I move:—
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £1,000,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1950, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, including certain Services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain Subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.
This Supplementary Estimate arises out of the land rehabilitation project and makes provision for the expenses that may accrue during the remainder of this financial year for salaries, travelling expenses, purchase of machinery and implements, grants towards the purchase of machinery and equipment, lime and fertilisers, grants to farmers, advertising and publicity, district offices and stores—rents, etc.— and the customary final provision for miscellaneous expenses the precise nature of which at this stage cannot be foreseen.
Under the project, as outlined when we were discussing the Bill, two procedures are provided for. There is one in which the farmer whose land requires rehabilitation will undertake the work himself and on its completion receives a grant. In cases where the complete rehabilitation of the land treated requires lime or phosphates, or both, provision is made that a proportion of the grants be paid in money and a proportion in kind—and, in this case, "kind" will take the form of either or both of those fertilisers spread upon his land. Provision is made under sub-head E for the procurement of these fertilisers for that purpose. The other part of the project envisages the case where the farmer, for one reason or another, asks the Department to undertake the work, in which event, the programme having been agreed between the farmer and the Department, the Department will bring to the farmer's holding the most efficient equipment available to carry out the work in the most expeditious and economical way. Some of that machinery will have to be bought in America, some of it will be bought in Great Britain and some of it may have to be bought elsewhere as and when investigation proves that it is available.
The Salaries, Wages and Allowances item covers the staff who are being retained on the basis that they will be concerned with the business of this project and with no other Departmental duties. I think it is right to make it clear to the House at once that we conceive it to be the proper policy to retain at headquarters in Dublin the minimum executive staff possible. Inevitably, there must be a considerable clerical staff to deal with the applications, opening letters and answering them, but apart from the director himself, his two deputies and the administrative and technical side, virtually all the other executives of this project will spend most of their time in the region for which they are responsible.
That degree of decentralisation is, I believe, a desirable departure. I apprehend that there has been a natural but, I think, undesirable tendency to allow excessive centralisation to separate the executors of work of this kind from the daily personal problems of the farmers who live upon the land and get their living from it. Travelling expenses, of course, arise as a result of the officers moving about a district and calling on the farmers who seek their advice and assistance.
The item of £200,000 for Machinery and Implements is, of necessity, a speculative figure, for more reasons than one. The equipment required will largely depend on the amount of work we are asked to do; but, unhappily, it will also have to depend on the availability of the equipment. It has been possible, and this we have done, to initiate tentative inquiries and, where equipment appears eminently suitable, to arrange an option, where manufacturers were prepared to do so, the exercise of which will follow on the passage of this Estimate, if the House passes it. Whereas, as Deputies will understand, in the present supply situation to wait inactive until the House had given express approval to this would have imposed intolerable delay, nevertheless I would have been reluctant to enter into irrevocable commitments unless and until the authority by way of Estimate had been given by the Dáil.
Under sub-head D, Deputies will notice provision is made for grants towards the purchase of machinery and equipment. That provision is made so that we may facilitate individual young men throughout the country who desire to become contractors under the scheme. I foresee that some farmers, particularly men with large acreages who have, say, a substantial permanent staff of men working for them, may elect to do the work themselves with their own men. In the process of doing that, certain parts of the work will require the employment of heavier machinery which no individual farmer would ordinarily keep for permanent use, such as drainage machinery, ditch making machinery or equipment of that kind. Where the kind of man who keeps a tractor and agricultural machinery for doing work on contract at the present time desires to extend the scope of his activity, it is proposed to facilitate him by enabling him to borrow one-third of the cost from the Agricultural Credit Corporation and by giving him a grant of one-third of the cost, provided he is prepared to put up one-third of the cost out of his own pocket. That is the general scheme, but I would like the Dáil to know that, while that is the general overriding proportion, I do not intend to exclude the possibility of increasing the facilities by way of loan where, in the judgment of the Department, some fellow is a man of exceptional merit who might very readily make a very real success of the contracting business but just has not got the ready money.
I hope—if I am not unduly optimistic —the House may give me this Estimate to-day. Is there any prospect of that?
