When progress was reported last night, I was proceeding to refer to some matters, arising on the Minister's Estimate, that have reference to the farm improvement scheme. I was trying to get some information from the Minister with reference to that scheme in the coming year. The Minister informed us that instead of what I suppose he would call the little farm improvement schemes that we had in operation for a number of years, he was going to put into operation this year a scheme costing £40,000,000. Will the Minister tell me when the full details of that scheme will be published.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 29—Agriculture (Resumed)
I understood there was agreement that, inasmuch as that scheme might be the subject of legislation, we were not going to discuss it on this Estimate. I am in the hands of the Chair.
There is no agreement whatever.
There is a difference, of course, between discussing the subject matter of a scheme and advocating legislation.
I do not propose to discuss legislation. Nobody could do that since we have not yet seen it. I simply propose to ask the Minister certain questions. He told the House, when introducing his Estimate, that he proposed to abolish the farm improvement scheme as it was known and to substitute something else for it.
The Deputy understands that he cannot ex-pressely advocate legislation on an Estimate.
There is no question of legislation at all in this matter. I question whether any legislation is needed at all to continue the farm improvement scheme, and I question my right to raise this matter.
So do we.
On numerous occasions during the past year the Minister who is responsible for this Vote thought fit to speak on this proposed scheme. I take it that he was speaking as Minister for Agriculture when he announced more particulars about this proposed scheme. He told the farmers of the country about the good days that were in store for them under this proposed scheme, and he told the workers of the country all the extra labour that would be provided under it. I think that Deputies are within their rights on this Estimate in making reference to that scheme.
I should be glad if the Minister would give the House and the country some information as soon as possible on this proposed scheme. When will details of the scheme be published, and what proportion of money will be given by way of subsidy on lime, either ground or burnt lime? What amount of money will be spent in the present year on it? What amount by way of subsidy on artificial manures will be spent on it in the present year, and, generally, how much does the Minister estimate will be spent on the scheme this year? These are all very pertinent questions about which the public at large will need information.
How much does the Minister estimate will be spent in wages, and how much on workers who have become unemployed as a result of the Minister's policy and of the policy of his Government? These are all important matters on which I think the public should have some information, particularly if the Minister proposes to do away with the farm improvement scheme which, generally speaking, was a popular scheme amongst the farming community. Under it a lot of good and useful work was done on the land and farms of the country over a number of years. This House, before it agrees to vote money to the Minister for the coming year, would like to have some information as to what his proposals are for replacing the farm improvement scheme. Whether the House approves of his proposals or otherwise, it surely is entitled to have some outline of the details of this proposed scheme.
I should also like to refer to the question of oats, and as to how the muddle in regard to it has been dealt with. There are some burning questions arising out of the oats muddle. Will the Minister tell the House what he has done with the oats that he has purchased? I understand it is all lying on the merchants' hands still. Did the Minister provide any moneys to help the merchants to purchase that oats? Is the Minister aware that the money used to purchase that oats was largely borrowed money, and that the merchants are awaiting, the liquidation of the Minister's promise to take the oats off their hands? Many of them are anxiously wondering how long more they will have to wait, and how long that corn will be left on their hands, as well as when the Minister will make an advance to them, if he has not already done so, to cover their capital costs. This is a very important matter for a number of responsible citizens in this country.
I should also like to know if the Minister is aware that, in the spring of 1948, many corn merchants gave seed oats to farmers on credit out of moneys which they had received, by way of overdraft, from their bankers? Is the Minister further aware that, in the harvest of 1948, many of those merchants who had given seed oats on credit to farmers did not come under the Minister's scheme, and did not get licences to buy oats? Is he aware that those merchants are still waiting to be paid for the seed oats they advanced in 1948? These are all questions that I want the Minister to answer.
I suppose the Minister is aware that oats is being exported to the Continent and, while we are exporting oats, we are continuing to buy maize with borrowed money. Is that a good agricultural or national policy? Does the Minister ever stop for a moment to consider that aspect of the matter? We are selling oats to continental countries— I do not know whether it means a profit to this country or not—and at the same time we are borrowing dollars to buy maize meal, which is being retailed at 25/- to 27/- a cwt. —not around the £ at all. Is it good policy to continue to borrow money in order to bring maize from the ends of the earth to this country——
On a point of order. Towards the end of the first hour of Deputy Allen's speech he dealt with this at length—the relative value of maize. He is now starting the third hour of his speech with a recapitulation of those views. Is that repetition in order?
Repetition is not in order, but the Chair is not convinced that Deputy Allen is repeating himself.
Deputy Allen did not make previously the points he is now making.
Now that the Minister has raised this matter, I would like to bring to the notice of the Chair that in probably less than one and a half hours yesterday evening the Minister, while I was speaking, interrupted 113 times—over a century of interruptions in a little over an hour, or more than one for each minute.
Interruptions are not peculiar to either side of the House.
But the majority of them come when any Deputy on this side is speaking. There is one other matter to which I would like the Minister to give a little attention. Representations have been made to me and to other Deputies within the past few days by people who have farmers' butter on hands to the effect that a cheap cocoanut oil as a substitute for fats is being extensively imported and is being used for the same purpose for which farmers' butter is used—that is, for making confectionery. This practice is preventing farmers' butter being sold to the confectioners who formerly used it. It is drying up the market, cutting out the farmers' butter from the home market. This foreign product bought with dollars is cutting out the farmers' product from the home market. It is a serious matter. The farmers have the butter in their dairies and they are not finding buyers. The cocoanut oil substitute is one of the factors that has brought that about and I hope the Minister will take some action.
We hope in the coming year that the Minister's policy will bring happier results to those engaged in agriculture. Schemes were already prepared when the Minister took over control. There was little or no alteration needed in any direction and those schemes were definitely meant for the benefit of agriculture. Everything would have been all right but for the muddling of the Minister or his Department, and the advice which he gave to the farmers. The Fianna Fáil agricultural policy was a sound one. It has been proved sound in so far as the Minister has adopted it. Where it was allowed to operate freely it has served this country well; but to the extent that the Minister has interfered with it, either in relation to tillage or otherwise, he has damaged the interests of agriculture. He has put numerous people out of employment and injured the income of the farmer in the past year. The country hopes that in the coming year he will direct his energies to see that the sound national policy that was in operation under the previous administration will be carried out to the full and it is to be hoped also that he will not interfere so as to damage it further.
Deputy Con Lehane hesitated to follow Deputy Burke into the labyrinths of his mind. I would hesitate to follow Deputy Allen in his many divergencies and amazing tangents. He spoke of muddle in the Department of Agriculture. He had not to suffer listening to himself while he muddled and floundered in the most extraordinary flights of stupidity, criticising our agricultural policy. Tempted as I might be, having listened to two former Ministers for Agriculture, to be facetious, I hope in the course of my contribution to this debate to discuss in a calm way with the Minister aspects of his policy on which we might possibly be at variance. I, like any other member of the House, occasionally feel I have a better slant on a certain section of agricultural policy than the Minister, and for what it is worth I will discuss in that spirit certain aspects of the Minister's policy.
I will start with milk. There was a time when I was absolutely convinced that an increase in the price of milk was an imperative necessity. I feel the Minister has been able to offset the necessity for that by the increase in the various prices of other agricultural commodities during the year. There is a lot of sound reasoning in the statement that the price of calves has so appreciated that it offsets any hardship that might have been caused by the stable price of milk. However, I would ask the Minister, particularly now that we have arrived at the happy stage where there will be a surplus of butter, to consider milk from another angle, to consider, if it were possible, limiting the use of milk by the creameries to supply home market needs only and converting the surplus milk into more remunerative types of export than butter would be. The Minister is aware that there are forms in which milk can be exported other than as butter, and from the point of view of the milk producer they would be more remunerative.
I have not been able to work out a scheme, but if the Minister is faced with having to export surplus butter at a subsidised price to England it might be better if he were to divert the surplus milk into other channels so that it could be exported as chocolate crumb or possibly as liquid milk. That might be more remunerative for the producer. I think the House must feel satisfied that the Minister has succeeded in giving an impetus to agriculture that will benefit the country as a whole. It may be honest to say that there were many factors which contributed to this impetus. I do not think, however, that it is anything other than petty hate and intense personal jealousy, as is evidenced in the case of at least one of the Minister's predecessors in office, or sheer political expediency which completely overlooks the fact that, no matter what circumstances may have been in the last year, the prime and most important factor was that the Minister for Agriculture was Deputy Dillon.
The cattle population of this country is showing a gratifying upward trend. I know discussion on the cattle population is rather a sore point with the Opposition because it took many years of bitter experience to make the Fianna Fáil Party revert to the common-sense practical view of developing the maximum possible trade at the maximum possible remunerative benefit to our own people with the English market. The Fianna Fáil Party meandered around the Continent of Europe looking for other markets. They did not get them. Now, because in an extraordinary situation it might be possible, if one were sufficiently shortsighted, to exploit a temporary shortage on the Continent that Party is crying out because it is not done. Mark this. If we were to play with that folly in this Government there is nothing surer than that when the continental situation had cleared itself the continental buyers would laugh at us and we would find ourselves forced into the unwelcome position of having to go—as the present opposition Party often did go—hat in hand to beg for something.
Let us be rational and reasonable in our approach to agriculture. Your nearest and most readily available market is England. There you have a consumer who can consume without any trouble more than we shall ever be able to produce. Why not adhere then to what I believe should be the political watchword of the country; repair the ravages of the past by selling England as much as we can as often as we can and as dear as we can? That is my simple approach to the English market. Let nobody think for a moment that my heart is aflame with any love for England. But I believe that the more money we can make out of England the better it shall be for our agricultural community.
I am glad that the Minister is taking a realistic view of the urgent necessity for veterinary research in connection with the various diseases that arise in this country. Some people condemn expenditure of that nature. I think it is only right that all the aids of modern science should be brought to the assistance of the agricultural community. It is nearly always that section of the agricultural community that can least bear the loss of a cow, a bullock, a heifer, a sheep or a pig that suffers most intensely when disease breaks out among animals. To these people veterinary research that will lead to the extermination or prevention of disease is a tremendous boon. I hope that the Minister will go even further than he has done. I think the agricultural community should have veterinary services available to them in the same way as the ordinary people have medical services available to them. I hope that the Minister's scheme, when it ultimately comes to fruition, will make veterinary services available to those who can afford them at a moderate fee and to those who cannot afford them without any fee at all. If the burden of this country is to be carried successfully in its economic revival, it must be carried by our primary producers. We all know that our primary producers are the agricultural community. Veterinary services given in the way I have indicated will repay themselves one hundredfold in the gradual decline of mortality and the ultimate improvement of our stock. In that particular line of work I say to the Minister: "God-speed to his work." I urge upon the Minister the utmost expedition in bringing this scheme to completion throughout the country.
Again, let us be reasonable and rational in our approach to the problem of tillage. Cries of lamentation and weird rumblings of dire distress were heard and crocodile tears, such as only Deputy Burke can shed, were shed on the abolition of compulsory tillage. Yet, the amazing fact remains that this year the amount of tillage is very little less than it was when compulsion was in force. I hazard the guess that the ultimate yield this year, if we have any kind of reasonable weather between this and harvest time, will be better than it was during compulsion. I firmly believe there is no tougher or cannier businessman in this country than the farmer. If he finds there is profit for him in tillage he will do it far more readily than he will under all the compulsion in the world. Going through the country on my way to my own constituency, I pass through the major portion of the country. I am gratified on my journeys to see all the evidence that the plough is as busy this year as it ever was. All these vapourings about the unemployment arising from the abolition of compulsory tillage and the emigrant ships should be given the lie to now once and for all. Much of the unemployment that has arisen is paper unemployment. Where genuine unemployment has arisen the steps proposed by the Minister in his land reclamation scheme hold out a prospect of more employment in rural Ireland in the future than has ever been held out in the past. I would urge upon the Minister that he should find some way of encouraging, if necessary by an increase in price, the milk producer. He is the basis on which our cattle trade is built. He has been clamouring for an increased price in milk. If an increase is not feasible I urge upon the Minister that, instead of using milk for the production of an exportable surplus of butter, he should divert its use into other channels which might make for an increase in the general price of milk on an over-all basis without in any way affecting the price that the consumer in either the city or the urban area has to pay for it.
I was rather amused at the confusion the Minister's answer to Deputy Smith on the poultry question caused the Deputy to-day. I was not really surprised because the very nature of the question led me to the inevitable conclusion that Deputy Smith did not know what he was asking about or did not understand where the question led. He wants us, as reasonable people, to draw a very sinister inference from the fact that the Minister, instead of continuing for a very limited period a price of 3/- a dozen for eggs and then allowing the whole egg situation to go "phut" until the price fell to about 1/6 a dozen, negotiated an arrangement by which, for a period of over two years, there will be a stabilised price of 2/6. Because the Minister took the situation firmly in hands in that way, the Deputy wants us to draw some sinister influence from it. The only inference I can take from it is that his successor in office was able to bring about a greater increase in poultry and in the production of eggs in this country than the Deputy, in his wildest dreams, could have imagined. That is the simple answer to your egg worry. I am happy, representing a constituency that has a very large poultry population, to endorse thoroughly and without any qualification, the courageous action of the Minister in taking that step because I know the lamentations that would have arisen if, at the end of about next August, the bounty or the subsidy of the British having been exhausted, the price of eggs fell to 1/3 or 1/4 for the farmer's wife.
I think the time has come when we in this country, planning the agriculture of the community, must do it, not on the basis of profits in a scarcity market or profits in a difficulty but on the basis of a long-term sensible approach, to give the farmer a reasonable choice of crops to choose from and a reasonable choice of the type of live stock to feed, so that he himself in his judgment can go in year after year or by biennial periods, for what form of agriculture he feels would be most remunerative. I do not think we are doing the farming community any good unless we, in a constructive way, try to suggest how the farmer can better his margin of profit. I think the only service we can do in this Dáil is, in a unified way, to encourage him rather than just indulge, as we have been doing in this Estimate, in tirades of vulgar abuse either of the Minister personally or of some alleged mistake that is not a mistake at all, but a misunderstanding of the situation by a befuddled Opposition.
I hope the Deputy will give a good example of that in future.
Deputy Burke asked who started the economic war. He should go and ask his colleague, Deputy Erskine Childers, who said he started the economic war and carried it on. We might then have fewer stupid interruptions from him.
I am referring to your vulgarity in the House yesterday.
When I called you a sanctimonious old cod? What else are you? —a sanctimonious old hypocrite.
Deputies must refrain from these recriminations across the floor and address the Chair only.
I am very glad to see the return of bacon to shops in this country. I am even more glad to see poor old Deputy Burke picking up a little bit of courage at last and that he is raising his voice now and again. Let me say to the Minister that I think he has reason now to gloat over the jibes and sneers of people when he said he was going to tackle the black market in bacon. He tackled it with more courage than the Opposition can appreciate and the patent fact now remains that there is more bacon in this country. I was delighted to hear the Minister say that we may be able to export bacon before the end of the year. That is something about which some Fianna Fáil Deputies might sit down, scratch their heads and do a little bit of thinking. Some of the rackets that have been growing up in this country——
What are the rackets?
One was the millers and the other was in reference to bacon. There is another and more welcome side to that. It leads to a more pleasant and more cheerful week's purchase from the housekeeper's point of view. I must say to the Minister on behalf of the harassed housewives of this country: "Well done; we have a rasher at last."
And flour at 7/-a stone. The housekeepers are delighted with that too.
When the old cuckoo over there has stopped, I shall continue.
Or the barrel organ over there.
Calling names across the floor of the House is not calculated to lend dignity to this Chamber and it should be discontinued.
I did not wish any discredit or discourtesy to the cuckoo when I referred to the Deputy as one.
The Deputy is not going to repeat these observations by entering on explanations. The Deputy must cease calling names across the floor of the House. There is a particular form laid down for debate in this Chamber and it must be observed.
I just want to make this further point. It is gratifying to people who have an intelligent approach to agriculture to see that at last we are tackling the problem at its very roots. I congratulate the Minister on the foresight he has displayed and I wish to see a very rapid implementation of the recommendations contained in the Holmes Report. I think that the Minister is absolutely right in getting down to the problem of putting the land itself right, because if he does that production will right itself without any trouble. I welcome the drive to improve the soil of this country. I think the Minister should in all ways be encouraged to keep at experimentation and tests until he gets back into the soil the maximum heart and the maximum fertility. I hope his new land reclamation scheme will permit not only the draining and reclaiming of bad land, the removal of scrub and unnecessary fences and things of that nature, but that it will extend to putting back into heart the better land of this country that compulsion and stupid carelessness allowed to go out of heart very much. I do not blame any Administration completely for the fact that there has been a deterioration in the actual soil value of much of the land of this country. I think emergency conditions forced an overuse of land and that was contributed to in no small way by the fact that there was a lot of absentee landlordism in this country for a long time so that the land was used to the full and as little as possible was put back. I think we can all be adamant on one thing, that it is necessary, urgently necessary, for the Minister to tackle the problem of increasing the value of the land to the maximum. When that is done I have no hesitation in believing that production will follow the trend of the land itself. The better the land, the better the grass; the better the actual land used for tillage after being put into heart by fertilisers, either artificial or natural, the better the yield is going to be, the better the profits will ultimately be and, in the final analysis, the greater the wealth for the country generally. I welcome honestly and wholeheartedly this drive towards putting the land itself back into heart.
I would say to the Minister: Go further. I do not think this House would quibble in any way about giving him further moneys if he finds it necessary for additional proper soil-testing stations and for proper large-scale experiments with grass. I think the Minister has the nucleus of a rational, sensible, sound, national policy in the pretty little saying of the late Paddy Hogan: "One more cow, one more sow, one more acre under the plough." I think his drive for the actual strengthening of the land itself will give him more and more readily the realisation of that hope.
I want to say that the Minister has one failing in common with myself. He likes to say things in a very effective, and sometimes in a very dramatic, manner. I hope his launching of the land reclamation scheme is going to be effective and dramatic and is going to embrace all types of land in this country. Instead of in any way injuring Deputy Smith's conception of the farm improvement scheme and that type of scheme, I hope that it will only serve by its magnitude to enhance the value of that germ that came from Deputy Smith's brain during his period of office and that the land reclamation scheme will serve in its final realisation to leave on the escutcheon of the Ministers for Agriculture of this country the name of Deputy Smith—if that would gratify his hurt spirit.
I want to say to the Minister that no matter what we may say about any individual branch of agriculture, I am glad to report that in my constituency the general farm income is better. It may be that the farmers are not getting as much for their milk as they think they should get, but there is some general compensation in an increase in other prices and the over-all income of the farmer is better than it has been before. No matter what particular small issue may be raised, I can tell the Minister quite honestly on behalf of my constituents, that they feel that the impetus is upwards and that they know that they have more money. It is gratifying to go back into some of the parishes in my constituency and see that the farmers— not big farmers because we have not very big farmers in West Cork—are now able to afford a little van to take their produce to the local market, or the milk to the creameries, and on a wet morning they are able to run the children to school in the van, too.
I wonder does the Deputy realise what a cod he is.
I wonder does Deputy Burke realise that his interruption is disorderly.
I think this is a very good and welcome trend and I give it to you, Mr. Minister, as an encouragement to have the courage—as we have reason to know you have—to keep on in spite of fogs of vituperation and stupid laceration by a disgruntled and a distorted opposition. Keep on, because if you ever conceive the idea that you will please all the farmers of the country you will be fit for an establishment other than the Dáil. As long as you keep pleasing them where it counts most by adding to the profit of their farms, that long and only that long will you redound to the credit of this country as somebody who faced the problem of putting the primary producer in the best possible position and of making the people of this country realise quickly that the boy from the country is not either a yob or a gom but that he and his farm labourer are, as they should be and as please God they always will be, the real aristocrats of this country.
All the farmers of West Cork have vans now.
Listening to the speeches made by the vast majority of those on the Government Benches, where exactly is the Minister going to find himself? If they come from a dairying district, I notice that they start off by telling the Minister that the dairy farmers are most unsatisfied with their present position with regard to the price of milk. Then, like Deputy Collins, they switch from that to saying that the Minister has offset this by the general increase in prices to the agricultural producer. Of course, most of the Deputies I have heard speaking from the opposite benches are not farmers at all. I do not think I could call Deputy Collins a farmer or Deputy Rooney or Deputy O'Higgins. Most of those whom I have heard cannot be termed farmers and I do not think they know anything at all about farming.
To my mind, when this Estimate is under discussion it should be discussed under two headings. We should be in a position to separate the question of grasslands and live stock from what, in my own part of the country at any rate, is clearly understood by the word "agriculture." An agricultural farmer in my part of the country is a man who works his land with a plough and horses or with a tractor, and produces food from the land. A man who goes in for live stock is in most cases called a grazier or a rancher. That is why, in order to know exactly what type of farmer those people are speaking for, I suggest that the Estimate should be divided into two different headings. We might then be in a position to know along what lines most Deputies are trying to concentrate their energies or their efforts.
Deputy Collins has told us about the increase in the price of other agricultural produce. I happen to come from a part of the country where a very small farmer produces seven, eight or nine acres of potatoes — potatoes known as certified seed. After the certified seed is selected, he is faced with the problem of getting away his ware potatoes. I would like if Deputy Collins could tell me what increase that farmer has got this year in the price of the ware potatoes that he has for sale. I would even like him to tell me at this particular moment where he might get a market for them. The Minister made great claims here about a year ago and told us that we had now a guaranteed market for all these commodities, that he had made arrangements for the disposal of 50,000 tons of potatoes to the British at £10 13s. 6d. a ton. I would like to know if anybody who has been praising the Minister can point out one farmer who has got anything in the neighbourhood of £10 13s. 6d. a ton. The Minister went further and said it was for the period November to February and that from February to May the price would be £11 8s. 6d.
What is the Deputy quoting from?
From the Minister's speech, as reported in col. 2596 of the Official Debates, Volume 111.
It is a good job you had that, or the Minister would have denied he said it.
He has heard it often enough in the House to know what I was quoting from. No matter how often a thing is quoted to the Minister he tries to quibble and find some easy way out in order to hide his mistakes.
But the Deputy has misquoted. Come, come! The Deputy must learn to read. Come, now. Let the Deputy read on.
£10 13s. 6d. per ton.
Go on.
Did the Minister not promise that? Did he not tell the House——
On a point of order, the Deputy purports to read the Official Report and he is, apparently, deliberately seeking to misrepresent its contents. The paragraph he purports to quote reads:—
"There is a guaranteed market for 50,000 tons of ware potatoes in Great Britain at £10 13s. 6d. per ton delivered f.o.b. at a port in Ireland."
There was no suggestion that there was a market for them at the farmer's farm at that price.
If the Deputy purports to quote he must quote exactly what is in the document.
Is it not lucky that I had the Official Report?
I have quoted, anyhow, £10 13s. 6d. per ton.
F.o.b.
Very well, f.o.b. I remember distinctly putting a question to the Minister at that particular time, and he will find it in the Official Reports of this House, asking him to tell us then and there what price the farmer would get, but he shelved that question, as he has shelved many other questions since that it is important for the farmers to know. He did not tell us at any time what price the farmer would get, but this looked very nice and was something in the way of a nice bait for the farmer to swallow. It gave him the idea, as it gave to Deputies, that there was a market at £10 13s. 6d. per ton. I knew we could not get it. I am glad the Minister has come out, even at this particular stage, to admit that he knew very well he was only fooling the farmers when he told them that. He knows very well that the price was around £8 a ton, and he knows they cannot get £5 a ton now, that they cannot get a market at all for potatoes at this particular moment. It was the same way as regards oats. The Deputy Collinses and Deputy O'Higginses and the rest of them who sit behind him there do not know a skillet from a skib. They try to tell us he is a powerful man and that he has done marvellous things.
He has done a damn sight more than the Deputy.
If the Deputy would take that thundering big voice of his outside and let the debate be carried on, we might proceed more intelligently.
Stop the growling now.
Do you hear my bold cousin over there?
"Grow oats," said the Minister, "grow all the oats that your land can produce and you will sell it profitably, either in the bags or on the hoof." Deputy Collins, of course, did not try to tell us, when he said we had got the increase in other ways, what the profitable price for the oats is that the Minister told the farmers to grow. He did not tell us where the market is for it. He listened, as I did, to the Minister answering the farmers who came up here on a deputation to him from farmers' organisations—I think it was Clann na Talmhan who were at the head of the deputation—asking what they would do with the oats. He said:—
"Go home and thatch the stacks and you will get the price later on."
What advice is he going to give at a later stage, when the oats is still unsold? Of course, he imported maize meal. Deputy Allen dealt with that in detail last night. I listened here attentively to a speech by Deputy Rooney the other evening. Deputy Rooney is another of the Deputy Collins type of farmer—I understand he is an insurance broker.
What kind of farmer are you?
On a point of order, is it in order for a Deputy to speak here about the professions of Deputies? Every Deputy is sent here by his constituents to do the business of the House, and I think that his profession should not be mentioned in the debate.
