I want to-day, in a factual approach to these problems, to correct misapprehension where it exists and to expose fraud and deception where it has been attempted. For a very long time the Fianna Fáil Party in this country has sought to propagate the falsehood that those who are not subservient to its leadership had no true appreciation of what form the agricultural industry should take in this country, and, by the use of a continuous stream of falsehood and by the use of a body of their weak-minded creatures that constitute the bulk of the Party who were provided with written pieces to go around from corner to corner and bawl from the ditches, they have largely succeeded in imposing on the poorer quality of their followers the illusion that they believe in tillage and that nobody else does. Long before the name of Fianna Fáil was ever heard in this country, a very distinguished public servant, the late Mr. Patrick Hogan, laid down the sound fundamentals for a successful agricultural policy in this country in a very telling phrase: "One more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough," and in that aphorism he emphasised that mixed farming is what provides the maximum employment on the land of Ireland and provides the maximum return from the land of Ireland, and involves for its successful performance, the maximum tillage, in intelligent rotation, for the most effective exploitation of the resources with which our people have been blessed by the Lord Almighty.
The result of the practice of that policy from 1922 to 1931 was that when a storm of unprecedented fury swept the world, bringing down Governments and nations and shaking the foundations of the very United States itself, an economic survey of the world, at the darkest hour of that international disaster, brought Ireland under review and said that it was a matter of amazement to the surveyors of the state of the world that one country, which ordinarily might have been expected to suffer as much as any other: that one country, whose resources were by no means abundant, stood out amongst the nations of the world as, apparently, having suffered less than any other in the economic tornado that was sweeping so many to their ruin and destruction. Our people, in that hour, in the exercise of the glorious freedom we enjoy, exercised their undoubted constitutional right in the sphere of politics to do wrong, and, glorying in the right to do wrong in the sphere of politics, they marched to the polls and they rejected the Government which stood for that policy. They installed Fianna Fáil and economic self-sufficiency, whereupon the whole world, having gone through the martyrdom of this economic catastrophe, began to stagger to its feet and, slowly and painfully, to climb up the mountain side down which it had come crashing, and, as the rest of the civilised world crept upwards, what was its astonishment to meet one modest pilgrim marching with its head erect down the hill, deliberately, resolutely and determinedly under the leadership of that God-given leader, Eamon dé Valera.
From 1932 to 1948, with firm, unyielding step, they reduced the output of milk, they reduced the output of butter, they reduced the output of every crop per acre that is grown in this country, they reduced the number of cattle, they reduced the number of pigs, they reduced the quantity of grass that could grow. They evolved, I think as the first country in Europe, a variety of grass that would fill a cow's stomach and yet that would let her die of starvation where she stood— for that is the correct description of aphosphorosis. I have seen cattle in this country eat their fill of green grass and lie down to die of starvation.
And, in that interesting hour, the unexpected happened. Nobody is more willing to concede than I am that when I stood for election at the last general election in County Monaghan I would have laid 40 to 1 against myself as Minister for Agriculture. But it is the odd chance often that saves a nation, and I suppose the good Lord determined that this country had been faithful for so long, it had borne de Valera on its back long enough, and this Government came into office and removed him.
What I want, if I can, is finally to lay the bogey that Fianna Fáil was the promoter of tillage and that their opponents desired to prevent it. Sometimes I cannot help feeling that some of my own colleagues, having listened for 15 years to the symphonic braying of the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, have allowed certain echoes of that braying to lodge themselves in their minds. I heard some of my colleagues say: "If our Minister was opposed to tillage we would be opposed to him." I want to submit to my colleagues that that is as rational as saying that "if our Minister declared it to be his intention to spend the rest of his life walking on his hands, we would represent to the Taoiseach that it was time to suggest to him that it would be more becoming if he were to walk on his feet." But, you see, the implication of that prudent reservation is, "well, probably he is a little bit daft, but he is not quite as daft as that."
