Irish agriculture from the Fianna Fáil death-dealing dragon, the Minister announced that farmers in future would have no inspectors on their land. The farmer, if he did not have the inspector there by invitation, would have no inspector. He would stand at his gate and if the Minister did not say, "kick him out if he comes near you" he very nearly went as far as that.

The Minister's philosophy was apparently that the farmer had such complete control that the State had no right even to go as far as it went during the period of the emergency to enforce compulsory tillage upon the Irish farming community. If that was not what the Minister meant that certainly was the meaning that was conveyed and I have serious doubts as to whether it was not the meaning the Minister intended to convey. In an endeavour then to retrace his steps he said that compulsory tillage was dead as far as he was concerned but if another war should happen of course there would have to be compulsory tillage. In that case, however, land would only be utilised for the purpose for which it was best suited and in this event the Minister would have all the information in his files as to what farm could best produce wheat and what could produce barley and so on. The Minister would not spare the farmers in carrying out whatever measures of compulsion were necessary in such a crisis as that.

I think we have reason to complain that the policy which was carried on during the emergency and which we considered ought, in a much lesser degree, be maintained under normal conditions has been greatly, if not wilfully, distorted. I think we have serious grounds for complaint. When the Minister tells us now in regard to the 11 months' system that farming must have regard to the national interest, that he cannot allow the position that land in Meath—and presumably elsewhere, but particularly in Meath—will not be utilised to secure the maximum national production and when he goes further and threatens those who have the temerity to continue this bad old system, as he describes it, that they are now going to be dispossessed, one wonders is this another example of the Minister's irresponsibility.

It certainly does not seem to me to indicate that that growing sense of responsibility which we all hope will ultimately descend upon the Minister is coming upon him. How are we to reconcile these statements with the statements about the farmers being masters of their holdings, with the sacred rights of security of tenure? Who is going to determine whether they are farmers or not?

What about the absentee farmers?

The Minister for Agriculture, as a Deputy in Opposition, questioned the right of the Government to interfere in these matters, to deprive the private owner and the private citizen of his rights.

He has made the exception.

Several Ministers of the Government have told owners of industries and shops that if they did not conduct their businesses in a certain way they would be dealt with either by being taxed out of existence or by being nationalised, perhaps by being expropriated. Perhaps we have no right to be astonished at those utterances but I think that all who have been listening to the Minister, as some of the Deputies have not because they are new to this House, will be astonished. These new Deputies have not had the advantage of hearing the Minister year after year on this topic. The Minister, of course, has justification for what he says, but it is the inconsistency, the extraordinary right about face—not merely a change of step—that he has shown that makes me wonder what exactly is behind the change, what is the cause of it. Is it the fact that "the best Minister for Agriculture in Europe", as he has been described by the Taoiseach, has discovered only now that this system is bad and ought to be done away with?

Do you agree with him now?

What are the activities of Deputy Lemass?

According to the report of the Commission on Agriculture, set up by the former Minister for Agriculture, we find this in paragraph 259:—

"The condition of many farms in the country is deplorable. Outlying fields usually show greater deterioration as they recede from proximity to the farmyard. Many of them, because of over-grazing and annual hay-making, have reached a state of impoverishment that renders them of little output value. The less accessible fields were the first to go out of cultivation, and under compulsory tillage, unless directly regulated, they would be the last to return. There are many thousands of acres of moderate and poor pasture upon which, over a period of many years, no effort has been made to improve the quality or quantity of herbage and from which the annual output is the minimum which nature provides. For various reasons, some subjective, others fortuitous, the fertility of thousands of farms is now so low that they yield but the barest maintenance to their occupiers, and frequently subsistence is obtained by annual lettings or the repeated sale of hay, or by part-time alternative employment; judged by modern standards of agriculture such land is derelict."

That is an extract from the Report of the Majority. It is published in the White Paper: "Policy in regard to Crops, Pastures, Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs", which was considered by the last Government on the 3rd May, 1946. In Minority Report No. 2 it is stated:—

"Proper grass husbandry will involve the periodic use of the plough for the conversion of poor, unproductive pasture into a sward capable of producing a greatly improved yield of milk, or of live-weight increase in cattle."

One of the minority reports recommended:

"That legislation be introduced requiring farmers to maintain a minimum of 15 per cent. of their arable land in cultivation, the term cultivation to include first-year hay."

It further recommended:

"That powers be taken to ensure cultivation over the entire holding in accordance with the practice of good husbandry."

What is wrong with that?

This is Fianna Fáil policy which the Minister has now been converted to. Paragraph 20 of the White Paper says:

"It would be undesirable in the public interest to revert, for the second time in a generation, to the position which obtained immediately prior to the emergency in which, over large areas, cultivation of land had ceased, no tillage implements were available on holdings and the technique of tillage was being lost both by owners and farm workers."

It then went on, in paragraph 21, to give the policy of the Minister.

Are you boasting about that report?

Certainly, I am boasting about it.

Why did you not adopt it?

We did adopt a policy of compulsory wheat growing, and the principle that some measure of compulsory tillage was necessary in order to maintain a reasonable quota of arable land, having regard to the then present needs. We decided that that should be national policy. If the world situation improved substantially, or if other circumstances operated that meant that it would be no longer necessary to have any quota specified, then the matter could be reviewed.

Do you believe in compulsory tillage then?

Do not ask me a stupid question. Go and read the White Paper which was published three years ago when the war was only barely at an end. Circumstances have changed very much since. Deputy Hughes came into this House only a year ago.

Tell the farmers what you stand for.

He was only a baby then.