That is a lecture to the Chair.
The Chair does not take it as a lecture. The Chair would say that a great many of the things stated, while not absolutely disorderly, should not be stated. Most of the interruptions should be avoided definitely by every side of the House. To refer to a Deputy's professional occupation is not in itself disorderly, but it is undesirable.
When an ignorant remark is thrown across the floor by a Deputy like Deputy Collins——
Let us pass on to the Department of Agriculture.
I would like Deputy Cowan at least to be honest to all sides, and——
Let us have a discussion of the Department of Agriculture and not a discussion of the disorder.
I think I am entitled to make my point. I made a reference to individuals——
That point has been decided. The Deputy will return to the Department of Agriculture.
I listened to Deputy Rooney and it struck me that what Deputy Rooney should do is to have a record made of the speech he delivered here, the same speech as we have heard time and time again—I have heard it six or eight times—and then all he need do is play it over here. When the Deputy has heard it a certain number of times, he will realise that there are a number of errors here and there in it and that, if these errors were corrected, his speech would sound a little better at some later date. He told us that when we started to produce food for the country at the beginning of the emergency we had nothing but a few worn-out horses and went on to talk of the great steps this Minister has taken to provide the farmers with machinery. I should like to know what steps the Minister has taken to provide us with machinery. I have heard Deputies who claim to represent the farming community asking day after day when the Minister would make even loans available and the Minister has completely refused to do so. What are the steps which we are told by Deputy Rooney and others the Minister has taken to make machinery available to the farmers?
Deputy Rooney told us about tomatoes and he spoke of the price of tomatoes in 1937 and in this year. Is he aware that, in 1937, there were very few tomato houses erected in the country, and, when he gives us huge figures of imports in that year as against this year, does he not know that the number of tomato houses in existence was so few that our requirements here could not possibly be met? Is he not aware that every time tomato production went up, the necessary protection was given to the grower by the Fianna Fáil Government, and is he not also aware that the only Minister who refused point-blank to give protection to the tomato growers is the Minister who now holds the office of Minister for Agriculture?
That Minister when sitting on this side of the House tried to convey the impression to people inside and outside the House that he was a mighty strong man who would smash to smithereens any obstacles that came in his path, but quite recently we saw a very delicate looking, feeble type of individual frighten the heart out of him. We saw the Minister for Finance coming with his economic axe in his fist, and, holding it up to the Minister's nose, saying: "Mr. Dillon, if you do not severely and drastically cut down the subsidies given to the farmers in respect of artificial manures and other things, I will deal with you." The Minister fell before the Minister for Finance and said: "Very well; I will give way", and thousands and thousands of pounds were taken from the farmers and handed over to the Minister for Finance to be used for purposes which are not by any means beneficial or helpful to the farming community.
One of the things in respect of which the Minister gave way was the subsidy which was made available by Fianna Fáil for artificial manures. The Minister went to the trouble of bringing in foreign experts to examine the land and to tell us what condition it was in and they reported that it was starved of phosphates and other artificial manures. One would imagine that the first step that would have been taken by the Minister would have been to encourage the farmers by all means at his disposal to put more phosphates into their land, to purchase all the superphosphate they could lay their hands on and to put it on the land to bring back its fertility.
That is precisely what they did.
Precisely what they did, but what was the Minister's contribution towards helping them to do that? He removed the subsidy made available by Fianna Fáil to help them to purchase cheaper artificial manures in order to do the work which the experts who were brought in said should be done. Is that not the help the farmers got from the Minister?
No shame at all.
The Minister said last night that Fianna Fáil did not spend any of this money, but, as Fianna Fáil were out of office, there was no Fianna Fáil Minister to spend it. The Fianna Fáil Minister had been replaced by the Minister who now occupies the post. The money was made available and provided for in our Estimates, but not one farthing was spent by the Minister in doing what the experts said should be done to bring the land back into fertility. Some Deputy last night said that the price of pigs had dropped and the Minister said it had not. I can tell the Minister that I was at a fair in Tuam a few weeks ago, and, in the course of two hours, I saw pigs drop from 19/6 to 18/- per stone. At this fair, where there was a fairly reasonable supply of pigs, there were only four people in the market to buy them.
They had all gone away.
I do not think we will ask Deputy O'Leary to step into this matter at all. If he wants to make a speech, he can do so. The Minister advocated the use of lime by farmers and I have been listening to the Minister for a long time telling us about all the new industries he intends to start in making more lime available. I suggest that the means of producing all the burnt lime we require are already in existence—the machinery is there.
We have the greatest lime kilns in the world lying idle for about nine months of the year. I ask the Minister has he got around to seeing where they are. I do not think he knows they exist. I will tell the Minister where he will find them. In each of the beet factories there is one of the most up-todate lime kilns, capable of turning out thousands of tons of lime per week and these are used for only a couple of months of the year. Did the Minister ever consider asking the sugar company if they would work those kilns in the off season. That would be a very brilliant idea. I think the sugar company have offered their services to farmers to facilitate them in every way. If the Minister were to approach them now, they would probably use these kilns all the year.
Will the Deputy tell us why they did not use them for the last ten years?
I am making the suggestion to the Minister now. He says that he is going to establish lime kilns. I put the suggestion to him now, whatever about the last ten years. As the Minister knows, coke was not available.
We had turf.
Coke was not available and the Minister knows that as well as I do. Let him not be quibbling all the time. Let him be a small bit honest at some time. The Minister's encouragement to people to collect lime was indicated very clearly in this House on the 14th December, 1948. At that particular time the Minister abused an organisation who had done their utmost to encourage farmers, in the West of Ireland at any rate, to lime their land. The people I refer to are the Beet Growers' Association. Ten or 12 years ago, the vast majority of farmers did not think that lime served any useful purpose in increasing output. The Chairman of the Tuam Beet Growers' Association was the first to carry out experiments. He even got the sugar company to send out their agricultural advisers to examine and report on the experiments he had carried out. The Minister should know as well as I do that from that day on every effort was made by the Beet Growers' Association to encourage the use of lime all over the country and the first efforts were made to get the factory waste lime distributed. The Minister thought fit to abuse this particular association in this House, knowing that they were not here and that they had no means of defending themselves.
Was not Deputy Corry here?
I am leaving Deputy Corry out of this altogether.
He is a big man in the beet growers.
Deputy Corry was in the House and was able to defend himself. The people I am referring to were not. I am proposing to give the Minister some idea of what their attitude was and how he has actually slandered them. The Minister's statements are on the records of this House. At the time he told us that they had made every effort to try to—he almost said "prohibit"—the farmers in the West of Ireland using waste lime.
"Almost" is good.
The Minister did not use the word "prohibit". That is the only difference. He went further. He went on to say that the Galway County Committee of Agriculture had tried to subsidise lime which was being given for nothing to the farmers—the usual quibble, of course, of this particular Minister. No greater falsehood ever issued from the lips of any individual. That was never done by the county committee of agriculture and the Beet Growers' Association never advised people in the West of Ireland not to take waste lime. What the County Committee of Agriculture in Galway did was quite a different thing.
The waste lime in the factory of Tuam is in two different forms, as the Minister knows, and up to a distance of 20 miles it can be delivered by the factory in their own lorries. For distances over 20 miles the carriage is exceptionally heavy and what the Galway County Committee of Agriculture tried to do was entirely different from what the Minister said. They tried to see if there were ways or means by which they could help to subsidise the carriage of the lime for distances of 20, 30 or 40 miles and they asked for information from the Department in that connection. That is what they did. Was there anything wrong in that?
There was a pile of lime lying in a silo. Our efforts were directed to getting it from there on to the land all over the country, not merely around the beet factory. These efforts were made by the association with the object of getting the farmers to avail of the waste lime. There was hardly a year that there were not three or four efforts made by the Tuam Board of the Beet Growers' Association to advertise in every possible way the use of factory waste lime and to educate the farmers in the importance of putting it on to their lands and to show them the results that had been obtained by experiment.
I do not want to go any further into this matter. I just want to make it clear that the Minister did definitely blackguard an association that had been making an honest effort to do for the people they represent what they thought was a good day's work. When the Minister tried, for political purposes, to convey the impression that that association had been working, perhaps, as he said, in the interests of some individual rather than in the interests of the community as a whole, he was stating what he knew to be false and a complete misrepresentation of the whole position.
Deputy M. O'Reilly took the Chair.
Did they succeed in getting them to take the lime?
No. The lime is there yet. There are thousands of tons of waste lime in the factory in Tuam.
For nothing?
Yes, except to pay the carriage. I do not know whether the Deputy understands the kind of lime it is. It is sludge lime—about 60 per cent. of it is moisture in wet weather.
It is beneficial, but they will not take it?
Farmers within a certain distance of the factory will take it but it is uneconomic for people who live outside a certain radius of the factory to take it.
They tried to get the farmers to take it and they did not succeed?
They are taking it now to a greater extent than in days gone by but that state of affairs has not come about without effort. The Deputy who is sitting beside the Minister at the moment, Deputy Donnellan, is well aware of the efforts which were made by the Beet Growers' Association to have the lime taken. He should have advised the Minister not to make such silly statements.
Deputy Killilea, you are an honest man. You believe anything you hear.
There is not a statement I have made which I cannot stand over. If the Minister thinks that there is, he is entitled to say so. I notice he is behaving in a rather silly way about it. He can whisper back to the Deputies behind him.
Ninety per cent. of what the Deputy has said in the last ten minutes is wholly untrue. I did not bother to contradict him because everybody knows it.
I challenge the Minister to come anywhere he likes—to any public meeting in Tuam or elsewhere— and have the facts thrashed out between himself and anybody he chooses. I should like the Beet Growers' Association to be represented there. We shall then see who is telling the truth and who is telling a lie.
That is a fair offer.
The Minister has in his records at this particular moment details of the efforts made by the county committee of agriculture not to subsidise lime, which he has said in this House they were getting for nothing, but to subsidise the carriage of lime over 20 miles. Does the Minister deny that that is true? Those are the statements I have made. The Minister might at some particular stage be prepared to listen to reason. If there was anything like ordinary decency about him he would at this stage apologise for the statements he made and which he knows were absolutely untrue.
Several other matters were dealt with by the Deputies on the back benches on the other side of the House. They referred to the economic war——
What did Deputy Childers say about it?
The Blue-shirts.
I was interested in what Deputy Rooney said. I have made a study of the people who gave assistance to and helped to bring about a successful end to that particular fight when it was on and of many of the things that have led to the particular state we find ourselves in to-day. I do not think the economic war was fought solely for the retention of the land annuities. I consider that the whole political situation at that time hinged on it.
We cannot discuss the economic war now.
I know that, but Deputy Rooney seemed to get away too much with it last night.
It cost the farmers of this country £4,000,000.
It cost farmer Rooney nothing because he is not a farmer.
Who told you so?
I know it well. I have the whole of his history at the tip of my fingers.
It seems to have annoyed Deputy Killilea.
Acting-Chairman
Deputy Killilea is in possession.
I have gone through this economic war and I say that the people are better off to-day than they were before it. It is very doubtful if Deputy Rooney and those who belong to him who reside on farms—although they probably did help to start this "no rent campaign"—were better off before the economic war started than they are to-day.
Acting-Chairman
We cannot go through the history of the economic war now.
Ask Deputy P.J. Burke about it.
If the Deputies sitting behind the Minister would only make up their minds to advise him along the right lines instead of trying to praise him it would be better for himself and for the country. I think everybody knows that the Minister has a swelled head. To reduce that swelling would not do any harm and it might help to put a little more commonsense and a clearer understanding of the real agricultural position as it is to-day in it. As far as I can judge, the Minister has made every effort to bring about in this country the grass ranchers' position that we had in days gone by. That is clearly indicated.
Is that why we have more eggs and poultry now?
The production of eggs and poultry in this country was handled very well indeed before the present Minister for Agriculture came into office, and the Deputy knows that too. The only thing that this particular Minister has done in regard to egg production in this country is to reduce the price by 1/2d. per egg. Is that not right? Those professional interrupters across the House had their chance last night to make their speeches. One would imagine that they would have said then all they had to say and not interrupt as they interrupted Deputy Allen last night and as they are interrupting to-day also. They are trying not to devote too much time to this Estimate and to that Estimate but, by their constant ignorant interruptions and interference, they seem to be prolonging the agony hour after hour and day after day.
The greatest disaster this particular Minister has been responsible for is the fact that, immediately on taking office, he made a certain number of statements that were not then, and are not now, helpful or beneficial to the farming community. His statements regarding the inspectors who should be shot like scarecrows if they were seen on a farm undoubtedly helped one particular section. As I have pointed out in this House before, there were in this country all during the emergency farmers who were not anxious to have their grass lands broken up and who were not anxious to see that the people of this country should be supplied with food from the home market—considering that they must have known that it was impossible for us to import foodstuffs at that particular time from any other country. We had in this country an enormous number of people who availed of the opportunity that was given to them by the Fianna Fáil policy of compulsory tillage, of taking land in conacre. Undoubtedly they paid huge prices for it but, through their extra efforts, they made it pay and they were able to make a few shillings for themselves while, at the same time, they were doing a good day's work for the country in producing the extra food that was required. Having done that for a number of years and having laboured so hard for a number of years they were not entitled to receive from any Minister for Agriculture the blow they received from the Minister who occupies that bench over there at this particular time—I refer to the complete abandonment of the policy of compulsory tillage.
I believe that compulsory tillage should have been continued, of course on a much lesser scale, for a number of years. I believe it was a tremendously foolish policy to have cut it out overnight, because those unfortunate people who this year, and some of them last year, were looking for conacre to try and clear up things and get out as easily as they possibly could, when they looked for conacre were told by the larger landowner that he was applying hay seed to all his land in accordance with the policy of the present Minister for Agriculture. They were given the high road. They found themselves in a very bad position last year and they find themselves in a very much worse one this year.
I think the Minister was badly advised by Deputies who sit behind him and who to-day are singing his praises. I think those Deputies have done a terrible injustice to the smaller farmers, who always did their day's work honestly and well. Deputy Collins said that the Minister had now brought about a condition of soil fertility on land that was destroyed by the blundering policy of compulsory tillage that was adopted by Fianna Fáil. I wonder if the Fine Gael Party had been the Government during the economic war and were allowed to continue the policy they adopted in days gone by of the land for the bullock and the road for the people what would have happened to the people of the towns and cities in regard to their requirements of essential food during the emergency. I wonder would they have had it.
I am, as I said, surprised that Deputies of other Parties who, apparently, some time ago had a different outlook on agriculture, have fallen into line now with the old worn-out policy of the Fine Gael Party. I suppose when you start associating with certain company you begin to develop their habits and, eventually, you become part and parcel of the particular elements with which you are associating day after day. That is why the different Parties supporting the Government at this time have now developed that Fine Gael outlook and we are once more back in the position in which we found ourselves when Fianna Fáil took over office in 1932.
Owing to their policy agriculture had been brought to its lowest ebb and there did not seem much hope of recovery for it. Were it not for the wisdom of the people at the time in putting the Fianna Fáil Party into power at the right moment and the wisdom of the Fianna Fáil Government in adopting their agricultural policy and putting it into operation as swiftly as they possibly could, I am afraid that during the emergency starvation would have wiped out the vast majority of our towns and cities and probably a lot of the agricultural community would have gone with them.
Listening to the debate on this Estimate for the last few days, I am at a loss to understand who is right and who is wrong. On the one hand, if one believes what has been said by the Deputies opposite in regard to the position of the agricultural industry at the moment, one must come to the conclusion that the position is indeed very bad. On the other hand, if one examines the figures issued by the Department of Agriculture, which I presume are accurate and vouched for, one must come to the conclusion that the agricultural industry to-day is in a very healthy and prosperous condition. If the opinions expressed by the Opposition are right, that would prove that these figures and statistics are wrong, and I think that all the officials of the Department of Agriculture would deserve instant dismissal. If, on the other hand, these figures are correct, I think it is only right and proper that someone on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party—I should say the Leader—should disown and disclaim absolutely what has been stated here by the members of that Party, which, in effect, is a very serious reflection upon the honesty and integrity of the officials of the Department of Agriculture.
Making a rough-and-ready calculation from these figures, I find that the net revenue from cattle, horses, poultry, eggs in shell, condensed milk, raw wool etc., for the year ending 31st March, 1948, was somewhere in the region of £28,000,000 and that the revenue for the year ending 31st March, 1949, was somewhere in the region of £32,000,000. Therefore, if figures prove anything, the revenue derived by the agricultural community for the year ending March 31st, 1949, was much greater than that derived by them in the previous year.
I do not think Deputies opposite are doing a good day's work for the country when they set out deliberately, I am sorry to say, to misrepresent in every detail and to minimise the efforts that are being made by the Minister, in close association with the responsible officers of his Department, to put the agricultural industry on a proper footing. All Deputies must realise the fact that the position to-day, not alone in regard to agriculture, but to all industries, is much more difficult than it was even during the war. A great many people have the mistaken view that it was more difficult to carry on the government of this country during the six years of war. I admit it was fairly difficult, but not so difficult as it is to-day because, being neutral and not in the war, we were then in a position of great prosperity. Those years are now past. It inevitably happens after every war that slowly but surely there comes a reversion of the state of affairs from what appertained during the war. It is generally followed by something approaching what is known as an economic blizzard. Get it into your heads, my friends of the Opposition, that you will not beat that economic blizzard by talking nonsense and by pretending that the farmers of this country have no initiative and that they want to get subsidies at every turn. I would say you would be doing a better day's work if you would tell the farming community that it would pay them to fall in line with the suggestions contained in the Minister's very instructive and educative statement and to co-operate by doing their own business in a proper way. That is what the Minister is out to do.
No matter what opinion we may have as individuals we must remember that he is the Minister that represents the farming industry of this country. He is out to promote the interests of the farming industry—not the Fianna Fáil farmers of this country but all the farmers. That being so, I think the least he may expect and should get is the attentive co-operation of the people opposite. I believe that deep down in their hearts they take as much interest in the future of the farming industry of this country as we on this side of the House do.
Having said so much, I think that the attitude adopted by the Opposition, with a few exceptions, was a wrong and unpatriotic one in the face of the figures that I have quoted. I do not intend to go through the whole litany of everything incidental and ancillary to the agricultural industry but there are two things which seem to have been brought specially to the attention of the Deputies opposite—the question of eggs and potatoes. In the facts and figures produced here it is definitely stated that production, so far as eggs are concerned, has gone up by leaps and bounds, so much so that the subsidy guaranteed by the British Government was eaten up almost a year and a half before the year it was supposed to last out, 1952. Yet, on the face of that we have Deputies making statements that the Minister for Agriculture has destroyed the poultry and egg industry simply because a reduction has occurred in the price of eggs of 6d. per dozen. Do the Deputies not realise that had the Minister not made that agreement extended over two years, had he allowed the production of eggs to grow, as undoubtedly it had been growing, he would have arrived at a point where it would be almost impossible to get rid of the surplus of eggs and he would be compelled to sell them at anything from 1/- to 1/6? Was it not better to make this bargain for two years? That, in effect, is briefly the history of eggs in so far as the reduction of 6d. a dozen is concerned.
We have, then, the question of potatoes. I heard a lot of questions asked as to what the Minister proposed to do with the surplus of potatoes and oats. Let me say what I would say even if I were addressing a meeting of farmers. Get it into your heads here and all over the country that no Minister of Agriculture, no matter what Government is in power, can be held responsible for enabling the farmers of this or any other country to get rid of any extra tons of potatoes or oats. There must always be those ups and downs in all walks of life and in all industries and more especially in the agricultural industry. If Nature, in her bounty and goodness, increases crops by 400 per cent. in one particular year surely it cannot be argued by anyone who has any commonsense that the particular Minister who happens to be in power at that time should be held responsible for the disposal of all those extra crops. Let us deal with potatoes. Great stress has been laid upon what the farmers are going to do with their potatoes. What will be the total quantity of potatoes left in the hands of the farmers? I should like some of the Deputies opposite to answer that question in so far as their respective areas are concerned. The same was said about oats and there was a time when I, myself, was a bit anxious. However, this must be said. Were it not again for the foresight of the Minister in making the agreement with the British Government whereby the Minister of Food in England guaranteed to take 50,000 tons of our potatoes, the position of the potatoes in this country would indeed have been a very hopeless one and one which would have meant great financial loss to the farmers of this country. Instead of putting such questions to the Minister and asking him what is he going to do with regard to the disposal of any little surplus of potatoes, they should congratulate him for the very good bargain he made with the Minister of Food on that occasion.
As I say, a fair price was being paid. I am sorry that Deputy Killilea, possibly unconsciously, tried to create the impression here that he, at least, was convinced that the Minister definitely promised that the farmers would receive an average of £10 per ton net. I listened to the Minister making that statement but I have not had time to refer to the records. However, as far as I know it was £10 f.o.b. delivered at the nearest harbour. Deputy Killilea must know that potatoes do not just leave the field and get to the harbour free of charge.
I should like to inform Deputy Coburn that the farmers I am referring to delivered them at the port in Galway harbour and did not receive £10 for them.
The Deputy knows that is not true. It is against the law. If they attempted to do it they would be arrested at the dock.
I am only explaining to Deputy Killilea how that business operated in the county which I represent. As far as I understand it, the buyers who were appointed were usually men in the business because they had the necessary accommodation as far as a suitable building and weights and scales were concerned. They were the men to whom was entrusted the work of getting the potatoes. Everybody knows that the Minister cannot depend on each individual farmer all over the country by saying: "You will be able to give me a ton." He had to get some central authority appointed on whom the responsibility could be placed. I readily admit that very few farmers received £10 or anything approaching it. What they did receive was something in the region of £8 to £10.
Remember, the picking of the potatoes and the selection of them was on a very strict basis and the men who did this had to be paid. It was not a question of just taking them out of the fields. They had to be selected very well for export otherwise the British people would reject them. Taking it on the whole, I think that matter of the potatoes was very well handled, not alone by the Department officials—leave out the Minister altogether to whom I want to pay a special tribute—but also by those men who bought the potatoes. The principal buyer in my own county was the right-hand man of Deputy Aiken and the man who nominated him. I want to make that clear and to show that he was the man appointed who got most of those potatoes and carried out his work well.
I want to pay that tribute to all concerned. I do think that the Minister does deserve a little credit, if for nothing else, for the way in which the potato question was handled. The Cooley area, as Deputy Killilea must know, suffered very extensively. The farmers of that area, not for the last few years but for the last 25 years, could not get their potatoes out to the Dublin men. There were years when they had to sell them for £2, £2 10s. 0d. and £3 when the average price in other regions was £7 per ton. I am glad to say that this year due, again, to the foresight of the Minister and his officials there is very little, if any, of the potato crop in Cooley left on the hands of the farmers. It has been all bought up and cleared at a price which, taking all the circumstances into consideration, was a very favourable one for the farmers in that area.
The Minister, in the course of his statement, indicated the steps that he proposes to take to enable the farmers to avail of the services of our veterinary surgeons for the eradication of fluke, mastitis, contagious abortion and other cattle diseases. That is an aspect of his policy which should command the respect, support and, above all, the co-operation of the Deputies opposite. In pursuing that policy, the Minister is working in the interests of all the farmers.
Another aspect of his agricultural policy, which should command the support and co-operation of the Deputies opposite, is the use which the Minister proposes to make of part of the loan given to this country by the American Government. That loan has been readily accepted, and our people are deeply grateful to the American Government for it. Part of it will be used, I understand, in connection with the Minister's reclamation scheme, the success of which will depend, not in the main on the Minister or his officials but on the co-operation of the representatives of the people in this House, irrespective of what side they sit on, and on the lead they will give to the people. I hope that, when the scheme is being put into operation, every Deputy will make it his business to make a tour of every area in his constituency and advise the farmers to do all they can to make the scheme the success it deserves to be.
It has been stated here that the Minister is against compulsory tillage, that he wants to end tillage. I think it is about time that the Deputies opposite should use a little discretion in regard to that matter. The Minister is not against tillage, and the facts and figures which I have quoted prove that. There was a bigger revenue derived from the growing of cereals last year than in the previous year when Fianna Fáil were in power. I am not making that comparison just because the present Minister and not Deputy Smith is in office. It is all the same to me what Minister is in power. I spoke on much the same lines on this Estimate when the last Government was in power, and gave credit to the last Government, but let me say again that the present Minister is not against compulsory tillage. The farmers, as far as he is concerned, can put every acre of their land under tillage this year and the Minister will not raise the slightest objection. He has indicated that he is in favour of mixed farming, including, of course, tillage and, above all, of increasing our cattle and pig population. There, again, we must admit that the Minister, like the previous Minister, has had to pass through a difficult time, but in spite of the difficulties that beset him at the moment lie has succeeded in increasing the pig population to such an extent that not only will there be sufficient bacon for home consumption this year, but he is hopeful, before the year is out, of having a little bacon to export to our people in Great Britain. Is there anything wrong with that? I do not think so.
