Deputy Cogan to talk to me about oats, Deputy Cogan who deplored that oats worth their weight in gold were exported from this country! Who was it started the oats racket in this country, who was it started the whole racket in getting farmers to sell their oats, despite the advice of the Minister for Agriculture? Who was it denounced the Minister for Agriculture for speaking at Waterford and warning the people not to sell their oats but to hold them for they would be badly wanted before the end of the year? Who was it summoned a public meeting to start a campaign to ensure that the oats would be taken from the small farmer?—Deputy Cogan, and he was followed by Deputy Blaney. Then, from the cavernous recesses of the Fianna Fáil club, the public spirited Deputy Davern took up the echo and a lovely triumvirate they made. The unfortunate small farmers of this country were persuaded to sell their oats to the Minister for Agriculture, who came into office after 15 years of Fianna Fáil. There was not enough economic storage in this country to hold half the wheat that was being used in the mills and those oats had to be stored all over the country, transported up and down the country, until there was £2 10s. a ton for them, under Deputy Cogan's beautiful scheme. Then, having saddled the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture with the duty of disposing of these oats, he wants to know, six months after they are sold, "Why did you sell the oats?" For brazen-faced audacity, for Deputy Cogan to formulate the word "oats" in this House, I never met his match.
I do not deny that he gave me during last year as much persecution as a living man ever had in regard to those oats. I was grieved to think that small farmers over this country, especially Deputy Blaney's neighbours, were robbed by being induced by somebody in whom they trusted to bring their oats in and sell them, and I knew some of the poor creatures to be going around the following summer with a bag seeking to buy for 24/- a cwt. what they had sold for 16/-.
I am not a patient man and I do not pretend to be. I cannot conceal my contempt for the fraudulent hypocrisy of somebody who has the impudence to agitate in the country, against my strong remonstrance, for the tomfool oats scheme that Deputy Cogan was responsible for and then to come up, 18 months later, to beat his breast, bemoan its consequences and try to blame it on me. If the Deputy were 45 times Deputy for Wicklow I would not listen to that and I doubt if very many others in this country will listen to it with anything but contemptuous loathing.
I do not think I would have done my job if I had, without regard to anything else, forced the curers into raising the price of pork to a level that would have resulted in putting a heavy burden on the bacon consumers of this country, because two-thirds of the bacon that is eaten in this country is eaten in the kitchens of Irish farmers. Now I notice that the public spirited Deputy Corry's heart is bleeding all over the chamber at the price that was charged by the curers to the wholesalers and the retailers. I do not give two fiddle-de-dees what price the curers charge to the wholesalers and retailers. They are well able to look after themselves. I have long been a member of both camps and I do not want Deputy Corry, or I did not, when I was a shopkeeper, want Deputy Corry or anyone else to be bleeding his heart over me.
My concern was for the retail price, what was it going to cost the man or woman who went in to buy it. Bacon was sold in Carrickmacross last Christmas at 2/- a lb. and the best of hard, salt, long clear bacon is to be had to-day for 2/6 a lb. in any country shop in Ireland, except where there is a rogue behind the counter. My advice to any woman is, if she meets a rogue behind the counter, to lift her basket off the counter and start for the door. He will be over the counter to catch her shawl and bring her back. If we can get good hard, salt, long, clear bacon for the people for 2/6 a lb., taking the whole side, 1/8 for the shoulder, 2/1 for the belly and 2/8 for the back, and at the same time get 190/- to 195/- for the man that sells the pig, is everybody content? I am, and that is the way I am going to keep. Anyone that does not like that can lump it. That is a fair price for the producer. That is a fair price for the consumer on the present basis of costs.
Deputies will see one of the advertisements that give Deputy Cogan such offence. Deputy Cogan, deep in his heart, thinks it is a reckless thing to say "yes" or "no" to anything in black and white. I do not. I am happy that the Deputy should have the advertisement avowedly published by the Department of Agriculture under my instruction relating to the profit to be derived from a sow pig 18 months ago. Is there any Deputy who will deny that the farmer who put in one sow or two sows 18 months ago is better off to-day than he was before he bought the sows? They paid him well. The Deputy says that because a cart of bonhams cannot be sold at £5 a piece they are no longer worth £5. That shows the Deputy's familiarity with the pig business.
There is nobody in Ireland can make money buying bonhams and keeping them to be fat pigs. That system means that the man who breeds the bonhams gets the cream and the man who feeds them gets the skim. The only man who makes money in the pig business in this country is the man who breeds the pig, feeds the pig and fattens the pig. Anyone who wants to breed bonhams and sell them at ten weeks old, if he can find a "gom" to buy them, more power to his elbow. But if he is a farmer and cannot find a "gom" to buy them, he will bring them home and fatten them himself unless he is too lazy, and then of course he will sell them to anybody who will take them off his hands at any price he can get for them because he does not want to be bothered with them.
I knew a man once who professed to be poor. I offered him a pair of bonhams and said he could pay me for the bonhams when he had them fattened. He said it was a very good offer, but he asked: "What would I feed them with?""Have you nothing at all in your place?" I asked and he replied: "Not a thing." I said: "I will lend you the meal until you have them fattened and you can pay me for the bonhams and the meal.""That is a very good offer," he said, "but what will I do if one of them dies on me?" I replied: "We will not spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar. If either of them dies on you, pay me for the other.""That is a great offer, thank you," he said. "I will think it over." I never saw hair or hide of him since. What was wrong with that fellow was that he did not want to have his peace of mind upset and the man who sells his bonhams to-day for £2 or 50/- apiece must be one of the boys who does not like to have his peace of mind upset.