Statements were made here that farmers were being forced to till unreasonably. There were denunciations of wheat growing going on all over the country. The fact was that compulsory wheat growing was done away with when this White Paper was issued. There was no longer any compulsion with regard to wheat growing. Farmers could grow whatever crops they wished. The intention of the then Government was to carry out what is now the professed policy of the present Minister for Agriculture—that the land of the country must, in the national interest, produce the utmost possible amount of food.

Then you agree with the Minister's policy?

No, but he agrees with our policy. Why did he denounce wheat growing as "all cod" and beet growing as "all cod"? Why did he say a few years ago, that it was folly to have beet growing when we could get sugar from Jamaica, or somewhere else, and save £400,000, and why would we not close down all our beet factories? Do you think that we have been converted to the Minister's point of view, or that the Minister is not in the process of a slow and gradual conversion to more reasonable ideas about tillage and good husbandry and putting fertility into the land?

There was nothing but wheat growing for Fianna Fáil.

You had plenty of beet growing, and if you had not wheat growing you would not have had any bread. This Government is now well over a year in office, and remember the present Minister for Agriculture told us two years ago what "a cod" bread rationing was in view of the magnificent harvests of wheat that were grown in America. But we still have bread rationing. Why have we bread rationing? Are we going to be dependent in the future on what we can get through Marshall Aid and through the generosity of American wheat producers and the American taxpayers? The Minister has not been able to go back on wheat growing which Deputy Hughes has had the temerity to refer to.

Who put up the Carlow beet factory?

The Deputy should allow Deputy Derrig to make his statement.

According to this White Paper, it sets out what the Irish programme is. We have to assure the Marshall Aid Administration that we intend to carry it out, to the best of our ability, so as to relieve food shortages elsewhere, and thus add our quota to European recovery. According to paragraph 24 of this White Paper:—

"It is assumed that by 1952-53 home production of wheat will have declined from the 1948 acreage of 516,500 to 250,000, which compares with the 1934-38 average of 192,500 acres. An acreage of 250,000, assuming recovery in yield to 0.95 metric tons to the acre, would produce about 240,000 metric tons of `green' wheat or 180,000 tons after allowing for seed, waste, and drying."

Where is the difference between that and the policy which we announced of keeping the arable acreage of this country somewhat higher than in the pre-war period? I think the figure of 250,000 was the figure actually mentioned by the Minister's predecessor as being the figure that we had in our minds, as being the figure which, while it would not go as far as you would wish to provide your home requirements in bread, was one which you could step up in case of another national crisis: one which you could step up pretty rapidly to produce almost your full requirements, and at the same time was not such as to impose an unreasonable burden upon producers, seeing that it was less than half, very considerably less than half, what producers of wheat had been able to give us, even in the last few years, when conditions were very unfavourable to them because of the shortage of fertilisers.

"The intention is to reduce the tillage quota, as soon as world conditions warrant it, to a level which, while not imposing an unreasonable burden on any class of occupier, will ensure the widespread maintenance of tillage technique and the general adoption of proper rotation. Subject to compliance with the obligation to cultivate such a quota as may from time to time be prescribed, occupiers to whom the proposed legislation will apply would have freedom of choice as to the crops they would grow."

These were the features of our policy —that compulsory tillage should be made a permanent feature of agriculture, the percentage to be well below what was considered necessary during the war and to have regard to the current needs, the normal needs of the country, and that farmers should be free to grow whatever crops they chose; but there should be a fixed price and a guaranteed market for wheat, the price to be sufficient to induce farmers to keep the acreage above that of 1939.

When Deputies ask me do I favour that policy, seeing it was the policy produced by the Government of which I was a member and that it is the policy that was attacked by the present Minister for Agriculture and by so many Deputies opposite, their question is certainly extraordinary. "People had better make up their minds at once that the 11 months' system of running land will not be tolerated as normal practice in this country. There was no better agricultural land in Ireland than the land of Meath and the nation could not afford to allow that land to be used less intensively than would ensure maximum production. Fixity of tenure was just as important and sacrosanct for the farmer with 1,000 acres as for the farmer with ten acres, but ownership of land carried with it responsibilities as well an privileges." I am quoting from the Irish Press of the 12th April. “If people wish to retain ownership of their land,” the Minister said later on, “they must realise that these practices were from every point of view economically and socially intolerable.” He advises owners to get agricultural graduates to run their farms if they are not capable of running them themselves.

Deputy O'Higgins indicated that the Minister for Agriculture was working probably in harmony with another State Department, the Department of Lands, in this matter. We have a Department of State which has power to take over land which is not being used in accordance with the rules of good husbandry and which is needed for the relief of congestion. Of course, the State always has that weapon at its disposal. Even Deputy O'Higgins, in the course of his remarks, pressed for land division. He had a solution for this problem, for all those who are taking conacre—the small men, of whom there are tens of thousands in the country, who have no land of their own and who work very hard and may have a little equipment, a horse, a cow or two perhaps, or a few calves, the cottier who takes land and has been paying very high prices for it. The solution is to give this cottier a holding of his own.

The trouble is that the Minister for Lands promised that he would introduce legislation to improve the facilities that exist for relieving congestion. There is not nearly enough land in this country to provide what Deputies from good farming areas would consider as necessary for congests in the West. I doubt if there is enough land—perhaps there is—for all the cottiers who might look for it and who would probably make a fairly good job of it; but certainly there is not enough land for the congests, and still less is there enough land, no matter what legislation may be passed, to provide new allotments and new holdings for both congests and cottiers. Therefore, that is no solution and we must consider the position of those small people who have been taking land and who, unfortunately for themselves, last year, following the guarantees of the Minister, grew oats and potatoes and were unable to grow them profitably and make a decent remuneration for themselves. You have those people all over the Midlands and the eastern and southern counties.