In the same way, the position as regards cattle has improved. We are now not only able to supply our own needs, but our farmers are presented with the opportunity of being able to export almost 1,000,000 extra cattle whenever they become available. That is as a result of the policy which the Minister has pursued during the last 12 months. I do not want to go back on the question of the slaughter of the calves, but we all know that when you kill calves you cannot have cattle. If you do not kill them you will have cattle. In 1945, the number of calves slaughtered was 56,961. In 1946, it was nearly 47,000, and in 1947 it was 68,713. It is well to point out that the number slaughtered in 1948 was 14,500, a decrease of 40,000 on the number slaughtered in some of the previous years. If those figures mean anything, they mean that, on the average, we are going to have 35,000 more cattle for export. I do not think there is anything wrong with the Minister's policy if it results in such a significant increase in our cattle population. As a prerequisite to that we must, of course, increase our tillage in order to be able to feed the extra number of cattle that we rear. That means we must grow more cereals.
There, again, the question of oats comes in. There has been talk about cash crops. The Minister never meant to tell the farmers that they were going to get a remunerative price if they sowed oats only as a cash crop. I know large numbers of farmers who have never sold a stone of oats. The economy they pursue is to walk it off their farms. The farmers who grow oats only as a cash crop should not put the responsibility on the Minister if they cannot dispose of it. If all the farmers of the country were to decide to grow oats only, what can the Minister do if they cannot dispose of it? In my opinion, the policy that is being pursued by the Minister and his officials is one that will pay the farmers. It is one that would pay them better if we were all to co-operate a little more with the Minister than we have been doing during the past 12 months.
I do not want to throw any bouquets at the Minister, but, so far as I can see, the farmers all over the country do not disagree so emphatically or so violently with the policy of the Minister as one might be led to believe from the speeches made by the Deputies opposite. He is not the big, bold, bad wolf that he is represented to be by the people opposite. If he were, the farmers would soon make themselves heard. They are not cowards, and if anybody were to threaten their industry in any way, they would soon make their voices heard. I do not see much sign of that at the moment. There is, of course, nothing perfect in this imperfect world, but, taking it in general, the policy pursued by the Minister certainly has the tentative, if not the active, support of our farmers.
I have listened to a great many of the speeches—and read others—made by Deputies who support the Government on this Estimate. In my view, the proper approach is not being made to this Estimate. From the Deputies opposite, we have heard nothing but long speeches in praise of the Minister. "We have got a great Minister and, thank God, we have got rid of Deputy Paddy Smith"—that has been the sum total of the speeches from the opposite benches. Hardly one of them got up to point out what item of agricultural produce had improved in price since the present Minister took office. No amount of statistics will convince me that 2/6 is more than 3/-. No amount of talk will convince the farmers that 2/6 is more than 3/-, or that 2/- a stone for oats is better than 3/-. No amount of talk will convince me or convince the farmers that the policy pursued by the Minister is not accountable for the emigration and unemployment that we can observe all over Ireland.
The first thing that strikes me about this Estimate is that the cost of administration has gone up while the Estimate itself has decreased; in other words, the cost of administration has gone up while the money that should go directly to the farmers has been decreased. That is what we have from a Minister who promised to give cheaper administration and better service. That will take a lot of explaining. I believe the whole outlook of the Minister and his Department is to make this country a cattle ranch for England. Let me deal with cattle. I admit the price of cattle has increased, but does that policy bring us more employment?
Would the Deputy like to have them reduced?
I did not say I would. When I was a young man I remember reading about meetings held in various parts of this country when the people were fighting the ranchers and the landlords, and one of the slogans was: "The land for the people and the road for the bullocks." Now that slogan seems to be reversed and the Minister's policy seems to be: "The land for the bullock and the emigrant ship for the people." These slogans were invented after the policy of ranching had been tried out for years and after it had reduced the population almost to half.
It is lower than ever.
It is, because more people than ever before emigrated last year. I come now to the question of oats. In his opening speech—Thursday, 12th May, Volume 115, col. 1081—the Minister, dealing with oats, said:
"The farmer who grows them exclusively as a cash crop"——
I wonder can this man read better than the last?
Of course, he was not in an English public school— he is only an ordinary farmer's son.
My head may not be as big as the Minister's and there may not have been as much money lost on my education as on the Minister's and some of the Deputies behind him, but I am endowed with a certain amount of commonsense and I know what the small farmers want just as well as he does. Speaking about oats the Minister said:
"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."
The people of Donegal and Sligo and elsewhere who grow oats as a cash crop may remember that. What arrangement has the Minister made to apprentice all these men to tailors and cobblers? Has he made any? Further on, in relation to potatoes, he says:—
"The value of the potato crop cannot be exaggerated, subject precisely to the same reservation, that those who grow potatoes will grow them in the knowledge that if they are to be a standby to Irish agriculture everywhere, they must be grown by a farmer who is prepared to sell them as a cash crop when the market justifies that course, and who is also prepared, if necessary, to convert the surplus into feeding stuffs for live stock, whether it be pigs, cattle or fowl."
How does the Minister expect any farmer to grow oats as a cash crop if he thinks fit suddenly to change his mind? Does he expect the farmer to follow his advice and grow more oats as a cash crop if later on he thinks fit to say: "There is no cash for it"? Where is the farmer to get the cash? By what feat of acrobatics can the farmer keep turning from one crop to another? The farmer wants continuity of policy. He does not want to be told one day to grow oats, the next day to grow wheat and the next day to rear cattle. I would like the Minister to explain how these things can be done. I know it is only in keeping with the Minister's other changes.
As regards the cattle trade, what steps are being taken, by reason of promised developments and the statement of the Taoiseach, to make a further trade agreement with the Continent? Will we be as we were before, put into the position of having only the one market? I say without fear of contradiction that if this country is forced into the position of having only one market, as we were before, we will be getting any price these grand English gentlemen like, whatever the Minister may think about it.
Could you find another market?
What would the Minister say to any housekeeper who would go to a bank to borrow money to buy food while his own stuff was going to loss? That is just what we are doing. National housekeeping is the same as private housekeeping. We are borrowing dollars to buy maize and wheat from the ends of the earth while our oats and potatoes are rotting along the ditches of Donegal and Sligo. I defy any man to contradict that.
I contradict it.
You may, but if you come with me I will show them to you. The crops are lying there and you are importing Indian meal and wheat from the ends of the earth while our young people, who should be producing more food, are going in the emigrant ship to England and America. I want to be fair to the Minister. I do not blame him because that has been his outlook. He never made any secret of his policy in regard to agriculture. He said he would not be seen dead in a field of wheat and he hoped the day would come when wheat and beet and all those things would go up the spout. Still, County Monaghan thought fit to re-elect him.
I defy Deputies over there to say that they got a mandate to put that policy into operation, to change our agricultural policy. It is all very fine for Deputy Kinane and others to say that there is too much talk about the almighty bullock. If he can salve his conscience with that, well and good, but those Deputies got no such mandate and they will be held accountable later on for the Minister's policy.
Deputy Coburn quoted a lot of figures about agricultural produce. In a reply given to a question asking the Minister for Industry and Commerce to state in respect of each of the years 1947 and 1948 the net value of agricultural output the Minister said: "The net value of agricultural output for 1947 was £102,144,000 and in 1948, £106,746,000." That was a little over £3,500,000 as compared with 1947 which was one of the worst years since the famine and one must remember, too, that in 1948 the costs of production and wages had gone up by millions.
That is the net production off which both wages and every other charge have been taken.
Why did you not give the gross figures then?
You did not ask for them but, if you do, I will and welcome.
I come now to the parish committees. The Minister made some jibing remarks about the county committees in his opening speech because those committees did not see eye to eye with him with regard to the proposed parish instructors.
The county committees of agriculture?
The county committees of agriculture. In Sligo most of the members of the county committee of agriculture are supporters of either the Minister or some of the Parties who constitute the inter-Party Government. That committee voted practically unanimously against this scheme. Now, what the people in Sligo want is what the people all over the country want. They do not want experts. They want a decent guaranteed price for their produce. No amount of instructors will make the farmer till or do anything else. Give the farmer a decent guaranteed price for his potatoes, oats, milk and so on and he will produce the stuff. The people have a horror of inspectors.
Hear, hear.
Or experts. The Minister asked the county committees to give up control to these instructors.
Experts.
It is very hard to understand an invitation like that from a Minister who showed such opposition to the Managerial Act because he held that the rights of committees and public bodies were being infringed.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle resumed the Chair.
This is the fifth day of this debate. We are engaged in discussing a very important Estimate admittedly but, with the exception of Deputy Beegan, who made a constructive and critical contribution, most of the time has been taken up with misrepresentations and personal attacks on the Minister for Agriculture. I think the time has come when we should search out out hearts and answer the question: "Are we fair to the people whom we represent when we adopt an attitude like that?" There are many points at which I differ from the Minister for Agriculture, but, at the same time, I feel that he has a certain vision and a certain outlook upon agriculture on which I cannot find much with which to disagree. I do not for one moment agree that our tillage should be reduced by 33,000 odd acres in 1948 as against 1947. Yesterday in reply to a Deputy he said that there was a surplus of milk. I take it he was referring there to the City of Dublin. If there was a surplus of milk surely we could have more than eight ounces of butter per head per week. I do not think there is any ground for complacency on the part of anybody until every man, woman and child has a pound of butter per week at his or her disposal.
He would not eat it, Deputy.
I consider that remark to be in bad taste and so do many other people. There is a scarcity of milk in the country at the present time. We cannot be satisfied about our position until we have one pound of butter per week per head of the population. There was a time before the war when that situation prevailed.
We reckon the total requirements of butter on the statistical experience gained in the years before the war when there was no limit to consumption at all. We never reached a point at which we were consuming butter at the rate of one pound per head of the population per week. If that quantity of butter were supplied the people would not take it. When there was no limit our experience was that the people did not take that quantity per week. If you have a household comprised of grown-up people and small children it is more than likely that the younger members will not consume as much butter as do their parents. The common experience is that the highest consumption we ever reached was about 660,000 cwts. per annum.
From 300,000 in 1932.
But it is nevertheless true that though some people might not consume one pound of butter per week there are others who would be very glad to consume more than that quantity. These people cannot get it. As I said last year, we have consistently neglected agriculture down through the years. When this country was free from the turmoil and havoc of war milk production declined. Yet in countries ravaged by war the output of milk has increased. Recently I read a statement published in connection with the consumption of milk in England. That statement says:—
"In the year ended March 31st, 1939, milk produced for sale amounted to 122,000,000 gallons. In the year ended March 31st, 1947, the quantity was almost 129,000,000 gallons."
Will Deputy Brian Ryan suggest that that is not true? Let me say further that that increase is reflected in the health of the people in England. A pamphlet was issued recently by the United Nations dealing with the health of the people of different countries.
"A world-wide drop in infant mortality is shown in a statistical bulletin just published by the United Nations. In 1947 the lowest rate of infant mortality was recorded by New Zealand and Sweden, with 25 deaths per 1,000, followed by Australia with 29 per 1,000. The United States, the Netherlands and Switzerland had rates below 40 per 1,000, and Denmark, Britain and Canada had rates of 45 per 1,000. The most striking improvements in the last ten years were made by Sweden, the United States, Canada and Denmark, where the infant mortality fell by 40 per cent. or more."
What is the position in my own City of Cork? The infant mortality rate in that city was 62 per 1,000 in 1946 and 87 per 1,000 in 1947. I attribute that to lack of nourishment and an insufficiency of milk. From that, of course, we cannot divorce the lack of purchasing power to buy a sufficiency of milk for human consumption. What did they do in England? They gave a priority of 57 per cent. to young children and mothers; third in priority were the adults. Now, that is reflected in the health of the children and the youth of the country at the present time. It is very desirable that the Minister should step up the production of milk in this country. He should consult with the Minister for Health at the same time because agriculture and health are closely allied. Nobody in this House can ever estimate the social cost of poverty in the country.
I have heard a good deal of unfair criticism of the Minister because of his proposal to appoint instructors. I am afraid a good many Deputies are confusing inspectors with instructors. That is one of the faults I have to find with some Deputies' contributions to this debate—the unrealistic attitude they have adopted towards this important Estimate. I want to say to the Minister—probably he will consider it presumptuous on my part because I am so far removed from agriculture—that I think the one thing needed in this country is instructors who will provide farmers with an opportunity to acquire the latest knowledge in regard to seeds and improved types of production of all kinds. I can throw my memory back to my young days when there were demonstration plots on every second farm. I should like to see the same system established again. Groups of farmers came regularly to these demonstration plots to learn the latest developments in agriculture.
They are still there.
I do not think they are as universal as they used to be. I am satisfied that the more instructors and the fewer inspectors we have the greater production we shall get from the farms. I must say that I was rather disappointed last night to hear the unfair criticism coming from responsible Deputies, like Deputy Allen and a few others, in regard to the sugar company and in regard to what was taken from them by the Government.
I never mentioned the sugar company.
You talked about beet.
No.
I am sorry, then, but I know Deputy Corry referred to it. We hear a lot of talk about robbing the sugar company but I did not hear one word from Deputies on that side of the House about the large amount of money the gentlemen who were getting 6 per cent. on their preference shares in that company receive every year. Last year they absorbed £47,000.
A lot of them are farmers.
I did not hear one word of criticism about the large amount of money these men absorbed from the profits of the company last year. If profits are accruing from the operations of the sugar company, the first benefits should go to the producer, those who are producing beet. Many of the men who are drawing that £47,000 a year never stood in a beet field in their lives.
A lot of them are beet growers who have money invested in the sugar company. I know several of them.
I am surprised to hear it.
Many of them are farmers.
I heard Deputy Allen also make great play and lay great stress on the last increase given to agricultural labourers. The Deputy suggested that this might lead to less permanent employment for some of these people but I would challenge the Deputy to say if there is anybody in this country creating more wealth for the nation than the people he referred to. It would be interesting to have some comparison between the value of the contribution of the agricultural worker and that of other people to the wealth of the nation because I hold that the worker who is giving service to the community, whether by hand or brain, is of real value in creating wealth for the nation. If anybody can be said to be engaged in essential production, these people surely fall within that category and not those who are well fed and well clothed, many of whom, I doubt, ever produced a pound of goods for the people as a whole. Non-producers are a drag on any community.
I think it is a strange thing that the agricultural worker, the man who is most essential to the nation, should be paid the lowest level of wages in the nation. I do not at all agree that there is any room for criticism of the increase in their wages because their wages are not yet up to standard. In Britain we know that 129,000,000 gallons of milk were produced last year as against 122,000,000 before the war. The wage of the agricultural worker there is now £4 10/- a week for a 48 hour week and there is no complaint that the payment of that wage imposes too heavy a burden on the agricultural community. There is no use in my having £1 in my pocket if I cannot buy a pound of butter because goods and materials are the things that count and not the mere possession of money for which one cannot get goods.
I have heard a good deal of criticism about the price of pigs and the sale of oats but if I could convey my views to the farming community I would say that if they are unable to carry on the industry efficiently and with profit to themselves under the present system, they should develop the co-operative movement and become masters of their own industry. I am rather surprised that the farmers are not taking more advantage of the co-operative movement. I know there are a number of co-operative societies throughout the country and that they are doing marvellous work. They are especially useful for the farmer of 25, 35 or 40 acres. These are the people to whom Deputy Beegan referred in his very constructive speech last night. I feel that the Minister should pay the utmost attention to many things he said about the small farmer.
I think the Minister is somewhat mistaken in his idea that the farmers are going to till their land without some form of compulsion. The fact is that we had some thousands fewer acres under tillage in 1948 than 1947. If that reduction in tillage continues and people are allowed to turn to other forms of activity, does the Minister think that there are many people in this country who will be anxious to engage in tillage if they can get the same return out of anything else? While I believe that the Minister has the ability and the courage necessary to develop the agricultural industry in this country I think that it is a terrible thing that in a country such as ours, with a high reputation for the excellence of its cattle and its pastures the people are compelled to accept a ration of six ounces of butter. If there is anything in which we should expect surplus production from the agricultural industry, I think it is butter.
We have a surplus of butter.
But it is rationed.
To prevent it going across the Border.
I think we should encourage the people of the North by sending them our butter across the Border.
And pay the Ulster people £4 a cwt. in order to induce them to eat it?
Why not? They are Irishmen, too.
I am very fond of them but not to the tune of paying them £4 a cwt. to eat our butter.
Before we can say we have a surplus of butter, I think it should be possible for our own people to purchase a pound of butter every week. That would prevent it from going across the Border. I am not at all so convinced that there is such a surplus of butter when we cannot allow our own people to have a pound of butter per week at the moment. Apart from some speeches in which there was fair criticism, there has been a great deal of misrepresentation in many of the speeches I have heard in this debate. It is rather regrettable that we should have Deputies occupying the time of the House, one for an hour and 50 minutes and another for two hours, delivering speeches in which there was scarcely a single constructive suggestion and which contained many misrepresentations. The sooner we realise that that is not a fair form of debate, the more respect there will be for our Parliamentary institutions amongst the general body of the people.
Ba mhaith liom cúpla focla a rá ar an Meastachán seo, acht sul a dtosnú mé ní foláir dhom na giotaí sin as cainnt an Aire a thabhairt dhó mar a gheallas dhó.
I had better start with the quotations I promised the Minister last night. On this question of oats and potatoes which must be nauseating to him he challenged us with regard to quotations and I will give them to him. He spoke on the 5th August on the debate on the Trade Agreement with Great Britain and what I am quoting is to be found in Volume 112, No. 12, columns 2247 and 2248. The Minister said:—
"With regard to the last paragraph, the price for potatoes was published recently and I think it was £10 18s. 6d. up to Christmas and £11 8s. 6d. from Christmas onwards. That is something on which I would like an expression of opinion from Deputies. If Deputies will look at that last paragraph of the agreement they will see that further negotiations with regard to potatoes are envisaged. We have undertaken to deliver 50,000 tons at a price which Deputy Smith says is not enough. I am glad to have that outlet for the Cooley potatoes, so as to ensure that they will not have to be sold to the alcohol factory."
That is the first quotation. There is more about potatoes also but I will not weary the House or the Minister by reading it. He spoke on potatoes again during the debate on agriculture on the 9th July, 1948, in Volume 111 column 2596.
"There is a guaranteed market for 50,000 tons of ware potatoes in Great Britain at £10 13s. 6d. per ton delivered f.o.b. at a port in Ireland between November and February and £11 8s. 6d. per ton delivered at the same port between February and May. None of us will grow rich on that, and if the British want any increased supplies of potatoes from this country, they will want to straighten themselves and pay a bit more for them; but there is no obligation. We will send them 50,000 tons, I believe, at this price this year, if the potato crop turns out as it looks like turning out. In any case, it is a useful basement to have under potato prices that, if any temporary surpluses occur, there is a price of £10 13s. 6d. at the port here up to February and £11 8s. 6d. thereafter. I am in a position to say to the House, however, that, in future years, if we wish to produce a greater acreage of potatoes, the British Government are prepared to take from us whatever acreage we are prepared to offer. If they want a larger acreage than we are at present offering them, they will have to do better than £10 13s. 6d. and £11 8s. 6d., and I intend to tell them so. If they are not prepared to go a bit higher— no hard feelings and no potatoes; if they are prepared to go a bit higher —mutual satisfaction and more potatoes."
Here is another quotation about the subject of oats and I will finish with quotations then. I will also finish with those two subjects because they are not what I stood up to speak about at all. In Volume 111, the 9th July, 1948, in column 2596, the Minister said:—
"Oats I need not speak of because their value is too well known. ‘Grow,' I say to the farmers, all the oats your land will produce and you will sell them profitably either in bag or on hoof——"
Hear, hear.
"‘——during the winter and the spring of next year.'"
We know what happened the oats in bag. We had a surplus of potatoes last year and a surplus of oats, a large one. That is not the first time that happened and I would not have had blame for the Minister for that situation were it not for the foolish statements he made and what he said in an advertisement about a guaranteed market at remunerative prices for all the oats that could be grown. That is why we quarrel with him; that is why the farmers of this country quarrel with him. He did not live up to his promises.
What about "on hoof"?
I have things to say, so would the Minister stop interrupting me? I cannot hear what he said. I want to talk on the subject of the price of milk supplied to the creameries. I cannot deal with the subject of the liquid milk trade at all, but living as I do in one of the premier dairy counties of the country, I want to ask what happened with regard to milk supplied to the creameries before Christmas 1948, and I want the Minister to tell us. I will refer to a report that appeared on Christmas Eve in the Irish Independent and which was referred to by Deputy Corry. A deputation consisting of southern Deputies and Senators of various alliances approached the Minister about milk supplied to the creameries and the report in the Irish Independent says that he told the deputation that he had been greatly impressed by the case made by the deputation and the representatives of the Munster Dairy Institute and that having regard to the case made by the deputation he would now reopen the whole question and he was sure that any recommendations he made would be favourably considered by the Government. Deputy Madden intervened in this debate on this subject. He was not so vocal on this debate this year as he was in the years gone by in County Limerick. He was not as loud. I rather enjoyed his change of tone and his change of tune from what we used to hear on this very subject from him at the Limerick County Committee of Agriculture or on the hustings all over the constituency. He was a changed man and a mute man yesterday—I am sorry he is not here now but I have to make this statement and I think he cannot contradict me.
He certainly cannot when he is not here.
At Christmas he told the farmers of Limerick that he had secured an increase of 2d. per gallon on milk for the coming year. He definitely said that and I can bring him at least two men to whom he told it, friends of his.
That was Christmas time.
He meant it to be a Christmas-box but it turned out to be a very false Christmas-box.
This is like the Balbriggan widow.
This might be a subject for laughter here, but it is a serious matter for the dairy farmers of County Limerick and in other parts of the country. It was wrong for anyone to mislead people in that way by promising that there would be an increase of 2d. per gallon for milk when the thing did not come off afterwards. What happened in regard to that increase when that deputation were given some indication that something like that was about to happen? I believed it from the sources from which I heard it and I told it to other farmers I met who were asking me about it.
I knew that the Minister had made a very categorical statement a few months before that at Rath Luirc when he went to accept one of those golden keys for opening factories about which he used to sneer for many years when the previous Minister for Industry and Commerce took them. He made a very categorical statement on milk prices. He told the assembled body— I was listening to him—that he had no intention of asking the Government to provide an increase in the price of milk. He said that more than once. The Minister was consistent about that, up to the time he met this deputation and the newspapers reported him as having said he was greatly impressed by the case made.
There was a very sound case for an increased price for milk supplied to creameries. All the other sections of the community got increases in their remuneration, except that section of farmers supplying milk to creameries. They had to provide for certain increases in the cost of production, since the last price increase was granted in May, 1947. I stated last year—and I repeat this year—from the experience I have gained on this subject, that this problem of dairying is a very difficult one for any Minister for Agriculture and any Government. If that increase of 2d. a gallon, which would have been very welcome to the dairy farmers, were granted, it would have meant either of two things—an increased price of butter to the consumers or an increase in the amount of subsidy provided by the State and the taxpayers.
Or both combined.
Or a combination of both, as Deputy Allen says.
From the poor of the City of Dublin.
Will the official interrupter of the Fine Gael Party keep his mouth shut and let me make my speech?
Can the Deputy answer that?
I cannot hear very well, as the acoustic properties of this House are not too good and my hearing is not the best. You can have an increased price for butter or an increase in the subsidy, or a combination of the two, as has been done in previous years. The Government had to face the music when the price of butter had to be increased.
These Parties that form this conglomeration are against any increase in the cost of living. Therefore, they could not deal with it from that angle. Secondly, they went out on a policy of retrenchment and, therefore, they could not provide in the other way by increasing taxation in order to give an increased subsidy on the production of butter. In any case, the dairy farmers have been left in the lurch. I hope that in future we will not hear any of the sound and fury we have been hearing for the last 15 years from the Deputy Maddens, Hallidens, Lehanes of Clann na Talmhan and O'Reillys of Cavan. They had the ball at their feet and they did not kick it. Let us hear no more about it.
Sixteen years.
The Government which was in power for 16 years put the dairying industry on its feet when it was dying. If the position is that the dairy farmers have 1/2 per gallon in the summer and 1/4 in the winter, they may thank the previous Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, who provided those prices for them. The dairy farmers now have to depend on the prices fixed in May, 1947, by the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture— the prices that were termed then rotten, inequitable, iniquitous, mean prices. They have to depend on them just the same and have got nothing from this Government, in spite of all the shouting and the fury on this subject. I will be happy next year if there is not a raid by the Minister for Finance—this economist we have going out for economy and retrenchment—on that fund that has been provided to keep the price of milk supplied to creameries at the figure it is. If there is, then the dairy farmers will have to fight on, their backs to the wall, against a reduction, instead of talking about an increase. It is not coming from those people over there, as far as I can see.
The Minister spoke about butter production. There has been a substantial increase in the production of creamery butter this year, beyond what there was last year. We have had a good winter and a good spring.
And a good Minister.