If there are any farmers in Deputy Cogan's neighbourhood whom he is now discussing with Deputy O'Reilly, I should be very grateful if he would bring them a message from me that if they are selling their bonhams for £2 apiece, the sooner they become cobblers or tailors, the better it will be for themselves and the country. If that causes the Deputy to raise his eyebrows, he will raise them often. The curse of this country is the microscopic minority of lazy ne'er-do-wells who encumber some of the small farms of this country, who always have their hand out for something for nothing and who never want to do a day's work, if they can wriggle out of it. So far as I am concerned, the sooner these boys get out of farming, the better it will be for everybody. The blessing of this country, however, is, and the last two years have demonstrated this if they have demonstrated nothing else, that the farmers, left alone, are the best people in the world to run the land of Ireland and it is the first time they got a chance to give that demonstration in the past 20 years.
I said that facts are the best arguments and results the best test of a policy. Let me give the Deputy and the House a few facts and a few results of the policy which he has been concerned so stridently to condemn. In 1948, the number of pigs delivered into bacon factories was 238,972 and in 1949, the number was 546,626. In the month of January, 1948, the number of pigs delivered into factories was 19,851; in 1949, 21,759, and in 1950, when the Deputy's heart is bleeding, 55,984. I must say that it was only the hardier nails of the Fianna Fáil Party who could muster the brass to intervene in this discussion. All honour to the tough old roots who faced the music, but the picture of that galére talking about 190/- for pigs as being inadequate reward—God bless the mark! In 1939, the price was 73/- per cwt.; in 1940, 93/6; in 1941, 106/-; in 1942, 108/-; and in 1943, 135/-. Then the bacon went under the counter. In 1944, it was 165/-; in 1945, 166/-; and in 1947, 179/-.
Then we had to call out the Guards, when they started setting up bacon factories in the coal cellars. When I came into office, I found bacon factories in coal cellars. I found one house and it was like something out of "Superman" or the "Phantom". There was a hidden door and a concealed trap and you fell down about seven feet and discovered a bacon factory in the basement. There was another gentleman who got wind of the word that we were coming and he cleaned up the whole show, but damned if he could get rid of the salt, so he dug up the garden and laid a nice layer of salt all over it. He buried the salt, but he could not make it look as if the grass had grown uninterruptedly, and we dug the salt up again. Talk about Al Capone and the Cicero district of Chicago! It was trotting after the illegal bacon curers of the City of Dublin, who were flourishing. There was the greatest possible respect for them in the Dublin market. They could go in and pay any price you liked to ask for a pig and then they cured it in the most extraordinary places.
I have told the House about the respectable locales, but some of the stuff we found at the back of Capel Street, not to speak of some of the stuff in yards off Marlborough Street, was cured in conditions and presented an appearance that would stagger the toughest forensic physician who ever examined an exhumed remains. I disposed, with the help of the much blown upon pigs and bacon marketing organisation and the Garda Síochána, of those warriors and the price went up to 194/-, but it went there largely as a by-product of "skull-duggery" and as such gave me no satisfaction at all. But in 1949 the average price from the 1st January to the 31st December was 190/3 and we exported surplus bacon to Great Britain for the first time in 14 years. What was better, we sold bacon to the people at a lower price— and in any abundance they cared to call for—than they had seen for certainly ten years before.
What is the point of using this House for the purpose of proclaiming that the curers and their efforts to exploit the farmers have been allowed to succeed? Why do Deputies do that? Do they not know that I am as solicitous as they to get a fair price for the farmers? Do they not know that 15 years ago I was fighting in this House to expose what was then the undoubted exploitation of the farmers by the curers? Do they not know that Fianna Fáil fought hard to cover that up and that repeated exposures from my place on the far side of the House forced the Fianna Fáil Party to set up a commission which effectively revealed the unjust profits to the curers and made known to the people what was then a mystery? Why should they charge me, in the face of the facts, with having reneged on those principles? Why should they believe that the Government they are supporting would for one moment tolerate an attempt to exploit the farmers of this country? I do not know. I do not think I have ever been inaccessible to any Deputy of this House who wanted to see me on any matter, and I do not see why Deputies should take any pleasure in getting up to level against a Minister of the Government they are supporting charges that are demonstrably untrue. I do not see what pleasure it gives them to create the impression in this country that they have not access to the Minister to bespeak his activities for the abatement of any abuse which they might know of and which he did not. Why should they wish to present a picture to the country that the Ministers of this Government are supinely indifferent and have no interest in securing for the farmers justice and fair play unless they are held up to exposure?
Now I gladly accept Deputy Lehane's offer if he wishes to make it to let his motion for an inquiry into the bacon factories be set afoot. If he moves that I accept it. I will put him up and I will ask him to make his first subject of inquiry the Cork Farmers' Abattoir and Clover Meats and Shaw's of Limerick. I will ask why is it that when I looked confidently to the co-operative factories run by the farmers themselves to hold the line, to back me up, to show that honest prices could be paid, they were the first to beat the prices down. Why, when I asked them to give me a hand in holding the line, were they the ones who told me they did not agree?