Will the position be that we will have two Departments of State determining whether the land is being used to the best advantage or not? As Deputy Dunne asked the Minister, what action will follow upon this threat that he has made? He must have made the statement deliberately and fully conscious of its meaning. He must have had regard to some circumstances of which he was aware. He stated in the most solemn and emphatic manner that he will not be satisfied with landowners who do not utilise their land so as to get the maximum production. Who will determine that? Is it the Department of Agriculture or is it, as Deputy O'Higgins suggested, to be handed over to the Department of Lands to decide and is the land going to be taken over for the relief of congestion? It is a pity that we should have two Departments dealing with this matter. It is but another example of the duplication that Deputy O'Higgins referred to.

We have the Department of Local Government dealing with minor drainage works. We have the Board of Works charged with a national system of arterial drainage. Now, we have the Minister for Agriculture coming along with a scheme for land reclamation. Deputy O'Higgins wanted to know would this Party have the temerity to oppose that scheme. We have not seen the details of it yet. I suspect that when the Minister advertised this scheme to the Irish people the details of it had not been worked out, just like the scheme which is before the House at present in the form of a Bill. I hope that when it does come before the House it will have been worked out more satisfactorily. I think I am justified in asking whether, if £20,000,000 is going to be spent upon land reclamation, that is the only way in which money that is put into this Counterpart Fund is going to be spent for the benefit of Irish agriculture? The Minister for Lands who is in charge of forestry has been trying to get land for £4 or £5 per acre. He intends now to increase the price of that land. Perhaps he may pay up to £10 an acre. But he was very careful to explain that the land he seeks is by no means arable land. Any land that might be useful to the Minister for Agriculture or which could be utilised by him, even if it is marginal land or land that would only be used when prices are high and upon which it would pay the farmer to turn machinery and which would be permitted to return to its original state when prices are low, will not be touched by the Minister for Lands. Obviously the Minister for Lands thinks that all this land must go to food production and that you can grow timber on the tops of hills. Possibly you may grow a certain kind of timber, but it will not be commercial timber.

Forestry is an expensive and costly process if it is done properly, but scientifically it will at least give a return to the country of good timber at the end of the period. If the Minister for Lands thinks that he can grow even scrub timber on the tops of the mountains west of the Shannon, or in a great part of Ireland, he simply does not know what he is talking about; that type of afforestation would never recoup the country for the expense of drainage and the preparation of the ground, labour and fencing and all the rest. These expenses were the chief reason why the State was not able——

You are ten years behind the times.

——in pre-war days at least to pay more than the price that I have mentioned for land. The Minister for Lands spoke about growing hard timber. Hard timber will not grow on the tops of hills.

Will the Deputy relate all this to the Estimate?

I am relating it to the land reclamation scheme and to the question that was put as to the attitude of this Party towards that scheme. Perhaps I am out of order in referring to the matter since it has not come before the House. Briefly I want to know how a price of £20, which it is stated will be spent upon reclaiming land, can be reconciled with the price that is paid for land, not alone for afforestation but even for the relief of congestion. That worked out at about £10 per acre in the last Land Commission report.

Now it is proposed to pay twice that under the Minister's scheme for reclamation. How will they guarantee that that land will be kept in permanent production? However that may be, the real point is whether an expenditure of £20,000,000 on land reclamation, viewing it even in a very preliminary way, is going to be spent to the best advantage over the farming community as a whole and whether it will give those who are in a position and who have the facilities speedily and quickly to increase their production the same urge to do so as it certainly will give the farmer who is in a position to get the £20 for the acre that he is going to reclaim. But not every farmer is in that position. A great many farmers have no land to reclaim. I suggest, therefore, that, without doing any injury to that scheme in whatever advantage it may have to farmers who have land to reclaim, the Minister should also have combined with it the far more courageous policy of reducing the price of fertilisers, which are the prime necessity of the time, to the utmost possible extent. Until farmers get going in production and until they find themselves in favourable circumstances and are able to face this new situation without any qualms, one of the obvious ways in which to help them is by reducing the price of fertilisers to the minimum, even at the expense of a subsidy. The Government is saving millions of pounds on subsidies on flour, on fertilisers, on fuel and turf production. The Government is getting all this Marshall Aid money. If they want to increase agricultural production and agricultural exports, surely one of the primary ways to ensure that those who are already producing fairly satisfactorily and who have given proof over a period of years of what they can do—because the tillage farmers and the mixed farmers of this country kept the country going for many years right through the emergency—should be further encouraged by making fertilisers available to them at the lowest possible price. Their land has undoubtedly lost much of its fertility.

Does the Minister contend that the prices they are getting at present—I dealt with the question of milk and bread—having regard to their increasing costs, enable them to set about putting fertilisers on their land to the extent that he would like and to the extent necessary if the country is to get the maximum production that he has now set before us as an aim while, at the same time, paying for all these increased costs and services? Even in to-day's newspaper the Minister has made a few hundred thousand pounds more for the Exchequer because, apparently, white flour is now being made compulsory. The Minister is responsible for the administration of food subsidies. He has saved about £4,000,000 this year on food subsidies. He now comes along and makes an Order compelling the use of 75 per cent. extraction white flour. Perhaps one of the ulterior motives in that is to provide offals for the farmers—a very good idea, but there is going to be a considerable saving for the Exchequer. It is stated that it may run into some hundreds of thousands of pounds. The confectionery industry, despite the cold water that the Minister tried to throw upon the beet and the Irish sugar industry, has gone ahead by leaps and bounds. It is now one of the most important industries we have. It is for that reason that the Minister is now coming along to put that impost upon the industry. Of course, it will go back to the consumer of confectionery, but the Minister for Finance will save that money even during the present year. Therefore the Minister is saving.