There has been a favourable season this year. A few years ago we had the worst winter in living memory—none of us in the House remembers anything like it—with a most deleterious effect on the dairy stock of the country and, accordingly, a decrease in production. I would not be too sure, if I were in the Minister's boots, about this surplus in butter that he says is coming. When the Minister sees the production of creamery butter at the 700,000 cwts. figure or thereabouts, he can begin to think about a surplus for export. I hope the day will never come again when we will have any surplus of creamery butter for export, because if it does come, the dairy farmers might get it in the neck again as they got it before, particularly in the years 1929 to 1931. The price of milk supplied to creameries toppled during the years from 1922 to 1932, from 1/0½, on an average, per gallon all over the year to 4d. per gallon in the year 1932, when Fianna Fáil took over. These official figures are in existence and cannot be denied.
If we are going to depend on the "old and valued customer", as the Minister called him last year, or, as he stated recently, on the "base, bloody, brutal, British Saxon", for a remunerative price for our dairy farmers from that market that the Minister thinks so much about, I hope we will not have the same experience as we have had before in regard to dairying, when our economy was tied up in that way and we were exporting creamery butter during the peak period and importing Danish, New Zealand and Australian in the scarce period. I hope we will never see that day again. Dairy farmers will be wise if they take time by the forelock and arrange their output in such a way as never again to have an exportable surplus—because, if there is, we will have to take whatever price the British are prepared to give us.
I would not be too sure with regard to this forthcoming surplus of butter.
The consumption of creamery butter has gone up from about 350,000 cwts. in 1932. I think we had about 656,000 cwts. in 1945. We had more than that in other years. The peak figure for production was 836,000 cwts. in 1936. Until we have between 700,000 and 750,000 cwts., I do not think, from the point of view of sufficiency, that our consumers at home will be safe. When we reach that figure, we can be looking out for squalls, as we will have to be dependent then on the "old and valued customer"—and we know what we got when we were depending on him for a market for our surplus creamery butter before. I agree with the Minister that it is not the best policy to subsidise the export of butter to a foreign market.
So Deputy Ó Briain agrees with me!
If the butter is there, you have to do something with it.
There is the puzzle. What do you suggest?
There is nothing but dumping. Every country in the world has to do the same. When they cannot consume at home an article they produce, they have to dump it at whatever price they can get for it.
That is a counsel of despair. I hope to be able to do better than that for the farmers.
There is nothing the Minister can do.
The Deputy may be surprised.
The Minister might turn it into cart grease or something like that.
No, no. Courage!
There is another thing that might be done if this surplus comes about, although I do not believe it will come about as soon as the Minister seems to think. The Minister might subsidise the consumption of it by certain deserving classes here at home at a cheap rate, by people suffering from diseases of various kinds——
It is being subsidised at present to the extent of 9d. per pound.
——who might need extra food of that nature. I want to refer now to this question of eggs and the recent agreement the Minister has made. If there was any section of the community praying for the Minister, it was that section of the people, the farmers' wives and the women who go in for the production of eggs, when they heard of the recent reduction in the price of eggs. It does not matter what the Minister tries to do with figures or how he tries to juggle figures, he can never convince anybody that 2/6 a dozen is better than 3/- a dozen. He handled that situation very badly, I am afraid. The figures and finances of the whole thing are very mysterious to me and I do not understand them. The Minister should take the Dáil more into his confidence on the subject of the £1,300,000 fund that was available and the money that was available in respect of the turkey levy last year, as well as any other money available. He should tell us all about it and how it was disposed of.
I gave it back to the turkey women.
That is not very clear, either—there is a catch in that answer, too. There is the question of £1,700,000 more. How can that be when the price of eggs is less? There are a number of what are known as hatchery supply farms and various poultry producers were supplying eggs to these hatcheries under conditions and regulations laid down by the Department of Agriculture and in accordance with the instructions of the poultry instructresses — inspectors, I would call them, because their visits are always of an inspectorial nature ——
I would call them inspectresses.
——and God help the poultry producer if things were not in order.
Do they frighten you?
In any case, there are a number of these hatchery supply farms in the part of Limerick I live in and I have here an interesting document, a communication received by the owner of a hatchery supply farm some time ago from one of these hatcheries. The hatchery supply farms supply eggs to the hatcheries at, I think, 7/6 per dozen for the hatching season and there was an understanding—I believe it was really an agreement — between the hatchery and the supply farm owner to supply all the eggs produced on that farm to the hatchery for the purposes of the hatchery. But, after the announcement of the reduction in the price of eggs from 3/- to 2/6, the owner of the farm received this communication.
Will you not give us the name of the writer?
The letter reads:—
"Further to our circular of the 11th inst., we find that, with present bookings, we have more chickens than we require for the rest of the season. We regret therefore that we cannot take further supplies of hatching eggs for the remainder of the season."
Will the Deputy give the name of the writer?
I cannot, unfortunately, produce the previous circular, the circular of the 11th April——
Can you not give us the name?
——but that circular definitely stated that, owing to the number of cancellations of orders for chickens, they could do nothing but reduce the supply which they were taking each week.
But this is not another Balbriggan widow. Tell us who wrote the letter.
It was written by every hatchery in the country.
To a hatchery supply farm in County Limerick.
Cén tainm atá air? Léigh amach é.
Bheadh eagla orm díobháil a dhéanamh don chomhlucht a chuir an litir amach go dti na feirmeacha sin go léir ach tháinic an litir sin chuca.
Níor tháinic sé chugam.
Níor tháinic— go dti na feirmeacha.
Cén uair a tiocfadh sé chugam?
Níl a fhios agam. I will not give the Minister an opportunity of doing any damage to the hatchery that sent out that letter to its suppliers.
Divil a much good it does, if you will not tell me.
I am telling you that this is a letter sent to all the hatchery supply farms supplying eggs for hatching purposes in that area. It is only one of a number and this is a stencilled copy.
I thought Deputy P.J. Burke was the only one who had a Balbriggan widow.
Deputy P.J. Burke can speak for himself, but the Minister can take my word for it. I did not stand up here to mislead him or to mislead the Dáil in regard to this matter.
You can read out the name of the hatchery.
I said last year that the extension of the poultry industry was, to a certain extent, justified and desirable, but that we should not go over the precipice, or we would be left in the same position as that in which we found ourselves before with the old and valued customer, that, when supplies began to come from the Continent and from other sources, our eggs would not be as valuable as they are to-day, even with the reduction.
I want the Minister to tell us what is the position with regard to the farm improvements scheme and the farm buildings scheme. Money is provided in this year's Estimates for both and I should like the Minister briefly to say what is the position with regard to people who wish to apply under this year's scheme. It has not been announced yet. Will it be announced soon and what will be the position with regard to applications, particularly under the farm buildings scheme which he dropped last year, at the behest, I suppose, of the Minister for Finance?
The Minister paid a visit recently to Limerick in connection with the subject with which I have been dealing. He went to a meeting of the Limerick County Committee of Agriculture on the invitation of the committee who were hoping, as Deputy Madden had let it be known, that he was going to announce an increase in the price of milk. He went down there, but he did not deal with the price of milk at all until he was questioned about it. He dealt principally with this £40,000,000 scheme he talks about, which, I understand, will not apply to Limerick this year and in respect of which one might say that it may be for years and it may be for ever. In any case, Limerick is not one of the first counties to which the scheme will apply. When the Minister was asked to go down there, he was asked to do so for one specific purpose, to deal with the price of milk. He was not wanted for anything else. They were not interested at all in that scheme, particularly when it will not apply to Limerick for some time to come. They were interested in only one subject, the price of milk.
It was a rather noisy meeting, I believe, and the Minister, I understand, has been led to believe that all the noise was created by the Fianna Fáil organisation. If the Fianna Fáil organisation was responsible for that, we would not deny it but there is no truth whatever in that statement. We had nothing whatever to do with what took place at that meeting. The Minister's information is just as sound and as reliable as the information that was given at that committee to the country and to the whole world a few years ago, when a certain member of that committee said that the cows in County Limerick were rotten with tuberculosis.
Let me repeat that when the Minister went down to Limerick he was asked for one specific purpose, to deal with the price of milk, and the dissatisfaction that was expressed there came principally from the supporters of the Party sitting behind him—he has no Party, of course—and that dissatisfaction was occasioned by the unfavourable news that the Minister gave with regard to the price of milk for the coming year.
It took you a long time to think that up.
Which?
The story that you have just told.
I had no thinking up to do.
He is three months thinking that up.
All the interruptions prevented me from dealing with it when I was dealing with the price of milk.
Poor old cod.
What is Deputy Collins growling about now? Will he shut up or else take himself out of the place. He is a proper pest in this establishment. He ought to be ashamed of himself growling like that always. There are two other points on which I want information from the Minister. The first is, what is the position now about the wheat credit voucher fertiliser scheme? Payments are in arrears, as I have been informed by farmers who have some vouchers to their credit.
Would not it be fitter for you to send in their names?
Let me say what I have to say without this continuous barrage of interruptions. If you stopped the interruptions, you would not be here so long. Will the Minister say what is the exact position and can he give an assurance that all farmers who hold such vouchers will be paid without further vexatious delay?
The second point is in connection with the proposal that was mooted before the Minister became Minister for the establishment of a factory in the town of Kilmallock, County Limerick, for the manufacture of a milk product—I think Horlick's Malted Milk.
To be sold where?
I do not know I know nothing whatever about it.
God help you, you are that innocent.
I want the Minister to give information. The factory was to be set up in the town of Kilmallock. A site of ten acres was purchased and the site is now let in grazing. A deputation waited on the Minister in regard to the matter on that famous occasion that he visited Rathluirc. That deputation was representative of all sections of the community in Kilmallock, all organisations, political and otherwise, with the exception of the Fianna Fáil Party. They were not invited to go on the deputation. Would the Minister tell me, when he is concluding, what exactly is the position with regard to that factory and is he going to give a licence for the establishment of that factory or for the milk to be supplied to it?
Cheerfully, if they want it. I cannot sell their product; that is the trouble.
I would like the Minister to give the information I have asked for with regard to the wheat credit voucher scheme, the factory in Kilmallock, the farm improvement scheme and, particularly, the farm building scheme.
Last year, when I was contributing to the debate on this Estimate I mentioned that I thought the solution of all the grievances of farmers would be production. There is no doubt that production has stepped up to an amazing extent within 12 months. We hear a lot of talk about oats. The people on the other side of the House were very doubtful as to what was going to happen to the oats crop in October of last year but, surprisingly, everyone who grew oats got a remunerative price for it, with the exception of people who were exploited by speeches made by Deputy Davern and Deputy Corry who, at one time, got 30/- a barrel which, in my opinion, is a fine remunerative price for oats. I can assure the Minister that if he can guarantee that price for oats every year a lot of oats will be grown. Surprisingly, the bottom fell out of the case about oats. There is not a word about oats now and we are moving very cautiously on to potatoes. Deputy Blaney was speaking about Donegal and the terrible hardship imposed on the Donegal people by the slump in potatoes. I do not know in exactly what paper I read it but I did read in some paper that they were working by moonlight in Donegal recently sending potatoes to England. I do not know whether that is a fact or not but it appeared in some paper and I think it was an English paper. I have not seen it contradicted by the Dáil Correspondent of the Fianna Fáil Party yet. Therefore, I must assume that it is right.
Reference was made to the price of cattle. This day three weeks the prices of yearlings in Mitchelstown fair were from £22 to £27. If anybody will say that is not an unprecedented price for yearlings, he must have been born long before anyone else in this House. I am sorry that Deputy O'Reilly of Meath is not present to hear that because I am sure that if the people of Meath heard it there would be a rush from Meath down to Cork at the earliest opportunity to pick up all these cattle at that price.
We have heard about eggs. Deputy Ó Briain was speaking of eggs at 3/-and 2/6 a dozen. I wonder what is the increase in production from the time they were 3/- a dozen to the present time when they are 2/6. I would say that the gross amount at 2/6 would compare very favourably with the gross amount at 3/-.
Solicitude was expressed by Deputy Ó Briain for the Limerick farmers. Some four years ago a group of Limerick farmers decided by a big majority on coming in under the Mitchelstown Co-operative Creameries. At that time Dr. James Ryan was Minister for Agriculture. He could not, constitutionally, put a stop to it but, very adroitly, he stopped subsidies to the Mitchelstown Creameries to the extent of £18,000. I do not know for what length of time he held those subsidies. In any case, the committee of management took legal advice from, I think, the present Taoiseach, Mr. Costello, who advised them that he thought the Minister could not do it legally. When they told that to Dr. Ryan he said: "All right. I may not be able to do it but I will get a Bill through Dáil Éireann with a retrospective and retroactive clause which will leave you people minus your £18,000." Therefore, the County Limerick farmers who had been getting 2d. or 3d. a gallon more for their milk had to revert immediately to their former system and suffer that loss. I do not think that at any time we heard any complaints from the Limerick Fianna Fáil Deputies about that.
When this Government took over there were approximately 500 tons of cheese in the creameries at Mitchelstown for which no market could be found. Representations were made to the previous Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, on two or three occasions, for an export licence but he would not grant it. When this Government came into office representations were again made and the present Minister for Agriculture, realising the losses that would otherwise occur, immediately gave an export licence, thus saving the creameries anything up to £100,000. I feel sure that that is one thing the Minister did which the farmers in my area appreciated.
Reference was made during the course of this debate by Deputy Allen to "Bloody Balfour". I felt that I should interrupt Deputy Allen and say that that name should not have been introduced against the present Minister for Agriculture.
The Deputy should keep to the Estimate.
I was never on any platform with the present Minister's father, the late Mr. John Dillon.
Now, now, that is going back too far.
I am only going back to what was referred to last night—"Bloody Balfour".
Hear, hear!
I can say that the name of Dillon will be remembered in Mitchelstown.
The Deputy will have to keep to the Estimate.
I did not start this. Deputy Allen started it last night.
Hear, hear!
I know that I am speaking with the support of 90 per cent. of the farming community in my area when I say that 1887 will not be forgotten for the Dillon family——
Or 1949.
——and it will not be forgotten for other families either.
The Deputy must come to the debate at once.
I must say that I am inclined to wonder at all this talk to the effect that the farmers are not getting a remunerative price for milk. I wonder if the Minister would contradict me if I said that recently a costing experiment was carried out by a pretty good farming organisation and that it was supervised by a very prominent professor of agricultural science. If I said that the costing— outside its management, principal and interest—did not come to a shilling per gallon I wonder if the Minister would contradict me or if any Deputy on the other side of the House would contradict me?
No, nor anybody in Ireland either.
That experiment was carried out and supervised by the farmers under the direction of Professor Murphy, of University College, Cork. I may not know the exact figures but I say that outside of its management, capital and interest, the costing per gallon did not come to one shilling. Therefore I cannot see why the farmers should be grumbling at the present price of milk. What I am afraid of is what Deputy Donnchadh Ó Briain has mentioned—the danger of a slump in the dairying industry. As far as I can see, in the constituency I represent, the farmers are getting more and more into the dairying industry, and I am sure that they would be very satisfied if the present price of milk could be stabilised.
In 1944, while the war was on, the price of oats in this country was from 24/- to 26/- a barrel. No maize was coming into the country at that time and we were relying absolutely on oats for feeding. We heard no outcry then —good, bad or indifferent—from the Fianna Fáil Deputies about the price of oats and the Minister was not asked to increase it. The very same thing obtained in regard to the price of barley. Early last June I asked the present Minister for Agriculture a question about the guaranteed price of barley. I followed up that question with a supplementary question. I asked him if any attempt was going to be made to recoup the barley growers of this country who had had to sell their barley at £1 a barrel less than Messrs. Guinness were prepared to pay and who had indirectly contributed £2,000,000 to the war fund of John Bull. Immediately after that, an all-out drive began—and the leader of the drive was Deputy Corry. He contacted Messrs. Guinness and got amazing and glorious promises and guarantees from them. He went down the country and, as is typical of Deputy Corry—he tries to get credit for everything, no matter who does it—he tried to take credit for the whole lot of the increase that Messrs. Guinness was going to give to the malt barley growers of Eire. He also tried to get the farmers to swallow the whole thing and if they had, we would have had a slump in barley in the coming year. A dastardly attempt was made by Deputy Corry and some of his colleagues in the county committee of agriculture of which I am a member to get the Cork farmers to grow barley ad lib notwithstanding the fact that only barley on contract would fetch 52/6d. a barrel. Fortunately some people circumvented the efforts of these gentlemen and, by question, succeeded in getting the Press to publish that it was only those people who had contracted with Messrs. Guinness and the breweries who would get the price Deputy Corry was speaking about. If some people think that this exploitation of the farmer is going to get Fianna Fáil back into power let me say that it will be a very long time before they will sit on this side of the House again. The farmers were exploited a couple of times and if the people who are living in a fool's paradise—and who are having very unhappy dreams now and again—think they are going to exploit the farmers this time they are mistaken.
References were made to the credit system as it exists at present in this country. I have no hesitation in saying that unless, shall I say, direct action is taken in regard to the banks of this country so as to make them realise their responsibility to the farmers and to the security of this country by offering them what they have at the moment at their disposal at reasonable terms, I certainly would recommend very strongly —— and I am not a bit afraid to say it—the nationalisation of that particular system.
The Minister has no control over that.
I am sorry if I have digressed too far but I heard a reference to the agricultural credit system. I cannot agree that the Agricultural Credit Corporation gives loans as freely as I would like them to do so or, I am sure, as freely as a lot of other people in this House would like, irrespective of what side of the House they may sit on. The bank managers throughout the country are absolute Mandarins as far as the farmers are concerned——
Now, now. That has nothing to do with the debate.
——in their pursuit of the increase of production on their land.
Surely the Minister has no control over bank managers. The Deputy has already been told that in very clear terms.
I should like to refer to the freedom which the present Minister for Agriculture has given to farmers so that they may work their lands to their best ability and to their own advantage. Undoubtedly, his latest scheme of allocating an agricultural instructor to every three parishes is one of the greatest steps ever taken to improve the production of the farming community. We all know that even in one field there are different soils. With these men of technical and practical experience helping the farmers, I am sure that after 12 months we will be in a position to state that production has been stepped up to a remarkable extent.
I am sure the Minister will take into consideration the points put before him by Deputy Ó Briain. I am sure he will also take into consideration that there are people who have to live in cities and towns and if people who can least afford it have to pay, whether by subsidy or direct taxation, £700,000 extra to give an increase of 1d. per gallon of milk—I think Deputy Ó Briain wanted an increase of 2d. which would come to £1,400,000—there will be a famine I am afraid. We have to take into consideration the people in the towns and the cities as well as the agricultural community. I would ask the Minister before he allows any increase in the price of milk to explore every avenue to see whether more help could not be given to the farmers by improving the price of cattle, pigs, poultry or something which will be exportable, instead of giving it to the dairying industry. I am a farmer myself and, personally, I should like to see the Minister giving 1/- per gallon more for milk. However, I am alive to my responsibility to my constituents. I have put a firm case before the Minister and I would ask him to contradict it if he can—that the cost of producing a gallon of milk is less than 1/-. If we continue with our policy of improving the conditions of the agricultural community, we shall be a very happy country in 12 months time.
I hope to be very brief.
We are now 28 hours discussing this Estimate.
Were it not for a remark of the Minister's which I read in the report of his introductory speech, I would not have spoken on this Estimate. The Minister said that certain committees of agriculture on which there was a Fianna Fáil majority deliberately turned down some proposal of his for political reasons. Personally, I resent that very much. I am chairman of a county committee of agriculture which has a Fianna Fáil majority. I was also a member of that committee before we had a majority there, and I can say very definitely that any matters put up by the Ministry, no matter who the Minister may have been, were considered on their merits. Whatever impression the Minister may have got, I think he is very wrong to make a sweeping charge like that.
I got a letter from the Minister to which I did not reply because, in fairness to the county committee, I could not have done so without consulting them. However, I have handed that letter over to the secretary and asked him to put it on the agenda for the next meeting. I can assure the Minister that it will get full and fair consideration on its merits. These exaggerated notions of the Minister's, I am afraid, are not doing him any good and they have prolonged this debate very much.
As to the general policy which the Minister has expressed on various occasions, I must confess I am very puzzled. Not very long ago he stated that, while farmers might grow any crop they desired, the best crop to grow was grass. Within the last few weeks he stated that we must have tillage. It is very hard for a county committee of agriculture to decide what the Minister really means. I think he should settle down and decide definitely what his policy is going to be. Hitherto, it has been very mixed, which is a very bad thing. I am not doubting the enthusiasm of the Minister in many ways or that he means to do the best he can. But, when there are so many statements which appear to be contradictory I do not think it is good for the Department or for the country.
What is contradictory in these two statements?
If the policy is to be a grass policy, I do not think it can be reconciled with tillage.
You cannot have grass without tillage.
We know the difference between the two. We have had experience of both; we have had a long experience of the grass policy anyhow While giving the Minister credit for all the good intentions in the world, I do not think he has been fair to the working farmer. There is no use in repeating what has been said already, but during the year in which he has been Minister I do not think that the working farmer got a fair chance. The question of a market for oats and other produce has been referred to repeatedly. This year, however, according to the Minister's own statement, the subsidy on artificial manures has been withdrawn. In fact, I do not see any advantage that he is giving the working farmer, especially the small farmer. When I speak of farmers, I generally mean those who have small holdings and the Minister is very well acquainted with them. I do not see what advantage they are getting or what help they are getting.
We are told about a number of schemes that are to be put into operation, such as the reclamation scheme and the field drainage scheme, but in fact nothing is being done. The Minister should fix his mind on doing something practical and giving some help to those people who require it very much. We had, of course, complaints that the fertility of the soil has been very badly impaired during the years past. I am sure it has. But, now that artificial manures are available at a price, we find that the small poor farmer is not able to buy them in sufficient quantities. Even during the last few weeks the prices of artificial manures were increased.
When the various other increases are added, it is very hard for the small farmer to make ends meet. I am sure that those people who have a big number of cattle to sell are doing well. But the type of farmer to whom I refer has not a big number of cattle to sell and never can have, as he has very little land. The Minister comes from the same area as I do and he should understand the necessity for helping the small working farmer.
The Minister thinks that it is a good thing to import feeding stuffs from abroad. I entirely disagree with him in regard to that. It is a very bad policy. The land of this country should be utilised to grow feeding stuffs both for human beings and animals. Even if it costs the State a good deal in subsidies, I think that should be done. If, as the Minister states, barley is at least as good as maize I do not see why the growing of barley should not be encouraged. After all, it keeps our farmers employed and it keeps the money at home. That was never more necessary than at the present time when it is stated, and truly stated, that it is very hard to find dollars to buy stuff in the dollar area. I say that I think it is a national folly to be importing stuff the equal of which can be produced at home. The Minister may not agree with me in that but I think I am right. However the fact is that a great many people in the poorer areas have left the land. I suppose there is no use now in introducing the question of those poor people of three, four or five pound valuation who have been knocked out of employment by the discontinuance of turf production. They are a very important section of the people, too.
Where?
Everywhere that I know in the West.
Four hundred men are wanted at Ballyshannon and we cannot get 20.
They are gone. Four hundred left the parish of Kiltullagh. It was not for a joke they went. They went because the few acres of land they had were not sufficient to give them a living.
Go away out of that.
The Minister knows as well as I do that these people were never able to live on the patch of land they had and I think their lot is worse now than it was. I hope that that will be remedied. It certainly needs a remedy. There are less people employed on the land at the moment, as you know, than there were some time ago. I am not going to refer to the agricultural conditions in general; they have been dealt with. Those who spoke from the Government Benches are convinced that everything is all right. On the other hand, the people in these benches do not think so. There may be a bit of right on both sides. I am certain that the working farmer has not received any advantages recently.
I should like to refer to the proposed reclamation scheme. When I say this I am not speaking critically of the Minister at all. Anything I say is by way of advice. Whether the amount to be spent be £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 it can, to a large extent, be misspent. If you reclaim land which in a few years will be back again to its wild state you will find that a lot of that money will be swallowed. In my native district many years ago I saw patches of land reclaimed. I have been there within the last few months and it is as wild as it was a 100 years ago, almost. What I would put before the Minister is this. I understand that the Marshall Aid Plan is for increasing food production. I would suggest to the Minister that he should devote a reasonable fraction of that money to help the people on land that is already reclaimed and to give them a chance. After all, I presume the money so borrowed will have to be repaid and with interest. The best way of using it would be to spend a considerable share of it in helping farmers to till the land which is already in reasonable condition. I am sure the Minister will agree that there is a danger that while you may temporarily improve reclaimed land it will go back again in a short time. I know that matter will need very close examination. However, I think it is well worth an attempt.
There are some points in the Minister's statement that I am happy to compliment him on. One of them was his desire for scientific research, applying the results of experiments to the curing of cattle diseases and so on. That is a very desirable thing, but it is nothing new. It was started before he came in and the instructors of county committees were also working on these lines. The fact that the Minister is trying to improve the position and is determined to do so is commendable. I am happy to congratulate him on that line of action. I should like to say a word about those instructors that the Minister proposes to put in at the rate of one per three parishes. It will all depend, of course, on what the Minister proposes to do and how he proposes to use these instructors as to whether it will be a desirable scheme or not. If the Minister is definitely carrying out a tillage policy as opposed to the ranching system, I certainly will be in favour of it. I have always held that we need more instructors. I am not stating this for the first time. Years ago I urged the county committee to appoint additional instructors. I remember a time when we had only one poultry instructor in County Roscommon and now we have four.