I have frequently said, and I want to say it again, that one of the most valuable crops that we can grow on our soil and with our climate and our markets is grass. But grass is a crop, and it is a crop that must find its place in a rotation of crops. You can have the kind of grass that rational farmers need, not the grass that fills a cow's stomach before she lies down to die of starvation—that is Fianna Fáil grass. But real grass, nourishing grass, produces milk that is the source, the ultimate source, of almost every food the human race consumes. That kind of grass is one crop in a rotation of crops and there is no other way of getting it, because if you leave permanent grass over a protracted period undisturbed, the finer and more valuable grass would in the ordinary course of nature be suppressed, the coarse, less nutritious grass would prevail, and the sward would lose from half to two-thirds of its nutritive capacity.
To that general rule there are exceptions. In Wiltshire in England and in the County Meath in Ireland there are certain fattening swards of venerable age and nobody knows the explanation of why they have that quality. I brought to these grasslands in Meath some of the most distinguished scientists, who are authorities upon soil science and the botany of grass. I asked them if they could explain how it was that in County Meath you had one field on one side of a hedge which would fatten a beast, whereas the field on the other side of the hedge would only bring a beast to the stage of a forward store. They told me they had seen the same phenomenon in Wiltshire in England. They examined the soil and the grass and they told me that there is not any answer to the question, because nobody knows an answer. It is one of the things that scientists are at present studying, to try to find out what is the explanation of that phenomenon, for phenomenon it certainly is.
But it is the rare exception to the general rule. The general rule all over this country must be that if you want the kind of grass which forms the foundation of a successful mixed farming policy, it must appear as one crop in a recognised rotation, which involves probably three or four cereal or root crops with a two or three-year grass crop in the rotation. Therefore, let us be clear on this, there is no special virtue in ploughing, there is no special virtue in digging up the ground for the fun of digging up the ground. The virtue of tillage is that it is the correct user of the soil God gave us in order to get the maximum return from it, while at the same time leaving that soil a little better than we found it.
I have gone repeatedly to ploughing matches. It was a favourite practice of Fianna Fáil Ministers and Deputies to go to ploughing matches; and there grew up a tendency at these ploughing matches for boys to arrive in the field with a pair of horses and a plough and a footman. They proceeded to plough a furrow and the footmen went after the furrow packing it all along the line. Then the plough would stop and they would all gather round and have a conference. I saw one fellow take a foot rule to measure up the furrow in order to ensure that he was keeping within the limitations. They eventually reached the stage when they were not ploughing the land to sow a crop on it. They were sowing a crop on the land in order to get a chance of ploughing it. That is insanity. That is turning the whole purpose of life upside down. You do not plough land in order to make pretty patterns on the soil. The primary purpose of ploughing land is to sow in it a crop that will grow. If you so far pervert the whole agricultural outlook of this country that the men who live out of the land consider it more important to make pretty patterns where they work and leave the land lying as if it was done with a needle and thread —though it takes you six weeks to plough an acre—than it is to do a good workmanlike job and get a crop in, then you have perverted the whole purpose of agriculture; and you have done so because you never knew its purpose.
The purpose of the Department of Agriculture now is to extract from the soil of this country committed to our care the maximum return for the man and his family who live upon the land and get their living from it, and to extract from the soil of this country committed to our care the maximum income for the nation of which it forms the foundation. But, over and above these two essentials, it is our purpose to ensure that at the end of every year the land of every holding will be a little better after the harvest is done than the farmer who worked upon it found it when he broke his first sod. The policy of this Government involves that in due rotation and in its proper time every arable acre of land in this country must receive its toll of tillage, not for the purpose of making pretty patterns on the ground but for the purpose of ensuring that in every succeeding generation the land of Ireland in the hands of the Irish people will give the maximum yield which, under God's Providence, it was meant to give so that when an account is rendered of our user of what was entrusted to us we shall be able to say, individually and as a nation, that it was used to our best ability to feed the hungry, to maintain the families of those who worked upon it and to ensure that the abundance it produced would never grow less. That is the position of your Minister for Agriculture. That was always his position. It has never changed. I submit to you, my colleagues in this House, the interesting fact that the intelligentsia who sit in front of us has had 15 years of my speeches on this Estimate. Yet they have not been able to find one single phrase I ever spoke in the House in all those 15 years that they could quote against me after I had been only 12 months in that Department which I myself had been criticising for 15 years in Opposition. Do not doubt but that if there was a phrase to be found which they could quote against me, those of them who can read would have found it.