He is saving also on the glasshouses in the Gaeltacht. When I hear Deputy Dunne talking about protecting the Irish tomato producer, I wonder what scheme the Minister will give these people in the West when he closes down, as he apparently intends to do, the tomato growing industry there. As was pointed out to him by one of the Western Deputies, he knows Connemara sufficiently well himself to estimate regarding the land reclamation scheme, no matter how it is administered and no matter how sympathetic he or his officials may be, how very limited is the assistance it can give to the people in that area. The Minister complains that people are not prepared to work. They are flying out of the country. Last year the increase from the congested areas was greater than from any other area. It was almost double what it had been in the preceding year.

When efforts are made—and we all know that the officials of the Ministry of Finance can question and find any number of reasons for not doing a thing—to find reasons to continue this scheme and to enable it to be carried through, when it is benefiting the poor community even at a cost which might seem somewhat extravagant but is not so—probably the Minister has found that out—these efforts should be supported. I would appeal to him to continue the industry or, if the decision is that it is definitely going to be terminated, to assure himself that the congested areas will get some quid pro quo for what they are losing I know that in some parts of the country like Achill the people know all about this industry. They have worked at it in the Channel Islands. The only difficulty is the question of the marketing of the tomatoes.

Why did they go to the Channel Islands?

They worked in the Channel Islands.

Was that since February of last year?

They had emigrated and they knew all about this industry. They did not emigrate by reason of anything the Minister did last year. I am trying to explain—perhaps I have not been able to make myself sufficiently clear—that they are technicians in this industry. Just as you get people who worked in Lincoln who are experts in the beet industry and who came back here later to work as sugar-cooks, you will get people who know all about the tomato industry because they have been working at it elsewhere. The only difficulty is that they have not the capital or the resources to enable them to get into that industry. We know that they cannot find a living on their small-holdings. Just in the same way as the co-operative dairying industry gives a living to groups of producers, very often small producers in other counties, co-operative tomato-growing with Government assistance might secure a foothold in these congested areas, and do something to ease the burden of the people and perhaps so reduce the extent of emigration from these places.

At the outset, I should like to deal with the remarks of Deputy Derrig concerning the tomato industry. He complains that cold water has been thrown on this industry by the Minister, but I think we have only to look back over the years to see what has been Fianna Fáil's policy concerning the tomato-growing industry in this country. I know that in the year before the war 3,000 tons of tomatoes were imported while last year only 1,800 tons were imported under this terrible Minister who is trying, according to Deputy Derrig, to drive tomato-growers out of business.

I am not going to say that there are so many glasshouses as there were before the war but there has been a scaling down of imports this year and probably, with the increase in glass acreage, the scaling down of imports will be continued by the Minister for Agriculture. I can see that the acreage under glass will be increased to such an extent that growers themselves will become their own enemies. In other words, they will be competing with one another to such an extent that there will not be a living in the industry for all of them by reason of that competition.

Deputy Derrig, of course, bases his case on the fact that £64,000 was made available to subsidise the erection of glasshouses in Connemara and Donegal. Deputy Derrig should know that the tomatoes produced in these subsidised glasshouses are being sent for sale on the Dublin market in competition with tomatoes produced by growers who had to erect glasshouses in County Dublin at their own expense. In other words, the Connemara and Donegal glasshouse owners have a definite advantage over growers from County Dublin who are trying to dispose of their tomatoes in the same market. Glasshouses are being erected so rapidly that it seems quite obvious that within a very short time—perhaps in one or two years— we shall find tomato-growers in this country selling tomatoes at the price paid for tomatoes imported from Belgium and Holland during the Fianna Fáil administration, a price of 3¾d. per lb. That is not a very rosy outlook for tomato-growers in this country but there is that possibility with the increase in the number of glasshouses. Probably, when we reach that stage, Deputy Derrig and his colleagues will have no reason to talk about the importation of tomatoes because the tomato-growers of this country will be in a position to supply the full demand of the home market, the population of this country being relatively so small. The Deputy then perhaps will not have so much reason to talk about the men who qualified as sugar-cooks in Lincoln and who came back to work in the Carlow factory, the white elephant.

The Minister's administration of his Department during the past year appears to me to disclose a remarkable record of progress. In that short period, he has succeeded in establishing a certain degree of confidence amongst the agricultural community. They are not afraid of the Minister for Agriculture, as has been suggested. They know he is on their side. He has adopted a new approach towards the industry, a helpful one, not a destructive one. When he came into office he took control of the remnants of a crippled industry, one that had been attacked vigorously during the period of office of Fianna Fáil. The first fruits of their attitude towards the farming community was the economic war.

Do not play England's game again.

That was the first present made to the farmers of this country. Fianna Fáil all during the period of the war were hostile to the farmers and, even after the war was over, they still insisted on compulsory tillage, until the present Minister came into office and declared to the farmers that at least he would relieve them of the burden of having to carry out tillage which was not essential and which they did not wish themselves to carry out. The Coalition Government, as far as the farmers are concerned, is a favourable one and no matter what attempts the Irish Press may make to make the farmers of this country or the other people—I suppose there are some other people who read it; not many farmers read it——

You would be surprised.

——believe the contrary, the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy James Dillon, is the bane of their life and his achievements over the past year prove it. The estimated cost of the economic war on reliable figures was in or about £400,000,000 and that was contributed in losses sustained by the farmers of this country. It was estimated during those years that 25,000,000 calves were slaughtered and the destruction of the live-stock industry was subsidised by the payment of 10/- per skin for calves which it could be proved were slaughtered.

Will the Deputy tell us who was responsible for the economic war?

The Deputy opposite started the economic war.