Did you hear what Deputy Smith said?
I did not. If the Minister is determined on giving instruction in the proper tillage of the soil, the proper use of tillage and, above all, if he is determined on producing our own feeding stuffs at home I will certainly back it. If, on the other hand, he is not determined to do that I should be very doubtful about the advantage of having extra instructors.
I heard a number of Deputies on the other side of the House talking about Fianna Fáil compelling the people to till. I think that is hardly fair in view of the fact that until some years after the war started Fianna Fáil had no compulsory tillage. It had never been a doctrine that we should have compulsory tillage. It is not my doctrine. I have some land and I am tilling more this year than last year. I may be a doctrinaire tiller but I certainly have no doctrine about compulsion. The fact of the matter is there was no compulsion until it had to be. If you ask why it had to be it was because those people with large areas of land would not till and when they did till they certainly did not till the part of the land that was likely to give a good crop. The number was very limited, of course, but at the same time they occupied a great deal of the land and surely compulsion was necessary in that case. I do not know what would have happened if Fianna Fáil had continued in office.
Hear, hear!
I believe a certain percentage might be required but nothing like the same percentage as was required the year before. I should like to direct the Minister's attention to this. The Minister apparently is in favour of having grass. To the extent to which I grow grass I certainly would agree with him but is it desirable that land which was in tillage for the last few years is now let out to grow weeds?
No, no, a thousand times no.
I know. I am drawing the Minister's attention to the fact that thousands of acres are being let out in weeds and I should like to know what the Minister is doing about it. It is a very serious matter.
The Minister may not want to have compulsion, but I think he should have it. I do not know what powers he has at the moment, but, if he has the power, I think he should see that it is not right that land which had been tilled every year up to now has not so far been ploughed, scraped or seeded this year. If the Minister makes inquiries he will find that I am telling the truth so far as County Roscommon is concerned, and I do not mean that the people there are the worst offenders. I recommend to him that he should make inquiries into this and see what can be done. It may be rather too late to do anything about it now, and for that reason I am sorry that this Estimate did not come up earlier for consideration so that the matter might be raised.
As I have said, I had no intention of speaking on the Estimate were it not for the fact that I am anxious to remove the false impression which the Minister seems to have got—that because our county committee has a Fianna Fáil majority it is necessarily opposed to any proposal which he puts up. I think if that were to happen it would be very wrong, and that if the Minister's mind were prejudiced in any way it would be a bad thing. I have attended every meeting of the county committee for several years and I can assure the Minister that not one single decision of that committee has ever been arrived at on political lines. That applies particularly to the county committee of agriculture. I hope the Minister will believe me in what I am saying, and will act accordingly. In so far as the Minister is anxious to improve conditions in this country, he will have my wholehearted co-operation, as would any other Minister. This is a very serious matter because the Department of Agriculture is, from the point of view of the majority of the people, the most important Department in this State. I hope that the Minister will take what I have said in that light.
Will the Deputy say from what parish the 400 men left recently for England?
Kiltullagh. That was after the cessation of the turf production scheme. That is all I have to say, and I hope the Minister will give attention to the matters that I have mentioned.
I propose to be very brief, but I really could not face the majority of my constituents if I allowed this opportunity to pass without saying a few words to congratulate the Minister on his success, and also his Department, during the past year. Despite what the Fianna Fáil Deputies may say and the propaganda they use through the country, the Minister is very popular because he has had the courage to tackle our agricultural problems in the proper way. I am in thorough agreement with his proposal to increase the number of agricultural instructors. We have at the moment a system of instruction that is archaic and obsolete. Some of the agricultural instructors to whom I have been speaking feel that the system under which they are working results in a waste of money, and that they cannot give a sufficient return for the salaries they are receiving. One reason for that is that their areas are so extensive that most of their time is spent in travelling. If an instructor delivers a lecture in a parish in some particular year it will probably be ten years before he returns to give another lecture.
A lot has been said about the inspectors who were appointed during the Fianna Fáil régime. In my opinion, the money that was spent on them was wasted. If, during the emergency, the Fianna Fáil Government had given guaranteed prices to the farmers for what they produced there would have been no necessity to have inspectors. There is no doubt that, if the farmers of this country get an economic price for what they produce, they will avail of their opportunities, and there will be no need for inspectors.
As regards the additional instructors who are to be appointed, the success of the scheme envisaged by the Minister will depend on a continuation of the policy of guaranteed prices over a period of years. I am sure the Minister himself is well aware of that fact. If the farmers are given a guaranteed market and guaranteed prices they will welcome the instructors and will be only too glad to avail of their instruction.
The people in my constituency are greatly interested in the question of drainage. A lot has been said down the country to the effect that the Minister is slow about putting the drainage scheme into operation. People complain that they really do not know what is in the Minister's mind as regards the scheme. In my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim, the valuations in Leitrim especially, are very low—£3, £4 and £6. I would ask the Minister to expedite the putting into operation of that scheme in my constituency because the majority of the farmers there see no prospect of ever being able to increase the size of their holdings. There is not sufficient land there to be acquired and divided by the Land Commission. The next best thing, so far as they are concerned, is the carrying out of a drainage scheme and the provision of fertilisers to increase the carrying capacity of their small farms.
I listened to my colleague Deputy Gilbride speak here this evening. His speech rather disappointed me because I know him to be a sound, solid, common-sense man. He comes from farming stock as I do myself. I would invite him to make his own speeches in future and not to speak as a Party man. He referred to the question of oats and said that the small farmers of Sligo needed an increased price for what they produce. Last year the price of oats was raised by the Fianna Fáil Deputies at the Donegal by-election. Oats were then fetching 22/- and 23/-per cwt. on the Sligo market, but as a result of the campaign that was started at that time the price was fixed at 2/- per stone so that the farmers had to take 16/- for their oats. That is what Deputy Gilbride stood for, so far as the farmers of Sligo-Leitrim are concerned.
The question of the advisability of confining ourselves to one export market for our cattle was also raised. Well, our memories are not so short that we cannot recall what happened in 1932 during the economic war. Deputy Childers said it was deliberately and intentionally conducted. We were made well aware of that down the country. The Government of that time tried to get a continental market for our produce and they failed. Perhaps the Fianna Fáil Deputies imagine that if we had a second market the price of our cattle would fall. I think that was the gist of Deputy Gilbride's remarks. I do not see why he should begrudge the small farmers, whom he claims to represent, the £25 or the £27 per head that they are getting at the moment for yearlings.
I am in thorough agreement with the Minister as regards the selection of dairy herds. I think that the shorthorn cow is the most suitable one for this country, particularly for the small farmer, because she is the type of cow that will stand up to all sorts of weather. Fianna Fáil did attempt to introduce the Friesian breed. I know something about the different breeds of cattle. My opinion is that if the small farmer was confined to the one breed —the Friesian—he would find his position rather difficult. The Friesians are a delicate class of cattle. In the winter and spring—if you had bitter showers of hail—the farmer would need to stand over them in a field with an umbrella. I think that if the farmer were confined to that breed of cattle a considerable reduction in milk supplies would soon be noticed.
I was glad to hear the Minister say that he intends to encourage the growing of barley. It is a crop that can be easily grown, and has not to be sown until late in the season. I believe the middle of May is the proper time to sow barley. That is the experience of the farmers in Sligo and Leitrim. The fattening qualities of barley are equal to those of maize meal, Indian meal.
Deputy Sweetman took the Chair.
If I were to say any more, I think I would be merely repeating what has already been said, so I will conclude by congratulating the Minister on the very fine job he has done during the past year. The production of bacon and butter has jumped up, I might say, at an alarming rate. Some of us wonder what happened the butter and the bacon during the Fianna Fáil régime. It certainly did not find its way to the counters in the shops in the cities and towns and it did not find its way into the homes of the poor people.
Deputy Blaney rose.
The 29th hour of the debate.
Mr. Blaney
I heard the Minister just now mentioning that this is the 29th hour of the debate. I wonder why he should pass a remark such as that? Is it that what has been said on the Opposition side of the House is not very good medicine for him? Is it that he feels sore because the allegations that are being made against his policy, or lack of policy, are well-founded?
I am very sorry that the Minister has seen fit to leave the House just now, because I would like to disabuse his mind and the minds of many Deputies in the benches behind him with reference to a few matters which, I thought, were very well known to anybody, both inside and outside the House, and on which I am somewhat loath to speak because so much has already been said.
I heard so many strange views aired over there for the past few days that I feel I must again refer to the problem that the farmers in my constituency and in many other constituencies found facing them this year in relation to potatoes, oats and flax. I do not want to labour this point, but I should like to say, in reply, particularly to Deputy Keane, who made the statement that everybody got a remunerative price for oats this year, that that seems to be something which the Government members wish to put around and wish the people to believe. I dare say if they repeat it often enough they will get some people to believe it, but you will not have among them those who still have got oats and cannot find a market for it. The fact is that there is not a market big enough to absorb all the oats on the hands of the farmers. There are still oats in Donegal for which there is no market. We hear some Deputies shouting across the House and talking about the market that is available, but I would be very glad if they would let the people in Donegal, who have oats on their hands, know where that market is and what is the price.
Deputy Keane said that he saw recently in some papers where labourers and farmers in Donegal were working by moonlight packing potatoes for sale. As a matter of fact, that is true, but I do not want anyone to get away with the idea that because those people were packing potatoes in the moonlight or late at night that everything is as it should be. The fact is that for some weeks past these people were working very hard during the day trying to get their crops in and they found they had to work overtime if they were to pack their potatoes. These are potatoes which, I may add, should not be there at this time of the year to be packed. These potatoes should have been taken away months ago when it would have suited the farmers better to get them away and when they had more time to get them ready. But there was then no outlet for them. After the glut and when no market was available for months some opening eventually comes along, almost at the last moment, and these farmers have to do all sorts of things to get rid of some of their potatoes, even if they have to go so far as to pack some of them in the moonlight.
That is not the point I want to make here. I want to ask the Minister a question this evening and I was anxious, if it is possible, to have an immediate answer. This matter also has to do with potatoes—seed potatoes. During the past few months certified seed potatoes of the 1948 crop were for the first time in my county sold at ware potato prices, despite the fact that they had to be graded just the same as if they were going to be used for seed. Arising out of that naturally enough there is some confusion in the minds of the farmers who have been growing certified seed potatoes for years. There is confusion as to what is to happen the 1949 crop.
During the past three or four months I have endeavoured on several occasions, by way of Parliamentary question, to get some statement from the Minister as to what prospect the farmers have with regard to a market for the produce of the seed potatoes now in the ground. Each time the question was asked the same reply was given and that was to the effect that the matter was under consideration and a statement would be issued in due course. Later I pointed out the urgency of this matter from the farmer's point of view—that he really had to know what the price would be before he would put any potatoes in the ground. On that particular occasion the Minister replied that the matter was still under discussion and that a statement would be issued in the very near future. That was eight or ten weeks ago so far as my recollection goes. The same question was asked to-day and the reply has gone back again to its first state; it is not even in the "near future" now. The Minister merely says that it is still under discussion.
Is it any wonder that the farmers who engage to any appreciable extent in tillage, as the farmers in my area do, are confused and do not know what crop they should grow or what crop they should not grow? Many of them have sown seed potatoes again this year. Because of the Minister's early reply to my question they understood that they would know what the price would be before they sowed them. But the time came for sowing and they did not know the price. Rather than let the land go to waste they set their potatoes. They do not know what market they will have for them. They do not know what price they will get for them. What is still worse, apparently the Minister, who should know, does not know either.
With regard to flax the Minister has heard Deputies on the Government Benches say that the attitude which he adopted in relation to the flax market was right. But that attitude has definitely proved to be wrong because the growers and their representatives and the millers have accepted a lower price than the Minister was offered. If that is not proof that the Minister was wrong there is no point in saying anything more upon the subject.
Potatoes, flax and oats are the main crops from which the farmers in my constituency derive their livelihood. Because of the contradictory statements made by the Minister—particularly the statement made by him approximately this time last year—the farmers are really very worried. The Minister last year urged the farmers to grow more oats and potatoes and he assured them that there would be a good market available for the crops. In relation to oats he went even further than that at one stage; he said that if any farmer had any difficulty in getting rid of his oats he should drop a postcard to the Department and the Minister would fix him up with a good market. That statement was made about 14 months ago. It is obvious from that statement that the Minister did intend that some of the farmers should sell oats for cash. Yet, his opening remarks in introducing his Estimate this year were to the effect that the man who grew oats for cash should get out of farming altogether and in doing so he would be doing good for himself and for the country. Whether he would apprentice himself to a tailor or a cobbler really does not matter. Apparently in the last 14 months the Minister has changed his mind and that latest statement of his, following on the muddle that was made of the oats last year, is surely adding insult to injury. Farmers do not know where they are going. They do not know which way to turn. They do not know what they should do. One can scarcely wonder at that since they have been hit so very hard during the past year. Many of them have lost heavily. Some of them have lost to the extent that they will be compelled to get out of land altogether. I know that is true in one particular case at any rate. Some of the farmers are practically on the verge of bankruptcy to-day and the only encouragement the Minister can offer them is that they should apprentice themselves to tailors or cobblers or some other trade.
The effect of these contradictory statements made by the Minister is that tillage has declined all over the country. The area under tillage has diminished. I am not talking now about something I have been told. I have been down and across the country and it is evident that tillage is diminishing. That brings me to another inconsistency on the part of the Minister. Considering that the Minister's own maladministration over the past year has caused tillage to decline, it is rather strange to find the Minister at this late stage declaring that tillage is very essential. To quote his exact words:—
"Every farmer knows that if the maximum fertility and yield of his land is to be maintained, except in very exceptional circumstances tillage must constitute an essential part of his annual farming operations."
If that is so, how can the Minister justify his action and his statements over the past 12 months? Most people believed that the Minister's long-term policy was to get back to grass. That is the prevailing belief. No one can blame the people in general coming to that conclusion because of the Minister's own statements. Yet, far from getting back to grass, we now find the Minister declaring unequivocally that tillage is really essential. Possibly the Minister has such a large mind that these contradictions are simple to him. Possibly he can resolve them into something definite. Possibly he sees some goal for which he is heading in the future. Certainly the farmers do not see it. I would like the Minister to state clearly what he does mean in ordinary language so that the farmers will understand.
Not so very long ago the Minister talked here about importing maize. He mentioned a price of £1 per cwt. or £20 per ton. The fact, of course, is that you cannot buy maize at £1 per cwt., or even at 22/- or 23/- per cwt. The price is as high as 24/- to 26/- in my county. While the price of imported feeding stuffs, maize included, is at this high figure, I can assure you that there will be very good reason for tillage, but I want to know from the Minister, when these imported feeding stuffs become cheap, when they cost as little or less than we can produce the equivalent at home, what does he expect the farmers to do? He talks about feeding our produce to live stock, but if we can get feeding stuffs from abroad cheaper than feeding stuffs can be produced on the farm, you can hardly expect the farmer to lose money by growing the feeding stuffs himself.
I would urge the Minister to make a statement as to what is his long-term policy, whether we are going back to grass, whether we are going to have mixed farming or whether we are going to have tillage. I do not want him to hedge on this matter, to say that when feeding stuffs from abroad become cheaper than we can produce feeding stuffs at home, he will make a statement then and that that will be time enough. It will not be time enough. The farmers cannot change overnight from a grass policy to a tillage policy. You cannot pull down a switch and wake up in the morning to find that they have changed overnight from tillage to grass or vice versa. They have got to know in advance and only by knowing in advance can they possibly make the best of their land and make the land pay for their work on it.
I also heard a Deputy on the other side of the House—I cannot recall his name at the moment—challenge anybody on this side or elsewhere to point to one thing which the Minister had done wrong during his term of office. He seemed very serious about it, so serious that I really think he believed himself that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that was not done perfectly. Despite the fact that the Minister is responsible for the wellbeing of the agricultural community, for the regulation of prices to enable that community to live, I shall mention a few things which the Minister has done wrong during the year. At least I take them to be wrong; possibly there are other people who take a different view. The reduction in the price of tillage produce to my mind, in the present circumstances, is wrong, As I say there may be other people in the House who believe it is right. I do not. I do not believe that to reduce the price of eggs is right. I do not believe the reduction in the price of poultry is right; neither do I believe the reduction in the price of oats and in the price of potatoes is right. Yet, I have heard it stated from the other side of the House—and I am almost convinced that everyone who said it really believed it—that the present Minister had done nothing wrong during his term of office.
Does the Deputy not know that the general price of agricultural produce is higher this year than last year?
Mr. Blaney
If the Minister had taken me up properly, he would have noticed that I enumerated the items.
And ignored the others.
What are they?
The general price of agricultural produce is higher than it was last year.
Oats, flax, eggs, farmers' butter.
Mr. Blaney
That is enough. On the question of the price of eggs, I should like to ask the Minister is it a fact—I have heard it but I do not know how true it is—that the price of 5/- per case paid to collectors was cut to 1/- not so very long ago. The Minister is not here and I cannot find out one way or the other. If it be true—and I have been assured it is—it seems a ridiculous figure for handling eggs.
Would the Deputy develop that point? I should like to know something about it.
Mr. Blaney
I heard that the collection rate for eggs has been cut from 5/- to 1/-.
The Minister has absolutely no control over that. Has not the quantity of eggs gone up?
Mr. Blaney
That reminds me of a point that has been troubling me for a long time. I remember hearing a lot about eggs some time ago—a lot of "ballyhoo" as it since turned out to be. I believed at one time, and I think a great many farmers and their wives believed it too, that the more eggs we produced the higher the price would be. The price was 3/- per dozen at that time. Many more eggs have been produced since but, strangely enough, the price has not gone up. It has, as we all know, gone down. I should like to ask anybody to give an explanation as to how that came about since we were told that the more eggs we produced, the higher the price would be.
Ask Deputy Smith.
Deputy Smith is not Minister now.
Mr. Blaney
These are the points which I want to bring to the Minister's notice. The fact that he is not here means that they have not been, and very likely will not be, brought to his notice and, even if they were brought to his notice, I doubt very much if I would get very much information from him judging from the results I have had in putting Parliamentary questions during the past few months.
I should like to conclude by asking Deputies who support the Government, who are committed to support it— whatever way they are lined up I do not know—to examine their consciences when they get up to speak here and if they have any criticism to utter, as I am sure most of them have of the present Minister, then let us hear it instead of their getting up one after another, parrot-like, to tell us that we have the greatest Minister in Europe.
There was plenty of criticism from this side of the House.
Mr. Blaney
I do not at all agree. Nobody in his rational senses, who knows anything about agriculture, could agree that he is the best Minister in Europe. Not alone do I think he is not the best in Europe but I think he would have a very tight race to escape the last place. With that I will leave the floor to some other person.
I rise for a few minutes only. I have listened to the people on the opposite benches for the last three days and I do not blame them for painting the picture they painted because naturally they have to say that the country is doomed. During the general election the leader of their Party told the people that if they did not vote Fianna Fáil the country was doomed, so naturally the T.D.s of the Opposition must try to tell us here that the country and the farmers are ruined. The great issue here has been oats. I am surprised at Deputy Allen who lives near the people who advertised for oats in the local paper, the Enniscorthy Echo, of March 26th, 1949:
"We are open to buy large quantities of good, sound white oats. Highest market prices paid. M. Breen and Sons, Raheenduff, Oulart."
Mr. Blaney
What is the price?
The price is the highest market price.
That is worth talking about.
Deputy Corry got 30/-a barrel for them.
He got out of it well.
Deputy Davern will have his opportunity in a moment.
Last Monday week I was in Wexford and there was a boat there being loaded with oats. I went to see it and people told me that it was the first cargo of oats to leave Wexford in ten years. I see potatoes coming in on lorries from almost as far as Wicklow. Some are brought by tractor. There must be a market for them and I was surprised at Deputy Gilbride— I think it was—saying that in Sligo the potatoes were rotting in the fields and in the ditches. That is a shame when there are plenty of people in the City of Dublin and in provincial towns who cannot get them cheaply. Cabbage costs 1/2 a head here in Dublin. Potatoes are not as plentiful as you say at all and I come from the best agricultural county in Ireland where there are no lazy farmers.
Mr. Blaney
I suppose you are insinuating that there are in my county.
I do not mind you. You are only a young fellow. You are not well in yet.
Mr. Blaney
I will grow up.
We heard a lot about the price of milk and the scarcity of milk. Deputy Allen had milk brought from his own constituency to Dublin —not to give it to the youngsters, but for the ice-cream vendors, the Italians who are using gallons of milk that should go to the people. I hear a lot about scarcity but I saw in the papers that during the Dublin Show farmers of the 32 Counties were looking for machinery at Ballsbridge, the latest most modern type of machinery. What was it for? Because the Minister for Agriculture said that higher wages had to be paid to workers and they are trying to counteract that by using machinery. There is a campaign for farmers to put men on short time, to shorten their hours, because they do not want to pay them £3 a week. They can pay £700 or £1,000 for a tractor but they cannot pay their labourers £3 a week. They will put a man out on the street and then you are talking about unemployment. Fianna Fáil farmers that never needed to sack a man say there is unemployment.
Mr. Blaney
There is plenty of unemployment without Fianna Fáil.
There is a campaign going on to do it. What is Deputy Allen going to do to give employment?
The Deputy must address the Chair.
Did the Deputy not cut down the Estimates himself? I have the minutes in my pocket and I can produce them if you want them. All are worried about the workers to-day. When I came in here in 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1947 asking the then Ministers, Deputy Ryan and Deputy Smith, to increase agricultural wages, how did they escape an answer? They said: "It is not my function but a matter for a wage board." That was their cry, but the present Minister said he would see that they would get an increase and they got it while for years before that the previous Ministers were putting it on to a wage board. You want better prices and you want the cost of milk brought down. You want the cost of producing milk brought down and the price for the people who have to exist on it to go up. Who has to pay for that increase but the working class people in the towns and cities? I would like to see eggs at one penny each because every poor person could get one then. Who will be affected by a rise in price?
The hens.
The working classes. Why are people travelling to the Department for Agriculture for grants for hens if they are not paying?
Deputy Allen objected to interruptions when he was speaking and should not interrupt now.
Every other day the Department gets applications for fowl-houses, yet you say that hens are not paying. All that leads us nowhere. We are only 15 months on this side of the House and if the great fortunes that were made during the previous 16 years under Fianna Fáil have broken inside 15 months those people have a great deal of credit. We all got the figures given by the Minister which showed an increase. I would certainly say that the bacon came out anyway. Wherever it came from, everyone can get a rasher now. Where was it during the Fianna Fáil time? They are trying to make capital out of the white flour and, at the same time, they are saying that we wanted more pollard and bran. How will you get pollard and bran if you have not an extraction? You got flour from America and you did not let one spoonful of it go to the people who wanted it.
At 7/- a stone.
If you want to buy beer you will get it cheap but if you want to drink whiskey you will pay for it and the same applies to that. We are not asking you to buy it but there are people who can afford to pay it.
Mr. Blaney
White bread for the rich.
You need not talk; we know your tactics. Slogans will get you nowhere. There was one thing that did the farmers more good than all the talk here and that was the few showers of rain we had during the week. They were a godsend to the farmers of the country and to the nation. There is nothing here but unfair attacks. Deputy Allen spoke about the export of horses. I see horses going out of my own town every fair day and farmers getting £10 or £20 for them though they are broken down and good for nothing; whereas if that were not the case the farmers would be giving them away for greyhounds for a few tips. If they had not got this, they would have to sell them as food for the dogs. I think it is a great market to get rid of all the old horses in the country.
Does the Deputy mean Chappies factory?
I do not know what Chappies factory is. One of the Fianna Fáil people was the agent to buy up these horses in my constituency.
That would not make the horses any worse, because it was a Fianna Fáil agent.
Why not label it "Dog Food" and they could have it? Was that not the idea—to have it labelled "Dog Food", but the people interested would not do that? I suppose they would get nothing out of it. We heard a lot about guaranteed prices. Deputy Allen and Fianna Fáil farmers know that, during the emergency, very few farmers got the guaranteed price for wheat from the flour millers. I know something about that, as I had questions down about it here.
A Deputy
They were good friends of yours.
I never got anything from anyone except what I earned hard. When I put a question down to the then Minister, Dr. Ryan, to see that the farmers got the guaranteed price, what was his answer? It is there on the records—"anyone that saved it well, in a reasonable condition". The farmers at that time in my constituency got only 45/- a barrel, when the guaranteed price was 55/- There was no guaranteed price there, after all the protection we heard about from Fianna Fáil. We would like to see the farmers doing well. The majority of them are not the worst-off section of the community. There may be small farmers who have no capital in the bank, but the majority of them are fairly well off to-day, after five years of a war with top prices. They are all sitting back snug, any Deputies who had any stock during the past war, and they have no need to worry.