Some specific matters have been raised here with which I wish to deal. The first is flax. I first communicated the events leading to the negotiations about our flax to this House. On the following day I went down to Monaghan, to my own constituency, to communicate the facts to my own constituents in a parish where there was more flax grown than there is in any other parish in Ireland. I conceived that to be my duty first as a Minister to this House; and, as a member of Dáil Éireann representing County Monaghan, secondly to go to Monaghan and to pick that district where more flax was grown than in any other district in that county or in any other part of Ireland, and there to render an account of all I had said and done. I want to return to that now. During the war the flax of this country was purchased by the British Board of Trade. In 1932 the flax acreage of this country was about 400 acres—400 acres. Then the wiseacres had a brainwave and they decided to revive flax. They worked the flax acreage up to a couple of thousand acres in 1939. In that year the British Government approached the Irish Government and explained that linen was badly wanted to cover aeroplane wings, because it was discovered that the only fabric which would prevent an anti-aircraft shell fragment which penetrated the metal wing of an aeroplane leaving a jagged edge on the metal wing where the fragment emerged after striking it was linen. If that jagged edge was left a rush of wind would tend to tear the whole wing to pieces and destroy the aircraft. But if you glue linen to the metal fabric it prevents the formation of that ragged edge and there is no wind break left after the piece of shell passes through the wing to tear the wing to pieces. I think, with perfect propriety and neighbourly solicitude for a decent people on the whole—daft and all as they sometimes are—the Irish Government told the British Government they would be glad to do what they could to help provide the linen necessary to furnish forth the wings of the Royal Air Force.
In pursuance of that undertaking, the British Government provided a very substantial sum of money which our Government distributed by way of grants to the flax mills, to increase the number of scutching mills, to provide retting dams and facilities of one kind or another. By the provision of these facilities, they raised the acreage of flax to some 30,000 acres. So long as the Government were dealing with the British Board of Trade no difficulties arose. The British Board of Trade negotiated the price every year and that price ruled for all. We appointed our examiners, they appointed theirs and at every flax market the representative of the British Board of Trade and our inspector were present. Every parcel of flax offered was inspected, the grade to which the flax belonged was agreed between them and the farmer was paid on that basis.
In 1948 we were informed that, after the season's crop was purchased, the Board of Trade was letting the matter go back to the North of Ireland spinners and that they in future would negotiate the purchase of our flax. Shortly afterwards a group of respectable and venerable gentlemen called at my office and announced blandly that they had carefully considered the costings and they made some laughable offer. We had a very cordial conversation. I do not think there were any hard feelings on either side and I do not think that they meant that there should be.
They were very avuncular, very Oxford-accent, and so forth, but I begged them to come down to a realisation that we were all from Ireland, that they need not be embarrassed about revealing that fact, that I was not in the least impressed by the paternal declaration that they were prepared to bestow certain favours on us and that we wanted them to understand that if they were prepared to pay a fair price, if it was a convenience to them to have flax grown here, it would be a pleasure to us to help to provide the raw material of an Irish industry. They expressed appreciation of that attitude and said that we would hear from them again.
I had observed during the year, in regard to a variety of trade agreements that had been made between this country and other countries, and by other countries with other countries that this practice had arisen: Say that Greece wanted to buy candles from two countries, one of which was a friendly country and the other a country which they thought was going to be tough. She would pay the friendly country 1/- a lb. for the candles and then tell them on the bye: "We will slip you 3d. per lb. on the quiet; we are going to negotiate with Y country and we want to be able to say to Y country that we bought these candles from you for 1/- per lb., because if Y gets to know that we paid you 1/3 they will make us pay 1/4, but if we can say to them that you sold us your candles at 1/- a lb. we might be able to get their candles at 1/1."