Do not be always trying to play a game.

That is not related to the present question.

I am glad to hear from the Opposition Deputies, anyway, that they do not approve of the live-stock industry or in maintaining it, and that they still stand for the destruction of that industry as they did in the past.

I think I can refer fairly to an independent view of the attitude of the Minister for Agriculture and the progress of his policy during the past year, that is, the view expressed by Mr. Carrigan, the American adviser who came to this country. It was his job to satisfy himself that the money which would be made available to this country would be justified by that policy. He was quite satisfied with the policy as he saw it and with the progress made over the past year under the Minister for Agriculture. Anybody who can remember the references in Mr. Carrigan's broadcast will remember that he paid a special tribute to the present Minister for Agriculture and to his fitness to carry out a policy which would justify making money available to this country for development.

There is no Deputy on the Opposition Benches but will agree that if he goes through the country to any part of it he can look right and left and see acres of bare fields where there should be some kind of live stock or tillage or something going on. Instead we see nothing but hungry land, bare and incapable even of growing proper grass, grass jibed at by Deputy Derrig in his speech when he suggested that the Holmes' Report was actually prepared for the purpose of selling various varieties of grass in this country to the Irish farmers who, I expect Deputy Derrig meant, would be going out of tillage.

I think the Deputy is misconstruing what I said. I said that Mr. Holmes had been in the grass seed business but I did not make insinuations such as the Deputy suggests. I think the Deputy is putting me in a position of making an attack on Mr. Holmes.

The Deputy has a right to interpret Deputy Derrig's speech.

And I have a right to protest against a wrong interpretation in the case of a private individual.

He has interpreted yours.

You were not here, you do not know.

I did not interpret your remarks with regard to Mr. Holmes but rather your suggestion with regard to his purpose for submitting a report. The Deputy suggested that his report was for the purpose of getting orders from this country for salesmen of grass seeds in New Zealand.

I was here all the time and I heard no such thing.

You must be deaf.

I am not deaf.

You are when it suits you.

I will pass from that and if I have misunderstood Deputy Derrig I am sorry. Another thing about this year's progress is that we have not seen an example of farmers being driven to do this or do that. We have no "John Browns" or bailiffs. They are all gone. There is a different attitude towards the farmers as far as the Coalition Government is concerned. Theirs is a helpful one realising the value of our main industry.

There was an old Fianna Fáil slogan: "Thanks be to God the British market is gone." I think they have been converted in that respect and the conversion took place about the year 1938 when the Trade Agreement was carried out between this country and Britain. It was the first suspicion one could have that they had come to a certain sense of reason. That 1938 Agreement was carried on during the war years and it is unfortunate that during that time an attempt was not made to improve trading conditions between this country and Britain because of the increased demand there for all kinds of agricultural products during that period. Instead of that we came to the 1947 make-shift agreement between this country and Britain whereby we got what appeared to be increased prices for live stock exported to Britain. Rightly enough, however, the Minister for Agriculture, since he came into office, examined that Trade Agreement and saw that an improvement could be made. He delayed for a very short time before he went to Britain in order to improve the position for the Irish farmers and try to put them on a level with the feeders of live stock in Britain.

There was such a discrepancy in price between live stock exported from this country and the same stock about two months later after it had been fed in Britain that it seemed essential that that injustice should be righted. All during that period we find that the farmers were left without capital or live stock. They faced the emergency period with their bare hands and a number of broken-winded horses, which were referred to before, and with 1,000 tractors. The Fianna Fáil Party themselves admitted that they knew an emergency was arising and that they would have to put into effect a compulsory tillage policy, but they did not take into consideration that if they were going to put into effect a compulsory tillage policy they should also equip the farmers and, if the farmers had not sufficient capital or equipment themselves as a result of the abject poverty created among them during the first five years of the Fianna Fáil régime, then they should have come to their assistance at that time and given them sufficient machinery to enable them to carry out that policy. We find after the organised slaughter of the live stock during that period, when Britain was short of meat, wanted meat and was prepared to buy our cattle, the land of this country was capable of feeding—as it had depreciated—a live-stock population far below a level which would ensure a proper degree of prosperity for the farmers. In 1939 I think the value of live stock almost doubled itself and this sudden rise in price enabled the farmers to pay off the debts which had accumulated during the previous six years and they were able to start off from scratch about 1939. They were faced with large areas of compulsory tillage and I believe myself that the land is impoverished to such an extent that only by the employment of the best possible methods can it be brought back to a proper standard of productivity.

The soil can definitely be nursed back to productivity. In areas which have been reduced to the condition of dust bowls—and there are many of them, according to a recent survey— it is essential that the land be treated in a certain way. Even in the case of grass land that was not broken up during the emergency period, quite a lot of it is growing grass of a very inferior quality. I am glad to see that the Minister has taken the trouble to hear the views of an expert in the person of Mr. Holmes, so that every acre of arable land can be brought up to its maximum level of production. There is no excuse for cheap gibes at any attempt made to improve the quality of grass, as that improvement will have positive results. The derelict land which we have in many parts of the country is hardly fit to keep a beast alive or grow proper crops. The agricultural figures for the past year show a remarkable change and since it is the main industry it is very encouraging. If it were a minor industry that could show a great change, it would not be as hopeful as it is when it is our main industry.

Opposition Deputies said that fertilisers could not be imported during the emergency and that, as a result, the land had got into its present condition: but none of them will tell me that they could not have got time for the land that needed lime during those years. We would not be faced at this time with the task of liming land if that had been done. The lime could have been made available and the land could have been limed under various schemes, during that period of compulsion which farmers had to face.