Deputy Ó Briain comes from Limerick. There was a cry about the slaughter of calves. Why was that allowed to go on for years, until the change of Government? If the people were getting the calves slaughtered to get the skins, we all knew what was going on and there was no outcry at all about it. Thousands of young cattle were slaughtered, but if they had been on the market to-day the plain people in Britain would not be looking for 1/2 worth of meat a week—we would have cattle in the Dublin cattle market to give them. That is why there is a scarcity.
The Minister says he will have plenty of butter. He ought to bring some of it into the resturant here and give it to us. Whether it is the Minister's fault or the fault of the people running the restaurant, the committee looking after it ought to see that we get more butter. I know the poor people find butter a novelty. The majority of poor people get nothing but margarine, as they are not able to buy butter at 3/6 a pound. There are men living in the country on small wages, as road workers or agricultural workers, on 60/- a week, and they have to keep families on that. If anyone thinks that a good wage to be giving to the people producing on the land the food of the nation, then they are not doing justice to the people who are toiling up and down the fields after a pair of horses or a tractor.
The only thing is to pay skilled workers in any industry according to their skill—as skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled. If that was applied to the agricultural worker, the skilled all-round man would get more money and you would have young men to-day studying agriculture and the workings of machinery and the management of horses; but when you have the man who can only draw out the manure and the skilled man getting the same rate of wages, there is no proper encouragement. I am stating this from my experience as a worker myself. In the bacon factory, in the flour mills and in other skilled industries, there are three grades and naturally you will work to get the high grade with high wages. That is the reason why people are not staying on the land—the skilled man gets no encouragement.
We have had 15 months here with the present Minister for Agriculture who has met with great opposition, not alone in this House but from the county committees of agriculture, where the Fianna Fáil henchmen are doing everything to put a spoke in the wheel and agitating the farming community. That is very wrong, as we all depend on agriculture, no matter what sphere of life we are in. The towns and cities depend on it and that sort of thing is of no help to farming.
Regarding the talk about alternative markets, there was a time here when some responsible people said: "Thank God, the British market is gone, and gone for ever." They put cattle on the boat and it went around the seas, but they could not find a market for it and they had to bring it to Germany and give it away for nothing. That happened, but the people in opposition now would not believe that. Is not that true? The Deputies opposite were looking for alternative markets and could not get them.
The British put a penal tariff on.
You have an agreement now for three years ahead on prices. That was never got before.
A Deputy
A friendly nation, confining us to Britain practically.
In all the agreements, farmers never got three years to look forward to. They are to get 2/6 for the eggs for the next three years. They never got the 5/- which the British farmer had in the market, until the Minister for Agriculture got it in that agreement. These are the things that must be faced. The British farmer had 5/- more on the market for his cattle in preference to the Irish farmer.
He still has it.
Deputy Allen would believe nothing. He is an auctioneer and the more farmers who are down and out the more auctions he will get.
He is a most incredulous person.
I urge that the agricultural labourer should get some benefit from the profits accruing to the farmer by reason of these agreements, because, if the working class people who are helping to produce are not enabled to get some of the benefits, no agreement is any good. It is all very fine for people to say that the agricultural labourer is well off, but agricultural labourers are the most depressed class of worker in the State, and, signs on it, the agricultural worker is going over to Britain where he can get £4 10s. 0d. a week. He cannot be expected to stay on the land here for £3, and some of them are not getting that, because they are an unorganised body, unlike industrial workers, and have not got a union strong enough to enforce their demands. I know farmers who have bought tractors which their sons are driving and they are going into their neighbours' fields and doing their tilling for them. That is why we have unemployment in rural Ireland.
People make complaints with regard to milk. In my town, a milk cart was put on a month ago which is selling milk at a price lower than that at which the milk hitherto has been supplied. I blame Fianna Fáil for the milk situation, because, when they brought in the Milk and Dairies Act, they forced people who had a few cows out of existence with their regulations. They gave a monopoly to the few and the small farmer had to give up selling milk. In our own area, when the free milk scheme came into operation, we found that we could not get a person to supply a pint of milk to a poor person. They were afraid to do so as they were not registered dairymen. The supply of milk was left to three or four vendors and other people who had not got an up-to-date dairy, although they had supplied milk for years, were put out of production. Milkmen had to have white coats and special buckets had to be bought, but, when a few people got a monopoly, the white coats and the Irish on the back of the carts were forgotten. Milk in the rural towns is dear enough and the reason for the prevalence of tuberculosis is that the youngsters are not getting fresh milk because their parents cannot afford to buy it.
A shocking condemnation of the Government.
That is the position after 16 years' of Fianna Fáil Government.
Why do you not change it now?
We will. We have already changed the bacon position. The whole mistake Deputies opposite made was in thinking that we would not be here six weeks, but the figures which were given here will be greatly improved upon next year, and well these Deputies know it.
Do not forget the deserters, anyway.
The only cockshot they have now is the Minister for Agriculture because he made certain statements when on the other side of the House, but we all heard Deputies opposite making statements in 1932.
We would hate to lose him.
You will not lose him because we will keep him here.
He is worth a dozen to us.
He is a practical man, a man who has travelled and a business man, with as good a knowledge of agriculture as the two people before him—misfits of doctors.
They had to send him to America to fix the price of oats.
Deputies opposite have oats on the brain. There were 300 hens in the County Home in Enniscorthy, and we had to send five or six members of the county council to investigate why they had no oats, and, while we are on the subject, I might add that when the committee went to inspect the oats sent into the institution, 32 stone of oats, they found it was all hulls, but the top price was paid to a supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party. I saw on the paper recently that a question was asked in the British House of Commons about the agreement in regard to potatoes, and, bad and all as they are, the British Government said they intended to honour that agreement, although they did not require the potatoes, as they had had a bumper season themselves.
I should like to see the farm workers getting some benefit from any agreement made with England or any other country and surely the farmers ought to pass on some of their profits to the men working on the land. I do not believe that farm labourers with £3 a week are receiving a living wage, in view of the cost of living. We see people who are 100 per cent. better off complaining when they get 11/- and asking for more—men with £6 and £7 a week. I am referring now to the Guards.
They do not arise on this Vote.
I should like to see the agricultural labourer getting that 11/-on top of his £3 a week. I am glad that the bacon factories are now working full time. Our own factory in Enniscorthy is working full time, although, under the Fianna Fáil Government for a time, there were not 20 pigs going into it per week. In addition to providing bacon, employment will be given in the production of pigs. There is a demand for young pigs at every fair. Sheep are £8 a-piece. I do not see what the farmers in the Fianna Fáil Party have to growl about. Of course, I know it is only political propaganda. They are not sincere. They know well enough that the farmers are doing well.
The farmers do not believe that they are doing well.
Some of the farmers will not be satisfied when they get into Heaven.
They are so disgusted——
Certain Deputies are trying to provoke interruptions.
I do not mind it, Sir. I often interrupt, myself. I can take it.
That is quite true. That is an honest admission.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle resumed the Chair.
I shall not delay the House any longer because there may be other Deputies who want to speak before the Minister concludes, if they are going to let the Minister in at all to give the replies they are asking for. I hope he will be given plenty of time because I am sure he will be able to answer everyone.
We will give him all next week.
He will be able to give them all their answer. There is no doubt about that. There is no argument to put up, only slander. They have not put up a good case yet, either for the farmers or the Fianna Fáil Party.
When I heard Deputy O'Leary, I was beginning to think that there was no further need to speak because, as at the Wedding at Cana, the good wine was kept to the last. The position as I know it is that the farmers of this country have lost confidence in the present Minister. Regardless of his many irresponsible, verbose statements, they are nevertheless satisfied beyond all doubt that one of the greatest calamities in the history of Ireland was when the present Minister was appointed to the post which he now occupies. It is unfortunate— perhaps we must blame the Taoiseach for it; perhaps circumstances—that the present Minister for Agriculture above all other members of Dáil Éireann was appointed to guide the destiny of the farmers and to guide the destiny of the all-important industry, agriculture.
Without throwing bouquets to the others of the 12 apostles who constitute the Independents, there were many sound people among them but, unfortunately for the farmers of this country and for the country as a whole, this one man was foisted on the people.
It is the duty of a Minister, by sound, sane utterance and by planning ahead, to give confidence to the people, especially to the farming community, to inspire them with confidence for the future, to give them the necessary assurances that their labours will not go unpaid. That is the duty of a Minister. Despite the many verbose utterances, proceeding from the unbalanced mind of the Minister, the farmers of this country find themselves in the position that they do not know whether they are on their head or their feet.
Deputy O'Leary made many wise remarks, although he had not the same ability as the Minister has to put his ideas into chronological order. There is no doubt that the Minister is a past master in the art of coining phrases and, so long as he utters his kind of phrases in this House, so long is he satisfied that he has done a good day's work, regardless of the consequences to the Irish nation. It appears to me from the many irresponsible statements that I have heard and the many irresponsible statements that I have read that if the Minister is able to reverse the old Sinn Fein policy of 1918, of self-sufficiency and preservation of the home market for the Irish farmer, and if he can insult every member who stood for that policy in the past, the Minister will have satisfied himself that he has done a good day's work for the country.
One of the policies preached in the past, preached by Griffith and other Irish leaders of 1916, 1918, 1920 and 1921, was that the curse of this country was emigration. We find the Minister for Agriculture, occupying as he does that all-important position, saying to the people that he hoped that every 20 of 21 children would emigrate. No Irishman worthy of being called an Irishman would dare to say anything except that emigration was the curse of this country and will remain the curse of this country until some plan is found to keep our manhood and the cream of the Irish nation at home. When we export our manhood, we continue to do the devil's own work for this country.
The Minister ought to know that the dairying industry is the all-important industry in this country. I remember when Australian butter was imported. I remember full well when the Irish farmer, in 1931-32, was getting 3½d. a gallon for his milk. The Irish farmers, unlike their antecedents, did not strike for a better price. Why, I do not know. They would have struck under an alien Government. Why they did not strike under an Irish Government, I do not know. While they were getting 3½d. per gallon they found that in every shop in the country they could purchase Australian butter, to the detriment of the Irish dairying industry.
The old Sinn Fein policy was resumed under Fianna Fáil and we preserved the Irish market for the farmer. The result was that under the Fianna Fáil régime, two years ago, the price of milk was fixed at 1/2 for a certain period, 1/6 for another period. Despite the fact that costings have increased considerably and that the rates on the Irish farmers are almost unbearable at the moment and despite, above and beyond all, the promise of the Minister for Agriculture that he would increase the price of milk, the Irish farmer finds himself getting the same price for milk to-day as he was getting two years ago when the cost of production was very much less.
There are in the mountainous areas of this country people who must depend entirely on the money they receive from the creameries by way of milk production. Every Irish Government—the last and the previous, the present and the future—owes a debt of gratitude that we can never repay to the mountainy farmers. One thing we should do to compensate them for their losses in the past is to give them a decent price for the one product that keeps them between poverty and frugal comfort. The mountainy farmers paid dearly and very dearly for the independence of this country. We made barracks of their homes and we bankrupted many of them. Many of them will never recover from the columns they kept in 1920 and 1921. Perhaps the Minister would not appreciate that. However, it is the duty of an Irish Government to give to those farmers an opportunity to recover and to compensate them in some way for the losses they have sustained and for their service and generosity which has undoubtedly been forgotten amongst those adherents of the inter-Party Government.
Tillage is decaying in this country. It behoves me to tell the Minister, if he does not know it already, that there are thousands of acres of land in this country being laid down without even putting grass seeds into them. I saw a 37-acre field only a couple of weeks ago and no grass seeds were being put into it. The weeds will grow and nobody dare contradict me when I say that it will take at least ten years before that field is back again in normal production, unless a large amount of fertiliser is used on it for that purpose. Tillage was the one thing more than anything else that gave employment in rural Ireland. It gave an assurance to the farm worker that he need not go to Britain or anywhere else for employment. While the farmers of this country were tilling their land—especially the larger farmers who had of necessity, and no apologies about it, to till a percentage of their land—there was no danger of unemployment amongst farm labourers. To-day, we have, unfortunately, in every parish, district and townland in the country unemployment of farm labourers. These men are now doing their best to get work on the roads and so forth. What I say is true. I know of one instance where six out of 11 had to go because the farmer had gone back from tillage to grass. If the Minister doubts my statement I shall give the name to him privately but I am not going to say it in public.
Another Balbriggan widow.
None so deaf as those who will not hear. There is a large and respectable section of the farming community to which the Minister has not referred. I am thinking of those farmers who have very little capital, if any, and who—perhaps in many cases through no fault of their own — lack sufficient capital to restock their land where they had mortality in cattle——
Calves.
——during the recent years. They might as well speak to the moon as to think they are going to get credit from the Agricultural Credit Corporation. As a matter of fact, it is much easier for them to get credit from the banks than to get credit from the Agricultural Credit Corporation. I know the case of a man who lost six cows last year. He is a hard-working man—a man who can produce over 100 barrels of wheat, barley and oats as well. However, because there was in his home a simple boy who, under his father's will, could not sign his rights away to the Agricultural Credit Corporation that man was refused a loan. The simple boy whom Almighty God had given to that homestead was the impediment. Is there any sound commonsense in such a refusal? It is hard to mention matters of that kind in this House.
Who fixed the rate of interest?
Whoever may have fixed the rate of interest for the Agricultural Credit Corporation, I know perfectly well who fixed the rate of interest in regard to housing. You increased it from 2½ per cent. to 2¾ per cent. That is the answer I am giving the Deputy.
Answer my question.
I am answering it in the way you would answer it.
In the 29th hour the Deputy brings in housing.
The Minister himself would bring in the Southern States of America if it suited him to do so. The Minister has been very severe in regard to those people who use horses to till and cultivate their land. Deputy O'Leary very kindly reminded me of the fact that he said a few months ago that everybody in the country could get rid of them. In the Deputy's own words—and remember, he is one of the people who keep the Minister there— he said that every old hollow-back in the country could be exported and that the farmers would get plenty of money for them.
Does the Deputy object to selling them?
Deputy O'Leary was speaking in complete ignorance of the facts and if he has patience with me for a moment or two he will be enlightened as to what happened. If I were to tell him that 260 people were put out of employment in Clonmel because of the decision of the Minister for Agriculture not to allow the factory there to proceed——
You would have made a monstrous falsification of the facts.
I can assure the Minister than when God made us he matched us and that he will not get away with anything with me.
That is the unkindest cut of all.
I am going a bit further for Deputy O'Leary's information because he is one of the gentlemen who spoke very strongly in favour of trade unionism, full employment and good wages. It is quite on the cards that the Minister was prejudiced against some of the directors of that company. That is my honest opinion and that is one of the reasons, if not the chief reason, why he refused a permit to Chappie and Company to export horse flesh to nations that were looking for it. They were looking for it. The people of Sweden were looking for it— and the Minister knows it. Still you refused sanction because you did not like some of the directors, perhaps.
I did not do any of these things. I take it Deputy Davern is addressing me.
I am sorry. The Minister has been a bit vocal. At times he would lead you to believe that there was nobody in the House except himself. Chappies is closed down and 260 people, with an average of perhaps four or five depending on them as well, have been disemployed. That is what the Minister has done for the capital of Tipperary. The capital of Tipperary deserves better from an Irish Government than that they should deprive 260 people of good employment at top wages.
The Deputy has not heard that it has reopened, not to send out horse flesh as corned beef, but to send out beef.
Is it not a fact that it has been bought over and is to go into full production shortly?
I should like Deputy Timoney to be able to assure me that it is going into full production and will remain in it. It will be in production for a few months to the detriment of other canning industries in this country and, thank God, it is not Tipperary directors who are doing that. They would not stand for taking the bit out of the mouth of the Waterford people or the other people who are in the canning business.
Only to put a bit of horse into somebody else's mouth as corned beef.
I am glad to be able to boast that gallant Tipperary would not dare to do a thing of that kind. There are no "emergency" men in Tipperary.
Would not dare to do it? Were they not going to try it?
Parnell put an end to all these things.
What about John Brown?
Would you like to discuss John Brown?
I would rather not.
If I were to discuss John Brown, some of you would blush very much. If it were not for him, the economic independence of this country would not be established and you did your damnedest to smash it. We won the economic war in spite of you. The farmers of this country stood up to it —the majority of them, anyway, because there were some black sheep. You have a similar fight yourselves now and we shall see how you will stand up to it.
In my absence, the Minister on one or two occasions accused me of sabotage. We had many debates here in the months of November and December on oats and potatoes. The Minister at that time was going over to America to settle world affairs, having of course settled the agricultural problem here. As a matter of fact there is a story told that during the voyage there was a Question Time and the compére asked, "Who is the greatest man the world ever produced?" One very good looking gentleman, a very honest man said, "James Dillon." The compére asked: "How do you know James Dillon is the greatest man the world ever produced"? and the answer was, "I am James Dillon."
Is this leading anywhere?
The Minister will have to take his medicine, just as he gave it. In my absence, the Minister accused me of sabotaging his whole agricultural policy. Could you believe that the policy of the Minister was so fragile that a Deputy in a few minutes speech could smash the whole thing to atoms? That was the Minister's excuse and the only one he has ever offered this House for the mess he has created by promising farmers that if they grew oats he would give them a remunerative price and if they grew potatoes he would give them £10 13s. 6d. a ton. Every farmer was delighted with that, thinking that the Minister was speaking with responsibility and that he was sincere.
Where was the £10 to be paid?
£10 13s. 6d.
Where?
We would not like to have Deputy Cowan in doubts about what happened. The Minister for Agriculture made the dreadful statement that I sabotaged his whole agricultural policy. When the Minister makes a statement of that kind I would not dare to say he told a lie, but I am going to say that he handled the truth very carelessly. Speaking at a meeting in Tipperary, composed mostly of practical, hard-working farmers who produce beet and wheat and the other things upon which this nation survived and on which this nation hopes to survive and become an independent selfsufficient nation, I told them that from many statements I heard here I concluded that the Minister for Agriculture had made a complete mess of agriculture so far as oats and potatoes were concerned.
A child of five would realise that the Minister had made a mess of it and that he was not even going to try to help the farmers. "Smart Alec" talk and high-falutin phrases were all the Minister had to offer the farmers after advising them to grow oats at a remunerative price and potatoes for £10 13s. 6d. per ton. The result was that when the farmers grew the oats—and they certainly had a very plentiful harvest—they could not get the merchants to buy the oats. Some of them sold the oats at as low a price as 18/- a barrel. I know others who offered the oats at £1 per barrel, plus the straw which was left after the oats was threshed. That was a very different price from what they got the previous year. Many farmers that year got as high as 39/6 per barrel for oats.
Many people who were the victims of the Minister's promises had taken conacre in order to grow oats. The result was that they had threshed it and having no place to sell it had thrown it out in the garden with no protective covering whatsoever. They were the victims, perhaps. Unlike some of the Minister's friends they did not have the big stores to put it into. They did not have the capital to survive the calamity that had overtaken them. The position was to clear it out at any price or let the elements take the best of it. The Minister has few, if any friends in this country and definitely not in Tipperary except the rates. They are the only people he caters for. The rats have grown fat on the Minister's policy or his lack of policy.
The Deputy is stout enough.
It is a pity that the Minister is leaving the House. However, if he decides on going I am afraid it takes much from the spice of my argument. Deputy O'Higgins complimented me on being stout. I certainly do not owe any of it to Deputy O'Higgins. I advise him to read the history of The Invincibles and he will not get overburdened with fat as a result. The Minister has gone away. Apparently he cannot take it. The Minister is a very proud man. Mind you, most decent, honest people are proud too. The Minister cannot take it because a former statesman said on one occasion, he had the brains of a pig; he is as proud as a peacock who has less brains. I am sorry he has gone.
One word in consolation—he referred in a disparaging manner to certain farmers in this country. He advised them to be apprenticed to tailors or to cobblers. What is wrong with being a tailor or with being a cobbler as long as you are an honest man? How dare any Minister or any Deputy in this House refer to any man with an honest trade in such a way? The great Master Himself had a trade; St. Joseph had a trade. What is wrong with it? Why use these disparaging remarks when referring to tailors and cobblers? Why should that happen in a Christian country? If the Minister had waited I would have asked him to withdraw. The only thing I can say to the Minister is that it is a good job he was not apprenticed to a tailor because, judging by the way in which he has handled agriculture, he could not make a jacket for a gooseberry.
Could you?
I did not intend to speak on this Estimate for Agriculture but I received a letter to-day from a man in Cork who is a flour, meal and general provision merchant:—
"A Chara,
I wonder if it was to reduce the cost of living and to increase the supply of eggs that the price of maize was advanced £1 per ton in Cork this morning. The millers refused to supply only at advanced price."
That letter was sent to a colleague of mine, Deputy Corry. As he has already spoken on this Estimate he asked me to give it to the House.
While I am on my feet at all I thought I would say a few words as to how this Minister for Agriculture is acting in the view of the city man. It would appear to me that the policy of the present Minister is to drive the people of rural Ireland away from the land and to compel them to go to the cities and towns of this country as well as driving thousands more out of the country completely. Of course, as Deputy Davern stated the Minister said that if a farmer had a family of 21 it would be a good thing if 20 went away and one was left at home to rear another family of 21 on the same farm.
I am very glad that the Minister for Justice is here. I belong to a trade which is closely allied to the agricultural industry. I believe that every blacksmith in this country, including the Minister for Justice, strongly resents the Minister's attitude to the horse in this country. In March, 1948, he stated that only for the sake of freedom he would make it illegal for any man to plough with horses. In other words, he was giving the blacksmith, carpenter and the harness-maker notice to quit rural Ireland. The horse and everything connected with it is produced in this country with, perhaps, the exception of the iron for the shoes and for parts of the cart. While I have no objection to mechanising the agricultural industry in this country I believe that it can be overdone. No tractors are made in this country; they are manufactured in other countries and brought into this country. The oil, petrol, spare parts and everything connected with them have to be brought into this country. It is very doubtful that they are such a good proposition as many of the people on the other side of the House seem to think. I cannot see any blacksmith or any rural tradesman supporting a policy such as this. If they voted for the present set-up, I do not believe they ever thought it would be the policy of that Government to try and drive the horses out of this country. We can all see that the people of this Government thought it better to have motor cyclists than horses even for the President's escort.
Who started that?
It is no wonder that the Army horses refused to win the competitions.
Deputy Davern wants to send them out of the country.
Who started that?
The Coalition started it.
Ask Deputy Aiken.
Nonsense.
The Deputy opposite has been asleep for the last 12 months.
I cannot see any reason for this activity of the Minister against the horse except that perhaps some time or another he might have got a bad kick from one. Mind you, some of those horses are fairly intelligent. I am sure Deputy O'Leary, Deputy Dunne and the rest of the Labour Party will agree with me that all those tractors are not going to increase the number of agricultural workers. They are certainly going to help to decrease the workers and the population of rural Ireland. I imagine that the Minister for Justice is thinking the same as myself although he will not say it, as one old blacksmith to another.
If we were thinking alike we would be on the same side of the House.
I was very much surprised last night to find there were Deputies belonging to Clann na Poblachta who seemed to be in favour of this policy of taking the people out of rural Ireland and putting them into the big towns.
I was very much surprised to find a man like Deputy Timoney standing up and objecting to the chocolate crumb factory that was put up at Rathmore by the Fianna Fáil Government. As he said, it should have been put in Tipperary town. Now I, possibly, believe that the best place for that factory would be in Cork. I suppose there are a lot of other people who believe that the place for it would be Dublin. I would like to know why the people of Rathmore are not entitled to get employment in their own area. Why should they be forced out of their own area, and why should they be forced into places like Dublin to make Dublin bigger than it is? I would like to see factories like it started in every rural area. If that were done it would be better for this country. There would be a better balance and a lot could be saved on the transport of food to feed the people of Dublin.
I have a note here with reference to the promises of the Minister as regards potatoes and oats, and the statement that he made that he would not put a floor to the price for oats. Apparently, the Government had to wait until he was in America. When they saw the Donegal by-election coming along they said: "Well, we will have to do something about this; anyway, the Minister is away and we will fix the price of oats." The Minister had stated that on no account would he do it.
Last Friday I listened to Deputy Corry speak on this Estimate. I think there is a lot of truth in what he said. The Minister's two strong points, as regards agriculture, seem to be pigs and eggs, and, as Deputy Corry wisely remarked, you could carry on these businesses in any kind of a decentsized back-yard. You could feed pigs and hens and you would not want any land at all. If agriculture is going to be developed on that line, perhaps the city Deputies will be taking more of an interest in agriculture than ever before, and the country Deputies will be finding that there are more valuable dogs than greyhounds, and that the cattle dogs, to mind the cattle, will be making a higher price, because, apparently, that is all that will be wanted in this country. You will not want horses, men or anything else—only a sheep-dog and a boy.