That has happened time and time again. The fertiliser manufacturers — not our own but the continental manufacturers — have made agreements which they have produced showing the more than ample price they have got from another country but well knowing that, in some cases by a family arrangement, the bulk of the payments have been passed back to a certain gentleman's daughter-in-law. Of course the convention is that you do not refer to it. He knows that you know and you know that he knows that you know. Certainly I had this experience in mind when my friends from the North blandly informed me that on one and the same day they proposed that the price payable for flax on one side of the road—in County Monaghan and in County Donegal— was to be reduced by 2/6 a stone, while on the other side of the road—in Tyrone, Fermanagh and Derry—it was to be raised by 7/-. The explanation offered was that the spinners were offering the same price to all producers but that the Northern Government, to the amazement of everybody, had stepped into the breach and said: "We will give a bonus of 7/- to our own producers." Not only that, but for the first time the spinners of Northern Ireland said: "We shall take only 2,000 tons from you." Observe the principle of limitation because if we once admitted that we would undertake to grow a limited amount for Northern Ireland, what should we do next year if they said: "We shall only take 1,000 tons this year"? If we protested then they would then say: "Last year you did not complain when we told you that we would not take more than 2,000 tons We do not want it and we shall take only 1,000 tons this year." The following year probably it will be reduced to 500 tons. In fact our people would become poor mendicants collecting crumbs from the surplus table of the Northern Government. Observe this, however, that, in order to preserve perfect equality, the Northern Ireland spinners said they would take only a limited acreage from their own people. They did not add that the Northern Ireland Government had given a contemporaneous guarantee that, if there was any surplus grown in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Government would buy it.
Would Deputies consider this for a moment: If the Government of Northern Ireland was going to spend a 7/- surplus bounty on flax, if the Government of Northern Ireland was going to buy itself an undetermined acreage of flax, what do you think the Government of Northern Ireland was going to do with the flax? Stuff a pillow with it? Thatch Stormont with it? Did it ever occur to some of the innocents of this House that they were going to sell it back to the spinners and, just as the daughter-in-law passed back the surplus price that had been paid, so then Stormont would proceed to sell back to the Northern Ireland spinners the flax that they, as a Government, had bought. How was I going to find out what price the spinners were required to pay? Would not that be a very convenient vehicle to collect back from the spinners the 7/- a stone bounty paid on a limited acreage? By the operation of that little device, our people are to grow flax at 32/- while the aristocrats of Northern Ireland are to get 40/-. Our people were to be exposed to an affront when they said: "Not that we are leaving the price of flax at what it was, but, to show that we know that you should be hewers of wood and drawers of water and servants of the aristocrats of Belfast, you are to come down 2/6 and like it, while the really superior person cannot be asked to do this heavy labour for less than 40/-."
Am I deserving of the censure of this House when I said to them: "I do not want to quarrel with anybody; I do not want unduly to pry into your business and if the price payable to our people is left at the same figure as it was last year that is good enough for me?" I was told to take, on behalf of our people, 2/6 a stone less and like it on the same day as the price was raised 7/- in Northern Ireland. I told them to go and take a running jump at themselves. I would do it again. I would answer the man in Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan, West Cork or anywhere else that I believe that 99 per cent. of our people are not prepared for any fee to hold themselves out as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Northern Ireland spinners. We do not want to stand on our dignity; we do not wish to pretend that we are superior to any other group of Irishmen in this country, but I am damned if I will ever be messenger to tell the spinners of Belfast that it is good enough to reduce the price payable for flax to our people on the same day as it is raised by 7/6 per stone for the growers of Northern Ireland.
One of the principal flax-growing centres in this country is West Cork. A writ is going to be moved for a by-election in West Cork and I hope to have the opportunity of going down to West Cork in the course of that election, and the people of West Cork are not afraid to speak their mind. Whoever goes down will get a very convenient opportunity of discovering whether the people who grew that flax and had profit out of that crop, some of the most skilled cultivators of that crop—heavier weights of flax per acre were raised in West Cork than ever were raised in any other county in Ireland——