The land reclamation scheme is one good step, designed to bring every acre into productivity. There are great areas not capable at present of producing an economic crop that will repay the expense and labour involved. This scheme will increase the volume of production, which will be a very important factor in the coming years. That volume will have to meet dropping prices. The prices of agricultural produce in this country will definitely be affected by the prices of agricultural produce in other countries. One particular example is barley. If Messrs. Guinness can buy barley in Britain at £1, I think they are not going to pay 40/- or 57/6 to the Irish farmers. For that reason, the volume of production will have to make up the gap between the present price and the price to which produce will fall according as we go back to peace-time conditions.

Our population is a small one and this country is quite capable of producing more than its needs. The main worry of our farmers is to dispose of the produce, whether it be crops or live stock, in the best possible way. This country can produce more than sufficient of both—both live stock of all kinds and agricultural produce. In fact, if we had our land in a proper state we could have a surplus of wheat. We could have an exportable surplus if we had the land in good heart.

In my opinion, compulsion is undesirable. I believe I heard Deputy Derrig saying that it is desirable, that the farmers should be compelled to till a quota. The farmers are no different from any other section of the community, from shopkeepers, factory owners or anyone else. So far as I know, the Government has no right—and no policy which would give them a right— to go to a shopkeeper and tell him he must sell this or sell that, or go to a factory owner and tell him he must produce so much or the Government will put him out of business or interfere with his business. The farmer is entitled to be put on the very same level as any other section of the community.

I am sorry that the Minister is not here at the moment, as I would like him to consider the possibility of making capital available to the farmers. I know that it is difficult at this stage, when we are facing falling prices. It is unfortunate that capital could not have been made available when prices soared and when that capital could have been got back in a very short time. I know that a group of farmers visited Britain during the past week and visited farms all over the south of England. They were amazed at the equipment there and the methods employed and it appeared to them that the farmer in Britain has more sympathy from his Government than ever the Governments of this country gave to our farmers. One small-sized farm there was able to show, I think, a gross income of £3,000. It was quite a small farm, which gave only a small amount of employment, but it was fully equipped. The wages there are higher than they are here. I do not know what balance the farmer had left, but there are very few small farms in this country which can boast, at the end of the year, that their takings amount to £3,000.

I was glad to hear the Minister, earlier in the year, stating that he would consider some kind of scheme to enable county committees of agriculture to provide farm machinery in their respective areas, for development purposes. It must be agreed that our farmers are not properly equipped. They are unable to equip themselves, as they have not the capital and many of them have not the credit. Therefore, they have to depend on time for accumulation and must say: "I have so many head of stock this year and I hope to have a few more next year." If they had the capital, they could say: "I have so many acres of land and it is capable of carrying so many head of cattle" or "I will till so many acres and I can afford it, as I have the capital and the machinery." The farmers here are not equipped in that particular way.

I noticed last year, from some figures given by the Minister when he took office, that he found the cattle population of this country to be the lowest in recorded history. So far as I know, statistics are in existence since 1847. In other words, our cattle population is the lowest for a hundred years and very probably it is the lowest ever. Deputies on all sides of the House know that there is an unlimited demand for meat at present, both in Britain and on the Continent. It may be said that that is all very well, that the only people who get money for meat or cattle are the people who sell the cattle. If our farmers were paid the money for the cattle. I am quite sure that the prosperity amongst them would be reflected amongst all sections of the community.

In addition to the low cattle population last year, we find that, under the former Minister, the country had fewer than 1,000,000 young cattle. That is what he did in the matter of facing the needs of the future. Everybody knows that the cattle population cannot be increased overnight. It will hardly show much change in a couple of years, and that is unfortunate, in view of this vacuum in Britain and Europe in regard to fresh meat at present. We cannot increase our cattle population to such an extent as to cover all the available land, apart from the land which is tilled in the normal way, and it is unfortunate that there should be so many idle acres, many of these acres being idle because the grass is not capable of feeding live stock. In 1949, cattle export prices showed an increase of 25 per cent. over 1948 and it is a strange thing that, when there is an increase in price, farmers get to know it by some means or other. Even if the Irish Press does not tell them, somebody whispers it to them and that increase of 25 per cent. in the price of cattle exported last year compared with the previous year is well known to the farmers.

I was sorry to see from the figures given by the Minister that 12,000 more horses were exported during the past year than in the previous year. In 1947, 26,000 horses were exported and in 1948, the figure was 38,000. If these were all racehorses, I should be very happy, as I know it would result in a very substantial increase in income for this country, but unfortunately the increase included a number of farm horses. I hope the Minister will in future try to restrict the exportation of horses to the broken-winded animals about which he rightly spoke at this time last year, horses which are not very useful to our farmers. He ought to restrict the export of horses under nine years old because it is very probable that, if there were another world war, we would experience an oil shortage and would have no horses. There are quite a number of horses over nine and ten years old which could be exported at a profit, but it would be very wise to keep the horses in this country until they reach that age.

The figures given by the Minister indicate that the quantity of dead poultry exported last year was double the number exported in the previous year. That was a remarkable achievement in such a short time and it was probably due to the flamboyant statements which the Minister is accused of having made so many times. He boasted last year, and was ridiculed by his opponents here for it, that he would drown Britain in eggs and he scared the poultry producers of Britain. The result of his past year's activities show that that was no empty boast, that he had a progressive policy as a result of which it was obvious to him that he could send into Britain vast quantities of dead poultry and eggs.

The value of eggs in shell exported increased from £2,712,000 to £4,366,000 in the past year and poultry keepers are bound to appreciate the result of the Minister's policy from these figures, because this amount divided amongst the poultry keepers will show a substantial income to the individuals concerned.