One after the other, the Coalition Deputies have congratulated the Minister on being the best Minister for Agriculture this republic ever saw. Some of them joined with the Taoiseach in going so far as to say that not only was he the best Minister this republic ever saw but that he was the best Minister for Agriculture the world ever saw. There is one Minister in the Government to be congratulated on having the best Minister for Agriculture in the world, the most subservient Minister for Agriculture in the world, and that is the Minister for Finance. When the Minister for Finance, last year, wanted to make some savings the Minister for Agriculture stepped into the breach, held up the farm improvements scheme and stopped the farm building scheme.
This year, when the Minister for Finance wanted some more money he gave over some of the food subsidies to the Minister for Agriculture and immediately he started to save by doubling the price of white flour, and, recently by making the use of white flour compulsory for the making of cakes for sale. Had the Minister for Agriculture been in opposition when some Minister in the Government doubled the price of white flour and made white flour compulsory in the making of cakes for sale thus increasing their price, we would have heard him denounce that roundly with some of the old phrases that he used about former Government policy. He would call it "a dirty trick,""a dirty deceitful game,""a shuffling cloutish way of dealing with the problem" and getting some money for the Minister for Finance, "a vicious, contemptible, mean jab at the poor."
The Minister for Agriculture of course and people of his standard of income can afford to eat cakes, no matter what price they go to and the Minister for Agriculture, in order to get some money for the Minister for Finance, will force them to pay it or go without. But when the Minister for Agriculture fixes the price of some agricultural produce here he claims it as his duty to fix it at a price that everybody can afford. When Deputy Dunne wanted him to stop the flood of foreign tomatoes last year, the Minister for Agriculture said:
"I decided to permit the importation of tomatoes to such an extent that supplies will be available for all sections of the community at prices which all, including the poor in our towns and cities, can afford to pay."
What is the quotation from?
The quotation is from the Dáil Debates of the 20th July, 1948, column 754.
Is it complete?
That is a complete sentence and an answer to one part of the question.
Read it all.
That is a trick of the Minister's that I am going to expose before I sit down—that when anyone quotes something effective against the Minister he says: "Quote it all". He wants me to quote the whole Dáil Debates, to give other parts of the Minister's statement in reply to supplementaries by Deputy Dunne who was not satisfied with the reply he received. The Minister was not going to eat tomatoes unless the people in Dominick Street and Meath Street were able to eat them. That is the Minister's attitude when he is fixing prices for farm commodities but not when he wants to collect sums of money for the Minister for Finance. He is then quite prepared to make certain that some of the lowest paid people in this country cannot eat cake, although he will not eat tomatoes unless they can because it would mean giving a reasonable price to the farmers. He will collect money for the Minister for Finance, even though certain sections of this community who heretofore, could afford it will have to go without cake.
The people of the country and the farmers of the country do not know from day to day what is the policy of the Minister for Agriculture. They cannot judge from his actions what way he is likely to go in the future. He jumps from one thing into another. I will now give another quotation from the Minister—a question which he asked a member of his own Party.
Give it all.
I will give it all. Deputy P.D. Lehane—Deputy Con Lehane would not dare embarrass the Minister by giving a quotation of this kind or saying anything about it— said on the 12th May, 1948 at column 1169:—
"The Minister said everybody who has a Jersey, a Friesian or an Ayrshire is a crank or an old maid.
Mr. Dillon: I should like the Deputy to refer me to that statement."
Well, I will refer him to it. The Minister for Agriculture, if he looks up column 2603 of Volume III will find that he said:—
"I know there are a lot of old maids and cranks in this country who keep Jerseys and Guernseys and Friesians and the rest of them."
Old maids and cranks! He tried to put Deputy Lehane off by saying: "I should like the Deputy to refer me to that statement"—that statement in which he said that everybody who has a Jersey a Friesian or an Ayrshire is a crank or an old maid.
Read what I said at column 2603.
Deputy Lehane was inaccurate to the extent that the Minister did not say "Ayrshire". But he did say Friesian or Jersey. He said:—
"I know there are a lot of old maids and cranks in this country who keep Jerseys and Guernseys and Friesians and the rest of them."
Go on.
If the Minister goes further down the column he will see where he said:—
"If the Shorthorn cows of this country got one-third of the feeding and the fancy treatment that the Friesians and the Guernseys and the Jerseys and the rest of the Pekinese get...."
and he went on further to refer to the "fancy breeds".
You are a very dishonest creature.
The Minister sometimes can get away with a lot of tripe and he can say to a lot of his own members; "Quote me." I will quote him.
You are not doing so.
Yes, I am quoting him, and I will quote him further. I will quote something else that the Minister is trying to deceive our farmers about.
You will quote it correctly or I will expose you.
The man who exposes the Minister for Agriculture most effectively is the Minister himself, every time he opens his mouth, and the people know it. They have certain names for the Minister that it would be unparliamentary to describe him by here. The Minister may be getting into a frenzy. I know it was not possible for him to be satisfied with the mere celebration of the republic here. He had to go to Paris to do it. I understand he got into such a republican frenzy there that he spat on the grave of Marie Antoinette. He is not only a republican but a regicide—that is what he is now.
The Minister exposed himself, not only on that occasion by going to Paris, but he also exposed himself in reply to a question put to him by Deputy Smith about eggs. The Minister has been trying, ever since he made the agreement about eggs last year, to misrepresent the situation to the farmers. He sent this circular of the 14th April to the committees of agriculture, a circular which, in fact, was untrue and intended to deceive the farmers with regard to the egg agreement. We discovered to-day from the question put by Deputy Smith that the basic price that the Minister will get for the next two years is 30/8 a great hundred. That is 2/- above the basic price which was in the agreement of 1947 to apply to 1948 and 1949. The Minister succeeded in getting 2/- more, but he did not tell the country that of the £1,330,000 odd that Deputy Smith, when he was Minister for Agriculture, got from the British in order to give the additional amount to bring the price to the farmer up to 3/-, £500,000 or more was left unspent and still in the hands of the British. He did not tell them he left that in British hands in order that they might bring the basic price from 28/8 to 30/8.
The Minister in this circular also made a calculation as to how much extra his agreement would mean for 1950. In the third year of the Fianna Fáil agreement the basic price was only 20/-. That was the minimum price to be guaranteed and it was left open to negotiation to see how much higher it would go. We were satisfied with the two-year agreement and with having some minimum mentioned for the third year, but the Minister made the calculation that the minimum the British agreed to give us for the third year would be the maximum and he made a calculation as to how much more his agreement would make for the year.
That is quite untrue, and the Deputy knows it.
Conduct yourself.
On a point of order. Where a Deputy produces a document and purports to read from it, I submit it is deliberately disorderly to read from the document that which is not in it. I charge the Deputy with doing that now.
The Chair cannot have at his disposal every time a document is read from, the particular document, to see whether it is read in full or not. What I wish to draw the Minister's attention to is that he said the Deputy's statement is untrue and the Deputy knows it. That is a connotation which cannot be allowed to pass in the House and I ask the Minister to withdraw it.
Gladly I withdraw it.
I wish to draw the attention of the Chair to the fact that Deputy Aiken prefaced his introduction of the circular by saying that it was untrue and intended to deceive.
The Deputy should have drawn my attention to that at that time.
I trust the Minister will place on the Table a copy of this document that was sent to committees of agriculture on the 14th April and it will settle the matter. There is no use in arguing about these things. If the document is there it can be seen that for 1950 the Minister calculates that there will be 4,250,000 great hundreds of eggs exported at 1/5 a dozen or 20/- per great hundred, meaning 1/5 to the farmers when expenses are paid. He calculates that in 1950 we would get only 1/5 a dozen and he shows that his agreement means that the farmers will get more in 1950 because they are guaranteed 30/8. The 20/- referred to in the third year of the agreement was a minimum.
As the Minister has no minimum for the third year, I could as truthfully say that the Minister proposes to export 4,500,000 great hundreds of eggs for nothing because there is nothing in the Minister's agreement about the third year. At least we had in the third year a basic minimum of 20/-. The Minister has none. If he calculates and sends out information to the committees of agriculture that they will only get 20/- per great hundred, it would be true for me to say that in the third year they are going to get nothing and they will export their eggs for nothing.
Which is just pure crankiness.
It is absolutely correct and the Minister knows it is correct. What is more, I direct the attention of the committees of agriculture to the reply that the Minister gave to Deputy Smith to-day and to the circular that was sent out to them by the Department of Agriculture on the 14th April last. There is another point about this. The Minister laid down as a principle—a principle which dominated the policy-making aspect of his Department —that when a chicken would put its beak through the shell the farmer would be able to say: "If you are a pullet I know what every egg you lay will fetch during your economic lifetime." That was the principle he laid down. Now when Deputy Smith made the agreement the farmers put eggs to hatch in the month of December, 1947, and in the early months of January and February of 1948. Those farmers were expecting 3/- for 1948 and 1949. Suddenly in the middle of 1949 the Minister comes along and brings the price down to 2/6 because he wants to leave £500,000 in the hands of the British in order to subsidise prices during the operation of this agreement. Why should the Minister give the British "home assistance"? That is what the Minister for Education would call it; he referred to the £1,300,000 that we got from the British in order to give an increased price for eggs as "home assistance". The Minister for Agriculture himself denounced that agreement and said that we were asking the British to come over here and teach us our business.
He himself has asked a lot of other people to come over here and teach us our business, but that is by the way. Why did he leave £500,000 in the hands of the British when he made this agreement? Why did he break the principle he laid down that the farmer must know before the chicken comes out of the egg what the price per dozen will be for the eggs that chicken will lay if it happens to be a pullet? It is no wonder the farmers do not know where they are when the Minister enunciates different principles to suit himself in every particular difficulty.
Another principle that the Minister laid down was that it would be accepting the status of "poor peasant" for our farmers if we were to sell our flax for less than the northern farmers could get from the flax millers, plus what they could get by way of subsidy from the Northern Government. If it is demeaning our farmers to ask them to take less for flax here than the northern farmers can get from the northern millers, plus the subsidy from the Northern Government, how does he stand over asking our farmers to take 6d. less per dozen for eggs than they were getting under Fianna Fáil and about half what the British egg producer is getting? If it is demeaning to our farmers to ask them to take a few pence less per stone for flax, surely it is demeaning to ask them to take half the price for eggs? Let the Minister square that one out.
The Deputy is rambling dismally.
To come back to this agreement and to the old maid and crank who persists in breeding Friesians, the Minister himself was quite an advocate for a breed called "Friesian" a few years ago. I have another quotation for him, in which he said——
He has lost it.
The Minister need not console himself by thinking he can put me off in that fashion.
Send out one of your Sancho-Panzas. Deputy Allen is very fleet of foot on messages like that. Deputy Ó Briain is very good, too.
Last year the Minister said that everybody who bred a Friesian or kept a Friesian or a Jersey was a crank and an old maid.
That is not true.
A couple of years before that at column 1528 of Dáil Debates, 6th June, 1946, the Minister said:
"If we want to go into the kind of dairying industry in which Denmark and New Zealand engage then we ought to go in for the Friesian cow. As a milk machine there is nothing to compare with her."
Hear, hear.
And he wound up by saying that—
"...as a means of producing milk it is fantastic to compare any existing breed with the Friesian cow."
Hear, hear.
And then, two years afterwards, he calls anyone who keeps one of these beasts a crank and an old maid and he calls the beasts themselves "Pekinese breeds." I would like the Minister to square that up when he is replying.
I believe you can read, but you do not seem to be able to.
I want the Minister to square this up for the farmers. He said the Friesians were the best milking machine we could have and it was fantastic to keep any other breed for milk and then the next year——
On a point of order. This is the third time the Deputy has made that identical observation. Is he entitled to keep repeating himself?
I am perfectly certain the Deputies on the Government Benches do not like to hear it. I want to get this straightened out for the farmers. Otherwise where are they? Yesterday, or the day before, in challenging Deputy Lehane it seemed to me that the Minister was going back to what he said in 1946 and not to what he said in 1948. Before the end of this debate will the Minister let us know where he stands in this matter?
I have already told the House that you are stating what is not true.
The Deputies can read the quotation. The people can read the quotation and they can reason quite well. The Minister need not think that because——
You did not give the quotation.
The Minister can gallop off to Paris because he cannot live a lie here. He thought he could shove a lie down everybody's throat.
Read the quotation.
I read the quotation. It is on the records of the House.
You did not read it. This is an amazing technique.
I want to find out where the country stands in relation to cattle prices. The Minister made an agreement last year—an agreement which we always refused to make—to limit our exports to countries other than Britain to a certain percentage of what we sent to Britain. The Minister for External Affairs explained the reason for that limitation.
There is no such agreement.
The Minister for External Affairs said there was.
No, no. You did not get the wheel of your intelligence round the axle of his observation.
The Minister for External Affairs in an interview with the Manchester Guardian in September of last year said:—
"We on our part in the recent trade agreement have agreed to supply meat almost exclusively to Britain at prices far below those we could have obtained by selling elsewhere. I think that the British public appreciate this great gesture of our goodwill and faith in their recovery. These are the real constructive links in the chain upon which Anglo-Irish relationship should be based."
But that is not what you said he said.
What is that quotation taken from?
From the Manchester Guardian, and it is quoted in the Irish Press of September 27th and not contradicted since, although quoted and published almost eight months ago.
And it is not what you said he said.
It was not contradicted although published in a paper in this country. One of the activities, the greatest activity possibly, of this Coalition Government is contradicting things that appear in the Irish Press. That was not contradicted because it is true.
It is not what you said he said.
We shall quote the Minister for Agriculture himself.
Will you apologise for misquoting the other Minister?
The Minister need not think that he is going to put me out by talking that sort of nonsense. I challenge anybody in this House to read what I said and to read the quotations and see if there is any contradiction. It does not matter that the Minister says there is a contradiction. The people of this country are cleverer than the Minister thinks. The Minister is foolish in thinking that the people of this country are big fools. Give them an opportunity and we shall see where they stand.
I shall expose you. You must not try to change the typescript because you will not be let.
That is an activity in which the Minister for Agriculture indulges with great freedom on occasions, as all Deputies who read the volumes and have heard the Minister, know. The Minister did not deny a statement which appeared in the Irish Press on May 5th, when he said to the Irish Shorthorn Breeders' Association that his aim was to export 1,500,000 cattle to Great Britain within the next ten years. Further down he said:
"I am not one bit ashamed of saying that it is a proud assignment if we accept it, to help in time of need to restore as brave and gallant a people as ever defended the world against barbarism single-handed——"
When you were a Nazi.
"——as the British did, some of the amenities they are at present denied."
When you persuaded Mr Hull you were a Nazi.
What is that from?
It is from the Irish Press of May 5th. The Minister went out of his way to throw this fulsome praise at the British, who are still occupying six of our counties, three days after they announced a change in their law to perpetuate Partition.
This has nothing to do with the administration of the Department of Agriculture.
That is the sort of tripe the Minister used. I should like the Minister to cut out that fulsome praise because the only barbarism we ever knew in this country was British barbarism.
I told the Deputy that this has nothing to do with the administration of the Department of Agriculture but he still continues to refer to a matter which has no reference whatever to the administration of the Department.
The Minister has not denied that, last week, speaking to the Irish Shorthorn Breeders' Association, for which we have some provision in this Estimate, he said it was his object, in spite of the fact that they were just after introducing a Bill, which this Parliament repudiated——
The fact that the Minister said it at the Shorthorn Breeders' Association does not make it relevant to this Estimate. The matter itself must be relevant before the Deputy would be in order in introducing it to this discussion.
I hope that on the conclusion of the debate on his Estimate he will let us know where he stands. Is this country going to be tied, as far as these people can tie it, so as to exclude us from the continental market by compelling us to export to the Continent no more than 10 per cent. of the cattle we send to Great Britain? It is a well-known fact that had it not been for the buyers from continental Governments for a number of years past, the price the Irish people got for their cattle would have been very much lower. Since this agreement was made by the present Minister for Agriculture, limiting our total exports to the Continent to 10 per cent. of the amount of our exports to the British——
No such agreement was ever made.
Upon my soul, the Minister is the most astounding creature the world has ever seen. We spent days here discussing the agreement with that 10 per cent. provision in it. The Minister for External Affairs goes over to Britain and assures them it is in the agreement, and he is delighted it is in it, in order that we can show our love——
There is no such statement in the agreement negotiated by the Minister for External Affairs about 10 per cent. to Britain.
There was a reference to the fact that we could get more for the cattle on the Continent, only that we decided, for the love of the British, to send our cattle there.
You are talking about 10 per cent.
Will the Minister tell us, then, about the 10 per cent.?
I will, if you want me, but you must sit down.
I shall sit down.
Sit down then. Article 5 states:
"The Government of Ireland undertake that they will limit their exports of live cattle to countries other than the United Kingdom to 50,000 head in the 1948 season and to a number in subsequent seasons which shall not exceed 10 per cent. of their total exports of live cattle to all countries."
That is from the trade agreement presented to Dáil Éireann by the Minister for External Affairs on July 31st, 1948.
I thought the Minister might delay his entry into a mental hospital for some years, but after hearing that I think he should go there now.
You appear to forget that there was a tough hard battle for that.
We have limited our exports to the Continent to 10 per cent. of our total live exports to England.
Can I explain that again to the Deputy? It is a slow process but we will get it in by reading it again and again:
"The Government of Ireland undertake that they will limit their exports of live cattle to countries other than the United Kingdom to 50,000 head in the 1948 season and to a number in subsequent seasons which shall not exceed 10 per cent. of their total exports"——
A Deputy
Spell it.
That would not help.
——"of live cattle t-o a-l-l c-o-u-n-t-r-i-e-s."
I wish the farmers of this country who are dependent for their livelihood upon the policy of the Minister for Agriculture had been in this House to see that exhibition.
Now do not be a silly-billy.
They would say that it is a poor opposition that that had to be done for.
I will give the Minister an hour and ten minutes to finish if he wishes but I will conclude by asking him what he thinks the country gained——
Some of your Sancho-Panza brigade are very indignant about that. They think their Don Quixote should not sweep them away.
Leave the classics out of this and get on with the debate.
We might quote a parable from Don Quixote because never did I see anybody behave so much like Don Quixote as the Minister when surrounded by sheep which he thinks are an enemy army.
Get on with the Estimate.
Will the Minister tell the House what advantage there was, in the effort to get our farmers to use more fertilisers and lime, in getting the Holmes Report. I read the Holmes Report and; like a lot of other reports written by agricultural experts, it was interesting, but there are at least half-a-dozen Irish experts I could name who could, in order to persuade Irish farmers to drain their land or improve it, write a better book than Mr. Holmes's. I think some of the advice he gave was open to grave doubt. I do not think that a lot of the New Zealand seeds which he proposes to broadcast here are anything like as good as native seeds. There is nothing produced in New Zealand or even in Aberstwyth to come up to the multi-leaved cocksfoot bred in Glasnevin ten years ago.
Before Mr. Holmes wrote his book I wish the Minister had explained to him that our low level of production in 1947 was due to weather as much as to deficiencies. Without a great increase in fertilisers we increased some production by 50 per cent. and others by 33?rd per cent. in 1948. With regard to Mr. Holmes's insult to the Irish people—if we are to take it as an insult—when he said that he had seen lands produce as little as lands could possibly do under Irish climatic conditions, there are millions of acres of land in every country in the world as bad, and millions of acres in New Zealand and a greater percentage of it than here. We admit that there is high development in certain sections of New Zealand but in other sections there is low development.
That is called et tu quooue among schoolboys.
Although the Minister for Agriculture did stuff him with a lot of things that were unreliable, he might easily have dropped that out. I would say to him if I saw him that the book would be more valuable and likely to be read with more sympathy if he had not in his introduction hurled that at us. I would not like to see any good effects that might come of it nullified by a useless and unwarranted ukase of that kind. I want to give the Minister time to reply, and I hope to goodness he will give the farmers of this country who are looking for a line of policy some good definite line on the policy he intends to pursue while he remains in charge of agriculture.
Oh, the addendum is availed of.
I will not delay the Minister very long, because having read his quotation from the trade agreement, and as he is an ardent republican, I am sure he will be very busy during the next few months seeking alternative markets for our cattle as a result of recent legislation.
What does the Deputy mean?
The Minister will discover at the next election. Before I say something which intimately concerns the people of my constituency and the Minister's——
What does the Deputy mean?
I said I did not intend to delay the House, because after your reading the quotation from the trade agreement you would be very busy seeking an alternative market for our cattle.
Why, Deputy? We have the trade agreement.
That is all right. It is a matter for you. I am not Minister. Before I refer to matters intimately concerning the small farmers of my county I would like to refer to what is known as "white" flour. I would like to refer to it purely from a medical point of view. The Minister took the occasion of a visit to Castleblayney to make an announcement that the price of the best-quality bread and flour would remain but that as from the 15th January, white flour would be on the market at this fantastic price you all know. If the best-quality bread and flour already existed, what was the object of introducing an alternative quality, an inferior quality?
To collect taxation.
I am glad that the Minister answered correctly.
It is nothing but a luxury.
In other words, it is one of the many trick-of-the-loop devices invented by this Government to provide revenue and erroneously convey to the public that it was not going to increase the cost of living.
Is not the 85 per cent. flour more nutritious?
I think it is agreed that you have already asserted yourself that the best quality from the dietitians' point of view, in the opinion of dietitians, was the quality that already existed in the country.
The commodity that intimately concerns the Minister's constituents and mine is first of all potatoes for which he promised over £10 per ton. We are now getting £5 per ton for them and as the Minister knows—or perhaps he does not know—there is a glut of this commodity in County Monaghan.
He promised 45/- per barrel for oats. As a result of his protestations from platform and Press, 47,000 extra acres of oats were grown in this country. With what result? I appealed to you some time ago in connection with this glut of oats and asked you for suggestions and the only answer you gave me was that if I had any isolated case it would be dealt with. Might I refer the Minister to a letter I got following this answer from one of his constituents?
Are you going to give me the letter?
I will hand it over to you but I will read it to the House first. It has not been replied to and it was written on the 28th February.
I have had so many Balbriggan widows.
"Dear Sir,
Seeing the reply given to you by the Minister for Agriculture regarding the sale of oats I wish to supply you with the following facts. Last spring I took 4½ acre of conacre——"
that the Minister is so fond of—
——for oats at £7 10s. 0d. per acre. I paid £10 for getting it ploughed by tractor. The harrowing and sowing I did with my own horses. I put seed oats in it at £3 per barrel. It was a success! The earth yielded forth its fruit in abundance. After plenty of hardship and expense (as it was four miles from home) I succeeded in getting it to the stage of threshing. I got it threshed but not sold. I have 80 barrels bushelling the required standard but no one wants it. I went to Dundalk and to Magee's, Ardee——"
I am sure the Minister knows the place referred to.
——"a registered merchant. He had no storage space. That was in January about the time that Dillon said in the Seanad that the amount of oats offered for sale wouldn't cover the floors of the merchants' stores. This merchant showed me his stores and one floor was propping the other with oats——"
Just get a load of that.
——"He said to call again in February. I did, with the same result. I have tried all the towns around, some would agree to take it at 23/-per barrel. That's no good. I expect there are plenty in the same boat as myself but why did the Minister for Agriculture encourage people to grow oats and then let them down in such a fashion. He needn't be showing his indifference. It is a serious case. I suppose there will be no redress."
I will give the Minister the letter and he may reply to it, as I have not done so yet.
The gentleman in question might have written to the Department or to me last February.
I assure the Minister he did not.
Did the Deputy write to me about it?
We are tired writing to the Department about these things.
Did the Deputy write?
I certainly did not bring it to the Minister's notice.
Surely, then, the Deputy is the one who is at fault?
This is not an isolated instance. The Minister's panacea for all this glut of oats and potatoes is to feed it to live stock. I did not know, until he became Minister for Agriculture, that rats were included amongst live stock. He mentions about farmers having taken conacre at £7 10s. an acre. It is his declared intention to do away with the conacre system. Is he aware of the type of constituents he represents? If conacre were done away with in County Monaghan, there would not be a living for half the people there. Fortunately, even in his own constituency, the people have become so accustomed to him that they pay no heed to his eruptions concerning conacre, horses to ploughs, inspectors on land, and so on.
We now come to the interesting question of flax, which intimately concerns people of the constituency. Deputy Mrs. Rice very innocently asked a question early in February concerning the price of flax for the coming season and, to our utter astonishment—it must be remembered that the Minister, Deputy Rice and myself represent the constituency of County Monaghan, one of the best flax-growing counties in the country—we heard the Minister upbraiding Deputy Rice for embarrassing him in his negotiations with the flax-spinners. He informed us that these negotiations had commenced the previous June. This question was put early in February of this year. There was a complete vacancy from June until December, when the negotiations were resumed. Where was the Minister from June to December, if he was not attending to a matter of such urgent importance to the small farmers—and the women, particularly—of County Monaghan? Of course, he was flying his kite in the United States, escaping the declaration of the republic and speaking to the Americans and the British people and making suggestions to them as to how to ensure for the future the invulnerability of England from the new republic.
