Or even widespread prejudice against home-produced articles. I stood behind a counter for 25 years and sold seeds and pretty well everything else that is sold in a country shop. I never in all that time met anybody who rejected that which was produced at home in favour of that which was produced abroad if the article produced at home was equal in quality and value to that which was manufactured abroad. But I have found repeatedly that tariff racketeers in this country, having got high protection, manufactured and offered for sale rubbish and the average Irish farmer, perfectly legitimately, came in and said: "Do not give me that, give me the British thing" because it was the only way he could readily express his grave disapprobation of the commodity that had failed to satisfy him. I remember the late Deputy O'Hara of Swinford getting up in the benches over there and taking out of his pocket the head of a fork every tooth in which was like a corkscrew, and asking the present Deputy Dr. Ryan who was then Minister for Agriculture how he expected farmers to face the harvest with forks of that quality. It was experiences of that kind that have caused our people on occasions and in certain circumstances to seek to defend themselves from exploitation by looking for something that was not the product of a highly protected industry for they had come to associate such products with inferior quality. I never heard a farmer in this country prefer Huntley and Palmer biscuits to Jacob's biscuits. I never heard them prefer foreign produce to domestic produce where both articles had been produced in the free field of competition and both articles had secured their market by merit alone
Deputy Dr. Ryan has adopted a conciliatory tone in his opening observations. I am bound, however, to deprecate strongly aspects of the policy which he rebukes me for jettisoning. The policy of root seed production in this country fell into two parts. There was the duty of the farmer to grow seed, stecklings, and then in the following year to allow these to mature and bear a seed crop. Side by side with these producers, however, there were the monopolists, these two groups of seed merchants. The basis on which these two monopolists were prepared to handle the produce of Irish seed growers was that if they did handle the seeds of the Irish grower they must have an absolute monopoly of the right to import root seeds from any other source and I allege that what in fact was happening was that the monopolists were using the Irish seed growers as an alibi to cover up their activities as importers. Once they became associated in the public mind with the domestic grower they were in a position to say to anyone who challenged their monopoly: "Are you going to hit me with the baby in my arms?" What happened? Armed with the baby, in 1948, the retail price of mangold seed in Ireland was 4/10 per lb. I would like to make this clear to the House— the members of these two monopolies are wholesale seed distributors—Associated Seed Growers and Pedigree Seed Growers. These were the names of the two monopolies. They sold the seeds which they had had propagated for them on contract in Ireland and the seeds they imported to wholesale distributors and they themselves were wholesale distributors. The price per lb charged to wholesale distributors by the producing companies worked out on an average in 1948 at 3/2 per lb. for mangolds. The retail price by the time the farmer bought it was 4/10.
Does Deputy Ryan know the price at which mangold seed was on offer delivered at the port of Dublin from Great Britain? The price was 1/4, which, by the time it reached the farmers' hands, was 4/10. Do Deputies think I am remiss in saying that that kind of exploitation is going to stop as soon as I can stop it? The price of swede turnip seed in 1948, the retail price, was 3/11 per lb., and the price at which that seed was on offer at the port of Dublin was 1/8 per lb. The price of common turnip seed was 1/2 delivered at the port of Dublin, but by the time it reached the farmer the retail price was 3/3.
Deputy Ryan was Minister for Agriculture and he was succeeded by Deputy Smith, who was succeeded by myself. Is it our duty as Ministers for Agriculture to protect the farmers or to protect the seed merchants? Maybe I am wrong, but my interpretation of the duty of my office is to defend the interests of the farmers who live on the land and get their living from the land, and if someone imports seed which could have been imported at 1/4 per lb. and I find the farmers being asked to pay 4/10 per lb. am I expected to get into a wrangle and a tangle with auditors, costing accountants, lawyers and solicitors to disprove the proposition that you can justify 4/10 per lb. for mangold seeds that could be bought at 1/4?
Every monopolist in Ireland loves the prospect of sitting down with a Minister and his officials and introducing them to his costing accountants, his auditor, his solicitor and his expert adviser, and chopping logic till the cows come home to prove that his expenses were so heavy, his losses in previous years so oppressive and the necessity for an ample allowance for management expenses and interest on capital, not to speak of lighting and rates and cleaning and advertising, so great. By the time you have argued the toss with them about each item, everybody has forgotten what the argument is about. I do not think I want to argue with anybody about that. A price of 1/4 to 4/10—not all the auditors, costing accountants, solicitors, business advisers or anybody else can persuade me that that jump does not constitute robbery somewhere along the road. I should like to find out from Deputy Allen, Deputy Corry, Deputy Gorry and Deputy Walsh if they consider it wrong to put an end to a system of seed propagation in this country which conferred monopoly rights on two groups of importers, with the result that in 1948 mangold seed which was available at ¼ at the port of Dublin cost the farmer in Kilkenny 4/10. Gloomy silence!