The quantity of condensed milk exported to Britain during the past year was doubled and it seems to be a trade that ought to be developed to the greatest extent possible, having regard to the fact that there are more persons going into milk production every day. There is no falling off in the number of persons going into milk production, but, in order to encourage its continuance, it would be advisable for the Minister to develop this market for condensed milk still further. It is reassuring to see that the exports were doubled in the past year and I hope they will be higher. There are other products, such as cheese, which could be manufactured for export, as well as chocolate crumb. I believe there are some factories engaged in the manufacture of chocolate crumb for export and there appears to be a ready market for this product at present.

There was also an increase last year in the wool exports, which was due to an increase in the sheep population. When the Minister came into office, the sheep population was almost extinct and I remember last year advocating the adoption by him of some scheme regarding ewe lambs which would ensure that the population could be rapidly increased and brought back to the original level.

I have already mentioned some figures in relation to poultry, but an examination of the statistics will prove that egg exports in 1947 were only one-third of the 1948 exports. That is an example of production trebled in the short space of 12 months. The exports were: in 1947, 614,000 great hundreds, and, in 1948, 1,846,000 great hundreds, showing that egg exports were trebled during the Minister's year in office. Every farm has at present its flock of chickens and the Minister was quite right in his anticipation that we would be faced with a problem this autumn, so far as the sale of eggs and poultry products is concerned.

I know that we have a market for eggs at 3/- a dozen up to next January, but, after next January, under the arrangement made by the previous Minister, the price would drop to 1/5 per dozen—at a time when we would have a colossal quantity of eggs to export. The Minister was very wise to take time by the forelock and to go over to Britain and say: "We will bring our eggs from 3/- to 2/6 per dozen, if you will allow us to export at that price all next year and all the year after." That was the best piece of business, so far as poultry keepers are concerned, that was done, having regard to the enormous quantities of eggs and poultry products which will be available for export at the end of this year, all during next year and probably the following year. The Minister has, in effect, put a floor under the price of Irish eggs until the end of 1951. These are just some examples of the remarkable change which has taken place in the agricultural industry since we got Mr. James Dillon as Minister. Even the hens began to lay when the people got rid of Deputy Smith.

Twice on Sundays.

Cattle exports show progressive increase but we cannot be too hopeful because it is an industry which takes time to develop having regard to the period it takes to bring the calf to the state of being a prime beast. At the same time, we know the Minister's attitude towards it. We know that he is anxious to put a beast on every acre of land that is not tilled. We know that he has done all he can to encourage milk production. Butter production has shown a great increase in the past year and only recently an opposition Deputy put down a question and was readily told that the butter ration will be increased. I expect that very soon there will be a surplus of butter for export. I know that that will present a problem inasmuch as the subsidised price of butter in Britain is something like 1/2. Naturally, we cannot export butter to compete with a subsidised price to the consumers but it is very probable that the British consumers will demand an increased ration, that the subsidy will have to be withdrawn to some extent and that Irish butter will be able to compete in the British market.

Butter production in April, 1947, was 35,827 cwts. For the year ended April, 1949, it was 70,220 cwts. That represented a doubling of butter production in 1948-49 as compared with the year 1947. That progress will continue so long as more persons go into milk production. These are actual figures. They are not flamboyant statements. They are not some reckless statement of the Minister. They are there for anybody to see. If we are to judge progress, especially in regard to production, we must rely on figures. The set of figures that I have given shows that agriculture is on the upgrade as a result of the policy adopted by this Minister and the encouragement he gave, probably through the columns of the Irish Press, by advertisements and by various statements.

"Grow more oats."

He said: "grow more oats" and the result was 1,000,000 more barrels of oats. He said: "Grow more potatoes" and we had too much potatoes. Everything he asked for, even through the columns of the Irish Press, he got and he paid the Irish Press the ordinary amount for the space.

But he did not pay the farmers.

Despite the widow.

It is one of the best papers in which to advertise.

I want to tell Deputy Killilea and Deputy Burke what Deputy Burke should know, that Grangegorman Mental Hospital took 500 barrels of oats recently and paid 35/- a barrel for it and could not get 500 barrels for less. Of eight tenders submitted, the lowest was 27/6 per barrel. When I hear Deputies from outside County Dublin talking about the price of oats and when I see that that lowest tender was 27/6 a barrel, I wonder where is all this cheap oats? I am sorry that Deputy Hilliard is not here because he complained about oat prices, but he did not indicate that there were any oats for sale in County Meath. He was right because, when a scheme was brought into operation whereby the Department would give 28/- per barrel by arrangement to a merchant who would purchase and store the oats, no merchant in County Meath volunteered to carry on that scheme because he could not get oats in County Meath. Wheat production under Deputy Smith in 1947 amounted to 313,000 tons, and in 1948, under Deputy Dillon, it was 409,500 tons.

What were the acreages?

The acreage in the case of Deputy Smith was 579,000 on which he got 313,000 tons and in the case of Deputy Dillon it was 518,000 acres on which he got 409,500 tons.

Have we to thank Deputy Dillon for the weather?

The wheat started to grow for James Dillon.

It is very strange considering that the land was supposed to have been destroyed and impoverished that these crops were produced. It is a miracle.

These figures show that there were about 60,000 acres of impoverished land on which the farmers could not attempt to grow wheat. So, they grew only 518,000 acres of wheat on which they got a large yield. Deputy Smith's policy in previous years showed a yield of five barrels an acre of wheat. Five barrels per acre, as every farmer knows, may pay expenses and the expenses would need to be fairly low whereas ten barrels on half the acreage would be far more remunerative. Here is another thing: For Deputy Smith's wheat of 1947 the farmers got £5,500,000 and for Deputy Dillon's wheat of 1948 the farmers got £8,000,000. The farmers will begin to feel that they got paid for wheat last year in spite of everything and they will see the difference of £3,500,000. It is not far from £5,500,000, the total which they got from Deputy Smith during his period of office. That sort of thing will make the farmers realise that perhaps there has been a change of policy, and for the better.