The Deputy fought for England.
Not exactly.
The Deputy himself was in the British Navy.
Yes, I was, and I am not a damn bit ashamed of it. As I told Deputy Collins in the debate on the Budget, better Irishmen than he or I have served the British Government in one capacity or another—and Deputy Collins, of all Deputies in the House, should be aware of that.
A lot of them fought under their own colours.
We will see what colours Deputy Collins will fight under, if ever he gets the chance, and he will be a great help to the country when the time comes.
I served this Flag when I was asked.
I was listening to Deputy Collins on a former occasion making this assertion.
I served six years in our own Army.
What Army?
The Army of this country.
I was making a rough calculation and it is interesting to think that, when some of us were making our contribution towards the effort by this country for independence, Deputy Collins was kicking the bottom out of his cradle.
On a point of order, I would like to know if this is relevant to the debate on agriculture.
Do you mean the interruption by Deputy Collins?
A Deputy
Deputy Coburn.
I served six years in our Army, when Deputy Maguire was serving in the British Navy.
A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I appeal to you for permission to speak. The Minister proceeds to upbraid Deputy Rice and myself for embarrasing him in connection with negotiations which were afoot at the time, not in December but in February. In connection with flax, conacre had been taken at the time and the seed was ready to go in. The Minister does not think for a moment, and cannot believe, that we would prefer to embarrass financially the small farmers of County Monaghan than to embarrass the Minister in his negotiations, which should have been completed at the time and for months previously. If it were a thing that he saw, as he should have seen if he had any brains at all, that negotiations in connection with flax prices with the northern spinners were going to be difficult, it was his duty to consult with the people primarily responsible, namely, the flax growers, as to the price they would accept.
Another point is that, before eventually coming to a decision in the matter, he should have called the flax growers together and asked them what was the lowest price they would take, before he would tell the one buyer he had for this valuable commodity to go to blazes, as he boasted in this House. No businessman with any sense, knowing he had only one buyer for his commodity, would tell the buyer to go to blazes and hope eventually, when the flax was grown, that this buyer would come along and give the price required. He was offered 31/3 in June for 4,000 tons of Grade 5 and was offered, I admit, 32/- for 2,000 tons in December. As a result of the Minister's impetuosity and his attitude, unbefitting a Minister, the unfortunate flax growers had eventually to go behind his back and accept 28/3. The Minister ought to be ashamed of himself. That means to the people a loss of £120,000 in flax alone.
I do not blame the Minister—he is entirely unaware, he is not au fait or conversant with the struggle of the small farmers of County Monaghan or the women farmers of County Monaghan. He does not realise, because he is very seldom there, that it is on the flax crop that the small farmers there, and the women particularly, depend to pay their shop debts at the end of the year. I know young fellows who have taken, in their spare time, conacre for flax and have made quite a lot of money out of it. It is a blow to these ordinary labouring chaps. The Minister turns up his nose and gives the impression that he is a great patriot in refusing this, saying that he would not stand this from the northern spinners. If he would not stand us accepting less than the northern flax growers, why did he ask the farmers to accept 3/- a dozen for their eggs when, at the same time, Englishmen were getting 4/- a dozen? There must be some commonsense amongst us. We were not in the least reluctant to accept the price offered by the northern people. We would have accepted it and the Minister knows that, too late, of course. Then he goes down to Scotstown in County Monaghan, even after the price had been settled, and tells the farmers that they should not grow flax. Why? Jealousy, because he was not in at the death. As bad as the price is, I am hoping they will make something out of it.
We have heard about our farmers accepting 3/- a dozen for eggs while the British farmers get 4/-. Under this trade agreement the Minister, with the usual blare of trumpets, announces the glad tidings to the people that in future they will get 3/-a dozen, and the more eggs, the better price they will get. He calls himself a businessman, but anybody with an ounce of sense will know that the more plentiful a commodity the less the price must eventually be. Then, just as the people had responded to the drive and the price of 3/- a dozen, he gets up in County Donegal and announces a drop of 6d. a dozen which, to the vast majority of the farmers of Monaghan—I am referring to the small farmers—means a loss of £2 a week in income. He assured us that we were to get 3/- per dozen. As the people believed, for the rest of their days, the English people were prepared and were glad to pay 3/- per dozen for the privilege of being drowned with this commodity.
He has abandoned compulsory tillage, and nowhere more than in his own constituency is that having such a desperate effect. There is scarcely a day I hold a dispensary that some men do not come into me hoping I will discover something wrong with them in order to put them on national health insurance.
You have great respect for your neighbours.
I know families of three and four who have not done a stroke of work since before Christmas for the reason that the neighbouring farmers, and the Minister knows them very well, have abandoned tillage and have left these men high and dry. The Minister may say that there is alternative employment for these men in Ballyshannon and on the bogs. The Minister must try to get down to their level.
Another Balbriggan widow. Will the Deputy name them?
Name whom?
The people who cannot get work.
I will give you their names any time you want them—they are constituents of yours.
These people who came to you fraudulently to certify them for national health insurance.
I am not asserting that at all.
Did you not assert it a moment ago?
I did not.
That is what you said— that they came in to you hoping that you would find something wrong with them.
If they got employment on turf work or at Ballyshannon, you would think it damned well good enough for them. You have no use for this type of people.
I would not charge them publicly with fraud.
I am charging you with fraud. You must remember that if these people——
Is the Deputy addressing the Chair?
Yes. If these people go to Ballyshannon or to work on the bogs, it means they must keep two houses going. They have to pay for their "grub" at their work and send back their money to keep their wives and families at home, so that these State schemes have no attraction for them. I consider that the Minister, since he took office, has, due to his ineptitude, contributed more to the encouragement of emigration from this country by his encouragement of grass and his discouragement of flax, together with his abandonment of compulsory tillage, than any other economic factor operating in this country at present.
I did not intend to speak at all.
Chance it—it is no harm.
I have the same legal and constitutional right to speak and be heard here as the Ministers. The administration of the Minister for Agriculture has been subjected to a very caustic review by Deputies, from my colleague, Deputy Corry, to my opposite number, Deputy Madden, although he applied the soft soap, and I would not have spoken were it not for a remark by my namesake, Deputy Seán Collins, while Deputy Maguire was speaking. I will be very honest and sincere about the points I want to raise. Last year, I spoke about farm improvements and I was very disappointed that the farm improvement scheme for 1948 should have been suspended.
It was not suspended.
It was, absolutely.
Not for an hour.
On the Minister's own admission, 23,000 applications were received in his Department and they were deferred for consideration until August of 1948. We have now, as a result of pressure which has been brought to bear on him, an undertaking that, for 1949, the farm improvement scheme will be operated as it was intended by his predecessor. In that connection, I should like to say that farm improvement schemes were matters on which all members were at one.
It was not suspended for an hour and is not now suspended.
Do not try to persuade me. The Minister must be honest with the House and with the people. It was suspended for 1948. The Minister said that 23,000 farmers made application in 1948 under the farm improvement scheme, which applications were passed on to the senior supervisors of the Department. I challenge any member of Clann na Poblachta or Fine Gael to contradict what I say in that respect.
The farm improvement scheme was not suspended for an hour, for a minute or for a second, and it is still in operation.
If the Minister is sincere in wishing to implement fully this scheme which was inaugurated in 1947, it is necessary, in view of the increase in wages and the extra costs of materials, that he should increase the grant by at least 25 per cent.
With regard to milk, I represent the dairying County of Limerick, although I cannot claim to be the senior Deputy, and I am convinced that it is useless to make any further pleas to the Minister with regard to our dairy farmers. I believe that the Minister has definitely closed and double-bolted the door. To use an expression that has current application, I believe he has put on the double bolts in a Basil Brooke fashion. I would like to tell the Fine Gael people that they are wronging him to this extent: they come to my county and say: "Unfortunately, we have not the right Minister for Agriculture. If he was one of our men, we might do better for the dairy farmers." In fairness to the Minister, the full responsibility should not be placed on his shoulders for saying "No." The refusal to grant an extra 2d. a gallon to the dairy farmers of Limerick should be the collective responsibility of the Government. I would like that to be recorded. It is not fair. I do not want to mention names, but we have Fine Gael Deputies saying that.
Tell us who they are Name them.
I need not name them for Deputy Morrissey. It is not fair.
Do not run away from it.
I am not running away. I name Deputy Madden. That is a queer one for you, and I never in my life told a lie and I never will. I will always stand behind the truth. I would not like to wrong the man. It is the collective responsibility of the Fine Gael Party and the people who are in the Government who have refused to give our dairy farmers an extra two pence a gallon.
Is that the solution to the dairying problem, to raise the price of milk?
It is not. I strove to make a case for an increase in the price of milk for the dairy farmers of Limerick. I can make the same case to-day. I put it to any decent Deputy on the Government side that the Limerick farmers cannot produce milk at the present price of 1/2. I would ask the Minister to remember that we have not developed to the extent of having winter dairying in this country. In the district that I come from, the extreme part of West Limerick, from November to May, the farmers do not receive a penny for milk. That is not the fault of our economy. It is due to a certain set of circumstances over which we have no control. I admired Deputy Smith when, in 1947, on succeeding Dr. Ryan as Minister for Agriculture, he gave us 1/2 and 1/4, but 1/4 for winter dairying in my part of the country is no good to us at the moment. I would like to come down like a ton of bricks on the Minister for Agriculture because he has refused to give us an increase, but we should be fair. I do not like the Fine Gael people, just because they want to keep their barometer reading at a steady level, to come to my area and say: "Were it not for the fact that Deputy Dillon is Minister for Agriculture, if we had somebody who belongs to our own Party, we could do better." I want to nail that here and now. It is the collective responsibility of the Fine Gael Party and the Coalition as a whole that our dairy farmers did not get the increase they deserve. There is one other matter that I want to deal with—lime and fertiliser.
Deputy Kitt has to load Deputy Collins now.
No. I always stand on my own feet, thanks be to God, and nobody will ever shake me off them. While I appreciate the lime scheme, I would suggest that the grants that are made available by the Department to the county committees of agriculture for burnt lime should be increased. I have met several farmers in my constituency who are much keener on buying burnt lime than crushed lime. Comparatively speaking, the price is not much higher and they tell me that the results are quicker with burnt lime. The amount of the grant given by the Department to the Limerick County Committee of Agriculture is not sufficient to meet the number of applications received in the last three or four years from farmers in West Limerick. Does the Minister consider that burnt lime is as good and as cheap as the crushed lime which, I understand, is being produced at Fermoy and which is very handy for spreading but which has not reached my area yet? We would ask that the Department would give our county committee of agriculture an increased grant in that respect.
In connection with fertilisers, there is another matter that I want to raise. Some Kerrymen are here and I think they will agree with me. In Limerick, where there is a heavy, loamy soil, there is another fertiliser available that has a manurial value and a great physical value, that is, sea sand. The sea sand that we can get is 65 per cent. lime. Its physical value is of great importance. It is absolutely invaluable both for tillage and grass on that particular land. I would like the Minister to consider any representations that may be made by our county committee of agriculture to his Department and to give us whatever he thinks is fair as a fertiliser subsidy under the heading of sea sand. It has been a great blessing to us in the West. If the Minister thinks it fair or practicable, I would ask him to say, when he is concluding, that he will give consideration to the suggestions or representations that may have been made by our county committee of agriculture.
Next I wish to deal with the poultry industry. The poultry industry, notwithstanding all the criticism that we have heard in this debate, has taken root. Our people and the Department have thrown their weight behind it and we all hope that this scheme will be a success. I say very honestly and sincerely that the one danger I see is in the possibility that we are placing all our eggs in the British basket. There is an awful danger. History has a peculiar knack of repeating itself. There is a danger in pandering to the British. In connection with the poultry and egg industry, I would ask the Minister has he made, or is he making, any effort to try to procure alternative markets for this industry that is going ahead at the moment? It is no harm to recall what the Minister said last year. He said he would drown the British with eggs. I told him last year, when I made my maiden speech, that if he gave a price to the dairy farmers of Limerick, we would choke him with butter. I would suggest to the Minister that he should be mighty careful. I know he has great grádh for the British. I have not and never will. I will never depend on them.
He has a grádh for the farmers.
I wonder has he.
He has.
And remember this. There are people sitting over there, who are supporting the Minister for Agriculture at the moment, and if they got their freedom to speak their minds they would speak as I am speaking.
There is nothing to stop them.
Deputy Collins is wrong. I say that on behalf of all supporters of the Government on this side of the House.
Will Deputy Palmer tell me, for the purpose of having it on the records of this House, that he depends on John Bull?
Who is this "John Bull"? What about Seán Buidhe?
The man you admire, the Minister for Agriculture, is the man who said 12 months ago that he would drown them with eggs.
At 2/6 a dozen.
Whatever you like. I do not want to dwell on what has happened in regard to this country recently. Every member of the House realises the position. John Bull has played an ugly part, as far as this nation is concerned, within the past fortnight—as he has done for generations past.
What about John Brown?
If we want to live in this country and preserve a good agricultural economy, either under the heading of beef or poultry, I would say in all sincerity to the Deputies opposite not to place too much reliance on John Bull. I would seriously suggest that if it is within the power of the Government to do so they should seek continental markets for our cattle and eggs. I appeal to the Government to make a sincere and energetic effort to find those markets rather than to pass everything we have over to John Bull. I am telling the Minister for Agriculture, with a full realisation of what I am saying, that the more we pander to John Bull the more he will put his heel down on us.
I want to say a word on behalf of the officials of the Department. We are in the poultry industry at home and we are playing our part as ordinary honest citizens. I would point out that there are in the Department junior poultry instructresses who, I understand, are badly paid. I would ask the Minister to take some cognisance of the great work they are doing from dawn till dusk. If the scheme is going to be a success I believe that those junior poultry instructresses— who are working throughout the country and who are, so to speak, carrying out in toto the instructions of the Department—should be better paid.
In conclusion, I want to pay a tribute to the underdog—the under-worker who is the foundation of any industry we have in this State. I would recommend the Minister to give him a fair break.
In concluding this debate, before I turn to the myriad topics that have been touched upon, I want to reaffirm my faith in parliamentary democracy, even after what we have witnessed here during the past five days. The system of parliamentary democracy we have in this country is the greatest instrument of human freedom that has ever been formed. I do not deny that on a grave occasion, under prudent leadership, an opposition may legitimately, in defence of fundamental rights, threatened by a tyrannical majority, resort to all the devices that the rules of Parliament permit in order to ventilate their grievance. But there is no precedent since this Parliament sat first in this country for the shameless misuse of its power and privileges that we have seen during the last five days. The Leader of the Opposition in this House has, in his own rôle, as significant a parliamentary office as has the Taoiseach himself. I direct his specific attention, as Leader of the Opposition, to the printed record of the proceedings of this House last night. After four days' deliberate malicious obstruction, so hopelessly exposed was the Opposition that I charge that the printed record of this House will show to anyone who reads it that shortly before 10 o'clock last night the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Lemass, came in here for the purpose of breaking up the proceedings in a riot.
On a point of order, Sir, you were in the Chair last night when I was in the House. You recollect that I took no part whatever in the proceedings except to protest against the persistent interruption of Deputies by the Minister for Agriculture. Is that not correct?
There were 113 interruptions.
I leave the written record to speak for itself but I want to remind the House of this—that the circumstances of this nation at this moment demand, above all, that we should provide the traducers of this country with no material for slandering us more foully than they may have already tried.
What about talking about agriculture?
You were talking about the navy a while ago.
The persons who risk at this time—simply for the purpose of venting their contemptible vicious spleen on one individual—the whole reputation of our Parliament are in my judgment so maddened by irresponsibility as to be unfit for public life.
Because the Minister was criticised.
I heard the deputy Leader of the Opposition get up here last night and say, with the Leas-Cheann Comhairle then presiding:—
"If this is not ended, we ought to wind up the session on the ground that it is impossible to carry on."
And I was referring to the persistent interruptions by the Minister.
That application was made in the immediate proximity to the user of language by Deputy Corry which constituted a clear breach of order; the user of which was designed to elicit from the Chair an order to withdraw, to be followed by a refusal, a scene, and then a further demand from the deputy Leader of the Opposition to wind up Dáil Éireann—that we had ended the day like cats and dogs, unfit to sit down in our own Parliament and, by free debate, resolve our differences. Fortunately, by the prudence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and the restraint and generosity of certain Deputies on this side of the House, insults, scurrility and affront were allowed to pass and thus the public degradation of this House by those who sought to achieve it to cover their own ignominy was avoided. Shame on a man who was 15 years a Minister in the Government of Ireland——
What about the farmers now?
——and who is now the deputy Leader of the Opposition in this House to be a party to that transaction. Are not the proceedings that attended the discussion of my Estimate part of my Estimate? Am I to sit five days while all the filth and all the scurrility that degraded Party is capable of pouring forth is poured upon me and not to be permitted to characterise their contemptible conduct for what it is?
What fools they are, hoping and praying to scramble back to office, after the first 12 months, making up their minds that that cock is not going to fight and asking themselves: "How are we going to get them out; how are we going to get back?" and then the device: "We will concentrate all our venom on one member of the Government and, if we can destroy him, we destroy all." Fools that they are, they do not understand that to concentrate their attack upon me renders me more secure with every bit of filth they hurl upon me. I do not work with colleagues of a character that they would understand. I do not work with colleagues who begin to look for an opportunity of running away from the individual in their ranks on whom the enemy fire for the moment may be concentrated. Fire away. The more Deputies of that Party are put up, the more their utter degradation is revealed.
Ineptitude, scurrility and worse, which I am about to prove, untruth, have been the instruments employed in this debate by the Fianna Fáil Party; most of it of that subtle kind so difficult to expose until Deputy Killilea, the agile performer, entered the ring. He had his Balbriggan widow like all the rest of them, the nameless and oppressed creature who came crying to his door that she had mountains of potatoes and had been promised £10 per ton for them and was only given a tithe of that. The Minister promised Deputy Killilea's constituents £10 per ton. Deputy Killilea is reminded that his memory has played him false, that the £10 13s. 6d. applied to potatoes f.o.b. at the port. Is Deputy Killilea consternated? Not at all. He says: "I was at the port and I saw the farmers bring them there." He forgot for the moment that the only person who can bring potatoes to a port is a registered exporter. If Deputy Killilea had gone with his farmer to the port, he would have been summoned for his pains. The fact is that he never went to the port; that there was no Balbriggan widow; that there were no potatoes which the poor, downtrodden farmer could not sell. Deputy Killilea had a widow, Deputy Ó Briain had a widow, Deputy somebody else had a widow; but we could never find out the widow's name. We will never find out the widow who went with Deputy Killilea to load sacks of potatoes on to the boat at Galway Bay. Poor Deputy Killilea, we must not blame him.
But, when we come on to an old warrior like Deputy Allen, he carries his Balbriggan widow in his hands. There is an air of verisimilitude about his problem, because his widow takes the form of the Book of Estimates and he is going to read from them for us to reveal the Minister's iniquity. He says that he is pained and shocked when he turns to sub-head G (3) and finds that, ample provision having always been made for fertilisers by the Fianna Fáil Government, the iniquitous Government now in office has not made any provision for them.
Let us see what provision the Fianna Fáil Government made, and then let us see, having made the provision, what they did with it. In 1945-6, this public-spirited Fianna Fáil Administration provided £120,000 in the Estimates for fertilisers. The Minister for Agriculture of that day wept to think that he could do no more but offer this pittance and all his colleagues gathered around and said: "While a provision of £120,000 is all you can make, you can do better next year" and he said "Please God" and we passed the Estimate. Do you know what the decent man spent in subsidising fertilisers that year? It would be well to have a little guessing competition. He spent £1,463 out of the £120,000 and the rest went back into the Government's left breeches' pocket and the boys knew nothing about it. They are so simple, poor creatures, that you can do that kind of thing with them and have them behind you and they never know anything about it. But, vigilance personified, they wanted to know next year what uncle was going to do for the farmer that year after all he did for them the previous year and they were told: "This year all we can do is to provide £77,400," and sympathy was expressed, but they were content.
That year a very strange transaction came to light. They spent £18,395 and then they discovered that the year before the fertiliser manufacturers had plucked the public for £39,512, and they took back from the fertiliser manufacturers what they had charged in excess profits to the farmers in 1944-45. That Liberal Government in 1946-47 bestowed it on farmers amidst loud praise. Deputies understand what this business ultimately became. The distribution of the modest sum for 1947-48, the year before we came into office, came along. There was an appropriation of £198,750—it just missed £200,000. Do you know how they spent it? They gave £19,058 to the manure manufacturers because they said they had not made enough profit. Now, knowing that I have those figures in my hand, did you hear them hold forth the whole day and last week comparing the deplorable record of this Government in subsidising fertilisers with their record of lavish benefaction? The only difference between this Administration and the Administration that went before is that we made the fertiliser manufacturers cough up their unjust profits and sell their manures to the farmers cheaper, without subsidy, than they ever sold when they were getting doles of £19,000, £18,000 and £1,463 in the years that went before. I guarantee to the House that that process will be continued and that no manure ring or any other ring will be allowed to batten on our people or be paid to do so as long as the present Government is in office.
That is the first fruit of honest Deputy Denis Allen's contribution to our proceedings but not the last. He did not really become lachrymose until he reached I (3). The poor—and his voice broke a little—hard working Connemara people. For the scheme to encourage the commercial production of glass-house crops in Gaeltacht areas Fianna Fáil provided £77,438 and this Government only provided £13,456. I told him to turn to page 145 and, if the House remembers, he was like a cat on a hot brick for about ten minutes trying to avoid turning to page 145. If he had turned he would have discovered that last year, of the £77,000 odd that was provided £73,000 odd was expended on the erection of propagating houses, packing sheds and glass-houses themselves. Did he want me to erect another propagating house? Did he want me to erect another packing shed? Did he want me to duplicate all the capital expenditure in connection with the existing scheme or did he want to suggest to this House that, while liberal expenditure was made on this scheme last year, drastic economies were being made this year? The fact is that I warned the House on this repeatedly although I deliberately refrained from giving it publicity lest it should discourage the growers.
In the Gortahork glass-houses bacterial canker has reappeared this year. I have sent down to Gortahork the leading botanic expert in these islands on that matter and he is there now. I am not without hope that we may bring this business under control. If that disease spreads there is an end of this experiment. Every resource of the Department is now expended to circumscribe it and to ensure that it will not spread. As the Deputies from Donegal know, it wrought considerable havoc on the crops last year. Every device that was known to science was employed during the winter to disinfect the houses and the soil and to fumigate every place where the spoor of that bacteria could survive. Despite the employment of every device known to science, that bacteria reappeared and again all the resources of the Department and outside the Department, including, in my opinion, the advice of the best botanists in this matter in these islands, were invoked for the protection of this enterprise. Nothing public expenditure can do to secure a fair chance for this experiment is being, has been, or will be left undone. Why then does Deputy Allen waste his time and the time of this House in manifesting misrepresentations of the figures before him, knowing, as I believe he knew, their true significance but desiring to create in the minds of most Deputies of this House an entirely false impression?
What is the use of people making the case that an industry is in the process of disintegration when the facts are that the total production of milk carried to the creameries up to the 5th May this year is the highest figure since 1939? In 1939 there were 28,134,620 gallons. In this year in the same period 27,753,000 gallons approximately have gone to the retailers. The daily consumption of milk in the City of Dublin between 1939 and 1949 has gone up from 40,000 to 50,000 gallons in round figures.
The daily consumption in Cork is about 9,000 gallons as it was ten years ago. Coming into the City of Dublin now are about 4,000 gallons in excess of the demand for it and we have to divert that milk from the liquid milk market into the chocolate crumb factories in this city. I want to see enough milk for everybody. I hope my friend, Deputy Hickey, will give me credit for this, that in one 12 months, whether it was the providence of God in my despite, or with me as His instrument, I have created a surplus of milk in the City of Dublin for the first time since the Dublin Milk Board was set up. That is not bad going, no matter what way you look at it.
Of course, it was not as a result of anything I did, but it is none the less true that with a higher consumption of butter in this country than ever was known before, unless some unprecedented catastrophe takes place between now and the end of July, we will have an exportable surplus of butter for the first time since 1941. On top of that, far from having any shortage of butter, if Deputy Hickey or any other Deputy of this House will get me a domestic market for all the farmers' butter that we can manufacture this year, they are heartily welcome to use it all, every pound of it without control, without ration, without question and without investigation of any kind.
The direction I got from the Government was to raise production. According to Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party the dairy industry is destroyed, the liquid milk producers are ruined. If they are they seem to enjoy it because they are bringing more ruination on themselves than they have done in the last ten years. The more ruination I bring on them the more milk they produce and the more farmers come into the milk business. More farmers are sending milk into the Dublin milk supply area than ever before and every day there are new farmers beginning to send milk to the various creameries. I have got to organise some kind of subsidiary creamery service to go up into South Galway in the Gort area to draw milk out of that area because if I do not they will smother us in butter.
I move to report progress.
Progress reported. Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 20th May, 1949.