I announced that if I could open the market to competitors who would put the "come-hither" on that kind of activity the following morning, I was going to do it. What did I discover? I discovered that I was irrevocably bound by an undertaking given by Deputy Ryan some years ago that neither I nor any of his successors could break that monopoly without giving them two years more to rook the farmers right before they let go. That is the position at the present moment. I did my level best to get round that agreement, to get under it, to get over it or to break my way through it, and, short of repudiating an undertaking which my predecessor was legally entitled to give and which was most undoubtedly binding on any successor he might have, whether in the same Administration or another, I could not break loose from that agreement. It is still in operation. From the first tick of the clock, when I can put an end to that, down it will go, as dead as a duck, never to rise again, and, if there is a Deputy who disagrees with that, let him oil his joints for a trip to the Lobby, because he will go one way and I will go another.
I am happy to inform the House, however, that, although I discovered that that agreement could not be broken, I thought a little exhortation might achieve some purpose and I had a discussion with the gentleman engaged in this public-spirited activity, and, with all the respect due by a public servant to his employers, I told them what I thought of them. I am glad to say that in this case the master hearkened in some measure to his servant, and I received an assurance, to which I believe effect has been given, that the retail price chargeable for seeds during the past spring would be substantially regulated by the retail prices ruling in Great Britain. I am glad to have been able to achieve that measure of reform, but I do not propose to take any chances hereafter. The power of exhortation in reforming the wayward is often striking in the early stages. The hardened sinner does not always so readily yield to exhortation. I have decided to remove temptation from their way and the surest way to remove temptation is to provide honest competition. I want to reaffirm that as soon as it is humanly possible to restore the full Arctic blast of competition it will blow through this land like a tornado and the farmer, seed dealer and shopkeeper can buy his seeds where he pleases, how he pleases and he shall be the judge of what he pleases. My Department retains the overriding duty to examine the quality of all seeds offered for sale in this country, with a view to preventing the sale of seeds of low germination or incorrect description. That has always been the duty of the Department of Agriculture and it will continue to be such in the future as in the past. That duty is designed to prevent fraud and will, of course, continue.
Deputy Dr. Ryan says: "You cannot grow seeds here if you allow imports of seeds." Does Deputy Dr. Ryan believe that? Why is it possible for every other country in the world to grow seeds and allow imports of seeds, except Ireland? Why have we so wretchedly low a conceit of ourselves as to imagine that we can do nothing in this country that somebody else cannot do better? I confidently anticipate that within four years from to-day we will have grass seed, root seeds and barley seeds superior to anything else produced in the world and I would consider that we had failed in our purpose if we had not produced here what, in the judgment of a competent farmer, was the best in the world and I have not the slightest doubt of our capacity to do so, it being understood that nothing less is an objective that we would entertain for a moment.
Deputy Coburn said in this House earlier to-day: "Try to forget that the Minister for Agriculture is Deputy Dillon." It is an interesting commentary on that, that a motion is moved in the House calling on the House to reject the Minister's policy in relation to the home production of seeds when the only thing they know about the policy is that it is the policy of Deputy Dillon. I ask Deputies on the other side of the House if they do not feel in some measure that it degrades themselves to be manipulated into the position of getting up in this House and moving that Dáil Éireann do reject the Minister for Agriculture's policy on the propagation of seeds—on the sole ground that the Minister for Agriculture is Deputy Dillon. Surely, if the iron has entered so deeply into their souls they ought to learn, for respectability's sake, the art of dissembling. Hatred is never a very pretty spectacle, clothed even in the raiment of hypocrisy, but Fianna Fáil hatred, naked and unashamed—oh, it is a revolting spectacle.