Barley production last year was 12,300 tons more than the previous year. We found, when the present Minister for Agriculture came into office, that the price of barley was nailed down to 35/-, later increased to 40/- a barrel. It was 35/- a barrel during the years when Guinness was travelling to the four corners of the earth paying 89/- a barrel. Here in the very last year the farmers were relieved to the extent of 5/- a barrel. I know it was near the election period and there might be some slight connection. It was unfair to nail the farmers down to a price while Guinness travelled the globe for barley when he could have got a certain proportion of it here at what I will call a scarcity price.

The beet growers, under Deputy Corry, were very happy with the barley prices until Deputy Corry crossed the floor. When he did that, they started an agitation for an increased price. I do not quarrel with them for asking for an increased price when they saw Guinness paying bigger prices elsewhere and, in addition, purchasing all the barley he could get in this country.

Was that the only agitation by the beet growers?

There is another one. It is on the way. Deputy Corry boasted that, in their last year of office, the farmers of this country grew more wheat than they were required to grow according to the compulsory tillage quota. That may be, but they did not get the yield per acre they ought to have got.

Does the Deputy not realise that it was a bad year? Does he remember that bad spring and bad harvest?

Was that the Red Cross harvest?

Do not be personal. I contributed my share at that time.

The widow and the bank manager, I suppose.

The Minister is only good for personal abuse.

The Deputy should be allowed to make his speech.

I do not want to be personal but I do remember that there was a harvest campaign that year in which the Deputy took a very active interest. Nevertheless the huge acreage of land under wheat at that time showed a very poor result for the farmers of this country.

Half or more than half of it was not reaped.

It could not be reaped.

If we had had the machinery it might have been possible to do so. The Minister's attitude to the barley growers was a welcome change but it was really too late. The farmers of this country could have availed of the benefit of a free market in barley, instead of having the price nailed to 35/- a bamel, if there had been a free market at that time and if they had been allowed to get a scarcity price from Messrs. Guinness. I think it was most unfair to the farmers of this country to nail down the price of barley in those years. Although the price restriction has been removed by the Minister I believe it is too late but that is not his fault. In my opinion, he only got into office in time to save the farmers from going into bankruptcy.

I think it was Deputy Corry who spoke about the price of milk as being 1/2 a gallon. He complains that the milk producers are not being treated fairly in this respect and that they should increase the price. Until it became obvious that there was going to be a general election, the price of milk was 10½d. a gallon. It was only increased to 1/2 a gallon as a result of a certain amount of agitation and when it became obvious that there was going to be a general election. There is no general election coming off yet and Deputy Corry ought to stop asking for an increased price until it comes because he might convince the farmers that he is sincere in his demands for an increased price. The number of milk producers is on the increase. At the same time I know that we must meet that increase by finding a market for milk and milk products. There is a limit to our capacity in this country for the consumption of milk. When we have reached that limit we must depend on an export market. We are not going to say: "Thank God, the British market is gone" because we realise that it is one of our best markets. I believe that the farmers in that respect are definitely entitled to fair treatment.

I shall refer briefly—I think I have already alluded to it—to the tomato industry in this country. The acreage under glass in this country is on the increase. The result is that, with the small population we have in this country, we shall soon reach saturation point. We shall reach a point when growers will be going into competition with one another and not into competition with imports from other countries. That is a very desirable state of affairs, but I think that if some measures are not taken for the purpose of controlling the number of persons going into the industry those who are already in it may find themselves being put out of business, even by competition, by new persons going into it who see that it is a profitable business.

The sheep population in this country has increased something like 33,000. However, it is very low considering that there is a ready demand for mutton both in this country and outside. It would seem desirable that the Minister should adopt some scheme to enable him to speed up the increase in this particular section of our live stock.

The cattle population has increased 73,000 in the past year but we are far below what could be regarded as a proper level. I was glad to see from the last year that the Minister's policy has completely changed the attitude of farmers, especially milk producers, towards calves. I know that in the past milk producers were glad to get the calf out of their yards no matter whether they were paid or not—"Take it away, we do not want it". Deputy P.J. Burke can bear me out when I say that in my county greyhound owners were quite glad to come and take the sucking calves out of the dairies to feed to greyhounds. They paid a few shillings for them but it was cheap dog meat. There is no more dog meat of that kind. Calves are at a premium at the present time. In fact, they are nearly beyond the capacity of feeders to pay for—it is a very high figure for a start when you consider the risk a man is taking.

Will the Deputy tell me where these calves could be bought in County Dublin for a few shillings? I would be a millionaire, had I known of it, long ago.

What about the widow?

Is the Deputy looking for a brief?

I would not defend you anyway; I would have a bad case.

These calves were available to the dog owners for dog meat before the present Minister for Agriculture told the farmers that his policy was to increase the live-stock population of this country and the tillage to such an extent as to maintain the greatest number of live stock that could be fed.

There was great talk during this debate and before it about the price of oats. The figure which was always mentioned was that of 45/- a barrel. That figure of 45/- a barrel was in respect of the terribly bad year that Deputy Burke was talking about. Right enough, the oats could not be harvested. The crop was lying on the ground and so on. There was a scarcity of oats and the scarcity price was 45/- a barrel. Any man selling wheat at 55/- who could sell oats at 45/- could not be blamed if he got 50,000 or 60,000 acres of land, which he might have sown in wheat, and put oats into it instead. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the 18th May, 1949.
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