What then are our plans? In regard to grass seeds, I do not think I need recall the memory of Deputies of this House to the catastrophe which the folly of my predecessors brought upon those who had to buy grass seeds in this country. The situation which was created by their utter incompetence resulted in the man who grew the finest, cleanest seed it was possible to grow being paid precisely the same price as the man who brought in the sweepings of the loft. It is a very natural result that the number of persons who went on taking the traditional care to produce a good clean sample of perennial dwindled steadily until hardly anybody brought anything into the market except the sweepings of the loft and they gave up growing Italian altogether so that for the last three years you could not get a stone of Italian. The nearest you could go to it was mixed seed, because the glorious principle of a guaranteed price for grass seed had been established and, of course, grass seed was grass seed whatever sort it was. But the man who produced it, the man who cleaned it, the man who sold it never lost, because his rate of profit was carefully fixed by Order at every stage. The only man who got it in the neck was the unfortunate farmer who had to buy it and when he sowed that stuff God only knew what was going to come up in the spring. Sometimes nothing came up at all and sometimes there came up a crop that would frighten the rabbits. Then we took the control off. I took the control off. Monaghan is the largest grass-seed producing county in Ireland and I was told that I would be run out of the constituency. I was told that it was a lovely racket, that my constituents in Monaghan had got in on the ground floor and that if I spoiled it on them I would know the reason why. I told my political advisers not to worry their heads, that I knew the people of Monaghan had no admiration for racketeers or love for rackets. I told them that I was going to take the control off grass seeds immediately and that I ventured to say that no county in Ireland would more consistently support me in that than the growers of County Monaghan, and I was perfectly right. Two years from to-day we will be growing in Monaghan, Cavan and Louth better grass seed than is grown in any country in the world—and we want no protection for it. Our only trouble is that we will not have enough to meet the demand that exists for it abroad. Yes, the Deputy may raise his eyebrows and wag his head and dismiss from the range of possibility that anything could be produced in Ireland that people from abroad would come to buy. Deputy Walsh regards such a proposal as grotesque, ludicrous—but he is wrong. According to his standards, I am not surprised that he laughs with scorn at the suggestion that what is here produced should be eagerly sought from abroad. But it is, and it will be, because it is the best and because the men who are growing it are of that invaluable quality—too proud to do less than their best, given the assurance that they will be allowed to sell their produce at its worth, so that their care and labour may be adequately rewarded. Their neighbours all over Ireland would far sooner pay 6d. or 1/- a stone more for the best—what is produced in County Monaghan—than buy the sweepings of the loft, which they were compelled to buy for the last six or seven years.
We propose to go a step further. Certain preliminary work has been done in the research institutes of the country on indigenous strains of grass. In the propagation of grass one unique difficulty confronts the propagator, if he is concerned, as we will be, to propagate Perennial, Timothy and Cocksfoot. Broadly speaking, for pasture land we aim to get a leafy tillering strain; for short leas, a leafy but more upright variety; but, in each case, a leafy strain—and a leafy strain connotes a strain which produces relatively little seed. The more seed it will produce the less leaf it tends to retain in maturing. Now the man who grows seed for commercial sale has a perfectly legitimate interest in the bulk of the seed that he saves off his acre; but the variety of grass we hope to propagate is going to be of a variety which, instead of yielding ten to 12 cwts. of seed per acre may yield to the commercial grower no more than five or six cwts.
My aim is to eliminate from our domestic market all foreign grass seed of the Timothy, Cocksfoot and Perennial varieties, but without prohibiting, hindering or taxing by one farthing a lb. the supply of seed from any other part of the world. The aim will be to do that by propagating varieties of seed here derived from indigenous grasses selected by our own agronomists and by making it possible for the grower who is prepared to grow them and accept the yield of five or six cwts. instead of ten or 12 cwts. to get an acreage bounty no more than will put him on an equal footing with where he would have stood had he sown commercial seed. Then put both on the market side by side and let the best seed win, and I confidently prophesy that, so soon as adequate supplies of the seed we wish to propagate and distribute for growing for seed have been made available to growers, not one ounce of foreign grass seed will be brought into this country—because nobody will be able to sell it. Anyone who wants to bring it in, however, will be as free as the air, and if there is any country in the world that can make available a better seed at a lower price to our farmers than the seeds that are propagated here, my advice to our farmers is to buy them and leave the seeds we are propagating on our hands. My advice to every farmer in Ireland is this: Sow your land with the best seed you can find which yields the best value; do not care who propagated it; whence it came, or who is selling it; if it is the best seed for your land and will give you and your family the best living for the work you do on your land that is the seed you should buy; do not ask if it is Cathleen Ní Houlihaun seed or Seán Buidhe seed or Yankee Doodle seed, so long as it is seed that will produce a profitable crop for you and your family, put it down and you are under no compliment to anybody.
Regarding barley and oats, as Deputy Dr. Ryan said, the business of propagating this has gone on for many years. For well-nigh 50 years the attempt has been made to spread the use of pedigree seed by selling it to merchants and asking the merchants to get their customers to sell their production back to them, so that in the second year they could sell it out again. That plan has never worked. One never could get a sufficient number of merchants sufficiently interested to keep the crop under surveillance and get the crop sent back to sell it again. The Pedigree Seed Growers' Scheme was operated here with the astonishing result that pedigree seed was costing 105/- to the farmers who wanted to buy it when commercial seed was costing 85/- or 95/-. Yet Deputy Ryan says: "Get their balance sheets." I saw a good many balance sheets published in the last 15 years in this country and I never saw a trace of an excess profit on them, but some of the tulips who drew the balance sheets, when I first met them, had not a shoe to their foot —and they are going around now in Bentley cars. Of course, you can study their balance sheets for the last 15 years, and more moderate men never transacted business in this country. I often think they must imagine their neighbours' memories are very short. When I pass the residence, standing in its own grounds, of a gentleman I knew 25 years ago in the two-pair back, I am told that he is a prop of Irish industry, an employer of Irish labour, a benefactor of the Irish people and a man who has done yeoman service for his native land. He has done yeoman service for himself, anyway.